FFXIV inventory management is an uphill battle. Retainers, the Glamour Dresser, and your Chocobo Saddlebag make for a somewhat convoluted system of unlocking more bag slots. There are plenty of ways to manage your inventory in FFXIV, and although it never seems like it's enough, there are some tips and tricks you can use to keep your inventory under control.
Part of knowing how to manage your inventory is knowing what is and isn't worth keeping in your pockets and tucked away with retainers or your Chocobo Saddlebag. While that can be individualized based on what players are looking to do in the game, there are some common practices that will make managing your inventory a little easier.
Free Retainers
Your first opportunity to expand your inventory comes at Level 17. It all starts with Retainers — living equivalents of “banks” or “vaults” in games like Destiny 2 or World of Warcraft. Meaning they can hold items for you, but you need to return to specified locations (in this case Summoning Bells) to retrieve or deposit inventory items. Though Retainers are good for quite a lot more than holding your cool rocks.
By default, you can have two Retainers at one time. You just need to hire them from the “Retainer Vocate” NPC found in the market areas of any major city: Hawker’s Alley in Limsa Lominsa, Sapphire Avenue Exchange in Ul’dah, and stalls east of the Leatherworkers’ Guild Aethernet stone in New Gridania. You can find more vocates and more Summoning Bells throughout the game, though (usually in non-combat city areas like Kugane, the Crystarium, Idyllshire, etc.).
Retainers are currently locked at 175 total inventory slots a piece — plus their own, separate stores for Shards, Crystals, and Clusters used in crafting. Odds are you won’t have to worry about the latter, though. Not unless you collect or buy more than 9,999 Shards, Crystals, or Clusters of any one element at any one time. So, in essence, that’s 350 extra “bank slots” on your custom-designed NPCs.
Retainers have other functions not directly related to inventory, too. You can spend a currency called Ventures to send them hunting for items. Which items are available depend on whatever class you set your Retainer to: Miner, Botanist, Fisher, or any one of the combat classes.
You also use Retainers to sell items on the market board — the digital auction house where other FFXIV players can buy your stuff for prices that you set. This is one of the best ways to clear your inventory, since most items sell for a pittance of gil to NPC vendors. Instead you want to get a fair market price from human players while removing items from your own backpack. Every Retainer can display up to 20 items on the market board at one time.
Paid Retainers
Three hundred and ninety extra bag slots sounds like a lot. However, crafters and gatherers leveling their non-combat classes for the first time will quickly discover it's just not enough. Not if you hang onto furniture, materia, crafting components, and more.
There is an option for more space, though. You can hire additional Retainers through the Mog Station website. Yes, that means spending real world money — just as you would for any optional item. It’s not a one-time purchase, either, unfortunately. The “Additional Retainer Service” is an additional monthly fee on your subscription bill. Specifically it costs $2 USD per month per Retainer. You can hire up to five more than your two freebies, as well, totaling up to seven helper NPCs.
The value of extra Retainers has more to do with their Ventures: special missions that collect crafting items and the like. These take real time to complete (between one and 18 hours). So the more Retainers you have, the more money you can make off them, but the extra bag space is nice too.
It’s useful, but unless the extra fee doesn’t faze you, simply selling your unnecessary items is a better practice.
Chocobo Saddlebag
Every adventurer needs a mount. The easiest and earliest, for most, will be the trusty chocobo. The creature becomes available at Level 20 via the side quest “My Little Chocobo.” You can pick up the quest from Limsa Lominsa, Ul’dah, or New Gridania depding on where your Grand Company is.
Once you have the mount, you need to reach Level 30 and complete the subsequent quest “My Feisty Little Chocobo.” This upgrades your birdy companion into, well, a companion. Using Gysahl Greens from your inventory will then summon the big chicken to fight by your side in the open world (useful for FATEs and Beast Tribe quests).
None of that really matters to your inventory, though. You just need to unlock the chocobo companion feature to access the Chocobo Saddlebag. This is essentially 70 free inventory slots that you can open from the Character menu at (almost) any time. You can’t dip into it during Duties, though.
