What Inventory Space Costs in Forever
Bag space is usually treated as a convenience purchase and then quietly paid for out of the first hundred coins a character earns. On a fresh realm it behaves like a start-up cost instead: it is charged early, it competes with trainer ranks, and it decides how long a gathering route can run before it turns around. This is what inventory actually costs in Forever, slot by slot, and which parts of it we cannot confirm yet.
Bags are a start-up cost, not a convenience
A character starts with a backpack and empty bag slots, and every one of those slots is bought from another player. Nothing on a fresh realm vendors a useful bag, so the whole category sits on the auction house from the first week and is priced by whoever levelled tailoring first. That makes bags one of the few purchases a new character cannot defer: a gatherer with half the slots of a competitor makes the same loop and comes back with less of it.
The cheaper route is usually crafted rather than bought finished. Cloth bags scale by rank, and the gap between the small starter sizes and the next tier up is where most of the saving lives, because a larger bag replaces a slot rather than adding one. Buying two small bags and replacing both a week later means paying twice for the same slot. The practical rule is to buy one size above what feels necessary, once, and to leave the top tier for later.
Bank space is the second half of the same bill and it is charged differently: the slots themselves are bought from a vendor, and the bags that go in them are bought again from players. What bank slots and bag purchases add up to over a levelling run is the wider version of this, and it is worth reading alongside the route planning rather than after it.
The reagent slot and what it frees
A dedicated reagent slot changes the arithmetic of everything above, because it takes a fixed block of inventory and moves it out of the bags entirely. For a class carrying reagents for several spells, that block is not small: it is permanent, it is restocked in town, and in the original game it was the reason a caster travelled with one bag effectively full before picking anything up. Freeing it does not earn gold directly. It extends how far a route runs before the character has to stop.
What we do not know is the exact behaviour of that slot on Forever: whether it holds every reagent category, whether it needs a bag of its own placed into it, and what such a bag costs when it is bought from a crafter rather than a vendor. Beta players have described a reagent slot existing, but we have not found an official text setting out its rules, so treat the detail as unsettled and check it on your own character before planning bag purchases around it.
The spending side of the same question is separate and better documented. What reagents cost to restock is a recurring charge rather than a one-off, and the running cost of class reagents is counted per trip to town rather than per level.
Ammo, quivers and the slot that goes missing
Ammo is the one inventory cost that is both a purchase and a space problem. It is bought in stacks, it is consumed, and unless it sits in a quiver or a shot pouch it occupies ordinary bag room. The quiver solves the space half and creates a different one: it takes a bag slot that would otherwise hold general storage, so a hunter effectively carries one bag fewer than every other class while paying for the ammo on top.
That is why ammo belongs in a start-up budget rather than in a consumables list. The quiver is bought once, from a leatherworker, and is replaced only when a better rank is worth the gap. The ammo itself is restocked whenever the character is in a town with a vendor, and running out mid-route costs the trip rather than the coin. Buying more than feels sensible is the cheaper mistake of the two.
None of this applies evenly across classes, which is the point of counting it separately. A hunter pays for quiver, ammo and bags; a caster pays for reagents and bags; a warrior pays mostly for bags and repairs. Those differences are set out per class in what each class pays to keep running, and the inventory share of that bill is larger at low level than most plans allow for.
What this is worth against the rest of the start-up bill
Inventory competes with trainer ranks for the same early coin, and the honest answer is that it usually wins. A missed trainer rank slows a character slightly; a full bag ends a farming session outright and charges travel time to fix. On a route that is already paying in hours rather than coin, the bag purchase buys back more of the evening than the rank does. The exception is a character levelling through quests rather than gathering, where the pressure on space is lower and the ranks matter more.
The supply side is worth watching for timing rather than for price. Bags are made by tailors, quivers by leatherworkers, and both trades are being levelled by the same crowd during the opening weeks, so availability moves faster than demand does. Who is actually supplying that shelf and when is covered in the market for crafted bags, which is the piece of the economy this page spends against.
We are not publishing figures for any of it. Prices on a new realm move week to week, and a number written here would be wrong before it was useful. What holds is the order: one larger bag beats two small ones, a quiver is bought before the ammo it holds, and the reagent slot is checked on the character rather than assumed from another version of the game.
Questions
Should bags be bought before trainer ranks?
For a character that spends its evenings on a gathering route, usually yes, because a full bag ends the session and the trip back to town is paid in time rather than coin. For a character levelling through quests, the pressure on inventory is lower and the trainer ranks are the better use of the same money. The split is less about the class and more about how the character actually earns.
Does the reagent slot remove the need for a reagent bag?
We do not know. Beta players have described a dedicated reagent slot on Forever, but we have not found an official text setting out whether it holds every reagent category or whether a bag has to be placed into it first. Until that is published, check the behaviour on your own character before planning purchases around it.
Is a quiver worth a bag slot?
For a hunter using ranged attacks as the main damage source, it is the standard trade: the quiver keeps ammo out of general storage and carries the usual ranged benefit, at the cost of one ordinary bag. The practical consequence is that a hunter plans for one bag fewer than other classes and should buy a larger size in the slots that remain.
Why are there no prices on this page?
Because they would be wrong within a week. Bag and quiver prices on a fresh realm depend on how many tailors and leatherworkers have reached the relevant ranks, and that changes faster than a page can be updated. What stays true is the order of purchases, which is what this covers instead.
Sources
- Official World of Warcraft site, where feature descriptions and patch material for the Classic line are published — worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com.