Fallout 4 Guide: How to Carry More Items When Overencumbered

Fallout 4, more than any Bethesda game before it, will have you carrying around a ton of stuff. Weapons, armor, and other items will fill your inventory, but also a ton of “junk” items that are actually extremely important. This means you’ll constantly be pushing the limits to what you can carry, but in Fallout 4 there are a bunch of ways to get around this. Here’s a quick guide for how to carry more items in Fallout 4.

First up is the easy stuff, though it actually takes a lot more time than the other options. Raise you Strength stat and for each point you’ll be able to carry 10 pounds more. Raise it high enough and you’ll find the Strong Back perk. This perk will instantly give you a 25 pound boost to your carry capacity at just rank 1. Rank 2 raises that to 50, and beyond that allows you to run and fast travel when overencumbered. You can also grab the Lone Wanderer perk, which gives you a boost to carry capacity. This will mean you can’t use any companion other than Dogmeat though.

You can also give yourself a temporary boost using certain chems. Buffout, Bufftats, and other chems that raise your Strength stat will temporarily boost your carry capacity. Grab everything you want to carry, pop one or two of these, and fast travel to a spot where you can dump everything.

This is just if you want your character to be able to carry more though, and even that only gets you so far. How about if you need to carry more, but have to use those perks for something else? That’s where your companion comes in.

Each of the companions in Fallout 4 can carry a ton of items, usually close to the amount you can carry, even Dogmeat. Grab all the stuff you want to carry and speak with your companion. Tell them you want to trade with them and start sending items over into their inventory. Start with the heavy stuff, like Power Armor parts.

Eventually it will say that they can’t carry anymore, but that just means they can’t take that item. Start trying to hand them smaller and smaller items and eventually you’ll find that they have a little bit of capacity left. Once they have everything and you’re back below your threshold you can fast travel out to Sanctuary, or wherever it is you store all that “junk”.