Inventory and Money Management

While it may sound odd that we have included a section titled Inventory Management at the start of our guide in truth it did not arrive that way or in that order. This section came about as the result of lessons learned in play that suggest that you knowing about this NOW, before you get too far into the game, can only be a good thing.

So please take a few minutes to read the following suggestions...

Your Inventory

It may not be obvious to you at first but the game treats the personal and horse inventory as if they are ONE. That means that even when you are on foot, the capacity and its additions that are applied to your horse via the Saddle Bags still maintains a relationship to what you can carry and how much,

The other important point to make is that looking at your inventory for each tab does NOT allow you to see how much remains available. That is to say that there is no set number of boxes in each tab for you to use to judge when you are getting closer to full.

To increase the amount you can carry in Inventory requires you to purchase Saddle Bags. These come in several versions, each of which expands storage to a set amount. Ideally you will purchase better bags whenever you encounter them.

You WILL find some of the basic bags as loot. More advanced versions must be purchased with money and they are not cheap. But they are worth buying nevertheless...

Expanding your Inventory capacity as soon as you can is a good idea for a number of reasons, not the least being that you want to not have to think twice about Collecting reagents or looting loot. Keep upgrading and this will never be an issue.

Increasing Inventory Space

As noted, the purchase of Saddle Bags and then actually deploying the bags onto your horse is the fast track to increasing the amount you can carry in your Inventory.

There are a number of Saddle Bags in the game... In the Prologue you can obtain as loot the basic model, and in Act I you can get a larger version. The bags are:

• Saddlebags - +20 Added Weight

• Rugged Saddlebags - +70 Added Weight

Note that it says Added Weight - not Added items... The Inventory tabs will expand to include everything you pick up and allow you to stack like items up to the max weight you can carry. Once you reach the max weight though, you will not be able to add more.

Bear in mind that the formula for Inventory Max Weight is a combination of the weight your character can carry plus the weight the horse can carry, and again this is increased by getting better bags. There is also an increase when your character levels up and gets more stamina.

Dealing with Inventory

There are some steps you can take to help control and manage the weight you are carrying, so please make use of the following tips:

• Combining - Certain items like Mutagens can be combined to make stronger items of the same item line. Is when you have 20 of the base Mutagen (regardless of color) if you have the recipe for making stronger versions you should USE it. That way you can use basic Alchemy to lower the weight you are carrying.
• Metals - Metals come in raw forms (several) as well as ingot and plate. Ideally you should convert the raw forms up to ingots, and keep plates as they are, since you can convert ingots into plates as needed.
• Dismantling - Have crafters dismantle larger heavier objects. In particular dismantling furs and weapons as well as armor (that you do not choose to sell) will offer incredible weight savings.
• Stack Management - Finally you should manage the numbers of reagents and other resources that stack. You do not need 50 Fool's Parsley Leaves or 50 Wolfsbane - and while they may weigh next to nothing, when you have dozens of large stacks of different reagents, the weight can add up. The same is true for crafting components.

  Try to figure out what the most you will need for each in terms of crafting sessions is and then sell off any extra - that way you get the added income in coin, while Saving weight. Just saying...

Brass Tacks

It all comes down to weight. Seriously.

There is no evident limit to the number of different items you can carry - the Inventory boxes will simply expand to include all of the stacks of all of the items you are carrying. Natch!

The actual hard limits of the Inventory Scheme kick in when the weight you are carrying exceeds the weight you CAN carry. A quick glance at the PDA Inventory Screen will reveal this in the form of the top bar of the screen, which if you look at it right now will reveal, in the top right side, the following constant information:

xxxx (Coin Symbol) xx/xx Weight Symbol) Level XX xxx/xxxx

So what do all the x's mean? The first column is your money/bank - the x's are the amount of Crowns you possess and the Coin Symbol? That is the game symbol for Crowns.

The x's in the second column break down to the amount of weight you are carrying by the maximum amount of weight you CAN carry and those numbers are followed by the Weight Symbol which is - well, a weight!

Finally there is the Level Status Display, or LSD -- which tells you what level you are, how much XP you have towards the next level, and the target amount of XP you need to hit the next level.

So yeah, all of this is simple enough but what you need to take away from it is this: the max weight you can carry is the only evident limitation in the Inventory Scheme.

That said, once you exceed that max weight you will discover that you move very slowly and you cannot run or dodge when over-weight! So yeah, you do NOT want to be overweight!

But if you DO find yourself carrying more loot than you should, be at ease. You CAN drop stuff. Not you know, that you would WANT to but hey, sometimes you HAVE to. Oh you can try crafting some of the resources into other objects but usually the new object ends up weighing more than the stuff you used to make it. Just saying....

Money

The money you will use most often is Crowns - that is the Coin of the Realm as it were. However there are two OTHER types of money you will loot and in some quantity... These are discussed below, as well as how they can be converted into Crowns.

Florens - Can be exchanged for Crowns at the Vivaldo Bank in Novigrad

Orens - Can be exchanged for Crowns at the Vivaldi Bank in Novigrad

You may want to look at this as a clever way to create savings since you cannot spend them until you actually get to Novigrad and can convert them. That being said, you should ALWAYS loot them.

Getting Crowns

Funnily enough it is not XP and leveling that players complain the most about in the game, but rather the difficulty in getting as much money in the form of Crowns that is needed.

This is entirely accurate. And not just early in the adventure either! You are going to need a steady flow of Crowns, and so one of the tactics you should use is to learn what the components are for the various loot you get.

For example once you have a sufficient amount of fabric and metals it may make more sense to sell rather than breakdown the armor and weapons you loot.

The easy sources for Crowns is a combination of consistent looting AND doing quests. Seriously, you get a LOT from quests. And as they also deliver XP, that is a win-win setup.

If you need more Crowns and do not want to grind them out there is a cheat you can use for the console version only - that involves Seashells.

In Novigrad there is a merchant who sells Seashells fairly cheap. You buy stacks and stacks of them from him, then go to the Armorer and have them broken down into Pearls. Then you take the Pearls and go to the Pawn Shop on the east side of town (it is located a little north and west of the bridge).

Go inside and do the following:

1. Purchase ALL of the Floren he has. As that is an inventory item he will instantly restock it. Keep doing that until you are out of money (or have put sufficient funds in his inventory so that he can afford to purchase all of the Pearls you have).

2. Sell him your Pearls.

3. Rinse and Repeat.

After you have sold all of your Pearls and purchased all the Floren you can, head back to the main market and convert the Floren to Crowns at the bank. Between the two exercises you will turn the Crowns you started with into more than twice as much in value.

You can do this pretty much as much as you like - at least until they patch it. But as of now it is a legitimate tactic and is not considered cheating!

That wraps up the tips - for now - on Inventory and money.