I never have anymore space

I used to have 1 retainer be for enemy mats but since retainers have made gathering them a non issue and supply is abundant on the market, I tossed them to make more room for my excess equipment.

I'm not an IT person or anything, but really, what kind of POS servers does SE use that have problems with item data? Seriously...look waaaaay back at EQ. Server tech from 15 something years ago could support 500+ storage slots, and SoE never charged you for more inventory. Crafters made boxes and bags you put into your inventory you can open for more slots. Does a digital sword programmed in 2013 take up more imaginary space than a sword programed in 1999?

Really makes SE look bad when they invest in *expletive* servers.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

I'm not an IT person or anything, but really, what kind of POS servers does SE use that have problems with item data? Seriously...look waaaaay back at EQ. Server tech from 15 something years ago could support 500+ storage slots, and SoE never charged you for more inventory. Crafters made boxes and bags you put into your inventory you can open for more slots. Does a digital sword programmed in 2013 take up more imaginary space than a sword programed in 1999?

Really makes SE look bad when they invest in *expletive* servers.

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^
There are also SO many items they could just delete completely.

It's the storage requirements and coming from IT I can understand them. But I don't agree with them.


An item stored on your retainer will require something like Item <-> Retainer relation if they have the Retainer <-> Character relation done already - but this is simplistic and probably not very efficient(slow). But this needs:

a) storage - for when not in use and in use
b) memory - for when in use
c) cpu time - for when in use

Now for a single item+retainer+character this isn't much. Let's say the retainer id is a long and the item id is a long and the character id is a long... A long is 4 bytes... So that's already 12 bytes used up for just for basic id's.
Then you have the relation that also uses atleast 4 bytes on each side. So 8 bytes as well. 20 bytes so far. And that's for a single item on a single character or a single retainer.

You already have 175 inventory slots - so 20 bytes * 175 = 3500 bytes for your inventory alone. Add to that the armoury chest - what is it 25 slots per page... so 6500 bytes. So a retanire needs 3500 bytes of raw storage. There is always overhead that you don't see and that needs to be taken into account for such things. It might not be much but it's still there. And with scale it has a negative effect on the performance and the storage.

So for a single character with 2 retainers for ONLY inventory and armory chest storage you need...
17000 bytes or 17 kB. Now multiply that with number of players... let's say 2 milion... that's 32GB(and I would guestimate that the actual number with all the overhead and stuff is probably atleast 5 times larger) just needed in storage. JUST for inventory and armoury for each character with 2 retainers.

Now you add the overhead of all the transactions that need to be logged, backed up, add stack data in there as well and so on and the overhead just goes up higher and higher.

Also cpu, storage and memory needed for good performance is not cheap for this kinds of environments.

So as said I can understand them but as this is a pay to play game I disagree with them charging more for this and they will not see any extra money from me for this even though it would help me immensly(so no not white knighting).

Storing items in armorie though is a bit cheaper since only items in there actually require storage space. There is also no item metadata to store for that - despirit bonds, 100% repaired so as someone said you are in essence junking that item. But can get it back for free.

The above is a very simplistic calculation and omits a lot of things - stacks, metadata(durability, spiritbond, items on sale and for how much, retainer gear).

My main character is lv50 in everything but BOT, FSH and MNK...and will soon be lv50 in everything but FSH (don't feel like leveling it)

I have 2 retainers. That's it. 2.

And I have free space in my inventory and on both retainers. Not much, but some.

My one retainer has gear and housing items; most gear I can honestly get rid of, and did get rid of a bunch of things yesterday. Some things I'm saving for my MNK, and will be turned-in after I actually go back and farm Coil again for what I'm missing.
My other retainer is full of crafting mats and materia; again, tons of stuff I will never use or need to convert (hides, logs, stone, etc), I've got a bunch of stuff vendors sell (no idea why), and can go transmute a bunch of my crap materia.

