Topic

Smarter inventory management

I suspect that most people (or at least those of us who have a whole bunch of bags) have some system of keeping their bags organized so that they can find what they're looking for. The game actively works against this when adding new items to your inventory: they're always put in the first available open spot, either in your main inventory or in the first available bag with an empty spot. Some people get around this by putting an empty bag in the first slot so that it'll catch new things, but that still leaves players in the position to have to go and manually distribute its contents to other bags when it starts to get full.

I'd like to see the game make some better guesses as to where to put things, based on what's already in your inventory. I can see two ways to do this:

1. If there's no room in the main inventory, attempt to place the item in whichever bag is open, rather than whichever bag is furthest to the left. This would mean that if I'm mining, I can open up my mining bag and have new rocks land in it automatically, and then later when I'm harvesting trees, I can open up my cherries-and-beans bag and have them go there.

2. Attempt to place the item in a bag where similar items already exist. This mean that if I have a full stack of beans and then I harvest more beans, the game would put the new ones in the same bag as the existing ones.

I'm sure there are additional possibilities as well, and I know that no solution would be a perfect fit for everyone's style of keeping their stuff organized. Regardless, it seems like almost anything would be more useful than the current behavior.

Posted 13 months ago by Gwenog Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I love these ideas! I'm very OCD when it comes to organizing my inventory bags and these improvements would be much appreciated!
    Posted 13 months ago by Loe Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Either of these would be so much better than the current system.  The second one, clustering similar items, is exactly what I want.  This works especially well if "similar items" is more general than "exactly the same item".  Pick up some beans, they go near the other beans.  No other beans or no room in that bag? How about near other food?  If there's more than one best choice, pick the one in the open bag.  If there's no open bag, pick the bag on the left.

    This goes not just for which bag to put it in, but also which open slot to choose.  Rather than the one on the left, pick the closest open slot.

    The reasons everyone has strong opinions about this is because we all spend so much time and energy fighting the current mechanism.
    Posted 13 months ago by spindle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 from me!
    Posted 13 months ago by H-nes Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would love it if it went into "the open bag".  I have a bag for grain, a bag for milk, and a bag for meat - the only way I've been able to make sure it doesn't get filled with random things I pick up is to drop a single grain, pick it up, put it in empty slot in the grain bag, and so on, until all the slots have at least one grain.  Same with meat and milk - but then I go craft something and instead of using the slots that have full stacks of gran, for example - it pulls the grains from the single slots.  Then I never remember to go look in those bags until I'm all frustrated because I can't find the thing I was crafting later.
    Posted 13 months ago by Charlotte Sometimes Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 for me! I think either of those would be better than the current system. It's a mess!
    Posted 13 months ago by Arcadia Noelle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • yes, please. either of these ideas would be an improvement over the present "system".
    Posted 13 months ago by flask Subscriber! | Permalink
  • IRL, you open a bag and take things out or put things in. It's intuitive that stuff goes, by priority, into the bag you have open.
    Posted 13 months ago by Fluxan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What about simply having more specialized bags (or ways to make custom-specialized bags)?  I like how if you've got a spice rack and you make a spice that you don't have any of, it immediately goes into the spice rack and not in the inventory or into other bags.  Should be easy enough to do that for rocks, or meals, or fruits, or tree products, or animal products, or...
    Posted 13 months ago by Ryllyn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • so, we're asking again for bag tuning.
    I agree.
    Posted 13 months ago by CrashTestPilot Subscriber! | Permalink