Adding Storage: Pricing Eight Options for Increasing Inventory

There have been a number of threads recently requesting ANet to add various forms of new storage. It's very unclear if that's likely to happen, never mind when. So here's a list of eight different options for increasing storage right now, comparing the cost per slot.

• New bag slot: 5.6 gold per slot for 20 slots. (~112g total)
• Guild Bank: ~2 gold/slot for 250 slots. (~500g total, if bought through the grey market) (alternative: start your own 50-slot g-bank: 1000 favor, 50g)
• New: Bank Tab: 5g/slot, 30 slots (~150g total, gem shop)
• New character, with 15 slot bags: 2.56g/slot for 80 slots (~205g total)
• New character, 20 slot bags: 2.48g/slot for 100 slots (~248g total)
• Replace 4x 20-slot bags with 24-slot: 8.25g/slot for 16 slots (~132g total)
• Replace 4x 20-slot with 28-slot: 12.1g/slot for 32 slots (~388 total)
• Replace 4x 20-slot with 32-slot: 20.7g/slot for 48 slots (~992 total)

tl;dr version

• First choice should always be a new bank tab, at ~5g/slot. They max out at 14 slots
• Second best depends on what works for you:
  • New character slots are economical for long-term storage: under 2.5g/slot, but iconvenient.
  • Extra bag slots cost ~5.6g per slot and give individual toons some breathing room, but don't really solve account-wide storage problems
• Other alternatives are less convenient or outrageously priced
  • Buying a grey market guild with 250 storage is cheap (2g/slot) but requires g-bank access and won't hold account bound stuff
  • Replacing 20-slot bags with 24-, 28-, or 32-slot bags is much, much more expensive, but does help a lot for farming or bag-opening characters.

And of course the best option is always: change your inventory management habits: storing less means more time for you to play the game.

I'll go into gory detail about these options in the first follow-up post.

I'll go into gory detail about these options in the first follow-up post.

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Most Economical: Manage Inventory Differently

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the best option of all is changing how you manage inventory. If you store less and organize it purposefully, you need less space and spend a lot less of your gaming time moving items around. Best of all: once you've changed your habits, it's free; you spend less time fiddling, more time playing, and have coin to spare that you didn't spend on more storage. However, if you've read this far, you probably don't have time to worry about that, so read on for the tradeoffs if you are spending coin to add space.

Simplest: Add Bank Tabs

The simplest & most convenient option is obviously adding a tab of 30 slots to your own bank, at 5g/slot (600 gems = ~150g). After that maxes at a generous 14 tabs (420 slots), you need to find a new source.

• Pro: simple & convenient
• Con: 5g/slot and maxes out at 14 tabs.

Cheap, Simple, & ...Inconvenient: Add Character Slots

The next most convenient is to spend gems to buy more character slots. You need 200 gold for the 800 gems and then your best bet is spending another 48 gold on 20-slot bags, so you end up with 100 slots for 248 gold, roughly 2.5g per slot. You could save ~40g by going with 15-slot bags, but that ends up reducing your storage by 20%, while saving you only 18% in costs, i.e. it's more economical to go direct to 20-slot bags

• Pro: Low per cost slot, easy to implement.
• Con: inconvenient. You have to have a plan for which 'mule' stores what, so you can easily find it.

Economical: Buy a 250-slot Guild Bank off the Grey Market

A lot of people have guild banks from the pre-HoT days when you could put one together for under 11g (even more people didn't bother because, back then, 11g seemed like a fortune). Some of those people are willing to sell those guilds with a Stash, Trove, & Deep Cave at a going rate of 400-600 gold. Such guilds almost certainly don't come with a hall or any other improvements, so you'll need to visit the relevant 'NPC' located in WvW spawns, PvP lobby, or (ideal option) a VIP lounge. There's also one in each of the major cities, near or not far from the bank (in LA, he's located at the Guild Initiative HQ.

• Pro: Cheap at 2g/slot. Plus 250 slots is the biggest single boost you can provide with one purchase.
• Con: Inconvenient, requires finding the right NPC. Also can't store account-bound items.

Alternatively, you can get your own g-bank with 50 slots for 50 gold, i.e. 1g/slot. It's a very cost-effective, if inconvenient option.

