David Wonn
Smash Ace
I have made the unfortunate discovery that this game cannot hold much more than approximately 3000 pieces of equipment. This first came to my attention as I was upgrading my custom fighters with better auto-healer equipment. My intention was to feed my inferior auto-healer equipment to one of my amiibos, but you cannot sell or feed equipment if it is being used by one or more fighters. Shortly after I unequipped the inferior badge off of every fighter and equipped them all with the better variant, the old one disappeared without a trace, as if it never existed. Curiously I investigated into this further to verify it was not a one-time fluke....
I went to the Custom menu, picked any fighter, and then proceeded to act as if I were going to sell equipment. I sorted the entire inventory by order obtained, scrolled forever to the bottom (holding right is faster than scrolling with the C-stick BTW), and snapped a photo of the last six pieces of equipment, which should be my first ones ever obtained. I played a round of Classic mode on 9.0 and carefully counted how many pieces of equipment I earned, but nothing purged. It wasn't until I played a round of Crazy Orders (where it gives out equipment like candy if you go really far) that I noticed my oldest equipment no longer existed.
You can very easily verify this for yourself if you follow the same steps I did, assuming you have around 2800 unused pieces like I do. Unfortunately I do not know exactly when the game decides it is time to purge, or exactly what the limit is. I just know 3000 is the estimate, based on the collective sum of my uniquely used equipment on my fighters plus the unused equipment that is available to sell.
So, what can you do to prevent good equipment from forever vanishing? Make certain you create a bunch of custom fighters, and equip each piece of equipment you want to keep on at least one custom fighter. The game cannot purge equipment that is in use, but once it is no longer used by anyone, it will eventually reach the purgatory on its own. You have been warned!
TL;DR version: Periodically go through all your custom fighters and upgrade their equipment while you can, or you may forever lose some good stuff.
I went to the Custom menu, picked any fighter, and then proceeded to act as if I were going to sell equipment. I sorted the entire inventory by order obtained, scrolled forever to the bottom (holding right is faster than scrolling with the C-stick BTW), and snapped a photo of the last six pieces of equipment, which should be my first ones ever obtained. I played a round of Classic mode on 9.0 and carefully counted how many pieces of equipment I earned, but nothing purged. It wasn't until I played a round of Crazy Orders (where it gives out equipment like candy if you go really far) that I noticed my oldest equipment no longer existed.
You can very easily verify this for yourself if you follow the same steps I did, assuming you have around 2800 unused pieces like I do. Unfortunately I do not know exactly when the game decides it is time to purge, or exactly what the limit is. I just know 3000 is the estimate, based on the collective sum of my uniquely used equipment on my fighters plus the unused equipment that is available to sell.
So, what can you do to prevent good equipment from forever vanishing? Make certain you create a bunch of custom fighters, and equip each piece of equipment you want to keep on at least one custom fighter. The game cannot purge equipment that is in use, but once it is no longer used by anyone, it will eventually reach the purgatory on its own. You have been warned!
TL;DR version: Periodically go through all your custom fighters and upgrade their equipment while you can, or you may forever lose some good stuff.