Thursday, November 6, 2014

Some Garrison FAQs

There are a few questions I have been asked, and a few I expect to be asked because I asked them myself when I was first looking at things, so I figured I would throw together a short FAQ with some of them as there are people that might have the same questions.

1) Are garrisons required or optional?

The are both.  You are required to start up your garrison when you first reach draenor.  However, after you do the initial quests that set it up and pick up the quest from inside that sends you out in the world to start questing you never really need to touch your garrison again if you do not want to.  I suggest, even if you do not intend to get into garrisons, just keep up on the quests from there at least so it grows with the story even if you do not build on it.  Many quests will start from there and lead back to there.  Might as well have your town hall, at the least, upgraded.

2) How can I visit my friends garrison?

You need to be in a group with someone to visit their garrison.  You can not just visit any garrison you like.  You also can not just visit any garrison of anyone in the group, only the garrison of the group leader.

You right click on your portrait and click on visit leaders garrison.  When you next zone into the garrison area you will be in the leader of your groups garrison and not your own.  When you wish to return to your garrison you once again right click on your portrait and choose to return to your garrison.

3) What can my friends do at my garrison?

Your friend can come to your garrison and you can fight off garrison invasions together.  This is actually a very good idea to do also because it will make it easier to get a gold and golds offer nice rewards at the start of the expansion like 645 gear.

Beware however that anyone that visits your garrison has full access to it which means they can pick your herbs and mine your ore.  I know, a real friend would not do that, but it is something to think about before inviting people to a group.  For all you know they can click to view leaders garrison, hearth to the garrison and steal all your herbs or ore.  Perhaps it is best you clean up before you join a random group unless you do not care.

But there is a good part to this.  Even if you do not have an enchanters study as long as a friend does you can go to his / her garrison and disenchant using their enchanters study.

4) When does my garrison get invaded?

Whenever you want it too.  It is a quest, not a system timer thing.  You can start the garrison invasion whenever you wish and do it solo or with friends.  I was able to get bronze, silver and gold solo in many of the invasions but they were always easier with friends and only gold gives you a bag where you can get 645 gear from it.  Great for alts, if you can find a friend or two to help you get the gold.

5) Can the horde / alliance attack my garrison?

No, the garrison itself is not a PvP zone.  You will never be standing around and suddenly find yourself ganked.  The opposing faction can not get into your garrison and in truth I do not see that ever happening because the garrisons are phased, like the farm, where every one of them is in the same place.  So if the opposing faction came and entered which one of the 3.5M garrisons would they be be flying into?  Don't worry.  You are safe in your garrison.

6) Do I need a profession to use the profession building?

No you do not but be aware that you will not be able to make everything a profession can make with the garrison building.  Top tier items, like upgrades, best flask, weapon enchants, etc, are for people with the profession only.

Note:  There is however one profession building that is kind of useless if you do not have the profession and that is the alchemy lab.  While it is true you will be able to make everything outside of the top flasks and such, the work orders will be useless to you unless you have alchemy as they give the alchemical catalyst when filling them and the only things that use those are the best flasks which only an alchemist can make.  An oversight by blizzard that was still on beta when it went down.  With less than one week until release, I do not expect it to be corrected, but you never know.

7) Why do I need leather (fur) for tailoring?

You don't.  Sumptuous fur is not leather, it is cloth.  It is easy to be confused by the name.  Sumptuous fur (cloth) drops from animals and the cat people on draenor.  It is not like standard cloth we have gotten used to that only drops from humanoids.  Thus, as it is fur, it is only dropped from animals.

8) Can I change buildings?

Absolutely.  While you can not change standard buildings like the garden or mine with something else, any building you built yourself that required a decision can be changed later on.  You will need to go to your architect table and drag the new building you want over the old building and pay the fee to build it, as well as wait the hour it takes to build, but any building can be replaced as long as you have the blueprints to do it.

Be aware that even if you have a level 3 building, when you replace it with something else that something else will be level 1 and you will need to build level 2 and level 3 as well.

9) How much does it cost to build the garrison to max?

This question actually has multiple answers but I will give only one of them, the most expensive version.  The worst case situation, so you know the most it could ever cost you.  There are buildings you can get blueprints of for free and there are 4 items you can get when questing and completing the outpost quest line in their respective zones that can be used to get a level 2 pattern for free, if you quest in all 4 zones and collect all 4 books and use all 4 books than the price will be a total of 5,000 gold less.  But I am only giving you the absolute worst case scenario of building a completely level 3 garrison without using any free stuff, so you know the most you would ever conceivably need.  Note: If you start replacing buildings it will cost more of course.

The absolute most you will need to build everything from the ground up once is... drum roll please...39,000 gold.

Yes, that is 39K.  The number includes buying all blueprints and the cost to build then in gold.  The number will be lower if you use the 4 books I mentioned to buy some blueprints, but yeah, it is a bit of a gold sink, so saving 5K gold from those books really seems worth it.

Lets hope blizzard makes a last minute change that when you get the achievements for the level 3 buildings to "learn" them instead of "unlock" them and that would save us an additional 7,000.  Or how about if they made the blueprints account bound so you did not need to buy them on every single character, that would lessen the over all cost as well.  Lets face it, 39K is out of reach for the vast majority of the player base.

