Inventory and Stash Upgrades for Collectors (Method Inside, Plus Management Tips)

[Revengeance]

If you're anything like me, you want to collect All The Things.

Sadly, KoA:R is terrible for such players. Inventory space is at a premium, but there are workarounds for people willing to dirty their hands with tools such as Cheat Engine.

To upgrade your character's carrying capacity, the easiest way is to turn on Cheat Engine before buying a backpack. Load the KoA:R process and scan for an Exact Value equal to your character's current inventory space. Then buy the backpack, and scan again, using the new value. This should isolate the address of your inventory size, allowing you to freely change it to any (reasonable) number. True hoarders probably won't need anything beyond 1,000.

If you're a more noble soul and despise using third-party software to give yourself advantages, have no fear: you can also get an unlimited supply of backpacks. It'll just require getting your hands extremely bloody, and you probably won't be able to collect all the books and scrolls that appear throughout the game. Plus, it takes a lot longer. Here's the method:

1) Go to Mel Senshir.
2) Buy a backpack from Illyn Doldran.
3) Murder Illyn. If you're concerned by the prospect of enormous bounties, you can set a Shadow Prism to move his position closer to the jail, then assassinate him with Faeblades. Due to the physics of the game, his body will go flying toward the blacksmithing area.
4) For best results, immediately throw a Smoke Bomb or drink an invisibility potion. Guards will de-aggro, allowing fast travel away from Mel Senshir.
5) Illyn will respawn either in a few days, or at the conclusion of each quest. He'll have another backpack to sell. He'll also be on the lower level, where he can be assassinated out of sight and therefore without a bounty.
6) Repeat as desired.

Unfortunately, this leads to horrendous inventory management issues, with dozens of Unique and Set items cluttering the page, as well as hundreds of books and consumables. Ideally, you'd want to store them somewhere, but the Stash is only 155 spaces large. There is no permanent fix, short of editing the game itself, and so far that solution hasn't been found. The reason for this is that the stash size is not actually stored in your save file - the variable is set in a data file, and called when your character is loaded. As a result, changes made in Cheat Engine won't persist.

However, they will last for the duration of a play session. The previous "best practice" was to search for an array of bytes in Cheat Engine. There is a better way:

1) Load your game.
2) When you're ready to dump your Phat Lewt into the Stash, enter Cheat Engine and search for the string "stash_inventory_limit".
3) Open Memory Viewer within Cheat Engine, and examine the block of memory. You should see a string of 0's followed by a 9B - the hex code for 155.
4) Change the first two bits before the 9B (and the 9B as well, if you desire) to anything you like, so long as it's hex (0-9, A-F).
5) Quicksave, then quickload. This is necessary because the stash size is only called on loading.
6) Your stash should now correspond to the hex code you just entered. Items may be freely stashed.

The next time the game is started, the stash size will reset to 155. However, items stored in the stash will still exist. You won't be able to add anything more to the stash without repeating this process, but it will remove a lot of clutter.

As a final note, be very vigilant about picking up items, as many are quest items and cannot be removed by any means. Because each item is stored in multiple places within the save file, it can be very difficult to identify them and it's not obvious what the quest flags are anyway. Make hard saves before every dungeon, and check that any items you may have picked up can be stashed or sold. Fortunately, some quest items can be sold - typically, if they're not required to be turned in as part of the quest. Since the game "remembers" up to 50 items sold to merchants, you can designate a "stash merchant" to sell all of your quasi-unique items to, thereby reducing the amount of scrolling needed to run through your inventory. In particular, here is a (probably non-exhaustive) list of stuck quest items:

Vanilla Game:

1) The Maiden's Ring and Selkie Veil are permanent if you manage to keep them through persuasion checks at the conclusion of each quest. However, they're also collectable uniques, so that's a price collectors should be willing to pay.

2) Red Legion Daggers can be looted from the Red Legion leader, but cannot be stashed. They can be sold, however.

