3rd Retainer by Default, please?

[Taekrys]

Making it so that NQ and HQ version of the same item occupies the same inventory slot would just solve a lot of problems by itself.
Also, they could make unbounded gear pieces stackable.

[Nyalia]

Making it so that NQ and HQ version of the same item occupies the same inventory slot would just solve a lot of problems by itself.
Also, they could make unbounded gear pieces stackable.

The first idea would be wonderful, though a bit awkward. Quantity counters when splitting, selling, entrusting to retainers, trading, etc would have to be changed to have two parts to them, the NQ and HQ quantities. Totally doable though, and it would be pretty nice! Would one stack hold 99 NQ and 99 HQ, or 99 total NQ+HQ?

The second idea, while I really would love for something like that to exist, has the problem where gear pieces can have differing information despite not being bonded, the big one being Materia. Melding materia doesn't make an item bound to you, nor does dying it. The maker's mark would also be destroyed by stacking, which kinda removes the entire point of them (that already happens with potions and food, but you can't examine someone else's potions or food, so it doesn't matter as much). That's a small thing though - maker's marks don't really matter for anything (though it made me happy to examine random miners at unspoiled nodes and count the number wearing my gear back when I was the primary supplier of miner gear on my server). Unbonded items can't be glamoured or have any Spiritbond %, and while there is not currently a way for an unbonded item to be damaged, I doubt condition is tied to bonding. If, down the road, something was added that could damage random items in your inventory, stacking equipment really breaks down.

Still, ignoring the potential future condition issues and the maker's marks, losing dye and meld information would be a problem. Maybe if only undyed items with no materia in them could be stacked? Then, they'd have to make it so you can't dye a stack of gear or meld to gear that's in a stack. You'd first have to separate one item from the stack.


In any case, I'd imagine both changes would require quite a bit of development coding to support them (especially the later one). These are neither bug fixes or cosmetic changes - they require UI changes as well as edits to the code that handles trading, dying, buying, selling, inventories, etc. I'd rather see that coding time spent toward implementing an Equipment Guide we can glamour from :P