With Cataclysm only a few short weeks away, it’s tome for you to face up to the unholy mess that is your personal bank vault. And it’s also time for Officers to evaluate the Guild bank vault. This guide to efficiently cleaning out your bank assumes you have a bank alt. If you don’t have one already please go roll one now. Thank you.
Personal Banks
To get started cleaning out your personal bank, start by moving around all the items you have accumulated. I suggest grouping them like this:
Gear
- Old gear with sentimental value (like me and my old tier sets and favorite weapons)
- Off spec gear
- Old gear you are keeping around for hit swapping purposes
- Old gear you aren’t using anymore and didn’t get around to tossing out
- BoE gear that is higher level than you are
Keep all those in bucket 1. Keep those in bucket 2 only if you have used your off spec in the past 3 weeks. Throw out category 3 items since you can reforge and will be getting all new gear in a month anyhow. Bucket 4 should have already been DEd or sold by the time you are reading this sentence. Send items in bucket 5 to your bank alt.
Consumables
- Flasks, fish feasts, and buff foods for your current spec.
- Speed pots, Wild Magic pots, health pots and mana pots.
- Cooked mana/health non-buff food such as Sauteed Goby.
- Fun consumables that turn yourself or other people into other things (i.e. savory deviate delight, etc.)
- Level 75 vendor water/food.
- Elixirs.
Keep items in categories 1-3. Keep items in category 4, in moderation, unless they are only usable in Dalaran. And no you really do not need 6 stacks of pygmy oil. You really don’t. Minimize how much of each item you have on your character (max of 1 stack); send overflow to your bank alt. Throw out items in categories 5 and 6. You’ll be getting far better ones soon, and are likely to use up your old flasks while leveling rather than using those elixirs anyhow.
BoAs
- Vanity pets.
- Alt gear and weapons
Make sure you only have, across your account, 1 of each of the BoA vanity pets (Or two if you are contemplating a one character server move.) Delete the rest. Mail all remaining BoA vanity pet items and all BoA gear to your bank alt.
Reputation and Quest Items
- BoE currency that can be turned in for quests or rep rewards (ex: Relics of Ulduar, Arcane Tomes, etc.)
- BoE quest items.
- BoP quest items.
- BoP currency that can be turned in for reputation or items (Argent Dawn insignias, champions’ writs)
- Items needed for quests currently in your logs.
- Quest items leftover from completed quests.
Mail all items in categories 1 and 2 to your bank alt. Keep items in category 3 such as Blood of Innocents from Scholomance, or the blue ring that allows you to summon Vael in UBRS if they have sentimental value for you. Throw out items in category 4 unless you are actively engaged in that reputation grind currently. Don’t hang on to a half dozen slots of items you know in your heart you will never ever turn in. Especially if it’s from BC times and earlier. Keep items in category 4 if you are really going to do the quest before Cataclysm hits. If not, toss them out along with all the items in category 5.
At this point, you should have 3-4 bags free on your main character (we all have a certain amount of gear, consumables, and toys we like to carry around with us), and hopefully well-organized bags in the bank with plenty of room for your Cataclysm goodies.
Toys and Other Fun Stuff
- Irreplaceable or hard to replace items (the Timbermaw bear transforming rod, the piccolo of flaming-everyone-at-the-mailbox-wants-to-kill-you, etc.)
- Wands
- BoE and common items
Fun stuff has a tendency to be the downfall of many banks. A leather ball here, a stack of snowballs there, and pretty soon your inventory is full. But this game is ABOUT having fun, so keep all items in category #1. Try to trim down the number in category 2 (I have a whole bag of Halloween wands, blossoming branches, and a Manabonk wand on more than 1 character. That’s OK.) Mail items in category 3 to your bank alt or unsuspecting guildies, or throw them out.
Profession Materials
- Items for use at my current profession level.
- Items leftover from my profession leveling.
- Excess items made while leveling my profession.
Keep a moderate amount of items in category 1 if you think there is a good chance you will need them. For example, if you are an enchanter, hang on to some materials. But if you are a max level tailor for example, liquidate those extra materials. Send all items in categories 2 and 3 to your bank alt.
Bank Alt Vaults
Now that you have sent your bank alt a ton of stuff as part of the process tidying up your bags, it’s time to get organized. Most personal bank vaults with which I’ve been acquainted (i.e. I’ve asked impertinent questions about this on twitter and in game) tend to top out at about 3 tabs and a full set of Frostweave bags. The tabs start to feel a little too steep after that, so it is not entirely uncommon for serious auctioneers to have a second bank vault for keeping their storehouse of goods at the ready. But I digress.
You’ll want to evaluate each item as you unpack it form the mail as a keep or a sell.
Keep and Organize
- Profession materials that can apply to professions you might level in the future on alts
- BC and later reputation items that you will use on alts
- Consumables
- BoA items
- Rare quality or better gear for future alts
Sell
- Profession materials specific to the profession you’ve most recently leveled and that you do not intend to level again (i.e. engineering materials)
- Uncommon quality BoE gear and weapons
- Epic quality BoE gear and weapons
- Enchant scrolls and excess materials
- Epic gems
- Buff foods and scrolls
Keep Until Cataclysm Then Sell
- Your stockpiles of lowbie profession materials such as mageweave cloth and wool cloth and mithril ore
- Extra glyphs (prices are currently going lower than the herb cost on many glyphs)
- Excess reputation items you won’t use
- Excess profession items such as fishing lures and raw food that you don’t need
- BoE toys and fun items (there is often a mini surge on this sort of stuff around the holidays)
Guild Banks
I’ve seen guild banks that truly became the receptacles for all the junk the guildies couldn’t sell. Guild banks that had so many and such strict rules that it was not uncommon to receive an item mailed back with a note about how it was not adequate for the guild bank and to please not place it there again. I like a happy medium between those two extremes.
First, you need to evaluate what items guildies actually contribute to — and withdraw from– the guild bank. If the all access tabs are stuffed to the gills with junk, and only the Officers-only extra special items ever leave the bank, consider not having as many slots open for general swapping. In addition to the tips for bank vaults above, guild banks will also want to take these thoughts into consideration:
- Make sure you have enough room to allow guildies to share recipes and profession materials, and group them together by profession.
- If you can afford it, consider having an entire tab for glyphs, and organize them by class, then by type.
- Buy as many bank tabs as the guild can afford. It’s a lot easier to keep tabs organized if there is room to move things around and to add in more items.
- Organize gear by armor proficiency to make it easier for folks to see there is something they could use.
- Consider selling or raffling off those reputation items needed for crafting, and the epic BoEs that are gathering dust in the Officers tab. After Cataclysm, they are not likely to be requested– or to be able to be sold for any significant value.
- Assign an officer to keep an eye on the bank and weed out any items in overabundance.