Auto-sort inventories

[Unbeliever]

My first suggestion:

Multiple inventory tabs, differentiated by item type.

Armor/weapons always land on Tab 1.
Reagents/potions always land on Tab 2.
And so on.

Now when I "take all" from a chest, things will automatically go "where they belong", and are easier to find.

Quest Items could have their own special tab. Anything that lands THERE, you know not to lose...

Barring this, at least have an "Inventory Sort" button that sorts everything in our One Big Inventory Panel, by type (and value?) so we have some hope of finding what we're looking for...

[IJBall]

My first suggestion:

Multiple inventory tabs, differentiated by item type.

Armor/weapons always land on Tab 1.
Reagents/potions always land on Tab 2.
And so on.

Now when I "take all" from a chest, things will automatically go "where they belong", and are easier to find.

Quest Items could have their own special tab. Anything that lands THERE, you know not to lose...

A very good suggestion - far better than the earlier suggestion some of us had for a separate "food bag" inventory. I'd also like to see a GUI 'keychain' included in this, which would eliminate the need for my suggested separate GUI keychain.

I think my preference would be:

• Tab 1 - Weapons & Armor (including Rings & Amulets)
• Tab 2 - Foods (& Water (skins))
• Tab 3 - Potions & Reagents
• Tab 4 - "Valuables" (e.g. gems) & Miscellanea (e.g. Scrolls, (trainer) Books, maps, other documents (e.g. Citizen Writ), wolf pelts, fine vellum, etc.)
• Tab 5 - (GUI) Keychain
• Tab 6 - Quest Items (if separated out from Tab 1 or Tab 4)

(Bonus, if we could use the game app's preferences to choose which Inventory 'tab' the game would default to when opening the Inventory! )

But I very much like this idea - I'll add it to the 'wishlist'!

Barring this, at least have an "Inventory Sort" button that sorts everything in our One Big Inventory Panel, by type (and value?) so we have some hope of finding what we're looking for...

There has been some discussion of this idea before, but I think the general consensus is a number of players might object to a forced "sort" function like this (though I'm not sure how people would feel about it if it were an optional "button" feature...).

Somewhat related to this is the need to finally get "autostacking", in both the player's inventory, and in merchants' inventories, when buying/selling goods - I'll add that to the wishlist as well, as that's been a perennial request.

[SpottedShroom]

Please don't make this the only behavior, though. Everyone has his or her own way of organizing their inventory, and I at least don't want my stuff split into different screens by type. My primary organization scheme is "stuff I'm going to hang onto" versus "stuff I'm going to hock the first chance I get." It works fine in the current system, but would require a lot more clicking in one with multiple inventory screens.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Please don't make this the only behavior, though. Everyone has his or her own way of organizing their inventory, and I at least don't want my stuff split into different screens by type. My primary organization scheme is "stuff I'm going to hang onto" versus "stuff I'm going to hock the first chance I get." It works fine in the current system, but would require a lot more clicking in one with multiple inventory screens.

Well, if the different vendors only bought and sold stuff of a particular type, your inventory could automatically open to the page for the stuff that vendors buys and sells. I think it's a cool general idea, but quite possibly too complicated. I don't find the current system particularly broken, aside from our character clearly having one massive back pack.

[xolotl]

Well, if the different vendors only bought and sold stuff of a particular type, your inventory could automatically open to the page for the stuff that vendors buys and sells.

Ooh, now that is a truly fantastic idea. Just present a subset of your inventory, so you don't have to go hunting around. Not that it was particularly cumbersome or anything, but it'd be great to simplify that a bit.

It'd have to make sure that it doesn't give you too many "open" slots when doing that, of course...

[IJBall]

Well, if the different vendors only bought and sold stuff of a particular type, your inventory could automatically open to the page for the stuff that vendors buys and sells.

Ooh, now that is a truly fantastic idea. Just present a subset of your inventory, so you don't have to go hunting around. Not that it was particularly cumbersome or anything, but it'd be great to simplify that a bit.

