Spring Cleaning with ArkInventory

I've collected stuff on Lae since I started playing 4,5 years ago. It goes without saying that I need to tidy my bank up now and then, where I search up quest items on Wowhead to see if I can safely delete them, or ask myself "do I really need this?". The answer is surprisingly often "Yes. Yes, I need this item." (It's my precious.)

Archaeology and Transmogrification have given me even more things to collect. :) And with it, a major difficulty increase in inventory management. Void Storage helped a little, but it's only a drop in the ocean to be honest. So while organising myself, I thought I'd show off my little management plan:

1. Reagent Restocker (addon)
   Automatically repairs my equipment (you can toggle "use guild bank funds"), automatically sells gray items, remembers what I've sold to vendors before and automatically sells them for me (goodbye Fish Oil), and automatically stocks up on things (like food or potions) I want it to, either from vendors or from my bank. /rr is the config shortcut.
2. Illusionary Bag
   This baby takes 8 Dreamcloth to make. 8 Dreamcloth equals 40 Embersilk Cloth + 30 of any Volatile or 4 Chaos Orbs to make. I'm slowly and steadily buying cheap mats from Auction House and transforming it into bags. (Volatile Earth is super cheap on my server.)
   The only "problem" I have with changing out all my bags is that I'm attached to some of them. There is no way in hell I'm getting rid of my Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina for example. Bonus points to those who knows where it's from. :)
3. Bank Guild
   Keeping as much as possible of my transmog gear unbound to me, storing it in my Bank Guild. Actually buying over again unbound items so that I can delete the bound ones, and keep them stored until next time. This is an idea I got from Sesamee over at Shooting Azeroth. Thanks a lot. :)
4. ArkInventory (addon)

ArkInventory is gonna need a more thorough explanation. I've been using this addon for almost as long as I've been playing. I know it pretty well, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are some clever tricks to it that I didn't discover yet. I feel like I should also clarify that I haven't tried any other bag-addons, so I can't really say that it's best either. Anyway... ;)

This addon gives you:

• Overview over free space, gold and your chosen currencies (I have it showing Valor Points and Jewelcrafter tokens)
• Search within the bag (will fade out everything else so that you can find the item easily)
• Search in all bags, banks, guild banks, mails, "wearing", pets, mounts, tokens, auctions and void storages of all your characters on that realm
  ("I need 5 Chaos Orbs. Searching; Alt 1 has 2 and Alt 2 has 6 on Auction House. I'll log Alt 2, cancel 5 of the auctions and send them over.)

And being on the Beta without it makes me feel ill. xD

Search within all inventory of all characters. Tooltip with orange letters show that Laeleiweyn is wearing the item. (Other things in tooltip are auction addons + the preview picture of the bracers is addon MogIt.)

You can open all inventories on all characters on current realm with the addon.

Toggle Location; Bag, Bank, Guild Bank, Mail, Wearing, Pet, Mount, Token, Auctions and Void Storage.

Minimum configuration

When you first download the addon, you'll see all your inventory in one big chunk. All items have premade categories set by the addon, but you need to assign the categories to their own "minibag" yourself. So the first thing you need to do is enter Edit Mode and assign categories to minibags. The minibags are the big numbers you see. When I first got the addon, I started with one minibag for consumables, one for trash, one for soulbound items, one for quest items and one for trade goods. And that would have been good enough, I really didn't have to change it more for it to already be better than the default bag UI. But I can be some kind of organising maniac-monster sometimes.

Lae's bags. Transmog sets, Teleporting, PVP-gear, Fishing, PVE-gear, Cooking, JC, Archaeology, HUNTER ITEMS, Bags, Quest Items (10 Arena Master trinkets ;)), potions (from same arena chest I'm sure) and misc.

Lae's bank. Transmog sets, fun transforming items, world events, tier sets, tabards, world event items, old fishing poles, more archaeology items, more HUNTER ITEMs, a teddy bear, a trinket that can make rainbows and even more misc.

A bit more configuration

"Empty slots" can be either shown or invisible. I've chosen to keep empty slots in Enchanting Bags etc as not shown, while the empty slots in normal bags are visible. I did this so that I have a visual of how much room I have to work with, in addition to the counter which shows me how many bag spaces are used of the total available. I have the empty slots gathered in the minibag to the bottom right, which is kind of the Default Minibag, where all miscellaneous stuff end up. (Or stuff you assigned to a category, but you don't have that category assigned to a minibag.)

You can change colours of borders, how thick borders should be, fonts and anything else you want to change of the appearance in the Config Menu, which you will find if you click on the bag in the upper left corner.

You can also choose whether or not you want to see what kind of bags you have equipped. (I have it hidden in my bag/bank, but shown for guild bank.)

ArkInventory config menu. Add categories, alter display, toggle override, load profiles.

How to toggle standard bag interface for selected bags

Sometimes you might need to see the standard bag interface. When I'm on Lae I'm in a guild where there's actually people (compared to my Bank Guild). In the guild bank we keep typical guild bank stuff, and it needs to look tidy for other people than myself. So in Lae's config, under Controls - Guild Bank I unchecked the "override", and it will show the default World of Warcraft Guild Bank UI.

Configuration for Transmog Sets and more

I have another addon to organise outfits (Outfitter). But sometimes, for example if you've got some new gear, you need to find it to gem and enchant it. So I made two categories for my gear; PVE and PVP. Archaeology came, so I made a category for that. I'm collecting teleporting devices, so I made a category for that; a minibag for Hearthstone, Last Relic of Argus, Blessed Medallion of Karabor, Band of the Kirin Tor, Direbrew's Remote, Argent Crusader's Tabard and Wrap of Unity. I wanted a category for Fishing, so I could easily find my pole, hat, coin and chair. I made several categories to make it easier to find stuff. And then transmogrification came... And I'm starting to make a category for each set.

Bank Guild tab 1: Quest and reputation items.

Bank Guild tab 2: Consumables. Meant for all those leveling alts. Too bad this server is full...

Guild Bank tab 3: Scrolls, food, bags and misc.

Guild Bank tab 4: Darkmoon Faire quest items and rare/epic gear for those leveling alts.

Guild Bank tab 5: Now we're talking! The transmogging tab! All mail, all for Lae. :) Steadfast, Marauder, Grunt, Fel Iron, Chief Brigadier, Battleforge, Glimmering, Ebonhold, Der'izu, Engraved, Blood Knight, Pillager, Hero and more to come!

I feel I know this addon pretty well, so I probably forgot to explain some important things that I didn't even think of. I've added some pictures that hopefully gives some complementary explanation. Please ask if you're wondering about something. :)

Lae