Bag

A bag is the generic term for any container that a character uses to hold other items. Inventory space is a critical resource in WoW and inventory management is an important aspect of game play. Using more and larger bags to increase available inventory space is a key aspect of character development.

Bags are equipped for use by placing the bag in the bag slots at the right-most end of the interface bar where your backpack is. Your backpack is actually a special bag that cannot be moved nor be replaced. Bags can be stored in your inventory (unequipped), but bags inside of other bags must be empty (thus they do not nest more than two deep).

You can purchase up to seven extra bag slots for your bank account at progressively increasing rates, starting at for the first slot,  for the second,  for the third, leveling to  for the fourth through seventh. Bags in your bank slots are considered to be 'equipped' (for binding purposes) but not 'being carried'. You can swap out entire bags between your bank slots and your carried slots. The inventory in your bank, including bags in bank slots, is shared with your carried inventory for some purposes, in particular for restricting unique items. Quests which require items that you have in your bank inventory will show up as complete even though you can not turn them in until you retrieve the items from the bank.

Normal bags can hold any sort of item, unlike special bags that can only hold specific types of items. Special bags give the player more slots to store items than regular bags of equivalent level (and are generally cheaper than regular bags of the same size), with the trade-off of only being able to put certain types of items in them.

Bags are not displayed on the character in the game. The only visual difference is the icon used in your bag slots, your bank bag slots, and in your inventory. If the bags are the same type (hold the same kinds of things) and have the same number of slots, then they are roughly equivalent (but read the section discussing restriction). You may find the different graphics useful in organizing your inventory.

Normal bags
Normal bags come in a variety of sizes and are used to store all the items you obtain through your adventures and come in sizes ranging from 1 to 24 slots:

Bind on Pickup (BoP) bags cannot be bought nor sold at the auction house; you must acquire them directly through play.

Bind on Equip (BoE) bags can be bought and sold at the auction house, but once used they can no longer be traded. Placing a bag in any of your bag slots, including your bank bag slots, equips the bag. You will get a warning when you attempt to equip a BoE bag.

Bags that don't bind can always be bought and sold or otherwise passed to other characters.

You cannot have more than one unique bag anywhere in your inventory, including in the bank and any in transit in the mail. You cannot loot a unique item you already own, and you can not receive it by any other means. For example, 50 Darkmoon Faire Tickets will get you a Darkmoon Storage Box, but 100 Darkmoon Faire Tickets cannot buy you two Darkmoon Storage Boxes because you can't have a second one.

You can only use one Unique-Equipped bag, including in your bank slots. You can, however, handle others of the same bag and get them to the auction house.

Many items in WoW have level requirements before they can be used. General purpose bags do not. A beginning character can use a high level bag with many slots.

All of this contributes to a bag's value; the less restrictions on use, the more valuable, although number of slots carries more weight in determining value. Since common quality (white) items tend to have less restrictions than uncommon quality (green) items, some common quality (white) bags are more valuable than a few uncommon quality (green) bags of the same capacity — don't be mislead by the item's assigned quality color.

A couple of the 4 slot low-level quest reward bags in the game that are Bind on Pickup have no vendor value, and when you outgrow them they have to be destroyed; for example, the Sunstrider Book Satchel.

Vended normal bags
Four of these general purpose bags are widely available from vendors:

(They also drop, and are listed above under "dropped".)

All four are available from bag merchants, and the smaller ones are available from general goods merchants. These vendors are competitive with the auction house in the small bags, but become a progressively worse value for the larger bags. The 12 slot is very much more expensive than 12 slot mageweave bags in the auction house — you can get a 16 slot netherweave bag for as much or less on many servers.

These vended bags have the useful effect of providing an upper limit to the value and (indirectly) to the auction house pricing of smaller bags in the 6 slot to 10 slot range. They are also the only regular bags you can purchase while playing in a trial account. Players not yet comfortable with walking a low level character to their capital city for the auction house might initially want to buy a bag or two from a vendor.

Ammo bags
This class of specialty bags were converted to normal bags with Patch 4.0.1. Ammunition (arrows and bullets ) were also made unnecessary for using a Bow, Crossbow, or Gun.

