The "naked" button; more useful than you think

I dun goofed up.

What you see above is a recreation of what happened to me when I logged in on December 8th, 2009, the day patch 3.3 was released. Because so many people had logged in, eager to try out the new dungeon finder, my high-population realm was lagging like I had never seen it lag before. I, too, wanted to try the new dungeon finder, but I had the misfortune of leaving my character in Dalaran before the downtime for the patch. The lag was so slow that I decided to fly down to Crystalsong Forest, where there are never any other players, hoping the lag there would not be so bad. I made the ill-advised decision to dismiss Swift Flight Form, hoping to cast it again once I was closer to the ground, as I had done so many times before without incident.

This time, however, things were different. I suspected that the lag would make my recast take a while, but when I started to hit that button to recast Swift Flight Form, my druid kept falling. And falling. And falling. I knew, at that point, that he was going to die, so I started spamming my "naked" button, which removes all of my druid's armor. What happened next was quite tense. My druid kept falling and landed on the ground in Crystalsong Forest, where he stood for about fifteen seconds (did I mention that the lag was really bad?). He couldn't move or do anything; he just stood there... with all of his armor still on. However, much to my relief, after those fifteen seconds were up, a naked Night Elf crumpled to the ground in front of me. I did have to run back to his corpse, but I had saved myself a few gold on the repair bills.

I have had quite a few incidents like this where stripping my character saved me money on my repair bills after dying from a fall I thought I could make, then realized mid-descent that I wouldn't. I know it seems like something that wouldn't be all that useful, but you don't realize its utility until you need it. I may have only used it three or four times to save myself repair bills since I made it, but that's because I can cast Swift Flight Form while falling in most places; a class that can't re-mount mid fall would probably get much more use out of a "naked" button than I do. And let's be honest, that isn't the only use for a button that strips your character of all his/her armor. ;-)

In all seriousness, if this idea appeals to you, then let me tell you how to make such a button for your character. There are certainly addons that will allow you strip your character at a moment's notice, but this method doesn't need to be updated after every patch.

1. If you haven't activated the Equipment Manager yet, do so.
Go to the game menu (escape key), then interface, features, and make sure Use Equipment Manager is checked.

2. Remove all of your armor.
There's no easy or fast way to do this (that is, until you finish this process). Just open the character screen and manually move all of your armor from your avatar to your bags. If you are a bit prudent and don't want to totally strip your character when you use this button, then just remove the armor pieces which have durability, while leaving your tabard, cloak, shirt, and jewelry (you will need a tabard if you don't want your character to be functionally naked when you use this button). This has the added benefit of leaving you with more health when you return to your corpse, since the stamina on your gear will increase your maximum health pool and the amount of health you have when you return to your corpse is a percentage of your health pool, so you won't need to heal yourself as much when you come back to life. Note that if you choose to go this route, you will need to update your button every time your tabard, shirt, clock, or jewelry changes, whereas a purely "naked" button never needs to be updated.

3. Save this "set".
Go to the equipment manager (it's the little button in the top left of the character screen) and click "Save". Give your nakedness a title (I went with the very creative name, "naked". You can use a name like "Panic Button" if you don't want such an obscene title.) and an icon (I went with the icon of the hunter's pet ability Dust Cloud, since it's just a bare face, which I felt captured the way my druid would look after I used this button.). Then click "Okay".

4. Drag your new "naked" button to your action bar.
Place it somewhere where you can click it easily, but you aren't likely to click it by accident. I keep an empty space between my "naked" button and any other buttons on my bars, on both sides, to avoid clicking it accidentally while trying to click something else.

And you're done! Now you too can save five gold when you least expect it. Yes, you will need to do this for each of your characters that you make, so I recommend you do it early on (as in levels 1-10), while you have less armor to remove. Just remember, though you do need to set it up each time you re-roll a character, it's more reliable than an addon since it's an official feature of the game.