Storing Items
You have two options to storing items you've collected in the game. You can either place the items in your Rucksack or you can use the Storage House that is attached to your house. Both locations will hold items until you remove them.
Many items have a freshness rank associated with them. Depending on where you are storing your items, freshness can decrease at different rates. Items such as tools, seeds, gems, ores, jewelry, and insects do not have a freshness and cannot rot. You can leave these items in either storage option and they won't decrease in value.
The flow of time does not stop while you are browsing the contents of your Rucksack or Storage House.
Your Rucksack
At the beginning of the game you automatically receive a Rucksack. The bag can hold up to 36 different items and you cannot expand the maximum size of your Rucksack.
Many types of items can stack into one space in the Rucksack, but the item's star rank and freshness must match before the item will stack. If you had a 2-star Branch and you picked up a second 2-star Branch, then the two items will combine into one slot in your Rucksack. If the second Branch was only 1-star, then you'll have two slots in your Rucksack used, each containing one Branch.
Storing an item that has freshness in your Rucksack will cause it to decay faster than if you place it in your Storage House. If you are planning on selling items at the weekly bazaar then you may want to put the item in your Storage House until you can sell it, especially if you are in Summer. During that season, items will decay faster (due to the heat of the sun) and they'll sell for less if they drop a full freshness rank.
For those who were wondering, the Charm box in the active items area is for the rings you can make by placing a Purple Wonderful in the Manufacturing Windmill:
- Blue Ring: You will use less stamina when you use an equipped tool
- Purple Ring: Similar to the Friendship Brooches in previous versions of Harvest Moon, you will earn more friendship points (10% bonus) when you give gifts
- Yellow Ring: Your bell ringing during the bazaar will be heard from farther away, bringing more customers to your booth
- Green Ring: If you have this ring equipped and go to bed, the next day's wind strength will be 1 blue-mark stronger. You can't go past 3-marks of wind though
Your Storage House
You can access your Storage House by going to the building to the left of your farmhouse front door or by walking into the room's entrance from inside your house. Your Storage House can only hold 12 items at the beginning of your farming adventure, but you can upgrade its capacity by talking to Wilbur at the bazaar. He sells expansions to the Storage House. Each expansion adds another "page" (12 slots) to your Storage House and costs 10,000 G more than the previous expansion:
- Expand Storage to 24 slots: 10,000 G
- Expand Storage to 36 slots: 20,000 G
- Expand Storage to 48 slots: 30,000 G
- Expand Storage to 60 slots: 40,000 G
- Expand Storage to 72 slots: 50,000 G
- Expand Storage to 84 slots: 60,000 G
- Expand Storage to 96 slots: 70,000 G
- Expand Storage to 108 slots: 80,000 G
After Wilbur adds more storage, the Storage House does not add empty pages; often players wonder why their Storage House didn't appear to expand after purchasing an expansion. Once you place enough items into the Storage House to fill up a "page", then you will see items appear on a new page if you continue to add items to your Storage House. The PAGE indicator at the bottom of the Storage House tells you what page you are on and not necessarily how many available 12-slot pages you have.
Unlike your Rucksack, you can enhance the freshness preservation of the Storage House so items decay at a slower rate. Once your bazaar reaches 25% in size, Gannon will open a booth. He sells enhancement upgrades to your Storage House that will slow the decay rate of items placed in the Storage House:
- Power Up #1: 30,000 G
- Power Up #2: 60,000 G
- Power Up #3: 100,000 G
There isn't a way to make items never decay when placed in the Storage House (unless the item doesn't have a decay rate, of course) but upgrading the house can significantly decrease it.