Inventory system

Characters carry items in their inventory, or pack. Items carried are shown in tabs that separate the inventory into blocks of 20 slots. Each character also has 16 equipment slots for items that are currently being wielded or worn. For carried items that are not currently being worn, there is no practical difference which tab holds an item, it's all one inventory. By default the inventory screen is displayed by pressing i.

Once all slots are filled*, a character will not be able to loot chests of additional items or accept trades from other players. In order to do so, something must be discarded, traded away, sold to a vendor, dropped in the mail (possibly to a different character in your account), or placed in the bank to free up an open slot.
 * * Note that occasionally, newly acquired items will not stack with similar items, especially after trades or moving items from the Bank. Make sure you do not have 2 small stacks of similar items!

Since Update 7 it is possible to view inventory as a list with sorting and search functions.

Space limitations
Characters are limited in how many items they can carry by the number of inventory tabs that the character has access to:
 * 3 tabs are unlocked for new characters when they start (60 slots) plus 16 dedicated equipment slots.
 * 2 additional tabs can be gained in-game by achieving favor with The Coin Lords faction.
 * 3 extra tabs can be purchased* from the DDO Store at any time, separately for each character.
 * * Purchased tabs are preserved when the character undergoes reincarnation.

Some small items, such as scrolls, arrows, gems, collectables and so forth, stack if the items are identical, allowing multiple of the same item to take up only 1 slot. Bags can also hold large numbers of different gems and/or collectibles in only 1 slot. The total number of small items in one slot can differ depending on the bag and/or item being stacked. Items can be dragged from one inventory tab to another. To split a stack, hold down Ctrl while dragging the stack to a different inventory slot.

Currency does not take up inventory, although there is a limit as to how much a character may carry.

Strength is also a consideration that affects the carrying capacity of a character, however this places penalties on in-quest action rather than limiting the number of available inventory slots. For purposes of carrying capacity, different items have different weights, so freeing up 1 slot by removing an item is not necessarily the same as freeing another.