This is mostly advice for tradeskills (Artisan's Prize especially) as they take up the most space by far. Storage: Player housing comes with a 300ish-slot crate. You can essentially create dedicated houses for each trade. I made an alt guild and acquired its own private neighborhood to fill with storage houses. I only recommend that for passive management -- it gets annoying going back and forth. Organization: I automated this. I wrote a Python script that: 1. Parses my /outputfile 2. Organizes by type, and cross-checks with an EQRecipe master list 3. Makes a GET request to EQTraders for materials and sub-combines 4. Piles it into a CSV file so that... It's then pasted in a Google sheet, which has a macro in it to sort by what's done/needs to be done. Adetia didn't have one for Research so I made my own process. Artisan's Prize would have been a nightmare without it. Below is what the tradeskill/inventory management looks like at the end: P.S. My flood of GET requests crashed EQTraders one time and I apologize. Write an API!
Does anyone else think it's insane we have to use programs, spreadsheets, multiple mules, houses, etc to store stuff? EQ2 has an item storage crate why can't we have that?
For a guild, afaik, the housing storage is the best method for people to have access to all the things. For me personally - I've got 2 mules for collections (currently). One holds RoF, CotF, and TBM collections. The other holds the rest. The 3 expansion one doesn't have the big bags that the other has, cause it's on my bard's account. The big one gets the castoffs from Winnowyl, so has a LOT more space. Also, free to play accounts. You only get 2 characters, but that's not really a big deal. I've got 2 set up for my tradeskill stuff currently, but once I amass more, I'll open another f2p and make 2 more mules. I've got a 'standard' tradeskill mule for the 7 basics, then a 'special' that holds stuff for spell research, alchmey, tinkering, and poisonmaking. Eventually, I WILL split it down farther, if I ever get around to hitting 350 for the aug. Right now, I'm too lazy to mess with it. If that's what your current bank/mule looks like, you can open up some slots by combining stacks. Your alchemy supplies that I can identify by sight stack to 1k now, instead of just 100. Lots of the stuff does now. Actually, MOST of the stuff does now, if I'm not mistaken. So that would help some.
just a FYI .. although F2P accounts only let you have 2 characters to start you can always use your loyalty to buy more char's up to 3 from vender and another 3 from marketplace.. so thats 6 more toons you can have access too plus the 2 original so 8 in total ..
How does their storage crate works? I'm a trade skill fan, but the amount of time I spend organizing stuff is ridiculous. I would like a better system for us.
One doesn't HAVE to do any of that. Not everyone is a pack rat. And many of us who are almost enjoy that aspect of the game. Besides, with a good approach, and some organization, you don't need programs and spreadsheets. Admittedly, though, EQ2s storage crates are very nice
For your 1st sentence, I'd say for anyone, not just guilds. Using houses is the way to go. Also, to Deux: You really should consolidate, as Winnowyl says. Use the "ctrl-click" trick to move stuff quickly from bag to bag, which will then automatically stack things for you. Also, look into the "bigBank" mod from the AYA interface on EQInterface. It's just one window for all of your bank bags. I've used it for years, and would never give it up. If you're using a standard 1080p screen, you can have that open, and all 10 of your inventory bags, and nothing overlaps. It's great!
I also use AYA (the whole UI, not just the bank) but I have some seriously custom windows that I adjusted. I REALLY love the bank tho; you're right, it's the perfect size.
Yep, I use AYA as well, and really like it. My only complaint is the group window. The horizontal layout is fine, unless you're healing, in which case, stacked vertical HP bars are much easier to keep an eye on.
I feel the same way, actually, and usually end up putting my group on XTW when I'm on my druid. I've been pondering a way to make a vertical group window that I can fit in there somehow. It'll be sized to fit mine, but I can share it with you when I have it done, and you can see if it'll work for you.
