Mule

A character or account created only or mostly for the purpose of extending your inventory space for your account to store items and material is often referred to as a "mule". The term "mule" was first referenced in either Ultima Online or Diablo 2 and has gone to more widespread usage among all MMORPGs.

Character

To maximize storage space a good Mule will be equipped with a Belt Pouch and two Bags with Runes of Holding applied.

• This gives you 45 item slots in the inventory.
• You can also equip one primary and one secondary weapon
• If you have the Nightfall campaign or the Eye of the North expansion, each character has access to Heroes that can be used to hold additional items:
  • Each hero can equip one primary and one secondary weapon
  • As hero armor can not be destroyed when salvaged, you can also use heroes to store 5 runes and 5 insignias each. Note that and runes and insignias must follow the profession restrictions, and can only be salvaged if the character is a PvE character.
  • Depending on whether you also have Prophecies and/or Factions campaign linked or not, each of your character may have access to 13~15 heroes.

Note: You can swap items between the different characters on your account by using the Vault Box storage space.

Account

Some people may dedicate entire accounts to use as mules. This is significantly more cost-effective than linking an additional campaign or purchasing additional character slots.

• Linking an additional campaign only gives you two extra characters plus one extra tab of storage, whereas keeping accounts unlinked means you get 4 characters plus two tabs of storage and one tab of material storage.

• Purchasing a new separate account costs at most the equivalent of 5 character slots. The separate account's two tabs of storage plus one tab of materials in the vault box should more than compensate for only having 4 characters.

• The disadvantage of a separate account is that if one day you ever decide to actually play using one of those 4 character slots, none of your account unlocks/titles on your main playing account will be counted, and you cannot merge accounts.

When buying an account just to serve as a mule, campaign selection can be important.

• Guild Wars Nightfall and the Guild Wars Eye of the North are the only expansions that have heroes (which gives you additional storage capacity).
• Guild Wars Prophecies is the oldest retailed game, and the Guild Wars online store offers it at a depreciated price compared to the newer campaigns.

The amount of theoretical mule capacity of a Nightfall character via heroes is 156 greater than that of a Prophecies character (more than the equivalent of 3 character slots per character, or 12 character slots per account!). This substantial difference is slightly restricted by the fact that:

• 13 of those 156 slots must be primary weapons
• 13 of those 156 slots must be secondary weapons
• 65 of those 156 slots must be runes, and the other 65 of the 156 must be insignias
  • at most 10 profession-specific runes and 10 profession-specific insignias for each of Warrior, Ranger, Monk, and Elementalist.
  • at most 5 profession-specific runes and 5 profession-specific insignias for each of Necromancer, Mesmer, Ritualist, Paragon, and Dervish.
• The above numbers assume all 13 Nightfall heroes have been unlocked, which requires certain progress of at least one character on that account in the PvE campaign or PvP battles, or a significant amount of Flames of Balthazar.

Due to the restrictions, and depending on the storage needs of the individual, the Nightfall campaign may or may not be suitable for a dedicated mule account compared to the older Prophecies campaign. Future changes in pricing or vault box upgrades may change the relative suitability of the two campaigns in either direction. For example, decrease in Prophecies pricing and/or introduction of campaign-independent storage upgrades will make Prophecies more attractive, whereas decrease in Nightfall pricing and/or introduction of Nightfall-exclusive storage upgrades will make Nightfall more attractive.