The Sinking City 2 Inventory Upgrades

Why inventory space is the upgrade that matters

Backpack space is the quiet difficulty setting in this game. The Sinking City 2 is about carrying capacity as much as about ammunition. You will routinely find more supplies than you can hold, and the choice of what to leave behind is the survival horror pressure the whole design rests on. An early inventory upgrade changes that maths permanently, which makes these the highest-value pickups in the game — higher than any single weapon part.

They are also the reason to care about ERC crates beyond their ammunition. A crate you skip may well have been an upgrade you can never get back on this run.

Where to look

• Inside ERC crates. The primary source. One activator pen per crate, and pens are scattered separately across the level.
• On tables in dungeon areas. These sit in the open, unguarded, in rooms slightly off the objective path. In a game this dark, "in the open" still means easy to miss.

Practically, that means the sweep habit matters more than any location list: clear side rooms before you advance an objective, and check flat surfaces — desks, benches, operating tables — rather than just containers.

Managing space before you find upgrades

Until the upgrades come in, three things help:

1. Use the safe room stash. Safe rooms let you store loot you cannot carry, and they are also where you save at the conch record player.
2. Commit to two weapons. Carrying ammunition for all six is what fills a bag. Pick a primary and a backup — which guns are worth it.
3. Craft rather than hoard. Raw materials take space too; see ammo and crafting.

Upgrades and the second playthrough

Because upgrades are missable and there is no chapter select, most players finish run one with a few gaps. That is fine — Ex Oblivione Mode exists, and the platinum requires a second run anyway for the codices.

If you are chasing 100%, the platinum roadmap suggests treating run one as the story-and-choices run and run two as the completion run, rather than trying to do both at once and enjoying neither.

How much space you actually need

There is a practical target rather than a perfect one. Enough space to carry two weapons' worth of ammunition, a few healing items, your crafting stock and the quest items a chapter hands you is comfortable; beyond that the returns fall off, because the game keeps restocking anyway.

What upgrades really buy you is the ability to not make trips back to a safe room stash in the middle of a level. In a game where every walk back through cleared space is another chance for a respawned Slither to catch you in a corridor, that is worth more than the raw numbers suggest.

If an upgrade is not appearing

• The crate is still shut. No pen, no upgrade — check the pen page.
• You are looking in containers only. Some upgrades are on tables, not in anything.
• You already picked it up. Upgrades apply immediately and silently; check your current capacity rather than your item list.

One habit is worth building early: whenever you clear a room, look at the flat surfaces a second time before you leave it. Containers glint and catch the eye; a backpack upgrade sitting on an operating table in an unlit corner does not, and it is the one pickup in The Sinking City 2 you genuinely cannot afford to walk past.