Time is Money: Owning your own guild bank

A character's bank is a special place meant to store gear, consumables, novelty items and a whole mess of other things (and I do mean mess!). Because of this, many players have at least one "bank alt" which is an additional character created primarily to house and auction items.
The value of your banker's ability to store things should not be underestimated. Today, I will walk you through the steps to and costs of purchasing bank space, and show you an example of how it can be utilized to help you make gold.
Banking Costs: Guild vs. Personal
Every bank alt should purchase the first four bag slots within their own personal banks. This will cost you a total of 36g10s, and require that you purchase actual bags to place in those slots. The more slots the bags can hold, the more storage you will have.
If you have a high level Tailor, then acquiring bags should cause you little trouble. 18-slot bags are relatively cheap these days, while 20-slot bags will cost you up to 100g per bag, depending on the server. You might want to try gathering the materials and soliciting a Tailor to make them for a tip instead. You can also visit Haris Pilton for a whopping 1200g 22-slot bag, or solicit a Tailor who is exalted with the Sons of Hodir for the equivalent Glacial Bag at a discount.
The other thing to consider when choosing your bags is your main character's professions. For most professions, there are specific bags that offer an extraordinary number of slots and will hold profession-related items.
As an example, a Miner-Engineer might purchase a gem bag (Bag of Jewels from Tailors), Mining bag, and an Engineering bag. These will take up three slots just like your other bags will, but will hold much more, provided you actually store your professions items (which I highly recommend doing).
First four slots of your personal bank: 36g10s + cost of bags. All bank alts should purchase these, at least.
Now that you have some basic storage, it is time to expand.
The last 3 bank slots will cost you 75g. Wowhead lists Glacial Bags as selling at auction, on average across servers, for 650g (actual cost will vary). Thus, it would cost you 2025g for 66 slots worth of space.
The cost of all bank tabs, each outfitted with 22-slot Glacial Bags, would be 4661g10s. The total space gained would be the free 28 slots + 154 bag slots, for a total of 182. That is about 25g60s for each slot.
The first two guild bank slots will cost you 350g in total, and would grant you 196 slots. That is a mere 1.78g per slot, with no need to purchase bags!
The other bank tabs cost 500g, 1000g, 2500g and 5000g, respectively. Each tab offers 98 slots.
Starting a guild
Wowwiki has an excellent and concise guide to starting your own guild, but I will list some of my tips here:
- Don't start asking for signatures for your charter until you have the time to get all nine. If you try to do it over a span of time, signatures will disapear if any of those characters signs a charter for another guild (often, for money).
- Bring at least 45g with you, to be used to purchase signatures. Other start-up costs apply.
- Choose a server time when children are home from school and not in bed, and when guilds are unlikely to be raiding.
- Head to a popular starting zone. Start typing in general chat that you would like signatures, and are offering 5g. You may be able to get away with less. If you try in trade chat, people will likely request at least 10g, and many characters that frequent main cities are already guilded.
Now that you have lots of storage, you need to know how to use it properly. Uses will vary between professions and personal preferences, so I will leave you with an example of how my Scribe used bank + guild bank storage solutions to capitalize upon the booming glyph market immediately after patch 3.1 went live:
In her personal bank, I had two large Packs of Endless Pockets, 32-slot Inscription Bags. These, I had filled with ink and pigments over time. In my guild vault, I had 3/4 of a tab dedicated to herbs and vellum, as well as unsold glyphs.
As soon as the patch went live, I was able to auction off all of my unsold glyphs, and make and list new ones almost as fast as they were selling! I made several thousand gold without ever leaving the comfort of my home city. If I had not had so many stored materials, it would have taken me days or weeks to attempt to match that volume, and by then, the prices on glyphs would have bottomed out (as they are already beginning to).
Filed under: Herbalism, Inscription, Alts, Making money, Guides, Features, Economy, How-tos, Tips, Analysis / Opinion, Enchanting, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Engineering, Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Skinning, Mining, Time Is Money






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Cyno01 Apr 22nd 2009 5:41PM
My bank alt has all 7 of his tabs and all of the largest profession bags in each, its very convenient. Although i dont have an herber or scribe, at least im prepared.
JDM Apr 22nd 2009 7:42PM
You probably didn't have room... But it would be more cost effective to have 3 banks with 2-3 tabs each.
I've got 3 myself with 2 tabs on each current, though I need to purchase more slots - Adding in all of this Northrend stuff has really filled my bank alts. Currently, I have a good 50-75 mails bouncing between my main and each bank alt that can't be fit anywhere.
I make most of my gold with old-world stuff when selling on the AH. Sure, the inscription market may have gotten boosted, but it is and will continue to drop. Old mats (on my realm) have slowly been increasing (rarity?), and I drop a little into the market here and there, while retaining enough for personal use.
S?hrtogg Apr 22nd 2009 8:09PM
forget banks, just mail all items between your bank alt and your other toons:
slots:
12 slots / mail
50 mail slots / toon (visible)
= max 600 slots / toon
costs:
30 copper / 60 days / slot
win:
instant availability of your items at any mailbox of your choice. win for anyone, pure win for engineers.
