Banker/Mule Organization

[ValariusK]

I have two mules, one for Sharn stuff and the other for Ravenloft stuff. Besides that I have a main and an alt, and my mules get pressed into service to provide support for my wife and kids' characters. My wife and kids also have one mule.
I really wish I didn't have to do the mule thing at all. BTA is honestly just a workaround, we should have enough space for at least the 2 sigma gamer (as in 95% of the people should have no space problems at all, it's probably not feasible to design solutions that accommodate much more than +2 sigmas). TR caches are similarly an ugly workaround.
If SSG can't solve the BTC space problem (housing would be an elegant solution to the problem IMO), then they should make nearly everything BTA and improve the process of shifting gear around between the various characters on your account. I suggest an offline utility---you log into it instead of one of your characters and it gives you a view of everything and the ability to move things without entering the world. Make only CURRENT raid gear and perhaps a half dozen items that are Best in slot still BTC. For instance
SoS, Jibbers and anything that you've seen more than a few 'wishes of inheritance' spent on can be BtC. Everything else, make BTA. You should probably make all the minor artifacts BTA too, they're the most recent significant example of BTC bloat.

[Annex]

Many years ago I decided to create equipment sets at specific levels. Since I enjoyed Epic levels I made the best possible equipment sets I could for Level 15 (Iconic go rounds) and Level 20 (Epic go rounds). If a named piece of equipment did not work with or improve an existing set I immediately destroyed it.

Maybe 9 months ago I decided I was doing it wrong and started collecting all named equipment. After creating some new storage characters, I organized equipment by level, then quest pack, and recorded everything in a text file.

About two months into that project I was spending more time organizing storage than actually playing. It was one of many factors causing me to once again grow frustrated with DDO and quit for 7 months.

Upon my return a few days ago, I decided to go back to level based equipment sets since most of the stuff I was collecting is complete junk. I will never use it. About 7 months ago, I built an equipment set for level 4 (which worked quite well) and started building another set for level 8. While I am still burned out on DDO, I am currently trying to finish the Level 8 set. If I have the energy, I will next work on a Level 10 set, and then a new Level 15 set. If I am still here, a new Level 6 set will come after that, then a new Level 25ish set, and finally a new Level 30 set. Two storage characters with all five Vault tabs unlocked can store everything without a single item in backpack space, meaning I can still adventure with them. (Miscellaneous junk, L1, L4, L6, L8, L10, L15, L20, L25ish, L30) Any useful items beyond that can sit in the Vault of my Avatar and Mage.

Please note, I am a two class player. If you enjoy constantly trying new character "builds", collect and store everything. In time, your equipment selection will become so deep you can jump right into a new character idea without stopping to farm stuff. If you instead wish to acquire Past Life Feats as fast as possible using a minimum of character configurations, the level based equipment set approach may work better for you. Find a super powerful character configuration, build equipment sets around it, and run that repeatedly as fast as you can. Historically, I made melee sets with alternate pieces for ranged and arcane. Now, I am building ranged sets with alternate pieces for arcane and melee.

Anyway, I am not sure I have the right answer but that is my plan.

[Tilomere]

Let me know what works for you. Thanks!.

I pull gear for 15 levels or so on current build in shared bank. Mules are mostly named what they hold. A few have extra storage and bank slots.

1) Cosmetics Mule
2) Potions Mule
3) Consumables/Non-Equipment/Tome/Misc Item Mule
4) Trapping Gear/Runearms/Crossbow Mule
5) Level 1-3 Gear Mule
6) Level 4-6 Gear Mule
7) Level 7-9 Gear Mule
8) Level 10 Gear Mule
9) Level 11-14 Gear Mule
10) Level 15 Gear Mule Non Sharn
11) Level 15 Sharn Gear Mule
12) Level 16-19 Gear Mule
13) Level 20-21 Gear Mule A (Weapons and a few equipment slots)
14) Level 20-21 Gear Mule B (Other equipment slots) and Legendary Trinket Mule
15) Level 22-26 Gear Mule
16) Level 26-29 Weapon Mule
17) Epic Sharn Non-Weapon Mule and Gatekeepers non-trinket mule
18) Level 27-29 Mule
19) Epic Feywild Mule including Feywild Weapons
20 Alt used to store crafting blanks

[KoobTheProud]

I store very little gear compared to what I used to do since I never used most of it. I keep some named items and the rest I either Cannith Craft or use the Cannith Challenge gear. As for organising it all, I use 1 mule for challenge items, 1 for general stuff and 1 for twink items (items that I have crafted previously and all my items with augment slots on).

