What to keep/sell.. newbie here

Guides New Player Help and Guides
1

I all. I made it to LVL 22! I just finished the quest line in Ghostlands. And even though the last quest suggested a group a 5, I did it myself! Only took two attempts.

Anyways. Biggest problem I’m having is my bags, or lack thereof. My inventory is constantly full. Thing is most of the things in my bags seem valuable. Lots of green and blue items. Is it true that the green and blue items that have a word in red, like Leather, should just be sold since red means a Mage cannot wear that type of armor? Should I be moving things over to the various action bars and just store stuff at a bank?

Also, does it matter to whom I sell items to? Could it be a General Supplies guy, or could it be a Food seller?

Help me understand and clear out my bags! Thanks.

2

So simply… there are 5-ish types of items you can collect in your bags.

  1. Equipment. Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate and various weapons types. As a mage you use cloth, everything else is unusable.
    If it is Soulbound - only you can equip it. If its gear you don’t want just sell it to a vendor.
    If its Bind On Equip, and you don’t want to keep it, you can sell it on the Auction House and make more money.

  1. Consumables. Stuff you eat or drink. Typically keep what you need for and vendor the rest.

  2. Trade Goods - for professions. Look at the recipe section of the profession menu and keep what you need and sell the rest, auction house will make a little more money.
    For example - if you have alchemy, you want to keep herbs, but you don’t need cloth or gems that sometimes drop from mobs. So keep the herbs and sell the rest.

You can automatically sort your bags by right clicking on the top bar of the bag when its open - you can set them to automatically sort by the above categories.

If your not going to use something immediately sell it. There is little reason to keep junk in your bags.

  1. quest items. These are needed for quest completion, you should not sell them. If you press the sort button on backpack it will usually put these up top. They will disappear when you hand your quest in.

  2. Junk. white and grey items. When you sort your backpack these will always be at the bottom. Sell them all.

There are other items, like mounts and pets and toys, but the above is the basic.

No

I’d also recommend…

  • Investing in bigger bags. You can get 16 slot bags from bag vendors or earn them cheaper from getting rep up with you faction. You can buy up to 32 slot bags on the Auction house, though the biggest ones cost thousands of gold.

  • There are lots add-ons that make inventory management easier.
    The most basic (least amount of changes to the game) are “Pawn” - which simply tells you if an item is an upgrade for you or not, and “The Undermine Journal”, which adds prices you might get from the auction house for the stuff you might vendor.
    Again, there are more robust add-ons than those, but those 2 are simple and just add data to your tool-tip description of an item, rather than overhaul the interface.

2 Likes
3

Djarro covered pretty much everything, but I did want to touch on this as there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding here. When you move an item from your bag to the action bar it doesn’t move the item to the action bar. It just creates a shortcut link to that item. The item remains in your bag taking up a slot.

While there are a couple instances where this makes sense to do (such as a trinket with a click to use effect), the action bar is generally saved for things like your abilities, mounts, potions, and eventually when you get familiar with them, macros.

2 Likes
4

A lot of people create a bank alt that they can send the stuff that might be useful or worth auctioning. When you get to a mailbox, you just send all of your extra non-soulbound stuff to the bank alt so you can keep playing. You can then sort out what to do with it later.

A few more details on early bag options:

(1) Each of the city factions will sell you a 16 slot bag for less than 2g once you get to revered with the faction. They are unique so you can only use one from each city, but they are generally the cheapest option per bag slot. (There are 7 city factions, so you can get up to 7 of the bags — although you’ll usually have enough gold to move onto other options before you get revered with all the cities.)

There’s a quartermaster for each city faction, and they are usually NPCs sitting on mounts near the flight masters in the cities. For Horde, Silvermoon is near the flight master just outside Silvermoon’s gates. The Thunder Bluff quartermaster is right next to the flight master inside the totem in Thunder Bluff. In Undercity, it’s near the flightmaster in the center of the city. The Darkspear, Ogrimmar, and Bilgewater quartermaster are all near Orgrimmar’s flightmaster that’s up on the mesa in the middle of town. The Huajin Pandaran is the main exception to the flightpath rule. It’s actually in the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar. Look for the red hot air ballon. The NPC is near there.

Those quartermasters will also sell you special tabards for their city. If you wear them while doing a dungeon, you’ll get extra rep for that faction.

(2) You can get a “free” 16 slot bag from the Darkmoon Faire. The Darkmoon Faire is an event that runs for a week starting on the first Sunday of the month. You can look at the in game calander to see when it is up. You can buy a 16 slot bag for one Darkmoon Faire prize ticket when it’s up. (You earn tickets through the various activities on the Island, and the initial quest to go to the Faire will give you 5 tickets.) It’s unique, so you can only have one.

(3) Hit up the Auction House. The specific bag you’ll want to look for is “Netherweave Bag.” These tend to be the cheapest per bag slot on the AH. (Netherweave drops like crazy, and making bags is pretty much the only thing to do with it that can beat just vendoring it so lots of people with tailoring tend to make them.) As it’s the AH, prices will vary, but you can usually pick them up for 5-10g each. If they are higher than that, hold off on buying and keep any eye out. They don’t usually stay high for very long.

(4) If you’re just really desperate for anything, you can buy some 6 or 8 slots bags for a few silver from vendors in various cities. (Some general goods vendors have them, and there’s a bag vendor in Orgrimmar in The Drag.) They’ll often sell other bags as well, but they’ll tend to be more expensive per bag slot that the other options mentioned above.

1 Like
5

Sell It All
You should just sell everything unless you want to be a pack rack. Armor / Weapons don’t have a huge impact until much later in the game. Your “required level” could be at least 10 levels to your current level and you’ll still do fine. The zones were adjusted (several years ago) to get you quickly through each expansion easier and quicker. Every item will just get replaced with something better in the next zone. Also, red can mean you’re either not able to equip it or your level is too low. You can always check your skills book to see what you can equip.

Sell BoE Items
Some BoE (Bind on Equip) items can be sold on the AH (Auction House) for lots of money due to transmog (500 gold +). However, this is purely a “perceived cosmetic value,” it has nothing to do with the stats of the item. Note, I don’t think most people buy armor off the AH anymore due to Account Bound Heirlooms and transmog driving up the costs of a lot items on the AH.

Crafting
If you plan on crafting then you’ll need lots of regents. Purchasing a regent tab for your bank (100 gold) will make life easier. However, at level 22 that’s way out of your league so you’ll have to mail it to another character (Bank Alt). I also suggest finding a crafting guide online to plan ahead to figure out what you need.

Key Points

  • Sell everything to the vendor, unless you think you can sell it on the AH.

  • If you want to craft items, plan on buying a regent tab and reference a guide.

  • If you hold onto everything you’ll run out of bag and bank space.

  • Selling items to vendor does have different sell prices depending on your reputation with that faction/group. Goblins also have a racial that always gives them them the exalted (?) sell price (racial: Best Deals Anywhere) .

1 Like