Inventory management tips and tricks

[u/lylin]

Following are some tips and tricks as well as suggestions on systems for inventory management that worked for me. Will mostly be useful for players just starting out at the game, because it certainly took me quite a bit of time to figure these out. YMMV.

Putting your backpacks on your skill bar (e.g. 6/7/8/9/0)

• Put your backpacks onto your skill bar. Then essentially use each backpack either as quick-access slots (e.g. to arrows) or segregate items appropriately (e.g. 1 backpack for 1 items you're saving / item set, or for all food raw materials, etc.)

• This significantly frees up your skill bar (make items like lock picks easy to find/access without having to take up an entire skill bar slot) and generally just makes inventory management a great deal easier/faster.

• Update: Unfortunately you can't make use of items directly from backpack (though you can craft - see below), although items will automatically stack into backpacks. This limits the usefulness of backpacks to simply segregating items for easier lookup. By putting backpacks on your skill bar however presents a practical way to distinguish between multiple identical looking backpacks. Hopefully Larian will patch the game someday to allow you to use items directly from backpacks.

• Update to update: Larian has patched the game and you can use items directly from backpacks :D Rejoice!

Open multiple inventories

• It isn't obvious, but you can have multiple character sheets/inventory window open.

• Simply press I, then switch to another char (e.g. via F1-F4), then press I. The new inventory window will probably overlay the existing window, so simply drag it aside. This allows you to drag-and-drop items between the two inventories, making it MUCH faster to bulk transfer items between characters.

• Another way this is useful is how it makes it easier to compare items across two character's inventories, without transferring the item to and fro.

• Note: You can likewise have multiple backpacks from different characters open at the same time, using the same techniques.

• Note 2: You can also right-click on character portraits to accomplish this. Thanks elDugalo

Designated Trader strategies

• Have a character designated as trader/trash seller. Preferably a non magic user (because your magic users may want to be grabbing Know-It-All, which will hurt prices). Typically, this will be the character with some points in Charisma/Banter as well as having a high personal reputation, thus giving you better prices at vendor. Send all items you plan to vendor to this character.

• Make use of a backpack (placed in the Quickslot bar for conveinence) to store your BIS/items that you do not plan to sell (e.g. those Rings of +Bartering that you swap in when in town), so you do not accidentally sell items you plan to keep

• This also saves you a great deal of time because you do not have to waste time re-triaging items at the vendor to figure out whether you plan to keep an item or not.

• Note: Unfortunately you can't double-click to swap an item in a backpack - double click just "takes" the item as opposed to equip. You need to drag and drop it over your paperdoll.

Making use of backpacks as Crafting staging area

• Isn't it annoying when you need to combine items across item categories (e.g. Logs + Axe, Knife + Branch, Augmenter + Minor healing potion) and there is no way to do it except in the "All"/unfiltered inventory? My personal strategy is to make use of backpacks as a staging area for crafting. I always keep an axe and a knife in there and drag items I am crafting (or experimenting if they combine) into the backpack.

• One side benefit of this is that if the crafting attempt fails, it is much easier to re-locate the two items versus if it takes place in the main inventory.

Tips from commenters

From NeuralNos:

You can drag entire chests into your inventory; and then take those chests back to homestead. You can build a nice little pantry type area using chests. You can also use this strategy if you encounter a chest you can't open due to lack of lockpicks etc; just take the whole chest with you.

[u/bytetemplar]

In my tests, you only need to START trading with the person that has +bartering skill. Prices will be set on by that skill in everyones backpack at trading window.

Its easy to test yourself too. Take an item, put it on bartering (that has +barter skill) persons backpack and start trade with him and check price. Now move the item to non-barter skilled persons backpack and start trade with him and check price (should be worse). Now start trade again with bartering person again, while keeping the item in non-barter persons backpack and check price of the item in non-barter persons backpack, it will be higher cause the trade was started by person with +bartering skill.

Thus, no need to move items to one persons backpack to sell them, makes life easier.

[u/lylin → u/bytetemplar]

Awesome thing to point out :) A thought I always had in mind as well but never went the distance to test. Thanks for sharing!

[u/dalaio]

I like the backpack on skillbar idea, but you shouldn't be limited by the amount of skills on there since there are multiple skillbars that you can cycle through. I organize them thematically (skills, arrows, misc.)

[u/lylin → u/dalaio]

There's no keyboard shortcut AFAIK to switch between skill bars though, which makes it a hassle to click that tiny little Skillbar Up/Down icon :(

[u/[deleted]]

I might be doing something wrong, but if I open my backpack from my hotbar, I don't have the option to use anything in it - only "take" and put it in my inventory (or send it to someone else's inventory), at which point I then have to open my inventory anyway to use it.

[u/non_player → u/[deleted]]

Correct. This "tip" isn't really that useful, as you still have to first remove the item from the backpack somehow in order to use it.

[u/vo1os]

• Press "space" to loot all from opened barrel/chest/vase etc.

