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, Mining, Skinning, Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, How-tos, Economy, Features, Guides, Making money, Alts, Inscription, Time Is Money
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Zekta Apr 23rd 2009 5:35AM
Also
http://stuff.zekta.com/?p=588
mine about guild bank and
http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/2009/01/making-bank-bank-alt-math.html
Markco's about banker's math
Ironicly
Markco just talk about this column couples day before
about their lack of citiation and advice on that
(The commnet do not allow me to post too many link, so if you are interested, you have to go by youself.
and search for time is money)
Amaxe Apr 22nd 2009 9:44PM
I have a level 2 bank alt in Stormwind, which is short walking distance between the AH, bank and mailbox. Generally, I use the bank character to auction junk off and store stuff I don't want to toss but don't want to block in my main's bank.
Generally, every character of mine uses his own bank to store his own trade goods. Netherweave bags are cheaper than dirt and works well for all my alts. Only my main has all 22 slots on her person and 20s for her bank.
So far, the convenience of having my bank toon in my guild outweighs having my own private bank.
ArkInventory also makes it easy to see all my chara's goods at once.
Ashfall Apr 23rd 2009 3:27AM
Just wanted to say how much I like this blog regardless of the total hammering it received from the very arrogant Marko over at just my two copper.
His blog is the nerdy end of the money aspect of the game. Take anything to the extreme and you can wring all the fun out of it and Marko does this with gusto.
Time is money offers practical tips and hints to a general player base who don't have the time or inclination to "play the market" for hours every day.
Keep it up...
...oh and I'm sure your readership is much larger than his so Marko can go suck on it!
Markco Apr 23rd 2009 8:51AM
The advice I gave on my blog regarding this topic far surpasses what Time is Money is offering.
They don't need to cite because they are just making it up as they go, assuming that their advice is 100% accurate and the best methods. There's no research going into this column and no intellectual reasoning.
This may prove helpful, but there's so little information here and much of it is misleading, to the point that you're doing the readers a great disservice.
Auctioneerlite? Do you know who showed that addon off and worked with the author to possibly improve it? It was JMTC.
Obviously they read that article.
I wonder what your next post will be about? Oh wait I'll just read last week's posts on JMTC.
SarahTheGnome Apr 23rd 2009 6:03AM
Getting a guild bank for my bank alt has been the best investment ever! Like the author said, right now there was the rise in the glyph market, back when the inscription profession first came, there was a rise in the herb market, etc.
I have a bank alt (lvl1) in IF, I love IF, with a guild bank that has 3 slots, and of course the personal bank with every slot bought.
I offered people 5 gold for signatures, I had my guild in 10 minutes.
When I get above 300g on my main, I sent the money to my bank alt, it is a good way of saving up money, since you don't have access to it as easily as you would when you just kept it on your main, thus you think twice before spending it. EVERYTHING that is not grey goes to my bank alt, because everything can be used at one point. I clean out my bank once a week, check out AH, see what is on for good prices, put those items on, rest goes back to bank. I have never ever had money troubles, I can buy everything my heart desires.
My guild bank is very neat, I like it being all tidy, I have one tab for potions (I am an alchemist but made the switch at 80 so I have tons of low level potions), one tab for herbs, and one tab for herbs + enchanting materials (I do not have an enchanter but I have all my greens disenchanted because it brings in a lot of money), and one tab with WotLK stuff, meaning eternals, cards, etc.
In my bank alt's private bank, I have mostly fish, food, cloth, and other pre-TBC materials.
I would suggest people who accumulate a lot of things get a guild bank, it works wonders.
Jon Do Apr 23rd 2009 8:16AM
And of course you must have your bank alt look the part. Fishing dailies are great for that.
Mine has a tuxedo and cuff links with a jungle hat and diamond tipped cane at the moment.
And of course a speed enchant on his boots.
sinthar Apr 23rd 2009 8:38AM
I have two bank alts with a guild each (and two tabs). As my main is a tailor, theres lots of netherweave bags there. I also was a hoarder. Finally it go too much for me to manage, so i had a good old spring sale on the AH. To my amazement i made over 6k, and thats without selling any items, just spare bags, cloth, old ore, enchanting mats etc.
So another 2 sales and ill have enough for my chrs bike :) It took over 2 hours just to ferry the stuff from my bank to the AH and post it. Soon ill do the other bank alt too. :)
Kyle Apr 23rd 2009 10:25AM
I know gold is easy to come by nowadays, but I strongly disagree with offering money up front for signatures. I had no problem getting enough signatures for a guild charter without having to spend a copper. And it didn't require spamming. I simply targetted individual people who were not a part of a guild and sent a polite tell explaining my goal and asking for their assistance. It didn't take very long at all.