How a Roster Fits Under the Character Limit
Most gold plans in Forever quietly assume a second character, a third for gathering and one more parked in a city holding stock. That assumption has a ceiling on it. This is what the slot count does to a roster, where the gatherer earns its place, and what the bank character is actually for.
The slot count is the first constraint
Every plan that opens with make a gatherer and a bank character assumes there is room for them. A realm hands an account a fixed number of character slots, and that number sits ahead of levelling time and ahead of gold as the thing that limits a roster. Each name on the list carries 2 profession slots, one set of bags, one personal bank and one mailbox. The total a roster can hold is that count multiplied out, and no amount of play changes it.
That arithmetic matters more to alt players than to anyone running a single character. Gathering handed out free from level 3 means a new character starts feeding raw materials into the economy in its first hour instead of waiting for a trainer fee. The wider recipe list means fewer trades exist only as skill points on the way somewhere else. Both reward a roster staffed on purpose rather than one assembled from abandoned levelling attempts, and what Forever changed about professions decides which pairs deserve a slot at all.
When the list is full the options narrow to deleting a character or buying more room. Deleting costs the levels already put in, which is why most rosters stall rather than reorganise. The other route is a second account licence, which removes the ceiling at a real-money cost rather than an in-game one. Neither is a trick, and both are worth deciding before the slots are spent on characters nobody logs into.
What the gatherer actually adds
A gathering character is a supply line rather than an income stream. Its value shows up on the crafting character it feeds: materials that arrive by mail are not bought off the shelf, so the crafter keeps the margin the gatherer would otherwise pay to a stranger. That only works when the 2 trades are matched. A miner feeding nobody is a route that could have been run on the main, and which trades sit on which character is the decision that makes the slot pay for itself.
The costs are not obvious from the plan. A gathering character needs bags before it needs skill, because a route ends when the bags fill rather than when the nodes run out. It needs enough levels to survive the zones its materials come from, and it needs the trip there and back, which is why the cost of travel time belongs in the same column as the materials. A character kept at a low level gathers in low-level zones, and the stock it brings back is priced accordingly.
There is a point where the slot is better spent elsewhere. If the main already carries a gathering trade and farms the same zones, a second gatherer duplicates a route instead of adding one. The honest test is whether the character supplies something the main cannot reach in the same evening. Everything else is a question of what the hours return, and gold by level bracket is the comparison to run before the slot is committed.
The bank character is storage, not a shortcut
A bank character does one job: it stands in a city and holds things. It receives mail from the rest of the roster, keeps stock off the characters that are playing, and posts to the auction house without anyone leaving a route to do it. Mail between characters on the same account is the mechanism the whole arrangement runs on, and the account-wide bank in Forever changes how much of that traffic needs a mailbox at all.
What limits it is space and fees rather than levels. A bank character typically holds:
- crafting materials waiting for a price
- stock pulled from the shelf when listings expire
- gear held for an alt that is not levelled yet
- the coin the rest of the roster sends in
Every one of those lines runs into bag and bank slots long before it runs into anything else, and relisting the same stack repeatedly runs into deposits charged on listings.
Gold itself is the simplest part. Coin attached to mail moves between your own characters without a trade window, which is how a raiding main gets funded by a gatherer that never leaves the countryside. A guild bank adds a shared version of the same thing for anyone organising more than one person, and moving gold between characters is worth understanding as a habit rather than as a one-off before raid night.
What is not settled yet
We have not seen a published figure for how many character slots a Forever account gets on a realm, or whether that number differs from other Classic rulesets. We also have not seen confirmation of how much of the retail account bank behaviour carries across, or what delay applies to mail sent between your own characters. Those 3 details decide how aggressive a roster plan can be, and none of them are things we are willing to guess at in print.
What that leaves is a plan that survives either answer. Keep the gatherer matched to a crafter, keep one character in a city for storage, and do not spend a slot on a character with no job written down. The spend side is knowable in advance, since what a new alt costs is mostly bags and training rather than anything exotic, and stock held across a roster is where the arrangement either saves money or quietly loses it.
Before the 4 November start, all of this is cheap to change. After it, a slot spent badly costs the levels already put into it. If the published slot count turns out to be tighter than expected, the first character to drop out of most plans is the second gatherer, not the bank character, because storage has no substitute and a route does.
Questions
How many characters can I keep on a Forever realm?
We have not seen a figure published for Forever specifically, so we are not printing one. Blizzard's own account documentation is the place that answer will appear, and until it does, plan a roster that works with fewer slots rather than one that depends on a generous ceiling.
Does a gathering character need to reach 60?
It needs enough levels to survive the zones its materials come from, which is a different question. A character that only gathers in starting zones supplies starting-zone materials, and those sell at starting-zone prices. If the crafter it feeds needs high-level stock, the gatherer has to go where that stock is and be able to stay there.
Is a bank character worth a whole slot?
For most rosters, yes, because storage has no substitute. A character parked in a city holds stock, receives mail from everyone else and posts listings without anyone interrupting a route. The slot is only wasted if nobody else on the roster is producing enough to need holding.
Can I move gold between my own characters?
Coin can be attached to mail, which is how a gathering character funds a main without a trade window. A guild bank covers the shared version for groups. Neither depends on another player being online, which is the main reason the arrangement is worth setting up before raid nights rather than during them.
Sources
- Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site, where Forever announcements and patch notes are posted — World of Warcraft official site.
- Blizzard Support, where account, character slot and mail questions are documented — Blizzard Support.