Stash

The stash in-game.

A Stash is a chest where a player can store items. It is an important function in the Diablo franchise, since collecting items is a big part of each game. Characters can access their stashes from towns and cities in game, and the stashes are shared between all of the characters in the account, unlike in Diablo II where each character had their own individual stash.

It is important to note, however, that Hardcore characters do not share a stash with softcore characters, nor can they trade between each other.

Shared Stash

The reason for the development team adding in a shared stash is to prevent characters from muling in drop games, where the battle.net servers may drop a player from a game, items may disappear, or a host of other issues. Put simply, it was not at all convenient or safe to trade items between characters on an account. Hence, the shared stash.

The stash is natively "unlocked" for the player. It doesn't have to be unlocked via a quest like the Cauldron of Jordan or the Nephalem Cube were. It is available as soon as the player enters New Tristram.

Upgrading the Stash

The stash interface.

The stash is shaping up as a promising gold sink. The player begins with 7x2 (14 squares) of inventory space, which is equivalent to seven pieces of larger gear, or items which only take up one inventory space, such as amulets, or scrolls. The stash can be upgraded in 4 increments of 14 squares. As of the early weeks of the beta test, this costs 2,500 gold each time, but it is unknown if this value will change. After the player has maxed out the first page of the stash, they will be able to purchase an entirely new tab for a substantial gold cost. The tab begins the same as the natural stash: 7x2, and can be upgraded further, up to a grand total of 210 inventory squares. The total amounts per tab have been calculated during the Diablo III Beta test and are shown in a table below.

The stash has three tabs in total, counting the first tab that the player receives for "free".

As the stash is shared, any character on the account has access to it, assuming that they are all either hardcore or softcore. Softcore and hardcore characters cannot trade items whatsoever. Yet, any character on a single account that peers into the stash will see the exact same items.

Below is a table showing gold costs per tab for the shared stash, but as these were taken during the beta test, they are subject to change for the game's final release.

Shared Stash Gold Cost

Tab	Tab Cost	Upgrade Cost	Total Cost
Tab 1	0	2,500	10,000
Tab 2	10,000	2,500	20,000
Tab 3	50,000	2,500	60,000
Total Cost	60,000	30,000	90,000

Hardcore Death & The Stash

Hardcore characters do not have access to nor can trade with any softcore characters on the same account. If a Hardcore character dies any items they have placed in the shared stash will not be lost. All items on their person and inventory will however be lost with the character when it dies.

Previous Development

January 2012

In Beta Patch 10 the number of tabs was reduced from 5 to 3.

We reevaluated average character and account storage space requirements, and found it necessary to ensure we could handle what we anticipate will be a large amount of data very quickly after release.

Diablo III has both the benefit and disadvantage of having completely random items. Pretty much everything can roll up different affixes, if not a range of its benefits. That's obviously great because the item hunt is what it's all about, more randomization means you can keep chasing that perfect item, but that means the amount of data needed to describe an item is much, much larger than say, a World of Warcraft item, which is static and only needs a unique number to identify it.

A Diablo III item first has to say the base item, then each individual affix that it rolled up, then the ranges of each variable, and if it has any sockets. And we have to think about everywhere an item can be, an item on the ground is still an item, and so is an item on the auction house.

We obviously have room to grow if our projections are incorrect, or we just find that we eventually have the space. World of Warcraft definitely grew over the years, and that storage space didn't appear out of nowhere (although it does seem rather magical at times). We find three tabs to be plenty for at least the initial release of the game though. Not counting the items you're wearing (assuming they're the best you have), and assuming worst case scenario of nothing but 2-slot items, you'd be able to hold 405 swords per region. That's a lot. We don't expect people to be storing 405 swords... hopefully ever, because that might indicate you have an obsession with swords, but at the very least there should be enough storage to start and then we can continue to evaluate as we go.

An additional feature, which was a pleasant surprise to some, was the ability to select which class to view the stash as. Selecting a different class made the armor items appear different: each class has their own unique icons for armor. This also disappeared between Beta Patch 9 and Beta Patch 10. IN the left image above the 'Appearance' tab can be seen and in the right hand image from January 2012 it has gone.

January 2011

Shared stashes are confirmed as in the game and working, by an @Diablo tweet.

Shared stashes are in and working.

October 2010

In Blizzcon 2010's D3 Open Q&A Panel, RichterLocke from DiabloWiki asked if the D3 development team had decided whether or not to implement a shared stash. After some hesitation, Jay Wilson finally confirmed it: "Yes, and that's Blizzcon-exclusive by the way."

August 2010

Jay Wilson spoke again about the shared stash at Gamescom in August, 2010.

Including a shared stash in Diablo III is, I think, everyone’s first choice. A shared stash is very easy to deal with for the player, and having it in the game creates a nice common area where characters can gather in a game. It does create a few problems, though. For one thing, it really encourages players to [[mule]] items on multiple characters. Which may just be something we have to deal with. Players who like to mule really like doing it. We kind of feel, well, we wish you didn’t have to mule. We wish there was a better way to store away spare items.

Also from Gamescom, Jay described the stash getting larger over the course of the game.

The stash starts off small, but grows “ridiculously huge” over the course of the game, when gold is spent to enlarge it.

July 2010

The system remained undeveloped nearly two years later, as Bashiok explained in a forum post in July 2010.

"No update, it’s something we hope to do, it’s not designed or in any sort of implementation phase so until we reach that point and either hit a revelation of it working or not we won’t know for sure. But yes, still hope to have some sort of easy way to share between characters. “Drop games are dumb.” - Bashiok"

August 2008

Finding and collecting items is a big part of the Diablo franchise, but storing and transferring those items has not always been easy. Jay Wilson spoke to this problem in BlizzCast Episode 5, August 2008.

"'''Jay Wilson:''' ...we really want to make it easier for you to be able to share and trade items with other people and other characters on the same account. We’ve talked about ideas like a shared stash, or a mail system like World of Warcraft has, and we haven’t nailed down exactly which one of those we want to do, but we’re definitely going to do something like that, that’s going to make it really easy for you if you’ve got, a Witch Doctor and a Barbarian character, and you find that awesome Witch Doctor drop and you want to share it, it’ll be super-easy to do that."

'''Bashiok:''' so in other words, I won’t have to worry about my game closing after...

'''Jay Wilson: '''No, no more opening up a game, dropping items on the ground, and you know, hoping that the game stays open or getting a friend to help out, no more of that. You should be able to do it on your own.