Inventory Nightmare

[Froblex]

I am posting this on Steam because it seems to be the only hope in getting some clarity/change.

So, after playing this game and really enjoying it on PC a few years ago, I bought it for the Xbox wanting to enjoy the DLC on another playthrough. All excited and eager, I got Lohse off the ship and then gathered a new party, tailored then to my design at Fort Joy's new magic mirror, and set out.

3 hours later, after much suffering, I uninstalled the game in absolute confusion and frustration. What a mess! I do not remember the PC version having so many problems, and honestly I feel cheated. It is unplayable imo, not only because Sir Lorax or whatever his name is simply vanished, or because I discovered even an apple pie hurts Fane and killed him after a fight, (I wanted to use him for the first time, but his healing system is unclear and seems to just be more work rather than more fun), and a few other strange design choices, but mostly because of this infuriating inventory system.

Why on Earth is there no way to move items within the inventory? The only way seems to be "move to hand" then setting the item where you want. This is about 10 button presses too many. And on top of that, everything you select AUTOMATICALLY gets added to wares! Why? I never use the wares feature myself, and having to select everything AGAIN and remove from wares is mind-numbing. Coins and some other random items (seems to be quest stuff) get added to wares and you cannot even remove them! If i want to send coins to Ibn because he carries the party's money, I can't just send it because it creates a new stack; his hoard is set as wares until I drop it on the ground and pick it up. Then it can be merged, but as soon as i move the coins in his inventory, they get stuck as wares and the problem is there again.

I feel like I am missing something here, some option I clicked on to make inventory management harder than all the Dark Souls games together?

This is awful, and I feel cheated out of hard-earned money. I know I am ranting but seriously, who designed this?!? Please at least patch out the auto-wares thing on xbox, that would make it a little bearable, and I could at least get through a game and experience the 4 new quests etc.

It is such a shame, and I am sure some will think me whining, but I have a job and a family and I can't spend my time fighting an inventory system. I got home from work and wanted to play for a few hours, and I spent the entire time moving and deselecting wares. Annoying design.

[Author Unknown]

Wow... okay first. Okay first off in settings there is an option for auto-wares. If you click the Right analog stick while in inventory you can select multiple items and move them wherever you like. You say you've played this before and you may have forgot but conventional healing damages undead. This has always been a thing to my knowledge. Use poison to heal undead. You can also merge the coins easily just click on them all. This is useful for stealing and sending thing to other teammates. Not sure about the Sir Lorax thing but all the other problems are fixable. This type of game may not be for you anymore.

[Froblex]

You did nothing but confirm my issues. Yes you can multi-select, it doesn't work very well and pretty much sucks. Yes, you can auto-ware, but that doesnt help anything, as you can't seem to turn off wares altogether. On xbox, there are no options at all regarding wares. Yes, I know conventional healing hurts the undead and poison heals, but he ate a pie. It was the icing on the cake, don't focus on that too much, as I know it was my own mistake, the point is that it was a mistake that felt far worse than it should because of frustration with the game in general. And having to click on multiple stacks of coins as you suggest isn't "fixing" an issue, at best it is dealing with it, putting up with it. I have auto-wares correctly set, by which I mean nothing is set to auto-ware and there are no options in any settings on the xbox, it doesnt seem to stop every single thing you "move to hand" becoming wares and many items getting stuck as wares permanently until you drop them on the ground, including coins.

If it has to be "fixed" then at least you realise it is indeed broken. To move one single item in the inventory takes pressing X, scrolling to "take in hand", moving the item, hitting X, going to "remove from wares" because for some reason it has now automatically been added (that is the main issue, stop that wares bs, and i could live with the endless button presses and awful inventory in general) and it is ridiculously ponderous. That is over a dozen button presses for something that should take press, move, press. They are making us spend 20 seconds on something that should take 2, over, and over, and over again. It all adds up.

So thanks for your input, but you have literally confirmed my point.

