Bank alts are the perfect solution to a shortage of space in world of warcraft, because they help with organizing large amounts of goods and are much cheaper than upgrading your main account's bag space. Also see which set of bank slot and guild tab purchases get you the most slots for your wow gold.
As you get better at making gold in wow you will quickly realize that the standard bags/bank space is not enough for a character to hold their items they wish to sell. A typical night at the auction house will net me anywhere from 30-60 item slots that I need room to store in. Also, if you watch trends then you will often have stockpiles of items in your bags waiting to be sold. What if you had a 'slave' character which could serve no process other than to hold your excess items?
Creating a Bank Alt
To create the simplest of bank-alts, create a level 1 character of any race and run them to the nearest major city (obviously do your best to avoid the monsters in the way). When you get to the bank of that major city, you will see that your character has 28 open item slots within the main section of the bank screen.
Improving Your Bank Alt
Buy bigger bags. Your alt will benefit greatly from additional bags in their standard bag slots. This will make carrying lots of items from your bank to the auction house much more efficient. You will be able to grab more items out of the mailbox at one time as well.
You may notice that you have the option to purchase additional bank slots for ten silver. This cost goes up with each bag, from ten silver to 1 gold, 10 gold, 25 gold, 25 gold, 25 gold, and 25 gold for a total of 111 gold ten silver for all seven bank slots.
With the release of burning crusade there was another way to improve your bag space: the guild bank. This gets tricky because you need to purchase a guild charter for 10 gold and get 10 people to sign it. The people signing the chart must all do so from a single character, if they get onto an alt to give you another signature it will not be accepted. You can offer gold to low level characters to do this and paying 1 gold per is a fair amount. Any way you accomplish it, if you buy a guild charter you then have access to a guild bank.
The guild bank is different from your normal bank because you do not start with any bank tabs. Once purchased, the bank tabs have 98 item slots each, with a total of 6 purchasable bank tabs. The tabs cost 100 gold, then 250, 500, 1000, 2500, and finally 5000 gold for the last tab. That's a total of 9350 gold for all six tabs. A little excessive for one person, don't you think!?
So what is the best bang for your buck? Well for one, remember that you can make multiple bank alts if you don't feel like paying gold for bank bags/guild tabs.
Here is a chart with how much gold it would cost you and how many slots you would get ranging from one bank alt with no money spent to four bank alts completely decked out.
If you are new to this and would like to see the cheapest bank for your buck, here is a great setup for someone just starting out.
- 4 16 slot bags: approximately 40 gold.
- Purchase 1 guild charter + 1 guild bank slot (assumes that you got signatures for free): 110 gold.
Let's compare that to what most people do when they are creating a bank alt:
- 4 16 slot bags: approximately 40 gold.
- Purchase 5/7 bank slots: 61 gold, 10 silver.
- Buy 5 16 slot bags to fill those bank slots: approximately 50 gold.
See a difference? For the guild bank + 4 16 slot inventory bags you get a total of 162 bank slots for 150 gold. In comparison you get 144 bank slots for 151.10 gold by buying 5/7 bank slots and filling them with 16 slot bags. You're getting 18 bank slots more and you're paying less money! You could also buy the first bank slot for 10 silver + 10 gold 16 slot bag and you'd end up paying 1 gold 10 silver more for an additional 34 slots!
SO... if you're a little short on dough and want to make the best bank alt for your hard earned wow gold, then you're better off creating a guild bank.
5 comments: on "Making Bank - Bank Alt Math"
Anonymous said... January 22, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Hey - one more thing to think about... If you get a bank alt, and create a guild for the guild bank - make sure that your farming alts are also in this bank guild... that way your farming alts can deposit items without cost. Otherwise, you pay the per-item mailing fee.
This of course is not always possible, but a good idea since it will save plenty of gold based on your volume.
Slayers Herald said... January 25, 2009 at 3:04 AM
I've been playing for a years time with a guild full of my alts and i have to say maxing out or even just getting 3-4 guild tabs is a pretty good move for anyone gathering mats, collecting and playing the AH in tandem. Doing so gives you alot of room to work on various projects without flooding your mains bankspace. I really suppose its all depending on how much you plan on using your alt banker. I'm my case i used mine to work the AH, focus on my 2 professions and gathering enchant mats for later use.
Anonymous said... January 29, 2009 at 4:34 PM
If you are investing a lot in your bank alt, it would be prudent to level it to at least 10, so that if you do ever accidentally delete it (or it gets deleted), Blizzard will have a record of that character.
Lometa said... April 19, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Thanks for all the tips! I did well on the glyphs this week. I went with the guild bank option because I was doing a lot of mailing. Now I can just put stuff in the guild bank in one city, log out and pick it up in another. Is there any way to factor in the cost of postage to mail things back and forth among the alts?
Anonymous said... September 30, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Also watch the trade channel for people selling guilds. I've bought several guilds with 3-4 GB tabs for around 3-500g. If you can use the space, that'll save you quite a bit over starting another guild yourself and buying the tabs, since they go up in price significantly higher than private bank bag slots. People set guilds up all the time with big hopes and they fail regularly.
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