Guild Wars 2

One of the biggest things that annoys me with MMOs (and rpgs in general) is how much time is wasted on inventory management. Unfortunately, this game is no different than many others and has fallen into the same tired and annoying routine of having to hunt for vendors to sell stacks of junk and frequently travel back to cities to transfer items to the bank which fills up far too quickly so you have to spend even more time sorting that, and ArenaNet’s solution is to buy more bank/bag slots with gems.

I get that since this game doesn’t have monthly subscriptions that there is a need for microtransactions, but these are not cosmetic things, sure technically you can just dump all your items and only keep direct upgrades and live with a tiny inventory, but realistically if you’re doing any sort of crafting you’re going to run out of space very quickly and having to spend more real money to get more storage just feels like a cheap shot cash grab, like they intentionally gave you a tiny inventory so you would basically be forced to spend more money.

I bought this game when it first came out, excited to hear all the new things promised but was disappointed to see that this broken system was chosen instead of trying to rethink it. After awhile, I simply stopped playing, in large part due to the extremely high down time involved in inventory management making the game tedious to play.

Recently I started playing again and got spammed with a ton of gift items, which is nice, except for the fact that my inventory is full so I had to spend a bunch of time sorting that out to even be able to resume playing. Not a good impression for someone looking to potentially get back into the game.

Am I the only one feeling this frustration? Are there any good tips on inventory management that doesn’t involve spending gems?

Salvage, deposit collectibles, profit.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Salvage, deposit collectibles, profit.

Doesn’t really work that way the inventory hasnt adapted to the game play.
You need to keep stuff like boosters, pristine relics, various gifts, sand, shovels, gear swaps, agony infusions, fire clusters. Crafting items in excess of 250 like silk iron mithril obsidisn shards clovers geodes

Basically a dramatic increase in xurrencies uniqe items and recipes/vendors requiring items greater than 250. In conjunction with a drop system that fills up extremely fast.

I think they need to reduce item bloat

Craft bigger bags?
The Halloween Pail is a 20 slot bag. 4 of them plus your original 20 slot bag gives you 100 slots in your personal inventory.

The Uncanny Crafter achievement gives you a free 20 slot bag.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Uncanny_Canner

phys.7689:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Salvage, deposit collectibles, profit.

Doesn’t really work that way the inventory hasnt adapted to the game play.
You need to keep stuff like boosters, pristine relics, various gifts, sand, shovels, gear swaps, agony infusions, fire clusters. Crafting items in excess of 250 like silk iron mithril obsidisn shards clovers geodes

Basically a dramatic increase in xurrencies uniqe items and recipes/vendors requiring items greater than 250. In conjunction with a drop system that fills up extremely fast.

I think they need to reduce item bloat

I got a grand total of one extra bag slot on 1 of 8 characters. While I think the various currencies should go into the wallet, I don’t seem to have the on-character storage issues the OP describes.

• Increase your inventory’s capacity with 15 Slot Bags. They’re cheap, usually going for less than 2 gold each on the trading post.
• Always carry a Mystic Salvage Kit in your inventory.
• After salvaging items you don’t need, use the Deposit All Materials option to clear up some space.
• Sell high-value items on the Trading Post from anywhere.
• Sell miscellaneous junk whenever you pass by a merchant. They’re everywhere.

I’ve been playing for nearly 3 years, and not once have I ever had issues with bag or bank space.

The gemstore offers a variety of convenience items and account upgrades that make handling inventory easier.

Wanze.8410:

The gemstore offers a variety of convenience items and account upgrades that make handling inventory easier.

I do believe OP wants more free space. Or maybe it’s a call for less loot so his bags don’t fill up so fast. ^^

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Salvage, deposit collectibles, profit.

Doesn’t really work that way the inventory hasnt adapted to the game play.
You need to keep stuff like boosters, pristine relics, various gifts, sand, shovels, gear swaps, agony infusions, fire clusters. Crafting items in excess of 250 like silk iron mithril obsidisn shards clovers geodes

Basically a dramatic increase in xurrencies uniqe items and recipes/vendors requiring items greater than 250. In conjunction with a drop system that fills up extremely fast.