Amaxe Apr 22nd 2009 8:30PM
Assuming the mail doesn't get lost during a patch.
...not like THAT ever happened, right ;-)
Aaron A. Apr 22nd 2009 8:49PM
Agree w/ Amaxe. I've lost enough of my mail, either temporarily or permanently, that I don't trust it as a long term storage solution. The first two guild bank tabs don't cost much, and I always have a place to keep my disenchantables or cloth that my Tailor will eventually need, but can't use yet.
Also, as noted a few posts down, DK's make great bank alts, especially if you're just getting started on a server. They finish their starting zone with cash, starter bags, and a mount, plus they can level their professions to 375 as soon as they've defected from the Scourge (or 450 if you're willing to put in a few hours leveling to 60/65).
Avarth Apr 22nd 2009 5:45PM
I was wondering why you only evaluate why the highest cost bag, you can get 4 nethercloth bags for like 15g each and loose 4 slots, but for a much cheaper price..
dpoyesac Apr 22nd 2009 5:45PM
Offering gold (which is both shiny & desirable) for guild sigs works, but don't overlook more prosaic (but useful) inducements. I rode around the orc starting area offering 16-slot bags for guild signatures and I had people falling all over themselves to sign up. Cost me much much less than 45g.
And that is why you should level up your alt's professions.
klink-o Apr 22nd 2009 8:58PM
I tried the money thing for over an hour with little success when I set up my guild bank, so I finally just ran around spamming every person I saw with an invite. I had my signatures in five minutes. Sure it may be an annoying and low way of doing it but, more importantly, it's effective.
AyaJulia Apr 23rd 2009 1:32AM
Don't be like klink-o, kids. A lot of people will ignore you with just as many words as you asked for our signature.
Caustik Apr 22nd 2009 5:58PM
I'm a altoholic : got numerous chars.
As such, I've got 3 guild banks wth 15slots in total.
And still... I don't have enough room.
I'm playing my druid mostly for the moment.
Collecting gears for all your specs, keeping useless items, robes... also keeping some enchanting mats...
I'm using guild banks for all type of goods that are not soulbound.
I'm still hoping they will allow another row of bags in the personnal bank...
(and hopefully, non combat pets are now in the interface... being a collector, it would be even more painful)
Mike Apr 22nd 2009 6:06PM
I think you forgot the most important thing about making a new guild: BE POLITE. Seriously. If you ask nicely and politely and don't get upset when people say no, you can easily get all the sigs you need for free or at least minimal cost.
Also, get friends to make level 1 alts and sign your charter if they have the character slot available. Then when the guild is created, they can just delete them. (But not before, as I believe deleting a character erases any guild sigs they have made.)
Yeechang Lee Apr 23rd 2009 8:18AM
Please listen to Mike (and ignore klink-o). I got all ten signatures for my one-man guild's charter in an hour in Ironforge without paying a cent. How? I politely asked unguilded passersby for signatures using the lost art of proper capitalization, spelling, and grammar. In Warcraft—as well as everywhere else in life—good manners are amazingly effective at opening doors.
Rollo Apr 22nd 2009 6:20PM
Time is money! If you place your banker in Thunder Bluff, you can ride between mailbox, guild bank and auction house without dismounting. Personal bank however is indoors and will dismount you. That's why I have a guild bank but nothing in the personal bank.
This is assuming your banker is level 30 or higher of course. :D
Popesicle Apr 22nd 2009 6:27PM
Even without a mount though, TB is the best place for a Horde bank alt. That's where mine is, and it nice because travel time is less and its not as crowded as Orgrimmar. Plus there is a vendor in that path too for stuff that just never sells. UC is the worst spot for this.
Aggrajag Apr 22nd 2009 6:35PM
Why level 30? I'm missing something here :s
Eros May 5th 2009 11:16AM
The reason for a bank alt to be lvl 30 is that they can obtain apprentice riding skill (75, 60% speed) which cuts down on travel time between the bank and AH.
Tyeton Apr 22nd 2009 6:47PM
Minimum level for a mount is level 30. Don't feel bad. I sat here for a minute wondering...why level 30?? also.
AltairAntares Apr 22nd 2009 7:06PM
A lot of people use their dks as banks, me I leveled him to 80, so that is't really an option, but it's nice if you want to have the bank do professions or have a mount.
Artemes - Onyxia Apr 22nd 2009 8:16PM
Yeah, I leveled my DK to level 66 before I got bored with her, she's now an Enchanter who DEs my greens. I'm still trying to figure out a nice moneymaking profession for her second one. My main is Skinning/Mining simply because I enjoy skinning and getting money for basically no work (stuff I would kill anyway), and mining because it took so freakin' long to get those final levels so I could mine in Outlands ;-;
I may make her a tailor so I can have her make all my alts bags...but that's a big MAYBE.
Anelf Apr 22nd 2009 9:27PM
Hmm. This article reminds me of the one I wrote last year ;-)
http://wowwhimsy.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/my-own-private-bank/