What you need to upgrade each pouch at least once and where to find materials.
Your inventory in Horizon: Forbidden West is divided into different pouches.
Pouches determine how much of a type of item Aloy can carry on her person – anything over that is automatically sent to her stash. In order to carry more things with you and gain the inventory upgrade trophy, you need to craft bigger pouches.
This guide will show you how to upgrade each pouch in the game and where you can find the materials to do so.
On this page:
Horizon Zero Dawn Story Explained Part 1: Project Zero Dawn And How Humanity Went Extinct
If you’d like to learn more about Horizon: Forbidden West, check out our door code for Death’s Door mission, Tallneck in Cinnabar Sands and leveling and skill points pages.
What kind of pouches are in Horizon: Forbidden West?
Each type of ammo, as well as a few items, has their own pouch in Horizon: Forbidden West. Each pouch can be upgraded three times, and with each upgrade you can carry more of a specific item with you. The resource pouch holds machine parts and valuables to sell, the tripwire pouch holds ammo for your Tripcaster, and so forth.
You unlock each pouch type automatically the first time you unlock a new ammo type, or, in the case of food, buy food from a vendor at a settlement for the first time. You can see each pouch and how many items they hold at their current level by visiting your workbench.
How to upgrade pouches in Horizon: Forbidden West
In a change from the first game, each pouch upgrade in Horizon: Forbidden West now only requires a modest number of metal shards, as well as materials you can gather from animals.
Each pouch can be upgraded three times and, once you’ve reached Level 3, you’ll be able to carry the maximum amount of that specific resource.
Animal loot comes in three rarities, signified by the color of the icon that appears after a successful kill:
- Common – White icon
- Rare – Blue icon
- Very rare – Purple icon
Hides are rare, feathers and some animal bones are very rare, so it may take a few tries for you to get the material you need. The higher the upgrade level for a pouch, the rarer the materials you need for the next upgrade.
The good news is that the animals you need to hunt in order to get those upgrades are for the most part not difficult to find, since animals seem a lot more common than in the first game. Once you have the materials needed, simply visit a settlement with a workbench and select “pouch upgrades”, then navigate to the pouch you want to upgrade.
Aloy has returned in Horizon: Forbidden West! To help you get started in her new quest, visit our pages on how leveling and skill points work, along with how to upgrade your inventory pouches. We’ve also looked at how to climb the Tallneck in Cinnabar Sands and the door code for Death’s Door mission.
How to find pouch upgrade resources in Horizon: Forbidden West
Pouch upgrade resources in Horizon: Forbidden West can be collected through two main methods:
Hunting
You can find each type of animal in Horizon: Forbidden West in its natural habitat, meaning some of them are more common than others. You can find boars, squirrels, rabbits and foxes in most forests for example, and pelicans on beaches near the sea, while vultures are at home in the desert.
If that’s too complicated for you, Forbidden West gives you a helpful tool to find the necessary animal, (almost) no searching necessary. All you have to do is to set the resource you’re looking for as a job.
To do that, visit a workbench, select the pouch you want to upgrade, and press triangle to create a job for it.
The game will then ask you if you want to set the job as your current quest. As soon as the job is created, a small yellow icon will appear over the pouch.
As soon as you set a job, it will appear in the quest list under jobs.
When you set a job as your active quest, the game will automatically calculate a definite location of the material you’re looking for, no matter where you currently are on the map, and set a waypoint there.
This system isn’t completely smooth – you will definitely be able to find the animals on the location the map shows you, but in some cases, you might also be able to find them in a location much closer to where you currently are.
As soon as you have set your pouch upgrade as a job however, the quest menu will tell you in what climates or landscapes you can expect to find a certain animal, so even if you don’t want to follow a waypoint, setting your resource hunt as a job definitely helps.
Note that some animals, such as crabs and fish are rarer than let’s say, a boar, and can only be found in very few specific locations, so don’t be surprised if the journey to a certain animal’s stomping grounds can still take a while .
When hunting, it helps to make use of your focus in order to clearly see your prey, especially smaller animals like racoons, and tag them so you don’t miss your shot even as they move around.
Buying from hunters
At some larger settlements, hunters sell limited quantities of uncommon and sometimes even rare animal parts.
To buy them, you have to pay in shards and valuables you can gain from animals, such as small skulls and feathers. If a hunter offers an animal material you need for a job, an icon will appear next to the word resources in the shop menu.
Good luck in Horizon: Forbidden West!
