ShadowTani

Well, it doesn't resolve the issue, but it's a workaround, a tedious one. This is why they should have a system to purge old items (that isn't in chests and containers) and insects from time to time to ensure game performance remains stable. That would prevent issues like this one from happening as well.

I posted this on the Steam forums, but realize the bug reports there are likely to be overlooked so I'm posting this here as well. This exploit have been present from the initial version of the game and is so simple a lot of players might be doing it without realizing it. When you save and reload a game any completed BURG.L quest will be reset and completed again, effectively allowing you to dupe raw science by repeatedly saving and reloading until quests get removed properly from the quest list at daybreak.Related issue: After completing an exploration type quest, if you save and reload the game after the trail marker gets destroyed for any reason then the quest will once again be uncompleted and impossible to complete again.

If there is a cap on number of objects in the world as you speculate then I certainly hope they have a decay timer at all on abandoned objects. There's quite a few arrows that lays abandoned around that I missed picking up the first time (or because a mob ran off with it without me bothering to chase). Even if these don't add to the cap of things in the world, it will certainly degrade performance eventually. Stuff not in containers decaying eventually and mechanics that help balance the bug population of the world (despawning unnecessary quantities) would really help improve current and potentially future issues.

Quartzite was slow to respawn before the patch (about 5 days), it doesn't seem to be respawning at all now though.

I managed to get inside the box while crouching eventually, trying to hit the mints through the opening seems difficult if not impossible at the moment.