There has been talk of being able to drop backpacks but the managing of separates inventory spaces would be too much of a hassle to manage.
Terraria has a feature in which you tag items in your inventory to keep and then pushing a “drop all” button drops everything but the tagged items. This makes it easy to loot and drop stuff off.
Similar to the auto pickup list but this would be a Do Not Auto Drop list.
There could be two levels - Keep and Combat Drop
Keep would let you easily loot and drop off anything you don’t want to carry with you. Tags things like a few water bottles, gas mask, and tools as Keep to carry them around. All wore items would be tagged as Keep automatically. Used by Drop All key.
Combat Drop could be added to any item that is tagged keep. The Combat Drop key drops all items as in Drop All but also includes combat drop tagged items. This could include backpacks and other encumbrance items that you might want to drop to fight and then pick up later; or drop for extra speed to escape.
I’ve been quietly wishing something like this too, but now it occurs to me that you could in theory tag your desired default gear, separating them from looted items at a glance, although you wouldn’t be able to drop them quickly.
You could clear all your inventory hotkeys, and then proceed to bind keys to your default items. You might then see at a glance which items are your standard issue.
Another way is to use a permanent marker or similar and scribble something (anything) on your gear. The item name gets marked with an asterisk to denote that it has writing on it. Not sure if you can write on food or meds though.
Personally I’d love to try an option to select a text color per each inventory item, much like one can assign a hotkey for them. One would examine an item, and the menu would include a command “Assign color”, and you would then choose a color from a list, or enter a color abbreviation, or even a hexadecimal value. A number of colors and their abbreviations already exist for the map notes.
Reminded of this idea from watching lets plays in which people keep cursing that they forget items.
Maybe a system in which items can be assigned a priority 1-10, and a message or red text on the inventory screen will say when you are currently not carrying priority 10 items. The advanced inventory screen could have a sort by priority feature and have fast drop button with direction and enter priority.
Still seeing ease of use problems in let’s plays around organizing gear.
The inventory screen needs a “dedicated pockets” area to place items you want to keep with the character, these items wouldn’t show up in advanced inventory screen and would be dropped last if storage is lost. Kinda like a wearable item that holds something without adding any encumbrance but subtracts storage space based on the item’s size.
What we need is an overhaul to volume enhancing apparel, converting them all to portable containers. When you drop your backpack, every item inside of your backpack will also drop. The game already sort of works this way, except it isn’t dedicated to the contents of the backpack but rather your entire inventory. I would like to see portable storage added for the sake of inventory management. Don’t like the contents of a First Aid Kit? Disassemble it and use the container to put in better stuff that you will be of more use when you need it, throw the book away and stuff a splint inside. Or just take a small plastic bag or a empty cigarette pack and fill it with disinfectant cotton balls and some poppy painkillers, having it set to a dedicated item to unload when you need it. Being able to make our own go-bags, essentially.
I have been discussing this idea for a while now with folks tinkering on inventory. But it sadly seems it is a dead horse.
I mentioned in a few other threads that with every item holding garment. The player would have items placed according to size automatically in those “quick slot” outer garments. While a static backpack would be used(albeit slower) for a catch all space. Drawing items from a backpack would also require removal and placing on the ground to sift/sort/take/place inside etc.
Not only my idea still uses words. But could actually be coded to work with a mouse in a fashion similar to MS-DOS Shell style point and click. Would be damn cool to have both functional even in ascii and tiles. But for some silly reason(or none at all). Everyone hates my idea =(
…and no. It isn’t time consuming to point and click or to place commonly used items where you want them @ the naysayers! >;P