How To Fix Starfield’s Inventory, Storage And Encumbrance Problems

One near-constant criticism of Starfield, even among positive reviews, is how the game handles its inventory and item weight, meaning players are encumbered frequently, which saps your oxygen, eliminates fast travel and is all-around a pain.

It’s not good, I will say that, but there are a number of tools Starfield gives you to get around this to at least some extent. Here are all the ways to better bear your burdens.

Weight Lifting Perk – This is in the first row of the physical tree, and while you may want to be putting 4 skill points elsewhere, another 100 kg of carrying capacity is going to be incredible, trust me, and I think it’s worth it on whatever build you have.

Companions – Remember how Lydia was sworn to carry your burdens? Same deal here. Each companion can take a load off you and have their own inventory, so if you remember what you’re storing on each person, you can hit them up for stuff later. They will also use your best weapons in combat, if you give them those.

Ship Cargo – Some people aren’t going to know how to access this right away, but there’s both a panel in your flight deck and you can also access it from your ship menu. Ship storage ranges varies greatly, but some will have thousands of capacity. You can also add cargo compartments to any ship at the cost of increased weight (and possibly ugliness). There is also a perk to increase cargo space on your ships by scaling percentages.

Base-Building – You can build specific cargo containers for different types of materials on your bases so you can store stuff there instead of hauling it around. You can also build just normal chests, the type you loot out in the world. They don’t have unlimited capacity, but I had three for outfits, legendary weapons and legendary armor respectively, and it was a literal load off.

Armor Weighs a Ton – Spacesuits, boost packs and helmets all weigh the most out of any gear you pick up. While you may want an option or two, saving 4-5 of these at a time is going to be the vast majority of your inventory space and you gotta either store them elsewhere or make some cuts.

Check Your Inventory for Materials and Ship Parts – This is actually one of my biggest pieces of advice. You may not realize just how much weight you’re picking up if you’re randomly grabbing materials in the wild or from mining. Those are heavy, especially in bulk, and those are the kinds of things you are absolutely going to want to transfer elsewhere. One thing I kept running into specifically was accidentally carrying ultra-heavy Ship Parts without realizing it, which are meant to be stored on your ship to repair it after combat. Those are not listed in materials at all, only under “all” so absolutely look there if you cannot find what’s weighing so much in your inventory.

It’s not a great system and I hope they buff overall storage space at some point, but these are the things you are going to have to work with for now.

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