Your typical alt/backpack/sorting time?

METALPUNKS

How long are you guys spending with after each play session or before or inbetween sorting all your loot out? Wish you had more space or is it ok?

Hadria

I have 110 bag space and I have no problem keeping it around 50 of that.

negatiiv

I would estimate I spend about 30 minutes per 5 hours of game time managing bag space.

bigscoothb14_ESO

"Mules Management" add on through Minion saves me hours on inventory time. Just switch over to my food guy go to the bank and boom 27 items stacked 5 items moved. Less than a 60 seconds now, hooray!

Nox_Aeterna

I a while , but now that i got that awesome bank management addon , it became much less of a problem to have 7 mules :P.

Xithian

I have 110 bank space, 130 inventory space, and access to a guild bank. I spend about 10 minutes a day in the bank. That includes all deposits, withdraws, and fixing stacks in the guild bank (which I do use an addon for).

VampiricOmen

It depends. Whenever I switch to an alternate character I loot everything in the banks they hang out in. As for how long it actually takes, the following gives an idea:

Do I have traited items to move to my trait item holder?
If yes, about 10 minutes. I cross reference with a spreadsheet to ensure that it isn't a duplicate item. I have an addon that subdivides the bank/inventory into tabs, which is quite honestly, a major time saver. It would take me a lot longer if I had to wade through 50+ traited items just to find the ones I'm looking for. Research and bank addons thus far have cut down the time I spend on this character.

Do I have provisioning items or recipes to move to my Provisioner?
If yes, about 5 minutes.

Do I have runes or glyphs to move to my Enchanter?
If yes, about 5 minutes, up to 10 if I am deconstructing glyphs.

Do I have reagents or solvents to move to my Alchemist?
If yes, about 5 minutes, if I am making potions that jumps to 10, maybe 15 minutes as I often sell them right after making them (via Guild Store).

Do I have motifs, maps or trophies to move to my hoarding character?
If yes, about 5 minutes.

Do I have blacksmithing, clothing, woodworking or style materials to move to my overflow character?
If yes, about 5 minutes. This one holds full stacks of refined materials and/or style stones so I don't jump on it quite as often as the others.

Overall around 30 minutes to 1 hour, though I dawdle. Sorting adds time, cross referencing adds more time, vendor trips more time again. I enjoy micro-managing my bank so it's not a chore. While I'd love to have more bank space and more inventory space on the characters I currently play as "mains" to cut down on management times, I'm not desperate for more inventory space. 678 total item slots certainly helps, although only around 450-500 of those are in use (did I say I hoard items already? Yes? Ah, good.). That's 90 bank slots, 70 bag slots on 6 alternates, 88 on one of my mains and 80 on the other.

LadyInTheWater

I have 60 inventory spaces, and 70 bank spaces open. No alts, just the one main. Working on all the crafting professions simultaneously.

I spend about 5 minutes managing my inventory between play sessions. My usual play routine is:

1. Run around and complete quests, read lore books, and gather every resource I happen to find (except Essence runes. I don't bother collecting those).
2. Die a lot
3. Return to a city when I'm done for the day (or if my inventory is full). Usually, it seems like my inventory will cap out after completing 2-3 different quest hubs.
4. Repair my stuff, and then head over to the crafting area and play around with crafting until I burn off all the mats I've collected. I'll also check to see if I need to do any research while I'm there. Occasionally (every 4th-6th level) I'll craft an entirely new set of gear.
5. Run to the bank, deposit the small handful of leftover crafting mats (if there are any). This usually takes about 5 minutes, tops. And that's including the time I take to see if I want to sell/buy anything via the guild store.
6. Log out

**post edit**
Every other day, I tend to skip out on questing, run around towns gathering Provisioning materials, and then knock out as much cooking as I have the materials for. Then, I vendor/delete the rest.
**
I think the two big reasons I haven't had any major inventory issues are:
First, I don't collect any Essence Runes.
Second, I don't save anything that I can't use.

In all honesty, in as much as I see these inventory-management threads, I'd absolutely LOVE to see what people have in their bank/inventory that's taking up so much space.

