Greetings, everyone. Your friendly neighborhood Syndal here, to blow my one post addressing something that was one of the few good changes in SK, but which still needs a lot of work. Maybe it'll stay up, even.
Assuming you actually /want/ to work on reducing hoarding, and spreading EQ throughout the game, here are my suggestions.
First and foremost. Not counting magical devices is a massive oversight with this system. 1 person should not be allowed to carry around 6 copies of a unique stave for weeks on end, 1 person should not be able to carry around bundles and bundles of unique 'strong' scrolls, 1 person should not be able to carry around all the best wands/staves/etc in the game. 1 person should not have the color spray wand, and the acid blast wand, and the holy word wand, and the magma wand, and the harm wand, and then 20 high tier staves on top of that, etcetc.
I would propose:
A) A strict limit. You get 10 (or insert #) magical devices which you can carry. 3 wands, 2 staves, 5 scrolls, whatever you want. But just 10. This would help make PK more interesting as well, since it wouldn't just be people spamming the half dozen double petrification scrolls they have.
B) Limit on copies. That supercool wand that has only 2 copies in the whole game? Yeah, you don't get to carry both of them. Automatic login thief'd.
Now, onto the next failure with the hoarding code. 6 items is too many. It doesn't sound like a lot, I know, trust me, I expected to constantly have issues being over the limit, especially while playing my favorite class and the supreme hoard master, a sorcerer. However...the only time I ever had any difficulty with it is when I went to collect 3+ things at a time that I meant to enchant, then forgot I had or got distracted, and would log out with them. This is what my sorceror was carrying around.
Quote:
Some luxurious, silk-lined robes contains:
(Glowing) (Humming) a bloodied diamond-tipped military fork (brand new)
( 2) (Glowing) (Humming) the Orbs of Giant Slaying (brand new)
(Glowing) a bracer of white lightning (brand new)
a cedar walking stick
( 3) a platter of roast pheasant
a large golden apple
(Humming) a bluesilver wand
a perfect white rose bud
a long chalky parchment
a staff topped with wind charms
( 4) a twisted gnarled root
a mithril chain with a jade fanged serpent amulet (superb)
( 4) a rounded piece of jade
(14) a stem of tiny white and red flowers
the Hellblaze Wand
( 5) a very tiny glass bottle of word of recall
a wand of spinning vortices
a long piece of coral
(Glowing) a pair of swirling bloody vortices (brand new)
a blacksmith's repair hammer (brand new)
the Stoning Staff (brand new)
a thin slab of stone of mirror image
a waterskin
a staff of Water Breathing
a twagras mandible
a cast iron shovel
a light-swallowing wand tipped with a prism
a thick, jointed beetle leg
a ratty broomstick covered in soot (brand new)
Now, that is a lot of eq. Should 1 character really be able to carry that around? That's 6 items counting towards the hoard-code, of which 3 are energy weapons, 1 is a top-tier bracelet, 1 is a scripted item, and 1 is a diamond weapon.
None of the rest of those items count towards the hoarding code (a few of which are scripted objects even), which is part of why I brought up magical devices. The other funny thing about it, and just a small tweak of playing a sorceror or other caster, is that since I never hold a weapon, I could hold a weapon in my hand (instead of wand/etc, since they don't count towards the cap) when logging out and effectively get an 'extra' safe item.
Back to the magical devices for a second, though. That quote above is a very mediocre stash of devices, compared to what it's possible to amass. A lot of vets would look at that and go 'meh', and in fact, compared to some container snippets of old, that's hardly worth mentioning. Unless you are interested in actually spreading eq around the game and not having it sit unused in someone's container, which I am assuming SK is in fact interested in doing.
The above robe has, an op flight stave with numerous charges, an op invis stave with numerous charges, a resist elements stave (jesus [REDACTED], these are still way too easy to get. I gave one to Uriella as well, a nicer one even), a water breathing stave with numerous charges, an op Color Spray wand with 10 charges, an OP hellfire wand with numerous charges, an OP stone skin wand with numerous charges, an etherealform wand (the lifeline of any caster) with numerous charges, an OP sanc wand with numerous charges, a bless wand with numerous charges, an op wand of Haste with multiple charges, a 'staff' of petrification (really just a scripted item), an op scroll of MI (was originally more, but I handed them out). Oh, and then on top of all that, I had 3 energy weapons, a diamond weapon, a necklace with a script to cure plague/disease on command, a broom with a script to fly, a spare piece of jewelry with a greater save on it (highly sought after items nowadays), a scripted item that repairs any other item to perfect condition regardless of material or level of damage, and a handful of detect staves so I didn't have to cast it myself.
Then of course, the eq I was actually /wearing/ on top of all that.
......And I was completely, 100% safe from 'hoarding' thieves. In fact, I could have carried an extra energy/diamond/addy weapon by holding it in my hand, or just 1 extra any item by holding one of the weapons I already had.
And the above blurb pales in comparison to what an actual caster who is doing things and pk'ing/actively collecting things will gather. IE, double that, and you might be close to the ballpark.
Should 1 character really be allowed to carry all of those items? Should 1 character, who is only expected to spend 20~ hours in one of the 10's of thousands of rooms on SK doing nothing, be allowed to keep all of that month after month?
I don't think so, but it's not my decision to make.
P.S. I won't even do more than briefly touch on the countless items in the game that are 'cool' and fun and don't fit under the hoarding code limit of 'worn' things. Such as the Loophole, the portal rings, infinite fountain chalices/etc, speckled marble, etc. Or the really powerful scripted items that fall under 'magical devices' and are therefore not subject to this code, like the Runed Eye Staff, Somnium's Eye, Black Spiderstaff, etcetc. --I'll leave it to someone else to expand on that stuff.