How to increase your carry weight limit in Stalker 2

Wondering how to increase your carry weight limit in Stalker 2? Inventory management is an important part of the Stalker series. You can see your current inventory weight in the coloured bar below your inventory in Stalker 2, and if you hit any of the coloured thresholds, you'll begin to get overencumbered by the weight of all your gear.

While overencumbered, your movement speed will be decreased, your stamina will deplete faster, and it will refill more slowly. If you go beyond your max weight limit (80kg by default), then you'll be unable to move until you throw some stuff out of your inventory. It's not a good situation to be in, but thankfully there are ways to increase your carry weight capacity, both temporarily and permanently. Read our guide below to learn all the ways to improve your carrying capacity in Stalker 2!

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How to increase carry weight limit in Stalker 2

There are five ways to increase your carry weight limit in Stalker 2:

In addition to these tips, you should regularly sift through your inventory and drop what you don't need, as well as offloading surplus gear in trades or into your private stash to minimise weight. But if you're still hitting up against your carry weight limit, then the above five tips will help you to avoid getting overencumbered throughout your Stalker 2 playthrough.

Let's go through each of these strategies in more detail.

Equip Artifacts that boost carry weight limit

You can have up to five slots in your suit for holding Artifacts you find around anomalies in the Zone, and a couple of them grant bonuses to your carry weight limit. These Artifacts are: Sprint, Flytrap, Stone Blood, and Goldfish. They can all be found randomly near gravitational anomalies. Sprint and Flytrap have greater weight bonuses, but they also emit more radiation, so make sure you balance them with radio protection Artifacts like Slug and Mica.

Upgrade your armor for increased carry capacity

You can upgrade your gear in Stalker 2 by speaking to a Tech, and certain armor upgrades will increase your carry weight limit while it is equipped. Not all Techs will be able to work on every piece of gear, so you may need to visit multiple major settlements before you find one that can do the job, but it's well worth doing if you find yourself hitting the weight limit frequently on missions.

An example of such upgrades is the Load-Bearing Vest, which can increase your carrying capacity by 10% (from 80kg to 88kg). These upgrades are generally quite expensive, but as you enter the mid-game you'll likely find yourself with more than enough coupons to justify the cost.

Upgrade your gear to decrease its weight

The flipside of upgrading your armor for increased carry weight is upgrading all your other gear to lower their weight. Most weapons and armor will have an upgrade option somewhere to decrease their total weight, making it much easier to lug them around. These upgrades are also generally cheaper than the cost to upgrade your armor for the overall carry weight bonus, so they're a much more accessible option early on.

Equip Stalker Suits with max weight bonuses

Certain Stalker Suits have specific bonuses that increase your carry weight limit - and in my opinion, this bonus makes them among the most valuable suits in the game. Here are a few specific suits that increase your carry weight limit:

• Cuirass Exoskeleton (Found in SKD Assembly Unit, Cooling Towers): +8kg carry weight
• OZK Explorer's Suit (Found beneath the Sphere, Lesser Zone): +8kg carry weight
• Wanderer's Suit (South Swamp Journalist's Stash): +8kg carry weight

Use Hercules consumables for a temporary weight bonus

The final option is to use the Hercules consumable drug to temporarily increase your carry weight limit. Don't turn your nose up at this option just because it's temporary. Take one of these drugs, and you add 20kg to your max carry weight for 10 minutes. That's a very decent boost to your carrying capacity, and it's enough to make travelling much easier when you're on the tail-end of a loot-filled excursion.

You can find the occasional Hercules drug lying around just about anywhere, particularly looking inside medical crates and facilities. You can also trade with medics in major settlements to see if they have any spare Hercules lying around.

Hopefully this guide has given you a few options when it comes to managing your inventory and increasing your max carry weight limit in Stalker 2. For more primers like this one, check out our guides on how to fast travel, how to get more ammo, how to repair equipment, and how to use Bolts.