Sons of the Forest: How to Open Your Backpack, Add and Remove Items

The Sons of the Forest Backpack isn’t the most essential item in the survival-horror game, but it does make swapping out certain items slightly faster. But you won’t be able to do that if you don’t know how to open it and use it. The game doesn’t really tell you how to do any of these things, and you won’t have to do it as part of the tutorial, either. In fact, you can also add and remove certain items to somewhat customize what’s available at any given moment. 

Opening and Closing Your Backpack in Sons of the Forest

Screenshot by GameSkinny

• If you’re playing on PC with a mouse and keyboard, you open your Backpack by holding “I” (the inventory button). To close it, you simply press “I”. 
• If you’re playing with a controller or gamepad, you’ll hold down on the D-pad to open the Backpack. You’ll press down on the D-pad to close it. 

When you pull up your knapsack, it will show on the right side of the screen, and you can quick-select items attached to it, such as your Guide Book, your Axe, the Slingshot, or rocks and sticks. But how do you add or remove items from that quick-select menu?

If you’re looking for other inputs and controls, we’ve collected all of that information right here. Moreover, with Hotfix 2, released on February 23, 2023, you can add Hotkey bindings, too, somewhat circumventing the Backpack. But not totally. 

How to Add and Remove Items From Your Backpack

Screenshot by GameSkinny

To add and remove items from your Backpack in Sons of the Forest, you’ll need to open your larger inventory (slash item crafting menu) by pressing “I” or pressing down on the D-pad. 

With your inventory open, you’ll find your Backpack in the top portion of the screen, just to the right of the orange and black containers at the top. Hover over it and press LMB on mouse and keyboard or RT (or equivalent) on your controller. 

This will move your Backpack to the center of your inventory, in the area where you usually craft items. Now, hover over items attached to the knapsack, and press RMB or RT (equivalent) to remove them. They’ll enter your inventory. To add items, hover over them in your inventory, and press RMB or RT (equivalent) to slot them onto the bag. 

It’s worth noting that you can’t add every item you pick up on the cannibal-infested island to your knapsack. Only items that have a white glow around them in your inventory can be added to the bag for quick-selection. In a perplexing choice by Endnight Games, at least at this stage in Early Access, you can’t add things like your GPS or Flashlight. But you can add the whopping Modern Axe.

And with that, you now know how to open and close your Backpack, as well as how to add and remove items for quick-selection purposes. For more tips and tricks, like how to drop items when you have too many or zoom the map in and out, consider visiting our Sons of the Forest survival hub. 

Featured image by GameSkinny.