Ammo bags like quivers and ammo pouches can only hold ammunition (arrows or bullets respectively). Of course, this is only useful to characters who use ammunition: hunters, and with weapons training, rogues and warriors.

Identical ammunition stored in multiple slots in an ammo bag will be automatically re-equipped when a stack of ammo runs out. Ammo that is different in any way is not automatically equipped. This can lead to confusion or delays, so many players only store one kind of ammo in an ammo bag at a time.

Ammo bags display the number of shots remaining on their action bar icons, whenever the number of shots falls below 10000 (10 stacks).

Essentially, an ammo bag is a hunter item. While rogues and warrior can, with weapon training, benefit from an ammo pouch, the truth is that they will probably choose to forgo carrying an ammo pouch. Hunters burn though quantities of ammunition. Rogues and warriors shoot occasionally to call an opponent out of a group. Since ammo bags are less versatile than conventional bags, rogues and warrior will generally prefer to have general purpose bag space holding a stack or two of ammo.

Hunters start with a six slot quiver, Light Quiver, or ammo pouch, Small Ammo Pouch, that holds the ammo of their starting ranged weapon.

Quivers and ammo pouches follow a similar size progression, ranging from the six slot hunter starting quiver or ammo pouch to the 24 slot gear, which is only usable by level 70 characters. Ammo bags with 10 slots and above have increasing level requirements to equip. Ammo stacks in stacks of 1000, so even a beginning ammo bag can hold 6000 rounds of ammo.

(Ammo bags also tend to be larger than regular bags of the same item level, but since general purpose bags have no level restrictions, it may be easier to obtain regular bags bigger than your ammo bag.)

Ammo bags can be made by Leatherworkers, purchased from the auction house and vendors, or obtained as quest rewards. The source of each size increment of ammo bag is unique or a unique type ('crafted' or 'vended'), with minor exceptions. For the eight slot quiver and ammo pouch, there is a vendor version ( at Neutral), and a crafted version. The Alliance quest, 15, Loch Modan, rewards the character with a choice of a ten slot quiver or ammo pouch.

Prior to Patch 3.1.0, ammo bags generally gave a Rate of Fire bonus of between 10 and 15 percent, shortening the cooldown on the Shoot or Auto Shot ability.

Soul bags
A soul bag was a bag usable only by warlocks to hold Soul Shards. Although a warlock was not required to use a Soul Bag, they could hold more Soul Shards than they would normally be able to carry in conventional containers.

Soul Shards harvested by the Warlock were automatically stored in an equipped Soul Bag when acquired, making tedious Soul Shard housekeeping a thing of the past.

Only Soul Shards could be stored in Soul Bags. If you wished to convert a Soul Shard into any other type of inventory item (such as a Healthstone or Soulstone) you would need extra space in your normal bags to hold the new item.

As Soul Shards are no longer physical items, all Soul bags have been converted to normal bags with fewer slots.

Craft bags
There are a number of crafting-specific bags that can hold certain materials and products. Like Ammo Bags and Soul Bags, these are limited in what kinds of items they can hold.

The "Profession" is not a requirement, any character can use these bags. In particular, the "mining" bags are useful to any profession that uses metal bars (since they use a large amount) and the "jewelcrafting" bags are useful to any profession that uses gems extensively (since they use many types of gems, each of which takes a slot).

Like general purpose bags, craft bags have no explicit level requirements. Currently, all craft bags are Bind on Equip.

Like Soul Bags, craft bags have more slots than regular bags of a given level.

Craft bags are not widely sold by vendors; even then, they are often sold at high prices on the Auction House. Only the 12-slot Herb Pouch and 10-slot Scribe's Satchel are vended in zones accessible to low level characters. ((at Neutral) for Herb Pouch and (at Neutral) for Scribe's Satchel)

Cataclysm changes
In Cataclysm, bags that you loot and are non-BoP will automatically take up a bag slot instead of landing in your inventory. You will still be able to "un-equip" the bag and trade it if it's not BoP.