Its all inventory management. I don't (well, try not to) keep mats that just aren't used, and keep supplies of the "common" mats (Iron Ore, Mythril Ingots, Dew Thread, etc) around.

I do wish you could search all retainers, or like when you purchase an item it tells you how many you have of it.
Doing Gc daily turn ins for fish as an example only to find out you just went out fishing for something you already had, but since a lot of fish look alike it's hard to tell

Considering that I played ff11 for 11 years and the inventory needs were way higher in that game. While you "used" gil to buy more inventory spaces this was really you just unlocking it as the quest was locked by your progressions in the game, charter level, and fame generated, however you never had the option to have more space then another player had access too, unless you paid for it buy buying another character. Unlike in 11, they give you a ridiculous amount of storage for free. while space is restricted and can be annoying I can still deal with it and unlike in 11.

The reason for the cost has been explained, if you can't understand it then take a business class. It has nothing to do with SE purely wanting more money, you are less then 1/3 of the population of the game, When 2/3 of the population reach 80% storage on both retainers and nothing is done, then complain.


SE has provided this as an option while they work on creating more in game ways. So your insulting them for giving you an option until they can help you. Your problem seems to be due to the glamour system alone so all you really need don't need a retainer, just a place to store glamoured items, and primal weapons. So ask for that, but don't ask everyone to baby you and treat you special

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Originally Posted by Pandastirfry

you actually had the most important question in your first paragraph... really the only question worth answering " Am I going to want any of those items any time soon?"

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But that question can only be asked after you've spent a significant amount of time researching the previous two questions: "What recipes need it directly? What recipes need it indirectly for one of their intermediate ingredients?" Those are what tell you which items you're even talking about. Only after you figure out which items this thing in your inventory would be needed for can you ask whether you're going to want to make any of those items any time soon.

And in determining whether you're going to want to make them, you have to consider which classes of your own may soon want to use them (and whether they'd be an upgrade from what you currently have for each of those classes), plus whether they're used for leves or GC supply missions. And since a single ingredient may be involved in making a wide variety of final items, there's a lot of things to check before you can determine whether to keep or toss even one ingredient that saves just a single slot if you do toss it. Then repeat the whole time-consuming process for the next ingredient you picked up, or repeat it all 350 times if you want to clean out your retainers' inventory.

I'll agree with you that once you can finally manage to answer the question of whether you'll want any of the things this can make any time soon, you could eliminate most of the common junk you pick up along the way while playing. Indeed I said as much in my previous post. My point was about not wanting to have to do all that research every time I play.

all four retainers are full & I'm at 88/100, with maybe a free space in each equipment slot. I need to spend a week or two at crafting to clear it all up.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

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Honestly, a serious crafter should know most of that already, or know where to find that info very quickly.

Or, at the very least, have a list of things they make a lot and their mats, and keep those things (or the pre-mats) in stock.

Rare (AKA expensive) ingredients should also be kept if you plan on using them, or sell them if not.

Also, I would keep NQ stuff, sell HQ stuff (except for 1* mats [Twinthread, Rose Gold Nuggets, etc]) since if you're able to HQ 2*s, you can HQ 1*s and lower with all NQ mats without issues.

I'm leveling all DoH classes at once and gather all my mats; inventory has always been a toughie. One thing I do to help is assign item types to each retainer. In my case, weapons/gear are on retainer 1, ltw/wvr on 2, alc/cul on 3 (some overflow onto other retainers), and arm/bsm on 4. Random stuff like atma, materia, fish, and dye go onto different retainers depending on how much space each has. I do try to clean things out once in a while and sell off what I can.

Put 20 + 20 on Boards. for 10-50% less then everyone else is selling. 1st and last thing you do everyday.
-Perk, if it's something you think you may use. Use gil you got from sale to buy it when you are going to use it.
Don't hang onto any items that on the boards go for less then XX(I do 20 gil), Just NPC them for more space.

