Tag Archives: Garrisons

Hunting Party Podcast Episode 208: Happy New Year

Happy New Year! In 2015’s first episode Darkbrew, Delirum, and yours truly talk about Survival’s rise in popularity, whether or not its worthwhile to use Explosive Trap in your rotation, and we also give some tips for completing follower raid missions.

The show is broadcast live on Twitch TV every second Sunday at 10:00 am ET (14:00 GMT). In addition to the live show, you can find it at:

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Ready for Highmaul

I’ve been keeping busy enough in game that I almost forgot that World of Warcraft has this thing called raiding. Also, is it just me or does it seem a lot longer than 2.5 weeks since launch? Feels like at least a month for me. At any rate, I am ready to jump into normal mode Highmaul, hopefully tonight if enough guildies are ready for it. I’m “only” ilvl 636, but that is being brought down quite a bit by the fact that I still have my legendary cloak equipped and a 615 trinket. I also have not been running challenge modes, so the rest of my gear is either crafted or 630 stuff.

I do actually have some nice pieces. Most notably is my gun, Shrediron’s Shredder of the Savage. I’ll be upgrading that to stage 3 (ilvl 660) today which is going to be a huge weight off my shoulders. Why? Because traditionally I have terrible luck with ranged weapon drops. I know everyone says this, but I truly mean it. I spent the entirety of Throne of Thunder with a 516 heroic scenario weapon. I killed Lei Shen with a heroic scenario weapon. I went into Siege of Orgrimmar with a heroic scenario weapon. My raid never sees ranged weapon drops. It never saw one in Siege until a year after the fact, and the only reason I got one before that was because of bonus rolls.

So no, crafting this gun was not a waste of money. It lets me enjoy myself without worrying when I’m going to finally get a half decent weapon. I achieved this by having 3 toons cranking out Gearspring Parts. My main crafted the gun and the first upgrade, and an alt is crafting the second upgrade. The third alt had been churning out Didi’s Delicate Assemblies so I could reroll the gun to “of the Savage” (multistrike+crit). Now that third alt will be relegated to making my Wormhole Centrifuge, Blingtron 5000, and other fun engineering stuff.

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Hunting Party Podcast Episode 205: WoW Turns Ten with BRK

This week we had a very special guest that longtime hunters may remember — the one and only BigRedKitty! BRK sticks around for the entire show as we talk about WoD, Garrisons, and all kinds of fun huntery stuff.

BRK recently published an e-book on Amazon composed of some short stories from his old blog. If you used to read BigRedKitty.net, the Airman Howell stories may ring a bell. It’s also free for KindleUnlimited subscribers.

The show is broadcast live on Twitch TV every second Sunday at 10:00 am ET (14:00 GMT). In addition to the live show you can find it at:

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First 5 days of Warlords: Gearing up, garrisons, and hunter stuff

I know it’s been a few days since I’ve posted, but I’ve got a good excuse with, you know, Warlords coming out and all. I was thankfully immune from most of the launch issues.  I was there at the first minute, and with a group of guildies I managed to get ahead of the main crowd. I was level 99 by the time I logged off for good after a very long Thursday. Then Friday morning I hit 100.

One thing I’ve been pretty amazed about regarding the site is the insane amount of traffic the Gara taming guide post has been getting. Over 125,000 people have viewed it so far. Clearly Gara is a popular thing! As nice as it is to have a guide on how to do it all, I can’t help but wonder if we’d still be trying figuring it out had it not been possible to do the datamining… or even know to look in the data at all.

A lot of people have requested an uncorrupted version of Gara, like she is when you first find her. I think it would be amazing if Blizzard snuck in a future followup (without telling us it was going in) where you could uncorrupt her somehow. *wink wink* *hint hint*

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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.

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WoD Alpha Huntering: Day 1

I’ve been in betas before, but never in something as early as a F&F alpha. I’m used to betas basically being finished products, minus some balancing or minor issues. This is a lot different from what I’m used to. A good deal of my time is filling in bug reports or crash reports it seems, but I’m happy to do it as it’ll help make the final product better. There’s still lots of fun to be had too.

The alpha starts you right after the Dark Portal intro event. Your 90-91 XP bar is half filled, which presumably will be where it’s at once you’ve completed that intro event. I was basically thrown right into my garrison, and the vast majority of the questing in Frostfire Ridge is tied into setting up your garrison and gathering followers.

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New Warlords screenshots show off Garrisons and zones

I pulled these from the PAX East press kit.  I think a couple were featured on the Warcraft twitter, but this is the first time I’m seeing these new Garrison screenshots (maybe I missed them). These look much better than the BlizzCon shots if you ask me. Those early shots seemed pretty barren — just empty land with buildings — while these make it look like a neat little town. Still just the Alliance version, but I’m sure they’ll reveal the Horde buildings soon enough. I’m pretty excited for this feature! Now if only they could grant my ridiculous hunter stable wish.

PAX East Screenshots PAX East Screenshots PAX East Screenshots

PAX East Screenshots PAX East Screenshots PAX East Screenshots

PAX East Screenshots

Also be sure to check out this interview from Wowhead where they talk a little more about Garrisons. Your Garrison can be attacked by NPCs and you’ll have to organize its defense with your followers. You can even bring in your friends to help you! There are rewards for successfully defending it (in other words, I’m pretty sure it’s optional and you could ignore it if you wanted).

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Revamping the hunter stable in garrisons

Pets are, without a doubt, the primary reason I play a hunter. I think Blizzard has been pretty good to us over the years, putting a lot of development time and effort into something that serves only a single class. We have 45 pet families and, if you count all the different skins and color swaps, about 600 pets to choose from. Every expansion brings dozens of new pets to tame, and they continue to give us attention like the recent bump to 50 stable slots.

At least one developer over at Blizzard has their thumb on the pulse of hunters. But, like any WoW player, I will never be completely satisfied. I’m always wondering what they can do next to improve the best class in WoW. Stables, as a system,  have remained more or less unchanged since launch. With the announcement of Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor, I think there’s a pretty great opportunity to give hunters the pet stable they deserve.

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