Off-Topic General Discussion - Page 4016

So I'm addicted to Garrisons and it's basically 90% of what I do in WoW. I'm in the process of getting all my alts up and running in order to have a constant, low-effort firehose of income and thought I'd share my findings.


How 2 Garrison: A Guide for The Altoholic

So why bother?

The answer is pretty simple, it's easy. In past expansions exploiting alts for money involved repeating the same, soulless daily quests on them that you'd just finished on your main. This was effective, but time consuming and mind-numbing. By contrast Garrisons can produce equivalent or greater income for mere minutes of effort.

In addition, returns begin immediately. While daily quests can't be done until the max level, you get your Garrison almost as soon as you enter Draenor. You don't have to commit to maxing alt after alt to make Garrisons work for you!

Let's get to it.


Garrison Stages

How much effort you put into developing an alt's garrison is up to you. While a level 100 alt will yield the most returns, you can stop an alt's development at various stages while still benefiting. These are:

• Stage 1: Frostwall
  
• Stage 2: Gorgrond
  
• Stage 3: Talador
  
• Stage 4: Salvage
  
• Stage 5: 100
  

I'll be going over each in turn.

Before we dig in, realize that you will be ignoring many quests. This guide directs you only toward quests and quests chains that yield garrison upgrade books and followers. All other quests can and should be ignored. With rest experience you shouldn't need anything other than what I list here to keep up in levels.


Stage 1: Frostwall

This is the minimum effort you should put into an alt to make their Garrison worthwhile and effective. The steps are simple, and you get a lot for the investment. Here's the outline.

• Complete the introductory story chain to reach Frostwall.
  
• Complete the basic garrison quests. This nets you Olin Umberhide, Vivianne, Ka'la, and Ulna Thresher.
  
• Conquer Bladespire.
  
• Complete the slave quest chain below Bladespire to get Mulverick.
  
• Defend War'gol.
  
• Complete the Ga'nar and Lokra quest chains. Free Dagg from Daggermaw Ravine and Grom'gar during these quests and he'll appear outside your garrison.
  
• Defend your Garrison from invasion.
  
• Complete Shadow Hunter Rala's quest chain. Along the way seek out the nearby WeaponSmit Na'shral and Gronnstalker Rokash quest lines to acquire them as well.
  
• Finish off the Iron Wolf and complete the Battle of Thunder Pass, then take your pick of the three (Greatmother Geyah is typically best).
  
• You should be at least level 92, so complete the mine quest to unlock your mine.
  

Once you've completed all these steps you'll have a Level 2 Garrison, 10 Followers, and the Mine. You're free to build whatever buildings you deem helpful, but I'd recommend against Lumber Mills since running around hunting trees defeats the point of easy, low-effort income.

This is a very good stopping point. You can get a lot out of the garrison without sinking additional time into leveling your alt and/or acquiring followers. I've been stopping most of my alts at this stage before pressing forwards.


Stage 2: Gorgrond

This is a relatively short stage. You'll get a few more followers and a free building upgrade.

• Complete the introductory quests to unlock your base in Gorgrond. I suggest picking the Lumber Mill, but it's your choice.
  
• Complete the Kaz/Draka quest chain. This will net you a follower (Kaz or Xuk).
  
• Pick up Tormmok and Blook while you're in the southern area.
  
• Complete the building-specific quest chain to unlock your other quest follower (Bruto or Penny Clobberbottom).
  
• Complete Durotan's quest to fight the Iron Horde to get Outpost Building Assembly Notes.
  

For your efforts you'll gain another four followers and a free blueprint. That's obviously less impressive than Stage 1, but the time investment is proportionally smaller. In any case, after finishing all of that you should be level 94, which sets you up for the next stage.


Stage 3: Talador

This stage isn't quite as direct and simple as Gorgrond, but you get another building upgrade and almost get you to 20 followers when you're done.

• Pick your building and complete its quest chain. This will net you either Magister Krelas or Morketh Bladehowl.
  
• As you complete that quest chain look for opportunities to pick up Ahm, Aeda BrightDawn, and Pleasurebot 8000. Ahm in particular is a little out of the way.
  
• (Optional) Complete the Lady of Light quest chain to unlock Soulbinder Tuulani.
  

