Mini-Tutorial: Chests on shelves

[CodeMage]

The topic of placing chests on shelves pops up regularly on these forums, so I thought I would write a short tutorial on how to do it.

Let’s start with an empty shelf on the wall:

As you can see, the game won’t let you place a chest on top of that shelf:

What you need to do is provide support for the chest by putting something underneath the shelf. In this case, I’ll put another chest:

Once you have the necessary support, the game will let you place the chest on the shelf:

And now you can delete the supporting item from underneath the shelf:

The chest stays on the shelf without losing support:

And that’s how you can place a chest on a shelf. Be advised that putting a chest on any placeable is a risk. Stability loss bugs don’t happen often, but they have happened to me several times over the years of playing, regardless of whether the chest was on a shelf, a table, or a carpet. If you really don’t want to risk losing what’s in the chest, put it on a ceiling or foundation.

---

EDIT: A few words for those who might be worried whether this is an exploit or not. Be advised that Funcom is the final arbiter on what is acceptable emergent gameplay, and what is an exploit. And even when they confirm which one it is, they can change their mind later and have been known to do so at least once. If you’re worried about being accused of using exploits and want to avoid it at all cost, don’t use this or any other advanced building technique.

That being said, the final product of this is that the chest receives its stability from the shelf, and the shelf receives its stability from the wall. There’s nothing floating unsupported in the air, or indeed any circumvention of stability logic. The only thing this technique circumvents is inability to place the chest due to insufficient surface area.

This is pretty much the same case as trying to place a shrine on a reduced surface area by adding foundations or ceilings to the side of your intended surface until the game lets you place the shrine, then removing those pieces after the shrine is placed. Another example is placing the map room first and then the pillars and walls around it, because you can’t do it the other way around.

If this is an exploit, then so are those techniques, and vice versa.

[ConanBoDk]

Did you try to replace the wall with a doorframe after placing the shelve?

Maybe its easier to place the chests? And after this just replacing the doorframe with a wall again?

I was using this method long time ago but my chests lose stability.
My method is to place plates into the walls and chests on it. I can put 6 chests into a wall… And the cool think about it is, that I have access from both sides.

Edit: pics

That’s how I am making chest walls… if someone is interested once I send a private massage how to do this. I could make a thread about it. But I don’t know how I am against the server rules with this. I can say that this wall survived many updates and also a ban

[erjoh]

@CodeMage

Be advised that putting a chest on any placeable is a risk.

And the reason I don’t do this. I had a system for it where I would set it up, empty. Wait till server restart and if it was stable, I fill it. When I knew updates were coming, I would remove the mats and wait till server restart…I got burned with unannounced updates though and so I stopped do this.

[CodeMage]

@erjoh

When I knew updates were coming, I would remove the mats and wait till server restart…

Even that is not enough. Occasionally, you’ll have the bad luck of manifesting a decay timer bug instead of a stability bug. A random placeable inside your base could stop getting refreshed and when it inevitably decays, it’ll take with it whatever is on top.

I guess the only way to be sure is to either put the chest on the floor (i.e. ceiling or foundation), or take the mats out after an update and wait for a full week (or 2 weeks during the summer decay). Ain’t nobody got time for that

That said, I do put chests on placeables, but it’s usually in tandem with a chest that I placed on the floor. The stuff goes into the lowest chest first, and whatever doesn’t fit goes into the chest(s) on placeables. That way, if I lose something, I’ll lose the surplus, not everything.

[Capt_insano0]

Looks like exploiting building mechanics to me. Grey area anyone?

[CodeMage]

Sure, whatever. You could call it emergent gameplay, you could call it advanced building technique, you could call it a workaround for lack of wall-mounted storage.

Or you could call it an exploit.

We could even ask for it to be fixed by Funcom, so cheaters can’t mount chests on walls.

…the phrase “this is why we can’t have nice things” comes to mind…

[erjoh]

If I was part of @Umborls team and someone reported chests on shelves, I would label that false reporting and take appropriate actions…seriously! We have folks still thinking spamming 3 squares of the map is acceptable and someone is going to report chests on shelves?

On second thought, maybe that’s why I’m not on @Umborls team.

[CodeMage]

@Capt_insano0

I’m just pointing out how flawed the reporting system can be

It’s kinda like “I’m just asking questions”, isn’t it?

Yeah, I get it, the reporting system can be flawed. It’s almost like there’s a whole bunch of threads about it. But hey, let’s make sure to make every thread we can about that

EDIT: Okay, here’s an idea: you wanna discuss whether advanced building techniques are exploit or not, what should be reportable and what shouldn’t, and other stuff like that? Fine, make a topic, and feel free to link to it from here, instead of pushing your agenda by derailing this one, and I’ll happily discuss it with you there. I’m flagging your post as off-topic, because I’ve had enough of accommodating every single derailment.

[Anglinex]

The windows yo!

[Cattibria]

If they are using a mod, it is not an exploit. If you place a shelf on a wall, you can place a chest on the shelf. If the spacing is right, you can get 3 chests high on a wall panel. There were videos during EA on how to do this. Nothing new about staking chests.

[Taemien]

This is definitely not an exploit. Shelves are meant to have placeables stacked on them, chests like cups, bowls, etc are placeables. Chests needing a work around to place them on shelves is a known bug. Working around bugs to get intended behavior is not an exploit.

Now with that said I cannot advise doing this. The work around is tricking the game into deriving stability to the chest from the shelf. But it starts with the chest beneath. If the game thinks the under chest is still there then the chest will poof on next restart.

This state can change anytime a building piece (wall, floor, foundation, pillar, or ceiling) is added or subtracted from the building. If it does, then the chest will poof on the next restart. If you find your chest remaining after a restart and do not build or tear down ANYTHING (even if on the opposite side of the building or another room or floor), then you should be fine.

Anytime you change the state of the building you have a chance of this poofing on a restart. However if it doesn’t then you should be fine until you do.

[stelagel]

There are multiple ways to do chests, multiple! Chests are not ugly either bad and you can use them in as furniture to place candles and other decorative too. In my kitchen they always have some plates or little jars on them. Chests are not bad, they are extremely good and that’s a fact . But this brand new thing, our new shining toy, that’s not so ergonomic like chests are, it gave us different prospective on how to build a base. Not that even this item arrived chests would be out of menu, not even wooden boxes are out of menu, or crates!
They could just change the crafting cost and be allowed to be crafted with the crates lvl!
Anyway, what’s done is done! I will still use the new items, I like their looks!