unstack

[Sadie]

Is there a possibility of adding a button on containers, to "unstack" materials, i.g. a stack of 12 ingots into 1 per each little space? This would cut down enormously on the 'clicking' of crafting and cooking, and save our hands/fingers much work.... Kind of the reverse of "stack and take all" function.
 

[bewoi]

You can Press L-Shift while clicking on a stack to pick up only one item, as well as Ctrl to pick up the whole stack.

[cdmoreland]

There is something like that, but I don't know what it is. It is really annoying when someone fills a workspace with one click and leaves one without any spaces to put anything in.

[bilbous]

If you want to fill up a container quickly just dump a stack in and then shift-click on it until it has spread out. I don't think it works in inventory though. If there are others trying to use the same container you can take turns or use stacks smaller than the container capacity. Worst comes to worst there are work-spaces that are rarely used where you can work unfettered. It makes it a bit harder to train but you can possibly train several skill consecutively. If you need to do a lot of combines and someone is hogging the equipment drop a bag on the ground and do the combines in it, turning to the required equipment only when you have enough intermediary product to finish.

[Irelander]

Thanks for the tip, Bilbous.  Huge time saver.

[Sadie]

@ bewoi and Bilbous, yes I know this 'shortcut' .... thank you for saying, and it does save time.  However, what I want to do is simplify even further, with "unstack", a single-click, rather than 12, or 10, or whatever number into the container: the actual reverse of the "stack and take all", which goes to inventory. Shift-clicking can be extremely wearisome on the fingers ....   especially for something like metallurgy, for example.
@ cdmoreland, I agree with the annoyance of characters filling the entire container, I have had that happen to me. I either wait, or go somewhere else, or just put in 4-8 materials (when I can). I have also had the happy experience of the other character saying "I only need 12 (or whatever number) spaces. Can we share?" and that works well too.
 

[bilbous]

ideally everyone would get their own instance of the container and crowding would never occur. Even better would be to abstract the container even further so that you didn't actually have to do anything but put your book and ingredients in respective slots, pick a recipe, and pick the number of product you wish to make. I don't see that happening though. Too much is invested in the current system.

[tman]

I agree, it would be nice to just put 24 things in a container and hit a button and have it start working on all of them at once.  It would save a lot of clicking, which is good.

However, I think by far the most annoying step is combining, not putting things into containers.  If they could make it possible to do multiple combines at a time I would be so happy.