Working as Designed [Bug] 'Quick stack to nearby chests' stacks items in chests that haven't been discovered yet

[ScottySR]

Steam or GOG

Steam

Single Player/Multiplayer

Single

Operating System

Windows 10

Terraria Version

1.4.4.7

Controls Used

Keyboard/Mouse

I was in the dungeon and I quick stacked items to the flying piggy bank and noticed that one of the items went to the incorrect direction and disappeared at the top of my view area. Turns out there was a naturally spawned chest that I hadn't noticed, because it was outside the dungeon. I feel like this could be exploited by having the item you want to find in your inventory and trying to quick stack while moving around. It would reveal if there is a chest with that item nearby. Of course you could use spelunker potion, but if you are looking for something specific. Maybe a good fix would be for the quick stack to only work on player placed or player spawned inventories.

 

[Leinfors]

Unfortunately, the game does not actually distinguish in any way between player placed chests and natural chests. There is no way for the game to "know" what type of chest is what, which is also why fairies will be attracted to player chests as well.

Short of reducing the range again (which is a possible consideration), I don't see how this would be fixed in any simple way.

 

[Cave wizard]

which is also why fairies will be attracted to player chests as well.

Hrm...

Short of reducing the range again (which is a possible consideration), I don't see how this would be fixed in any simple way.

Even if the range is reduced, there's always the risk of accidentally sorting to chests behind a wall. Maybe a toggle that makes it switch between long range and very short range (for exploration) but I don't know how much work that'd be for something that will rarely be used. By the way, does auto sort work with locked chests?

 

[ScottySR]

It shouldn't be hard to just add a flag that tells if a chest is player placed in an update. This would already work perfectly in worlds created after the update, however solving which chests count as player placed in older worlds when opening the world after update might be tricky. Another option aside player placed is if the player has opened it, or both could set the flag.

 

[punchready]

It is not difficult per se, but it would waste one of the last few remaining bits in the tile storage for a somewhat minor feature, which is not great.

 

[ScottySR]

I don't know how those are programmed, so I can't say if it is waste or not.
Another option would be to increase the quick stack range in areas considered villages, because you most likely have your base at one of them. Another way is to increase the range when there are enough valid storages detected in a specific region around the player. If there are maybe 5 or more storages it would increase the range. The shorter range should be able to handle a few storages. It could also check the light level to make sure the chest isn't in complete darkness so it doesn't reveal undiscovered chests accidentally.

 

[Leinfors]

I checked out the quick stack range again and, to be honest, its really not that large. It IS increased from previous versions, but not brokenly so, and this would only work if you had items that were held inside of the chest to work on. I don't see this as abusable.