Time is Money: Owning your own guild bank
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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.
Guild bank uses
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).
Stay tuned for more tips to help you make piles of gold on Time is Money. Kebina Trudough is dishing the dirt on coveted gold-making secrets, and you won't want to miss it! Check out my guide to choosing lucrative quest rewards for resale to a vendor, tips for disenchanters, or a list of addons to help you sell your loot. Finally, check out my tips to using the Auction House to make the most gold!
