Bulging Inventory!

Not so much an issue w/gear, but all of the "stuff" one accumulates as one plays the game are a problem for me. Yes I have my 2 "free" retainers, BUT between the 2 of them and myself, maybe barely a dozen slots left. Compounding the issue, I'm leveling the 3 DoL jobs... figured out to do leves as you level faster AND don't have a bunch of stuff left over (except for the class quests where you have to farm).

So I have to do SOMETHING. One option is to hire more retainers, BUT that is pretty expensive (2 bucks/mo per). Curious how many retainers folks generally have.

What I have little feeling for is how much of what I am storing is so necessary for when I start leveling some crafting professions. At this point, my plans there are Culinary & Alchemy (same as my other MMO, I make buff food & flasks & potions to support my raiding).

What I have seems to be a lot of stone, good bit of leather, good bit of bone and "ingredients" and "reagents." I HAD thought of selling off all the NQ items, just keeping the HQ items. Maybe not so much for fish as my guess is fish are essential ingredients for both those DoH professions.

Advice?

Known issue. Just practice good organization... toss out stuff you don't really need, etc etc (ie don't hold on to leveling whites, minimize the amount of dungeon gear you keep). For ingredients... don't hold on to anything that you might need someday. In fact, don't even keep stuff that you think you might need in a month if it costs less than 20k or so. Only keep what you're currently using in recipes.

Some day we may get better inventory.

Ok, first things first, use the market as an extended inventory. If you can sell something on the MB and buy it back later when you need it, nothing was lost. Likewise, things easily bought from NPC vendors for very little money you also should not bother hanging onto.

Another thing to consider is leveling all your DoH/DoL together (and your remaining DoW/DoM if possible). The game is designed in such a way that they items a level 20 gather or level 20 battle class obtain will be useful to a level 20 crafter to make gear and items for level 20 classes. By keeping your classes at a similar range, you're reducing the range of items that you need AND the range of items you're obtaining to a mutual list. If you do leave some battle classes behind, go get the items to make the gear they use when you need it, don't hang onto copper ore, maple logs, and oranges just so you're ready if you one day level it up again.

TL;DR Keep what you either use on a regular basis or are extremely difficult to come by, sell the rest on the MB (or to NPCs if the MB price is near the NPC price.)

Yes I do have some gear I should deal with, but the vast majority is not gear. Guess I'm too used to how it works in WoW... where I'd gather everything from low level on up to level crafting class using those mats. Of course, there isn't near the variety of stuff over there as well. I DID get some use from some fish I got going 10-15 for some 15 leves wanted THAT in 3 levels of fishing, never once came from the water (had to hit the FC for the summoning bell because I had it on a retainer). At this point, I think the only crafters I think I want are CUL and ACM (assuming those are the right acronyms). It's also haS been not easy to get my head around the value system of the in-game currency (just spent 120k for a rep mount that I'd pay 5k in gold for in WoW). AND that one use items can go for substantial amounts of gil. Seems everyone has multiple, multiple millions...

Anyway, being new I have no way to judge what is or isn't hard to get.

I'd still really like to have an idea of how many retainers folks carry...

I use four retainers..before HW came out I used three (so two free and one bought). My current 4th retainer only holds HW gear.
Sell everything you don't need. If that is through a vendor or through the MB, doesn't matter. If you think you can make money use the MB.
I'm not sure about "leveling all" of one type of class (only one I would recommend is Disciple of Land since there isonly three). When I level my crafters I find that gear is the very least of my space issues... most of the space in my inventory is given up to ingredients and materials. And for DoW or DoM,.. well personally I'm not leveling them all (changes on the person of course, some people NEED to have everything leveled). Though to be fair I'm done with almost all low leveling I want to do.

Gil is useless until you really, really want something from the MB. (Like how I just spent a total of six mil for mats for my Company Tabard... bye, savings).

Also yeah fishing is. You won't make money from fishing until you level CUL to desynth the big big fish.. once ina while you'll find a few "worth it" but, not many. Almost all of my profit has been in mining.

Also you think you have an inventory problem now? Just have a bunch of non-stackable collectible sitting in your inventory (I'm talking about at least a page) because you can't turn them in yet....

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

When I level my crafters I find that gear is the very least of my space issues... most of the space in my inventory is given up to ingredients and materials.

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It's less about the gear and more about the materials. When I'm making armor with armorer, I don't JUST need ore. I need leather, cloth, maybe some reagents from alchemy... by keeping my levels more or less equal, I can make sure I just need a majority of one type of ore, log, etc. For example, at 50 I mostly just need electrum, cobalt, rosewood, raptor skin... and the same goes for lower ranges.

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Originally Posted by RiversideGuy

I DID get some use from some fish I got going 10-15 for some 15 leves wanted THAT in 3 levels of fishing, never once came from the water (had to hit the FC for the summoning bell because I had it on a retainer).

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That's a problem with fishing. While Botanists and Miners can pretty much pick what they want to gather, Fishermen cast their line and hope. I tend to keep all Seafood, even where I keep only High Quality Botanist/Miner items, just because the fish can be harder to gather again when I want them.

