In the eerie wilderness of Pacific Drive, every scrap of loot counts-but limited inventory space can turn your survival quest into a frustrating scramble. Unlock the secrets of expanding your storage across your character’s backpack, your car’s trunk, and your Auto Shop hub with our essential guide to maximizing inventory in Pacific Drive on PC and PlayStation. From crafting bigger backpacks to upgrading your car with expansion racks and unlocking new lockers at your base, learn how to carry more and survive longer in this haunting driving adventure.
Our Pacific Drive guide to increasing your inventory size will tell you how to get a bigger backpack and how to expand the storage in your car.
How to expand backpack inventory in Pacific Drive
To expand your backpack inventory in Pacific Drive, start by unlocking the Outfitting Station blueprint through the Fabrication Station in the Garage tab. This requires resources like scrap metal, plastic, chemicals, gas cylinders, and stable energy. Once built in the Auto Shop, interact with the Outfitting Station to craft the Medium Backpack using 20 pieces of Fabric, which increases your inventory slots. Later, you can upgrade to the Large Backpack by crafting it with 40 pieces of Fabric and 200 Swamp Coral found in the Mid-Zone, further boosting your carrying capacity for better resource management during your explorations.
You’ll start Pacific Drive with a decently sized backpack. Getting a bigger one, though, requires you to build a new workbench at Oppy’s auto shop.
Head to the fabrication station and look for the outfitting station – it’s three columns in from the left and one up. It’s the one with a backpack icon. You’ll have to have the matter deconstructor (35 scrap metal, 4 gears, 4 electronics, 0.8 stable energy) unlocked first. The outfitting station doesn’t have any prerequisites and will cost you 7 scrap metal, 15 plastic, 2 chemicals, 2 gas cylinders, and 0.3 stable energy.
With the outfitting station built, interact with it to see the upgrades you can make to your gear. Right at the top, you’ll see the medium backpack (20 fabric) that increases your inventory space to 66 slots and gives you six quick slots.
How to expand car storage in Pacific Drive
To expand car storage in Pacific Drive, you need to use the Fabrication Station located in the garage. Start by unlocking the “Side Storage” upgrade under the Car Storage tab, which adds a significant amount of extra space to your car by attaching storage racks to it. Crafting Side Storage requires materials like scrap metal, duct tape, and fabric, and it must be installed on your car at a workbench. As you progress to the mid-zone and unlock Unstable Energy, you can further upgrade your trunk with options like “A Trunk in the Trunk,” which greatly increases trunk capacity. Later upgrades, such as Augmented Trunk Storage, become available with higher-tier energy types. These expansions allow you to carry more resources, tools, and health items, improving your survival chances and efficiency while exploring the hazardous zones of Pacific Drive.
There are ways to increase your car’s trunk space, but they involve resources and energies that you can’t get until the mid-game or later, so we’ll ignore those for now.
Back at the fabrication station, tab over to the seventh tech tree, expansion racks. Across the middle, you’ll find four side racks to unlock. They cost:
- 2 steel sheets, 0.5 stable energy
- 2 steel sheets, 1 stable energy
- 2 steel sheets, 1.5 stable energy
- 2 steel sheets, 2 stable energy
On the next tab over, car storage, research the first node – side storage for 0.5 stable energy. That’ll give you the blueprint to build side storage (2 scrap metal, 4 duct tape, 12 fabric). Side storage modules need to be attached to a side rack. They add 43 slots (in three boxes) of storage each. Hypothetically, you could attach up to four side storage modules, but there’s other stuff to attach to those side racks like flood lights and extra gas tanks.
What’s the secret to crafting the largest backpack in Pacific Drive
The secret to crafting the largest backpack in Pacific Drive lies in first unlocking and building the Outfitting Station at Oppy’s Auto Shop, which is accessed through the Fabrication Station’s Garage tab. This station allows you to craft backpack upgrades, starting with the Medium Backpack for 20 Fabric and progressing to the Large Backpack, which requires 40 Fabric and 200 Swamp Coral found in the Mid-Zone. The Large Backpack expands your inventory to 76 slots and eight Quick Slots, significantly boosting your carrying capacity for survival and crafting materials. Prioritize gathering abundant Fabric and exploring the Mid-Zone for Swamp Coral to craft this essential upgrade and maximize your resource haul on every run.
What specific resources do I need to craft the large backpack in Pacific Drive
To craft the Large Backpack in Pacific Drive, you need the following specific resources:
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40 units of Fabric
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200 units of Swamp Coral (often just called Coral), which is found in the Mid-Zone
These materials are used after unlocking the Outfitting Station at the Fabrication Station’s Garage tab, which allows backpack upgrades. The Large Backpack upgrade increases your inventory to 76 slots and eight Quick Slots, significantly expanding your carrying capacity.
