I mentioned last night to Miss Bredhe that I would be posting something about shared crafting storage on another kins' site, and would it help if I posted the same on the Courserrim? I offered to share some tips, screenies and such, and she said yes, so here's t' a long read! Ya have some tea, right? And some cookies? If not, go get some before ya start reading. Ya'll thank me laters.
I am not an expert on this. I am someone who has been doing this with two groups with differing focus on their storage for a few years now, so I have a bit of experience in such matters. There are some things we've tried; some things folks still try to do because it works better for them, darnit, even if everyone else wants to throttle them for doing it; and I'm sure many things we haven't thought to try.
One thing I want to stress is that undertaking such a thing is daunting not only in the set up, but in the maintenance over the long haul. Not only do you have to keep up maintenance so folks can continue to access it easily, but inventory management is a beast unto itself. Do not let the downfall moments crush your spirits. Do not call out or /throttle someone who either hasn't learned the system yet, or doesn't understand why the system you put in place is important for everyone--no matter how many times they do it. Curl into a ball and eat (insert comfort food of choice) until ya feel better instead. Sharing is a grand thing, so be proud of the good moments more.
Below you will find: a few points to consider, an explanation about markers* and why they're useful; some vault screenies; info about screenies; and a copy of the "storage rules" for one kin. Feel free to use or lose whatever works for ya.
I will point to the rules in regards to "using these stores to level". The kin's rules I quoted does not allow for such because it's not the point of the storage. The kin is more than happy, however, to help farm needed materials in such circumstances. However, if someone notices we have three stacks of Magnificent Hides, and hardly any tanned, and would like to process level an alt a bit while giving us more of what we need, that's grand. But it's really darn annoying to go to tailor a full set of armour, and find 1 Brushed Magnificent, 1 Glazed and 245 Finished because someone bang leveled their Forrestry without considering the Tailor's needs. Same goes for wood/ore/scholar mats. My rule of thumb there is: 100 Brushed, 30 Glazed, 10 Finished. If you're low on the 2nd/3rd to craft at that moment, it's easy to convert up, but you cannot go backwards. If you have a lot of Guilded Crafters, and the storage will be for regular, guild and pattern crafting use, the ratio would be closer to 90/60/30, depending on the craft. With any Mithril infused whatever, 6 max. Again, can't uninfuse the mithril.
I have not been able to find the max storage available for a standard (I've heard it's 120--not confirmed), but a deluxe is 120, and a kin is 180 as of this writing. You can buy up to 60 slots with in game gold. (I think it's 9G and 27G for the 3rd 15 and 4th 15 slots.) Unless you are a millionaire in RL, do not spend MC until you have exhausted the in game gold options. If a Homeowner sets Maintenance (in house permissions) by checking the Maintenance box after clicking the Everyone listing, others can buy extra slots with MC. MC goes on sale, maybe every 6 weeks or so. We try to wait until then, but you can do what works for you. The 250 MC pack is the best deal per TP (2000 TP) when it's not on sale, and really at 100 MC per additional 15 slots, it's not worth buying the lesser packs.
None of the shared storage groups focus on keeping supplies at full stacks at all times. Sometimes there will be announcements like "Anyone have extra Sturdies around? We're low." or "Fryday, cooks t' the kitchen! We need cooked ingredients.", and whomever can help, helps. I've not yet heard a complaint ever about "Man, I just put two stack of medium in there yesterday, and now there's only 25 total left." YMMV. Regarding restocking. One group has a handful of folk who will restock anything below half a stack (for commons like carrots, Brushed hides, ores, etc.) at least once a month because the group likes to keep the storage used, and anyone else who has spares is free to put them in the vaults. The other group is really "I had extra, here it is." or "Hey, Friday let's go deed wargs and get pristine hides for crafting storage because we're gettin' kinda low."