The Lady of Light quest chain is fairly long and only rewards one follower, so it's not a great return on the time investment. If you've already reached level 96 you should skip this quest chain and move straight to stage 4. Otherwise, do however much of the chain is necessary to hit level 96 and make a judgement call as to whether you want to finish the chain.

This is a really poor stage to stop on. You should be so close to level 96, and thus to Salvage, that stopping here is basically a criminal waste of time investment. You're so close to a big payoff that you really should just go for it.


Stage 4: Salvage

The introduction to this area is longer than the others, but Salvage represents a significant increase in Garrison income. With a Salvage Yard, which you should immediately upgrade to Level 2, your Garrison income increases greatly. I pretty much vendor everything, but some items you Salvage can be worth hundreds of gold on the AH due to Transmogrification. If you've got an addon that shows an item's AH worth you'll want to keep your eyes open.

• Complete the introductory questline and choose your building.
  
• Complete the Salvage quest line, and acquire Kimzee Pinchwhistle.
  
• (Optional) If you didn't acquire Soulbinder Tuulani before, run south of your base and pick up Benjamin Gibb. You don't have to do the haunted area's quest line to get him.
  
• (Optional) Complete the building-specific questline to unlock a free blueprint.
  
• Complete your Herb Garden quest.
  

At this point you should have 20 followers, the Herb Garden and the Salvage Yard. Odds are you're far short of level 100, and there's nothing to be gained for your Garrison at this point short of reaching that level, so you can stop here and still rake in considerable dough. Just make sure you actually build your Salvage Yard.


Stage 5: 100

The primary benefit of reaching level 100 is that it unlocks the Level 3 Garrison, yielding Level 3 upgrades and more plots. The most notable upgrades are the Barracks (+5 max followers), the Salvage Yard (follower upgrades from Salvage) and the Barn (Savage Blood). There's a side benefit that you'll have something to do with all your 615+ loot tokens that have been piling up on your alt.

If all you're planning to do is run missions for easy profit this step doesn't gain you too much. Five more followers makes it easier to have good compositions for missions, and being able to explicitly recruit for Epic Mount and Scavenger is a big boon. More followers also reduces the impact of assigning followers to profession buildings. However, these are mostly quality of life improvements.

However, if you desperately want more Savage Bloods either for personal use or for Profit, then this stage is for you. Keep in mind that trapping 21 elite creatures per character every three days can be time consuming, but it's still far less effort than the old daily quest grind (especially if you're good at double trapping).

How you reach 100 is pretty much up to you. However, doing Nagrand quest chains and stopping just short of acquiring followers until you can get the upgraded Barracks is probably the best way to go. You'll get another free blueprint that way, and will be ready to quickly gnab five followers when the time comes.


Results

I'm not even halfway through this process, and already I'm seeing significant results. Not "I'm an AH master and rake in hundreds of thousands of gold a week" significant, but notable.

Each of my garrison alts is pulling in a thousand or more gold a week, and that's without salvage. The Garrison quests that net 35-50 gold may not look like much, but when an alt completes a handful of those a day plus rare quests that yield greater bounties it adds up fast. Salvage should easily double or even triple each alt's income.

$.$


Optimization and Concluding Remarks

While I've given a lot of options as to where you can stop, the best strategy is probably thus:

• Take all alts you plan on using to Stage 1: Frostwall. This is the biggest return for the least effort, and getting all your alts going is better than pushing them all the way one at a time.
  
• Push alts one at a time to Stage 4: Salvage. The time investment for Stage 2 + 3 + 4 is significant, but getting Salvage is worth it for the dramatically increased income.
  
• Push alts to level 100 at your leisure.
  

For the most part this has been what I've been doing, with some deviations due to all my sub-90 alts and such.

The first time you complete a stage it will probably feel slow, but mostly due to the unfamiliarity. Things speed up once you know what you're doing and don't have to look up where all the followers' side quests are.

Also, if you aren't doing anything with the materials you should feel free to ignore the Mine and Herb Garden on your alts. On one character they aren't much of a time investment, but even with just a few alts they start to feel like huge chores. Mining + Herbing + Missions takes ten times as long as Missions alone, so without a pressing need for the resources you should let yourself relax and just enjoy the Garrison.


Hi, my name is Montegomery, and I'm an altoholic.