Increasing the size of the smaller depots would be a great help for many of us. I have a level 100 of all crafters (2x lvl 100 sage and jeweler), plus several other crafters at various levels between 20-60. I like crafting, but I guess you figured that out already! I have a system in place to get around the problem (and it IS a problem) of fuel depots not holding all fuels. I put all my scholars in my Research Sanctum along with 3 crafting stations plus harvest depot, fuel depot, potion depot. My troll provisioner has his own diggs at Storm Tower Isle--Darkoth's Good Grobb Grub! He also has a harvest depot, a fuel depot, and a food and drink depot. All other crafters are lumped together at my Personal Grotto, which also has a harvest depot and fuel depot. The biggest problem I had here was always running back and forth between 3 houses to unload a full load of harvests into the place they would be used. The time it took at the end of each session was not always available, and the time it took became more than a little unreasonable. So.... I added a harvest depot, a fuel depot, a collectible depot, an ammo depot, a Lore and Legend depot, a potion depot, an adornment depot to my "hub" Mistmoore Crags Estate: Belenos' House of Portals, and I use it as a dumping ground for everything. That way I can come back and distribute harvests to their proper place at my leisure. It also makes for a quick-check for lore and legends as well as collectible items that are shared among alts. It seems to me that developing this elaborate system just to overcome an obvious flaw in a couple of the depots is asking a bit much. I had intended all my crafters to be in one place, and had that been possible, I would not have any need for a "dumping ground" for later distribution--my dumping ground would have been the same one I crafted from. As it is now, I made the best of the situation, and even used it as motivation to be creative--or at least as creative as a grumpy old curmudgeon is likely to be--lol. But the need does tend to end up causing "mission creep" if you will. I recently added another Lore and Legend depot to my Thurgadin Grand Hall, as the one in the House of Portals would accept no more unique items. Fuel depot--needs to be larger. Lore and Legend depot--needs to be larger. Adornment depot--needs to accept green adornments, as well as those white adornments for weapons that add procs. I do not like the idea of expanding the harvest depot to include fuels. All that would do for me is make it impossible to use the "deposit all" button on the depot, as I carry several fuels on me most of the time, and I would have to fish these back out of the depot, and hope to remember to get all the ones I need back out, or manually deposit 192 stacks of harvests at the end of each run. Neither do I like the idea of a house vendor taking the place of a depot. I like to prepare ahead of time, and in such a way that when I want to craft something, the only question I have to answer is "do I have the rares?" I don't know or care if it takes T6 or T7 fuels, as my depot is stocked with 3k or so of each. If I have to use a vendor, I have to plan for each thing I want to make, and sometimes my carpenter will make items in one sitting from as many as eight different tiers. Seems to me, bumping the capacity of a couple of depots is the more simple solution--to about the power of ten!
If anything, that would make the problem worse. It use to be that you could place depots belonging to different characters into a single house. That ability was removed. Probably because it was causing the data base to inflate at an unacceptable rate. The more you can store, the more people store. The more people store, the more resources needed to track that data and the more chance that something could happen to that data. If something happens to that data you need to spend customer service time to fix said problems and dev time to come up with long term solutions. EQ2's devs have softened their position on storing items, but they still know that expanding storage capabilities will cause an increased need for hardware, and possibly other problems as well. Then there is the whole political issue of personal vs guild. While it is a meaningless gesture in the case of the fuel depot, it is a consideration when talking about depots. Unless dev wants to reconsider the relationship between guild assets and house assets, guild depots need to be clearly better than personal depots. That clear difference means you shouldn't be satisfied with the personal depot, by design.
The advent of the apprentice necessitated this. You can't put apprentices in guildhalls for good reason lol If you want to cut down on storage stop making so many ingredients! Storage problems are planned time sinks lol fyi
You don't need 100 slots for apprentices... you only need 3 types of fuel for apprentices, x number of tiers and 50 slots is more then enough for that.
So each tier needs 3 different kinds of fuel for apprentice quests. At worst, you need a different tier of fuel for each crafter assuming that none of them are in the same range as the other crafters. Even in a worst case example if the fuel depot is dedicated to supporting the apprentice quests, you can accommodate all of the fuel types needed. If you are like me, you only need one tier of fuel anyways. Maybe if you put a bit of thought in to this you'd be able to stock everything you actually use. Like there isn't much call for T1 or even T1-T8 fuel. Some planning and thought would go a long way. But apparently that is too much to ask from crafters. Its either all or not good enough.
It would probably be easier for them to implement a fuel vendor anywhere feature and make it a perk for all access subscribers (in much the same manner as the broker anywhere feature works). That would completely sidestep the storage issue.