* A marker means "a placeholder". We ask for all storage, that folks never take the last single of anything (not meaning when there's one full stack and then a single lonesome item stack where the single would 101th of it) so it's easier to tell at a glance if something is running low. Accidents happen, so markers can and do vanish. Yet, without the markers, it's a nightmare for anyone to do a quick inventory check, whether they can check all tiers available for that craft or not. Whenever we started a new storage, markers were always the first in before we worried about filling up the stores with what we could. As you can see in the screenies, there are some markers missing in some of them. (This is a thing for me, missing markers. Inventories take time as it is, and missing markers make me want to curl up in a blanket and eat anise biscotti until I burst.) We tried to use some of the plugins available to make an inventory checker, but none of them work well easily (as of this writing). What we're planning on doing is taking screenies per house showing at least 1 marker for each item that should be in there so folks can use it as a quick reference with the icon only view so more will fit in a screenie. Some folks are in favor of having a text list they can dump into lotropad or lyrical, which I am encouraging them to make if it works for them (no tabbing out needed, but less visual cues). We tried doing the "apprentice should have x slots filled" and so on, but if folks put extras in--it doesn't work.
Even though some of the following has been around awhile, you'll notice none of these examples are perfect. Sometimes a tab still isn't labeled. Sometimes it wasn't relabeled after a recipe exchange. Sometimes five markers are missing, and it took you 45 minutes to realize how many. Sometimes you wonder who thought you needed 500 hearty stocks on hand. And then there's the days when you are at the woodworkers house, wondering why someone left sphere molds there. It's a constant process. (Comfort food. Lots of...while you move the molds to the metalsmithing house, only to realize there's no room, so maybe that's why they put them in the woodworking house?)
Notes on the screenies follows them:
- tailoring: you'll see that along with crit mats, single use recipes and journals, there are some NPC bought "extras" of cloth and such. If yer pressed for space, there won't be room for such, but it's nice if ya can spare it. Because our Dwarf folk's storage is far from Bree, I also have 2-3 benches that you can buy at the Bree Homestead used for the cushioned bench recipe on hand in the "materials" tab you'll see below Westemnet tab. "Scrolls" are the Scholar crafted min level use + crit chance scrolls, as a crafter can be crafting Westfold, but is still only level 20 because they use the Tortoise Stone, so we've found it easier to put those in their own tab. For anyone looking under apprentice, and asking "Leather pads? I've never seen those before.", if we have crafted redundant mats (also items like crafted hunter traps) that are no longer needed, they can be unmade into hides (or ingots), and folks looking to level love that stuff if they can get it. There are some redundant things that we have orphans of because the recipe requires two to unmake them, and someone eventually will find some long forgotten crafter that has an orphan as well. See the single Expert Tailor's Journal? That's a marker*. This house is about what to expect for all non gatherer/cook craft specific houses.
- forestry/wood: for lack of MC, we split wood and leather into two houses. With wood, you can see a tab for waxes, and you'll also note we have specials like the spider silk there as well. (Notice that Gnarled Ilex Wood in Master? That's a redundant orphan.)
-cross craft house: this has crit shards, LI stuff and essences, as well as the cross class crit items for Tiers 7-9. We keep riding the fence about if T7-9 should be at the actual houses, and some folks forget and put them per craft anyhoo, but personally, I've found it's best to keep it stockpiled at the cross craft house unless you have oodles of them, then you don't have to worry about only having a marker* left at the craft specific houses.
- farming: this screenie is a vault in Dampdale that needs some tidy up time, but you can see we have the waters, soils and seeds as well as the NPC bought or dropped/crafted crit fertilizers stored there for food crops (grain/vegetables), as well as fair crops so a farmer can generate crops quickly in a pinch. In Thorin's Gate, there is the Greenhouse, and I believe there is an Expert Farmhand there, but in the Shire, the South Fields only have a novice, so you do not have access to any T4-9 things at the vendor, so without the stash at the farming house, you'd have to haul all the way up to the North Fields to get mats to farm those tiers. Now, in Dampdale, we have a separate house for tobacco, tea/coffee, alcohol mash crops, as well as flower farming, so that is why you do not see those things there (tea, coffee sneaks in sometimes, and some mashes are used in recipes other than for alcohol). In Holda, most folks don't care about leaf, so instead, they have another scholar house for dye/paint related farmer seeds/soils/water/fertilizers (blackberries, irises, et al). But we also have a brewery there, so mash crop stuff is there except where there's crossover for cooked food, then there's a spot for crossovers at the cooked ingredient house as well as the brewery. There aren't many farming recipes that either aren't BOA, or available at the Farmhands, so sometimes folks will drop off extras when they have them.
