Stash
A Stash is a chest where a player can store items and gold. It is an important function in the Diablo franchise, since collecting items is a big part of each game. Characters can access their stashes from towns and cities in game, and there will be shared stashes which make it easy to transfer items between characters on the same account (this does not allow sharing items with characters on other accounts).
Neither the stash nor the shared stash have been shown publicly, nor have their dimensions been reported. However both have been refered to as "huge." [1]
Contents
Finding and collecting items is a big part of the Diablo franchise, but storing and transferring those items has not always been easy. Jay Wilson spoke to this problem in BlizzCast Episode 5, August 2008. [2]
- "Jay Wilson: ...we really want to make it easier for you to be able to share and trade items with other people and other characters on the same account. We’ve talked about ideas like a shared stash, or a mail system like World of Warcraft has, and we haven’t nailed down exactly which one of those we want to do, but we’re definitely going to do something like that, that’s going to make it really easy for you if you’ve got, a Witch Doctor and a Barbarian character, and you find that awesome Witch Doctor drop and you want to share it, it’ll be super-easy to do that."
- Bashiok: so in other words, I won’t have to worry about my game closing after...
- Jay Wilson: No, no more opening up a game, dropping items on the ground, and you know, hoping that the game stays open or getting a friend to help out, no more of that. You should be able to do it on your own.
July 2010
The system remained undeveloped nearly two years later, as Bashiok explained in a forum post in July 2010. [3]
- "No update, it’s something we hope to do, it’s not designed or in any sort of implementation phase so until we reach that point and either hit a revelation of it working or not we won’t know for sure. But yes, still hope to have some sort of easy way to share between characters. “Drop games are dumb.” - Bashiok"
August 2010
Jay Wilson spoke again about the shared stash at Gamescom in August, 2010. [4]
- Including a shared stash in Diablo III is, I think, everyone’s first choice. A shared stash is very easy to deal with for the player, and having it in the game creates a nice common area where characters can gather in a game. It does create a few problems, though. For one thing, it really encourages players to mule items on multiple characters. Which may just be something we have to deal with. Players who like to mule really like doing it. We kind of feel, well, we wish you didn’t have to mule. We wish there was a better way to store away spare items.
Also from Gamescom, Jay described the stash getting larger over the course of the game.[5]
- The stash starts off small, but grows “ridiculously huge” over the course of the game, when gold is spent to enlarge it.
October 2010
In Blizzcon 2010's D3 Open Q&A Panel, RichterLocke from DiabloWiki asked if the D3 development team had decided whether or not to implement a shared stash. After some hesitation, Jay Wilson finally confirmed it: "Yes, and that's Blizzcon-exclusive by the way."
January 2011
Shared stashes are confirmed as in the game and working, by an @Diablo tweet. [6]
