In this simple guide, we’ll explore various storages and how they operate. We’ll follow up with some strategies on how best to use your storage to avoid running out of room.
Sengoku Dynasty Storage Guide
Man, if I had a buck for every question that’s come in about this system, I’d have a lot of bucks! Ohhhh, the humanity!!!
Time to put an end to the confusion (I hope!)
Storages are a bit of a pickle, I’ll grant you, but really it’s in how the information in presented rather than how the system works. The system works really well… once you understand it. Isn’t that true of just about everything?
Storage building vs Storage Furniture.
Here’s where most of the confusion lies. Storage buildings are the actual big buildings you construct by grabbing your trusty hammer, right-clicking, choosing the buildings tab, then the Storage tab. There are six buildings listed here. Here are the six buildings, in no particular order:
General Storage: Unlocks upon founding first village.
Wood Storage: Unlocks upon founding first village.
Food Storage: Unlocks upon founding first village.
Beverage Storage: Unlcoks upon founding first village.
Weapon Storage: Unlocks upon reaching Dynasty Level 21.
Ice Storage: Unlocks upon reaching Dynasty Level 21
In order for your NPC villagers to access anything, they must be placed in one of the 6 storage buildings listed above. When you click on an item in any inventory screen, the central information panel will tell you where it needs to be stored. Some, like the stick here are pretty obvious:
(psst: it goes in the wood storage!)
If your villagers have no access to storage, they cannot get any food or beverages or medicine nor can they get tools or materials to do the work you assign them to.
Storage buildings are separated by Village Bells. Each village bell must have each of the above storage buildings in order for residents residing in that bell’s radius to access goods. However, storage is shared across all villages that have these buildings. This is both a blessing and a curse. It means that you can make one village devoted to farming and still make sure everyone else is fed. However, the curse is that you only have a limited storage amount for each type. More buildings will not increase this.
Now, Storage Furniture are the smaller access pieces that you can place all around your village in different buildings. You access them from a different location in the build menu by opening that menu with a hammer equipped and choosing… wait for it… FURNITURE!!! Yeah, it’s a stretch but it works.
From here, you select the storage tab:
And you’ll be able to access the six different types of furniture.
Storage furniture does not add storage. It does not provide any access to storage for NPC villages. These items are designed for you and you only. They provide quick access to various storages that are relevant to the buildings they are placed in. This way, you don’t have to run back and forth all the time.
Again, these items do not increase storage. As of this writing, nothing increases village storage space.
So, in conclusion, you must build the Storage Buildings in order to actually store anything for your villager’s needs. So, go. Build. Make Nata Valley a beautiful and vibrant place for all your storage needs!
A note on the Shed:
This building is NOT a storage building. It is a portable quick access point for you to place furniture on. Unlike other buildings, you can place each and every storage furniture access point on it. That means full access to every storage building you have! And it’s small enough that you can equip your hammer, aim at the base, and move it around. All the furniture and decorations move with it so, when your village gets bigger, you can plop it down and not have to run all over the place for materials! But, like the storage furniture it holds, the shed does not provide any storage of its own unless you place a Tawara Bag.
A note on Tawara Bags:
Tawara Bags are unique items that look like furniture but actually provide a unique universal storage. You can store any type of item in a Tawara bag. However, this storage is not tied in any way to your village storage. NPC’s cannot access it and items stored inside do not count toward satisfying villager needs. Also, any food you store inside will decay at a much faster rate. So, use it wisely!
I hope that clears things up.
Storage Strategies
In this section, I’ll get into how storage works and offer some strategies on how to keep your village inventory under control.
First off, when you open a storage, you’ll be greeted with another inventory screen. On the left is your player inventory. On the right, the inventory of the storage type. Here we see one of the first storage types needed: Food!
When you open the screen, items in your inventory will be greyed out if they do not belong in this particular storage facility. If you try to move those items, you’ll get an error message with a really loud and annoying sound so I’d advise against it.
You have 3 choices when transferring items from one side to the other.
- Click and drag: Click and hold the left mouse button and drag the item. This will move the entire stack of items to the box you drop it in. Useful to control where things go.
- Press E: Click on a stack and press “E.” This will bring up a quantity window which will begin at center point of your stack amount. Click and drag the slider to choose more or less. Useful when you need to move specific amounts.
- Hold E: Highlight a box on either side (your inventory is selected by default) and hold down the “E” key. This will transfer EVERYTHING from that inventory into the opposite inventory. If you move more items than the other inventory can hold, the game will take items in the usual manner, left to right and then down the rows. Useful to empty your inventory. Not so useful in emptying storage but you can.
Each storage type has exactly 180 slots. 6 slots to a row, 30 rows. You cannot store anything beyond this amount. As of this writing, this is a permanent feature and one that you must work around as your village grows larger. You will find the wood storage and general storage to be the most in-demand and will likely run into trouble. Careful prep and management of NPC tasks will help make this much easier to deal with.
Strategy 1: Organize your storage.
Here, you can see my wood storage:
As you can see, I have things grouped together. Coal up top because it is the key to my Heating Needs. Firewood comes next because it also provides heating and is used by my NPC’s to craft coal. Knowing how much I have at a glance is important. I follow it up with building materials: sticks, bamboo and straw. Again, so I can see, at a glance, how much I have. Then I place planks. These are key to the Maintenance Need. Clay can also be used but you have to gather that yourself. Planks can be automated with NPC work so I use them for that and for building. Finally, down below off-screen, logs. Because logs do not stack, they take up an annoyingly large amount of room. By having them come last, you’ll know quickly how many you can stock with your NPC production and not waste any.
I do this with all my storage inventories. It helps me get a quick grasp of what I might need and it just feels more organized.
Strategy 2: Rotate your storage.
When the new season begins, your storage might be a little messy. You may need to work on strategy 1 for a bit. While your doing so, remember how items are taken from storage. Left to right on row 1 then down the inventory row by row. You’ll likely end up with some empty slots at the beginning of your inventory so move the items you want the people to consume first into those slots. This is especially important for perishable items. Food will turn to rot even when stored. Rot is okay in small doses if you do manual farming. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of resources. Rotating older stocks into those first slots ensures they will be consumed before they turn to rot.
Strategy 3: Don’t overproduce!
I see a lot of people talk about storage limits and, when I ask, they all have the same problem: they overproduce items. When you’re assigning NPC’s to create goods, you want to keep their production as close to what is actually needed as possible. If you’re using 16 meat to produce cooked food for your villagers, then your hunting hut worker should only be bringing in 16 meat. Zero overage means zero waste. Also, you’ll cut down significantly on storage issues if you closely manage your NPC production.
As you can see from the screenshots above, my storages aren’t overcrowded. This is with a village of 24 people producing enough goods to satisfy all 6 needs. By careful management, I’m keeping my storage in check so. It’s a bit of work but nobody ever said being a village leader was easy!