- cooking ingredients: this vault is a mess right now, like the farming. You'll see a few places where we have too many extras, and some things with no markers. Note we have only bought 135 of 180 there so far at this share, but I guarantee if you go 180, you will find it mysteriously maxed even when you just culled the five extra stacks of taters out just last night to make room for the missing mint--whether from LIXP boosting related rare tea leaf farmers ninja dumping 1600 regular tea leaves in there (Why, yes this has happened more than once, why do you ask?), or from unculled but well intentioned donations of 301 eggs or 654 springs of parsley. You cannot fit it all (even if you leave out the rhubarb since it's NPC only) in a maxed out non kin house. This must either be in a kin house, or split amongst regular houses. If you have the room to spare, extra stacks are no biggie to a point, but when you do not, they are a nightmare. We keep the cooking fish, rare tea leaves, coffee, alcohol only, and a whole lotta extra NPC ingredients at another house. One headache we have run into with cooking ingredients, is someone keeps persisting in taking the crops out of the Crops tab, changing Crops tab to NPC extras label and putting them into whichever tier they are per farmer. This is a terrible idea because: 1) Not all cooks are farmers, thus they can't check their farming crafting tab, and 2) Many crops are used for numerous cooking tiers. (And when I find out who's doing this, I will wring their...nope, nope. I'll go eat some more biscotti.)
One I did not screenie was scholar. The two groups store scholar things differently. One group has (4): basic mat house; flowers, clay pots, flower farming/dye/paint ingredients & dye/paint recipes house; crafted dye storage house; fireworks & mysterious powder storage & fw recipes house. The other has (3): basic mat house; dye w/ dye & paint ingredients house; flower farming stuff house--with no fireworks house at all.
One set of Rules:
There aren't many rules involved with using the Quarterfolk smials, as I like t' keep things simple:
1) Always leave one marker of any given item so it's easier t' restock/know where things go.
2) If something is getting low, please send Daffy a post so she can arrange a restock. If ya have extras ya want to donate, please feel free t' do jes that.
3) The materials there are t' be used t' craft for Bounders first, friends and allies if we can.
4) The materials are not t' be used t' level crafting unless said leveling helps restock what's needed. Processors, please be mindful of what your target crafter needs. They do not need 1 brushed, 1 glazed, 346 finished hides. Think more along the lines of 100/30/10 ratio with brushed/glazed/finished. With Mithril Infused items, please keep it below half a dozen. We can always make more, but unmakin' em is impossible.
Explaining the following wouldn't fit on the map well, so instead I'll explain away here:
- The recipe scroll icons denotes two smials where recipes can be found. One is the Mootercycle space where I've been rotating recipes out each week for folks to check out and use, and the other is the Four Fourthlings Fairgrounds. (More on the Fairgrounds at the meeting.)
-The vault icon is for in case ya made a bit too much a' something or made the wrong thing by mistake and there's no room for it in Addernotch (fire oil comes t' mind...)
- The Mithril Flake icon is for cross-profession rare crafting materials like shards, legendary crests and such.
- Ya might have noticed that one smial has cook & farmer icons, but they're a bit see through. That's set aside for brewing iffin' folks want that, but as of this writing, no materials are stored there for such unless folks say so at the meeting. Iffin' folks don't want that, eventually we'll repurpose it for something else.
I will note that these rules were accompanied in the post with both a map showing which crafts were where, as well as a table that explained what one could hope to find at each house. The table had Profession, Secondary (profession), vault contents, Owner name, and address. Houses that pertained to all crafts were simply marked All. They were highlight color coded to match the color coding on the map key per craft. (If you look at the map, you'll see the color coding. Ex:
Cook |
Farmer |
fish, cooked fish, extra cook materials |
Finns |
4 Wending Way |
You'll also see that we used to store ingots at the smith houses, which we stopped due to space issues. We may have to do the same with woods and leathers if single use recipes keep rolling in. If you're wondering, yes, that's the same neighborhood we do the recipe swap. If you go there now, it's still not back to normal, so if you can look in a vault (aside from the Mootcycle), it's not set back for normal crafting storage.)
If ya made it this far, CONGA RATS!
<3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~ <3~
And I'm sure I forgot something.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Feel free t' reply.