Attics and Backpacks and Banks, Oh My!

One of the more common frustrations in F2P (free to play) models is the lack of bag/bank space available to players before visiting the cash shop or subscribing. Wizard 101 leads the pack in providing slots to store items and F2P players are afforded the same number of slots as subscribing members.

The magic number is 16,066.

That’s not a typo.

Now, to be clear, not all of these slots are available for all items. Let’s walk through the details and then sharpen our pencils to do the math.

There are a total of six character slots for each Wizard 101 account – yes, also F2P accounts.

Each character has a backpack with 80 slots. Special kudos to King’s Isle that quest items collected do not take up backpack slots! Reagents and pet snacks don’t use backpack slots either. Each character has 999 slots for reagents and 999 slots for pet snacks. (World of Warcraft, take note!)

So what does take up backpack slots? Equipment items, which includes pets, mounts and housing items.

Each character has a bank, which looks like a wooden trunk, in their dorm room (as well as any character houses). This wooden trunk serves many purposes. Through this “trunk” players access the specific character’s bank as well as three shared banks discussed below.

Each character bank has 100 slots for equipment and housing items. Each character also has an attic with 100 slots available for pets and housing items. This is in addition to 50 dorm room spots available to each character for housing items and pets. One super-fun feature of keeping pets in your dorm room is the way they gather around you happily when you are there.

Best of all, each Wizard 101 account has three types of shared banks. One shared bank provides 100 slots total for housing items and equipment. There is a shared bank with 999 slots solely for pet snacks. There is also a shared bank with 999 slots solely for reagents. This primary purpose of these shared banks is to move tradable items between characters, but they can be used for storage as well.

Now let’s start with the equations. Start with six toons (all slots are available to all toons at level one). Start with 80 backpack slots and add 100 bank slots, then add 50 dorm room slots and 100 attic slots, and we have 330 slots for each character to store equipment and housing items. Then add 999 slots for pet snacks and 999 slots for reagents. The grand total before shared banks are factored in is 2,328 per character. Multiplying this by six characters gives us a total of 13,968 storage slots before we consider the shared banks. Add 100 shared bank slots for housing and equipment, 999 shared bank slots dedicated to pet snacks, and 999 shared bank slots reserved for reagents and we have a whopping 16,066 storage slots per Wizard 101 account.

The Wizard 101 F2P account-holders might use all of this storage to collect items to sell at a later date if they are raising gold for a mount or a house. Or, they might collect as many items as possible to be used on higher-level characters once they unlock areas with crowns or become members. Either way, King’s Isle has been extremely generous in providing storage space for all players. Providing F2P accounts with the same number of storage slots is but one indication of the value they place on these players.

I haven’t done this much ciphering on all the tax returns I’ve ever submitted!

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