The base carry limit in Stalker 2 is 80 kg, and the weight bar turns yellow long before that. There are four ways to raise it: artifacts, suits, technician upgrades and consumables. The biggest single boost is Weird Water at +40 kg, but even with it you can't go past 140 kg total, the game's hard cap. Below: every method with numbers, what actually weighs the most, and which weight mods work after Update 2.0.
The 80 kg limit and what the bar colours mean
The weight bar at the bottom right of the inventory has three zones. In green, run and jump as you like. In yellow you're slower, jump lower, and stamina drains faster and recovers slower, with a weight icon on screen. At the limit your character just stops and won't move until you drop something. Sprinting while overweight is impossible: GSC closed the loophole that allowed it in patch 1.7.1.
Exactly where yellow starts is disputed: Gfinity says 50 kg, GamerFuzion says 55. Go by the bar colour, not the number. Another disagreement: the author of the Long Days mod, tested on 2.0, says the base limit is 70 kg, while every guide and the bar itself show 80. Most likely 70 is an internal penalty threshold. And the key constraint: whatever bonuses you stack, total capacity tops out at 140 kg. The wiki's Weird Water entry says so, and a separate mod released for 2.0 removes exactly that cap.
How many kilos each method gives
Since Update 1.7 artifact effects show as levels from one to five rather than kilos. Per the Russian wiki a Medium Spring gives 6 kg; per GamerGuides a Weak Goldfish gives 3 kg. So the working rule: Weak is about 3 kg, Medium about 6. Nobody has pinned down the Strong and the weakest values. Nearly every weight artifact radiates, so put an anti-rad like Slug or Mica in the next slot.
| Artifact | Anomaly | Weight | Side effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Night Star | gravitational | Strong, 4 of 5 | strong radiation |
| Torch | thermal | Medium, 3 of 5 | strong radiation |
| Flytrap | gravitational | Medium, 3 of 5 | disperses radiation, doesn't radiate |
| Spring | gravitational | Medium, 3 of 5, about 6 kg | medium radiation |
| Gravi | gravitational | Weak, 2 of 5 | disperses radiation, doesn't radiate |
| Flaw, Magma | thermal | Weak, 2 of 5 | medium radiation |
| Stone Blood, Stone Heart, Goldfish | gravitational | Weak, 2 of 5, about 3 kg | weak radiation |
| Lyre | thermal | 1 of 5 | plus bleed resistance, no radiation |
| Cavity | thermal | 1 of 5 | weak radiation |
| Weird Water | Zaton, at night | +40 kg | "drunk" effect when carrying over 50 kg |
Rosin is a muddle: patch 1.5 swapped its "weight: weak" for "endurance: weak", yet the wiki still lists both with a note that 2.0 may have changed things. Flytrap definitely works: 1.6 fixed a bug that stopped it reducing weight. All 80 artifacts are in our artifacts guide.
Weird Water: +40 kg, but only at night
It's not a regular artifact but an altered item from the Wandering Lights anomaly in Zaton. GamerFuzion calls it the largest single boost most players will find, and there's no arguing with that. Per the wiki it actually scales your maximum by half, and the "drunk" effect kicks in when you carry more than 50 kg. It only spawns at night: the author of the video below, recorded on 2.0, gives a window of 10 PM to 4 AM in-game, so you'll want night vision. The wiki lists its price as 70,000 or 80,000 coupons depending on which page you open.
The video loads from YouTube (Google) when you press play. Privacy policySuits, exoskeletons and technician upgrades
- Suits with a weight bonus. Per Deltia's and Sportskeeda: the Wanderer Suit, OZK Explorer's Suit and Cuirass Exoskeleton give 8 kg each, the Bulwark 12 kg. Those are launch figures; nobody has republished them since the 1.7 stats rework. Exoskeletons themselves are heavy, from 10.5 kg for the Cuirass to 20 kg for the Bulwark.
- Load-Bearing Vest. This upgrade adds 10% capacity, so 80 kg becomes 88. On the OZK Explorer's Suit it costs 14,600 coupons (wiki price).
- Lighter gear. Lightweight Materials on a suit cuts weight for 3,600 coupons, and some weapons have upgrades that trim their weight.
- Sprinting in an exo. Most exoskeletons can't sprint until you fit servos. For the Diamond that's Sewn-On Pockets for 7,500, then Hydraulic Amplifiers for Servos for 15,000 at Harpy in Yaniv. The Cuirass is the only exo that can't take servos at all.
On launch day Shacknews wrote that upgrades can't raise your limit permanently. That's wrong: capacity upgrades sit in the suit trees, as the wiki and the Prima and GamerGuides guides all show. Which suits and exos are best overall is in our armour guide.
Hercules, energy drinks and the NON STOP cans
Hercules is in the game and raises your limit for a while. Almost every guide says "+20 kg for 300 seconds" (Prima says 10 minutes), but all of them predate patch 1.0.1, where GSC removed Hercules's speed penalty and "increased the effect parameters". So today's figure is above 20 kg, and nobody has published by how much. It turns up in medical crates and at medics.
The regular NON STOP energy drink doesn't raise weight, it only restores stamina, and since 1.7 frequent use hits your breathing and aim. There is a nice secret with the collectible NON STOP Limited Edition cans, though, ten in the game: drink them with the Weird Pot altered artifact equipped and each one permanently adds 0.5 kg, 5 kg in total. That's per the wiki, and it matches a note in patch 1.3.
What weighs the most, and how to lighten up
Most of the weight is guns and armour. Per the wiki table: the PTM weighs 0.5 kg, the AKM-74S 3.3 kg, the SVDM-2 4.9 kg, and the RP-74 machine gun a hefty 7.5. Artifacts are light, 0.35 to 0.65 kg, except the Weird Ball, which gains weight with every hit up to 5 kg. The wiki doesn't yet know what a single round weighs in Stalker 2. What works in practice:
- Unload looted guns and drop them instead of hauling them to sell: almost nobody buys red ones, more in our repair guide.
- Carry 5 or 6 food items, GamerGuides suggests, not the whole fridge.
- Leave spares in the stash box at a base.
If you'd rather not farm kilos across the Zone, there are mods. Tested on 2.0: Long Days, Carry Wght, Rep Cost, Upg Cost: MODULAR (limits from 50 to 9,999 kg with matching penalty thresholds) and HKS Ultimate Carry Weight for 2.0.x. One quirk: the new limit from these mods only applies once you equip or remove a weight artifact or drink a Hercules. The rest of the mods that survived 2.0 are in our mods guide.
Sources
GSC patch notes: 1.0.1, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.7.1, 2.0. Series wiki: artifacts, Weird Water, Weird Pot, OZK Explorer's Suit, weapons. Shacknews, Prima Games, GamerGuides, Deltia's Gaming, Sportskeeda, Gfinity, GamerFuzion. Mods on Nexus Mods: Long Days, HKS Ultimate Carry Weight, 140 Carry weight limit remove. Video by Light_Fighter. Screenshots from Steam and GSC news, chart by FramesGames from the series wiki and Deltia's and Sportskeeda guides.
