You have to put a good number of hours into The Division before you can craft a high-end backpack, which makes it doubly sucky that doing so can lock you out of the game. Dozens of users are reporting the issue on Reddit and on Ubisoft's official forums, and it appears that the same issue has been around potentially since launch.
It goes like this: first you craft a high-end (the most powerful rarity) item, usually a backpack. Then the next time you go through a loading screen, the pack will disappear from your inventory, leaving your character's back all chilly and unadorned. It isn't an optional gear slot, so that's definitely not supposed to happen, and it's also a waste of resources. But the next part is way worse: the next time you try to log into the game, you may get stuck at the connection screen indefinitely, no matter how many times you try.
Ubisoft said on Wednesday that it's aware of the issue and working on a fix, but many players have already been stuck for a week or more; there are almost 30 pages worth of player reports on that forum thread alone. That's really, really bad!
I'd recommend being very cautious about crafting high-end backpacks for the time being. I'm going to play it extra safe and stay away from high-end crafting all together until Ubisoft can work out whatever the problem is and fix it.
Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!
One Piece creator and star of Netflix show teases the challenges of bringing season 2's Grand Line arc to life: "We need to shock audiences"
Rescued The Evil Within and Hi-Fi Rush studio confirms it's making "games that only Tango Gameworks can make" after Krafton saved it from the Microsoft graveyard
Absolute Batman #3 teases a new origin for the Riddler and delves into Bruce and Selina's childhoods
