My Garrison Plans: What buildings and why

Warlords… it’s so close!

I’ve received some requests to do a post about garrisons, so here it is. It seems there is still a lot of confusion about this feature (hey, I’m still a bit confused myself!) so in an effort to help clear things up, I’m going to let you know what my first garrison is going to look like and why. I don’t claim to be an expert on garrisons — for the most detailed information you’ll want to check out Wowhead guides or Alternative Chat’s To Build a Home garrison blog —  my post is simply intended to give you more information to help make your own decisions.

My main motivations for choosing what I did is probably 75% efficiency and 25% fun. After the initial rush at the beginning of the expansion (and once more alts are leveled with their own garrisons), that ratio will probably reverse. But to start, this is what it’s tentatively going to look like.

First of all, I’d like to credit Wowhead for the map and building images used in this post. On the map above, the white buildings are plots you have control over. The others are permanently there and unlock as you level up (mines at 92, fishing at 94, garden at 96, and pet menagerie at 98) via short unlock quests. I’m just focusing on the player chosen buildings. Once your garrison is at tier 3 (level 100), you can have 2 large, 2 medium, and 3 small buildings.

Dwarven Bunker / War Mill

The Armory stores and maintains the garrison’s armaments.

• Level 1: Doubles the chance for your quest rewards to get a rare or epic Bonus Upgrade. Allows the collection of armor scraps from the orc clans of Draenor for armor transmogrification use.
• Level 2: Opens up work orders for follower weapons and armor in exchange for garrison resources. Also, new armor transmogrification items unlock.
• Level 3: Grants 1 of your 3 seals of tempered fate (raid bonus loot roll) at no cost each week.

Why this building?

The first building you make in your garrison is a Barracks, but once you hit level 92 you can bulldoze it and switch it to something else. I plan on switching to a Dwarven Bunker (War Mill for Horde) at that point so I can benefit from the upgraded quest gear. At lower levels, it’s not so much of a factor, but once you hit the Spires of Arak and Nagrand quests you will begin to see significant upgrades once the gear starts to go above ilvl 600. Having more chances for the quest rewards to roll rare or epic means a better head start for heroic dungeon gearing.

The other main benefit is to gear up followers quickly. You must have followers at ilvl 645 in order for the highest tier of garrison raid missions to unlock. These missions, which are apparently pretty rare (every couple of weeks or so), reward you with actual raid loot from one difficulty over the current one you’re doing (minimum normal mode). So if you’re currently working on normal mode raids, these missions will give you heroic loot. However, they do not give weapons or trinkets. The work orders from this building are all about getting follower gear.

Eventually, once you unlock the level 3 plans, you’ll also get one of your raid bonus rolls free every week. A nice perk to save some gold or Apexis Crystals.

Stables

Stables provide significant benefits to your mounts.

• Level 1: Enables the capture and training of special mounts on Draenor. Also allows you remain mounted while interacting with objects in outdoor Draenor zones.
• Level 2: You will no longer get dazed by enemies while riding mounts in outdoor Draenor zones.
• Level 3: Increases mount speed in Draenor by 20%.

Why this building?

Several reasons! One, the amazing mount perks. Not having to dismount while looting objects of any kind? Yes please. Never getting dazed off my mount? Double awesome when you can’t fly. And 20% increased mount speed? Woot!

As a collector, I’ll also be able to get 8 new mounts from this building by training them myself. The training takes place in the form of daily quests. You do one per mount per day, and after several weeks should have most of them trained. Two of them are achievement-based for completing the mount training quests with items in your bags that make the fights harder (you get these items at the stable).

The best thing is one of these achievements, The Stable Master rewards a new title. “Stable Master Bendak” here I come. What an awesome hunter title!

Last but not least, I found it very handy to have an easy-to-find stable master in my garrison. There is another one outside the stable, but the last time I checked they wander around and it’s not always easy to find them. The stable has one right smack dab in the middle.

Other Large Buildings

Once I have several followers geared up enough for those raid missions, or have all of the mounts trained, I may consider swapping one or both buildings to something else. The Barracks is another good building for followers, and the Gearworks has some ridiculously fun toys. Not only fun, but very useful, and very overpowered.  There’s also the Mage Tower for fast transport, but it’s not worth it for me personally to give up a large plot. There are some tough decisions here.

Barn

The Barn houses captured creatures that provide the garrison with leather, meat, and fur.

• Level 1: Allows you to capture clefthoof, elekk, wolves, and talbuk for leather and fur. Used for leatherworking and tailoring recipes.
• Level 2: Allows you to capture boars and riverbeasts for rare meats used to create the most powerful food.
• Level 3: Allows you to capture elite beasts to harvest for savage blood, used in all epic crafted armor and weapons.

Why this building?

