Starfield: How to Manage Encumbrance & Mass

Inventory management is a large aspect of several games, and Starfield is no different. You’ll manage your character’s overall mass, ensuring you don’t become overencumbered, which is a common notification to receive while exploring any planet.

There are several ways you can go out of your way to manage your character’s inventory, and it all comes down to double-checking your character’s encumbrance levels, and how much mass they’re holding. Here’s what you need to know about how to manage encumbrance and mass while playing Starfield.

How to Lower Encumbrance & Mass in Starfield

You can manage your character’s inventory while playing Starfield in a few ways. One of the easiest ways to do this is to regularly go through what your character is holding and throw it into your ship’s cargo hold. You can do this from your Ship inventory menu or manually place it into your ship’s cargo inventory menu. I feel that doing it from the Ship inventory menu is much easier as you don’t have to be immediately in front of the terminal. However, similar to your character, a ship’s cargo hold can only contain so much.

Some of the heavier items your character will carry will likely be in the Resources, Misc, Helmets, Spacesuits, or Weapons categories in Starfield. I feel that the Resources can easily become overwhelming for a character because of how much the items stack up and how much they can weigh. Placing those in a cargo hold is always a good idea, followed by selling any Miscs, Helmets, Spacesuits, or Weapons you do not regularly use.

Thankfully, there are a few perks you can pick up in Starfield that you can add to your character that can make carrying stuff much easier. Even though you do have to use Skill points to purchase them, they’re worthwhile in the long run.

The Best Perks to Increase Inventory Size in Starfield

One of the more common ones you can grab for your character is called Weight Lifting. Each Skill point you put into Weight Lifting steadily increases your character’s carrying capacity for their standard amount, going up to 100 Kilograms. Your Starfield character’s overall strength won’t increase, but it should make it easier to carry nearly anything around with them, on top of the bonuses they receive from any armor or bonuses. You can find it in the Physical category.

The second one I always grab for my character is Payloads, and it’s in the Technology Skill tree in Starfield. Similar to Weight Lifting, Payloads increase your ship’s carrying space, which means they can store more items in their ship’s cargo bay. You may also need to purchase higher quality ships with large cargo holds, but buying a better ship requires a higher Piloting skill and credits.

If you increase your Starfield character’s Science skill and put points into the Spacesuit Design, there are bonuses to increase a spacesuit’s carrying capacity. You’ll want to do this regularly whenever you find a new suit you want and if you’re regularly struggling to carry items.

How Companions Can Carry Items For You in Starfield

Finally, the last thing I’ll say that can help you with your character’s encumbrance and mass management comes from having Companions. You can speak with your Companions and regularly ask them to hold items for you. They have the same limitations as your character where they can only carry so much, but they’re a good way to free up some critical inventory space and offload those items to a vendor for credits in your pocket.