If this does get fixed at some point, I think it is worth considering looking over the sorting across the board, and maybe updating/fixing strange behaviors while doing so, as there are many sorts that seem (to me at least) to be inconsistent. The way that the sort button works changes across all different item types, with the time and reason being very hard to discern. I know I can’t figure it out
The following is based on my experience. This may or may not be what’s actually happening in the sort:
Most items sort themselves by the item’s immutable traits(?), but some don’t. Gems do; they are
always going to be listed from diamond->ruby->emerald->sapphire->topaz->amethyst. Bricks and blocks do as well, but these get sorted based on the alphabetical name, from “Bamboo” all the way to “Yellow Team Blocks”, and everything in between. For most items in the game, the sorting system is a
constant outcome, and each item goes where it “belongs”.
Where things get weird, at least to me, is when we look at some other items. Like critters. I have a chest full of critters, and I threw in my Hamaxe for comparison of the categories. When I sort this chest, the first thing that gets listed is the gold critters. Then, the fairies are second. After that, come the Seahorses in third,
always. Then, penguins in fourth,
always.
From there, we get to the fifth category to be sorted, which are my owls, mice, rats, turtles, and ALL my gem bunnies and gem squirrels, which all get sorted
together, by the amount that I have of each.
Now onto the sixth category, which is my cardinals, blue jays, goldfish, seagulls, ducks, and pupfish, which all get sorted
together, based on the number I have of each of these, again. Noticeably, birds are not present in this grouping, but blue jays and cardinals are. The reason for this exclusion is unknown to me and I don’t know how to figure out why.
For the seventh category, we have bunnies, regular birds, and both variants of squirrels (gray and red). Even though the blue jay/cardinal bird variants were given a unique category that it shared with goldfish, the red squirrel variant happens to share a category with the regular squirrel.
Finally, the eighth category is uncategorized, and consists of toucans, cockatiels, etc.
The splitting of the critter categorization is fairly confusing to me, and when I add more gem critters, their location in the chest changes every time I save it, because the sort location is dependent on however many of that item are in the chest when I click sort, which can change every single time. This would be more okay to me, if the order of critters wasn’t arbitrarily split into three different countdowns, with seahorses and penguins being the only two to ignore the countdown entirely, and just exist on their own.
Honestly, I think I prefer the behavior of the penguins and seahorses here. Keeping this particular sort based on its ID(?), rather than the # of the item in the chest, means that the penguins and seahorses can be found at a consistent location every single time the sort button is clicked regardless of how many I have. I have a lot of critters, and seeing my chest change its structure every new day that I sort the chest, makes it a bit more difficult to navigate. I feel like, at
least for gem critters, they should be sorted in the same way the gems are sorted are sorted now, from diamond->ruby->emerald and so on and so on. Hopefully, eventually all critters can be sorted by a category that is more reliable in the future, maybe, lol.
There might be other similar situations too for other items, but this is just a long-winded explanation of
this particular example to demonstrate how some of the sorting is confusing to me at the moment haha.