I would rather have a banker anywhere feature. I would also rather have the fuel depot made the proper size to fit all the fuels. You cannot buy frostfell fuels from a regular fuel vendor and then it would be back to clogging my personal inventory bags/boxes (so NO it would not sidestep a storage issue). I just want to enter my crafting house and have all the fuels there without any worrying about buying fuel and having it in my inventory. Fuel vendor anywhere would come in handy for doing all the crafting questlines but not something I would want instead of having the personal fuel depot size increased.
I have all my tradeskillers in one house , I dump all the unused fuels there to get used up, coal, sandpaper and filaments. candles and incense I dump in another fuel depot someplace else. Yes I agree it would be nice for the personal fuel depot to hold at least all of the basic fuels.
It's a level of convenience that I think the fuel depot has allowed us, like the harvest depot, in that we don't have to consciously think about having the right ingredients and fuel on our person, they're in storage and ready for use. The fuel vendor anywhere as an account perk is a nice idea, would just mean that we'd all have to count the fuels we plan to use and buy accordingly, rather than buy a stack and stockpile. That's relatively easy to do. I do see the side of those who believe that such conveniences reduce the amount of time people would spend in a city. While I agree slightly in principle with the distinction between the guild hall amenities and personal amenities, since the fuel is such a basic component, and (for the moment) doesn't seem to be increasing its count of items beyond the 60 basics and 3 alternatives, I personally believe that the fuel depot could be the one exception to this distinction. The harvest depots, L&Ls, Collections, I can easily see them needing to be bigger for a guild hall since there are more characters to serve. In both guild halls and personal homes, fuels don't seem to be doing much increasing. I recognize that there are additional requirements for data storage and what-not. I guess that's where I'd love to hear from a Dev as to what might need to be explored to increase the depot size, or whether that depot could just be a mirror of the guild hall one, minus the upkeep. Personal desire would have the two depots match in size. In all practical matters, particularly for houses which are home to several crafting alts, the personal depot carrying at least enough capacity for basic fuels would be great, and we could vault the frostfell fuels or such. I don't know that there's a clear path to the correct solution. I've been trying to go over the fuels I know that I'd need to keep around for carpentry and holiday crafting, which are perhaps my two biggest draws. Outside of that, I still find myself crafting through all levels of other tradeskills, and inevitably I keep coming back to having to buy an amount of fuel for something specific.
I would also like one of those, but I'm reasonably certain that them giving us a banker anywhere feature wouldn't prevent them from also adding a fuel vendor anywhere feature. I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with their code, so it is within the realm of possibility that something exists within that code that would force them to choose one of them to the exclusion of the other. The likelihood of something like that existing, however, is extremely small. I would like that, and I've argued in favor of it numerous times - even to the extent of talking directly to developers in person about it. However, given that thus far I've read nothing stated by developers indicating that they plan on expanding the fuel depot to cover all fuels and fuel-like items, this time I suggested an alternative - one that also could be used to further incentivize subscriptions. You have a personal fuel depot within which you can store up to the max capacity per item for each Frostfell fuel (99,999, if I remember correctly) - which takes up all of three slots. If you are using 100,000 of any Frostfell fuel during the year, given that most (if not all) of the recipes take two of a single type of fuel, then that would mean that you were creating ~50,000 Frostfell items. Since I doubt that this is the case (because you don't seem cray cray - and one would almost have to be to craft that many items), I don't see the usage of three depot slots as causing a storage issue. Especially since traditional fuels wouldn't be taking up slots. It doesn't have to be an all or none proposition. The way you've phrased it makes it seem like you think that I was advocating the removal of existing depots; I wasn't. Another alternative to ensure that you have plenty of storage for your Frostfell fuel is to make a separate Frostfell crafting house (I use my Thurgadin house for that purpose) where it has only Frostfell fuels in the fuel depot, Frostfell harvests in the harvest depot, and Frostfell workstations (well, technically there are other Frostfell things, but they are house items and not relevant to crafting). As I indicated above, I've asked for the same thing, but they don't seem to be in any hurry to increase the size. If the only consideration was just needing to change the value of the variable(s) that control(s) the unique item count, I'm sure they would have increased it already (if for no other reason than to get us to quit harping about it). This leads me to believe that they have a rational reason not to increase it; at least not until after they've finished whatever back-end improvements upon which they are working. Again, I was suggesting an alternative in the event that they decide not to increase the depots by a sufficient amount to hold all existing fuels and fuel-like items. Being able to purchase them as needed shouldn't negatively impact your crafting that much as long as you realize some compromise may have to be reached to attain the functionality that you desire. If you refuse to compromise, then that is fine, but I'm not going to be held responsible if you pass out from holding your breath waiting on it to happen. (Edited to remove extra spaces between paragraphs.)
