Upkeep Costs Differ by Class
Mounts, trainers and repairs get planned for. Water, food, class reagents and ammunition do not, because they leave in small amounts at a vendor between fights. Added up over an evening, they decide what an hour of play actually has to earn.
Upkeep is the spend nobody budgets for
The large costs are easy to see coming, which is why they get written down. Riding skill, a trainer visit, a respec, a repair after a bad night: each is one visible payment, and riding skill and repair bills are counted that way because they arrive as events. Upkeep behaves nothing like that. It leaves in coppers and silver, many times per session, usually at the nearest vendor on the way out of town, and it never produces a moment where a character stands in front of a window and decides whether to spend.
A dungeon night at least has its own ledger, where repairs and supplies are offset against what the run drops, and what a dungeon run returns can be read as a single result. Upkeep keeps running outside that. It is paid while questing, while riding between nodes, while waiting for a group that does not form, and in all of those cases there is no loot column to set it against. It is the only cost in the game that is charged for playing rather than for buying anything.
That is why it belongs in a gold plan rather than in a footnote. Everything else on the spending list can be delayed by a week. Upkeep cannot, because the character stops functioning without it: no water means longer breaks, no ammunition means no damage, no reagent means a spell that will not cast. It sets a floor under what an evening has to bring in before any saving starts.
Water and food are not the same bill for every class
The split starts with mana. A character who drinks after most fights buys water in bulk and burns through it at a pace set by how fast the bar empties, which is a function of pulls per hour rather than of levels gained. Melee characters without a mana bar eat less often and can lean on bandages instead. A mage conjures the stock rather than buying it, which turns the same consumable into a service other players ask for, and how fast a mana bar drains is the number underneath all of it.
Forever also pushes against that bill from the other side. Perks that cut downtime mean fewer stops, and fewer stops to eat and drink thin out the demand for the cheapest food and water on the shelf. That works in the player's favour as a cost and against the seller as a market: the same change that shortens the restock list also shortens the queue of buyers for low-level stock, so a levelling character spends less while a vendor-shuffle route loses one of its easier customers.
Where the money goes matters as much as how much of it goes. Basic water and food come from a vendor, so the coin leaves the realm entirely instead of moving to another player. Buff food, potions and anything cooked are the opposite: they are player-made and land on the auction house, which is why restocking water between runs and buying a stack of feasts are two different lines in the same budget even though both get called consumables.
Reagents and ammunition split the classes further
Some classes carry a pouch of vendor reagents and some carry none. Where a spell consumes an item on every cast, the cost scales with how often that spell is used, not with the character's level or gear, so a support role that casts it on cooldown pays steadily while another character of the same level pays nothing at all. These items are bought from vendors rather than from players, which keeps them out of the auction house and makes them invisible in every market discussion, including ours until now.
Ammunition is the clearest case of a per-shot bill. It is consumed by attacking rather than by dying, by pulling or by failing, which means it rises with uptime: the better the route, the more it costs to run. A quiver or pouch also takes a bag slot that another character uses for loot, so the cost is partly paid in carrying space. Pet food, where a class keeps a pet fed, sits in the same bracket and gets bought on the same trip.
The parts of this bill that reach other players are the crafted ones. Poison materials, cooked food, flasks and oils are made by somebody with a profession, so they compete on price with everything else on the shelf, and what crafting materials sell for moves them week to week. Food made at a fire rather than bought in town is the cheap end of the same market, and cooking at a camp fire is where a lot of it gets produced on a long route.
What we have not confirmed for Forever
We are describing a structure, not a price list. We have no published vendor prices for water, food or reagents in Forever, no confirmed stack sizes, no list of which spells still consume an item on cast, and no confirmation of how ammunition is handled in this version. Anyone quoting an exact cost per hour for a class right now is extrapolating from an older build of the game, and we are not going to repeat those figures as if they were measured here.
Two things are worth watching as the beta reports come in. The first is stack size: players have asked repeatedly for larger consumable stacks, and the answer changes how many bag slots an evening of supplies takes up before it changes anything about price. The second is which parts of the bill the Legacy perks absorb. If downtime keeps shrinking, the vendor side of upkeep shrinks with it, while the crafted side holds, because raid and PvP demand is driven by fights rather than by rest.
Until those are settled, the practical way to handle upkeep is to count it per evening instead of per item. Note what the bags hold at the start of a session and what they hold at the end, and the difference is the real number for that class on that route. It will not match anybody else's, which is the point of the whole page.
Questions
Why is upkeep not covered under gold sinks?
Gold sinks on our site cover the visible, occasional payments: riding skill, trainers, respecs and repairs. Upkeep is charged continuously in small amounts, mostly at vendors, and it never arrives as a single decision point. It behaves differently in a budget, and it varies by class in a way the big purchases do not.
Which classes pay the most for consumables?
We have no measured figures for Forever and will not invent them. Structurally, the heaviest bills land on classes that drink after most fights, classes that consume an item every time a specific spell is cast, and classes that pay per shot for ammunition and keep a pet fed. A melee character with no mana bar and no reagent requirement sits at the light end.
Does any of this reach the auction house?
Part of it does. Basic water, food and vendor reagents are bought from NPCs, so that coin leaves the realm rather than moving to another player. Buff food, potions, oils, poison materials and anything cooked are player-made, and those compete on the auction house with the rest of the crafted shelf.
How should I estimate my own upkeep bill?
Check what supplies the bags hold at the start of a session and what is left at the end, then price the difference at whatever restocking it actually costs you. That number is specific to your class, your route and your pace, and it is more useful than any per-hour figure copied from an older version of the game.
Sources
- Blizzard's official news hub, where profession and consumable changes for Forever are announced — World of Warcraft news.