IG Storage use for muling (or, player banking system)

[Steve]

Don't know if this is the right sub-forum, but:

Since the IG permanent storage is connected to the CD Key, but, we know that any PC name—that either real or in a disguise—can be accessed by any other PC using that name or disguise, this means that I could Disguise my toon as "Johnny Muule" for the moment, and place items with a storage NPC. Then, I could release the Disguise, log onto another PC, use Disguise to change it's name to Johnny Muule, then access the storage NPC and remove/deposit Items, in the same storage "bank."

This is possible, yes? And, this is okay by Staff? And, this is a good way to do it, since the permanent storage is keeping a database and is very strong against crashing/losing items?

Cheers.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Items will be 'muled' in some manner no matter what, having them off the character BIC is my preference in the long run.

[Endelyon]

It's indeed possible. It's fine if you choose to do it unless the DM team decides to rule against muling as a whole. This is not considered an exploit, but you should be aware that occasionally bugs happen with the disguise system causing your name to get stuck and even sometimes characters to temporarily disappear from your vault. (If your main PC gets stuck as "Johnny Mule" or whatever then "Johnny Mule" will disappear from your character selection)

All of these bugs can be resolved by DMs or admins without loss of characters or items, but they might cause you minor/temporary headaches. The chance of them happening is pretty small, but it's best to acknowledge the downsides to this muling method.

I would say it's about equally safe as passing items off to a friend, and DRAMATICALLY safer than placing your items in a campfire in the Nexus. Overall I would probably use a buddy in the Nexus still if I had that available to me (for selfish reasons, not safety ones--it's just overall faster and doesn't require a bunch of transitions while walking to a bank NPC), but if I had to do it alone for whatever reason then I would probably do this disguise trick myself.

Consider this an exception to the normal "if it feels like an exploit it's probably an exploit" adage. As it is, muling is allowed, and I don't see any benefit to micromanaging how players accomplish that (except to remind everyone that if you use campfires to mule, you're gambling with your items' lives because we generally won't restore them ).

[V'rass]

Muling is much safer then the banking system... i dont care what they say if the system is part of the server then it can be brought down and or corrupted. May only be a 10% chance but any % is too many imho.

[Akroma666]

Banning muling would be a great disservice to the community as a whole and I would hope the DM staff is smarter than that.

[Endelyon]

Muling is much safer then the banking system... i dont care what they say if the system is part of the server then it can be brought down and or corrupted. May only be a 10% chance but any % is too many imho.

Data loss is possible in either case. The character files and the SQL server are literally hosted on the same machine.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Muling is much safer then the banking system... i dont care what they say if the system is part of the server then it can be brought down and or corrupted. May only be a 10% chance but any % is too many imho.

Here's where you might want to reconsider your thought process on.

In the OnAcquire/OnUnacquire event handling, we noticed a new behavior in how bartering works, when an item is dragged from your inventory into the inventory of another GUI modal, the character loses the object. It's an intermediary container held open for a brief amount of time with knowledge of who supplied the item and has no more security behind it than using a campfire for moving items between players. A scenario where your character acquires an item doesn't immediately trigger the save action, it awaits a two minute window to assure that you have collected as much of the objects as possible than saving for every object acquired, shortening computational load and GUI interruption. If you were to move the item into a barter window, and your character had not saved, and the game server crashes, you lose the item, bar none. There is no other workaround.

With the storage system, it creates a duplicate of the object you intend to deposit, can validate that the object exists first in the database table before removing the object from the character. The window of loss is if the server crashes before the OnAcquire save activity occurs, but is something that we will be changing here soon for immediate save actions on acquisition from storage only. This has a much narrower window of loss, and the query is replicated in large batches than trying to recreate the item based on screenshots or player descriptions of the item.

[NeonAvenger]

On a vaguely related note... how difficult would it be to have the items sorted, even if only alphabetically, when you view your storage?
I would make far more use of the storage system if I could easily find things when I was looking for them.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

ORDER Descending addition to the query.

[Endelyon]

On a vaguely related note... how difficult would it be to have the items sorted, even if only alphabetically, when you view your storage?
I would make far more use of the storage system if I could easily find things when I was looking for them.

Don't forget it has a search filter that actually works. Just type in part of the item name you're looking for (assuming of course you know what it's called!)

[chad878262]

On a vaguely related note... how difficult would it be to have the items sorted, even if only alphabetically, when you view your storage?
I would make far more use of the storage system if I could easily find things when I was looking for them.

Don't forget it has a search filter that actually works. Just type in part of the item name you're looking for (assuming of course you know what it's called!)

Wha?!?!?! Mind...blown. Never even looked at that, thanks!

[NeonAvenger]

Don't forget it has a search filter that actually works. Just type in part of the item name you're looking for (assuming of course you know what it's called!)

There is? *cough* I mean... There is.*
I still think it would be nice to sort them but... clearly not a priority.

* I don't know how I missed that...

[Steve]

Since suggestions are being fielded, would it be possible to have a "Deposit Entire Inventory" button/option, or maybe better: "Deposit ONLY Entire Fourth Page of PC's Inventory."

I ask because depositing/retrieving items one by one takes a very long time, and the interface seems to take 3 seconds to refresh after each deposit, before another can be done.

Yeah, I know...luxury issues!

[Aspect of Sorrow]

GetNextObject position isn't relative to the inventory, from what the server can see (it's a strange bug), so I don't at this time see a situation where page based deposits would occur, but a full storage dump is capable, yep.

[illithid]

Do you actually even need a character with the appropriate name?

If I disguise myself as "mule", even without a character called "mule" in my vault, does "mule" get his own persistent storage?