New Inventory System & LBE¶
The New Inventory System — abbreviated NIS, and just as often called NIV (the official hotkey reference uses "NIV only" for its inventory hotkeys) — replaces the fixed pocket grid of vanilla Jagged Alliance 2 with an inventory that depends on what your merc is actually wearing. Instead of every merc magically having the same twelve pockets, capacity now comes from Load Bearing Equipment (LBE): vests, thigh rigs, holsters, combat packs and backpacks that you buy, loot and upgrade over the campaign.
You pick the inventory system once, on the new-game screen. See New Game Options for the full list of start-of-game settings, and the glossary for the community jargon (NIS, NIV, NAS, LBE).
What changes compared to vanilla¶
Under the old (vanilla-style) inventory system, all mercs inherently have 8 "small" pockets and 4 "large" pockets. This never changes throughout the game. It is also the only option available when running the game at 640×480 resolution.
With the new inventory system, a merc wearing no LBE at all has almost nothing: little more than a gun sling, a knife slot and a few tiny pockets. Everything else comes from gear. You then build up capacity — far beyond what vanilla allowed — with the harnesses, holsters, packs, backpacks and pouches you equip. Most mercs come with a basic "LBE Gear" harness, and that same basic harness is available from shops from the outset for mercs that don't.
The trade-offs that make it interesting:
- Pockets are no longer generic: many only accept certain item types, and bigger pockets hold more of the same item.
- Better LBE becomes available as the campaign progresses, just like weapons and armor.
- Many LBE items provide a small camouflage bonus.
- Big backpacks carry a lot but slow your merc down in combat (see below).
Choosing it when you start a game¶
The new-game screen has a combined Inventory / Attachments setting with three choices:
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New/New (default) | New Inventory System + New Attachment System (NAS) |
| New/Old | New Inventory System with old-style attachments |
| Old/Old | Everything as in the original game |
There is deliberately no Old/New option: the New Attachment System only works together with the New Inventory System. The new systems also need more screen space than 640×480 provides — at that resolution the Inventory / Attachments selector is hidden and the game runs Old/Old. See Attachments for what NAS itself changes.
NAS needs NIS
If you want the new attachment slots, you must also take the new inventory. The reverse is fine: New/Old gives you LBE gear while keeping the old four-slot attachment behavior.
The LBE slots¶
With NIS active, every merc has dedicated body slots for load-bearing gear on top of the usual helmet/armor/hands slots: a vest slot, a left and a right thigh-rig slot, a combat pack slot and a backpack slot, plus a built-in gun sling and a knife slot. What you put in each slot determines which pockets appear in the inventory panel.
The game data (Data-1.13\TableData\Items\LoadBearingEquipment.xml) sorts every LBE item
into one of these classes:
| Slot | Typical gear | Examples from the standard item set |
|---|---|---|
| Vest | Tactical vests and harnesses | LBE Gear, TT TAC-1A Assault Vest, Hongkong Police Vest |
| Thigh rigs (×2) | Leg rigs, mag/grenade rigs, holsters | Holster, SMG Leg Rig, AR-Mag / Grenade Rig |
| Combat pack | Small day packs | TIMS Combat Pack, Blackhawk Patrol Pack, Tactical Tailor 3-Day Pack |
| Backpack | Large packs | TIMS Backpack, ARUC Backpack, MALICE3 Backpack |
Holsters are thigh-rig-class items, so a pistol holster occupies one of the two thigh slots — pick a holster for the sidearm on one leg and a magazine or grenade rig on the other.
How capacity works¶
Each LBE item grants up to twelve pockets, and each pocket is a defined type from
Data-1.13\TableData\Items\Pockets.xml. Two things decide what fits:
- Pocket type. Besides general-purpose pockets in several sizes (Tiny, Small, Medium, Large General), there are specialized pockets that only take their intended item category: AR Mag, Pistol Mag, Grenade, Canteen, Shotgun Shells, Medical Pocket, Pistol Holster, Throwing Knife and many more.
- Item size. Every item has a size, and every pocket type defines how many items of each size it can hold. A specialized pouch typically holds several of its intended item — a double mag pouch holds more magazines than a general pocket of the same bulk.
In practice this means you kit a merc for a role: a rifleman wants AR-mag rigs, a medic wants medical pouches, a grenadier wants grenade panels. Swapping a merc's LBE mid-game is easy — the items in the removed gear stay inside it, so you can hand a loaded rig to another merc.
Backpacks slow you down¶
Backpacks are the biggest containers, and they come with real combat penalties:
- Wearing a backpack reduces a merc's APs, so combat squads usually don't want to fight with packs on.