Stoner81.

This has been my experience as well. Lots of loot looks good in a general sense and yet there is always or will be soon named loot released that invalidates the gear piece in question.

The problem for leveling gear is set bonuses. I used to keep specialized sets for various purposes until I realized I was always going to be wearing an Adherent of the Mists set and another 3 piece set from 10 to 14 or so, followed by switching out to Sharn gear.

Power creep is so totally out of hand at this point that even the new extra affix gear, which is power creepy as hell, has no place in an established players inventory.

In some ways it is a shame because if Turbine/SSG had managed to keep power creep under control they'd still have the best game out there.

[Itchybeard]

Hello, I was just wondering what people have found to work well when it comes to storing gear on bankers/mules.

I prefer to keep it all on one account due to BTA gear.

Do you have separate mules for various ML of gear? (<-- Seems like the best idea to me, pending your replies).
Do you keep melee gear on one and caster gear on another? Then how do you handle gear that works for both?
Do you sort it some other way?

I am still going through lives and builds and thus have an accumulation of gear making it harder and harder to clear cache each time. .

TL;DR everyone else's replies, but here's my method.

Firstly, I would suggest naming your ALTs according to the max level of gear they will hold. I.E. "FedoraFive", "FedoraTen", or even "FedoraEpic" etc. Secondly, I would make a "NextLife" ALT where you store all the gear you are collecting/farming for said Life. If you plan to do an Artificer next (for example), put all your Rune Arms on the NextLife ALT. Lastly, I would make a Potions/Cosmetics ALT to store things you collect over time especially if you plan to put it on the Shard Exchange. Accumulating 100 Invis Pots can be nice to put on the SE.

If you choose to go a different direction, no biggie. I think it is less about how you organize the gear and more about naming conventions so you can actually find what you need easily. There is nothing worse than wasting a half hour logging/relogging a dozen characters because they all have unique names.

[ned_ellis]

Am currently going through an item purge myself; as has been said, as my alts bite the dust one by one () I assign them to a level range of equipment - currently :
lvl 1 - 10
lvl 11 - 19
lvl 20 - 27
lvl 28 - 30
plus one mule for general account stuff (xp potions, tomes, mirrors, etc. and xp stones that each time they fill up get upgraded by minimum value - currently 500xp).
I will see when I've finished the cull of items if I need any of these ranges to have a secondary mule assigned but am trying to be very strict : basically the stuff I would love to keep 'for that build I might try one day' has to go. Any doubles of items have to go. Any nice items that aren't practical go (this one hurts ).
All crafting stuff goes into shared mats bank; any that don't stack will go when I get near to capacity.
All usable questing stuff goes into shared bank (newly found loot, certain pots, etc.) otherwise it's just a purgatory until it gets assigned to an appropriate mule or used by a toon.
The way the game has developed has left me with only a few toon archetypes (Wis or Int DC casting and an archer) which makes it easier to streamline compared to others (thinking of poor melees and their different weapon choices!).
Would have loved player housing to sort all this c**p out...! GL OP!

[kanordog]

Wow, I thought I was bad for hoarding

1. Mule for 1-10
2. Mule for 11-20
3. Mule for 21-30
4. Mule for consumables including xp/loot pots, tomes and cosmetics.
On a separate account:
5. Mule for mostly outdated BtCoE stuff
6. Mule for filligrees
7. Mule for Augments

Getting rid of things as I get new ones.

[TedSandyman]

Do it by level. Nothing else really makes sense to me.

You don't want to have to bring up six different mules to try to outfit someone at level 10.

You want to go to your level 10 mule and see everything there is to see.

[lifestaker]

With server transfer from Hardcore to Live server I was able to set up the bank characters very easy. I used Zbank names so they are at the bottom of my character list.

