I always run out of inventory space in any MMO I play.  The main problem is that I love to craft and quest and always have a ton of those items on hand.  Here are some things I've found out about GW 2 to help me plan my storage space.

Starting Inventory

Account

• 30 shared bank slots
• Crafting Material / Cooking Material / Mini-Pet Storage... You can have 250 of each crafting item stored.

Per Character

• 20 slot starter backpack
• Four bag slots
• You can have up to 5 characters

Bags

Basics

• 4 slot bags can be purchased from vendors for 32 copper
• 8 slot bags can be made by crafters (tailor, leatherworker, armorsmith) with 20 tier 1 materials (jute scrap, rawhide scraps, copper ore)
• Each tier of crafting makes a higher quality bag (10 slots, 12 slots, 14 slots, etc).  In addition to raw materials, these higher level bags require an increasingly expensive vendor item called runes of holding.
• 20 slot bags can be made at max level, and they require a superior rune of holding (10 gold) to make. 

Specialty Bags

• All three professions can make invisible bags (which don't show up when selling to merchants)
• Tailors can make 8-20 slot Craftsman's Bags (New crafting materials are placed here first when looting)
• Leatherworkers can make 8-20 slot Oiled Leather Packs (Junk items are placed here first when looting)
• Armorsmiths can make 8-20 slot Reinforced Padded Equipment Boxes (Weapons and Armor Fill this bag First)

Gem Store Upgrades

Free Storage

• We start with 30 bank slots
• Each Character Starts with a starter pack and 4 bag slots (100 maximum slots)
• We can make 5 characters.
• That means we all have 530 free slots without using the cash store (which is a pretty decent number considering we have seperate storage for crafting ingredients in our bank and can send crafting items to the bank while on the field)

Bank Tab Expansion

• You can expand your bank 7 times for 600 gems each time
• Each expansion adds another 30 slots
• Since gems will most likely sell for 400 for $5.00, this each expansion will cost around $7.50.
• Each extra equpment slot  bought this way is therefore 25 cents

Character Slot Expansion

• You can buy more character slots for 800 gems
• This is about $10.00 US currency
• If you assume you can easily get 20 slot packs, you can get 100 equipment slots this way.
• Each extra equipment slot bought this way is therefore 10 cents.
• Even if we factor in the high price of 20 slot bags and just use 8 slot bags, each slot is still only 19 cents a piece

Bag Slot Upgrade

• You can add an extra bag slot to a single character for 400 gems  (Up to 3 times)
• This is about $5.00 US currency
• If you assume easy 20 slot packs, this is 25 cents a slot
• If you use 10 slot packs, this is 50 cents a slot

Tips to Maximizing Your Inventory on the Cheap

How to get by without extra bag slots even if you are a crafter

• Buying salvaging tools should be prioirty #1... Even if you don't craft, you will want to mine every ore node / chop down every tree you come across for experience and profit.  You can buy them from vendors in most starting areas.
• You can buy a crude salvage kit at many renowned heart vendor for a small karma price.  Use these kits to break apart trash drops.
• Send any crafting material directly to your bank by right clicking on it and choosing (send to bank)
• You can quickly sell junk items to renowned heart vendors through the sell all junk items button.
• You can post any item you think will selll (crafting ingredients will sell really well until bots ruin the market) by directly opening up the trading house.  I will write a guide on this later.
• You can also mail items directly to an alt from the interface without using a mailbox (bank alt, mule, etc)
• Using these steps, the default bag slots should be more than sufficien

Organizing your Bags

• Ideally, I will organize my bags this way...  Starter Pack = Overflow and a space for my salvage kits
• Bag #1 Reinforced Padded Equipment Box... All my salvagable loot will come here for me to quickly break apart or sell on auction house
• Bag #2 Craftsman's Bag ... All crafting material will gather here for me to quickly righ click and send to bank.
• Bag #3 Invisible Bag ... My Extra gear (extra weapons / armor, buffs, etc) that I don't want to sell on accident will go here.
• Bag #4 Oiled Leather Pack ... Junk items will go here so I never have to sort through them.