Give Me Some Breathing Room: Add a Bag Slot

Bag slots are a budget gem shop purchase at only 400 gems, i.e. about 100g. Spend another 12g for a 20-slot bag and you've given your character considerable breathing room. Net cost 112g for 20 slots, or 5.6/slot.

• Pro: Easily done, reasonable cost, adds breathing room.
• Con: Very few total slots and doesn't help if you have an account-wide storage problem

I'm Rich, You Know: Investing in Bigger Bags

The game now offers the possibility of upgrading 20-slot bags to 24-, 28-, or even 32-slot bags. This is outrageously expensive both in terms of outright gold and per-slot costs. However, if you farm a lot (or simply hate dealing with stuff), it's very convenient. The costs are over 8g, 12g, and 20g per slot respectively, so this is only worth doing if you have the coin and you just can't stand running out of space. Ideal use: put them on your L53 bag opener or L80 silverwastes farmer, so you can salvage & visit vendors less often.

• Pro: convenient for toons that generate a lot of stuff
• Con: Overpriced nonsense for the rich & infamous.

One More Option: Spending RL Money (Not Mentioned in Summary)

There's also the possibility of spending some of your RL wallet on storage. I've left it out of the summary because it's not really an option for a lot of people. If you're willing, you have three choices on how to spent US$30 of RL money on the game:

1. use it to fund gem shop options above
2. convert to 190g to fund TP/crafting options above,
3. buy a new account.

(3) turns out to be the most economical by far. Without spending significant in-game gold and using 8-slot bags instead of 20, you add 290 slots; with an additional spend of 240 gold, you end up with a total of 530 slots. That ends up being 0.7g/slot and 0.9g/slot respectively, far, far cheaper than any of the in-game-coin-only alternatives above.

If you already spend your RL money on ANet, this is probably your best option.

• Pro: cheapest option by far
• Con: least convenient option by far; you literally have to logon to a different account to access

Enough Already With the Options: Shared Inventory Slots (Also not mentioned in summary)

Shared inventory slots are available at a minimum of 560 gems each (if bought in a 5-pack), i.e. 140 gold per slot. On a per-slot basis, that's better than 28- or 32-slot bags, but ... it's only one extra slot at a time.

On the other hand, these are "item multipliers" so they provide an immense convenience over other forms of storage: instead of needing to buy & keep a Copper-Fed kit on each toon, you can drop one in a shared slot, saving one slot for each toon you own. With only the default five characters, that's not necessarily a big benefit. However, for altoholics, it's probably indispensable. (I confess I've maxed out on these.)

edits:

• Thanks to @Donari.5237 for pointing out that there are many more guild bank access points.
• Thanks to @ProverbsofHell.2307 for reminding me that the 50-slot g-bank can be had for as little as 50g.
• Thanks to @Menadena.7482 for introducing the idea of Shared Inventory Slots. As they say, a great tool for those with too many toons.

But the new account doesn't solve the fact that it's inconvenient to swap around for items.

The simple fact is that the new bags are an outrageous goldsink and nothing else. And they didn't help by having all these new consumable items and not fixing the useless green sigils from salvaging.

@Zenith.7301 said:But the new account doesn't solve the fact that it's inconvenient to swap around for items.Which is why I wrote, "least convenient option by far".The thread is about comparing the options, not ignoring one because it might not work for any particular need.

The simple fact is that the new bags are an outrageous goldsink and nothing else. And they didn't help by having all these new consumable items and not fixing the useless green sigils from salvaging.On the contrary, they are a gold sink and incredibly useful to a niche group of players. The other issues have nothing to do with my post: I'm comparing the options for storage we have today, not about what else ANet should or might do ... some day.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:But the new account doesn't solve the fact that it's inconvenient to swap around for items.Which is why I wrote, "least convenient option by far".The thread is about comparing the options, not ignoring one because it might not work for any particular need.

The simple fact is that the new bags are an outrageous goldsink and nothing else. And they didn't help by having all these new consumable items and not fixing the useless green sigils from salvaging.On the contrary, they are a gold sink

and

incredibly useful to a niche group of players. The other issues have nothing to do with my post: I'm comparing the options for storage we have today, not about what else ANet should or might do ... some day.

I'm glad development time was wasted on a niche group of players instead of the actual needs of most players.

If development time was only spent on content that served the desires of most players, some parts of the game would never have seen the light of day: WvW, PvP, Raids, underwater, JPs, etc. It's probably healthier for the game population as a whole to have a variety of content/items so that many different desires can be met.