I have: 13x Mistmoore Crags Estates (veteran's reward) 15x Other various (purchased) prestige homes 26x various in-town housing, some in all cities 3x Maj'Dul housing So if anyone thinks "house-lore" is gonna keep me from storing my stuff, well, think again! If I had been able to place everything in one house, I would actually be storing less, as some mats are used by both scholars, outfitters, etc., and I now must keep those mats fully stocked in more than one place. Add the additional storage in my "drop box" depots for later distribution (which would have been my one crafting area too, if I did not need to distribute these items to more than one place) and you can see my storage is probably about 300% of what it could have been. Meirril, I am not like you. And I am sure no other carpenter is either. Carpenters craft from all levels because a T1 item may be just what you need, even as a level 100 player. As I stated before, carpenters especially are likely to craft items from T1-T10 at one sitting if decorating a house. My characters run the full range of levels from 20s to 90s, and crafters 1 to 100.
You're correct. You're not like me. I use a guild hall for 90% of my crafting. For apprentices I actually summon resources with goblin and pony as needed and I carry a full set of fuel so I can do T11 crafting in my home, in the field for both quests and commissions. The default crafting prestige I leave my characters in is harvest and that happens to include the ability to summon tables. Very convenient. And I've got one of each crafter at 100. So there is a carpenter just like me, because I am one. And when I get serious about crafting, I go to my guild hall. Like I do for every craft. Now lets actually address the thing you kinda bring up but don't actually talk about. Lets just say you set up 9 different houses each with a fuel and harvest depot because you can't set up one house to do it all. To give you the ability to do it all in one house requires a bit of extra memory space, say an additional 10% to double the capacity of the depot (its probably a bit more than that, but lets be as pro-increase as I can reasonably be for the purpose of this example) So if you went from 9 houses at 100% memory useage (a total of 900) to 1 house at 110 that would be a savings of 790% memory usage, win right? But there are 3 assumptions going on here. First is that everybody that uses a home fuel depot has multiple home with depots in them. For every person that doesn't, that is a 10% increase with no compensating removal of depots. Second: Why would you remove those other depots? Even if you aren't using them, why would you get rid of them? It isn't like your using all 50+ homes at the same time, but I bet they are all decorated. Once you have storage capacity you use it. People don't tend to downsize without a compelling reason. So what would really happen is all the housing depots that exist would take more memory each, and it the only positive effect would be a decrease in the number of future fuel depots introduced to the game. Third: Some people will still place a fuel depot in every house. Like you said, there is nothing to stop you from doing that. Other people will place one in every house because they can, not because they need to. Especially when they don't have to think about it and they can just store everything. Oh, and if there is a T12 ever introduced we'll need new fuel. Gobbling 25 and 75 fuel per combine of T10 fuel is a makeshift way for dev to hold down the bloat created by introducing a new tier of fuel, but it isn't a sustainable one. If they did the same thing again it would be 125 fuel to craft handcrafted and 300 fuel per mastercrafted. Carrying 2 stacks of fuel to craft 1 item is ridiculous. T12 will have a new fuel and if dev wants to play the stack adjusting game again it will start off with fuel that costs about 15-30 gold each and you use 1 for handcrafted and 3 for MC so they can do the x5 thing for T13 and T14 before they have to repeat the pattern again.
I didn't say it would prevent them from adding a fuel vendor depot and a banker anywhere but they are down to a very small number of developers now and they need to set priorities of what they will work on. If they were trying to decide between fuel vendor and banker anywhere for the next thing they work on..I am saying I personally would hope they do a banker anywhere since it will benefit all players not just crafters. Plus the fuel vendor anywhere really is not to fix the depot problem. The devs in one of the live videos recently said that they are looking into expanding the personal fuel depot. I am not worried about my frostfell fuel storage. If others think the fuel vendor anywhere would be a fix it will not since you cannot buy the frostfell depot from a normal fuel vendor. I am sure there are a large number of people that removed their frostfell fuel from their main crafting house so there is room for other fuels. The fuel vendor anywhere will only really fix the issue of going around doing the crafting timelines and you have forgotten the right fuel. You will have to have the fuel in your personal bags/boxes with a fuel vendor anywhere which doesn't fix the personal depot being too small. We have to either carry it in our personal bags or put on broker or in house vault if we want every kind of fuel available. All of us have already been compromising/finding work arounds for the too small personal fuel depots. One reason I have a personal fuel depot is some people that I let craft don't have much coin and so I let them use not only my mats but my fuel. I ended up getting the large harvest depot so I can have the large one be for trustees and the small one for visitors then they can use the guild hall fuel depot. I have lots of rare mats that I didn't want visitors having access to that's why I would let them craft in my crafting house. It is a huge pain transfering the bulk of the mats to the large depot however and now I have upkeep on it. The work arounds are basically what we all had to do before personal fuel depots so no need for advise regarding that topic. But thank you for your concern about me personally...I am still breathing. Edit: If the devs like the idea of a fuel vendor anywhere option, they could make it a prestige tradeskill aa item like the summon crafting stations aa item.