Efficient Use of Gems

• Buy Character Slots First:  If you find yourself running out of space... Your best bet is to make sure you are using all five of your character slots and then to buy more character slots
  • First... this is the cheapest use of gems by far (10 cents per equipment slot compared to 25 cents for the other options)
  • Second... It is quite possible that Arena Net will give each of your characters a birthday gift like they did in Guildwars 1.  These are usually worth money and on a per character basis.
• Buy Extra Bank Slots Second:  I would only buy bank slots if you find the 30 default slots too annoying.  While not as good a deal as character slots, they are a quality of life issue and mean you won't have to mule as much.
• Buy Extra Bag Slots Last:  These are not a good deal.  I would only buy them if you find yourself running out of working space consistantly and even then only for your main characters.

I hope you all find this useful!

- Jerich

Part 2: Gem Store Upgrades vs 20-Slot Bags

As like any MMO, bags in GW2 get more expensive as you get better and better ones. Here is a table that lets you quickly see the scaling cost per inventory slot for each level of bag:

The Price of Bags

*Assuming 8 slot packs are 50 copper and other packs sell for 1.5 times the cost of the rune

The Price of Gem Store Upgrades

When should you buy gem store upgrades instead of 20-slot bags?

Note: I don't think the price of 100 gems will reach 24 gold until at least a month after launch. If gems ever go over 57 gold per 100, that will probably be at least a couple weeks after launch. That means it will most likely be better to purchase gems for inventory upgrades instead of investing in 20 slot packs.

Part 3:  Adding Inventory By Purchasing Your Own Private Guildbank

We can be part of multiple guilds at once in Guildwars 2.  This means that you could create a dummy guild just for the sake of a guild bank.  While I think we should always represent Gaiscioch so that our task influence go to our guild, it is quite possible to buy the influence you need to purchase a guild bank.  Here are the breakdowns...

Cost of Hiring a Guild Promoter

• 10 influence for 10 silver
• 100 influence for 1 gold
• 1,000 influence for 10 gold
• 10,000 influence for 100 gold

Cost of adding a guild bank

• 500 influence to research Architecture Level 1
• 1,000 influence to research Architecture Level 2
• 1,000 influence to add a 50 slot guild bank  (requires level 2)
• 5,000 influence to research Architecture Level 3
• ??? influence to research Architecture Level 4
• 5,000 influence to add 100 additional slots to your guild bank (requires level 4)
• ??? influence to research Architecture Level 5
• 10,000 influence to add an additional 100 slots to your guild bank (requires level 5)

Analysis

This means that it will cost a mere 25 gold to add the first 50 slots to your personal guild bank.  That is about 50 silver per slot and is comparable to the jump from 15 slot packs to 18 slot packs.

While we don't know right now how much architecture level 4 and 5 will cost, let's assume that they are 10,000 and 20,000 respectively.  This means that the next 100 slots would be 200 gold or 2 gold a slot.  The final 100 would be 300 gold or 3 gold a slot.  Note that both of those are better deals than moving to 20 slot packs  (although using this route will probably take over a month of real life time).

Very nice post. I have not thought about my bags yet, and this helps a lot.

Yeah didn't think about inventory space really, but I did find I was running out fast.

nice post

Well done. Thank you for putting this together.

Very nice post.. and yes.. this should be in the guide section!

Thanks for the comments!... I went ahead and posted it as a guide. The guides didn't seem to have any built in formatting tools and the HTML appeared slightly different than the forums, so I had to wrestle with it a bit. I think it looks okay in I.E., Firefox and Chrome, but I don't have old browsers to test it on. Let me know if anything looks wonky. - Jerich

Looks great Jerich. I especially like the number crunching on how much each gem store item would cost in real dollars. And I didn't know about all the different kinds of bags (very neat, I'm more likely to actually use them now). As for bots ruining the crafting market, since the Trading Post runs across all servers, I imagine this will be a lot harder to do than in previous mmo's; I'm not concerned about it and I imagine Arenanet will be happy to use ban hammers on botters. In the case of GW1, it was Dhuum (older god of Death) that killed botters/cheaters (for those lore lovers, Grenth defeated Dhuum and is the current god of Death): videos of a Dhuum ban More Dhuum lore

» Edited on: 2012-07-09 09:09:53

Awesome post. Lots of useful tips there! I wonder what the max character slots will be? I think it was 8 in GW.

» Edited on: 2012-07-09 21:16:42

I like your logical way of thinking, and how you broke down the costs. This does encourage me to think very hard about buying extra character slots at the begining of the game. Thanks.

Very nicely presented. You sir are a credit to the study of the efficient allocation of resources, the dismal science.