3) The three "Azo's" rings may or may not become stuck depending on the choices you make. Turning them in and then stealing them back will lock them in your inventory; *sometimes* they will become unsellable, sometimes not. Be sure to check!

4) A quest in Detyre requires harvesting a unique plant, but this plant respawns. Only harvest it once, or you'll be stuck with the extra in your inventory forever.

5) The Blacksmithing Trainer's quest - also in Detyre, and the follow-on to (1) - has a required item in 2 distinct dungeons. Only one will be taken from the player, so don't pick up the other if you like a tidy inventory.

6) Some quests from the Scholia Arcana line have permanent items, such as journals. Sadly, this is an inevitable price for completionists.

7) During one of the Travelers quests, you can pick up Grim's thief tools as well as the Missives of Sable, but turning in the Missives will stick the tools. When completing this quest, bargain for Grim's freedom rather than springing him out.

8) There are Death Notices that can be found in the world. These are not related to any quest, but are permanent. One is in the Forsaken Plains inside a grave. Another is in a dungeon within Tala-Rane. A third is found inside The Raven in Mel Aglir. Do not pick them up!

9) A task in Tala-Rane has you hunting for a variety of monsters throughout the Faelands. Make sure all requirements are fulfilled before turning the task in, and be sure to ask for more work when turning the quest in. Otherwise, you'll get duplicates of the vials. Be sure to save first just to be safe.

10) The House of Ballads quest line can make the House of Ballads Armor Set stuck if you stash/sell the set and then pick it up again. The Whistle, Storage Case, and King's Token also get stuck, but the Storage Case and King's Token can be sold. Finally, there are multiple Desk Keys; while these are tucked out of sight, they cannot be removed.

11) Buru's Boots in the Travelers quest line will become stuck if not equipped during the appropriate quest.

DLC:

1) The Legend of Dead Kel introduces building materials in both random loot (chests and mobs) and as rewards for the Diplomacy and Scouting Mission quests. Do not pick up any such items from mobs - the game will clear them in due time. Save before collecting the rewards from either quest, and reload if you receive more materials than you'd like. Random chests have more than enough to finish the Gravehal reconstruction; the only crafting components you're likely to want are the Flawless Damaging Bindings/Grips/Rivets and Flawless Everlasting Trim/String/Linings.

2) Also in The Legend of Dead Kel, the Ancient Texts are quest items. Be prepared for lots of clutter. More importantly, some of the chests containing them *will respawn* after enough time. To minimize cluttering, complete the entire DLC as quickly as possible, and then stay away from the DLC content. You can also find a Cage Key which is used in the quest The Price of Freedom. Because that quest is mutually exclusive with another, the key can become stuck; unfortunately, it appears in the main inventory rather than on the keyring.

3) The Teeth of Naros leaves Ethene's Cipher in the inventory permanently. Unfortunately, it's required to complete the DLC so this is something you have to deal with.

4) The Teeth of Naros also has an Amphora which can be refilled. However, doing so before the game prompts you to (i.e., before it's fully empty) will result in duplication.

There may be more I've left out.

Thanks for reading; I hope this was helpful to everyone.

(Edited to add items to the "stuck quest items" list.)

(Edited again to add a few more.)

[JuanWick]

Thanks. very useful ;)

[snake_angel_18]

In the Teeth of Naros DLC Ethene's Cipher also is an item that gets stuck in the inventory after the quest is over (you need it for the main quest, but it is permanently stuck in the inventory after the main quest.)


Is there a way to use the Cheat Engine to change the flags to let you get rid of (or at least let you put it in the stash) things like the Cipher after the quest, or the Akara's power vial you get during the Master of the Keep quest?

[BaelZephyr]

Just a small FYI, most quest items do not hold inventory space. Such as the cypher, the house of ballads whistle, the building pieces for dead kel dlc, and a bunch of others, they just sit in your inventory.