

Yui told Kirito that it would be a good idea for him to clear out his
inventory as all the items were bugged and he could be detected by the system
if they remained. As he was about to, he was hesitant in doing so. I can
assume one of the 2 reasons:

  1. All the items were a record of his 2 years in SAO and had a personal connection to them.

  2. Yui's Heart was in the inventory and he was being careful not to delete it.

However, in the anime, it didn't show any sort of filter was applied and his
entire inventory was cleared. So I am wondering what happened to Yui's Heart -
was it not in his inventory because Yui was right beside him or was Yui
protecting it in some way from the system so that it wouldn't appear in his
inventory.


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sword-art-online
What happened to Yui's Heart when Kirito wiped out his Inventory?


Like your previous question, I don't think there's a way to confirm exactly
what happened here, but I have 3 possible explanations.

  1. _Yui's Heart_ was marked as a special item and couldn't be deleted (e.g. Quest item, etc.), but I think this is the least likely, since as you said, the anime showed his inventory being empty and there was no filter on it.

  2. It could simply just have been consumed when Yui was summoned, so it was already gone when he deleted everything.

  3. It was simply deleted. Since Yui was already initialized in the world, it didn't matter if he had it in his inventory or not.


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Kirito saved Yui's data inside his NervGear local memory. The program is
usable in Alfheim Online, and it didn't get wiped out, maybe because it wasn't
data from SAO's save data (like his items). If ALO is based on SAO, then many
interface programs are just the same. This is shown when Kirito starts at ALO
and first checks the Logout button (which is there, unlike SAO).

Maybe the inventory showed both the items from SAO and _Yui's Heart_ from the
local memory. When he wiped out the inventory, _Yui's Heart_ remained because
it was not a cached item.


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From the point of view of programming and my experience (regarding MMO
mechanics), I think the _Yui's Heart_ item is like an object who grants a
passive skill in ALO.

When Kirito activated it, Yui became bound to Kirito's character so all data
from _Yui's Heart_ were also transferred.

From _Sword Art Online Volume 3 – Fairy Dance - Chapter 2_ :

> “So…wait a second”
>
> I suddenly thought of a possibility.
>
> If these are the items from Aincrad, - then «that» should be here too. I
> touch the item window, and scroll down the menu with my fingertip.
>
> “Please, please, please be there.”
>
> I quickly scroll down the list, ignoring all of the gibberish. My heart
> started beating faster and a feeling like ringing bells resounds through my
> body.
>
> “!”
>
> My fingers unconsciously stopped. Below my finger was a line of letters like
> all of the others save it was emitting a warm green color. « **MHCP001** ».
>
> Almost forgetting to breathe, I touched the name with trembling fingers.
> After selecting the item, the color reversed. Moving my fingers I pressed
> the button labeled “ **Use Item.** ”


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One other explanation from a developer perspective is that when Kirito
supposedly saved Yui's Heart to his NervGear, it would have been stored in a
different physical location from his inventory (which would typically be
stored server side).

The persistence of one's SAO inventory would make sense if SAO and ALO used
the same infrastructure, I have a feeling they may have been the same but
could not say so with certainty.


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