Infinite Bag Space - Using A Trade Mule
Posted on July 14th, 2008 by Gavin under Efficiency Tips, Exploits, World of Warcraft
When you run as many auctions and toons as I do, having enough bag slots can become a serious issue. I will buy out hundreds of auctions every week for resale, as well as having to manage the items for my rolling auctions as they expire every couple of days.
Add to the auction items the little piles of BoE greens, consumables and commodities (cloth, leather, metal) I pick up while leveling and raiding and it can end up being quite a mess if I didn’t use a toon for the sole purpose of asset management. If you do everything with your main character log on right this minute and create two more characters to help you with your item management.
Even though I want to tell you how to work your trade mule, let’s start with the concept of using a dedicated banking toon. On every server and every account I will have a single toon who does nothing but go back and forth from the mailbox to the auction house.
For Alliance choose a Gnome or Dwarf and run them up to Iron Forge. Horde players should use a Tauren in Thunder Bluff. Those cities are simply the best places for commerce because the ah and mailbox are very close together.
Instead of taking time out with your main (or any other alt your are leveling) to do your ah business, always use your banking toon. This will help more than anything to avoid mistakes and confusion. Simply mail every single item of value to your banker and then you can deal with the whole pile at a time when you can concentrate on what to do with each piece.
Use your banker to post all your auctions and hold your gold. I also use my banker to buy items for my toons to use as well. My main rarely visits the ah, I’ve got more important stuff to do with that guy.
Now that you’ve got a banker, create a mule toon. With a mule, it makes no difference what race you select although I will normally use a human for Alliance and an orc or troll for horde. Just run this level 1 toon to the nearest inn with a mailbox and there they will stay forever.
The really neat thing about using a mule is that you can take advantage of a little exploit in the way the mail system works. This tip will make it so much easier for the new player who doesn’t yet have the gold to blow on a full set of big bags for all their toons. It will also make life easier for you power ah users since I don’t think we’ll ever get 250 slot bags!
When your banker’s mailbox and bags are jammed full and you’re waiting for the weekend to post all of those goodies at the auction house just use the bulk mail system and mail everything to your mule to hold. Every mail you send can contain up to 12 items. You can clear hundreds of items out of your mailbox and bags in just a few minutes. I also recommend mail mods such as “Open All” and “Postman” to help speed up this process even more.
Once your Mule has everything in the mail you can let it sit there for up to 30 days. I never leave things in there that long, but that’s the max. After 30 days, those bulk mail items will just get returned to the banker - it doesn’t even cost you the mail fees!
But here’s the cool trick. When it’s time to send everything back to your banking toon, just log your mule, open the mail and hit “return.” You can return hundreds of items to your banker in a few clicks and zero postage fees.
Using the mail this way gives you hundreds - even thousands of absolutely free bag slots. If you use the mail system to it’s maximum advantage, you’ll never have to worry about running out of space or blowing too much gold on bigger bags before you can really afford to.
You will also know exactly how to handle extra items. Everything just gets mailed to your banker - simple. When you have time to concentrate on what to do with everything, your banker will either post items on the ah or mail them to the mule to hold until they are ready to be sold or just to hold if you like. Your banker will almost always mail things exclusively to your mule, and all your other toons will almost always mail everything to your banker, it makes visiting the mailbox short and sweet.
You’ll notice that the screen shot for this article shows my mule in Booty Bay. On most servers I keep one mule for each faction in Booty Bay so that I can take advantage of moving things back and forth between Alliance and Horde auction houses. This is a topic for another time, but if you can stand running your mules to booty bay (multiple deaths are often inevitable, especially for ally) then you really set yourself up for some dominating moves between faction auction houses.
It all sounds too simple once you read through it. But there are so many players I see on their main toon at the auction house day after day that I thought it would be a great tip for those of you who do not use banking toons and mules up until now. It will make your life a lot simpler and expand your storage space to near infinity.
Have you subscribed to Dominate Your Server yet? Our subscribers are eligible for contests and giveaways that non-subscribers don't get access to. Click Here to Subscribe!
why use the classes u specified for bank alts?
Why use the races u specified? or is it just for starting area purposes?
Human and Tauren’s starting area is very close to their home city, and their bank & mail box are close to each other, so you don’t run back and forth alot.
hemajang,
We didn’t specify a class for the bank, just a race. We select those races because the capital cities (TB and IF) are simply the easiest to work with for banking purposes.
