Ambermist’s latest challenge and July’s recap can be found here. The challenge is, what do you keep and why? I ended up writing so much, I’ve had to split into two posts 😛 sorry…
Part 1 ~ Inventory management
I try very hard to keep my inventory manageable in games but usually fail miserably… Out of EQ2, Lotro and Skyrim I’ve so far found Lotro the easiest, as you have so little space you just have to be ruthless. So what do my storage slots usually hold?
- gear – either situational or for alts to grow into
- consumables – food, potions, poison, temp buffs and the like
- shinies! (eq2)
- appearance gear (this is my worst offender in lotro)
- house items
- pets (if available in game)
- crafting mats
- legendary items and items for blowing up (lotro) or gear to be muted/used for other crafting needs (skyrim, eq2)
- odd, nostalgic or unique can never get again items…. like Gandalf’s pipe in lotro, Falmer eye in Skyrim,
- *stuff* for alts
I think this is fairly standard for most gamers and managing these items in game can be pretty tricky. It is scary if you ever have a break from a game, open up your inventory and bank slots and WTF?! what is all this stuff?!
- this is *just* my bank storage in eq2… this isn’t including house storage or inventory…
In fact returning to a game and trying to sort out your inventory can be so offputting that it can seem easier to start a new character. After putting in around 80 hours in Skyrim from Nov to Jan this year, I then went on a break from the game until a month or two ago. I looked at my character, I tried to remember where I was up to, I looked at her inventory and wondered why I was carrying all this stuff. I went to what I thought was her main house and found it empty. At this point, I just thought…. no…. no…. I just cannot pick up from where I left off and the thought of trying to track down her gear (spread across 5 or 6 houses) and then figure out what to do with it was too much…. So I started again. A new bow wielding sneak thief…. I have now backtracked and started sorting out my first character. It turns out my whiterun house was for smithing, my riften house for alchemy, my solitude house for general loot and displayage of weapons, markarth for enchanting… stupid stupid stupid system!! I’ve now downloaded the mod house The Reserve which has tons of storage, all crafting needs and many display areas – in short, its perfect for a packrat like me 😉
No matter the game though, I tend to be very nerdy about it all and have different boxes, slots etc, organised by type. I keep stuff until I don’t have room and then have a purge. I would like to say that I only keep stuff I truly need but clearly I don’t… A lot of stuff is kept ‘just in case’, and of course I never need it…
OldStarShadow 
Heh. That was a pretty interesting system to try organizing your stuff in Skyrim. At least in theory. I didn’t get that bad during my first play throughs but I had problems too. Basically I would just dump everything in the Breezehome in Whiterun. That chest on top of the bookshelves in that small room with the alchemy table was where I dropped all my craftable stuff. Then the chest of the master bedroom I just dropped all the unique stuff I wanted to keep as a memento. Books I just threw them at whatever bookcase I could. When bookcases got full I would throw it in the memento’s chest.
Things started getting complicated when I got a house in Windhelm with my first character. Since he was a nord supporting the stormcloaks it made sense for him to make that his actual home. So I was planning to move all his stuff there, putting some unique armors in the mannequins, putting other stuff in the containers there…. But I never moved everything. In fact I am not sure how much I moved. I might just have moved some of the armors to put in the mannequins and nothing else. I might have put stuff in the containers of other houses too because it seemed a good idea at a time. So, yeah, things are a bit scattered with him.
Nowadays I am trying to avoid that problem by only using houses that are compatible with the General Stores mod. That way I can just drop stuff on the right type of container and pick it up in any other house compatible with that mod. No more worrying about where exactly I left my shiny treasures!
yeah I couldn’t decide which house I liked best, and the ones I did like best (markarth and solitude) were a long way from a forge so I think I ended up with that system because I was trying to be efficient (heh!) and wanted to use the houses that I actually liked.
The general stores mod sounds a pretty good solution although now I have The Reserve, I’ve found a house which is not only gorgeous but has everything I need 🙂 But I still have stuff in the other houses, its sort of stuff I don’t know what to do with… lol
I can see that. When I got the house in Windhelm and the one in Solitude I couldn’t decide which one I liked more. And I still liked to go back to the Breezehome for sentimental values (first house and all that. 🙂 )
And indeed, the General Stores mod is one of those that you don’t know how you were able to live without it. Or even use any other house that doesn’t have it. As for The Reserve I took a look at it on the Nexus and from the pictures it does look like a pretty cool house. The author seems to begun working on The Reserve II though so I think I will give it a try when he/she releases that one. 🙂
aaaaah no! don’t tell me about another house!! I was just starting to get my packrat tendencies under control 😉 will check out both though!
Haha. Well, if it makes you feel better the General Stores mod isn’t so much a house mod per se, as a modder resources. So by itself it is pretty useless and you would need a house mod that supports it. And I don’t think The Reserve II was even started so by the time it is released you would probably have forgotten about it or finished with your current play through. 🙂
The fact that you came up with a plan that detailed is pretty freaking cool to me, even if it didn’t work out the way you expected! 😀
@Rakuno ah i see – will definitely check it out 😉
@ambermist hehe it does worry me… and sadly it carries over in RL too, no one else ever gets how I organise stuff… it looks like chaos… but um its not 😀
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