@Zenith.7301 said:I'm glad development time was wasted on a niche group of players instead of the actual needs of most players.

A reasonable sentiment, but more appropriate for a thread about ANet's plans. This thread is about the costs of each option and I hope I've made clear how inconvenient and expensive some of them are. In the end, regardless of how we got here, don't you think everyone deserves to know what the options are, their costs, their downsides, and get to make their own choice about what's worth their time/coin and what's not?

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Economical: Buy a 250-slot Guild Bank off the Grey Market

A lot of people have guild banks from the pre-HoT days when you could put one together for under 11g (even more people didn't bother because, back then, 11g seemed like a fortune). Some of those people are willing to sell those guilds with a Stash, Trove, & Deep Cave at a going rate of 400-600 gold. Such guilds almost certainly don't come with a hall or any other improvements, so you'll need to use WvW, the PvP lobby, or one of the VIP lounges to have easy access to this form of storage.

Correction: Any major city bank area has a guild banker NPC in it. Off the top of my head, in DR it is to the left as you walk into the bank and in the Grove it is the platform before the private bank as you walk up from the wp. In Rata Sum it is on one side of the Accountancy wp triangle. Also in LA there is one outside the guild HQ in the ne corner. I don't frequent Hoelbrak and Citadel bank areas enough to have them memorized.

I would label this as somewhat less convenient, however, since you must get to an NPC rather than any crafting station or bank express. Plus you have to have a guild slot free and toggle your representation on and off whenever you use the bank, and you can only put tradeable items in it (also an issue with a second account used for storage). How many people are short of space thanks to holding onto fungible items? (This goes to your inventory management discussion). My maxed bank is choked, I admit, and some of that is LS1 memorabilia I cannot replace even though it is currently useless but most of it is tonics and skins all account bound.

Sorry, that got long, I only meant to point out that a guild bank has more access locations than you mentioned and most of them are almost as easy.

Good point @Donari.5237. I'll rephrase. My point was that you have to go someplace to access the more storage, as opposed to it being available anywhere (like a new toon or more bank storage). I'll add a link to the relevant wiki page.

For altoholics look into shared slots. While most commonly used for some shared tool they also can hold a stack of something (like food) all of those characters need.

@Menadena.7482 said:For altoholics look into shared slots. While most commonly used for some shared tool they also can hold a stack of something (like food) all of those characters need.

Good point. Although, even at the minimum cost of 560 gems (if bought in multiples of 5), that's ~140 gold per slot.

True, I was going on the assumption that you would want to have the same amount of inventory space for each character. At buying 5 slots at a time it started to look attractive in the upper teens for characters.

Just a quick question, where is this “grey market” that you speak of? I used to have a banking guild a few years ago but got rid of it. Now I’m kicking myself since you need a Guild Hall to get storage.

Thanks for your post!

@Cynister.2865 said:Just a quick question, where is this “grey market” that you speak of? I used to have a banking guild a few years ago but got rid of it. Now I’m kicking myself since you need a Guild Hall to get storage.

Thanks for your post!

Not true, you only need 1000 favour and 50 gold to unlock the guild bank, no hall needed.

@Cynister.2865 said:Just a quick question, where is this “grey market” that you speak of? I used to have a banking guild a few years ago but got rid of it. Now I’m kicking myselfThe grey market is... everywhere. People typically advertise on Reddit, using the

GW2 Exchange

address. Occasionally, you'll see people offering in /map (and, violating the ToS, in LFG, too). It also can happen in massive social groups, such as massive guilds or various Discord communities.

since you need a Guild Hall to get storage.@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:Not true, you only need 1000 favour and 50 gold to unlock the guild bank, no hall needed.Good point. That's 50 slots of storage for 50 gold. (Not worth it imo, but obviously, this whole thread is about everyone's mileage varying; I'll include it in the original posts.)

@Cynister.2865The g-bank is accessible from any guild bank NPC or a subset of the guild initiative NPCs (links in the second post above).

Thanks for your post!Happy to help :)Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Thanks for the info. I’m glad that I was misinformed on the Guild Hall piece of this. 50g is better spent elsewhere. I like the “banking toon” with 20 slot bags personally.

Just farm the heck out of candy corns during this event and trade the cobs for the 20 slot bucket. Just a cost of your time that way.

Cheers guys!