About Stash Tabs

Hello fellow exiles!

So, though my account is quite old, I started playing PoE regularly just a few days ago. As soon as I was getting familiarized with the game, I've noticed something that really upseted me: the stash tabs. There are only 4 of them, and I'm pretty sure that latter in the game there will be need of more of them. I've watched a few videos about stash tabs and I've realized that sooner or later stash tabs will be a need for the accomplished PoE player.

With that in mind, I've decided to buy a High Council Supporter pack that earned me 550 points. The point is: how should I spend these points? Keep in mind that I'm not interested in cosmetics atm. I just want to spend it in useful resources for the game, in other words, stash tabs.

I was wondering buying the following:

1 premium stash tab bundle (200 pts)
1 stash tab bundle (150 pts)
1 essence stash bundle (40 pts)
1 fragment stash bundle (75 pts)
1 currency stash tab (75 pts)

Remaining Points: 10

I'd like to have also a map stash tab and a divination stash tab but as you can see, I am lacking of points for the deal. There would be needed 190 extra points for that.

So, should I wait for a promo to spend my points? Do they occur frequently?
Should I buy a First Blood Pack instead?
Any other suggestion?

Thanks a lot ppl!

Greetings,

Welcome to Wraeclast, friend! Hope you’ve been enjoying your time here.

So here’s the advice I would give;

• There is a Watchlist.
  
  • Add things to it fairly liberally. You’re not making a commitment to purchase them.
  • Add a single type of stash tab to your Watchlist. They all go on sale every three weeks; adding more than one will just flood your inbox with near-duplicate messages.
  • Check which type of Watchlist Notifications are enabled. If you plan to rely on e-mail notifications, make sure you have an e-mail account associated with your Path of Exile account. People who have only played through Steam typically do not.

• Stash tabs are expensive; don’t rush into a decision.
  
  • Only buy them (and everything else) while they are on sale.
  • I don’t think you need to buy two bundles at once. Buy a Premium one the first time the sale comes around, then make a more informed choice about whether you would like your next bundle to be Premium or not. I’d lean towards one of each type, personally.
  • I’ve never seen someone claim they regret buying the Currency Tab. It’s probably the best example of specialized tabs. It offers a clean UI and generous storage.

• If you’re interested in what are little more than personal preferences...
  
  • The Map Tab is great at organizing Maps, however a Quad Tab offers superior search functionality. I’d suggest buying a Quad Tab and seeing if you like using it for Maps - if not, it can be repurposed and you can buy a Map Tab in the subsequent sale. Personally I have a “bin” Quad Tab which I dump items into while mapping, then I later sort through it and move items into various other Premium Tabs. Works for me, but YMMV. I’d suggest buying one Quad Tab with the plan to later buy either a second one, or a Map Tab. See how it goes!
  • The Essence Tab is of dubious value; buy it for the pretty UI, not the space. Essences aren’t so common that this would be a better deal than a regular tab which you can place other items in - and which costs less, too. It’s a ‘nice to have’, but not essential.
  • The Divination Tab is much the same as the Essence Tab. Nice UI; from a storage standpoint the value isn’t great. I wouldn’t spend points from my first / only supporter pack on these.
  • I do not recommend the Fragments Tab.

Please understand that much of the above is subjective.

regarding the tab type to buy, please note there is a upgrade path from normal tabs to premium but none for quads (which have premium tab functionality).

personally i really like a quad for just dumping items in it to evaluate them later on. many people have problems with the smaller item size once you placed items in it but the handling is ok for me once i got used to it.

I have a couple quad tabs that I use for quality gems and jewels but I find them too hard to use for most things. It's hard to drop things where you want them and hard to remove things because everything is small so I don't use them for chaos recipe or just item dump. But that's just me. Some people love them.

I agree with the advice above. The special tabs Ithink I couldn't live without are the currency and map tabs. I also have other specialty tabs too. I like the div card one because you can filter by full sets and they can stack to 5000. I don’t redeem some cards until I need them because one slot is smaller than the size of the item I'd have to store. The essence tab is nice but you don't find all that many essences so it's a luxury. The fragment tab is borderline useless for me. But it's slightly better than using a normal tab since you can stack sacrifice pieces and offerings there that don’t stack in a normal tab.

If you want to pinch pennies, I'd say get a bundle or two of regular tabs and upgrade one or two to premium just for trading. You don’t really need to name the tabs until you get more than that. On stash sale weekends, the normal tab price plus the upgrade price is the same cost as getting a premium tab. So in the future you still would have the option to upgrade more of your tabs. It just would distribute the cost over a longer period.

Pref order:

1 Currency tab
As many Premium Stash tabs as necessary for trading (pref 4; DO NOT GET A QUAD TAB IF YOU VALUE YOUR EYES.)
1 Divination/Card tab
1 Essence tab
More premium tabs, as necessary to hold all of your stuff (regular if you don't want to trade with these tabs for the time being.)


Rest

Thank you all for the support! I've read each one of the posts and I apreciate all the help. So, I've managed to buy all the tabs (except divination for a miscalculation) + 1 common and premium stash bundle and it really helped to organize my stuff in some way, but I guess common tabs are someway anoying once you have to remember where you dumped your gear. If I continue in the game next step will be upgrade the common tabs, buy the divination tab and buy more premium tabs... I think that 70 is a descent amount. 10 tabs for each class and each tab for each gear of the game. I know it sounds exagerated but it will certainly make things more organized. So, I think 1.600 point will be more than enough for this.