APBPConstants.inidefines dedicated backpack-related AP costs: opening a pack's zipper costs 24 AP and closing it costs 28 (AP_OPEN_ZIPPER,AP_CLOSE_ZIPPER), so digging equipment out of a backpack mid-fight is expensive.- Jumping a fence costs 40 AP with a backpack instead of 24 (
AP_JUMPFENCEBPACKvsAP_JUMPFENCEinAPBPConstants.ini). - Climbing with a backpack is restricted. With the shipped defaults
(
MAX_BACKPACK_WEIGHT_TO_CLIMB = 5,USE_GLOBAL_BACKPACK_SETTINGS = TRUEunder[Tactical Gameplay Settings]inJa2_Options.INI), a merc can only climb while wearing a very light pack (empty weight 0.5 kg or less — in the standard item set only the Tactical Sling qualifies). Both settings are documented in the INI if you want different rules — see Ja2_Options.INI.
Because of this, 1.13 gives you hotkeys to ditch and recover packs quickly:
| Hotkey | Effect |
|---|---|
| Shift+B | All mercs in the sector drop their backpacks; press again to pick them back up (NIV only). |
| Ctrl+Shift+F | Pick up all dropped backpacks (NIV only), then automatically run Shift+F (remove attachments/unload weapons in sector) and Shift+S (sort sector inventory). |
With SHOW_BACKPACK_OWNER = TRUE (the default in Ja2_Options.INI), a dropped backpack
shows its owner's name on the ground and in the taking-items interface, so packs go back
to the right merc. The full list of inventory-related keys is on the
hotkeys reference.
Drop packs before a fight
When you expect contact, press Shift+B to drop every backpack in the sector, win the fight on full APs, then press Ctrl+Shift+F to pick everything back up and tidy the sector inventory in one go.
Where to get LBE¶
- Starting gear: most mercs arrive with a basic "LBE Gear" harness; the same harness is sold in shops from the very start of the game.
- Bobby Ray's: the online shop now sells most of the items in the game, LBE included. As with weapons, better load-bearing gear appears in the catalog as your game progress increases.
- Battlefield loot: enemies have a chance to drop LBE items when they die.
MOLLE: build your own rig¶
The high-end LBE in 1.13 follows the real-world MOLLE concept (modular pouch attachment): instead of a rig with fixed pockets, you get a carrier and attach the pouches you want. In the standard item set this is the "3.11" line of gear — the game data notes "LBE with prefix 3.11 is MOLLE" — such as the 3.11 Thigh Rig and 3.11 Tactical M-LBE Vest as carriers, and pouches like the 3.11 Single Mag Pouch, 3.11 Mini Frag Pouch, 3.11 Med Pouch and 3.11 H2O Carrier.
Two limits control what a carrier can take:
- a number of free pocket slots, and
- an available volume budget; every pouch has a volume cost.
How the volume budget works
From the MOLLE design document: a carrier leg rig has an available volume of 25 and 5 free pocket slots. An AR-Mag pocket costs 8 volume; a Small Utility pocket costs 5. You may attach 3 AR-Mag pockets, or 5 Small Utility pockets, or 1 AR-Mag + 3 Small Utility, or 2 + 2 — but not 4 AR-Mag pockets, because their total volume (32) exceeds the carrier's 25.
For modders: carriers declare <lbeAvailableVolume> and <lbePocketsAvailable> in
LoadBearingEquipment.xml, each pouch declares its <pVolume> in Pockets.xml, and
pouch attachments use <AttachmentClass>16777216</AttachmentClass> in Items.xml (an
attachment class that accepts duplicates). See
XML files for how to edit game data safely.
Sources¶
- Features page of the old ja2v113 pbworks wiki (saved copy; sections "New Load Bearing Equipment" and "Inventory/Attachments")
- "Design Document MOLLE" from the 1.13 documentation materials
- New Attachment System readme/design doc by WarmSteel (NIS/resolution requirements)
- Previous 1.13 starter documentation, Play Guide (r8741-era)
- JA2 1.13 official hotkey reference,
JA2_113_Hotkeys.pdf(r9389, 2022) - Current game data from github.com/1dot13/gamedir
(re-verified July 2026):
Data-1.13\TableData\Items\LoadBearingEquipment.xml,Data-1.13\TableData\Items\Pockets.xml,Data-1.13\TableData\Items\Items.xml(MOLLE pouch attachment class),Data-1.13\Ja2_Options.INI,Data-1.13\APBPConstants.ini - 1.13 source code from github.com/1dot13/source:
Tactical/Item Types.h(inventory slot and LBE class definitions)