The reasons for this building are simple. For one, I’m a leatherworker who is not a skinner. This will help me get leather without skinning. Second, the Savage Feasts you can create with it are the best food in the game and you don’t need to level cooking to make them.

Last but not least, the Savage Blood. This is the key ingredient to upgrading pretty much all Warlords crafted gear, and the Barn is the only way to acquire it. If you don’t have a Barn and want to upgrade your gear yourself, you can still purchase Savage Blood off the auction house from those willing to sell it. And sell it they will. I predict this stuff to cost a fortune for quite a while. The items you craft with it (that actually upgrade the armor or weapons) can also be sold on the auction house. I’m not exactly gold rich, so I mainly want this so I can do a lot of the crafting for my own gear myself. Keep in mind it will take about 3 weeks (as long as you don’t miss a single work order) in order to unlock the level 3 blueprints and start making Savage Blood.

Lunarfall Inn / Frostwall Tavern

• Level 1: Each day, a visitor offering a dungeon quest will spend the day at your inn.
• Level 2: Recruits random followers each week. You can specify traits and abilities you’re especially interested in.
• Unlocks the particularly lucrative treasure hunter missions.

Why this building?

I’d like to tell you I got this building solely because of the follower benefit, but really it’s the TOYS! The daily dungeon quests reward many fun toys, and I love collecting toys.

The follower benefit is nice though. Need a follower to assign to a specific building? The Inn can give you one because it allows you to specify what kind of follower you want.

As far as I can tell, the treasure hunter missions simply award more gold, but things may have changed. For someone who has trouble making it, getting 100-200 gold for a garrison mission is pretty good bank though!

Other Medium Buildings

I find that the medium buildings present some of the toughest choices, and my choices may very well change once I get into the swing of things. I am pretty confident I’ll keep the Barn for a while, but if I find myself running low on garrison resources I may consider the Trading Post or Lumber Mill, both of which can supply you with garrison resources in different ways. So if the garrison resources end up being my bottleneck, my toy collecting with the Inn may have to wait until later on. The Gladiator’s Sanctum is something I would strongly consider using if I ever get into PvP this expansion, or maybe some point down the line to get some of those fantastic titles.

Engineering Works

• Level 1: Allows the production of Engineering items and 7 Work Orders at once.
• Level 2: Allows followers with the Engineering trait to work here, granting a unique bonus. Also allows up to 14 work orders at one time.
• Level 3: 21 Work Orders

Why this building?

I’m an engineer and I want to be able to produce Gearspring Parts faster. I can make some with my daily engineering cooldown, but work orders give me more. Work orders complete every 4 hours, and if I have an engineering trait follower assigned to the building there’s a chance the work orders will give more. Gearspring Parts are used for everything, from scopes to guns to crafted battle pets.

The Tannery

• Level 1: Allows the production of Leatherworking items and work orders.
• Level 2: Allows followers with the Leatherworking trait to work here, granting a unique bonus (tents). 14 Work Orders.
• Level 3: 21 Work Orders.

Why this building?

Just like the engineering building, I am a leatherworker and want faster access to Burnished Leather through the work orders so I can craft the epics as soon as possible.

An interesting thing about the Tannery is the tents you can craft, for example: Elune’s Retreat. These are BOA and do not require leatherworking to use, so you can send them to alts. These should be very handy for leveling. The stat buff is nice, and while I haven’t specifically tested it, it sounds like you’ll be able to log out inside one and gain rested XP while logged off. Still have to confirm that last one though.

Salvage Yard

• Level 1: Allows Salvage to be occasionally recovered from missions.
• Level 2: Increases your chance at recovering Salvage from missions. In addition, you may now discover follower items in Salvage.
• Level 3: Greatly increases your chance at recovering Salvage from missions. In addition, you may now discover player items in Salvage.

Why this building?

What can I say? I love opening loot boxes. You just never know what could be inside! Whenever you complete a follower missions, there’s a chance you’ll get some salvage. Take that salvage to your salvage yard and you can open it up and see what’s inside. Items for your followers? Profession materials? Transmog gear? Even BoE epics? Who knows what you’ll find!

Other Small Buildings

There’s a building to go with every crafting profession, plus the Storehouse which gives some really nice perks like bank access, void storage, and transmog in your garrison.

Another one you may want to consider (especially if one of your professions is a gathering profession!) is the Enchanter’s Study, even if you don’t have enchanting as a profession. It’ll allow you do disenchant gear and create all enchants except the more powerful weapon enchants. It’s definitely a building I will have on an alt to mail all my BoE greens to for disenchanting.

Well, this turned out much longer than I expected. I wanted a quick garrisons post and ended up with this. I still didn’t even scratch the surface. As I mentioned at the start, check out Wowhead guides or Alternative Chat’s To Build a Home garrison blog for more information on all this garrison stuff.

At the very least I hope I gave you something to think about. See you in Draenor.

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