The Witcher 2 is a really amazing game. So much so that I'm totally baffled as to how the inventory management options and crafting got so grossly overlooked as to be some of the most tedious and annoying I have encountered in as long as I can remember. I've recently been playing Pool of Radiance (from 1988) and the inventory in that game is even more user-friendly than in TW2.

While the issues taken individually may not be that big of a deal, when taken as a whole, they all add up to be a whopping mess. Reagents sell for too little and weigh too much, for instance. You cannot pick up an individual item from a group of items yet, if you leave something on the ground it will disappear. Not only that, if you want those 4 Orens sitting with that shovel, spoon and blackjack, you have to pick it all then slog through the inventory to drop the trash.

One of my favorite little annoyances: if you 'look' at item by selecting it in the menu, it's information regarding weight and price disappears. So, to inspect an item you must not look directly at it...

I seriously love this game but, really, what happened? CDPR clearly wanted crafting to play a major role in the experience of TW2 yet it's implementation has been the single largest reason for me to turn the game off to go do something else.

While it seems unlikely that any of this will change one can hope, I guess.

Completely agree with you, ChaseDuncan.

I seem to be spending more times juggling inventory items than I should be. If I could leave things in specific places and return to them later then that would be part of the problem solved but, no, I can't even do that because they disappear after a short time!!!

This game is absolutely terrific and I'm thoroughly enjoying it in spite of the numerous little niggles which include the inventory as well as poor save options (why no delete or overwrite), clumsy door coding, no fullscreen 1920x1200 support and now post-v1.1 patch I find I can't use the analogue stick in the menus!

I completely agree with you as well as I have the same issues. It's like they are going backwards with the inventory and the looting system...

Here's my post for the saving system that also mentions this issue, hopefully they will improve/fix it somehow:

Even in-game UI is not really that helpful like if you are looting items (like weapons or armors), there's no way you can see the stats of the item until you put it in your inventory. There's no dropbox where you can store items, and when you want to buy new items from shops, there's no comparison to gear that you are currently wearing so it is really annoying to go back and forth the item page and the shop page. Finally, the item description is not intuitive (not scrollable so you will have to wait to see the required ingredients if you want to craft an item). If they can clean and improve the UI and also improve the saving system and graphical options, this will be nicer. Right now everything just seems clunky and messy...

Hence why I use the weightless item mod. Now I can pack thousands upon thousands of items. Wee ~

If you look at the item the weight and price shows up in the tooltip below (which is too small and takes too long to scroll - fixable by a mod though).

Not sure what you mean by this "if you want those 4 Orens sitting with that shovel, spoon and blackjack, you have to pick it all then slog through the inventory to drop the trash". If there are say, 5 items in a box, can't you just pick one of it. You don't to pick all (there is an option for it). Sorry if I misunderstood your statement.

That being said, inventory is a mess, what with the 7-item per view and the long list of formula and crafting diagrams you have to sift through.

Plus, the screen space is not utilized effeciently. You have 55-60% for currently equipped items (and a body model) and the rest for tabs, item list, item description tool-tip.

But you see that wont solve the problem completely...

If you are crafting a potion for example, the game automatically picks out the herbs for you and most of the time the ingredients it autopick isnt what you want to use...Sometimes it picks a rare ingredient that you dont want to use over common herbs that will do the trick. Like I want to keep my Endrega embryo for other things but it was automatically picked for Samum bombs instead of say, common Balisse herbs.

The text for some of the item is sometimes too big and the description is confusing (cant scroll and you will have to wait for it to scroll before you can see the full description). If you want to craft an armor or an item, you need to wait until it shows you the ingredients before you know what to do...Annoying.

Agree with this. I rather they have a pop-up tooltip which shows everything at once instead of the slow-scrolling tool-tip currently implemented.

Maybe it's only an issue if using a controller, which I am, but as far as I can tell it's only possible to pick everything up at once. Are you using KB&M?

I've considered the weightless mod but it just feels too much like cheating for me for my first run. I don't think I'd play through the game a 2nd time however without some sort of change. That mod may be it.

Commiseration makes me a feel a little better at least :)

I was so excited to get up and play some Witcher but then ended up spending the entire time trying to make a couple of items. Even more infuriating than the difficulty of the act itself is the fact that I'm having to desperately look for stuff I have previously had to dump... I finally gave up when I found myself 'carrying too much' again yet still did not have the items I actually needed. I would love to know how! Is it possible to do with a controller?

Wait... when you click on the chest/bag/etc and you get the pop up with the contents you can loot, you mean to tell me there's no way to select a single item from the pop up if you are using a game pad?

As far as I know. When you stand next to a container a little blue 'x' pops up that says 'search' next to it. If you press 'x' you pick up everything. I don't see any other options. I just went back into the game to play around and see if there's anything to do different but I can't find any way to pick up individual items if the option exists.

Yes I play with KB&M.

If you are into crafting I suggest accumulating money instead of carrying the ingredients/components around, i.e. buy from merchant/look around town when you need them. At one point I was carrying like 15 hardened leather and 20 robust cloth etc so it was a PITA.

To accumulate money, pick up items that have high price-to-weight ratio, for example all mutagens and maybe some monster parts, then sell those in town.

One tricky part with the more exotic crafting items (usu. monster parts) is that some components might be useless after a certain point in game and yet you don't know it because you haven't seen the crafting diagram for it.

That being said, absolutely keep those that are marked as quest items. The others are dispensable.

Yea and that's when you find the next flaw with the inventory system : Finding anything .

There's no way to sort things and no way to quickly see which items are "trash" or "epic" . The current indicator on items to show it's epic/rare/magical is not very visible. I would expect some improved colouring would be in order, you know the same colouring that Diablo brought us ...grey for trash, epic purple , rare blues and the legendary yellow which you would see the moment you loot. You would also be able to quickly determine which items to sell based on this colouring.

I did not even know i picked up some uber sword until i started selling everything and saw it was a "named" sword .

Can't you just select another ingredient and just replace the automatically chosen one?

Yes but after you craft just one potion it autoswitches back to previous ingredients.