Lets say you have a three part palm tree, Palm bunch, then two palm logs. To avoid using up something to break up these items, I just drag it to a plank station, and use R1 quick menu to craft planks. Planks go into inventory, fine. The palm bunch and remaining log remains. Now lets say the plank station uses the middle section of the tree, this means you have one palm bunch and a log on the ground. You can still drag them around, however you cannot put them into your inventory. its like the game sees it still as a full tree. I usually toss all the palm bunches into a pile off to the side… and then when I log on next, Im THEN able to pick up the palm bunches and have them in my inventory or store them in boxes.
So reloading seems to fix the issue.
I just drag the logs to the station to keep making planks. If i have to store a log for some reason, well it has to sit to the side as well.
But having like 25 palm bunches laying around tends to cause some lag until I relog.
Break up trees before you turn them into planks, take just the tops and put in a pile, then clear inventory, pick up all the logs that u intend to make planks out of and make a pile next to your plank station. Use the quick build while looking at log/station. This works very effectively with no lag for me. The tops of the trees only seem to make lagg if u have tons of them from multiple islands. Try doing that. Dragging full trees is a waste of time.
Thank you for sharing this experience you’ve had with the plank station. I shall pass this info onto the team so they can look into it and what happens when the planking station breaks the tree instead of your character.
Piles of loose items have been reported to cause lag on an island - the workaround for which is usually to store items in crates, but if you can’t store items then that’ll prevent that workaround until reloading as you mentioned. I’ll be sure to add this point to my report too.
While I understand it’s not the most ideal workaround, I would recomment not letting your piles get too big before reloading. Severe lag has been known to cause issues with saving and crashing so reloading often should help avoid that.
You may also wish to use Dank-a-licous’ suggested method above if that suits better.