Fallout 4: How to Increase Your Carrying Capacity
During your travels across the wasteland, you’ll come across weapons, armor, and a ton of junk that you’ll want to keep hold of. Whether it’s as a backup weapon, junk to turn into crafting resources, or that worn fedora that increases your Perception, the last thing you want to find is that you’re encumbered once you’ve picked it up. Here are the best ways to increase your carry capacity to ensure no item gets left behind.
Check Your Perks
One of the best and easiest ways to increase your carry strength in Fallout 4 is to pour skill points into the Strength perk. Every time you add a point into the Strength stat of your SPECIAL perk tree, you’ll gain an extra ten points of carry capacity. If you’ve already maxed out your Strength stat to the full ten, then look no further than the Strong Back perk, unlocked when your Strength has reached six.
The Strong Back perk increases your overall carry weight by 25 for rank one, 50 for rank two, and in its later ranks allows you to use action points to run while overencumbered, and fast travel while overencumbered for its final rank. This final rank of Strong Back means you can head back to a settlement and dump all your junk, without painstakingly walking for three hours to get to your nearest settlement. Finally, if you choose to wander the wasteland alone, the Lone Wanderer perk under the Charisma stat will boost your carry weight by 50 on rank one, and 100 on rank two.
Armor Crafting
When you have some issues with your carrying capacity, make your way over to an armor crafting table. There is almost always an option to make a ‘Pocketed’ modification on each individual piece of armor. This improves your overall carrying capacity by five points for each item that you add a pocket to. Therefore, if you add a pocket to every item possible, you’re looking at about an extra 25-30 points of carrying capacity.
It’s a simple way to increase your carrying capacity, but just make sure you’ve got enough adhesive, cloth, and leather to allow you to craft it. We’ve got a handy adhesive farming guide here, too.
Use Your Companion
As long as you’ve chosen not to wander the wasteland alone, you’ve always got a sneaky way of keeping extra items nearby that your character cannot physically carry. Simply talk to your chosen companion and ask to trade. Throw in any extra pieces of equipment that you can’t carry, but you want to keep hold of. The best practice for this is to give them items that they cannot possibly use. You don’t want to hand them that hefty Missile Launcher only for them to use it in a confined area of combat and take your arm off.
Companions seem to have an unlimited carry capacity too, meaning you could quite literally use them as a storage box for any junk and apparel that your carry capacity won’t allow you to have directly to hand. Our chosen pack mule is Dogmeat, because even if you give him weapons, he can’t use them. Just make sure you don’t lose him in the wasteland if he’s carrying your Fatman!
Take Some Chems
If you have no other option, you can always choose to take some Buffout or Bufftats. These chems boost your Strength by two points for five minutes and three points for eight minutes, respectively. Both of these should give you enough of a boost to your carry capacity to get that extra weapon or piece of armor back to your settlement with a quick dash, or allow you fast travel with it.
Be warned, though, like with all chems, Buffout and Bufftats have a chance of you becoming addicted and having some nasty side effects. Buffout is the safer choice with a 10% chance of addiction while the more beneficial effects of Bufftats will cost you a 15% chance of addiction.
How have you been increasing your carry capacity? Have you got any tips you use to allow you to carry all of your equipment around the wasteland? Let us know in the comments below.
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