You aren't really thinking about this. If you can access a fuel vendor anywhere it mean all you need to do to fully stock your alts with non-holiday fuel is give them 10p. A stack of the most expensive fuel in the game costs a bit over 3p. Anything less than t9 will be less than 1p per stack. It is easier to transfer coin through the shared bank than it is to put fuel into a depot. You also don't have to stock more than 1 kind of coin, but with fuel you have to stock every different kind. If you could buy fuel anywhere the only thing you'd need to stock in the fuel depot would be holiday fuel. Anything else would be like banking money: No point to it since all your doing is making it harder to access that resource. If you can buy it anywhere you have every normal fuel available to you anywhere. No need to store what you can buy, which is the main reason the guild fuel depot is a waste of an amenity slot. Unless you are trying to pay people to craft in your hall it is a waste of time to put non-holiday fuel in it. It doesn't save time because it takes twice as long to buy and then put fuel in the depot as it does for each person to just buy the fuel as needed. It doesn't save money, all it does is transfer it very inefficiently between characters. Worse, while it is fuel in a depot it just means you have something worth money sitting in a depot where you can't see it, use it, or worse you can even forget how much you actually have. You can fool yourself into thinking you have more or less than you do which is equally bad. Lots of the depots are good, the fuel depot is the worst of the bunch.
You couldn't be more wrong. The whole reason for even having a fuel depot in the first place is so that I don't have to carry it around on all my alts or use other storage space like in a broker or house vault. I am full full full all the time cuz of decorating. I need every tier on a regular basis when I am crafting. Having a fuel vendor anywhere just means now I have to carrying fuel around again. Even if I guessed exactly how much fuel I need there is a chance my fuel is not used so there I go again carry crap around I don't want to carry. I have to have room to buy it too. I got tired of waiting for the personal one to get expanded to a big enough size. I actually made a personal guild and leveled it to 100 all by myself. I can have all my alts (I have a ton of them) crafting in one place and not worry about mats or fuel. I went and bought a ton of every tradeable fuel possible and then clicked one button (deposit all) so it really doesn't take that much time. I don't need the money I spent on storing tons of fuel. I don't have to calculate how much I need or anything now. All my friends can have free fuel or guests that don't have much coin. I am not worried about giving my alts coin since they have plenty. The whole point of expanding the personal fuel depot for me is to not have to worry about carry it around in your bags or placing in house vault, making sure you have enough. I use my guild hall fuel depot every day I log into game by several alts. So no fooling myself is needed....I don't worry about my friends/guildies needing it cuz it is plenty full and if not there is a fuel vendor right next to the fuel depot along with all the other crafting npcs. All crafting stations are right in the same spot so you don't have to even move one millimeter if you don't want to. Easy peasy. Now for other people, it would be nice if they didn't have to find a work around to the too small personal fuel depot. The devs did say they were looking into it so I suggest everyone hang on and let them get back to us shortly on what they plan to do.
Ocarinah, I'll reply fully tomorrow morning, but before then, I would like you to consider the full implications of what people would be able to do with summonable fuel vendors and how it would be a complete game changer as far as storage is concerned. Until the next time we chat, I wish you the best.
As one who owns his own guild, I don't have a ton of the personal depots. Most of my crafting is done in the guild hall. I do have one house where I have all my Tradeskill Apprentices, and have crafting stations and depots there, but not fuel, as I always carry fuel on me anyway. To be entirely honest, the personal depots aren't a huge deal to me. What would be a huge improvement for me would be to have the ability to place the Tradeskill Apprentices in the guild hall. I understand that many guilds don't want this, and I'm for making it a guild hall toggle ("[X] Allow Tradeskill Apprentices in the guild hall"), and I think you'd still need Trustee regardless, but for those small guilds or tradeskill-oriented guilds who wanted to let their characters bring in their apprentices, I think it should be an option. I hear the rants from "old school" players who say that guild halls killed the city populations, and while I didn't start playing until after guild halls were in the game, I can see how that happened. I find more and more people hiding out in their houses crafting, rather than crafting in the guild hall, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that their apprentices are there, so they've just put depots in their houses for convenience, and are using them more and more. If we could place apprentices in the guild halls (where the guild leaders allowed it), I think in some cases, it could bring at least some population and socialization back into the guild halls.
While I see that would be nice for people with personal guild halls, can you imagine a larger guild with dozens and dozens and dozens of apprentices?