Xithian

LadyInTheWater wrote: »

In all honesty, in as much as I see these inventory-management threads, I'd absolutely LOVE to see what people have in their bank/inventory that's taking up so much space.

14 style mats
16 trait stones
4-12 upgrade mats (4 per craft)

Comes out to 34-42 slots without even holding any actual ore/ingots, wood, flax, etc.

Provisioning has over 100 mat types itself. Saving only level 50+ leaves you with 35 more slots taken.

~20 slots if you're an alchemist.
Pets, trophies, costumes...
Probably at least one extra armor set.

Inventory space can go pretty fast.

LadyInTheWater

Xithian wrote: »

14 style mats

You're not talking about things like bone or obsidian are you? Can't you just buy that stuff off a vendor for 15g each? Except maybe the fancy stuff like Daedric. But even then, you could save yourself 9 inventory spaces just by getting rid of stuff like Starmetal and Moonstones. Do those really take priority over other things you could hold onto?

Provisioning has over 100 mat types itself. Saving only level 50+ leaves you with 35 more slots taken.

If those mats belong to recipes you know, why hold onto them? Why not simply craft the food that it makes?
Even if you crafted different food for a variety of situations (just rattling ideas off my head like tanking, healing, dps, all 3 versions for a second weapon set, and all 6 of those again for PvP-related activities) that'd still be only 12 different foods that you'd use.
Personally, I only end up using like 2 different foods anyway, the rest all gets vendored. But wouldn't that make more sense than saving up 35 different crafting materials?
Isn't it easier to simply farm up enough materials to make a bunch of food during a single play session and then ditching the rest?

Probably at least one extra armor set.

I haven't ran into a need for a second armor set yet, but I suppose it'd probably be useful in the future. That makes sense. But I think I lucked out, because my two weapons are dual-wield and bow, so either way I'll end up using the same armor set regardless.

Well, regardless, thanks for the heads-up on what takes up your personal inventory space.

Rotherhans

Simply tooo looong!

It´s seriously sapping my will to play this game when every time I filled up my main I have to port back to start the stupid bank logon/off extravaganza to shuffle stuff to my various alts.
And coming from from my most recent MMO that was GW2, this is usually my general feeling..

Xithian

Style mats for the 9 basic styles only costs 15g at a vendor, correct. Ask a level 50 crafter how many they went through while leveling their craft. You can go through hundreds and only get 2 or 3 skill points. After you have your crafting skills capped, yes, it would be silly to keep those basic style mats.

Provisioning mats for veteran food are ridiculously hard to get in any large quantity right now. (half the mats are leveled to the original zone, plus the diminishing returns they recently put on containers that results in looting nothing) I wouldn't throw any away. There are 6 mats that you are guaranteed to have to use 1 of for every blue/purple recipe you craft. There are 12 mats that you are guaranteed to use 2 of for every purple recipe you craft. Some of these are common, some aren't. They are used in all blue/purple recipes for all levels though. You can probably get by with a lower number of the other mats. I craft for a guild, so I need them all. If I were crafting food for only myself I would probably just skip the time it takes to gather provisioning mats hoping for the right combo and buy from another player instead.

See the werewolf post for the armor set. I'd wager that half the werewolves in game have a complete Salvation set in the bank. It's practically a requirement if you want to level up the werewolf skill line in reasonable time. (You only gain werewolf line XP for kills made as a werewolf)

Xithian

Worth noting, I do still manage all of my stuff on one character, keeping my actual inventory down to 12 items when starting a run and my bank hovering ~70. The above are examples of how much room can be taken up by hardcore tradeskilling. If you're selling for profit, you're not throwing away anything you might use to make money.

METALPUNKS

Xithian wrote: »

Worth noting, I do still manage all of my stuff on one character, keeping my actual inventory down to 12 items when starting a run and my bank hovering ~70. The above are examples of how much room can be taken up by hardcore tradeskilling. If you're selling for profit, you're not throwing away anything you might use to make money.