Zbank to Zbank-9 all have surname defining what they are. EX: Zbank-4 Cosmetics is just cosmetics I have, Zbank-3 Fey is all fey loot.
Zbankepic to Zbankepic-4 are Epic items that are not cataloged yet, overflow on sharn items, or whatever is needed.
Zbankheroic to zbankheroic -2 are heroic items
Zbankrolls to Zbankroll-2 are daily roll items and XP stones
ZbankSP to ZbankSP-1 are spell point potions, spell dust, dragon blood, and other spell related items for caster lives.
ZbankXP to ZbankXP-1 are Sentiant XP, Xp potions, Large daily XP gems, etc
ZbankOverflow, ZbankOverflow-1, ZbankUnsort, and Zbankunsort-1 are for items I need to dump out of Shared bank but don't feel like cataloging yet. These take about a month to fill.

Additionally to these I use Charactername-1 for TR planning. If I plan on doing a set build I will lay out the gear on a page of the bank character's inventory so that I have all the gear for the life planned out if it is not BTC. I only play 2 characters so it makes it easy to keep their leveling gear and everything in one place off the character.

Now mind you I have 45 character slots, 37 banks, 2 playable characters, 2 loot bots (characters who's names I use to use that are good only for loot pulls), and a few open slots if ever needed.

All banks have unlocked Coin Lords favor 1, some coin lords 2. I do not use their personal bank space as it can not be displayed in list.
Most are under half capacity, but just because I would rather have open space in their inventories as it seems to load the character faster.
All at placed in banks, commonly near a vendor and or mailbox. Typically I use Hall of heroes, or lower necro. Some are in House C still as they were iconic BF that just dropped down and became a bank.

[Bunker]

When you run enough Lives, especially with a Main of 2, you end up wearing the same gear depending on class makup.

So I don't separate my Mule gear based on level, but instead based on 5-6 builds. Each Mule will have a full set of gear that I would wear for that style character from level 1-30.

Melee Mule
Caster Mule
Ranged Mule
Divine Mule

Ranged weapons Mule
Melee Weapons Mule
Shields Mule
Caster weapons/orbs Mule

others.....
Potion Mule
DDOStore Items Mule
Cosmetic Mule
Crafting Mule

Honestly, outside main hand / off hand switching, if i run 5-10 melee lives, all my gear will be close to the same, so I keep all unbound and bta gear for that style character together.

Important tip: Keep your shared bank EMPTY so if you want to swap out a ranged life for a caster or melee, you can easily swap out your entire gear setup quickly.

Most of my gear setups for a character are in 5 sets:
Levels 1-5
Level 8-10
Level 13-17
Level 21
Level 28-30
Some gear that is level 5 I might wear till level 15, and some level 15 gear I might wear till lvl 28. That changes and gets updated all the time. But you get the idea

[KoobTheProud]

The simplest approach is to do what I do and play gear Tetris every life until your head explodes.

The more rational approach is to have a wardrobe toon for levels 2-9 or so, then another for 10-14, 15-18, 20-23, 24-27 and finally 28+. The big range from 2-9 is because the levels go by so fast, particularly in a TR-train group, that you might only visit the bank 3 or 4 times total in that span. 10 is when the Ravenloft set bonuses arrive and dominate until Sharn gear at 15. 18 is where most toons stop taking levels until 20. 24 gives you Thunderholme gear upgraded. 28+ is where the best pieces for endgame live.

[Zavina]

One of the things that takes up a lot of space is my crafting armory.

Other mules consist of:

BTA Potions;
Non BTA Consumables (bigby's through to mnemonic pots);
Cosmetic mule (i keep saying i'm doomed if they bring out a boot cosmetic);
x2 weapon mules;
Trinkets;
Tomes;
Rings;
Feywild Mule;
Other set item mule (sharn through to ravenloft);
Wearable mules. They are done to support 2 types (eg: boots+helms) at the same time;
Stuff i want to keep but don't want to trip over regularly mule (this is the trinkets from Risia, Hearts of Wood, the odd twig, slavers blanks, that sort of thing);
Sales mules;

Personal Character Mules (the main has 2, the other 2 characters have 1 each).

The Cannith mules range from specific mule for a specific type, eg: flametouched weapon is separate to flametouched armor.

