Guide:Inventory management

Keeping a clean and organized inventory is a key part of success in Terraria. Running back and forth between your home-base and current mining extension is unavoidable to new characters. Figuring out what to keep, what to store in chests and what to throw out along the way will reduce the number of trips, allowing for more digging time. As a general rule, when you leave your house you should always have 10 or more slots in your inventory free, which will allow you to pick up new items as you continue your adventure.

While you're in the middle of the earth, digging a new ore vein you just found, you realize you have no room to pick it up. What do you do? There are several options:
 * Discard low-value, easily acquired blocks you dont need. Dirt Blocks and stone blocks are usually not needed in the quantity that you get them.
 * Return to your home base and unload current goods into chests and containers.
 * Create temporary containers to put things in, so that you can pick them up at a later time.



Once you return home, you should have several containers waiting for you. A good idea is to separate items into categories, and to keep each category in separate chests. For example, keep weapons/accessories in one chest and ore/bars in another. Doing this will allow you to easily store newly acquired items of the same type by using the 'Quick Stack' command in the Storage Items. Having a chest to quickly put things into is a good idea as well, because sometimes you need to get to a friend quickly.

Tips

 * When you find a chest and you have an open slot in your inventory, pick it up and take it home with you. To pick up a chest, you need to loot it first and break it with a hammer.
 * If you don't wish to clutter your living space with lots of chests, create a new world and name it something like "Storage World". The size of this world doesn't really matter, since any world will provide you with ample space to place your chests. Simply put them near the spawn point and make a visit whenever you need to store or take any items from there.
 * Once the merchant spawns, buy a piggy bank and build a Wooden Table. Carry them to increase your available inventory, just place the bank on the table to access the extra slots - then pick them up and continue.