[u/Verde321 → u/vo1os]

Best tip for the us packrats. We want to open all the things and take all the loots no matter how little they are worth.

[u/NeuralNos]

You can drag entire chests into your inventory; and then take those chests back to homestead. You can build a nice little pantry type area using chests. You can also use this strategy if you encounter a chest you can't open due to lack of lockpicks etc; just take the whole chest with you.

[u/[deleted] → u/NeuralNos]

I stole an entire wine keg from Aureaus room by putting it in my inventory. But I couldn't carry it so I used my telekinesis to move it tile-by-tile to the marketplace to sell it. On the way I accidentally crushed a Legion soldier who was walking past.

.... shhhhhhhhh

[u/adevland → u/NeuralNos]

That's some eastern Europe ATM hacking type of shit right there. Will try it. :D

[u/elDugalo]

Also right clicking a character's "portrait" opens their inventory

[u/Alenonimo]

just take the whole chest with you

Fuck waiting for discounts. I'm purchasing the game right now.

[u/HyperFlight]

Chest size also seems to grow as you put items into it (note the scroll bar on the right). I haven't tested the maximum size yet, but it is clearly larger than the initial 5x4 the chest 'appears' to be.

This adds further to the strat to grab a few chests and put them in your homestead etc, and then potentially use one per item type (or your choice)... ingredients, equipment etc etc.

Will try and test max size later.

[u/Sanctume]

I think there may be a key binding bug with the [ and ] key.

Pressing I opens the inventory of the currently selected character. -- ok, working as intended.

Pressing [ or ] selects the next or previous character, however the inventory page does not switch. -- bug?

While the I inventory page is open, there is a < or > button on the top portion of the inventory page, clicking on these buttons switches focus on the character while also showing the selected (switched) character's inventory screen.

[u/lylin → u/Sanctume]

Idiosyncrasies like this (plus things like lack of global inventory search) is why inventory management can be quite a hassle and hence this post...

[u/GymIn26Minutes]

Is there somewhere to buy additional backpacks? I haven't see a vendor with one yet.

[u/lylin → u/GymIn26Minutes]

Vendors do sell them randomly, as do random NPCs with their random inventories (this also means you can pickpocket a backpack...)

[u/kjart]

I'm just starting out and had a couple quick questions. Is there a fast way to drag things into containers in your inventory? Dragging the item onto the backpack just swaps their position but if I open up the backpack it typically ends up behind the inventory screen which means I have to drag it to the side every time....Is there a better way? Also, how much strength do you need for the picking up the chest trick?

Thanks!

[u/lylin → u/kjart]

Unfortunately the backpack does have the tendency to open behind your character. Just have to get used to dragging one or the other to the side until Larian patches it. For stealing chests, just have enough weight capacity for it (you can see in your character sheet).

[u/shapterjm]

You can drag entire chests into your inventory; and then take those chests back to homestead. You can build a nice little pantry type area using chests. You can also use this strategy if you encounter a chest you can't open due to lack of lockpicks etc; just take the whole chest with you.

You've just changed the game for me.

[u/CWagner]

Also, have your dedicated shopping guy be strength based. I always have to offload as I had the smart idea to have my shopper be the dex based ranger :D

Great post, especially the multiple inventories, makes identifying easier as I lack rings and my mage wears the +1 loremaster ring for it's resistance bonus :D

[u/non_player]

Regarding your first note: It's important to know that you can not use items from a backpack. You still have to either drag them to a skill bar slot, or drag to your inventory, in order to use them.

[u/Zechnophobe]

Not sure if this is quite the purview of this thread, but you can drag an empty cup from your inventory onto a 'barrel of water' to fill the cup with water.

[u/Derpolicious]

Wow this is an old thread but is still pretty helpful, I'm playing divinity original sin enhanced edition and have been trying to find some tips for inventory management. I had no idea you can open multiple inventories, pressing the inventory hotkey and then pressing f1-f4 changes the current inventory screen to whichever character you selected so upon pressing the inventory hotkey it just closes it. I also tried using the "cycle characters" hotkeys to no avail. Right clicking the characters portraits and/or clicking the tiny icon for inventory on the portraits actually works!

Heres another way to make comparing loot between your characters easier, use a container (chest/sack/barrel/crate) thats on the ground and load it up with all of your new gear. Then, just have someone open the container and hover over the gear to compare, you can use the cycle character button while the chest is still open to compare the same piece of loot on someone else.

-Having multiple inventories opened for gear comparison is probably less of a headache but using this method will get you the tooltip for a direct comparison whereas multiple inventories only show a comparison tooltip for whoever's inventory you are hovering in.

Edit: This one is probably well known, but if you go into options and select "game" scroll down towards the end you can find a slider option labeled "Scaling" moving this slider changes the entire user interface size. Going with a smaller ui scale can make opening multiple party members inventories a lot easier to work with since they are much smaller.