Inventory

Annotated inventory menu, April 2009.

A character's Inventory is the menu page that shows the Paper Doll with currently-equipped Items, and the inventory where spare items are stored. The inventory system has changed a great deal from how it functioned in Diablo II, and it will continue to evolve as the game development process continues.

One thing is clear... Diablo III will offer much more storage space on each character, as well as a larger, shared Stash.

Inventory Evolution

Inventory from August 2009.

The inventory continues to change during development, and each time Diablo 3 is playable we see a lot of changes to the system. The most recent look was at Blizzcon 2009, in August, and there were many new features since the last information Blizzard released, in April 2009.

The screenshot to the right shows the most recent version, and it's very different than previous designs. Gone is the multiple tab system from April 2009, where one inventory held large items on single slot spaces, and another held small items. As of August 2009, there is just one large inventory grid, the size of which is largely determined by how big a pack players possess. (The pack goes in the lower left side slot on the paperdoll.)

The largest possible grid was what players enjoyed at Blizzcon, an 8x5 rectangle. 27 of these spaces were from the Adventurer's Pack equipped in the paperdoll, and it's assumed that this is a far larger pack than a level 12 character would normally expect to possess.

Items in this build came in 2 sizes. Large items were all types of armor and weapons, and they required 1x2 spaces. (Wands and helms as well as polearms and plate mail.) Small items were everything else; jewels, potions, scrolls, runes, etc. These all required a 1x1 space, and like items stacked up. These large and small items had to be fitted into the same grid, Tetris style.

There was a second inventory tab that held Quest items, which were essentially BoP (Bind on Pickup) since you couldn’t drop them; they were automatically added to or removed from the quest item inventory when your character completed quest events. This inventory seemed to be a default size, and not affected by the pack a character equipped.

How Fast to Fill?

It’s hard to say how adequate the inventory space was at Blizzcon, since there was no town to return to, no stash in which to save stuff, and no NPC merchants to buy/sell items with. Most players picked up almost everything they found (since new players were curious about the items and didn’t know what was good), which resulted in a full inventory fairly soon. More experienced players were a little more selective in their item gathering, but even only picking up rares resulted in an inventory that filled up every 15-20 minutes. When that happened players would stop, ID everything, and simply drop anything that wasn't an immediate equipment upgrade, since there was no way to stash items and no NPCs to sell the extras to.

New characters in the Blizzcon build started off at level 12, with a variety of fairly good items on, so not everything was an improvement.

The general impression of players was that the drops were turned up, in quality and quantity for the demo, since Blizzard wanted new players to have fun and find a lot of cool stuff. As a result there was no way to compare the demo item gain speed to what the real game will be like.

Even though there was no way to sell items, every item includes its sale price, in gold, in the hover description. Perhaps the process will be made totally convenient, and players will be able to sell things anywhere, at any time, with a simple click of the button? Realism be damned.

Inventory Layout

The picture to the right shows how the inventory window is laid out in Diablo III. While the details of this display have evolved during the game's development, the basic form seems set.

The paper doll is on top, with shoulders and pants added to the item slots we saw in Diablo II. The Talisman is seen below the paper doll on the right, while an empty space on the lower left must be reserved for some future feature.

Below the paper doll is the inventory grid, which has repeatedly changed in form and function. One feature returning from Diablo II is the gold counter, with the amount of coin a character is carrying shown numerically, and no inventory space required to hold the money.

One thing the designers have stressed is their desire to fit in a lot of inventory storage, while keeping the items large enough for players to appreciate the graphics. The inventory tab system added in April 2009 was inspired by this goal, and the tab for large items allows them to fill boxes big enough for their details to remain visible. Small items look okay in smaller boxes.

This changed again for the GamesCom 2009 demo, and the system is now more similar to the old "tetris" grid, where some items take up two slots, and others take up one.

There are no charms in Diablo III, and as far as is known, no other items that force a trade-off between storage space and bonus stats.

Stash

The D3 Team has promised that we'll see a much larger town Stash in Diablo III. They've also said the stash will allow easy item transfers between characters on the same account.

Since no specifics or screenshots of the stash have yet been revealed, we can only take them at their word.

Development

During WWI 2008 and BlizzCon 2008, the inventory was similar to that of World of WarCraft, with one slot for each item, and a possibility to expand the inventory space by adding up to four bags to your character. Smaller items also stacked up to five in a stack in order to save space. It started with 12 slots, but could progressively be upgraded to 30 slots.

This system was simplified over time, and as of August 2009 there's only one bag slot, but it can add a great deal more space to the default character's inventory.

Old interface.

The evolution of the Inventory was discussed during Blizzcast #8, in March 2009. [1]

Bashiok: Since people saw the game at BlizzCon, the interface and the UI has actually changed dramatically.. ...What are the changes that have come about since then?

Mike: Well one of the biggest things involved in Diablo are items, right? We’ve experimented with a few things and one of the big things that everyone liked from Diablo, as an entity, were the large objects right. While it was more efficient to go with a WoW style one size fits all icon, which is what most people have seen, we really wanted to see what we could do and so we went back and reevaluated the system and we’ve decided split it into large and small objects. That brings up the question of Tetris inventory all over again, and a lot of people are opposed to that, some people like it, some people don’t. So what we did we ended up tabbing the inventory, so now you have your large items, and then you have a tab for small items, and there’s a third tab for quest items. That way all the items can coexist nicely with each other without the frustration, which w as one of the complaints about the old system is the frustration in trying to fit everything into your pack.

Bashiok: And are we still going to see the bag system coming back, the expandable [inventory] with the bags, or is it a set inventory size for each tab?

Mike: Current design right now is to have bags. You’ll get bags and they will expand, you know kind of like in WoW, except you’re not going to open up separate windows. You’ll start off your inventory with say… you know, eight slots, right, and then you’ll get a new bag and that has ten, so two more slots will open up within that tab, but you’ll never have multiple tabs. Like you won’t have two or three “large” tabs.

Bashiok: Right, and is that working out pretty well so far? It’s been in testing for a while.

Mike: Yeah, most people seem to really like it. I mean the feedback has been pretty good, personally I love it, because it lets you do both, it lets you have the large icons but it eliminates the frustration that people voiced about having different sized items within your inventory.

Bashiok: And you can really see the artwork as it is now with the larger icons...

Mike: Oh yeah, very much so.

The system changed yet again in the GamesCom 2009 demo, where the bag has reverted slightly to the Diablo II style, having one slot items for small things and two for larger, but also a separate tab for quest items, to keep them separated from the regular inventory.

Fan Requests

When the 1-item-slot bags were revealed, there were some fans who would rather have an inventory with the multiple square items in the actual bag, and the newer version from April 30 is a little step in that direction. Some still want the original D1 and D2 bags though, but it's highly unlikely to change. Here is a quote from a discussion between a Battle.net member and Bashiok: [2]

Phat_smoke: All items shuld = 1 inv square space

thats my thot

Bashiok:

i totilly agre

Simple view
Alternate view.
Pouch view and more.

References