Setting Up a Bank Alt

First of all: what is a bank alt? An alt is a character you create that isn't your first or main character. A bank alt is such an alt that you create only for doing your business at the AH and storing stuff in a bank.

You may be wondering why not use my main for such business and make a character just for it? Suppose you got something from your adventures that you need to auction on the AH for money. You would need to get some transport from where you got the item or where you are currently adventuring, get to the AH, auction the item. Then you would get back to your current place of adventuring and at some point get a notification that your item has been sold. You would then need to move to a mailbox to retrieve your money. If the auction expired (no buyer has been found), you will need to get back to the auction house to re-list it. This all takes time.

Instead, you can create a bank alt and post it next to the AH in your favourite city (Orgrimmar or IF for instance). Then, instead of auctioning the item off your main character, you would mail it to the 'bank alt', auction it from the bank alt and re-list everything from it as well, without having to move all over the world, just logging in and out of your main and bank alt. This saves both money and time.

Some people also like to mail off items to be auctioned to the bank alt and continue adventuring. After a while they log on to the bank alt and auction all of their for-sale items. If they didn't have bank alts they would have to either store all those for-sale items in their bags filling them up, or make several journeys to the capital city to auction them.

Also, some sneaky people like bank alts because it keeps business separate from friends. Say you get a nice staff from a mob and want to sell it. If you auctioned it off your main, a friend may come by and ask if you could 'donate' it to him as a sign of affection, thus no money. If the auction comes from a level 1 alt whom nobody knows such tricky inter-personal problems can never occur and money is made without any 'interference' from friends, guildies etc.

Read More »»

Money 101 (or how to make gold)

In World of Warcraft, like in real life, you need money. In WoW, money is not quite as necessary, but still required to enjoy yourself.. and it is called 'gold'. If you are at your first character, you need to have gold in mind or you will be almost stuck at some point, like not being able to afford training at the class trainer or not being able to buy yourself a cool horse of flying mount.

So... 1 gold is 100 silver and 1 silver is 100 copper. WoW translation is "1g=100s, 1s=100c". You initially earn gold (more like copper actually) by:

• completing quests that award money as reward
  
• killing certain mobs (humanoids are better)
• selling off items you do not need to vendors
• selling off items you don't need to other players

You don't need to be told to complete quests as that is how you advance in level anyway.

You also kill mobs in the process, and the only thing you need to is to remember to pick up the money off them. To do that most efficiently look into your interface options and select auto-loot to pick up all loot from a mob when you right-click its corpse.

Selling off items you do not need to vendors is more complicated. You first need to remember to do that. Then you need to know which items to sell to vendors and which to sell to other players. Generally you will want to sell items who's names are written in gray to the vendor as no player will buy those (they are called 'vendor trash').

Secondly, you will notice you need bags to pick up all the trash you can so that you can sell it for gold. And you do not initially have that many bags and they have a limited number of slots. If you are at a first character on a realm: your first priority, over anything else, is to get more bags. You will not have money to buy bags with many slots, so at first, buy many bags with few slots (you can have up to 5). Pick up everything and sell regularly so that you can pick more. Invest your money to upgrade your bags to more slots until you have 5 bags with at least 10 slots each. After that point it's no longer an issue and you should focus on other things as well.

If you don't want to make your money 1copper at at time, you will want to trade some of the stuff you get from monsters to other players, who will be infinitely richer than you and afford to pay sums that will seem obscene (much more than the vendor, sometimes thousands of times more). For that you will need to make a 'bank alt' and post it in front of the Auction House (AH).

A last tip: do not buy yourself anything except water and food (if you need them) for the first 20 levels at least, if you are not already flowing in gold from other characters you may have. Getting copper-less can be a very unpleasant experience.

If you do however find yourself with no money, quest for it or make it on your own in some other way. Do not beg and do not ask for loans (except from close real-life friends who may be in the game with you). Begging and asking for loans is so frowned upon that you will most likely regret doing it for a long time. So don't.

Read More »»