This was actually an idea I discussed with the other programmers when I first joined the team :) I think it's a great idea, but the one concern we all have is the strain it would put on the servers. We definitely don't want to query the vault every time you use shop search (or start a quest). It's a real concern, too, because shop-search and quests are pages that get a lot of traffic so if we make them do more stuff, those requests to the server will add up fast!

How would you guys feel though if there was a "Vault Search" button next to the "Shop Search" button when you start a quest? It would just take you straight to the vault search results for that item when you click it (just as if you manually searched for it in your vault yourself). You could then remove the item from there using the buttons in the vault. I was thinking this might be a viable compromise, because it won't query the vault unless you click the button, and it's more efficient than account-search since it only queries your vault (and not your entire account). So it's a way to give a bit of convenience to you guys, and allow a quick way of checking if you have something in your vault, without putting too much strain on the servers. And people who don't care to look in their vault won't click the button, so there won't be any unnecessary database queries being done.

If you think that would be a decent compromise, I'll talk it over more with the other staff (they're all asleep right now... it's also Saturday lol) and let you know what we decide. I don't think adding a "Vault Search" button would be a huge deal, as it's essentially just a link to the vault.

[edit] Also guys please don't ping me personally to a topic unless you feel it's been ignored for a while. I browse these forums every day and I do my best to respond to things in a reasonable time frame. If a topic is older, give me some time after bumping it up for me to see it! It can feel kind of stressful/pressuring when I get a personal ping for suggestions like this - It feels like I'm being rushed to do more, when I already have a lot on my plate and am doing my best to keep up :S Thanks for understanding!

One thing we are working on right now is moving more and more things to the Subeta API. That's the stuff you see sometimes that starts with "sapi" instead of the normal site domain. When we do database things through sapi, it's wayyy faster than how most things are currently being done. So we are hoping to address the vault lag issue by eventually moving some of the item stuff to sapi, because then it should load lightning fast.

I actually spent the past few days writing some sapi stuff to handle pets, since the pets.php page is one that can be ridiculously slow to load. To give you an idea of how significantly it helps: After rewriting it to use sapi, we found this page loads under a second even when you have 70 pets and no cache. I'm working hard to get these changes ready to be rolled out asap, and after that, I'll be turning my attention to getting sapi to handle some item-related things too like the vault. It's our hope that as we move more things to the API, the site will run smoother and faster so a lot of our current issues about resource management will be less of an issue.

For now I still have to request everyone's patience >< It's hard work, and every stage requires lots of review and testing to make sure we don't break things even more by putting them online. But in the end hopefully it will not just solve some problems on its own, but make it much easier for us to fix everything else :)