Managing your inventory in The Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t have to be hard… even if you don’t have ESO Plus. In this guide, learn which items to keep, deconstruct, and sell. Discover the importance of ESO Plus when managing your inventory, and find out all the ways you can increase your inventory capacity in ESO.

In this guide, I’ll go into depth regarding which items you should keep, deconstruct, and sell in The Elder Scrolls Online. I’m going to cover additional considerations — like the importance of ESO Plus — explain how to expand your inventory space, and even list out commonly overlooked tips: like making mule characters or sending items to your friends for them to return to sender.

What is the maximum inventory space in The Elder Scrolls Online?

Even with every available upgrade, your maximum inventory size in The Elder Scrolls Online is 215. You can have an additional 480 slots in your bank. You can also have storage coffers, a guild bank — things we’ll get into later on the guide.

Even with ESO Plus, even with all the upgrades you can get, inventory space is not limitless in ESO. We’re going to begin the guide by covering which items you should keep, deconstruct, and sell, covering all the different kinds of items you might come across in your adventures in ESO and providing guidance on what to do with all of them.

Which items should I keep in The Elder Scrolls Online?

In ESO, you should keep any researchable gear, crafting materials, crafting motif pages, or furnishing diagrams you pick up.

You should definitely keep any researchable gear you come across in ESO. It’s important to start researching gear traits as early as possible, and the best way to do so is to simply research gear that you find as you adventure around the world of Tamriel. Gear that is researchable has a magnifying glass icon next to it.

You should also keep any crafting materials you pick up. Of course, this is a lot easier if you have ESO Plus because you have an infinite craft bag.

But, even if you aren’t an ESO Plus member, crafting materials sell for very little gold at merchants. And, as you level your crafting skills, you’ll probably want these.

If you do choose to sell your crafting materials, sell them through a guild trader instead of to a merchant because you’ll get a lot more gold.

Other items you should keep are crafting motif pages and furnishing diagrams. If this is a character you want to make into your main crafter, you should use your crafting motifs as soon as you find them.

The same goes for furnishing plans. If you already have a furnishing plan or crafting motif, you might want to sell it through a guild trader, but you only get a pittance of gold for these through merchants while they’re worth a lot more.

The only other thing you should keep while you’re leveling is any gear that is above the level of the gear you’re currently wearing. Otherwise, you’re going to want to either deconstruct or sell that gear.

In the end, there isn’t actually very much you’re going to want to keep or hoard out of the items that you find as you adventure in Tamriel. Most of it you’re going to use pretty much immediately, sell, or deconstruct.

Which items should I deconstruct in The Elder Scrolls Online?

In ESO, you should deconstruct any Intricate gear or any low-level gear that can’t be researched.

Any gear with the Intricate trait should definitely be deconstructed. That’s what it’s designed for, and it gives you way more crafting skill line inspiration than normal gear.

Intricate gear gives you 280% more crafting inspiration, meaning you should definitely deconstruct these items.

You should also deconstruct any unwanted or low-level gear that can’t be researched. Once you’ve researched a particular trait on a particular type of gear (or if the gear doesn’t have a trait at all), you can just deconstruct any additional gear that has that trait.

So, just remember to research it if it has that little magnifying glass icon. Otherwise, deconstruct it.

Which items should I sell to merchants in The Elder Scrolls Online?

In ESO, you should sell gear with the Ornate trait along with any items labeled as “Treasures” or “Trash.” You may also want to sell Potions, Poisons, and Soul gems.

You should definitely sell any gear that has the Ornate trait. You get 280% more gold for Ornate gear, making it much more useful to sell this gear rather than deconstruct it.

You should also sell any items labeled as Treasures or Trash. Trash drops from random mobs. Treasures are more commonly found through reward coffers you get by playing the game.

Also, I personally just sell any poisons or potions I get. I don’t really use poisons. They’re kind of confusing. And as far as potions go, you’re going to get much better potions along the road.

There’s no need to keep these either. They just take up inventory space. They don’t give a lot of gold, but I sell them basically just to get rid of them.

What you shouldn’t sell is wearable gear. It’s going to be more profitable to you to either deconstruct or research it.

Knowing what to keep, sell, and deconstruct is only half the battle. There’s a lot more to consider when it comes to properly managing your inventory in ESO.

So, let’s dive into some of those additional considerations. And, at the end of the guide, we’ll cover all the different ways you can expand your inventory space.

How does ESO Plus improve inventory management in The Elder Scrolls Online?

Having ESO Plus primarily makes inventory management easier because it provides you with a Craft Bag. When you have ESO Plus, any crafting material items you get automatically go to your Craft Bag.

You can have tons of stuff in here that would otherwise be cluttering up your inventory.

Honestly, the Craft Bag is one of the main reasons veteran players get or keep ESO Plus. Effective inventory management is possible — but a lot more difficult — without it.

