Arelith

Scarne had just got back to Brogendenstein, deposited some gold into the bank and then was wandering across the trade hall.
I was not interacting with my inventory in any way, when I got a message saying he'd lost his adamantine tower shield. Indeed the item was gone. Not on the floor, not in inventory. I had enough space for spare items in the inventory too, having sold junk shortly before.
I relogged and checked again, but it had vanished without a trace. Shortly afterward the server reset.

Any ideas what happened? Is it a known bug, or is this the result of some hidden pickpocket?

Did you drop it because of a full inventory at all before it disappeared?

I did drop a few things within the hours before this happened. The shield once, from changing weapons, and then a few items when I accidentally picked up a character corpse with a full inventory. It spilled items on the floor oddly.
This is a known delayed issue?

That's what did it. It's a known glitch. The game never properly processes it leaving your inventory the first time or something along those lines and when the area it was dropped in de-spawns everything the item goes with it.

You can avoid it in the future by doing any of the following.

Put the dropped item in a container and take it out again. Enemy corpses work.
Trade the item with another player and have them trade it back.
Type -save after picking it up again and then relog.

I had used -save when I realised the reset was coming and before the item was lost, but I did not relog until after it was lost. I'll sure be more vigilant of this now I've lost something of value.
Thanks.

No problem. It's never a guarantee that items will be lost to the glitch but it's better to try and avoid it if you can.