10) Is it worth it?

That is completely subjective and it would be wrong for me to tell you yes or no.  I will just tell you what I plan to do.  My more active characters will surely have a completely upgraded garrison, even more than just my main characters on my main server where I have a few hundred thousand doing nothing anyway.

For the alts which I do not plan to do anything with I will only pay for and upgrade the town hall, garden, mine and salvage yard.  This will make sure I have materials, follower upgrade items and the full map for all possible quests.

As I mentioned in the opening question, none of this is required.  So if it is worth it is entirely up to you.  I will say, if you can not afford it, do not stress it.  It will not completely kill the game for you if you do not build it up to the maximum, which I believe over 90% of the player base will never be able to do anyway.

Have a question, I can try to help answer it, or even add it here?

Happy building.

24 comments:

  1. Many thanks again for this series, Grumpy, I am certain I will return to it often in the coming weeks. One thought occurred to me about Garrison visitors: Does the fact that visitors have full run of the place have any implications for leading raid finder raids? Does the RL have to worry that the random and let's face it sometimes odious people invited will first drop by and ravage his garrison?

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    1. For raid finder that remains to be seen. I did not test it. Never occurred to me to ask someone in group if they could go steal from the group leaders garrison. lol I am sure that would have gotten me a swift kick from the group if I did.

      However, in theory, it might still work. Enter the LFR, click on your image, select visit leaders garrison, use garrison hearth to hearth out (not leave group or you drop the instance), clear out his garrison, click on eye to teleport back.

      It could work like that. Don't think it will however. I hope not at least. I think those are called "instance" groups and handled differently than "party" groups.

      With that said, pugs will be able to get to your garrison if you are leader. Like for the raid, a world boss, grinding mobs for rep, etc.

      But there is an easy solution. Just mine and herb when you log in and then who cares. There will be nothing for them to steal.

      It would not surprise me if there were people in world boss groups that join just to steal from the leaders garrison. I would not be surprised at all.

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  2. Damn, 34k for a fully leveled Garrison per alt? That is a tall order. I have 50k on my main, but only about 5k per alt. Would really not look forward to having to relearn the AH trading game. I haven't paid attention to that since Wrath.

    How much about do we get from a fulls set of zone questing in Warlords? In each previous expansion I think I've increased by about 10k after finishing all the quests. So thats quest rewards minus repair fees and other costs, etc.

    I think I remember somebody saying you get a lot of gold from complete Warlord's questing, hopefully to the tune of 20 or 25k, that would make the full alt garrison much easier.

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    1. No, it's not even close to 20 or 25k. You do get a bit more gold per quest (a bit), than in MoP, but there are fewer quests - about half that in MoP. You'll get about 10-12k from all.

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    2. The cost took me by surprise too. I needed to add it up 3 times to make sure. I thought, that can not be it, but it is.

      I think once I completed all the quests on beta I made around 15K-17K. Do not hold me to that, it is just a "best I remember" sort of thing.

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  3. So 39K gold per character. How many hours?

    This all seems quite overwhelming. I am looking forward to ignoring as much of the garrison requirements as possible. Or finding a min-max guide for my class/spec and sticking to that.

    Reminds me of "the paradox as choice." A few choices are fun. A million choices and many of them are "wrong" and it's not fun anymore.

    If I could correct errors easily, then it wouldn't be a problem. But I suspect if I spend all my time on the "wrong" building and change my mind, I have to grind the new building instead of destroying the old one and transferring the hours spent over.
    --
    Regards,

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    1. Chances are, 39k gold per garrison per char is going to be nerfed. It's too much for most, especially if you have alts, and if you don't do garrisons on alts, you don't get all achievements. I think they will make level 3 blueprints free - that will shave 11k off 39k, would be a good start.

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    2. Hours? That is a hard one to answer as there is a lot involved in it. Most level 3 buildings require achievements to unlock the patterns for purchase. Some of these achievements will be done rather quick, some could take weeks if not longer. So can't really put a time on it.

      Not to mention, it would be different for all buildings. Lets take the herb garden for instance. To get the level 3 pattern I need to collect 500 draenic seeds. If I am an herbalist I can do that in a few hours out in the world. If I am not an herbalist and have to wait for the herbs in my garden to respawn daily it could take a month. See what I mean?

      Blizzard has been in that paradox for a while now, offering us "choice" where there really isn't any and what there is, is wrong.

      The good news is that you do not "need" anything from the garrison. Just open it up when your first start and then leave it there. It should not hurt your game play at all not to build it.

      @ PvP Anon

      It was nerfed. It used to cost around 600K to build everything. Then they knocked it down to about 250K, then around 90K and then to where it is now. I do not believe it will be nerfed any more than it already is.

      Like I said in the post. At 39K blizzard is basically telling over 90% of the player base this part of the game is not for them, and other 9% that this is not something you can do on your alts.

      How many people do you think can throw away that type of money for a bunch of alts? Even with my gold stash I would never buy it on all my characters even if I can afford it.

