Post by Cat on May 7, 2012 6:16:54 GMT -6
demajen.co.uk/?p=3833 = source
"1. Bankable Crafting Materials
Interestingly enough, most of the upcoming points are about items and inventory management. The first one is something I really wish I’d known while playing. A lot of the “white” quality items you get are labelled as “crafting materials”, “salvageable” or “used in the creation of X”.
Salvageable items can be broken down into their component parts using a salvage kit. The basic kit has 15 charges and will turn anything salvageable into common crafting materials. For example, a thin leather strap could be salvaged into leather; or a cloth coat could be salvaged into jute scraps.
Crafting materials quickly fill up your inventory, even though they stack. There’s a lot of different types of them. Fortunately, all items labelled crafting materials or cooking ingredients can be right clicked on and allow you to transfer to crafting material storage. I noticed this option when I was moving stuff into my bank, so I didn’t realize that, actually, you can use it anywhere in the world. That’s right, all those common crafting mats can be dumped into your account-wide crafting/bank storage at any time. This will help immeasurably to ease inventory clutter.
The somewhat rarer items like blood and tiny claws — blue quality items — can’t be stored in this way it seems, unless they’re blue-quality cooking ingredients, in which case they can. I’m hoping that all crafting materials can eventually sent to storage this way, allowing inventory management to be really tightly controlled for us hoarders!
2. Bags
However, there are additional ways to cut down on inventory clutter: namely the existence of several different types of bag. Five, in fact:
First you have the basic slotted bags, which seem to range from 4 slots up to 20 slotters, created by three different professions (tailors, leatherworkers, and armoursmiths).
Then you have Invisible Bags/Invisible Packs/Safe Boxes. Items in these will never show up in the “sell to vendor” window. Nor will they be compressed into other bags should you use the compress button.
Craftsman’s Bags, unique to tailors, will automatically fill with crafting materials if there is space in them, before depositing crafting mats in other bags. This way you know where in your inventory they are likely to be to more easily transfer them to storage.
Padded Equipment Boxes, unique to armoursmiths, will automatically fill with weapons and armour.
Oiled Leather Packs, unique to leatherworkers, will automatically fill with junk (grey) items.
The maximum slottage for each type of bag is 20, so unlike the specialist bagtypes in World of Warcraft, there’s no storage advantage for choosing a specialist bag over a regular one. The advantage is simply in knowing where your stuff is going to be in your inventory. It’s possible that there won’t be a “sort inventory” button at any point because these different bags will serve as it. Personally I think the idea is cool, but I’d still like that auto-sort button too.
I know a lot of people will love the invisible bags or equivalent — accidentally selling something when you’re trying to clear out your junk is frustrating, though I hear green-quality items have a “confirm sale” box pop up if you try and sell them to cut down on accidents.
3. Junk Management
Speaking of getting rid of your junk, I was rather disappointed that GW2 doesn’t have a “sell all junk” button. Turns out it does — but only in the current dev build. It hadn’t made it into the BWE1 build. It will automatically sell your grey quality items when used and you’re at a merchant. I love this feature in RIFT and am glad it’s making its way to GW2. It’ll save a lot of scrolling through the sell list looking for those grey names — unless you’ve got an oiled leather pack, in which case they should all be grouped together anyways!
4. Selling Items on the Trading Post
Here’s a massive convenience feature. I’ve never really been one to trade on auction houses in other MMOs. I’ve mostly disenchanted or salvaged items into materials or sold them to vendors at the nearest quest hub, because heading back to the major city and auction-housing everything broke up my playtime too much.
In GW2, you don’t have to do that. While you have to physically be at a trading post to pick up gold and items, you can actually put items on the trading post from anywhere in Tyria. Got a phat green sword drop which you’re sure someone will pay top dollar for but are in the middle of an area you’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get to for the last thirty minutes? You don’t have to waste any progress you’ve made to teleport back to town; nor do you have to waste valuable auctioning time while you complete what you’re doing in that area. Just right click the item, select sell on trading post, enter the appropriate details, and you’re done.
Again this frees up your inventory space, adds a great amount of convenience, and keeps your adventuring relatively uninterrupted. Sure it’s not realistic — unless the carrier pigeons who carry your mail are magically reinforced to carry around greatswords — but I can take a little immersion breaking to further my enjoyment of the game!
5. Music Customisation
I mentioned in my first impressions post that I was disappointed the music playlist customisation hadn’t made it into the beta client. Turns out, it had. There’s just no GUI for it. In your USER/Documents/Guild Wars 2 folder, there is a local.dat file, and two empty folders: one for screenshots, the other for music. To get your customised musical selection working, all you need to do is create a playlist of the correct name and place it in the folder.
Supported playlist formats are .wpl, .m3u, .pls, .asx, and .wax. The files can be .mp3, .ogg, .flac, .wav, .aiff, and a bunch of even older filetypes like .mid or .it files.
There are currently eight specific playlists recognised, but on the forums Jim Boer has stated that they could very easily make it so you could change music for specific areas of the game. Current you can use: Ambient, Battle, Underwater, City, Crafting, BossBattle, NightTime, and MainMenu as your playlist names — so you can test it right now with a custom MainMenu.m3u playlist if you want. Stick it in the folder, boot up the game, and if the main menu music is whatever is on your playlist, you’re doing it right
Personally, I suspect I’ll have some of the Dissidia: Final Fantasy tracks for my battle music, to try and get that classic Final Fantasy feel. Hell, I may even use some of FFXIV’s tracks, since I’m unlikely to ever hear them in that game again.
