Previous Fallout games have focused heavily on scavenging supplies and hoarding large quantities of items - and Fallout 76 is no exception. Like Fallout 4, you can find junk items all over the world that can be broken down into base components - but that stuff, combined with your weapons, armor, food, and even ammo, can really start to weigh you down!
A player starts the game with only 155lbs worth of inventory space. Once you put down a CAMP, or find a Vault-Tec shared stash, you can place your unused items here - but so far it ONLY holds 400lbs of additional space. While this may easily hold extra junk early in the game, once you start finding heavy weaponry and Power Armor, or start hoarding components, you may find that you’re constantly spending time managing your inventory weight limits.
Below are tips and tricks for being efficient with the space in your inventory and CAMP/Stash, so that you can worry less about stopping mid-exploration to figure out what to drop.
Expand Your Inventory with Perks and Mods
Besides leveling up your Strength stat, there’s only a few dedicated ways to expand your inventory: Perks, and Armor Mods. Power Armor can also be equipped to give you a huge boost to strengths, which will increase inventory size while using the armor.
Certain Perks will lower the weight of various types of items, letting you choose which to carry more of, or invest in all the perks to carry anything you need:
- Traveling Pharmacy (unlocks at level 3) - lowers weight of chems and stimpaks
- Pack Rat (unlocks at level 7) - lowers weight of all junk items
- Thru-Hiker (unlocks at level 7 - lowers weight of all food and drinks
- Packin’ Light (unlocks at level 9) - lowers weight of pistols
- Sturdy Frame (unlocks at level 13) - lowers weight of all armor
- Martial Artist (unlocks at level 16) - lowers weight of melee weapons
- Scattershot (unlocks at level 18) - lowers weight of shotguns
- Bandolier (unlocks at level 22) - lowers weight of all ammo
- Strong Back (unlocks at level 26) - gain +10 weight limit per rank
- Batteries Included (unlocks at level 28) - lowers weight of energy weapon ammo
- Ordnance Express (unlocks at level 31) - lowers weight of all explosives
- Bear Arms (unlocks at level 35) - lowers weight of all Heavy Guns
Remember - you can swap out perks as needed once they have been unlocked, allowing you to use these weight related perks when you need them most.
In addition to perks, you can learn armor mods by finding or buying plans, or by scrapping armor - and by learning how to craft “Pocketed” armor, you can increase the carry weight while that armor is equipped. You may even find modded pocketed armor on enemies you kill if you get lucky.
The Scrap and Stash
First things first - all of your base components should go into your stash whenever possible. The most effective way of doing this comes from two distinct options: When at a craftingstation, hit the “Scrap All Junk” button, and then at your stash or CAMP, hit the “Store all Junk” button.
You may not realize it, but many junk items tend to weigh a LOT more than the base components they are made out of. For this reason, it’s especially important NOT to store unscrapped junk in your stash. While the junk will be pulled for ingredients when crafting - it will still take up more space than its worth in the meantime, which can really tie things up.
After you’ve explored a location and are ready to move on, try to find a workshop on the property or one nearby to scrap your junk in as soon as possible. Then look for a location like a train station or Red Rocket truck stop to store your materials. If you can’t find either, you can always drop your CAMP for a few caps, and do the same.
Wasteful Weapons
Fallout has a habit of throwing more weaponsat you than you can handle - especially early in the game when taking on hordes of Scorched - or even Super Mutants. Weapons (as well as armor) tend to weigh a lot, and there is rarely a reason to hang on to more than a few different types in your inventory. When you find a suitable weapon, repair to full, and then start scrapping every duplicate of that weapon you find - as you’ll start learning new mods to apply to your main weapon.
You’ll also want to prioritize a few weapon types (a long range weapon, one or two short range weapons, and one melee weapon). Pick weapons types you intend to stick with to bolster with perks - and either stash or scrap the rest! For example: A sniper rifle with the Sharpshooter Perk, a non-automatic pistol with the Crackshot perk, and a two-handed axe with the Slugger perk are all you need to fight in a variety of situations, freeing your inventory to only need a Huntsman’s Rifle, 10mm Pistol, and Fire Axe. If you start swapping out perks, swap out your weapons accordingly!
Your level is also very important when figuring out which weapons to keep. All weapons have a minimum levels, but you’ll also start finding better versions every 5 levels or so. Once you reach level 10, there should be no reason to keep hoarding level 5 weapons because you can’t upgrade their base level. The inverse is also true - even if you find a level 30 missile launcher at level 10, it’s really not worth keeping many high level weapons around (unless they are unique!) when you’ll have to wait a very long time to use them, and will likely find more in your travels.
Scrap vs Sell
The one advantage junk has over its scrapped components is that you can sell junk to vendors, but most won’t take base components. If you happen to be nearby a Train Station, wandering merchant, or another robot merchant, you may want to consider just selling items like Pre-War Money and cigars or heavy junk instead of adding more components to your pile.
If you need to offload components - there are two main options: make use of your components and start base building, or find a Tinker’s Station and start bulking your components.
Bulked items uses plastic to wrap up components in a bundle, making them easier to sell (either to vendors or players), but rarely actually reduces the weight. Use good judgement when deciding what components are worth keeping around, and which ones are just filling up space.
Vendors also don’t have a lot of caps to trade with, and often share their resources across several vendors in the area, and regenerate their caps fairly slowly. Because of this, don’t be afraid to spend your caps buying worthwhile items like expensive plans, allowing you to keep selling as much junk as you need in exchange.
Too Much of a Good Thing
You might not expect it, but small things can add up quicker than you expect, making it harder to decide what to toss when you get over-encumbered.
Items like Chems, Stimpaks, and various types of food can weigh a pound or more, and if you aren’t careful, you’ll find yourself struggling to keep your weight under control. It can be tough, but often times you won’t need all the food you find. Set a hard limit for Stimpaks and Water, and a few food items or Chems you actually plan to use, and sell or stash the rest to use a backup when things get tough.
You can also look into the various Strength Perks that reduce the weight of items like Chems or Food, if you find yourself relying on carrying too many of them at a time. Remember that when harvesting plants or looting meat from animals - they’ll soon turn spoiled and become largely worthless unless you cook something, or turn them into fertilizer - but only do this if you’ve invested in a CAMP farm.
Otherwise, drop the spoiled items whenever you see them, and don’t be afraid to munch and drink to top off your hunger and thirst meters and keep yourself light.
Choosy Scavengers Choose the Essentials
When you loot everything you find, scrap everything you loot, and stash everything you scrap - you’ll eventually start noticing a disproportionate amount of resources. Steel and wood can be found most everywhere - but other things like Adhesives tend to be a lot more rare and in-demand for things like repairs.
After you’ve got a good stockpile of most types of components, try to relax on hoarding everything in sight and start looking for the good stuff: Grab duct tape and wonderglue for adhesives, and pass on wrenches and heavy pieces of metal. Keep around 100 pieces of the more common materials, and bulk and sell the surplus.
You can also start keeping track of what locations lend themselves better to find certain resources - like checking the WV Lumber Mill when you need to stockpile large amounts of wood.