Over the years I varied between a few ways to manage items. For TS, I used to use alt (on my main's account) banks full of TS bags to hold the items. The pain with that was having to log off my main to move items to or from the alts. I more recently moved to putting the TS stuff in houses and giving my mains on the three accounts I owned with access. The houses I used could hold 300 non-placeable items. So that meant I had to split the items up between more houses than the number of alts I used to use. For TS, I tried to have each house hold items for a specific TS. This wasn't perfect as some items could be used in multiple TSs. Like another poster in this forum, I did use a script to extract recipes for research when that was my last TS to max. That was easier with research than most TSs as research appeared to have EXACTLY one recipe for each crafted item. Then I didn't have to find which recipes IDs went to which alternate recipe. For collections, I used houses to begin with. I wrote a script and posted stuff to the GitHub Pages area associated with my code repo. It was pretty basic but looked fine in the browsers I used. Apparently other browsers didn't use the same default way to display HTML 5 summary and detail tags. I didn't bother with using CSS to address it to make it look better in more browsers as it worked fine for me in the ones I used. The collection code is data driven and I originally wrote it in Python, but I rewrote it to use Go. I did make the old Python code public, but didn't bother making the Go code public, but may do it sometime. I did post the new YAML files describing the collection sets to my code repo as those might be useful to others for some reason. I have since stopped playing and donated my Windows machine so I am not able to run EQ anymore unless they start allowing VMs. The Go code was portable and I can still compile for Windows easily enough. As above, I don't play anymore, but still occasionally check the email account I made. And since I don't play anymore, I don't expect to fill out the collection data with expansions past ToV. If any are interested in the newer Go code and I get an email to the address below, I may find time to clean it up just a bit and make the Go code public. Email: "eqnuttann@gmail.com" Data used by the programs: https://github.com/nuttann/eqdata Sample output of my Go programs: https://nuttann.github.io/collection.html Well, was just reading the forums out of curiosity.
I think the one thing to take away from all is this is that no matter how many alts/bag/houses you use to store your crap...you will always need more space for all of your crap.
I find my storage needs haven't really changed in quite a long time. The occasional TS skillup push frees up space, the occasional alt grabbing collectibles, the occasional alt grabbing rank 2 spells, defiant gear, or low level twink gear, it all contributes to keeping things on an even keel. If you never use up some of what you're storing, why are you saving it all?
Bumping this thread cuz ... hmmm For gear, and even tradeskill items,with a little bit of patience and arrangement, it's pretty much manageable now (1K stacks for most tradeskill items is a BIG improvement, for sure). But for collectibles, seriously, it's just silly. Ngreth, pretty please, we need some kind of Extraplanar Collector Satchels Craftable, tradeable and medium size (32 slots would be nice, same as tradeskill satchels). This afternoon I tried to finish the leveling of an alt, with collections, and now ... I need a painkiller cocktail cuz my brain is smoking . Even with the help of self made scripts to scan and sort my pile of outputfiles, it's a chore. We're in 3189 EQTime, dropping collectibles on the floor in our houses is a caveman technique. Even ogres and trolls are more organized than this. Edit : Oh, and one last thing (Thanks Sturmere for the idea) : a way to /outputfile our collections would be great too, because the achievements window is not really handy to browse the collections (and now, we have A TON of collections, maybe too much already).
Using the housing method, it seems to work just fine. Everything gets stowed in the houses, bring the main through once in a while to make sure he owns it all. All alts have access, and when it's time to have them start collections (once they're done with auto-grant, for me), then they come through and grab one of everything from the houses. Your tradable bag idea isn't a bad one for instances where the chars are not owned by the same person, and you just want to pass a bunch along to someone else.
I know you can set your whole guild to add/remove items from house (that's what I do). I also think you can set your whole fellowship as well. That might cut down on having to move collectibles around.
Yes, I know, that's what I do, too. My comment was more meant along the lines of trading between people not in that circle. I'm pretty sure you can give a bag with items in it, in trade, so that's why the idea of a tradable bag which can hold a lot of collectibles is a nice idea. Or, for people who don't want to use housing to share between their alts, for whatever reason.
You.People.Are.Crazy. Acquiring neighborhoods? Dedicated house per tradeskill? Entire banks filled to capacity with TS items "just in case" you may need them someday? The person responsible for inflicting this mayhem is truly a sadist. Truly.