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At the start of Starfield, you’ll quickly become encumbered by the generous amount of stuff enemies drop. You’ll want to carry extra space suits, weapons, resources and other miscellaneous items in your inventory — and even with an entire spaceship with its own cargo hold, that can fill up very fast. To help you keep your stuff, we’ll explain how to increase your personal carry weight limit and how to add more cargo containers to your spaceship. Carry all the stuff you need and become an ultimate cargo hauler.
More Starfield guides:
Best Skills | Best Ship Upgrades & Mods | All Companions | All Romance Options | All Settlement Locations | Join All Factions | How To Pirate Ships | Secret Companion | Secret Ship & Suit
How To Manage Carry Weight
Carry Weight is extremely limited early in Starfield — and even your cargo space isn’t infinite. If you want to carry more stuff and not trudge around with a very limited inventory, you’ll need to increase your carrying capacity.
Every item in your inventory has a Mass rating. Mass is the ‘Weight’ of Starfield — you’ll start with a Mass carrying capacity of about 135. That will fill extremely fast if you collect resources, ship parts, and other valuable cargo. If you do collect cargo on foot, make sure to add it to your Ship Cargo ASAP.
- How To Quickly Transfer Resources To Ship Cargo: Use the Ship Inventory (Cargo) menu to the left of the cockpit. There is a computer menu here that controls your cargo hold and displays everything currently being stored.
- Open the menu by slecting [Transfer] — once inside, select [Inventory]. On Xbox Console, the Inventory button is [LB].
- Next, select the [Resources] tab. Here, you can instantly transfer all resources to your cargo by pressing the [Store All Resources] button. That’s [RB] on Xbox.
Unloading resources is critical to saving on inventory space. You’ll also want to sell extra items. For anything you want to keep, instead of placing in the Ship Inventory, place it in the Captain’s Locker.
- Where To Find The Captain’s Locker: The Captain’s Locker is a special ship inventory located to the right of the cockpit. It is typically a small yellow wall safe. Use it to store extra armor, weapons or items.
Don’t worry about collecting Ammo, Cash or Med Packs. These all have 0.00 Mass so you can carry an infinite supply without weighing your character down. Grab all the ammo you find and don’t worry about sorting or storing it. You can carry as much as you want without encumbering yourself.
How To Increase Carry Weight
Carry Weight is determined by the Weight Lifting skill and is one of the most important skills to get early in the game.
- How To Increase Carrying Weight: Unlock the Weight Lifting skill under the Physical Tab. Rank 1 increases your carrying Weight by +10 kilograms. Each upgrade increases your Carrying Weight exponentially.
- Rank 1: 10 Mass
- Rank 2: 25 Mass
- Rank 3: 50 Mass
- Rank 4: 100 Mass
To unlock Rank 2, you’ll need to sprint for 1,000 meters while at 75% or more of your maximum load capacity. This is relatively simple. Go to any mission board and travel to a pirate or mercenary outpost. Grab enough weapons, armor and items to load you down but not encumber you. Then just sprint around until you unlock the next rank.
Alternatively, fill your inventory to 75% or more and simply continue to progress the game, sprinting wherever you go. You’ll rapidly complete the challenge. You can fill your inventory very quickly just by taking out heavy resources from your Ship Inventory.
How To Increase Ship Inventory
And finally, you’ll want to increase ship inventory fast. The starting inventory is pretty pitiful if you want to become a real space trucker.
- How To Increase Ship Inventory: To increase how much your ship can carry, you need to add more Cargo Holds.
- Cargo Holds can be purchased from any Ship Builder vendor or Kiosk. At the Ship Editor menu, open the Ship Builder [X] and Edit [A] while not selecting any component of the ship.
- This will bring up a buy menu. From here, select the [Cargo] tab. There are multiple Cargo options available at any vendor — and they range in extremely cheap to more expensive types of holds.
- Some Cargo Hold types will be locked. You’ll need to unlock Starship Design skill to purchase better and higher-level parts for your ship.
Upgrades can also be purchased at any Ship Builder. Upgrades require Piloting Skill ranks to unlock at higher levels. New Cargo Holds will increase how much mass your ship can carry. Please note that Cargo Holds are scanned as you approach every major or minor settlement, and you will be boarded if you’re carrying Contraband. Contraband is valuable but illegal, and if your ship is raided, you will also automatically lose any stolen items in your personal inventory.