I think they need to reduce item bloat

I got a grand total of one extra bag slot on 1 of 8 characters. While I think the various currencies should go into the wallet, I don’t seem to have the on-character storage issues the OP describes.

i think the OP is saying they find inventory management to be unecessarily onerous. You probably dont mind managing your inventory as much, so have less issues. I have never bought a bag or bank slot, but i would definately say you spend a decent amount of time just dealing with your inventory in that case.

and its not just storage, heres what a post fractal session involves
go to npc,
sell leather blues, sell greens,
salvage none leather blues
Salvage rares with black lion salvage kit, or salvage with master kit.
open bags
deposit collectilbles
open champion boxes
sell leather blues sell greens
Salvage non leather blues
possibly buy new salvage kits
deposit collectibles
open TP
sell items in excess of 250 usually mithril.

now is it undoable? no,
is it a pretty long time, and if you dont particularly enjoy sorting things, not really entertaining and somewhat annoying? yes.
will you have to do it more often if you have less inventory? yes.

With the huge variety of items that have crept into the game over time that don’t have special storage options, the initial freebie bank storage space provided seems a bit out of proportion. But don’t hold your breath for more free storage.

Best options are alts with full sets of 20-slot bags (100 slots of storage), and personal guilds (50 to start, up to 250 with upgrades).

OP, I’m sure there are other people frustrated with inventory management. I don’t have a problem spending money on storage in the bank, because I spend it once and I’m still not paying a sub. If you really hate spending money you can always far the gold in game and buy the gems with that.

Thanks for the responses, my biggest issue is with the time it takes to sort everything and figure out what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. The relatively tiny inventories exacerbate the problem by forcing me to deal with it more or less constantly.

I don’t have a tremendous amount of time to play the game to farm gold or any endgame characters (my highest is somewhere in the 60s) so the higher level bags and especially gems are still quite expensive from my perspective.

I’ve used the alt bank method before in WoW, that’s great for rarely used items but gets annoying switching back and forth all the time.

For the time being I’ll probably take a break from crafting on all my characters and just sell all the crafting materials I come across, it should help keep my bank less full and provide a nice income to start buying the higher tier bags.

If we want ArenaNet to potentially do something about this, does anyone have any suggestions for improvements to the system? A few things I can think of right away are providing a crafting materials storage tab for the bank that’s treated separately and has unlimited (or at least very high) storage along with a special inbox for things like gift packages so you can put them there until you’re ready to deal with them instead of logging in and having to immediately free up a slot to even receive the package. The ability to see your alternate characters and their inventories from the bank would also be useful so I can know at a glance whether an item is worth keeping or scrapping instead of having to either just dump it in the bank or log into my other characters to see if it’s an upgrade for them or not. A combined bank/trading post/vendor would also be nice so I don’t have to run back and forth between them when dealing with things.

I think the more of a hoarder you are the more problem you have managing inventory and bank space. I know from first hand experience. I recently got rid of worthless stuff that was taking up too much space in my bank.

Also now that all my characters are level 80 I freed up so much space in my bank that had all stages of armor, weapons, trinkets, sigils and runes that my low level characters could “grow” into. That also means none of my characters have to save any low level equipment in their inventories until they can get to the bank. I now only save occasional exotic gear in case it is better that what one my other characters have. But I still have quite a bit of junk in my bank ’cause somehow all that space I freed up in my bank is filled again.

Lord Aurelius.3167:

…
For the time being I’ll probably take a break from crafting on all my characters and just sell all the crafting materials I come across, it should help keep my bank less full and provide a nice income to start buying the higher tier bags.
…

I don’t mean to insult you but you do know that crafting materials are stored in the materials storage section of your bank and as such does not take up any bank space. They can all be stored at one time from your inventory by clicking on the top right “options” wheel button in the inventory and choosing “deposit all materials” .

You can also leave those ‘gifts’ in the mail, until you are ready to accept them.

Since you craft, surely you are aware you can access your bank, and material storage, from any crafting area….

A tip: Unless it is Exotic, or a fantastic Rare, don’t save any items/gear for other characters. It will likely drop before that character needs it in their own loot…or make little difference, anyway.

Good luck.

Lord Aurelius.3167:

Thanks for the responses, my biggest issue is with the time it takes to sort everything and figure out what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. The relatively tiny inventories exacerbate the problem by forcing me to deal with it more or less constantly.

I don’t have a tremendous amount of time to play the game to farm gold or any endgame characters (my highest is somewhere in the 60s) so the higher level bags and especially gems are still quite expensive from my perspective.

I’ve used the alt bank method before in WoW, that’s great for rarely used items but gets annoying switching back and forth all the time.

For the time being I’ll probably take a break from crafting on all my characters and just sell all the crafting materials I come across, it should help keep my bank less full and provide a nice income to start buying the higher tier bags.

