Bag basics: six columns, 24 to 42 slots

Your bag is a grid six columns wide. A run starts with 24 slots and can grow to a maximum of 42. The number of rows is just the slots divided by six and rounded up, so 24 slots is four full rows, and 25 slots is five rows with a single cell sitting alone at the bottom. A partly filled last row is normal — the game expects it, and so should you.

Everything a run carries lives in that grid, one thing per slot: artifacts, stone tablets, potions, food, throwables, quest pickups. A stack of identical potions still takes exactly one slot, which is why the arithmetic is simply “one item, one slot”.

There is no equip step. The game’s own line for artifacts is that their effects are triggered by having them in your inventory. Picking an artifact up is using it — and putting it in the bag is what commits the slot.

How capacity grows

Capacity always moves one slot at a time, never in blocks, and it comes from four places:

• Levelling up in the run. Every two levels you gain one additional inventory slot. Over a long run this is by far the largest source, and it is the reason a bag that feels cramped on floor two feels workable by floor five.
• Expanding Pouch, bought permanently at the Destiny Inscription. Its own description is “Expands inventory by 1 slot”, and it can be bought more than once. It applies to every run afterwards, which is what makes it one of the strongest early purchases — see how the tree compares to talents.
• Talents. Ingenuity gives +2 inventory slots at level 5, and Survival gives +3 at level 10. Survival’s level 20 is the one to think about before you spend: it unlocks Tablet Imprinting and takes a large amount of bag space back in exchange. Read the exact figures on the talent panel in game before you commit points to it.
• Costumes. A costume can carry the Inventory Slot stat in either direction. Red Fox carries Inventory Slot +6 alongside a Healing Curse that halves the healing you receive. Fairy of Fortune carries Luck +7 and Inventory Slot −3. These are modifiers, not a simple “start with 30 slots” — the costume list shows each one’s wording so you can see what a costume is really charging you.

The ceiling is real: 42 slots, seven rows. Nothing takes you past it.

The Side Bag is storage, not capacity

The Side Bag looks like extra room and is not. The game states it plainly: items in the Side Bag do not function. An artifact parked there grants nothing and counts toward nothing; a tablet there points at nothing. Some items refuse to be stored in it at all.

Use it for what it is — somewhere to hold a thing you intend to sell, hand in, or swap back in later. Never treat a Side Bag slot as a bag slot when you are counting a combo.

Why a free slot is the real currency

Three different systems all bid for the same cells, and they do not share.

Artifacts bid for combo counts. Category bonuses pay out at fixed counts of artifacts held — typically 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 of the same category. Every step up that ladder is another whole slot spent, which is the single biggest reason a bag fills faster than players expect. The combo guide works through what each step actually buys.

Tablets bid for slots and give none back. A tablet occupies a cell exactly like an artifact does, but it has no level and produces no combo count of its own. Its entire value is what it does to the cells around it, so a tablet is only worth its slot if its pattern is landing on artifacts you care about. That is the trade the tablet placement guide is about.

Consumables bid for the leftovers. Potions, food and throwables sit in the same grid. The Alchemy combo hands you dedicated Potion Bag Slots, which is the one way to stop drinks eating into artifact space.

On top of that, an empty cell is sometimes an effect in its own right. Some artifacts only trigger when both adjacent slots are empty; others only trigger when every surrounding slot is filled. A bag packed to the last cell quietly switches the first group off.

The practical habit that follows: when a reward screen offers you an artifact you would place “somewhere”, decline it. An artifact you have no plan for is a slot you have spent on nothing, and slots are the resource the whole run is built out of.

Bag size changes what your tablets do

This catches people out, because it looks like the bag only got bigger.

Patterns that work from an edge are defined against the grid, not against your intuition. A bottom-edge pattern takes the last six slots in reading order — so when your bottom row is only partly filled, it wraps up onto the row above and covers a stepped shape rather than a clean row. Gaining a single slot can move which cells a bottom-edge tablet is pointing at, and a layout that was working before the level-up quietly stops.

Column patterns move the other way. A pattern that covers a whole column is worth more the taller your bag is, so the same tablet that was mediocre at 24 slots is a serious effect at 40. Row patterns do not change: six is six, always.

When your bag grows, re-check the tablets that anchor your layout before you keep playing.

Working it out before the run

Trial and error inside a run is expensive, because the reward that would have fixed your layout is already behind you. The bag planner on this site lets you set the capacity you expect to be playing at, drop artifacts and tablets into the grid, rotate them, and read the resulting level on every cell — including the cells a tablet is dragging down.

Two things it is worth doing there before a serious run:

1. Set the capacity to what you actually reach, not to 42. A layout that only works at maximum capacity is a layout you will never play.
2. Lay out your intended combo first and the tablets second. Tablets are the flexible part; the ten artifacts are not.

If you are still deciding what to fill the bag with, the item database lists every artifact and tablet with its categories, rarity and per-level values, and search is faster than scrolling when you already know the name you are after.