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    3. am i the only one who isn't too concerned about 39k? that's around double the cost of, say, the JC mounts. with every addon comes inflation so it will be less relative to today.

      39k may be expensive yes, but not as much as now. and realistically speaking building an entire town IS expensive. but i agree with the idea that blueprints should be acc wide.

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    4. 39K is more than most players ever see. Sure for many people, myself included, I run around with 100K on me even on some alts, but for most they never see that type of money.

      Just talking to my raid team the other night of the 16 people that answered me, only 4 even had 40K on them now. That means 3/4 of the people that are active raiders, did not even have enough for the garrison on one character. And these are people that might be considered top 10% of the game by some people, maybe even top 5% or higher if you look at is as we killed garrosh on normal (now heroic) over a year ago.

      Gold is a great divide. For every person like me that has 100K on an alt I hit 90 with and never even played this expansion there are 100 people that have never even had 10K.

      The game, just like real life, has 1% of the player base in control of well over 90% of the gold.

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  4. Wait, is 39k to build every lvl 3 building? As in have every type of medium building and every large building upgraded at some point in time?

    Or is that the cost to upgrade to lvl 3 the standard buildings, 3 small buildings, 2 medium buildings, and 2 large buildings?

    So is 39k the worst case scenario for your "first" fully upgraded garrison? Or is it the cost to have every achievement related to upgrading every garrison building?

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    1. 39K is if you completely deck out your garrison meaning.

      Town hall level 3
      Herb garden level 3
      Mine level 3
      Pet menagerie level 3
      Fishing shack level 3
      Small building #1 level 3
      Small building #2 level 3
      Small building #3 level 3
      Medium building #1 level 3
      Medium building #2 level 3
      Large building #1 level 3
      Large building #2 level 3

      Just one building in every slot maxed. If you want additional patterns for later use, the price will of course go up. You can cut that down by 5K through quests however.

      There is also the cost for every single one you build even after the achievement. The achievements just "unlock" the blueprints. You still need to actually buy them on each character.

      They really should make the blueprint book account wide. That would seriously cut the costs for alts.

      Now, if you wanted to buy the extra blueprints for later use that would mean...

      7 more small buildings at 750 per level 2 and 1000 per level 3 = 12250

      3 more medium buildings at 1000 per level 2 and 1000 per level 3 = 6000

      3 more large buildings at 1500 per level 2 and 1000 per level 3 = 7500

      So an extra 25K for the additional patterns, should you wish to buy them. Not including build costs for when you do decide to actually build them.

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    2. If you build every single thing at one point or other it would put you in the ballpark of 70K.

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    3. Bloody Hell! I really am gonna need to brush up on my AH skills.

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    4. Heck, even my alts that I do not play will need more money. I used to think running around with 30K on an alt I don't play was awesome. Now it is nothing. :(

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    5. I wish I had took my hunter with leather and skin and not my warrior that is a alchemist. I now have to start all over with everything to get my hunter to where my warrior is. Would have been nice if Blizz let all toons share same garrison.

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    6. Yes and no. If they all shared the same we could not create our own mini empires. But if they were all shared it would not create a glut of resources on the market for ore and herbs eventually.

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  5. This might be a silly question, but do you have any idea if the nemesis quests can be progressed in battlegrounds, or world pvp only? Same with picking the bones.

    I mean the wording seems to be, kill 500 Xs "across Draenor." Old battlegrounds are not exactly Draenor, but how literal is this in reality. Quick look has given me conflicting comments, someone says battlegrounds don't work, someone else says they do.

    I'm very interested in going for this if it can be done in battlegrounds, but if it's world pvp only, screw that.

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    1. Not really a weird question and I can only answer 1/2 of it being I did not do battlegrounds. So I do not know if battlegrounds count.

      Bones can only be on draenor in ashran or on the continent otherwise. I know bones can not be collected elsewhere as I killed someone in the vale and did not get any.

      So, if I had to guess, nemesis kills would be the same. Only a guess however. I really hope BGs count for them.

      So it is literal in the sense that the vale did not count as across draenor. Read into it what you will in terms of BGs.

      It is the same for me, as I am not much of a PvPer, if it is BGs I will go for it as well. If it is world, well, on a PvE server, it might take a while unless I spend the entire expansion in ashran.

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  6. I have a level 1 Enchanter's study and I can't seem to disenchant anything. I've tried everything to the lowest lvl greens to unused Epics, soulbound, BOE, weapons, armor, etc. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

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    1. It seems they changed it to level 2 only. I will update the guide to reflect that.

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    2. Last week, when you could disenchant uncommons and rares in a Level 1 Enchanter's Study, I built my Level 2 Enchanter's Study to see if I could disenchant epics ("purples").

      I couldn't.

      Does a Level 3 Enchanter's Study allow you to disenchant epics, or should I just vendor/Void Storage them?

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    3. I have not tested it but on beta I could never disenchant purples. I will have to try it, I have a level 3, but do not have any purples to disenchant yet.

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    4. Checked last night. A level 3 study can indeed disenchant an epic. I got a temporal crystal from disenchanting one yesterday.

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