David Wonn
Smash Ace
"Sell equipment? I never do that! Why should I?"
These are probably some of your initial reactions to reading such a seemingly ludicrous title. That is, until you eventually discover that the game is eliminating equipment behind your back without any warning. As it turns out, your equipment is finite. Prior estimates have shown that the game purges equipment when you approach 3000 pieces. I later found it to be 2991 to be more precise. You can check your total in Games & More - Vault - Records - Stats, and scroll almost two-thirds of the way down.
"I know, I'll just feed my inferior equipment to my Amiibos!"
Sure, that will work... for just a little while. Eventually, all your Amiibos will be maxed at level 50 with attack, defense, and speed all perfectly evened out at +40 each with three bonus effects on top of that. Then what? Collect more Amiibos? Obviously this will eventually reach its cap.
"Well, I will just ignore the problem for now."
You can go this route, at least until you get close to maxing out on equipment. Then you risk inferior equipment overwriting the good pieces you have been saving. Oops, those are gone now.
"OK, I give up. How can I stop my good equipment from vanishing forever?"
As a temporary partial solution, you can create several custom fighters for every character, equipping your must-have pieces on at least one character. You can even create extra Mii fighters for the sole purpose of storing equipment you never want to lose. But that will only go so far. There is only one other way to take control of what stays and what goes....
Start selling! If you haven't done so already, take a good look at what you have. Pick any fighter, go in and customize one, and then press the button to sell equipment. Everyone's tastes will be different on what is best to keep and what should go. If you are a collector, you probably want to have at least one of every type of equipment with bonus effects, even ones you are unlikely to use. Fine. But don't keep too much of one type.
"How much is too much to keep?"
Keep in mind that no fighter will ever hold more than three pieces of equipment at once. Therefore, try not to hold much more than three or four of the exact same name of equipment. You may want to keep extras of ones you know you like to use all the time to give a little more flexibility in customizing fighters, but just keep a bare minimum of the ones you don't think you'll be using very often.
"How will I possibly go through my entire inventory?"
Admittedly it will be a tedious process the first time you go through all your equipment. Start alphabetically and compare duplicates. Then also compare character-specific equipment with badges. Sell anything that is completely inferior to another. For instance, if you have two pieces of the same equipment, each with the same negatives, but different positives, obviously sell the one with the lower positive. If a badge has completely superior stats compared to character-specific equipment, obviously keep the badge and sell the character-specific equipment. But if the badge has inferior stats, DON'T sell it, as it is still useful for other characters.
"How can I streamline the process?"
Once you've done a full inventory sweep, equipment management becomes exponentially easier to maintain. Assuming you now have exactly what you want to keep, make note of your most recently acquired equipment by changing the sort view during the selling process. Sometimes I'll intentionally do a quick Master Orders or Trophy Rush, then acquire a weak piece of equipment as my "marker." These often sell for very few coins. This way, I know where to begin my search the next time I start purging equipment. I then go about my business acquiring equipment in other modes of play, and then when I need to purge, the process goes like the following:
Customize a fighter, start to sell equipment, sort by recently acquired, and scroll down to your "marker" piece of equipment noted previously. Now place a checkmark by that equipment and all pieces above it. Then change the sort view to alphabetical. The beauty of this technique is that it makes all of your most recent equipment stand out against your long-standing, streamlined equipment. Now all you have to do is compare the checked ones with your older stuff. If the new ones are better, uncheck them, and check the ones you want to sell; otherwise leave the checkmark on and sell the more recent stuff. If you happened to have acquired badges, then you may consider keeping them, since they may make several old pieces of equipment obsolete. Continue the process until you reach the bottom. As a tip, scrolling with left and right are faster than up and down, btw. Press start to sell all the checked items.
"Is there anything you always keep or purge?"
While this will vary from person to person, I have specific favorites. My top keepers are Home-Run Bat, First Striker, Quick Batter, Trade-Off Defender, All-Around Trade-Off, and Desperate Immortal. Why? These are the best of the best for Crazy Orders, which is where you can acquire the strongest equipment in the entire game. I only sell these if they are completely inferior to another duplicate. Also, Risky Respawner equipment generally has the highest positives with the least negatives. I keep at least the best three or four of each kind I find. Naturally Auto-Healer, Vampire, KO Healer, Critical Hitter, and some other equipment are very handy to collect.
As for what I always purge, I look for generic equipment with no added effects first. If the sum of the positive and negative effects is less than +30, I ALWAYS sell it, no questions asked. Character-specific generic equipment will generally have higher stats than badges, so the ONLY Rare Agility/Brawn/Protection Badges I ever keep are +59/-29, +60/-30, +61/-30, and +61/-31, but they are all excessively rare. Eventually I raise this threshold for certain character-specific equipment by only keeping anything that adds up to +40 or higher. That is, +79/-39 is the minimum I'll keep, while +85/-42 is the ultimate best possible.
Also Meanderer and Hasty Edge equipment generally are not any better than generic equipment without bonus effects. Therefore, they are the most useless out of all possible equipment since they already come with penalties to boot. I only keep one of each badge just for completionist stats purposes.
"What patterns can be seen in equipment?"
Obviously analyzing equipment so rigorously gives an insight into what stats are possible. On generic equipment without bonus effects, the positives will never be more than one unit higher than double the absolute value of the negative stat. On equipment with bonus effects, the negative numbers will be more intense, while equipment with penalized effects will have much less significant negatives. Use this knowledge to your advantage in determining which equipment is best to keep and which is the most expendable. It all may sound daunting and tedious now, but it will be worth it in the long run if you start going through your equipment now.
