After Feb 23 update all NPCs are asleep and can not be interacted with, except looted and killed

sounds like there not respawning try to reload the plugin.

I did, multiple times, even. they don't even despawn they just lay there the whole time as if the game considers them actual players

Sounds like you have another plugin conflicting. im geting no other reports of this.

Hello, I have the same problem, did you find a solution?

Merged post

Edit:
I allow myself to answer the message to help those who have the same problem :D

After doing some tests and research I found where the problem comes from !!
It was the "HumanNPC.json" config file which is in the "Server _Rust\Server\oxide\data".
Who had a problem and therefore the server no longer took it into account, the NPCs were still on the map but not recognized by HumanNPC, which had the effect of no longer linking them with the config file, they were there sleeping.

Just review the file in question or simply delete it, kill the sleeping NPCs and replace the desired NPCs.

For my part, the problem came from the "message_hello" and "message_bye" parts.

I had done like this: "message_hello": "Hello to you!",

And that was apparently not good, I simply deleted the data file and replaced the NPCs without putting a message.

Hope it can help other people :D