I hit near cap about once every 2 weeks. I do delivery company quests everyday on all my crafting jobs that aren't level 50.

When I do hit cap I do what I said above for 2-3 days and free up about 100+ spaces.


Once you get better gear get rid of old non storable gear.
You have full myth set no need for any darklight/CT gear.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

Honestly, a serious crafter should know most of that already,

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Not really, as the answers are constantly changing. What you need at one point in the game isn't what you need at another point in the game. After a productive gaming session, you're likely to have advanced at least one class or another in either level or gear, so what that class needs will be different than it was the day before.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

or know where to find that info very quickly.

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There is no place to find it quickly. There are places to look up each step of the process, but then you still have to put all the pieces together yourself, and that's the time-consuming part I was talking about. So you can look up ingredient A to find it's used in making ingredients B, C, and D as well as final items X, Y and Z, but then you need to look up what ingredients B, C, and D are used for, etc., until you finally put together a long list of final items that ingredient A goes into. At that point, you need to start considering whether you'll want any of those final items, so need to go to a different site to look up leves and GC supply missions, as well as checking in-game for which items you have or want for yourself. That's a lot of work just for determining "should I keep ingredient A or not?"

(Actually, there's a pretty good site for going the other way around. When you want to make something, you can in a single step find all the root elements as well as intermediates you'll need to make it. It doesn't, however, go the other way around, and tell you what all items a given ingredient is needed for. And even if it did, there would still be a separate step to check whether you'll want any of those items.)

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

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Really, there's only one crafter that has confusing, unnecessarily wasteful recipes: CUL.

All others generally use the same materials for each "tier" of gear (and ARM/BSM share them, making it even simpler)

I keep Iron Ore, Bomb Ash, Brass Ingots, Silver Ingots, Mythril Ingots, Electrum Ingots, Colbalt Ore, each type of thread (except Hempen), each type of Lumber, each type of Leather (except Leather and Hard Leather), HQ Undyed Felt, HQ Twinthread, HQ Rose Gold Nuggets, HQ Darksteel Nuggets, HQ Spruce Lumber, HQ Hyppogriff Leather, HQ Shark Oil, Thavnarian Misteltoe and a few (yes few) other ingredients I use and can't remember right now. That's also not counting the stuff I use for my food, since I generally don't keep those mats around, making the food when I get that stuff.

That list makes the vast majority of things, and can be made into other mats. The extra stuff you need isn't needed much, and can be gathered quickly or bought cheaply.

I second that.

Once you get deep into DoH, you will realize yourself which mats are really important to keep. Combined with market supply and demand, you also will know which mats you don't need to keep. Very good example of this are hippogrif skins. The NQ are ridiculously abundant, so you can get rid of those.

Right now, I don't see myself needing extra retainer for keeping my stuff. atm, 1 retainer are in charge of holding all mats while I throw stuff like unused wep/gears and materia along with events stuff on other retainers.

Another tip is to not keep mats used for crafting below level 15 since those can be bought from npcs. Even you can easily HQ those if you have high enough DoH level.

I agree that from all DoHs, CULs mats are too many and taking alot of spaces. Right now I'm working to complete making all recipes so I can dump most of them to market/npc.

Another thing to consider is to npc/market stuff that you have less interest to craft on that particular DoH. When you do need it later, it's usually long time ahead and gathering stuff aren't as hard as you think.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

My point was about not wanting to have to do all that research every time I play.

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1) Attempt to place the item in your retainer for sale on the AH.
2) Check sale history.
3) Is it worth anything?
4) No? Sell it.

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Originally Posted by KenzieLynch

I'm pretty sure it's intentional. If you're here for the long run you are just going to have to give in and pay for another retainer.

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I did snag one so I don't have to pick and prune every 20 minutes, but at the cost of changing my subscription from standard to basic.

Funny how this actually reduces the money they make off of me...