Inventory

Everything you carry is tied to the character rather than the world, including worn armor, the coin slots and the ammo slots. It all travels with you between worlds and between multiplayer servers. That is why a new world is never really a fresh start once you have a character with gear, and why lending someone a hand in their world costs you nothing.

Forty general slots in four rows, a ten slot hotbar mapped to the number keys, four coin slots, four ammo slots and a single trash slot. Picked up items fill the main grid starting from the bottom right. Stacks reach 9999 on current platforms, while older versions cap each item type individually, which is why potions there sit at odd numbers like 30 or 75.

Ammo in the ammo slots is spent before anything in the main grid, working down from the top slot, which is how you set a preferred firing order. Most ammunition jumps there on pickup by itself. Coins and sand are the exceptions: they work as ammunition for the Coin Gun and Sandgun but cannot be placed in ammo slots at all.

The trash slot holds one item until something replaces it. Replacing it destroys the old contents permanently, even if the two items would normally stack, and the slot empties when you die or leave the world. Anything sitting in the trash also stops working, so an encumbering stone parked there will not block pickups and a paint sprayer will not paint.

Three armor slots, three vanity slots that override the look without touching your stats, and three dye slots that recolor whatever is actually being displayed. If appearance does not interest you, the vanity slots are a free three slot armor rack: park a second set there and swap it in when the fight calls for a different class.

Three loadout buttons sit beside the armor slots. Each loadout keeps its own armor, accessories, vanity and dyes even while unused, so a full class switch is one click instead of a minute of dragging pieces around.

Five slots to begin with. A demon heart opens a sixth that only functions in Expert or Master, and Master adds a seventh on top of that. Carry either into a Classic world and the item in the extra slot simply stops working until you go back.

Any accessory fits any slot, and there is no conflict checking: Hermes boots and rocket boots worn together both work. The eye toggle on each slot is cosmetic only and never disables an effect, though something like the Shield of Cthulhu still appears while you are actively using it.

Vanity accessory slots are decoration with one real exception: informational accessories function from there. That is five or six slots of depth meters, clocks and radars taken off your real build, and the rest of the space works as storage for gear you swap in situationally.

The grappling hook icon above the armor opens five more slots: pet, light pet, minecart, mount and hook, one item each. Only the minecart genuinely has to be there to work. Hooks, mount summons and pet items all function straight from the hotbar and answer their hotkeys from there, so the slots are mostly about keeping the hotbar clear.

Pet toggles behave differently from accessory toggles. Switching one off actually unsummons the creature rather than hiding it, and it stays gone until you turn the slot visible again.

Four more inventories exist, all attached to your character rather than the world. The piggy bank, money trough and eye bone all open the same one. The safe has its own, the defender's forge has its own, and the void bag and void vault share the last.

The bank inventory is where money belongs, since shops draw from it directly and its contents survive death. The void bag is the one that changes how you play: leave it open in your inventory and overflow pours into it once the main grid fills, its consumables feed Quick Heal, Quick Mana and Quick Buff, and Quick Stack to nearby chests pulls from it as well.

• Every storage item you carry keeps its contents while carried. A void bag, a bank, a safe and a forge occupy four slots and give you hundreds.
• The trash slot is a free extra slot for anything you can afford to lose to a careless click, a death or a world exit.
• With autopause off, an item held on the cursor counts as out of the inventory entirely, which buys one more space in an emergency.
• Favorite anything you cannot afford to drop. Favorited items resist dropping, quick trashing, sorting and quick stacking, though the trash slot still takes them if you insist.
• Sorting leaves the hotbar and favorites untouched, so a hotbar you have arranged deliberately survives the button.
• If every slot is full and you have no void bag, new drops are simply not picked up. They stay on the ground until they despawn.