Premium Companion App
Similar to bonus Retainers, you can also pay an extra $5 per month for the Premium Companion App. It’s not a bad value if you don't mind the cost.
The app is smartphone application that lets you manage your inventory and market board sales without logging into the game. You can just do it from your phone.
The other benefits are more direct. The Premium Companion App includes another Retainer in addition to any extra Retainers you already have, and a second Chocobo Saddlebag. That’s another 70 inventory slots you can take into the field with you, rather than access only from towns.
The Armoury Chest
This one is pretty simple — not to mention free and something you’re probably already using, even if you don’t know what it’s called. The “Armoury Chest” is just a collection of individual bags tied to specific types of gear. You have a bag for your weapons, one for your boots, another for your chest pieces, and so on. The Armoury Chest mostly makes it so you don’t clutter your inventory with gear you need to change Jobs, particularly since you can switch these classes on the fly in FFXIV.
Certain quests also require you to have gear equipped or “in your Armoury Chest,” so knowing that that means is helpful.
Market Board “storage” trick
Remember those 20 market slots per Retainer? There’s a sort of trick you can use to store excess items with them. Just put them up for sale!
We don’t mean sell them, either. Not exactly. You can make listings for most items in the game. The price can likewise be nearly anything you want (up to about a billion gil). By putting an item up for the maximum asking price, you all but guarantee nobody will pick it up. And if they did, well, you’d have an absolutely absurd amount of gil to buy a new one (or 20).
The Armoire
Similar to the Armoury Chest, the Armoire holds certain pieces of equipment. Only it functions a bit like a bank that you can access from any inn room at all the major cities. It’s also almost exclusively used for event items, online store items, and freebies — often silly gear pieces or things you got from a seasonal quest. As such, you can’t really rely on it to hold much. But it’s essentially free slots for stuff you have no reason to drag around. Not to mention any item in the Armoire can be applied to any of your Glamour Plates for free. That way you can wear them without using up a limited bag or Armoury Chest slot.
Glamour Dresser
This is almost identical to the Armoire; only it accepts just about every piece of gear in the game. The Glamour Dresser is found inside all inn rooms, with a shared inventory across all of them. So there’s no need to worry about leaving your items in Limsa Lominsa and not having access to them in The Crystarium.
The Glamour Dresser also requires you to burn one Glamour Prism for every item you store (up to 400 in total).
You can find a full guide to glamours — including the Glamour Dresser and Glamour Plates — in our guide to the cosmetic system. But a good rule of thumb is, if you’re not going to wear it, don’t put it in the Glamour Dresser. The 400 slots still somewhat limited and you’re better off desynthesizing ugly, unwanted gear than just shoving it in a drawer.
Some Items Exist to Discard
It’s rare, but there are a few items in FFXIV that you’re literally meant to discard. This includes collectables without enough value to turn in for Scrips, for instance. Some items gathered or created as story beats — like during Beast Tribe quests and some Skytool chains — are also meant to be discarded or junked by selling them to vendors.
If you’re absolutely scratching your head about one of the endless items in the game, look it up. It might be better stored on a Retainer. Or it might be garbage you should throw away. Those pockets fill up awfully quick.
Even if you spent time and money collecting something, that doesn’t mean it’s valuable. Prices on the market board fluctuate. Usually there’s a flood of activity on the weekends and during the weekly reset on Tuesdays. A piece of materia you bought for 2,000 gil is probably better off sold if you can get 8,000. And other folks going through whatever you just did (whether that’s leveling classes or melding endgame sets) are nearly always buying.
The same is also true if something you have is worthless. Say a crafting material you’ve been holding onto regularly goes for a single gil per piece on the market. That means it’s junk — only fit for selling to an NPC for the immediate extra bag space. If you need more later, you can buy it for the same pittance.
Your FFXIV inventory options are pretty limited (without spending cash of course), but hopefully this helps you make the most of what you’ve got.
