Your FFXIV inventory might be a lot lighter with the release of Endwalker — and you may not even know it yet. The latest Final Fantasy expansion brought a lot of flashy changes, like new classes and zones, but one subtler improvement actually removes something from the game: HQ items. Specifically gathering materials. All the ore, wood, sand, monster guts, water, bath oil, worms, and other weird items you might have picked up on your journey through Eorzea have been flattened reduced to their “normal” quality. Though not entirely automatically. It’s instead up to you, dear, player, to go through the process of manually squishing down your stacks. Crafters and gatherers, strap in for some tedium…
Don’t get the wrong idea, either: High Quality items are still very much in the game. Anything crafted by your or another player can still reach vaunted HQ status, which raises the stats of weapons, armor, potions, and food. The same goes for interstitial crafting items like ingots, rivets, dissolvent, etc. Raw materials are the sole exception. Miner, Botanist, and Fisher players can no longer dig up HQ items on their own.
Even if you never engaged with the any of those gatherers, however, you may have picked up some monster parts during your travels. The same rule applies; all your basilisk intestines and direwolf fangs are Normal Quality counterfeits now. You can tell by hovering over any gold-marked item in your inventory and checking the description.
See that bracketed phrase? The one that says “Functions as a normal-quality item”? That’s the ticket. This indicates that your item is potentially taking up unnecessary space, since HQ stacks get their own slots in your inventory, Chocobo Saddlebag, and Retainer bags. If you only have High Quality versions of the item, then it doesn’t really matter. These faux HQ materials can still be used for crafting as normal. They also often sell for a teensy, tiny bit more than less sparkly cousins (though NPCs rarely pay more than a pittance for your junk).
But if you’ve got a stack of normal Dimythrite Ore next to a “High Quality” stack, for example, you’ve got a problem. You’re basically wasting space. And the process of getting that inventory back isn’t as simple as it should be. So I’ve put together a list of very basic steps to explain how to stack your stuff and reclaim your FFXIV backpack.
- Find a High Quality material in your inventory (marked with gold sparkles on its icon)
- Select it with your mouse (or D-pad with a controller) to read its description
- If the description says “Functions as a normal-quality item,” right-click it (press X or Square with a controller)
- Choose the first available option: “Lower Quality”
- This will create a second stack of identical normal items, but WILL NOT free up any inventory space
- Left-click (select with A or X on a controller) to select the item
- Drop it on top of the other stack
- The two stacks will finally merge, freeing up one total inventory slot
Alternatively, you can move one stack to another inventory (e.g. a Chocobo Saddlebag or a your Retainer) before moving them back into your inventory. This also automatically merges incomplete stacks. You can also… just sell the stuff. You won’t hardly get anything for your trouble, but pre-Endwalker junk isn’t likely to be worth holding onto anyway.
The issue here stems from the fact that, for whatever reason, stacks of identical items don’t merge automatically in FFXIV — not even after sorting. You might have noticed this before, if you’ve ever used the “Split” function to create multiple stacks on purpose. “Lower Quality” has also been a last resort inventory management tactic for years. Only now it’s especially important, since you’re losing almost nothing in exchange for the extra bag slots. Even then, this might not affect you that much if you’re not a gatherer or crafter.
For those that know the pain of carrying six dozen types of herb and shrimp to make virtual pasta, though? This change is a godsend. Just make sure you tidy up those bags!
