There should be a way to specify if a DB NPC (putnpc2) is put into the npcs/ folder, or a subdirectory of that.
I know that you can have the NPCs simply save locally, and they will be stored separately; however, there is no option to just put them in a different place without saving them locally.
Perhaps an options fourth paramater could be added to putnpc2, something like
PHP Code:
putnpc2(32, 32, "", "items/");
The reason I would like this is because it is currently impossible to make a backup of Era's NPCs (copying from the npcs/ directory to a local folder) because RC2, RC1, and scripted-RC all fail to view the directory since it has too many files.