Ah yes you got it. The difference is if your selling or just using stuff for leveling. If your making stuff to make gold then you need alts and time if not it's pretty easy to keep things sorted. Like with me I am make food for myself but only want magic based food. Right now I have one main recipe that I use. It takes up two slots to make that. Have no need for any other ingredients.

VampiricOmen

LadyInTheWater wrote: »

In all honesty, in as much as I see these inventory-management threads, I'd absolutely LOVE to see what people have in their bank/inventory that's taking up so much space.

I'm a packrat and habitual looter by nature, anything that has potential to store items is fair game to me (barrels, nightstands, locked chests, etc). This is a breakdown of what I have stored across 8 characters:

Bank:
14 partial stacks of blacksmithing materials/tempers.
19 partial stacks of clothing materials/tempers.
14 partial stacks of woodworking materials/tempers.
1 partial stack of alchemy solvents.
14 partial/complete stacks of style stones.
8 partial stacks of weapon trait gems.
8 partial stacks of armour trait gems.

In regards to materials, some are refined others are not.

Trait holder:
54 weapons/armour with traits I have yet to research. That's with having researched 2-4 traits on every piece of armour and weaponry. With 34 pieces of gear that can have up to 8 traits, that's a total of 272 items needed for researching traits. Do I need them all at once? No, but I sure do like planning ahead.

Overflow character:
2 complete stacks of blacksmithing materials/tempers.
18 complete stacks of clothing matierals/tempers.
4 completes stacks of sanded wood.
7 complete stacks of basic style stones.

With complete stacks of style stones alone, that's equivalent to 10,500g if purchased from a vendor. If crafting items enmass to assist my friends with their professions, I'd rather not spend money on something I can get for free.

Provisoner:
3 partial stacks of player made beverages.
60 partial stacks of provisioning materials for recipes ranging from recipe improvement levels 1-4 as well as special ingredients.

Alchemist:
18 partial stacks of reagents.
3 partial stacks of solvents.

If I wasn't levelling Alchemy on that character I'd likely have complete stacks of some reagents and solvents by now.

Enchanter:
18 partial/complete stacks of potency runes (the stacks max out at 20).
17 partial stacks of essence runes.
5 partial stacks of aspect runes.

Motifs/Maps/Trophies character:
46 motifs, maps and trophies.

Mains:
Mostly stuff I'm collecting, using or haven't gotten around to moving to the respective alternate character, this includes player made food.
Soul gems of various levels.
Several stacks of lockpicks.

Okay so my previous guess was about 100 items off. However, as I am essentially obtaining items for myself, by myself, I have very little need for gold so I rarely sell items to other players (exception to potions as they are above all of my character's levels). Therefore, the gold goes towards inventory and bank upgrades as well as horse feeding. Occasionally I repair armour, but most of the time I just level a few times before making a new set to save on materials. The only other use for gold I have had thus far is purchasing traited items from the Guild Store and cheap materials that I need to craft appropriate levelled armour.

Of course I don't have to hoard all of these items, but I prefer to have items on hand whenever I need them. I've out-levelled some of them by a fair amount but as stated earlier in this post, I sometimes craft gear to help friends with levelling their crafting through deconstruction. As for provisioning materials, I plan to eventually level my all of my alts to at least 15 (I've started on three), so having low level provisioning items will help me out on that endeavour.

I hope this provides some insight on just what is taking up player's inventory spaces.

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO

Lets say 5 minutes per 5h gameplay. Find wayshrine > teleport to town > deconstruct stuff > get to bank > deposit all crafting marerials I use (clothing, woodworking, blacksmithing and few runes) > relog to alt which levels enchanting > take runes from bank > relog to main > continue the journey. I don't get what are people complaing about and where do they get those riddiculous times for deposits? People are simply doing something very wrong.

If I did mot decide to do enchanting at all I would not need to worry even with relog....

Tannakaobi

negatiiv wrote: »

I would estimate I spend about 30 minutes per 5 hours of game time managing bag space.

I'd say about this too give or take.

