The backpack contains the items in the player's immediately available inventory, as opposed to the tent storage that contains items the player has saved for later.
Any items the player collects by searching through leaf piles, digging up dirt mounds, mining rocks, cutting shrubberies, fishing, harvesting trees, flowers, and animals, crafting, purchasing from shops, completing the bear's quests, or other activities are collected automatically when approached, provided the player has free backpack slots available.
In the backpack menu, items can be sorted, abandoned, placed on the ground (for decoration items, pets, flowers, trees and bushes), or worn or placed in the closet (for clothing items). Selecting an item displays its information, such as description or tags.
Tools need to be placed in the player's backpack in order to be used.
Active slot[]
The first backpack slot is reserved for the item the player holds in their hands. This item is shown in a bubble above the scout's head and can be thrown or used with the respective action button. Raw of cooked food items can be thrown at imps or pets to feed them, skipping stones can be thrown into the ocean to hit clams, and bag bugs can be tossed into the ocean as well to be disposed of.
The fishing rod and critter net are the only tools that need to be placed in hand in order to be used. The dowsing rod will find spirit wells even when not held in hand, but the player will not be able to play the hot and cold minigame until they place it in the active slot.
Backpack slots[]
At the start of the game, the player has 28 available slots of backpack space, including one slot for the item held in hand.
Extra backpack slots can be purchased at Kit's Canteen after the player expands it three times. Each upgrade costs 200,000
and adds four extra backpack slots. The player can purchase up to three backpack upgrades, expanding their backpack to 40 slots in total.
If the backpack is full, no additional items (that do not stack with any of the items already in the backpack) can be obtained. When the player's backpack is full, they cannot collect the items lying on the ground, such as shells or hidden objects or purchase anything from Mr. Kit or Pandam. The player can still perform actions that spawn new items (e.g. cutting shrubberies, mining rocks, handing in quests and receiving rewards), but those items will not be collected until the player approaches them again while having free space in their backpack.