Weight And Bulk

How much you can carry depends on the weight and bulk of the items involved. A beginning character can carry 500 weight and 500 bulk. These capacities are affected by the player's Strength and Dexterity attributes, respectively. 0 in one of these attributes gives the basic capacity of 500. For positive attributes, every point above 0 provides another 500, so your capacity is doubled at +1, tripled at +2, and so on. If an attribute is negative, your capacity is divided instead of multiplied: -1 halves your limit, -2 cuts it to a third, -3 quarters it, etc. Note that this means each point of bonus is still useful no matter how high your attributes are already, but further penalties stop mattering much once you get down to -2 or -3.

Stat	Capacity
+n	500*(n+1)
...	...
+4	2,500
+3	2,000
+2	1,500
+1	1,000
0	500
-1	250
-2	166
-3	125
-4	100
-5	83
...	...
-n	500/(n+1)

Weight is usually measured in debens. Bulk is sometimes measured in cubits (for example with thread), but it's unknown whether this is a unit of bulk or just of length.

A player who is overloaded with either weight or bulk (or both) cannot:

• move
• use any rapid travel, such as chariots and Navigation
• give items to other players
• operate some objects

Containers are limited only by the bulk of items stored in them; weight doesn't matter.

The vast majority of items in the game have weight 1 and bulk 1, so it's usually pretty easy to estimate how many you can carry. There are some exceptions, however, and it's useful to know about them in advance when planning long-distance trades or large construction projects. It's ever so awkward to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with insufficient attribute-boosting food. The weight and bulk of most carryable items can be found in the master Resources list.

Trivia

In Ancient Egypt during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, there were two units of weight: the small, or gold, deben, equivalent to around 12-14 grams, and the large, or copper, deben, approximately 27 grams. During the New Kingdom, this changed to a single unit, also called a deben, that weighed 91 grams.