What's the best way to manage the same item with different imbuements?

Question

Is there any easy way to manage the same item with different imbuements? For example, if I have one elvenmail with fire protection and another with ice protection, they show on the hotkey bar together so I can't separate items with different imbuements. What's the best way to manage these items if I need to throw on the correct one in a rush?

Answer 1

Whether you use or equip an item with a hotkey (that is, based on its ID), the first item in your backpack order will be selected. This order works like this:

1. In a container without a subcontainer, the order is in reverse to putting the items. That is, you always put an item into the first place, which is displayed at the top-left.
2. If, while searching a container in this order, the algorithm finds a subcontainer, it is searched first before continuing the current one.
3. Your equipment and the main backpack is searched first, then the Store Inbox.

Essentially, you can manage which of the items will be selected by changing their order. Let's say you have fire protection in a red backpack  and ice protection in a blue one . If you put them next to each other , you can select the protection by putting the desired one first  (e.g., move it to an empty square in its container).

Edit: You can also iterate once over different instances of the same item by assigning the respective Obtain container to be further in the order than its current container. Thus, if you have 2 instances and hit a hotkey repeatedly, you will, in order: equip A, unequip A, equip B, unequip B, equip B, unequip B, etc. You may force the cycle to repeat on item A by leaving only one slot and putting a subcontainer in the target one like this:

I don't think it's possible to keep the A/B cycle with one hotkey. However, it is in principle possible to keep the cycle repeat a few times with two hotkeys. But that's more of a logic puzzle than anything useful :).