Strategy Guide: Sorting Inventory

Display of lots of multi-colored shoes on white shelves

You’re finished playing GW2 for the night. Your bags are almost full. Now what? Read on to learn our best strategy for sorting through all that “stuff” the game has given you.

Step 1: Junk

Find one of the basic merchants scattered throughout the game. Go to their Sell tab and click to “Sell Junk.” This will ONLY sell the Junk items, so don’t worry about selling something you might need.

Guild Wars 2 merchant sell tab with "Sell Junk" button highlighted

Step 2: Trading Post

Open the Trading Post. Click the Sell tab. Click the column header to sort the contents of your inventory by price, highest first.

Sell anything you want to sell, based on your price threshold. For example, if you need money more than materials, you might decide to sell anything worth 5 silver or higher. If you need materials more than money, you might sell anything worth 25 silver or higher.

Guild Wars 2 Trading Post panel with the "sort by price" button highlighted

Step 3: Salvage

Salvage everything that remains, using the best salvage kit you can afford.

Salvage Note: There are two permanent salvage kits you can buy in the Gem Store: The Silver-Fed and Copper-Fed Salvage-O-Matics. Are they worth buying? They are “just” a convenience item, but they are extremely convenient. Particularly if you put one in a Shared Inventory Slot so that you can use it on all of your characters.

Some players are afraid to salvage Rares and Exotics. Don’t be! Salvaging is good!

Salvaging Rare items level 68 or higher is the best way to get Globs of Ectoplasm. On average, you will get 0-3 Ectos for every Rare item you salvage. Considering Ectos usually sell on the Trading Post for 15-50 silver, this can be a very good deal.

Salvaging Exotic items is the only way to get Globs of Dark Matter, which are account-bound. Globs of Dark Matter are used in making Ascended gear.

Just be sure to do a quick check on the Trading Post before you salvage stuff. Nothing stings like accidentally salvaging something that’s worth 5 gold on the Trading Post.

Step 4: Deposit Materials

Click the gear in the upper right-hand corner of your inventory screen and choose “Deposit All Materials.” This will automatically move all crafting materials (like wood and fabric) to your crafting material inventory.

Guild Wars 2 inventory panel with the "Deposit All Materials" button highlighted

Inventory Note: Crafting material inventory is its own storage area, separate from your personal inventory and your bank inventory. The default storage size is 250 of each item (also known as a “stack”). You can expand that amount by buying upgrades in the Gem Store.

Step 4: Sell Unwanted Runes and Sigils

If “Mystic Forger” is a daily task, throw four of these into the Mystic Forge. Otherwise, the best option (in terms of time spent vs. money earned) is to just sell them all to a merchant.

Advanced Inventory Management: Bags With Special Features

If you want to customize how your inventory gets sorted, you might want to look into bags with special features, which automatically sort your inventory for you.

There are seven kinds of auto-sort bags:

  • Craftsman’s: Crafting material sorts to this bag.
  • Oiled: Junk sorts to this bag.
  • Equipment Box: Looted weapons and armors sort here.
  • Siegemaster’s: Looted consumables sort here.
  • Invisible: Items you place in an Invisible bag won’t show up in a “sell to vendor” panel, and won’t be deposited by “Deposit All Materials.” Handy way to hang on to stuff you don’t want to sell or deposit by accident.
  • Equipment Pact Box: A combination of the Equipment and Invisible bags.
  • Olmakhan: Containers and consumables sort here.

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

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