>From: Jesse <j@...>
>
>
>When playing my new bard, I took a common suggestion I heard of making
>hotkeys for the two melee slots and several (four) invetory slots. I have
>bags/boxes in my other four slots.
>
>This makes it very easy to switch instruments/weapons.
>
>I was wondering, is there any trick to keeping those inventory slots open
>(i.e. free of random loot) without manually having to put every item into
>a bag? I bought a mandolin and horn to fill 2 more slots, but there's
>still 1 empty slot (which needs to stay empty, so when I swap out 1
>instrument, there's room for a shield + weapon). Anytime I look anything
>it gets automatically dropped into that slot, which is very annoying when
>trying to switch weapons later.
>
>Hopefully there's some good tips out there.
>
>Thanks, =)
>

There is one trick, if one of your weapons can be equipped in the
ranged weapon slot (dragoon dirks, mino axes maybe others, I
don't know precisely which) replace one of the general slots with
the ranged weapon slot.

Now you have

General Ranged
Melee 1 Melee 2
General General

if the three generals have instruments in them,
Grab Main weapon, drop in ranged (or swap
with instrument) swap with second weapon
(or pick up instrument and swap) drop back in
empty general spot or ranged slot

Since the 3 general slots are always full, and
nothing auto drops to the ranged, you always
have it free.

Just be sure to not have a ranged attack key
where you might hit it by mistake :)