For the mules the race selection has more to do with how easy it is to run to the nearest mailbox without having to deal with a lot of mobs chewing on your back side. Blood elf is another excellent choice for horde for a mule.
I look forward to your comments concerning “my mule in Booty Bay”
My toon in BB is “Jbuffet” .
Mitch
there’s two other benefits of using a bank that i didn’t see mentioned. first, my main and higher alts have shatt as their home and it has no auction house. sometimes i can be out running around with my hearthstone burned and i’ve gtg. the bank means you don’t have to run back to a capital trade city every day with all your loot. just mail it to you bank and you’ll save a lot of time that would be spent running back and forth between towns. second, i get bored with my characters. i’ll get a wild hair and go play an alt for a few days then not touch them again for months. by mailing everything to my bank to post, i don’t worry about losing ah money by forgetting who had posted what and i don’t have to log every alt every month to make sure i’m not missing something.
for my bank i spent the money to buy the larger profession bags. i think profession bags are a waste of space on characters but on my bank it helps a lot. just some food for thought. thanks gavin for the non-arena topic.
I had my banker start up a new guild by paying players in Org 5g to sign the charter. Then, once it formed up, I kicked them all out (so my banker, and a few of my alts, are the only members). Then, as soon as I had the guild to myself, I headed straight to the Org bank and purchased a Guild bank vault for 100g. I now have gobs of storage for 1/4 of what a 20 slot bag would have cost me. Moreover, the 2nd tab is 250g, so I could get 2 tabs for the cost of one Primal Mooncloth bag.
Another excellent point for those who are serious bankers and have the gold- build your own guild bank. I keep my bankers on their own private guild bank - I can stock all my extras in there. With the exception of patterns as the add bankitems cant see in the vault only in their banks- and with that add on i can see from any of my alts who has what and what is stocked- a real help, also counts how many items you have and where- ie mail or bank or bags. Hope that helps manage things a little.
These are the kind of posts i enjoy reading as I don’t do Arena at all. Thanks and keep them coming
I got about a month before i can put any of this to use though 
Ill contest that the stormwind AH and mailbox are virtually just as close as IF, and it’s faster to run there from the starting zone. So, my alliances bankz are humans all the way
Servos,
Concerning Alliance capitals: in all reality, there is no better place for banking than Exodar. Talk about ease of use, but it’s a heck of a run. In the long term, the extra few minutes of running will save you a heap of time.
Add that to the fact that there is hardly anyone in Exodar and you don’t get all that crazy crowd around the mailbox like you do in Stormwind. In my book, SW bites for that reason alone. Plus, Dranei NPC’s are the friendliest in the game!
i agree with lawbringer
Having a banker is one of the first things I learned when I started playing WoW. I’m far from being a “dominate your server” player, but whenever I see lvl 70s at the AH I figure I’ve got them beat. Keep him in SW but thats just because I don’t like the environment at IF.
Stumbled on the “mail mule” idea when I decided to change professions on my main and quickly discovered I didn’t have enough bank/bag space to hold the mats to power level to 375.
I have been doing this for over a year and when they started with the larger mail system I immediately jumped on it
but thx for telling others and keep it coming 
ok so mules are handy especially when u have a few gold hanging around for those million slots.
I would like to add at this point that there is actually a limit to ur bag slots so its not infinite
But doesnt anyone, especially guys who are sitting waiting for a bg run to the ah to check prices etc?
i have a little notebook which i use to remember stuff and ill add them all together and whichever character i have a few mins on in a capital city, i go check them out.And yes totally agree with mr Jastiia… too much arena info for pve and leveling guys. keep tjhis kinda useful stuff comeing :D.
BTW SW FTW, shows u aheva pro computer than can handle lots of noobs running around, besides i always do trade with my bank alt so u need to be where the peoples are.
The Guild bank idea was tremendous, kudos to you.
Also, you are dead on concering the PROFESSION bags. They do nothing but limit the space on your raiding toon(s). My main is an Tailor/Enchanter and I carry one Enchanting bag on him (just get a few extra spots). Plus, for those of us who run two accounts and two comps, you can easily bypass the mail system delay.
Great post guys, keep up the good work.
ok this is a little more expensive but instead of just running out of space you can go and create a guild and just get some random lowbies to join, than boot them once it is created and from there you can use the guild bank for storin your things. I did this and it works perfectly you only need to pay for each tab once(although expensive) and even still im making a load of cash and have alot more storage space than most people do.
Josh, please see my comment posted July 15…