If we want ArenaNet to potentially do something about this, does anyone have any suggestions for improvements to the system? A few things I can think of right away are providing a crafting materials storage tab for the bank that’s treated separately and has unlimited (or at least very high) storage along with a special inbox for things like gift packages so you can put them there until you’re ready to deal with them instead of logging in and having to immediately free up a slot to even receive the package. The ability to see your alternate characters and their inventories from the bank would also be useful so I can know at a glance whether an item is worth keeping or scrapping instead of having to either just dump it in the bank or log into my other characters to see if it’s an upgrade for them or not. A combined bank/trading post/vendor would also be nice so I don’t have to run back and forth between them when dealing with things.

I think this post has inadvertently highlighted why you have so many problems and other players don’t.

Crafting Material Storage

This is already in the game, and has been since launch. Open up your bank and look at the left hand side of the window, you’ll see 3 icons: a bag (your bank), a grid of squares (Material Storage) and a rectangle divided in two (wardrobe).

Click on the second one. This has slots for almost every crafting material in the game, and each slot can hold up to 250 of that item. (You can upgrade it to hold up to 1000 using gem store items but for most purposes 250 is more than enough.) When you’re crafting you can access materials stored in here directly, you don’t need to have them in your inventory.

You don’t even need to be at a bank to deposit materials. When you have crafting materials in your inventory click the cog wheel icon in the top right corner of the inventory window. Then select ‘Deposit All Materials’. Everything that can go into the Materials tab in the bank will be instantly moved there.

(See the screenshot below if you’re not sure what I’m talking about.)

Gift Packages

I assume you mean things like the daily login reward, since I can’t imagine you’re being sent enough gifts by mail that it’s a regular problem for you to accept them. These can be ignored if you want. The chest won’t go anywhere, it’ll stay on screen until you accept it. The only problem is it will only appear for the character you first logged into that day, so if you want to pick it up later you’ll have to remember which one that was.

Trading Post Access

You didn’t mention this one directly, but since you said you’re running between them and the bank to sort things out I’m guessing you may not realise this:

You can sell things on the trading post from anywhere in the world. All you need to do is click the lion icon at the top of the screen (3rd from the left) and then click the scales icon on the left of the window that comes up.

You can buy things, sell things, preview things etc. through this window exactly as if you were speaking to the NPC. The only thing you can’t do is collect money and items you’ve earned from trades. But they will be held by the Trading Post until you’re reading to collect them and there is no deadline for that, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t do it right away.

Lord Aurelius.3167:

Thanks for the responses, my biggest issue is with the time it takes to sort everything and figure out what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. The relatively tiny inventories exacerbate the problem by forcing me to deal with it more or less constantly.

I don’t have a tremendous amount of time to play the game to farm gold or any endgame characters (my highest is somewhere in the 60s) so the higher level bags and especially gems are still quite expensive from my perspective.

I’ve used the alt bank method before in WoW, that’s great for rarely used items but gets annoying switching back and forth all the time.

For the time being I’ll probably take a break from crafting on all my characters and just sell all the crafting materials I come across, it should help keep my bank less full and provide a nice income to start buying the higher tier bags.

If we want ArenaNet to potentially do something about this, does anyone have any suggestions for improvements to the system? A few things I can think of right away are providing a crafting materials storage tab for the bank that’s treated separately and has unlimited (or at least very high) storage along with a special inbox for things like gift packages so you can put them there until you’re ready to deal with them instead of logging in and having to immediately free up a slot to even receive the package. The ability to see your alternate characters and their inventories from the bank would also be useful so I can know at a glance whether an item is worth keeping or scrapping instead of having to either just dump it in the bank or log into my other characters to see if it’s an upgrade for them or not. A combined bank/trading post/vendor would also be nice so I don’t have to run back and forth between them when dealing with things.

You can use special inventory bags to automatically sort your items. Crafting bags, invisible bags, rarity bags (accepting only exotic, or rare or whatever their setting is) etc are in the game for a reason, to make inventory management easier.

You can get up to 100 inventory slots per character without paying anything in gems. If you still have trouble with inventory management consider
a) using alts (if you have free slots) as bank characters
b) using a personal guild for extra space

Good luck

The one issue I do agree with is having to hold onto and deposit equipment that might be useful for other characters. This does get annoying if you have several characters you’re levelling.

But I took the same approach as Inculpatus cedo. I have about 10 exotic items I’m keeping for when various characters reach level 80, but anything below that I don’t bother transferring over.

Early on I did, but I kept finding that by the time they were ready to use it they had already found several equally good items themselves (or even something better). So now each character is responsible for their own equipment.