Just a hint for those who plan to get common tabs: buy them first. If you buy any other tab first, your common tab will lost numerical sequency. Just a detail but it anoys sometimes.

That's it. Thanks once again!

10 tabs per class definitely sounds excessive to me.

The majority of the playerbase plays the challenge leagues. Every three months there's a new league, which has its own (empty) copies of each of your stash tabs. You might play 2 or 3 characters during a challenge league... I really don't think you'd play every class.

You can use ur non premium tabs as junk tabs that you wanna dump stuff in. No need to name them just lists of numbers of tab u hoard stuff and not listed for sale

quad tabs are the best. I dont make long tab names so i can fit more tabs in one screen without having to scroll thru tab list as much. I just wanna go to my stash and dump my stuff in appropriate places without having to scroll thru tabs. regular tabs take up that really valuable real estate for tab name.

reg sized tabs are cheaper per inventory space tho if thats your focus.

I will concur with the above points, particularly on both waiting for a stash tab "super sale" (which I think is due in 2 weeks?) as well as the importance of a currency tab. Before the introduction of the currency tab, I was up to something like 11 tabs with every single space filled with full stacks of various orbs; on leagues, this meant I often had to spend a lot of time just exchanging currency just to keep it manageable.

For the short info on how I feel to decide for each type of tab:

• Premium 6-packs vs. standard 6-packs: I personally go with the premium tabs so I can name them all. If you just want premium for the easy trading, you only really need a handful of such tabs. (TBH, I've made hundreds of trades totaling 100+ exalts in Incursion only using 4 such tabs)
  
  
• Currency Tab: this was the first special tab for a reason. Absolutely essential. (I honestly feel GGG should give everyone a watered-down version for free, and let them pay to upgrade to the one existing now)
  
  
• Map tab: CAN be lived without, especially if you just vendor up almost all your maps to save space. But if you want to take advantage of the War mechanic, you can't vendor up much. Well worthwhile.
  
  
• Essence Tab: Worth it for organization if you collect lots. Also has a few more freebie spots for if/when your slots in the currency tab fill up. Has a convenient
  
  
• Divination Tab: This boils down to whether you bother to pick up all cards. If you're the folk that ignore anything unless it has a particularly valuable reward (e.g, Headhunter or Exalted Orb) then no, this does you no good. But if you're NOT like that (e.g, like me) this tab will let you pick them all up and not worry.
  
  
• Fragment Tab: over-priced and not really that useful. I ALMOST kinda wanted it when I was burning through dozens of sacrifice sets, but in truth it's pretty niche, and generally a single normal/premium tab works just as well. Fragments are so visually distinct (and there's not that many different ones) that organization isn't that much an issue. And if you get too many of a type, then it just means you need to use 'em or sell 'em.

My current stash has, at the moment, a total of 33 permanent tabs: 28 premium tabs, 2 map tabs, the currency and essence tabs, and a single quad tab. (I've yet to buy a fragment tab) This has proven vastly in excess of what I need for challenge leagues, and I really only need this much for Standard. That's also why two map tabs: I have a separate tab for older "Atlas of Worlds"-era maps. (And I may do the same for my Awakening maps, which currently take up 3 tabs; all my pre-awakening maps fit on one tab, though)

"

Sarno wrote:

• Add things to it fairly liberally. You’re not making a commitment to purchase them.

Downside: it's SO loose that unless you regularly check the forums (every day) you're liable to miss stuff. (I REALLY wish there'd be an in-game notice on logging in to let me know that a wishlist item was on sale/automatically show any wishlist items on sale on the main MTX shop screen)

As for watching out for stash tab sales, given they get mentioned on the login screen, I've found wishlisting them to be of dubious use even before accounting for the lack of visibility.

"

Sarno wrote:

• The Map Tab is great at organizing Maps, however a Quad Tab offers superior search functionality. I’d suggest buying a Quad Tab and seeing if you like using it for Maps - if not, it can be repurposed and you can buy a Map Tab in the subsequent sale. Personally I have a “bin” Quad Tab which I dump items into while mapping, then I later sort through it and move items into various other Premium Tabs. Works for me, but YMMV. I’d suggest buying one Quad Tab with the plan to later buy either a second one, or a Map Tab. See how it goes!

I'll admit I tried using a Quad tab during Harbinger. (before Map Tabs were available) So while we -ARE- dealing with personal preference, I'll give my counterpoint warning: Quad tabs make everything TINY. And since picked-up items revert to full size, it can be a bit of a pain to position things correctly before plunking them down.

"

Sarno wrote:

You might play 2 or 3 characters during a challenge league... I really don't think you'd play every class.

Heck, I specifically restrict myself to a single character per league, even as I've been tempted to break from my longstanding (3+ years) rule to make some alternates to handle some content. (e.g, Wuru blows through almost everything, but I'd considered making a dedicated labrunner, and maybe someone to better handle stuff like Uber Atziri)

And even for Standard, where I technically have all classes, I definitely don't need a bunch of stash tabs for their gear: the guys are all WEARING their gear, after all! And any alternates I'm holding onto "just in case" easily all fit into a single tab; I just make sure to clean them out after a while.