These are probably some of your initial reactions to reading such a seemingly ludicrous title. That is, until you eventually discover that the game is eliminating equipment behind your back without any warning. As it turns out, your equipment is finite. Prior estimates have shown that the game purges equipment when you approach 3000 pieces. I later found it to be 2991 to be more precise. You can check your total in Games & More - Vault - Records - Stats, and scroll almost two-thirds of the way down.
"I know, I'll just feed my inferior equipment to my Amiibos!"
Sure, that will work... for just a little while. Eventually, all your Amiibos will be maxed at level 50 with attack, defense, and speed all perfectly evened out at +40 each with three bonus effects on top of that. Then what? Collect more Amiibos? Obviously this will eventually reach its cap.
"Well, I will just ignore the problem for now."
You can go this route, at least until you get close to maxing out on equipment. Then you risk inferior equipment overwriting the good pieces you have been saving. Oops, those are gone now.
"OK, I give up. How can I stop my good equipment from vanishing forever?"
As a temporary partial solution, you can create several custom fighters for every character, equipping your must-have pieces on at least one character. You can even create extra Mii fighters for the sole purpose of storing equipment you never want to lose. But that will only go so far. There is only one other way to take control of what stays and what goes....
Start selling! If you haven't done so already, take a good look at what you have. Pick any fighter, go in and customize one, and then press the button to sell equipment. Everyone's tastes will be different on what is best to keep and what should go. If you are a collector, you probably want to have at least one of every type of equipment with bonus effects, even ones you are unlikely to use. Fine. But don't keep too much of one type.
"How much is too much to keep?"
Keep in mind that no fighter will ever hold more than three pieces of equipment at once. Therefore, try not to hold much more than three or four of the exact same name of equipment. You may want to keep extras of ones you know you like to use all the time to give a little more flexibility in customizing fighters, but just keep a bare minimum of the ones you don't think you'll be using very often.
"How will I possibly go through my entire inventory?"
Admittedly it will be a tedious process the first time you go through all your equipment. Start alphabetically and compare duplicates. Then also compare character-specific equipment with badges. Sell anything that is completely inferior to another. For instance, if you have two pieces of the same equipment, each with the same negatives, but different positives, obviously sell the one with the lower positive. If a badge has completely superior stats compared to character-specific equipment, obviously keep the badge and sell the character-specific equipment. But if the badge has inferior stats, DON'T sell it, as it is still useful for other characters.
"How can I streamline the process?"
Once you've done a full inventory sweep, equipment management becomes exponentially easier to maintain. Assuming you now have exactly what you want to keep, make note of your most recently acquired equipment by changing the sort view during the selling process. Sometimes I'll intentionally do a quick Master Orders or Trophy Rush, then acquire a weak piece of equipment as my "marker." These often sell for very few coins. This way, I know where to begin my search the next time I start purging equipment. I then go about my business acquiring equipment in other modes of play, and then when I need to purge, the process goes like the following:
Customize a fighter, start to sell equipment, sort by recently acquired, and scroll down to your "marker" piece of equipment noted previously. Now place a checkmark by that equipment and all pieces above it. Then change the sort view to alphabetical. The beauty of this technique is that it makes all of your most recent equipment stand out against your long-standing, streamlined equipment. Now all you have to do is compare the checked ones with your older stuff. If the new ones are better, uncheck them, and check the ones you want to sell; otherwise leave the checkmark on and sell the more recent stuff. If you happened to have acquired badges, then you may consider keeping them, since they may make several old pieces of equipment obsolete. Continue the process until you reach the bottom. As a tip, scrolling with left and right are faster than up and down, btw. Press start to sell all the checked items.
"Is there anything you always keep or purge?"
While this will vary from person to person, I have specific favorites. My top keepers are Home-Run Bat, First Striker, Quick Batter, Trade-Off Defender, All-Around Trade-Off, and Desperate Immortal. Why? These are the best of the best for Crazy Orders, which is where you can acquire the strongest equipment in the entire game. I only sell these if they are completely inferior to another duplicate. Also, Risky Respawner equipment generally has the highest positives with the least negatives. I keep at least the best three or four of each kind I find. Naturally Auto-Healer, Vampire, KO Healer, Critical Hitter, and some other equipment are very handy to collect.
As for what I always purge, I look for generic equipment with no added effects first. If the sum of the positive and negative effects is less than +30, I ALWAYS sell it, no questions asked. Character-specific generic equipment will generally have higher stats than badges, so the ONLY Rare Agility/Brawn/Protection Badges I ever keep are +59/-29, +60/-30, +61/-30, and +61/-31, but they are all excessively rare. Eventually I raise this threshold for certain character-specific equipment by only keeping anything that adds up to +40 or higher. That is, +79/-39 is the minimum I'll keep, while +85/-42 is the ultimate best possible.
Also Meanderer and Hasty Edge equipment generally are not any better than generic equipment without bonus effects. Therefore, they are the most useless out of all possible equipment since they already come with penalties to boot. I only keep one of each badge just for completionist stats purposes.
"What patterns can be seen in equipment?"
Obviously analyzing equipment so rigorously gives an insight into what stats are possible. On generic equipment without bonus effects, the positives will never be more than one unit higher than double the absolute value of the negative stat. On equipment with bonus effects, the negative numbers will be more intense, while equipment with penalized effects will have much less significant negatives. Use this knowledge to your advantage in determining which equipment is best to keep and which is the most expendable. It all may sound daunting and tedious now, but it will be worth it in the long run if you start going through your equipment now.
