The Warbands Guide: Key Features and Overview in The War Within

14 Sep 2024

~5 MIN

Guides The War Within WOW

What Are Warbands in The War Within?

The Warbands feature, newly introduced in The War Within, enhances the overall gaming experience by linking all characters connected to a player’s Battle.net account. These Warbands integrate characters along with their items, collections, and progression, allowing players to share resources across multiple characters. However, Warbands are restricted to specific regions like the Americas, Europe, Korea, or Taiwan, but they transcend realms, factions, and even various subscriptions under the same Battle.net account.

For a long time, many aspects of World of Warcraft have been connected across accounts, including pets, mounts, and transmog collections. The introduction of Warbands significantly expands the scope of these shared features. Below are some exciting updates that come with the new Warbands system:

Unified Reputations and Renown Tracks: Your entire Warband will share reputation and Renown progress, meaning you only need to complete certain content once per account.
Warband Bank: This new shared bank allows for the seamless exchange of items between characters.
Appearance Collection Expansion: You can now collect transmog appearances for any character in your Warband, regardless of gear restrictions. For instance, a Warrior can collect Priest transmog gear.

With these enhancements, players can tackle quests with any character without worrying about reputation progress. The first character to complete a quest earns the reputation for the entire Warband, preventing the need for repetitive tasks across multiple characters.

Warband Banking System: A Game-Changing Feature

Gold Transfer Made Easy

One standout feature of the Warband bank is the ability to store and transfer gold between all characters on your account, including those from opposing factions. This eliminates the hassle of using mail to send gold between characters, streamlining the process.

Warbank Tabs and Storage Space

The Warbank provides five tabs, each capable of storing 98 items, totaling 490 slots. These tabs can store any non-soulbound item, allowing for extensive storage across your Warband. By default, none of the tabs are unlocked, but you can purchase access as follows:

Tab	Cost
Tab 1	1,000 Gold
Tab 2	25,000 Gold
Tab 3	100,000 Gold
Tab 4	500,000 Gold
Tab 5	2,500,000 Gold

The total cost to unlock all tabs is 3,126,000 Gold.

Warbank Tab Customization

Each Warbank tab can be customized similarly to a Guild Bank, including icons and organization options. Players can also sort their Warbank tabs for quick and efficient item management.

Tab customization

Accessing Your Warbank

Your Warbank is conveniently accessible from the standard bank interface, similar to the Reagent Bank. This means you can access it via any bank NPC in major cities, or through mobile banking tools like Jeeves (for Engineers) or the Pack Hobgoblin (for Goblins).

warbank access

Shared Currency and Supplies

The currency system within Warbands has been designed for simplicity and convenience. Instead of making the currency fully shared across all characters, Blizzard has introduced an easy transfer system. You can now transfer shareable currency directly between characters via the currency User Interface (UI). This prevents the confusion of spending the wrong currency on the wrong character while still allowing for smooth transfers.

Dragonflight currency

Transfer currency option

In cases where specific characters are intended to use certain currencies, players may experience a slight loss when transferring excess currency. This mechanic mirrors older expansions, where a currency value loss was incurred when exchanging through items like Cosmic Flux from Shadowlands.

Warbound-Until-Equipped Gear: A New Binding System

The Warbound-Until-Equipped system introduces a new form of item binding in The War Within. This type of gear can be freely traded among characters in your Warband until it is equipped by one character, at which point it becomes soulbound.

This system addresses past issues where high-level gear was easily transferable between characters, which Blizzard saw as unbalanced. By binding the gear only after it is equipped, Blizzard ensures that players cannot exploit gear trading between characters for easy upgrades.

Equipped Gear

Transmog for All Classes: Fairer Gear Distribution

The Transmog system has received a notable update with Warbands. When rolling for Transmog gear, any piece that your current character can equip will take priority. For example, a Priest rolling on a cloth piece will have a better chance of winning it over a Warrior, who cannot equip cloth armor.

Transmog examples

Reworked Account-Wide Achievements: Now Warband-Wide

Account-wide achievements have always been part of World of Warcraft, but Warbands further refine this system. Now, all achievements are treated as Warband achievements. If any character completes an achievement, it is unlocked for the entire Warband, reducing the need for repetitive grinding on multiple characters.

However, some achievements will remain character-specific, such as those that reflect highly prestigious accomplishments (e.g., Gladiator titles). For achievements like Dreaming of Wyrms, which involve per-character progression, rewards will remain exclusive to the individual character.

Conclusion: The Future of World of Warcraft with Warbands

The Warbands system in The War Within marks a significant step forward for World of Warcraft players. By allowing characters to share resources, progression, and achievements, Blizzard has created a more cohesive and streamlined experience for players. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran with multiple characters or a new player exploring the vast world of Azeroth, the Warbands feature will undoubtedly enhance your gameplay.

Also, we encourage you to get through some of our recent TWW Guides that might be helpful for you:

The full blog with guides might be found here. Good luck!