When you start playing LOTRO, you will immediately begin accumulating a wide variety of items. If you play for very long, you will find your bags and vault full of things that you may or may not need. I have multiple alts that I play, so I want to pass items to the alts that can use them. I’m a hoarder, so I hate to throw away things that I or someone else might eventually use.
I have alts that are used just to store things. Some alts are on separate accounts, which allows them to buy houses. Keeping track of what is where takes time and effort, but pays off when I or a kinmate can use something I happen to have.
This note describes some of the things I do to manage storage in LOTRO. Some of the techniques may seem extreme (until Turbine adds another crafting tier, and you need to find room for a bunch of new resources and craft ingredients). Others may be useful even to beginners.
Inventory bags
Inventory bags are where things go when you first get them, and are the things you carry around with you. You may have different amounts depending on whether or not you are VIP, and on which expansions you have. Additional bag storage can be purchased for Turbine Points (TP) in 5 slot increments.
Since Update 13, it has been possible to put different numbers of slots (multiples of 5) in your bags, and to resize your bags. For example, a bag with 20 slots could be 2×10, 4×5, or 5×4, etc. Once you have your bags sized and positioned, be sure to save your layout with
/ui layout save layoutfile
If you want another character to use the same layout, you load it with
/ui layout load layoutfile
Note that the layout adjusts the position of the bags, but not the number of slots in them. You will need to set the sizes manually first.
Some people prefer to have one large bag. I use three, arranged with bag 1 at the bottom, bag 2 above that, and bag 3 at the top. Bag 3 has the pots, scrolls, etc. that I might need while in combat, so they are always in the same spot. Bag 1 is where new stuff goes, so I always try to empty it when I get to a vault. Bag 2 varies from alt to alt and depending on what I’m doing.
Vault and Housing Storage
Because gold is relatively easy to earn in the game, the first place to increase storage is at the vault or by buying a house. A VIP can get 120 slots in the vault and 60 in the housing chest without spending real money (TP or Mithril Coins (MC)). The currency cap (aka gold cap) limits Free-to-Play (f2p) players to having 2g, and Premium players to 5g, so limits how much storage you can buy with gold. (Premium and f2p players can remove the cap by spending TP).
VIP mail
Since Update 13, if you are a VIP and your bags are full and you’re nowhere near a vault, you now have another option besides throwing things away or rushing to a vault. You can mail items (up to 10 at a time) to another alt (A character cannot mail to itself, but can mail to another character on the same or another account). Unbound items can be mailed to alts on other accounts. Bound-to-account items can be mailed to alts on the same account. I have storage alts that collect different things (for example, one saves resources, another saves Legendary Items), so usually I can send them directly to the right one. Non-VIPs can also mail things to alts, but must get to a mailbox to do it.
Premium Wallet Upgrade
Although it is expensive (995 TP), the Premium Wallet Upgrade can save a lot of space as you level up. LOTRO has a wide variety of tokens and currencies that are bound to the character that gets them, but take up inventory space. They may be stored in your bags, or in your vault, or in shared or housing storage, but those are also expensive. The Premium Wallet Upgrade moves those things to your wallet, so they don’t take up any space. The upgrade applies to all characters on all servers, so it is a one-time purchase, and it is occasionally on sale.
Shared Storage
Even the minimum amount of shared storage is useful for passing items between characters on the same account. Although it is now relatively convenient to mail items to alts, doing so does cost 20% of the vendor value of the items. Passing them in shared storage is free. Shared storage also helps if you have multiple alts accumulating the same items. For example, my 3 level-cap alts keep resource items, task items and IXP runes in shared storage, rather than having separate stacks in their bags or vaults.
AltInventory plugin
Once you have multiple characters on the same account, you’ll need to keep track of who has what. There is a handy plugin called AltInventory that will do that for you. Using AltInventory, you can see what is in the bags and vault of all of the alts on the same account, anytime anywhere, without having to relog to check. For example, if you’re making hope tokens, you can see how many each character has. If you need some ore, you can see who has some stashed in the vault.
http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info414-AltInventory.html
Vault management
You can toss things into your vault any way you like. The search box allows you to find things fairly easily. However, if you want to arrange things in a particular way, here are some tips. (These apply to shared storage and housing storage as well as the character’s vault.)
The vault is divided into different “chests”, separate areas that you can rename. Many items stack. If you add more to the vault, it will add to existing stacks. If the total of the old and new make an additional stack, it will go in the chest with the original stack.
In most of my vaults, I reserve a chest called “Unsorted”. When I put things into the vault, that’s where I drag them. If that item is already in the vault, it will add it to existing stacks. If not, it will stay in the Unsorted chest until I have time to decide which chest it should go in.
My storage alt for craft mats has chests for different tiers. A handy feature for organizing crafting material is the item level. The item level is determined by the craft tier it relates to. For example, apprentice is item level 10, journeyman 15, expert 25, etc. There are some idiosyncrasies (some supreme things are 60, some are 55), but you no longer have to remember what name was chosen for scholar mats of different levels, or which kind of whetstone or brimstone or resin goes with which. Task Items can also be organized that way, although some are used at multiple locations.
Bound Items
It is important to understand the limitations of different kinds of binding. Items may be bound to a particular character or bound-to-account. Items that are bind-on-equip are usually unbound until a character equips them, at which point they become bound to that character.
Things that are bound (sometimes it will say bound to Name, sometimes just bound), can be stored:
- in the character’s inventory (equipped or in a bag)
- in the character’s personal vault
- in shared vault storage
- in housing storage for the account’s house
For the last two, only the character to which it is bound can put it in and take it from storage.
Although the above applies to bound housing decorations that are in storage, housing decorations can also be used to decorate any house, whether owned by the account or not. If the owner of the house gives permission to the player to decorate the house, the decoration can be placed on an empty hook of the appropriate kind.
Items that are bound-to-account can be stored
- in the inventory of any character of the account (equipped or in a bag)
- in the personal vault of any character of the account
- in shared vault storage
- in housing storage for the account’s house
For the last two, any character on the account can put it in storage and the same or a different character on the account can take it from storage. Bound-to-account items can also be mailed from one character to another on the same account. If you don’t have a house or shared storage, mail is the only way to move such an item from one character to another.
Warning: some items that are bound- to-account are also bind-on-equip. This means it can be passed to different characters on the account. Once equipped, it becomes bound to that character. The Stone of the Tortoise is one such item.
Most items that are bind-on-equip are not bound, so they can be passed, mailed, or stored anywhere. You just have to be sure your storage alt does not accidentally equip it.
Storage Alts
One way to gain additional storage is to create a storage alt, a character that you use only to store items. If you have a spare character slot on your account, you can simply start a new character and run it through the intro. Once out of the intro, head to the nearest vault. That’s where the storage alt stays, so there is no need to level it up.
The storage alt starts with the same amount of bag storage as your other characters plus the minimum vault storage. It also has access to any shared storage you have purchased. You can mail it some gold so it can increase vault storage. You can transfer items, including bound-to-account items, to or from the storage alt through shared storage, housing storage or mail.
If you don’t have a spare character slot, you can create another account and create a storage alt on that account. The separate account can be a free-to-play (f2p) account, so it won’t cost you anything but the time to set it up. That is a more involved process, so I will address that is a separate post.
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