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[Urist McUristsonson]

I've been lurking on and off for a few years now but haven't really played it often. I've been trying to play Adventure Mode lately, since it seems more accessible for beginners. One of the biggest problems I'm running into is the inventory management aspect. It's simply too cumbersome to be effective or fun. I've been organizing everything for over an hour just to get my adventurer equipped with the best of his gear. A process that essential should not take this long or be this tedious. Searching the boards hasn't shown any threads on the topic, so I decided to suggest it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, Dwarf Fortress on the whole isn't really hard as a game, it's just really hard to get used to understanding how to handle the interface.  (Hence "The Learning Cliff" - before you can do anything, you have to learn everything.)

You won't see many people complaining about the interface to Adventurer Mode because you're right, it's far easier to get used to Adventurer Mode than it is to Fortress mode specifically because of the interface.

As for what's actually bugging you, could you be more specific?  What, exactly, are you trying to do that's taking you so long?

[Urist McUristsonson]

Organize my inventory out. I wanted to keep my worn/equipped items near the top of the screen, throw out all the equipment that wasn't valuable or better than what I had already equipped, and use all the containers to group all of my loot. Arrows and bolts in the quiver. A pouch for meat. A chest for severed heads and stuff. That kind of thing.

I know stacking and merging stacks is planned, but there are plenty of other ways to improve the process as well. One idea would be to have slots for equipped items at the top. You start with nothing in your hands. You pick up a dagger. It automatically goes to the first line of your inventory rather than the last. You pick up a shield. It goes to the second. Equipping leather armor would put it at the default line for armor, and equipping greaves could place them right under it. Items in the inventory could also be grouped by type and the screen could include a string finder like the one in Legends Mode or the Quest screen. These would both make things far easier than scrolling through pages just to find a higher quality version of your current weapon.

[NW_Kohaku]

You mean a sorting function.

Yeah, that's... just not really the sort of thing Toady really considers.  (What with it being a part of the interface solely for the convenience of the player, and all...)

While maybe having equipped gear float up to the top of a list, and maybe putting hand-held gear up there, as well, the way that the game works, there isn't a clear way to sort "best armor" to the top of a list in this game the way that other games will do.  There isn't a simple "this metal is better than that" or "this has 12 armor points, that has only 11" stat.  So at best, you could sort by inventory slot.

Honestly, the way I sort my inventory is to... not sort my inventory.  Adventure Mode, especially, is an easy-come, easy-lose-everything game.  There's no benefit for fussing over things like that which will get disorganized again later, anyway.  Plus, I'd recommend going light - no point bothering with anything you can't wear, eat, or drink, since you can't buy anything of value yet, anyway, and money is therefore useless.