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Originally Posted by RiversideGuy

At this point, I think the only crafters I think I want are CUL and ACM (assuming those are the right acronyms).

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(CUL is right, but Alchemist is generally abbreviated ALC.)

Like other items, crafting materials specify an item type in their tooltip description. As a Culinarian, you're mainly going to want Ingredients, plus sometimes Seafood. As an Alchemist, you'll mainly want Reagents and sometimes Ingredients. Keep those three categories, particularly the HQ ones. Leather, Bone, Stone, Metal, Wood, and Cloth are really only going to come into play if you decide to level the other crafts as well.

That said, you may well end up deciding to level all of them. Just as with battle classes, crafting classes can use cross-class skills, but unlike jobs that can only pull in skills from a couple other classes, crafting classes can pull in skills from all seven of the other crafting classes, and some of those cross-class skills become pretty important for being able to produce High Quality results. There are a set of cross-class-able skills (one from each class) at level 15 that include some important ones. Another set at level 37 you can pretty much ignore, because the only important one from that group comes from Culinarian, which you'll be getting anyway since that class is one of your primary focuses. You have to get all the way to level 50 to reach the next important cross-class skills.

The low level materials that you'll need in getting to level 15 can be bought from vendors if you don't have them on hand from your own gathering. (The vendors in the crafting guild halls have a more complete selection available for what their particular class needs than the more general vendors in the city's merchant area.) So even if you sell off all your Leather, Bone, Stone, Metal, Wood, and Cloth, you'll still be able to level the other crafting classes far enough to reach that first set of cross-class skills just by buying the needed materials at the fixed and relatively low prices that vendors charge. I'd aim for that level 15 point for the other 6 classes while taking CUL and ALC the rest of the way up. Once you've finished leveling those two, you can decide whether its worth going back to any or all of the others and taking them far enough to get their high level cross class skills. Don't worry about their materials until then.

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Originally Posted by RiversideGuy

I'd still really like to have an idea of how many retainers folks carry...

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I eventually gave in and and got a third retainer, despite having the extra fee involved. My extra retainer holds excess gear and some miscellaneous items, so that my two initial (free) retainers' inventory can be devoted exclusively to crafting materials. That works so far, though it's tight at times. I'm working on all 8 DoH classes, but haven't finished leveling yet. (Level 50 Weaver, 40 Carpenter and Goldsmith, 38 Culinarian and Blacksmith, 37 Leatherworker, 31 Alchemist, and 30 Armorer.)

If you decide to only take your two primary DoH classes past level 15, so aren't keeping all the categories of materials, then you can probably get by with just the two free retainers. If you decide to take all eight of them all the way up to where they give you those level 50 cross-class skills, then an extra purchased retainer or two would make it a lot easier.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

It's less about the gear and more about the materials. When I'm making armor with armorer, I don't JUST need ore. I need leather, cloth, maybe some reagents from alchemy...

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That's more true for some classes than others, though. Culinarian and Alchemist are probably the most self-sufficient in terms of materials. They'll occasionally use materials from each other, but very rarely need anything from the other six.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

by keeping my levels more or less equal, I can make sure I just need a majority of one type of ore, log, etc. For example, at 50 I mostly just need electrum, cobalt, rosewood, raptor skin... and the same goes for lower ranges.

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In some cases you need both stuff from your current level plus stuff from previous levels as well, though. As a level 50 Weaver, for instance, I'm still using cotton fairly often, which I've been using since around level 10. Alchemist still keeps using level 1 quicksilver all the way into Heavensward recipes in the mid 50's.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

In some cases you need both stuff from your current level plus stuff from previous levels as well, though. As a level 50 Weaver, for instance, I'm still using cotton fairly often, which I've been using since around level 10. Alchemist still keeps using level 1 quicksilver all the way into Heavensward recipes in the mid 50's.

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While this is true, you rarely need them in such large quantities that getting them is a terrible burden. For example, a recent item set upgrade I made for some classes I was leveling through the mythril stage took 2 iron ore... and 81 mythril ore. One of them is a quick warp and a couple whacks, the other takes considerably more time :P

Oh, and for when you get into crafting, a great reference site to check out is Crafting As A Service.

For equipment crafting, you can tell it a class and level, and it will suggest the best gear that can be made for that class wearable at that level. And it's got info on all the crafting leves and their turn-in items.

From either the equipment or leve sections you can add items to your list of stuff you want to craft, or you can go to the Recipe section and select items directly. Once you've put together a crafting list, it will give you a list of all the raw materials you're going to need (with info on where to get each), then any intermediate components you need to craft, and finally those final items, with markers for tracking which you've gotten/completed. It's a really well put together site.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

The low level materials that you'll need in getting to level 15 can be bought from vendors if you don't have them on hand from your own gathering.

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Also, some materials drop so frequently from mobs that you can get them just as cheap or cheaper on the market board. If you're deciding whether something is worth cluttering your retainers' inventories, check the vendors and the market board to see how much it would cost to buy back later, when you actually need it. If the cost would be no big deal to you, get rid of it. For example, is having to spend 1,000 gil (or 5,000, or whatever amount) worth it to free up an inventory spot?

Good stuff in here for noobs, thanks all for contributing!