Try this order
- Talk to the woman all the way through. Do not stop after the first line. Leave the dialogue only when the interaction is fully finished.
- Leave the area and check the ground again. Look around the water and the paths rather than relying on the exact place you first saw a leech.
- Use Load Last Save. Prefer the last save that still leaves your progress intact. Do not immediately overwrite every save slot while testing.
- Re-check the leech locations. If they appear, collect three and return to the woman for the leech bait.
- If the save is still stuck, stop and preserve evidence. Note the game version, whether you died to the boss, and whether a restart or reload changed anything before opening a new run.
Why the cautious wording? The original thread says “talk to the woman fully” in one reply, but a follow-up says that did not work and later reports that reloading the last save brought the leeches back. The disagreement is itself a reason to label the page as a community report.
What you need for the Island 2 boss
The progression route needs three leeches delivered to the Island 2 NPC. She returns the boss bait; use it to start the Giant Piranha encounter. After the fight, return the bones to receive the next island coordinates.
If you are only missing the bait, do not restart the whole game before trying the reload sequence above. The route is documented on the islands-in-order page.
Save safety in v1.0.6
The official 1.0.6 note says the game now checks save files before loading and does not save server or local state when the application crashes. Manual Save, Main Menu, and Quit actions still save, and autosaves happen every minute. That patch note explains the save behavior; it does not promise to restore leeches in an already affected file.
Still missing?
- Record whether the NPC dialogue completed.
- Record whether Load Last Save restored other progress.
- Test in a duplicate/new run only after keeping the original save safe.
- Report the result with the exact version and whether death happened before the spawn problem.