About this mod
Realistically restricts the number of items you can carry, based on item type, not just item weight. You can’t haul a dozen hunting bows, even if they’re lightweight. Plan for your next quest and pack wisely – Skyrim is no longer a home for pack rats.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
Requirements
Inspired by (alternatives)
- Volumetric Capacity Beta – The original inventory capacity mod which inspired me to make my own. Great idea, but it didn’t work well when I converted and tried it.
- Harcore Capacity – An interesting concept: instead of dropping items, you just can’t fight or use magic while over-encumbered.
- Realistic Capacity – Another take on the inventory limit challenge, from the same author as Hardcore Capacity, this one works by adjusting your carry capacity when you equip items.
Complimentary mods
- Glanzer Tweaks to this Mod - Press a key to see how full your slots are, audible "item dropped" notifications, near-full notifications, and more. A worthwhile upgrade from this base version!
- Cobb encumbrance - You speed up or slow down depending on the total weight of your carried items. Fantastic and simple! Deals with weight, whereas my mod deals with item size (volume) so they play together very nicely.
- Immersive Horses - Horses become almost essential now that you can’t carry as much. IH allows you to assign a hotkey to remotely access your horse inventory, even deep in a dungeon. Nice for hauling loot out once you’ve cleared it without having to walk back and forth (just don’t cheat and use the horse’s inventory as your own!) Personally, I took it to the next level by reducing the horse’s carry weight from vanilla 999 to 250. (In SSEdit, go to Skyrim.esm>Race>HorseRace, and reduce “Base Carry Weight” as you see fit.)
- Frostfall, Campfire, Wet&Cold, and Bandoliers – all provide wearable backpacks, bandoliers, and pouches that work with this mod, allowing you to carry more. None are technically required, but trust me - you’ll want them!
What it does/how it works
This mod creates logical “limiter slots” which your items fit into. If you try to pick up an item, but its designated slot is already full, you can’t carry the item, so you’ll drop it and receive a notification instead.
Each slot has a base capacity, which can be boosted or reduced by equipping backpacks, bandoliers, or pouches. Frostfall backpacks, Campfire backpacks, Wet&Cold backpacks, and Bandoliers bags and pouches are all supported!
The slots have been built for a blend of hardcore realism and playability, but are fully customizable via MCM. By default, you’ll have enough room to carry what you need to explore, but not much more. A backpack certainly helps, but you still won’t be able to horde loot like you can in vanilla. You’ll need to wisely choose what to bring on a quest, and which loot to carry away from a dungeon. This has a side-effect of helping to balance the economy, since you’ll no longer be able to drag a dozen super valuable suits of armor into town for sale.
New in version 2: The mod now differentiates between equipped and unequipped (stowed) items, so you can adjust those individually. I also added a few custom user slots so you can customize it exactly how you want it.
What about the vanilla carry weight feature?
The slots defined
Slot #1 – Sheaths/weapons: You can carry six two-handed weapons, seven one-handed weapons, or a mix thereof. Wearing a backpack actually reduces this capacity a bit, since you can no longer sling weapons on your back. You’ll have enough for your main weapons, and maybe one or two extra to bring back to town for gold.
Slot #2 – Quiver: You can hold up to 60 arrows, or 50 bolts, or a mix thereof. Squeeze any more than that into your quiver, and you won’t be able to easily grab them out when needed.
Slot #3 – Coin purse: Highly valuable items (gems, soul gems, and jewelry) are securely kept here, away from the other stuff where they might get lost or damaged. Originally, this mod also limited gold here, but this made it impossible to carry enough gold for big purchases like houses, so now the gold limit has been disabled by default, so you can carry as much gold as your heart desires.
Slot #4 - Fragile bottles: You certainly can’t put your potions and mead in your backpack along with iron ingots, or you’ll have a mess on your hands! So keep your fragile bottles in the side pockets instead. You can only hold just a few without a backpack, but backpacks and bandoliers increase this capacity significantly.
Slot #5 – Hiding spots: lock picks are fragile enough that you don’t want them stuffed in with the other items in your backpack, and you need to keep them hidden from the guards to avoid suspicion. You can find spots to hide ten on your body, and a few more with every backpack/pouch/bandolier you equip.
Slots #6 through #9 – Custom user slots: By default, no items are assigned to these slots, but you can do so via the MCM. Use these as you see fit! The only thing you cannot customize via MCM is the overcapacity notification message - but you can do that via SSEEdit. Power users, see the image for an explanation of where to go to change that variable.
Configuration
Adjust the limiter slot capacity, backpack and other pack (bandolier/pouch) bonuses on the “Limiters slots” page. It also displays current slot capacity and usage here.
Adjust the item sizes, AND which slot they go into, on the “Items” page. Set any size to zero to stop this mod from restricting it.
On the "Misc options" tab, you can adjust what the mod considers a "medium" or "large" item. Also, you can choose to include or exclude weightless items (eg keys and notes) and/or mystery items that the mod can't accurately identify.
Any time you open and close the MCM, the mod will complete re-calculate all slots. This could take a minute or so, depending on how many items you have in your inventory at the time.
The only thing you CAN'T configure via MCM are the over-capacity messages you receive when a slot maxes out. To adjust those, you need to modify the ESP file via xEdit. For you power users, I've attached an image showing where to find those strings.
Notes/quirks:
New in v2.05: The mod will not drop anything picked up, if its quantity is 50. Why? Honed Metal adds ingots/materials to the player, 50 at a time, causing the chaos above. It's a janky workaround, but it'll let you use Honed Metal without setting the sliders to 0, and without causing materials to go flying all over.
If you remove a backpack while your slots are already nearly maxed out, it’s likely the slots will then be overcapacity. Originally, the mod removed items to get you back under the limit, but that quickly became problematic when I’d remove a backpack to take a bath or sleep, sending items flying all over. Now, though you’re overcapacity, it won’t drop items… you’ll just remain overcapacity until you drop some items on your own, or equip your backpack again.
How backpacks are detected
The bag detection function was re-written in version 2.04. I previous used the "HasKeywordString" - but that only "checks the first instance established by load order." This caused problems when two mods were in used that used the same keyword string with different FormIDs. Fixed in v2.04 and later!
Conflicts/Issues
Script load