• Head to the nearest auction house. This is the most straightforward option, but be prepared to pay for it. If you're just getting started, Netherweave Bags will give you a lot of storage for a minimal cost -- providing 16 slots of space for around 25 gold each. If you have the coin, you can pick up larger bags -- like the 20-slot Frostweave Bag or the 22 slot Embersilk Bag -- but expect to pay several hundred gold per bag, at least.
• If that's out of your price range, finding a tailor who's willing to craft bags for you in exchange for materials is a good bet. If you are a tailor you can, of course, make your own bags -- but it's exceptionally useful to have higher level bags when you're still at a low level, before you can craft them yourself. Just look up the materials required to make each bag, purchase them, and then hunt around until you've found a tailor to make them for you. Just remember, when asking, be polite, don't spam, and offer a tip. Even though you're providing the materials, the tailor is providing the skill -- and it's just polite to offer them something in exchange for their time.
• If you just can't spare the coin to buy bags, you can try asking your friends if they have any bags to spare. Again, it's important to be polite and not be a pest, but if you have higher level friends on your server, they may have bags that aren't being used because they've upgraded to better ones. You don't know until you've asked!

Visit your local bank
But even with the best bags on the market, you can easily fill up your inventory space. Fortunately, you've got a huge second inventory in your local bank. If you've never paid the bank a visit, there's no time like the present! Visit any major city -- all Horde and Alliance capitals will have a bank, and most neutral cities as well -- and talk to one of the bank tellers to access your very own bank vault. If you've got materials you're saving for crafting or gear you're saving for transmogrification, this is the perfect place to stash it -- and clean out your inventory in the process.

You'll notice that below the available storage slots there are 7 bag slots, each of which can be unlocked -- for a price. These slots can be filled with any bag you have and each costs a little more to unlock (the first is 10 silver, the second 1 gold, the third 10 gold, and from there on out 25 gold each). We recommend unlocking additional slots as you need them and filling them with hand-me-down bags when you upgrade the bags in your inventory.

Put things in long-term void storage
If you have things you don't need to access, void storage may be the answer. You can access void storage by talking to a Vaulkeeper in Stormwind City, Orgrimmar, or the Shrine of Two Moons -- just ask a guard to direct you if you aren't sure exactly where they are. Void storage offers 80 additional storage slots, but it's a pricey option, costing 100 gold to unlock and then an additional 25 gold per item stored. However, once you get over the sticker shock, it's a great way to hang on to things you want to keep indefinitely but don't need to use -- like old armor or weapons. However, there are some rules you need to be aware of before you get started:

• You can only store soulbound or account-bound items. Anything else you want to hold on to will have to stay in your bank.
• Any items deposited will be stripped of enchants, gems, sockets, and reforged stats. Though this may seem like an odd caveat, Blizzard says this significantly reduces the impact storing these items has on the game servers.
• You can't store items unless they're fully repaired.
• You can't deposit stackable items.

While you cannot presently transmogrify using items in void storage, in patch 5.3 you will be able to without any need to pull the item out of storage. This makes void storage an extra convenient place to keep items you want to use for transmogrification and nothing else.

Need more storage? Consider a bank alt!
For players with serious inventory woes, a bank alt may be the way to go. A bank alt isn't anything special -- it's just a new character you create on your server who exists primarily to give your main character access to another bank's worth of storage. Once you've created this new character, just make a run for the nearest capital city and park it near the mailbox. Your main can send it bags and items you want to hold on to (but don't have the storage space for), and you can store them in the bank of your bank alt. When you need the items you can just mail them back yourself.

A bank alt can also be a useful way to play the auction house. Because this alt is always in a capital city, it's easy to mail things to it that you want to auction off -- all without the trouble of making your way to an auction house yourself. When you need items or gold that your alt has, just mail them back to yourself -- mail between characters on the same account arrives instantly, making transferring goods extra simple.

If you find, after decking your bank alt out with bank slots and bags, that you still don't have enough storage space it's time to take extreme measures. Your bank alt can create its own guild which will then give you access to a guild bank's worth of storage -- which, trust us, is a lot. Starting your own guild for this purpose can be tricky, as you'll need 4 people to sign your guild charter, but you can often get this by asking politely, being patient, and offering a bit of gold to sweeten the deal for other players. Not sure where to get started with your own guild? Wowpedia walks you through the basics.

Hopefully these tips have you with all the storage space you can manage to use... and if not, well, you could always roll a second bank alt!

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Just because you're a newbie doesn't mean you can't bring your A-game to World of Warcraft! Visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to everything you need to get started as a new player, from the seven things every newbie ought to know to how to get started as a healer or as a tank.

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