Knootewoot

I have 70 backpack and 70 bank space. I only gather alchemy and provisioning stuff i want to use. I have all my tophies in my backpack and i collected some costumes which are in my bank together with the ingredients.

I start with 35/70 inv space and 40/70 bankspace. After a gaming session i put ingredients in bank and i sell loot in between.

I totally have no issues with bank/inv space. I have the CE treausre maps in my inventory which onnly takes up 3 inv space. I only take out the map from the area in which i am. So right now i am in auridon and have that map out. The rest of AD maps is still in the consumable.

Sorting stuff out takes less then a minute at the bank.

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO

@VampiricOmen‌
You are exactly the type that surely have issue with space as you collect everything. But it should be that way.

Trait items for research if I may say should not be kept in such huge numbers. I personaly keep just one because I will have ton of time to drop more of them before research is done... :-)

Tannakaobi

LadyInTheWater wrote: »

In all honesty, in as much as I see these inventory-management threads, I'd absolutely LOVE to see what people have in their bank/inventory that's taking up so much space.

In my bank I have about 35-40 items that range from armor trait items and race crafting items. (all the things that 'all' my alts use for crafting)

I then have an alt for each craft to store the items used only by each craft. Including weapons and armor that will be researched. anything between 30 - 60 items at any one time.

I have an alt to hold all my treasure maps, disguise's and dungeon goodies. 50ish items currently.

At the end/beginning of play I empty my bank, except the 35-40 items I mentioned above by logging into each alt and taking the relevant items.

Only my main actually crafts, I do this by putting whatever craft items I need into the bank for the duration of the time I am crafting and then removing them again when I'm finished.

It's probably a long winded way of doing things but it's super efficient and leaves plenty of space.

zaria

LadyInTheWater wrote: »

Xithian wrote: »

14 style mats

You're not talking about things like bone or obsidian are you? Can't you just buy that stuff off a vendor for 15g each? Except maybe the fancy stuff like Daedric. But even then, you could save yourself 9 inventory spaces just by getting rid of stuff like Starmetal and Moonstones. Do those really take priority over other things you could hold onto?

Provisioning has over 100 mat types itself. Saving only level 50+ leaves you with 35 more slots taken.

If those mats belong to recipes you know, why hold onto them? Why not simply craft the food that it makes?
Even if you crafted different food for a variety of situations (just rattling ideas off my head like tanking, healing, dps, all 3 versions for a second weapon set, and all 6 of those again for PvP-related activities) that'd still be only 12 different foods that you'd use.
Personally, I only end up using like 2 different foods anyway, the rest all gets vendored. But wouldn't that make more sense than saving up 35 different crafting materials?
Isn't it easier to simply farm up enough materials to make a bunch of food during a single play session and then ditching the rest?

Probably at least one extra armor set.

I haven't ran into a need for a second armor set yet, but I suppose it'd probably be useful in the future. That makes sense. But I think I lucked out, because my two weapons are dual-wield and bow, so either way I'll end up using the same armor set regardless.

Well, regardless, thanks for the heads-up on what takes up your personal inventory space.

One option is to use the guild bank if you are in a friendly guild where people stuff cheap items in it. i don't do alchemy so all alchemy items go into guild bank same with all the food items except the primary food I make +health and magic.

I store the square and round runes and the +magic ones, rest go in guild bank.
Keep one large stack of one type of style stones to make items for making items for training, take out of guild bank if you want to make something to use of some style.

As i'm now veteran I have started to collecting some armor sets they are stored on bank alts together with runes I can not use yet, fun stuff like costumes and trophy,

Last is items for research, here you don't need everything, and they can be stored on bank alts.

VampiricOmen

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO wrote: »

@VampiricOmen‌
You are exactly the type that surely have issue with space as you collect everything. But it should be that way.

Trait items for research if I may say should not be kept in such huge numbers. I personaly keep just one because I will have ton of time to drop more of them before research is done... :-)

I agree that people who hoard items should have difficulty doing so, it's a part of every RPG game/MMO that I have played to have limited inventory and/or bank spaces. While managing my inventory is higher on the list of priorities in comparison to the average ESO player, it doesn't impact my gameplay in a wholly negative mannger. Before beginning any adventuring, harvesting or questing, I shuffle items into my bank so that I have 50-60 free inventory slots for loot and materials.