Only update it needs is that heart vendors don't always sell salvaging kits or harvesting tools. Most times you need to see a standard merchant for salvaging and harvesting tools. These are usually found in camps and not always near a heart vendor. Most times there will be one in a camp where a repair merchant is. Even so, they are out there so you can manage to get the tools you need. Awesome thing about items harvested or salvaged, you can make them go right into the collections part of your bank any time you want to free up bag space. Think they are working on making this slicker than what it was last beta and we shall see in this next beta. Now for the number crunching I give you two thumbs up! I didn't bother going that far in my own decisions of how to handle things. I just know I'm going to craft along with everything else in this game.

Great Post!

@Narco - There will be 5 character slots at release, enough to play each of the races. If you want to play all the classes you will have to buy three more slots for $10.00 each. That is what I plan on doing. While I may not get to them for a while, I plan to level up one of every class. @Briseadh - Thanks for the update suggestion! I updated it to say that crude salvage kits could be found at many heart vendors (I typically bought them there). You can buy better salvage kits at the camps. I also updated it to say that the salvaging tools could be bought from a vendor. I believe I remember Arena net said they are adding more vendors who sell them. Once I figure out a few places to get them, I will update the guide. @Vampirebane - I loved the video.:) I hope Guildwars 2 does a good job of frustrating botters. I have never seen a game that hasn't been botted, but I think the fact that crafting nodes are on a 23 hour timer, we are downleveled, and that pretty much everyone dies to 3 a monster pull may help some.

Sticky!!!

Excellent guide, thanks Jerich for the useful info!

Thanks for the write up Jerich :) Agree with Rumpz Sticky this one :)

Great write up, It has got me thinking about the whole storage thing. I was also thinking about buying extra character slots and using them as a place holder for future names that I would like to have and as a mule that I can park next to a bank. The only thing I dont like is the bag expansion slots. The reason I dont like them is if you delete your character for whatever reason the bag expansions will also be gone along with the IRL money that you spent on them.

Great post, Jerich! Thanks for doing the math on this. :)

tyvm,this post give me a great help:)

Thanks for the guide! I have a couple of minor things to mention, though: 1. You say "You can also mail items directly to an alt from the interface without using a mailbox (bank alt, mule, etc)" - that's not true, you can't mail things to other toons on the same account, because in-game mail is account based (which also means if someone mails an item to you, any of your toons can retrieve that mail - this threw me for a loop the first time that happened to me). 2. In addition to right clicking on an individual item and depositing it into your bank, you can also click the gear at the top of the inventory window and pick "deposit all collectibles" which is much faster than sending collectibles individually. Since there's no charge for this and since you can do this from anywhere, this is an awesome way to cut down on the clutter in your inventory. Between "deposit all collectibles" and "sell all junk" my inventory barely has time to build up!

Loving this guide, especially the parts about various kinds of bags you can have.

Here's something else to consider.. not sure what the ration is, but keep in mind you CAN trade your gold for other peoples' gems.. so in a sense, you "could" do it free if you're one of those people with lots of farming time

Great info!!

Thanks for posting

Thanks! I'm thinking of making an addendum to this guide where I calculate what the costs are for each upgrade bag and compare that to costs for getting your own guild bank with gold. I am also going to calculate the break even point for how much gem prices need to be to make buying them with gold a bad investment. Think I should just add that to the OP or make post #2?

I'm curious to see how much bag space we'll need for gear and whatnot. E.g., Rift is particularly troublesome, in that I have a full set of dps gear, tank gear, and pvp gear, not counting consumables, gathering, etc. In GW2, will we end up wanting to carry different gear for different jobs? At the least I can imagine wanting more than just 2 weapon sets...

Your guides are great, thanks!

Thanks! I went ahead and added part two to the guide. With the price of 20 slot bags, it looks like buying gems in the auction house may actually be a relatively inexpensive way of upgrading your storage.

Jerich, thanks for the great analysis. I found the whole bigger bags vs. more character bag slots very helpful! Re bank slots, I tried out two extra bank tabs in Beta 1 & 2, and filled them up with extra runes/sigils, hand-me-down blue gear, cooked food. I'm sure some of it could be stored on a mule but it was nicely convenient to just grab stuff -- especially consumables -- from the bank as I needed it. I'm planning to buy at least one extra bank tab at launch. Lastly, I took a different approach to storage (and extra character slots) than what you've listed in your guide: I bought a second copy of the game. If storage becomes tight I'll probably create a mule on the second account and just mail stuff back and forth.