Lord Aurelius.3167:

Thanks for the responses, my biggest issue is with the time it takes to sort everything and figure out what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. The relatively tiny inventories exacerbate the problem by forcing me to deal with it more or less constantly.

Trust me, it doesn’t change. I have many extra bank tabs, my mat storage is upgraded to the max (1500 of each mat), and my characters all have a set of large bags including specialty bags for mats and junk items. I still spend a fair amount of time managing inventory.

I also like to keep most of my characters posted in zones that are far from access to town facilities. Some of them don’t get near town for weeks at a time.

One trick that helps is to use the WvW borderlands. Wherever your character may be, he can travel to the borderland for your server, use the services there, and return right to the same spot in the open world upon leaving the Mists. Services include merchants, trader, and all crafting stations. Any crafting station can be used as a bank even if your character does not know any crafting disciplines.

i never really had any problems with my inventory.

while some of my characters do use extra 3 bag slots, i still manage just fine with the basic bag slots you are given.

I use 2 invisible bags on my bottom bag list that contain all the things i wish to keep with me at all times. Things like extra armor set, food, boosters, geodes,pristine fractal relics, fun items like that wintersday bell ect.

The other bags contain all the random loot im getting.
Whenever it fills up i salvage all the things, deposit all materials and compact the remaining items….it takes about 5 seconds to do all that.

Now, after playing for a long time your material bank will fill up, and your mats will stay inside your inventory even if you click “deposit all”.

I fixed this by creating my own guild and unlocking guild banks. When i notice my main bank is full of mats, i transfer those mats into my guild bank. From that moment on i can continue to use the “deposit all materials” feature.

BrettM.9062:

One trick that helps is to use the WvW borderlands. Wherever your character may be, he can travel to the borderland for your server, use the services there, and return right to the same spot in the open world upon leaving the Mists. Services include merchants, trader, and all crafting stations. Any crafting station can be used as a bank even if your character does not know any crafting disciplines.

In my opinion it’s better to use the pvp lobby for this, because you being on the border without participating could be a disadvantage for your server – e.g. your team might not get the outnumbered buff because there are too many people at the crafting stations. The only thing that is not available in the pvp lobby are crafting stations, but if you need to access your bank or a merchant, it’s a viable option.

Thing i dont think yall realize, is all this stuff yall are talking about, which helps with low inventory is a pretty big hassle.
The game gives you a ton of stuff you have to sort through, salvage some, sell to npc, put on trading post, store in bank, store in tabs

i think his point is it seems like he is constantly having to manage, yall guys are giving good info for saving space, but its still a time consuming hassle that isnt as bad in other games, because they give you less stuff, and require less stuff from you.

Well what, should the game give you less stuff? I don’t imagine that would go over well, when people are already complaining constantly about the rewards.

Honestly you just have to get used to it. Stop hoarding things you don’t need, stop spending time thinking about things you don’t want to think about, etc. Sure, you might end up doing things sub-optimally, but that’s the choice you have to make. Nobody’s making you keep or sell or salvage or deposit anything you don’t want to, other than yourself.

Andred.1087:

Well what, should the game give you less stuff? I don’t imagine that would go over well, when people are already complaining constantly about the rewards.

Honestly you just have to get used to it. Stop hoarding things you don’t need, stop spending time thinking about things you don’t want to think about, etc. Sure, you might end up doing things sub-optimally, but that’s the choice you have to make. Nobody’s making you keep or sell or salvage or deposit anything you don’t want to, other than yourself.

it should. but that ship has sailed, hopefully they will keep this item creep from getting worse with future content.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Shukriyya.7629:

In my opinion it’s better to use the pvp lobby for this, because you being on the border without participating could be a disadvantage for your server – e.g. your team might not get the outnumbered buff because there are too many people at the crafting stations. The only thing that is not available in the pvp lobby are crafting stations, but if you need to access your bank or a merchant, it’s a viable option.

The problem with going to the pvp lobby instead of your borderlands is that when you log out, you’ll still be in the pvp lobby when you come back to the game. If you go to your borderlands, do your stuff at the bank, and log out, you’ll be back where you were before going to wvw once you log back in. So, if you have toons parked at, say, a JP chest or on a spot waiting for a certain event, you’d have to go back to that spot or redo the jumping puzzle if you went to the pvp lobby.

Isn’t there a button ‘Leave PvP Lobby/HotM’ in the PvP UI that puts your character back where you were?

RoseofGilead.8907:

Shukriyya.7629:

In my opinion it’s better to use the pvp lobby for this, because you being on the border without participating could be a disadvantage for your server – e.g. your team might not get the outnumbered buff because there are too many people at the crafting stations. The only thing that is not available in the pvp lobby are crafting stations, but if you need to access your bank or a merchant, it’s a viable option.