The sales mule also has two airships in support;
The crafting mules have around 12 airships in support at the moment. The eventual plan is to create more airships (i already have the GS deed + orien express in storage), so that it'll be airship: flametouched weapon, airship: flametouched armor, airship: mithral armor. At that point, I might slow down on my hoarding of cannith blanks. Oh, I also have 4 additional mules for processing cannith blanks (ie: items yet to be disjuncted, and cataloged). They are filed on these mules until being in the mood to process them. At the moment, there is around 240 pieces to be filed.

I'm also debating about creating a cosmetic airship too. This will consist of randomgen items that i like the look of, and might glamor in future, as well as other items that people might want to glamor (under collateral).

Yes, i do know where everything is. It's all cataloged bar the 4 processing mules. Those are akin to "throwing them in a closet to deal with later".

(My TR partner wrote a tongue in cheek post about my hoarding, and that was before the storage airships lol)..

[AlcoArgo]

I have 4 mules, lvl 1-9, lvl 10-19, lvl 20-27 and lvl 28-30

Within each mule I have inventory tabs organized by type (gloves, necklaces, armor, etc) and I keep weapons in the bank by type (2 handed, one handed, ranged, etc)

This works fairly well but with all the new content and gear I am running out of space on my legendary mule. Feywild has nearly doubled my content, it seems.

[Strambotica]

Wish could help but I'm actually here to see how others do the Mule Organization, atm have 13 Mules and is total chaos.
Atm:
Mule 1. Heroic 1-14
Mule 2. Heroic 15-19
Mule 3. Epic 20-27
Mule 4. Epic 28-29 (Everything that is not from expansions)
Mule 5. Consumables
Mule 6. Cosmetics
Mule 7. Ranged Weapons + Rune Arms
Mule 8. Weapons (Now need another one :P)
Mule 9. Experience Points Gems.
Mule 10. Armors (Many really old things that MAYBE will use)
And then the Chaos Start
Mule 11. Ravenloft
Mule 12. Sharn
Mule 13. Feywild

After see this thread... thinking in reorganize everything ^^ and will need like 7 more Mules.

Edit: and my hell is the shared bank... always full

[bracelet]

These are all good ideas, but it points out how utterly out of control the storage situation has become. Something like the shared bank for all this gear is desperately needed. Searching a dozen alts for something you know you have is incredibly painful. I would pay for a long term storage system that could hold 2000 items separate from my shared bank. If I could sort it like the shared bank, it would save so much time that even a very high price would be totally worth it. And I could delete all my “zz” alts as a bonus.

[Sylvado]

I have ML mules, although not one for each level.

I have mules for items with augment slots to use as crafting blanks.

One for rare scrolls

One for potions and other non wearable items

and I wish DDO would provide a tool to export inventory for external management or APIs to create our own.

[Sylvado]

One of the things that takes up a lot of space is my crafting armory.

Other mules consist of:

BTA Potions;
Non BTA Consumables (bigby's through to mnemonic pots);
Cosmetic mule (i keep saying i'm doomed if they bring out a boot cosmetic);
x2 weapon mules;
Trinkets;
Tomes;
Rings;
Feywild Mule;
Other set item mule (sharn through to ravenloft);
Wearable mules. They are done to support 2 types (eg: boots+helms) at the same time;
Stuff i want to keep but don't want to trip over regularly mule (this is the trinkets from Risia, Hearts of Wood, the odd twig, slavers blanks, that sort of thing);
Sales mules;

Personal Character Mules (the main has 2, the other 2 characters have 1 each).

The Cannith mules range from specific mule for a specific type, eg: flametouched weapon is separate to flametouched armor.

The sales mule also has two airships in support;
The crafting mules have around 12 airships in support at the moment. The eventual plan is to create more airships (i already have the GS deed + orien express in storage), so that it'll be airship: flametouched weapon, airship: flametouched armor, airship: mithral armor. At that point, I might slow down on my hoarding of cannith blanks. Oh, I also have 4 additional mules for processing cannith blanks (ie: items yet to be disjuncted, and cataloged). They are filed on these mules until being in the mood to process them. At the moment, there is around 240 pieces to be filed.

