Then I suppose it's possible that you had a case of a vanishing villager. It's usually seen when touching or moving a villager during or shortly after burials. I agree with you that it's probably not worth restoring a saved game in an attempt to "undo" the vanishing event.

it happens to me alot when i drop one onto another in a remote part of the village to breed... i'm running a zire 72

Last evening I took a 14 year old female villager to the cactus so that she could learn Healing. To begin, she was standing on the right side of the cactus & moved around to the left side, where (while trying to learn) she DISAPPEARED before my eyes! I immediately went to the Roster & all trace of her was gone. It's as if she never existed; this was her first attempt at learning anything, if that matters. Thank goodness it hasn't happened to anyone who has any established (important) skills!

(Playing on a Tungsten E.)

Unfortunately, there's going to be a risk of that until the v1.1 update is released. The best way to minimize the risk is to exit the game fairly regularly so that it's saved often, which also "tidies up" the villagers in memory so that there's not as much risk of vanishings.

I was just finishing up the game when I dragged a middle-aged woman into the ocean to learn how to fish. She disappeared! Another fisherman went into the water and the message read that somone was being buried. Sure enough, she was missing from my "Details" list. I know that she was not sick...just clueless about fishing...perhaps clueless about swimming too? She really stood out with her yellow hair and bright red bow.

Why isn't it ever the ugly, lazy villagers that vanish!?!

You're so right! The Special Ed. villagers seem to be the survivors. Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Here's a "cheat" that will probably work. As Ladycfii suggests, exit and reload fairly regularly. Now if something bad happens when you're in the game, hit the soft reset button on the back of your handheld. This will cause you to lose everything that's happened since your last save but also loses the lost villagers. I admit to using this when the random events are particularly bad. It's taken me three tries to get a village that didn't fail and I'm not going to allow some stupid random event to totally ruin it! Gah!

I believe that I already reported that I dragged one of the "Village People" to the water to teach her how to fish;she was perfectly healthy and about 30 years old. I plopped her into the water...she never reappeared and another villager went into the water, got the body out and took her to be buried. She was off my list also.

I've been working on Fish Tycoon, then decided to start Village Sim again. I took my best builder (thank you very much) and was dragging her over the research table. It appeared as though she had gone underneath the table....nope and gone from my Details List, too.

At the very beginning, my Palm rebooted and I lost 2 days of work. Barbara told me to exit the game so it goes into save mode. I do that now after anything happens that is important.

I have a Treo 600. Do also please let us know as soon as the upgrade is available. You all are truly adept!!
Gail

Vanishing villagers and other nasties will be a thing of the past when the update is released. Arthur will make an announcement when it's available.