The problem with going to the pvp lobby instead of your borderlands is that when you log out, you’ll still be in the pvp lobby when you come back to the game. If you go to your borderlands, do your stuff at the bank, and log out, you’ll be back where you were before going to wvw once you log back in. So, if you have toons parked at, say, a JP chest or on a spot waiting for a certain event, you’d have to go back to that spot or redo the jumping puzzle if you went to the pvp lobby.

Hit the leave PvP button on top left of the PvP panel. It sends you back to where you were in PvE.

I have 3 chars parked at JPs. When I need more salvage kits, I go to PvP, get them, and leave by using that button to return to the JP.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Shukriyya.7629:

In my opinion it’s better to use the pvp lobby for this, because you being on the border without participating could be a disadvantage for your server – e.g. your team might not get the outnumbered buff because there are too many people at the crafting stations. The only thing that is not available in the pvp lobby are crafting stations, but if you need to access your bank or a merchant, it’s a viable option.

The problem with going to the pvp lobby instead of your borderlands is that when you log out, you’ll still be in the pvp lobby when you come back to the game. If you go to your borderlands, do your stuff at the bank, and log out, you’ll be back where you were before going to wvw once you log back in. So, if you have toons parked at, say, a JP chest or on a spot waiting for a certain event, you’d have to go back to that spot or redo the jumping puzzle if you went to the pvp lobby.

Hit the leave PvP button on top left of the PvP panel. It sends you back to where you were in PvE.

I have 3 chars parked at JPs. When I need more salvage kits, I go to PvP, get them, and leave by using that button to return to the JP.

Wow. I completely forgot that button was there. Ignore me and my blondeness this morning.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

I hadn’t realized that there was a crafting inventory and a button to automatically deposit crafting materials and that the different bags had different sorting purposes (or if I did, I’ve forgotten these things since I haven’t been on in awhile). I’ll take a closer look at those and it should help some.

Hoarding is an issue I tend to have with RPGs (I’m spoiled by my bottomless chests in Skyrim), I like the observation that holding onto items for other characters tends to be a waste of time, that way I can just salvage everything that isn’t useful for my current character. I’ll probably just sell the materials, crafting takes a lot of time and is a money sink since everyone else is wanting to craft so raw materials fetch a premium on the trading post, while most crafted items are basically worthless since the market’s flooded with them. The extra gold will also help with bags and eventually gems.

I hadn’t realized that the PvP lobby could be exploited like that to get vendor/bank access from anywhere, or that I could always access the trading post, thanks for the tips.

I share Op’s pain,. There’s plenty of basic stuff with the inventory system that’s wrong. Basic concepts like making the blue reward bags from dungeons stack. Just one example, there are many more available.

Thanks to the Living World events, players are on the path of receiving a never ending barrage of new currencies and tokens.

They should let us purchase more bag slots per character. That would be a simple solution to part of it, even if time spent on inventory administartion would still be there.

I just have 148 slots on 14 characters, max bank tabs and a bank guild to the deep cave…

can stash up to 1000 in stash. and I do not care.

Your best frinds are 18 or 20 slot bags, a salvage o matic, a mystic salavege kit and then your done.

I don’t understand why some items have a collections slot and some don’t. Obsidian shards can be stored, but mystic clovers can’t. Makes no sense to me. I’d also like collection tab slots for things like vision crystals and mystic forge stones. Oh, and bandit crests and geodes.

You know whats annoying about inventory is not the lack of space which can be solved but the inability to have items go where you want them to. Fractal exotic bags used to help but now with ascended my weapons go to random places whenever i unequip espeically if i swap two weapons for one. Id pay a ton of gold/gems to get a bag that only bound gear would go into, or a bag where i can set where each thing will go when unequipped.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I just have 148 slots on 14 characters, max bank tabs and a bank guild to the deep cave…

can stash up to 1000 in stash. and I do not care.

Your best frinds are 18 or 20 slot bags, a salvage o matic, a mystic salavege kit and then your done.

Well umm…. thanks for popping by? No one’s concerns were resolved by your post

Op

Yeah it can be irritating, but there are some solutions. Bigger bags, extra bag slots, extra bank tabs, and extra material storage.
Also:
wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Permanent_Bank_Access_Contract
wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Permanent_Black_Lion_Merchant_Contract

I agree that some things should be in the wallet, and Im sure we will get that at some point, but for now there isn’t much we can do about it.