I already have a batch of gems pre-purchased. The "extra" bank slots were very convenient. I'm a recovering alt-oholic as well as virtual packrat, so I'll get some new character slots, too. *prays for serenity* *wonders if there's Firefly references in GW2*

Nice breakdown, Jerich. I am always concerned about bag space and this helps me plan more for ways to increase it. I would like to be clear about gems though - you can buy gems on the NCSoft store for cash, but you can also buy/sell gems for gold to other players in game?

You can buy gems from other players with gold. You can also sell if that is your thing.

I doubt I will sell gems for gold, though not sure about buying them for gold. I just wanted to be sure how it all worked. Thanks again, Jerich!

I realized that I left out guildbanks so I added information on them as an addendum. Guildwars 2 has made it so that it is possible to have your own personal mule guild in addition to being part of Gaiscioch. Edit: I went ahead and posted this on guru since I figure other people might find it handy.

» Edited on: 2012-08-02 10:57:20

Great post! I have not yet thought much about space because I knew I was going to be buying a lot of gems, but this will surely help me get the most for my money! I am very interested in the initial bag set up you discussed. I hate how disorganized my bags can get after a few hours of adevnturing. I would be very interested to learn which profession makes each of the bag types you describe, exactly what they do, and how much you estimate having to pay for them at launch (or will you craft them all)?

I am going to level up all the trade skills eventually anyway. I will only buy bags if someone is selling for cheaper than the components. Leatherworkers make Junk Bags (Normal recipe + bone chips) Armorsmiths make Equipment bags (Normal recipe + scales) Tailors make crafting bags. (Normal recipe + bone chips) Everyone can make invisible bags (Normal recipe + dust)

I'm jealous of your ability to manipulate HTML on this website. Every time I try to do something, stuff gets really wonky or it doesn't work at all.

Hi IronLegionnaire! I saw you replied to the post I made on Guru here. I decided to post this guide on Guru since I thought it might be more general use and one of our guild policies is to be as inclusive as possible. One nice thing about posting to guru is that a poster named Shayne Hawke found a small error in my calculations (63 gold / slot to 60 gold / slot). Thanks for the compliment! As for HTML, I been using raw HTML and then editing as necessary. I have found I could do some inline CSS, but it is chancy at best. If I try to add embedded css or java script my entire post is blanked out.

» Edited on: 2012-08-09 02:58:52

Hey Jerich, looks like you were picked for Featured Content on guildwars2guru, and first on the list, no less!

Nice! Thanks for pointing this out. I feel honored being placed amongst those other posts.

Very nice guide,thx:)

I modified names and linked my other guide to this one. If you have not looked at inventory yet, doing so before launch may save you some cash.

This is, hands down, the best guide I've ever read. Thank you! Three questions: 1) What are the in-game names of the bags? We can order them here on the website, and I don't want to order the wrong one! 2) Dollar-for-dollar does it make sense to buy a second version of the game for the extra 5 characters and their bank slots + the ability to mail to them? After all, they are a different account. 3) How did you get so awesome?

Great guide, thanks! Do you still think gems will get anywhere near that expensive anytime soon? They've actually felt very cheap so far, so I decided it was best to sell as much silver to buy as many gems as possible to do things with right now.

I am not sure Corbin. They are worth that much in terms of inventory, but I underestimated the amount of money people would spend on gems. Some people have been converting thousands of dollars in gems to gold. That is keeping the price down. I think that they will definitely keep climbing, however.

Thousands of US dollars in the whole community or by individual accounts? Just to clarify here, thanks. Maybe we should have a new thread on the marketplace and economy? Bes

bump

You're right, I've been very surprised by the number of people who have spent equal the value of the game or higher on gems right out of the gate. I did buy $10 in gems to start, since to a new player a few silver sounds like so much to start. But I've been happily trading my in game gold for gems ever since, once I realized how much money is to be made from selling crafting mats. That is, when the TP isn't down, sigh. I do believe it's not so much that any one person has spent that much, Bes (since I'm really not sure what they'd do with that much) but that a lot of people have spent $10-$100 on gems, since there's such a huge supply in the market. No doubt ANet is going to be rushing new products to the gem market to pump up the value.