Although I’ve had ArkInventory in my Addon directory for months, it was only last night that I actually spent some time configuring it to suit myself. For the most part, I’ve just been using it as a One Bag kind of mod, assembling all my bags into one pane but leaving the items in the bag as unorganized as ever.
I wasn’t using the addon to its full advantage. The last straw for me was during a Gundrak Heroic when I went to my bags to disenchant a BoP drop so that my group could roll on it. I couldn’t find the item. My group had to wait while I, like an idiot, went through my bags item by item until I found the piece of armor to disenchant.
So I decided I had to get organized. But one thing that has always stopped me before was I didn’t know how to configure ArkInventory. Nor are there any good guides to it on the Internet. There is a Google wiki with some information and sample Rules, but no simple, step-by-step guide for configuring it.
I’m going to try to describe some basic ways to configure ArkInventory, and I may add some screenshots at a later date.
The mistake I made was believing that I actually needed to create Rules in order to organize my bags. In fact for most purposes, you don’t need to create Rules at all. When you download the mod, items in the game are assigned a category such as “Consumable > Elixir” or “Class > Rogue,” and organizing your bags is simply a matter of assigning a bar in your inventory to a category or categories.
The first thing you have to do is go to the series of tiny icons in the upper right corner of your bag and click “Edit Mode.” This throws your bags into a mode that allows you to assign your categories.
Your bags essentially become one bag, but a bag made up of any number of bars that expand or contract as items are added or taken away. The number of bars is limited only by your screen real estate and they are numbered sequentially with no size restrictions on the number of items they can hold (as long as you don’t exceed your bag space of course).
To assign a category to a bar in Edit Mode, left-click the number of the bar you want to organize. A menu list will drop down and allow you to choose from several categories, for example “Consumables > Drink,” which will then place all items in your bag that fit that category into that bar.
Items that remain unorganized/uncategorized are put into the bar labeled 1 by default, so it’s useful to mouseover any items remaining in 1 to see what category ArkInventory assigns to it. Something like a Rogue’s Poisons, for example, are categorized as “Class > Rogue” rather than consumable, so you might want to assign all Rogue-type items such as Thieves tools and poisons to a “Class” bar.
If an item does not seem to fit a category–special Holiday items are a case in point–you can create a custom category. Again, click the item itself in Edit Mode and a menu list will drop down. Go down to “Custom” and “Create a Custome Category.” Type in the name of what you want to call it–”Holiday” for example–and it will automatically be added to the Custom list and you can assign the item to that category. Then left-click an empty bar and assign to it any items in the Custom Category “Holiday.”
Before you create a Custom category, though, make sure the item really doesn’t have a category already in the system. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Couple points: there are more configuration options via the in-game Options menu (accessible via the little computer icon you click when you want to exit the game). Click “Interface” and then click the Add-Ons panel. There should be options for ArkInventory there. I accessed this panel for two reasons. There is an important toggle under the “Sorting” options. I made sorting instant so that my bags constantly update as I add things.
One other thing accessible via these options is “Profiles.” To save yourself some time, the profile for the first character whose bags you modify can be copied to other characters and then modified based on those individual character needs.
The first character whose bags I organized became the Default profile and then I copied it to other characters and modified as needed.
Last night, I spent probably two hours organizing my bags rather than playing, but it was well worth it. Overnight, ArkInventory has become an indispensable AddOn, maybe moreso than even Auctioneer.