I'm also debating about creating a cosmetic airship too. This will consist of randomgen items that i like the look of, and might glamor in future, as well as other items that people might want to glamor (under collateral).

Yes, i do know where everything is. It's all cataloged bar the 4 processing mules. Those are akin to "throwing them in a closet to deal with later".

(My TR partner wrote a tongue in cheek post about my hoarding, and that was before the storage airships lol)..

I don't understand how you can use multiple airships for storage. You would need to get the guild to 19 just to hold 80 items.

[Zavina]

I don't understand how you can use multiple airships for storage. You would need to get the guild to 19 just to hold 80 items.

Correct. So this is the way it works.

Have an alternative account. On the one I have, it was done under DDOFreeQuest. Run the alt account though quests with saga. That's all it does is cash in guild renown. I have the support alts parked at level 7 (min) for Sentinels saga. I haven't progressed them to do GH saga, on the principle reason, I dislike mazes in general, and pay VIP for a reason (like, skipping quests like Crucible. Awesome xp, just the maze gives me a migraine). My TR partner, also helps and puts in a mule from her own account and runs saga through it too.

Then you put in 1 mule from your main account, and put that in the position of guild leader. When you need more guild renown, run the support character back through saga. So at this point you can then shuffle items through shared bank for filing. Tip: In the guild announcements, put in what the airship is for - good in case you forget. I usually have it listed as: Storage Byeshk + Cold Iron.

Most of the airships are around GL23. You install Oriens Express (GL10, bank/mailbox/AH), and Guild Storage I (GL19). At the moment, I have say silver + flametouched weapons sharing 1 airship. Eventually this will be split further as I said, so there will be airship: silver weapons, airship: flametouched weapons. At the most I'll upgrade it to the next level airship (100k plat), but it's a slow upgrade across the board on what needs doing first (it's something to occupy me in my DDOLife).

Then I can level them more, as and when required. Then if I want to do a group saga of leveling 2 airships at same time, I can take two of my support accounts into quests on a triple box, run them to quests (if necessary, i send the alts to go die and carry their stone); clear activity every 4-5 min, and get them through saga. Or I put another support alt into the airship that needs leveling, and run that through as well.. do double influx of GR.

Livmo does a similar thing but those are just general storage.

Some of my guildies have come from other smaller guilds which were their own, but couldn't afford these amenities. In one case, I installed Oriens Express and GS1 on their old ship so they could have their own vault just private to them; and they could pool items like this. Practice is the same... bank mules in their respective old guild to shuffle items to store. I also tell them to make their bank mules anonymous too, so at least its a level of privacy while mule hopping.

[Sylvado]

Correct. So this is the way it works.

Have an alternative account. On the one I have, it was done under DDOFreeQuest. Run the alt account though quests with saga. That's all it does is cash in guild renown. I have the support alts parked at level 7 (min) for Sentinels saga. I haven't progressed them to do GH saga, on the principle reason, I dislike mazes in general, and pay VIP for a reason (like, skipping quests like Crucible. Awesome xp, just the maze gives me a migraine). My TR partner, also helps and puts in a mule from her own account and runs saga through it too.

I understand that, I have a second guild that was from a friend that hasn't played in a long time so I keep the guild running in case they come back. However as a mule it only adds 80 inventory spots at that level, the same as a single character slot, less if you run the mules enough for the first level coin lords reward. So another character slot is easier unless you have used every slot on all 3 accounts.

[Zavina]

I understand that, I have a second guild that was from a friend that hasn't played in a long time so I keep the guild running in case they come back. However as a mule it only adds 80 inventory spots at that level, the same as a single character slot, less if you run the mules enough for the first level coin lords reward. So another character slot is easier unless you have used every slot on all 3 accounts.

I pay enough on one account, without upgrading the other 2 accounts. The alt accounts farm up their ddo points which is turned into character slots (usually when on offer). I keep the accounts at level 7, as I said; otherwise I'm having to be <at that level> to level them, so they get XP. It's more time effective this way, that I've found.

Bear in mind, this is a long time project and at the moment it's working fine. All the slots on the main account are filled.

The original post was asking about strategies, I outlaid mine. I'm not asking for suggestions or critique on the methods. It works, and it's more cost effective using ingame methods rather than investing in more ddo points for more cash.