Bag space and the cost to you
As many of you will know when you are levelling a character in World of Warcraft, bag space plays a key part in your ability to keep on questing or running dungeons, without having to stop and keep visiting vendors all the time.
The common philosophy among players and bloggers has always been to go for Netherweave Bags. These are 16 slot bags and are Bind on Equip. The reasoning behind this is sound, as you get 16 extra slots per bag space for generally between 8g - 16g on the realms I have experience playing on. Which at 8g a bag is 50s per slot or at 16g is 1g per slot compared to Frostweave bags during WotLk which where from 75g - 100g per bag for 20 slots. This works out at 5g per slot at 100g a bag or 84g for the extra 4 slots per bag space.
Personally I never followed this idea though, and there are several reasons for it.
- If you start a character then decide you don't like the class, a Netherweave bag can only be sold to a vendor as it becomes Soulbound as it's Bind on Equip.
- Every new character requires new bags.
- Its vendor value is only 1g
I prefer to equip new characters on new realms with Runecloth bags. These bags are 14 slots and generally cost around the same mark as Netherweave bags, but crucially can either be re-used on different characters or sold on the auction house once you've used them.
On my mains realm when I first started playing, it was towards the end of Burning Crusade and I bought 8 Runecloth bags for a grand total of 10g or 1g 25s each, which was a lot of gold for me at the time. But I still have these bags and my low level alts are currently using them now. This shows how re-usable Runecloth bags are.
Now with the addition of Cataclysm, Blizzard has added the possibility of buying faction specific 16 slot bags like the Ironforge Bag. These are available for the cost of 2g and you can buy one from each respective main home faction. So you can buy 6 for either horde or alliance, and they are available at revered with the respective faction. That's 8g for 64 slots to fill your bags slots on your character or 12g to buy them all so you can purchase two extra bag slots in your bank, giving you an extra 32 slots in your bank also.
Now with the way the levelling zones have been redone and the ability to wear tabard's for your home factions in dungeons it’s got a whole lot easier to get bag space.
So if your starting new characters on new realms or just new to the game when you go to the auction house to buy bags, stop and think about your purchase before you waste gold you may not have.
Epidermuss
I also use the Runecloth bags when I start a new server but I've also been handing in darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets to try for some rare patterns (Like my Rich Purple Shirt one). One side effect of this is an abundance of Journeyman's Backpacks from the goodie bags - these do not become soulbound when equipped so can easily be transferred too.
ReplyDeleteWhy not Mooncloth Bag or Traveler's Backpack? They cost more - maybe 20-30g each, but they're the biggest "heirloom" bags you can get, so they'll never go out of style. If you have a tailor on the realm you can buy some cheap felcloth and churn out your own Mooncloth bags for even less.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I prefer bags with multiples of 4 slots because I don't use an inventory addon, and the UI looks cleaner with full rows of slots.
@Rodos, Yup, I use Traveler's Backpacks too although Mooncloth bags on my server are extortionately priced most of the time! I think Epidermuss's idea was to highlight the fact that there are other options out there besides Netherweave Bags & depending on your gold resources/how often you delete alts/new server etc then you may want to look at those other options :)
ReplyDeleteSolid thoughts about bags and slots and an interesting guest post, Derm. Even on my main realm i'd use BoE bags because it would be easier to mail them around when I created new alts. And just like you wrote, if a toon was boring it would hurt a lot less mentally to delete it regardless of how much gold I had on that realm.
ReplyDeleteThe issues with Runecloth bags is when they're scarce on AH. In such cases I buy 8-12 slot bags depending on availability. Since making gold is easier off AH for me I only loot certain things during the lower levels. There was a time I used addons to clear certain items, but doing it manually ended up working pretty nicely as well. I'd get annoyed if an item got auto sold on one toon although another toon would want to use it.
I found that buying 20 stacks of netherweave cloth to make 1 bag makes alot of profit. You can buy a 20 stack for less than 5g and sell the bag up to 15g. Its an easy way to triple your profit with minimal effot. The only thing you have to worry about is have a tailor to do it for you.
ReplyDelete