That we can actually upgrade the inventory and bank space is something that I am very appreciative of. Now, while the price of upgrading this space does add up to a considerable amount, I'm not complaining at the rate at which the price increases two fold for every upgrade. Believe me when I say that the 20,500 gold upgrade price on my bank right now is a little intimidating; but I know that I'll get the funds eventually, so it is a non-issue.

Your post does hold validity in regards to researching. As I have placed one point on the "Stiching" and "Metallurgy" skills respectively, I can research two items at once, so I need only to hold 5 items with traits at any one time. Why I am not doing this however, is for the reason that I like the convenience of jumping on one character, storing the item in the bank, before jumping on my blacksmith/woodworker or clothier to research the traits. It takes about ten minutes of my time, which is preferable to hunting particular traits that do not seem to drop often, at least for me.

My highest level character is at 28 as of this post and I do have difficulty finding some of the traits I am missing, even with buying items from the Trading Guild's Store that I am a member of. I will say that in my opinion, this is working exactly as intended, even if I really do want to find just one more trait to bring my totals to a certain level so that I can craft specific sets. If I had an item with every trait by the end of the second month of the game being released, future researching would be an absolute breeze.

I have traded traited items with other players, so that is another valid method of obtaining them without having to go on witch hunts to find certain traits. The reason why I do not actively do this instead of buying them via the Guild Store, is that there is no guarantee that the other player has any trait that I want and or do not already have. In the end it is convenient for me to hold these items, so my packrat ways in that regard will remain unchanged.

Thank you for your words regarding inventory management, it is refreshing to see differing opinions that do not outright aim to insult the other person.

zaria

thanks for the idea of selling traits in shop, will ask people to do this to.
This is nice for small guilds where the shop is pretty dead and you don't mind using up you 30 items on this.

Khandi

Does no one else think it's insane that it's *common* for people to have 3-7 alts just for storage??

For the record- I have 2 accounts so I pay an extra $14 a month just for crafting alts. I think a lot of it has to do with never knowing when you pick it up, if it is something you will need when you start to craft a new line.

Sure wish we had a public auction house Oh wait...yes I DO wish that....

Blackwolfe5

No idea how long it takes, since the addon I use automatically stacks/withdraws/deposits whatever I specified it to depending on char when I visit the bank Certainly not even close to the amount of time it would take without the addon.

Slantasiam

I made 7 alts each one holds 1 type of crafting supply for easy access. I still have to log 8 times to clear bank but it doesn't take me too long now

Khandi

Slantasiam wrote: »

I made 7 alts each one holds 1 type of crafting supply for easy access. I still have to log 8 times to clear bank but it doesn't take me too long now

Seven alts!! Are you listening ZOS???

rowdog

When I go to town I spend like 5-10 minutes hitting the craft tables, vendor, and bank. Every other day I need to log an alt to pull the runes that have built up. I wouldn't even need to do that if I gave up on hording runes for a future enchanter. I suppose it helps that the only thing I keep in the bank are materials for crafting wood and cloth.

Oh, and besides the rune mule, I use one more alt to hold all the wonderful gifts that came with my digital download.

Evergnar

I don't even wanna know how much time I spend logging in/out to alts. Too much that's for sure.

alphawolph

I spend about half an hour a day shuffling stuff around. I can never find what i need in the game world so i keep everything i may need.

Xithian

Khandi wrote: »

Slantasiam wrote: »

I made 7 alts each one holds 1 type of crafting supply for easy access. I still have to log 8 times to clear bank but it doesn't take me too long now

Seven alts!! Are you listening ZOS???

That's not ZoS ruining the game. That's OCD players. If you had a full stack of every crafting mat in the game you wouldn't need 7 alts for it all.

Having access to a guild bank completely changes the inventory situation as well, and seeing as player to player interaction is something that ZoS wants to encourage I doubt that this is a coincidence.