Not bitter. Honest. ¬_¬"
"1. Bankable Crafting Materials
Interestingly enough, most of the upcoming points are about items and inventory management. The first one is something I really wish I’d known while playing. A lot of the “white” quality items you get are labelled as “crafting materials”, “salvageable” or “used in the creation of X”.
Salvageable items can be broken down into their component parts using a salvage kit. The basic kit has 15 charges and will turn anything salvageable into common crafting materials. For example, a thin leather strap could be salvaged into leather; or a cloth coat could be salvaged into jute scraps.
Crafting materials quickly fill up your inventory, even though they stack. There’s a lot of different types of them. Fortunately, all items labelled crafting materials or cooking ingredients can be right clicked on and allow you to transfer to crafting material storage. I noticed this option when I was moving stuff into my bank, so I didn’t realize that, actually, you can use it anywhere in the world. That’s right, all those common crafting mats can be dumped into your account-wide crafting/bank storage at any time. This will help immeasurably to ease inventory clutter.
The somewhat rarer items like blood and tiny claws — blue quality items — can’t be stored in this way it seems, unless they’re blue-quality cooking ingredients, in which case they can. I’m hoping that all crafting materials can eventually sent to storage this way, allowing inventory management to be really tightly controlled for us hoarders!
2. Bags
However, there are additional ways to cut down on inventory clutter: namely the existence of several different types of bag. Five, in fact:
First you have the basic slotted bags, which seem to range from 4 slots up to 20 slotters, created by three different professions (tailors, leatherworkers, and armoursmiths).
Then you have Invisible Bags/Invisible Packs/Safe Boxes. Items in these will never show up in the “sell to vendor” window. Nor will they be compressed into other bags should you use the compress button.
Craftsman’s Bags, unique to tailors, will automatically fill with crafting materials if there is space in them, before depositing crafting mats in other bags. This way you know where in your inventory they are likely to be to more easily transfer them to storage.
Padded Equipment Boxes, unique to armoursmiths, will automatically fill with weapons and armour.
Oiled Leather Packs, unique to leatherworkers, will automatically fill with junk (grey) items.
The maximum slottage for each type of bag is 20, so unlike the specialist bagtypes in World of Warcraft, there’s no storage advantage for choosing a specialist bag over a regular one. The advantage is simply in knowing where your stuff is going to be in your inventory. It’s possible that there won’t be a “sort inventory” button at any point because these different bags will serve as it. Personally I think the idea is cool, but I’d still like that auto-sort button too.
I know a lot of people will love the invisible bags or equivalent — accidentally selling something when you’re trying to clear out your junk is frustrating, though I hear green-quality items have a “confirm sale” box pop up if you try and sell them to cut down on accidents.
3. Junk Management
Speaking of getting rid of your junk, I was rather disappointed that GW2 doesn’t have a “sell all junk” button. Turns out it does — but only in the current dev build. It hadn’t made it into the BWE1 build. It will automatically sell your grey quality items when used and you’re at a merchant. I love this feature in RIFT and am glad it’s making its way to GW2. It’ll save a lot of scrolling through the sell list looking for those grey names — unless you’ve got an oiled leather pack, in which case they should all be grouped together anyways!
4. Selling Items on the Trading Post
Here’s a massive convenience feature. I’ve never really been one to trade on auction houses in other MMOs. I’ve mostly disenchanted or salvaged items into materials or sold them to vendors at the nearest quest hub, because heading back to the major city and auction-housing everything broke up my playtime too much.
In GW2, you don’t have to do that. While you have to physically be at a trading post to pick up gold and items, you can actually put items on the trading post from anywhere in Tyria. Got a phat green sword drop which you’re sure someone will pay top dollar for but are in the middle of an area you’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get to for the last thirty minutes? You don’t have to waste any progress you’ve made to teleport back to town; nor do you have to waste valuable auctioning time while you complete what you’re doing in that area. Just right click the item, select sell on trading post, enter the appropriate details, and you’re done.
Again this frees up your inventory space, adds a great amount of convenience, and keeps your adventuring relatively uninterrupted. Sure it’s not realistic — unless the carrier pigeons who carry your mail are magically reinforced to carry around greatswords — but I can take a little immersion breaking to further my enjoyment of the game!
5. Music Customisation
I mentioned in my first impressions post that I was disappointed the music playlist customisation hadn’t made it into the beta client. Turns out, it had. There’s just no GUI for it. In your USER/Documents/Guild Wars 2 folder, there is a local.dat file, and two empty folders: one for screenshots, the other for music. To get your customised musical selection working, all you need to do is create a playlist of the correct name and place it in the folder.
Supported playlist formats are .wpl, .m3u, .pls, .asx, and .wax. The files can be .mp3, .ogg, .flac, .wav, .aiff, and a bunch of even older filetypes like .mid or .it files.
There are currently eight specific playlists recognised, but on the forums Jim Boer has stated that they could very easily make it so you could change music for specific areas of the game. Current you can use: Ambient, Battle, Underwater, City, Crafting, BossBattle, NightTime, and MainMenu as your playlist names — so you can test it right now with a custom MainMenu.m3u playlist if you want. Stick it in the folder, boot up the game, and if the main menu music is whatever is on your playlist, you’re doing it right
Personally, I suspect I’ll have some of the Dissidia: Final Fantasy tracks for my battle music, to try and get that classic Final Fantasy feel. Hell, I may even use some of FFXIV’s tracks, since I’m unlikely to ever hear them in that game again.
Not bitter. Honest. ¬_¬"