At the same time, plenty of people play ESO every day without ESO Plus. It’s not strictly necessary, but you’ll definitely need to use some of the other tricks I’m going to cover in this guide if you want to efficiently manage your inventory without ESO Plus.

ESO Plus doesn’t just give you the craft bag, though. It also gives you access to every single DLC. It even gives you 1650 Crowns every month. So, in my opinion, it’s worth it for a lot of other reasons aside from just the craft bag.

Should I bind items before getting rid of them in The Elder Scrolls Online?

Yes, you should make sure that any items you sell or deconstruct in ESO are bound. Keep in mind that researching or deconstructing an item automatically binds it, adding that item to your Set Collection “sticker book.”

Selling also binds items — in a way. Items you sell only get bound when they’re no longer available in a merchant’s Buyback Menu. This menu contains up to 12 recently sold items, and it’s shared across all merchants in ESO.

If you want to sell an item but make sure that it’s bound immediately, you’re going to want to select “Bind” when you open the menu for the item.

If you follow the initial tips in this guide, you won’t come across this situation very frequently because you’ll be researching or deconstructing most gear. But, it’s important to be aware of how to bind items nonetheless.

What are “mule characters” in The Elder Scrolls Online?

Mule characters in ESO are additional characters you create specifically to utilize their inventory space.

If your main ESO character is running out of space, you can make additional characters and then send items over to them through the bank. Doing so is called using mule characters, and it’s a time-honored technique for getting additional inventory space.

How do I make a “personal guild bank” in ESO?

To make a personal guild bank in The Elder Scrolls Online, simply create a guild in the game, and then acquire 10 members to unlock the guild bank function. You can either recruit other players or simply make nine additional accounts and add them to your guild.

Once your personal guild bank is up and running, deposit items in your guild bank when your normal bank and inventory are full.

What is the “return to sender” inventory hack in The Elder Scrolls Online?

In ESO, the “return to sender” inventory management method is when you send items to a friend or alternate account using the in-game mail system and then have them returned to you, the sender.

Items you get mailed back to yourself will remain in your inbox for 30 days, giving you a month to clear up some inventory space and claim your items back.

With those additional considerations out of the way, let’s cover the normal and mainstream ways to increase your inventory space in ESO that almost every player eventually pursues.

How do you increase your inventory space in The Elder Scrolls Online?

In ESO, you can now upgrade your maximum inventory capacity directly through the UI. When you go to your Inventory and your bag has not been fully maxed out in that character, you’ll see an option saying “Upgrade Bag Space.”

This does cost quite a bit of gold — way less than it used to — but simply acquire the necessary gold, and increase your available bag space until you can’t increase it anymore.

This should be one of your first priorities on any new ESO character: Accumulate the gold necessary either from other characters or any other means to get your inventory space to maximum.

How do you increase your bank space in The Elder Scrolls Online?

To increase your bank space in ESO, simply navigate to your bank and select the “Increase Bank Space” option. The maximum bank capacity in ESO is 480, and maxing out your bank space is just as important — if not more important — than increasing your personal inventory space on your character, because you share your bank across all your characters.

What are Storage Chests and Storage Coffers in ESO?

Storage Coffers and Chests in The Elder Scrolls Online are furnishings you can place in your player home to provide additional space for storing items. You can acquire Storage Chests and Coffers either by buying them in the Crown Store, purchasing them with Writ Vouchers from Rolis Hlallu, or buying them from Tel Var General Merchants with Tel Var Stones in the Imperial City.

This is a much higher priority for non-ESO Plus members. If you do find yourself running out of inventory space, get some Storage Coffers or Chests and put them in your house.

How do I increase my inventory capacity at the Stablemaster in ESO?

You can increase your character’s overall inventory capacity in ESO by selecting “Carry Capacity” as your daily mount upgrade at a Stablemaster.

This doesn’t just apply when you’re riding your mount. Even when it’s unsummoned, your mount can apparently magically carry items.

Investing in this stat at the Stablemaster permanently increases your inventory space on that character. As of Update 49, you can increase this stat by 3% every single day.

How do you increase your inventory capacity with pets in The Elder Scrolls Online?

Inventory capacity pets, purchasable through the ESO Crown Store for 1200 Crowns Each, permanently increase your inventory capacity by 5 account-wide.

There are three inventory capacity pets in ESO overall, so if you buy all three, that means every character on your account will have its inventory space increased by 15.

This is kind of expensive, and the pets themselves really aren’t that great. But, if you are desperate for a few more inventory slots, picking up these inventory capacity pets is definitely an option.

Conclusion

That does it for this introductory guide to managing your inventory in ESO. I really hope the guide helped you figure out how to manage your inventory in the game — made it easier to figure out what to keep, deconstruct, and sell, how to increase your inventory capacity, and just in general get through one of the biggest bottlenecks in the game with grace, which is managing your inventory, all the items you pick up, figuring out what to do with them, how to keep your inventory from getting clogged.