Yep - that, combined with being able to set in the game Preferences which inventory 'tab' pops up when you open the Inventory (when not buying & selling) would, I think, go a long way towards silencing most critics of this idea.

The one thing that I'm personally pushing for in Book III is to make the overall 'game app' more "user-friendly" (i.e. better GUI). It's not that it's not "user-friendly" now. It's just that there a lot of little things that could be done (like the 'inventory tab' idea; like being able to get Skill, Attribute and Feat descriptions by clicking on them; like 'graying out' unavailable spells or recipes from the Spellbook or Alchemy mixer; etc.) that would just cinch this game as a great user experience.

So, anyway, put me down as a fan of this 'inventory tab' concept.

[Evnissyen]

Eh... I think I'm gonna be the Luddite, here, and say I like the system the way it is. I like being able to organize things the way I like. Yep, that's the sort of thing I like.

However... it'd also be nice if...

1. Things like arrows could be separated by scrolling up a number -- as when you buy/sell them -- so I don't have to click and drag 100 times to separate out 100 arrows from a stack of 201.

2. If items that are in the quickslots were autostacked there when more of them are added to your inventory, instead of them going into your backpack.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

However... it'd also be nice if...

1. Things like arrows could be separated by scrolling up a number -- as when you buy/sell them -- so I don't have to click and drag 100 times to separate out 100 arrows from a stack of 201.

Try shift-click.

[Evnissyen]

However... it'd also be nice if...

1. Things like arrows could be separated by scrolling up a number -- as when you buy/sell them -- so I don't have to click and drag 100 times to separate out 100 arrows from a stack of 201.

Try shift-click.

Nope, tried that already, many times, with both left and right mou... say... wait a minute... .

You know... all this time... .

No... It occurs to me I've known this all along; from Book I.

Yes... I definitely already knew this. What the hell?...

I think I even remember telling people... duh... shift-click.

You ever have these moments where you're sort of visiting yourself? And... you don't know or remember things that you think you ought to, so you want to sort of have this conversation with yourself, but... .

No? Okay, nevermind.

[Unbeliever]

I think my preference would be:

• Tab 1 - Weapons & Armor (including Rings & Amulets)
• Tab 2 - Foods (& Water (skins))
• Tab 3 - Potions & Reagents
• Tab 4 - "Valuables" (e.g. gems) & Miscellanea (e.g. Scrolls, (trainer) Books, maps, other documents (e.g. Citizen Writ), wolf pelts, fine vellum, etc.)
• Tab 5 - (GUI) Keychain
• Tab 6 - Quest Items (if separated out from Tab 1 or Tab 4)

(Bonus, if we could use the game app's preferences to choose which Inventory 'tab' the game would default to when opening the Inventory! )

But I very much like this idea - I'll add it to the 'wishlist'!

So if we want to make BW's life even harder and expand this further, you could have, say, eight tabs, and along the right edge of each pane, have a series of checkmarks, one for each item type. Then, we can customize which types (or multiples of types) we want on each tab.

"Armor" and "Weapons" could be separate types -- but you could put both on one tab. Hell, you could distinguish "Light Armor" from "Heavy Armor" if you like. Put "Light Armor" and "Weapons" together on one tab -- but put "Heavy Armor" on your "Junk Items" tab, for selling later.

Check all of the boxes on a tab, and it will collect all types. Sort of a catch-all for the last tab(s), if you like. Check all of the boxes on ALL tabs, and you're back to an all-purpose inventory. Make everyone happy.

(If you check NONE of the boxes on a tab, it becomes a special "manual" tab, where you can put anything you like for safe keeping, but the game will never add anything to that tab.)

Visit a merchant, and it pops open the first inventory tab containing items of the type(s) bought/sold.

If all of the tabs with the "food" type checked are full, and you pick up more food, you'd get an inventory full alert -- even if other tabs have room. Then you'll have to decide if you want to add "food" to another tab, or do some housecleaning.

Design your own organizational system!

OK, I'm probably just dreaming now... but just tossing it out there, to see if it sticks...

[SpottedShroom]

My vote is still to keep inventory management as-is, or at least have an option to disable the new version.