Lootbound items and inventory — grid space, auras and gear rules

The confirmed inventory rules

Lootbound’s official Steam page describes an equipment system without fixed slots. Gear is managed per character, and in the developers’ own words: “You can rotate them and place them in the inventory as long as there is free space.” In practice that means each character’s inventory is a spatial grid, and fitting items in — including rotating them — is part of the game rather than bookkeeping.

The demo page adds one more load-bearing rule: items only function when equipped. There is no passive stash bonus described anywhere official; if a piece of gear is not placed on a character, it is not doing anything. The same page is blunt about the stakes of these choices — equipment shapes how your party behaves, and “one item can make or break a character.”

None of this comes with published numbers yet. Grid sizes, item dimensions, rarity tiers and stat ranges are not documented on any official page as of 2026-07-26, so this guide does not list them.

Item auras: adjacency matters

The most distinctive confirmed rule is item auras. Per the Steam store page, certain items buff weapons and armor located in adjacent grid cells — and moving an item by even one cell can transform a build. So the inventory is not storage; it is a board. Two characters carrying identical gear can perform differently purely because of how that gear is arranged.

This is why the demo’s own pitch names “synergies” as one of the three core things it wants you to learn (alongside tactics and loot management). If you only practice one thing before launch, make it this: place an aura item, note which neighbors it affects, then shift it one cell and compare. What we do not yet know — aura shapes, stacking rules, whether auras affect companions’ cells or only the owner’s grid — is exactly the kind of detail this site will verify firsthand after release rather than guess at now. For how auras feed into damage-type planning, see the builds guide.

Companions and gear decisions

You control only the main hero in combat; companions recruited during a run act autonomously. That makes their inventories your only real steering wheel: what you equip on an ally decides what that ally can do, and per the demo page, a single item can make or break them.

A May 2025 Turn Based Lovers preview added color here — describing a hub where you assemble a crew before departing and decide, for example, who carries the healing potions. Note the discrepancy: the current Steam page says every run starts solo, with companions recruited along the way. The preview predates that description, so treat its structural details as superseded unless the release build re-confirms them.

Durability and item loss: not yet verified

The same preview described gear that can break, framing the dilemma as: “Do you keep the enchanted sword that’s on the verge of shattering, or swap it for something safer?” It also framed the whole game around escaping with loot you can keep. The current Steam store and demo pages mention neither durability nor item loss. Both ideas are plausible for a loot-management roguelite, but as of 2026-07-26 they are press-preview claims, not confirmed mechanics — we flag them here so you know to check patch notes and firsthand reports at launch rather than assume.

Claim-by-claim status

If you are new to the game entirely, start with the beginner guide for release status and the run structure, then come back here once you have the demo installed and can test placement yourself.