Burdened: Immersive Carrying

Burdened

Make every carried slot matter

Burdened reshapes Vintage Story's carrying loop around fewer, meaningful slots and bags you interact with directly.

It does not add per-item weight. Instead, it makes the hotbar, bag bar, offhand, and placed bags behave like one coherent carrying system.

The intent is simple: preparation and bag choice should matter without putting your items at risk.

What Burdened changes

• Configurable carrying space: choose between 1 and 10 usable hotbar slots and 1 and 4 bag-equip slots. The HUD contracts around the available slots, scrolling skips locked positions, and the server enforces the same rules for every player.
• Immersive bag roles: replace the normal bag bar with three typed slots, L / B / R. Backpacks and other wearable bags, such as quivers, remain visible together on the player.
• Bags from other mods: a bag is placed by what it is, not by a list of names, so bags added by other mods are sorted with no setup. Mods may declare their own default role, and the BagRoleOverrides setting lets the server owner reassign any bag, including vanilla ones.
• Bags as physical storage: open equipped bags from the hotbar, keep multiple bag windows open, place equipped bags into the world, and pick placed bags directly back into a compatible equip slot. Selecting a bag moves only it into the hand; other wearable bags stay on the body.
• A focused inventory screen: optionally remove bag contents from the inventory dialog so pressing E opens a compact crafting-only window. Equipped bags remain available from the hotbar.
• Useful, bounded offhand storage: manually place non-bag items in the offhand. Bags are rejected. While this setting is enabled, automatic pickup does not use the offhand as an overflow destination. The vanilla hunger penalty for ordinary offhand items is configurable: 0.2 keeps the normal 20% increase, while 0 disables it.
• Safe slot reduction: if configuration locks an occupied slot, Burdened first moves its item into valid inventory space, then drops it at the player's feet if necessary. Items are never intentionally deleted.

 

When an equipped bag is selected, it is shown in the player's hand without also appearing as a worn duplicate.

 

Config: two usable hotbar slots and one bag slot. The hotbar contracts around whatever remains.

 

Works with quivers.

 

And populated skeps as well.

Immersive carrying 

Immersive carrying mode replaces the four-slot bag bar with three typed slots. The back slot takes your pack. The left and right slots take everything else, so a quiver or a mining bag never costs you the slot a backpack needs.

The immersive L, B, and R bag slots.

 

Items accepted by the immersive bag roles.

Bag controls

Where	Input	Action
Placed bag	Right click	Open its inventory
Placed bag	Shift + right click	Equip it into a compatible empty bag slot
Equipped bag slot	Right click	Open or close that bag's inventory
Equipped bag slot	Shift + click	Place it on the targeted block
Selected equipped bag	Right click	Open or close the bag when the targeted block does not use the input
Selected equipped bag	Shift + right click	Place it on the targeted block

 

Several equipped and placed bag inventories open at once.

 

Use Ctrl + mouse wheel to include equipped bag slots in hotbar selection. Multiple equipped bags can remain open at the same time. If a pickup or placement is rejected, the bag and its contents remain at the source.

Wall-mounted bags such as quivers keep their vanilla placement gesture: Ctrl + Shift against a wall.

Configuration

Burdened creates the following server-owned file on first run:

%APPDATA%\VintagestoryData\ModConfig\burdened.json

After editing the file, restart the dedicated server or reopen the singleplayer world so the server loads and sends the updated settings.

Setting	Default	Effect
HotbarSlots	10	Number of usable hotbar slots, from 1 to 10
BagSlots	4	Number of usable bag-equip slots, from 1 to 4
ImmersiveCarryingMode	false	Uses the typed L / B / R bag layout instead of BagSlots
HideBagContentsInDialog	true	Keeps bag contents out of the E inventory dialog
OffhandHoldsAnything	true	Allows manual offhand storage for non-bag items
OffhandHungerPenalty	0.2	Extra hunger rate for ordinary offhand items; 0 disables it
ImprovedBagInteractions	true	Enables direct opening, placing, and pickup of bags
BagRoleOverrides	{}	Assigns bags to the back or waist slots by item code

 

BagRoleOverrides takes an item code and a role of back or waist. Codes accept * wildcards, and an entry with no domain is read as game:. An entry naming an unknown role is skipped and written to the server log at startup.

"BagRoleOverrides": {   "othermod:rucksack-*": "back",   "game:backpack-sturdy": "waist" }

 

Bag mods can declare their own default role in item JSON:

"attributes": { "burdened": { "bagRole": "back" } }

 

NOTE: A server override always wins over that default. Listing an item that is not a bag does not make it equippable. Entries the server cannot use are skipped and written to the log at startup so a typo is easy to spot.

Compatibility and installation

Version 0.5.0 changes the network protocol. Clients and servers must both run 0.5.0. A client on an older version cannot join a 0.5.0 server. Existing worlds are unaffected, and OffhandHungerPenalty is added with the vanilla default of 0.2, so no manual migration is required.

 

• Built for Vintage Story 1.22.3.
• Required on both the client and server.
• Standalone, with no required dependencies.
• Mods that alter the same inventory, hotbar, bag-slot, or worn-bag behavior may conflict. This includes Immersive Backpacks, Wilderlands Onus Moderatus, and Immersive Modular Backpacks.

 

Download the matching zip from the Files tab or use 1-click install. For a manual installation, place the zip in the Vintage Story Mods directory without unpacking it, then restart the game or server.

More information

• Source and full documentation
• Release history
• Feature status and design decisions
• Bug reports and feature requests
• Support development on Ko-fi

 

Burdened is actively developed. The public mod remains free.

 

Keywords: Carrying, Inventory, Immersion, Immersive, Bag, Quiver, Waist, Backpack, Burden, Carry, Hardcore, Management, Realism, Mechanics, Improvement, GUI, Hotbar, Slot