Hoarders rejoice! Today I’m going to show you how to make the most of your character. Every little item can be useful in Project Zomboid. The only problem is you won’t always have enough space to take everything with you! I am going to show you how to increase your carry weight/inventory space and give you some tips on taking more stuff along.
Project Zomboid is a game in early access which means it is still in development. You can keep up with the latest news on the Project Zomboid official site.
How to Increase Your Carry Weight in Project Zomboid
There are a few different ways that you can increase your character’s carry weight and bring more items along with you:
- Increase your Strength
- Find a Backpack to keep items in
- Drive around in a Vehicle and make use of the space in them
- Take the Organized trait when creating your character
These are just some of the ways that you can carry more items around with you. As each item has it’s own particular weight your inventory can fill up fast and leave your character over-encumbered. Obviously the best hing you can do storage-wise is to have a lot of smaller bases set up across the map and come back to them later with a vehicle.
How Does Storage Weight Capacity Work in Project Zomboid
In Project Zomboid every item in the game has a weight. These items will take up a certain amount of carrying weight in the storage unit they are in. Every container in the game has a limit of the amount of items that can be placed inside it. To see these limits, open up the container at the top of the screen and look at the top bar. See the image below for an example.
You can see the amount that I have marked with a 1 in the photo. This value is my characters carrying capacity. The 0/12 indicates that all of the items in my inventory weigh 0 and the full capacity of my character is 12. You character will be able to carry more than this limit, although the more you go over this limit, the slower and more fatigued your character will become while moving. If you character is under an extremely heavy load, there is a chance of injury and muscle fatigue as well.
One the right of the image, this is the container’s storage limit. For containers you can not go over the storage limit. Once you have items which take up the full 22 units of storage in the Big Hiking Bag nothing else can fit in this bag. When items are stored in the backpack and equipped to the players back they will weigh less than just being in the character’s general inventory.
Increasing Your Strength
One of the best ways to increase your character’s carrying weight capacity is to increase their strength skill. Levels in the strength skill directly allow your character to carry more items when they are leveled up. The effects of this can be immediately seen if you begin the game using some of the perks and traits which would increase your character’s carrying capacity. This is the easiest way to increase your strength as you just have to choose them at the start of the game.
One of the best ways that you can increase your strength in Project Zomboid if you have already started the game is to do strength-building exercises. If you want to read up on how to exercise in Project zomboid click on the guide below.
Using a Backpack to Store Items
One of the quickest and best ways to increase your carrying capacity is by utilizing bags and backpacks. Bags and containers can be found all around the place while you are looting and come in many different shapes and sizes. Getting your hands on a bag or container is one of the first things you should try to do when starting the game. Especially a backpack. Bags like the tote back and the suitcase are great if you need something quickly but you’ll have to carry them around in your secondary hand.
The best storage containers that are available in the game are packs. Particularly backpacks. By finding and equipping a backpack, you can store many different items inside it whilst keeping your hands free. To equip the backpack onto your charter’s back, right-click on the backpack and select the option which read’s Equip on Back. Once the backpack is equipped you can move items to it, by dragging them onto the backpack icon which will now be present on the right side of your character inventory UI. To see items in the backpack, left-click the icon.
- Top tip: The Military Backpack holds the most weight out of all of the packs in the game.
Using Vehicle Storage
One of the best way to bring a large amount of items around with you is by using the storage available in a vehicle. Like backs, vehicle storage capacity will also differ depending on the type of vehicle you are using. Moving vans and pickup trucks are going to have a lot larger storage capacity than a regular car trunk. A great thing to note about storing things in cars is that you can throw things on each of the car’s seats. Scroll through the seats in the inventory menu and send your items there. Make sure you don’t store any items on the seats that you want to sit on though, as your character will have to move them before they can get in the car.
As you can see in the image above, you can grab things out of the back of pickup trucks and store things there too. You can always access the back of pickup trucks. Check them out if you are moving past as there might just be something useful inside them. Other vehicles, like cars, may have locked doors. If the trunk of a car is locked you on’t be able to access it until you unlock it.
Create a Character With the Organized Trait
When you start your journey in Project Zomboid you are tasked with customizing your character. You can pick a past profession for them and add some positive and negative traits before you decide to start the game. One of the traits that you can take among the others is called the organized trait. The description for this trait reads, “Increased container inventory capacity.”
Whilst this trait won’t immediately increase your character’s carrying capacity, it will improve the inventory space of all bags. As your character is organized they are able to sort and store items a lot better than an average person would. By using this trait you will be able to fit more in every bag. Storing items in backpacks decreases their weight. This means you will be able to keep the total weight of all of your inventory down.