Up until this point I was ok with having a mule for each item slot storing only lvl 84 | 94 legendaries for that slot. Even though it was still a bit tedious having to “import” the items into mules once in a while, but at least “searching” for loot was somewhat fine. If I ever needed to check if I have a particular shoulder piece I just log in on a “shoulder mule” and check it’s personal stash.
With FoA introducing awakening I suddenly realised the need to also store a lot of 84 | 94 epic items that I find, and that was the breaking point for me.
I think I’m ready to use the storage mods.
So there are two options, Item Assistant and GD stash.
Brief description tells me that both solve the problem, so what’s the differnce?
Are there any advantages of one over the other?
I’m asking strictly in the context of storing items.
I know that GD Stash can also “print” items, but I’m not interested in that.
But considering that GD Stash has this functionality and more, I’m surprised to find out that Item Assistant was released ~1 year later than GD Stash and somehow got some traction going (while assumingly GD Stash already solved the problem IA was aiming at).
So if you have experience trying both, please tell me what’s the difference and why you’d chose one over the other.
*i don’t know if IA has changed as i haven’t checked it out in a while
but the way i look at it when we disregard the editor stuff is
IA is(was?) more automatic, GDS is more manual
IA auto stores stuff for you from a dedicated tab, GDS you have to manually click a button to store a given page you feel like taking from the game.
But you have to use both manually/the tool to browse and pull out your stored items
Right now/on v1.3 the game has changed how it handles some game data, so it stores in memory which means GDS can only be used from the main menu now. I don’t know if pete found a way to deal with that like he did with cloud saves/if IA can be used from “in world” still on v1.3
besides the new potential v1.3 caveat it’s how i often boil it down atleast, more manual clicking “control” vs using a dedicated tab for auto storage
I can’t compare them as I’ve never used GDStash, but I can say a few things about GDIA.
It has worked fine with 1.3 (from the first day of the play test).
It’s intuitive and, while you are in-game, quite invisible to use. You just put items into the last page of your shared stash and they instantly vanish.
Outside of the game it has a web UI in which you can filter your items and transfer them back into the game. The filtering is pretty good - better than the in-game loot filter.
If you are on Linux, install will be tricky (there’s a forum thread about it). No problems on Windows though.
With all this said, I’m planning to play full SSF in FoA, so I’m actually not going to use IA. But that’s not because of any problems with the tool.
Also, both tools have active, helpful developers, which is kind of key with a long-term utility like this.
I use GDIA because it’s just more smooth to use. I got confused with GDStash and it’s item storage. You have to manually move things around and it’s easy to duplicate things when you don’t want to (if you have no clue what you’re doing).
GDIA also allows you to view the items more easily imho and filter them/search more intuitively.
Same, at least initially. I’m sure at some point I will want to ‘collect them all’ to do more exotic builds so to say. But I don’t want that to be my starting point.