Understanding World of Warcraft’s Brand New Warband System

With so many new features heading to World of Warcraft The War Within, it can be hard to get a grasp on everything. One of the key features being added is the Warband System, which allows you to seamlessly send currency, gear, and materials to your other characters on the same account.

The Warband System brings an entirely new set of rules and loot tables for everyone to understand. Here is a quick breakdown of everything to expect and understand within the new system.

New Character Creation and Selection Screen

The new Warband System in World of Warcraft The War Within brings a refresh to the classic character creation and selection screen. Each one of our characters will be hanging around a cozy campfire, just waiting to see who will be chosen for the day’s endeavors. The list of available characters will remain on the screen’s right side thanks to a drop-down menu, but the new layout makes choosing a character a breeze.

With this new layout also comes the ability to add a character to a “Favorites” list, making it easier than ever to place our main characters in one spot and alts in another.

How Warbands Work

The point of the Warband System is to make trading materials, currencies, and gear to other characters easier than ever before. Prior to this system, you would either have to mail currency to your alternate characters, or trade the gold to a friend and hope they don’t run off with your loot. The system covers all characters on a single account regardless of Realm, but is limited to a single region such as the Americas, Oceanic, etc.

When you first login to World of Warcraft The War Within, whether that be upon full launch or during pre-patch which is available now, the new Warband System will begin merging all characters within the account into the new system. This could take a few minutes to complete when first logging in, so just be a bit patient as the process runs.

Once done, you won’t need to log in to each character as you may have in the past for the system to integrate properly. Renown Reputation and select Standard reputation gains are now account-wide as well, meaning you can earn reputation on any character you choose and reap the rewards on your alts. Alongside this, some gear will now have a new attribute called “Warbound Until Equipped,” meaning that item can be thrown into the Warband Bank and used by one of your other characters. In the future, there are plans to make Raid, Dungeons, and Delve gear “Warbound Until Equipped”, making gearing your characters easier than ever before.

The Warband Bank Tab

One of the key new features is the Warband Bank slots which allow us to access tabs on every character within the same account. These function just as the Stash in Diablo 4 does. It means we can access gear, currency, and materials in this bank to make crafting, trading on the Auction House, or getting an upgrade for gear much easier. The Warband Bank tab can be found at any regular banker all across the world, directly next to the Reagent Bank tab, although opening up more slots within the Warband Bank is quite costly. Here is a breakdown of the prices per new tab:

• 1: 1,000 Gold
• 2: 25,000 Gold
• 3: 100,000 Gold
• 4: 500,000 Gold
• 5: 2,500,000 Gold

What if you need to access your Warband Bank while out and about? Thanks to the Warband Bank Distance Inhibitor, you can! Upon logging into any character for the first time, there is a questline that should pop up titled Warbands: Warbanding Together. Completing the series of quests will reward you with the Distance Inhibitor which allows you to summon a portal to your Warband Bank tabs.

It is worth noting that just like the traveling mailbox toy and many other items such as this in World of Warcraft, there is a cooldown of two hours and the portal will only last 10 minutes, so make those transactions quickly!

Hopefully, the new Warband system will be expanded upon soon, to add even more reputations, currencies, and items to swap seamlessly between characters.

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