As I said, I don't like the wares feature, I don't know why anyone would want it in an RPG, so having to deal with this is frustrating as all hell. If the answer is "deal with it" then fine, I won't bother, no great loss, but a lot of disappointment at one of the worst ports to console I have seen in a while.

If I can't play the DLC, I'll live, I remember it being fun on PC at least. But I bet I am not the first to be put off by this, and it is a REALLY easy fix. RPGs have had solid inventory systems for decades, and a simple patch would be fairly easy to release; all it takes is an option to long press X to move an item in inventory, and remove the automatic addition to wares. All my issues solved right there, and I would play through the other issues no problem. I guess if I want to play again I will purchase on PC, for the THIRD time I might add. I am a fan of the devs/games clearly, but on Xbox it is unplayable imo.

[gregfromthepeg]

After the Relics of Rivellon update, there is definitely something weird with the wares on Xbox (probably for controller usage generally, not xbox specific). They may patch that as I have played the xbox version for 2 years and this seems to be different now.

For moving items to other characters, press X, then send to character instead. I have always done it that way so this change hasn't really made much difference for me.

The weird thing that happens now is that if I select "hold in hand" and just move it to another character, it gets put into wares automatically. You then need to remove it from wares. I don't really do that, though, so it doesn't affect me often. Only when I change my mind about putting something into a backpack while I am in the middle of it.

If you are trying to move items around within that same character's inventory, it gets put to wares for some reason. I don't move items within a character's inventory anyway; I just use their sort options so this doesn't affect me at all. But it is a bit odd.

I have found the multi select toggle really good, so not sure why you're having issues with it.

I have been extremely happy with the port so far, but if you used keyboard and mouse before, maybe that is the difference? I did find inventory tedious my first play through but have a decent system now. If the inventory system is better on keyboard and mouse, it could be a rough adjustment.

Sir Lora is a $4 add-on that I have never bought so I can't help you there. The other thing you mentioned are the same as it has always been; Fane being hurt by any healing effect (not just potions or healing spells).

[Froblex]

Glad I am not the only one.

RE: the multi-select... it certainly isn't a huge thing, nothing at all compared to the "wares" issues, but when you select multiple items to move, they don't only fill in blanks in the inventory but REPLACE anything in the row you add to. I understand I must be a minority, but having full control of inventory withiut having to use sort functions is a big part of, ya know, roleplaying, for someone like me. I like nothing more than lining up all my potions, arrows, equipment etc. Weird, I know.

As for Sir Lora, he was following me, along with the black cat, I went to the mirror to get pet-pal and he was gone. He is probably around the Fort somewhere, I ran around looking for him, I don't know, nor do I care anymore. It is a shame.

[gregfromthepeg]

I guess I am a bit confused; you are too busy to be messing around with inventory, but don't want to use the sort function which will solve your issue pretty easily. The issue mentioned is a minor one at most. Hopefully the mouse and keyboard version on PC works better for you.

[Froblex]

Sort function does not "solve" any problem, it just bypasses it and removes inventory management from the game altogether. Looking at a scrambled, albeit sorted, list of possessions is NOT inventory management. I am not "too busy" to "mess around" with inventory, not if it's done well. (I have spent endless hours playing NeoScavenger; it can be amazing.) I am, however, too busy to mess around with DOS2's inventory as 90% of it is meaningless, easily avoided button presses resulting from terrible design choices in the port, as far as I can tell. The majority of inventory management in this game, is correcting the game when it turns your possessions into wares without asking.

I already explained, if you still don't see my point, I don't know what to tell you. Inventory management can be fun, but not this way, not with automatic wares and dozens of button presses just to move an item. I want to manage the inventory how I see fit, like every single other video game RPG out there, if I so desire, manually and personally. To hell with sort features. It's straightforward, I don't really understand your confusion, as all you have said is essentially "suck it up". Well, as I said, I would rather not play at all if that's the case, but until I hear from Larian, I will keep hope that they could very simply patch this for players who still want to replay.