Draenor Horde Garrisons: Strangers in a strange land

Welcome to Draenor, fellow Hordie!   What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Well, friends, I'll tell you that it all boils down to one single, simple fact: Archmaage Khadgar NEVER asks for directions.

We see him blasting the Iron Horde into the air en masse, destroying bridges with a twitch of a finger, and even disintegrating a dam.  But as it turns out, the Omniscient One is secretly direction challenged and possibly time-challenged as well.

He does NOT manage to sail the boat to a nice warm place in Nagrand with sunny beaches where we can plan strategy over a nice microbrew.  Instead, Wrong Way Khadgar runs off to help the Frostwolves after they've hunkered down in the Great Icebox Of Durotar.  In lieu of cabana boys with frou-frou drinks, lush scenery, wooded dells, and uppity (but tasty) wildlife, Frostridge has rocks.  It also has glaciers, rocks, ice, rocks, and snow (and rocks) livened up by the occasional volcano.  And ogres.  And ugly hogs.  And demons.  And iceworms.  And rock ledges with a 200 foot drop. 

The Invaders from Argus (Dranei, who managed to crash land on Draenor before crash landing on Azeroth) ended up in lovely Shadowmoon Valley.  And yet with the rest of a lovely warm world on which to live, Our Hero's Father Durotan opts for settling down to live in the World's Biggest Refrigerator.

Apparently he gets epic hot flashes or something.



Welcome to Draenor.

GARRISON CHANGES:

Your garrison is visually more confusing than the Alliance garrison.  Gazlowe has a thing for Hides With Holes (as walls -- I think he gets them pre-ganwed on, wholesale) and your basic brick red and gray-ish tan scheme.  Your (white) position marker doesn't stand out well against the (white) snow and (gray) buildings.  Zoom in close to avoid changes.

If you're basing your gameplay strategy on what you did on the Alliance side, you're gonna be in a world of hurt.  That's what I did when I decided that my first resource building was going to be the Lumber Mill.

I ended up running across two zones (death run, really, and an 80 gold repair bill) just to find two doggone "small timber" trees to cut down for the lumber mill's approval, because there seems to be a rule that "Horde Doesn't Do Trees" -- except, perhaps for those flouncy Blood Elves, who seem to be closet tree-huggers when they're not sniffing illegal magic items.

And then I decided I'd build a barn and a leatherworking store -- only to discover that the animals you can get leather from live in Alliance areas (cue headdesk-ing.)  A few of them actually live in the Frozen North, but let me tell you, I feel guilty hunting wolves with Durotan and Thrall sitting around in my garrison.

Therefore, a better option is to build the Trading Post and simply trade for garrison resources.

As with Alliance side, build your tradeskill buildings first and then consider the recipes.  Remember that you can change out the buildings in your garrison if you want to pick up a different item.  For example, my priest (who has alchemy) traded in the alchemy building after getting all the recipes for an Enchanter's studio and enchants.

As with Alliance side, your better bet is handing over the raw materials to workers to process.  It takes my blacksmith character 24 hours, 20 true iron ores, and 10 Blackrock ores to produce one Truesteel Ingot.  Alternatively, I can turn over batches of Blackrock ore to my forge worker and get out 4-6 Truesteel ingots each day (and more possibly, depending on the worker.) The maximum item level equipment that these buildings produce is level 640 (and it takes around 2 weeks to make something, unless you get lucky), so you may want to change them for something else once you've gotten the gear you like.

Although you get a daily quest (with various rewards, mostly gold) from sticking with your own tradeskills and leveling the trade building to level 3, you may find that having an alternate building is more useful.  It is very expensive to make some items (and many things are "bind on pick up"), so I often include buildings that will produce armor for me.


SHAMANSTONES

One of the perks you do get is the blessing of the Shamanstones.  The main one is in Wol'Gar, but there's another one way out on the hind end ofnowhere (65,79 Frostfire Ridge).  They offer the "Spirit of the Wolf", "Blessing of the Wolf", and "Buffeting Galefury".  As best I can figure it out, the last one means a wind spirit comes in and dines on various things.  It promises some sort of levitation, but I haven't figured out who or what gets levitated.

My personal favorite is "Blessing of the Wolf," which calls a ghostly Frostwolf rushing to your aid when you get into combat (if you don't get into combat too often.)  So far, the frostwolf hasn't rushed in with a keg of brandy, but I have hopes...

So put some thought into your garrison early on if you're playing Horde.  While you can reverse the changes easily enough (gold and garrison resources are all that is needed), you can save yourself a bit of frustration by a little careful planning.

World of Warcraft Garrisons (Alliance)

Ah yes... SilverGeek is also a Warcraft junkie.  I've been enjoying the new expansion, though learning what to do with the garrisons has been a bit of a head-scratcher.  Although I play-tested both the alpha and beta releases, I was more interested in the quests and storylines and details than I was in playtesting the garrisons.

Still, they're a lot of fun, and it's been interesting to work them.  This set of notes is a general "guide to starting a garrison" as learned (the hard way) by me.

HEARTHSTONES:
The best bit of advice I got was to keep your old hearthstone along with the new garrison hearthstone. Yes, you can use the portals on Ashran (the PVP island) but those are useful only if you want to go to Stormwind or Ironforge.  If you want to go to (say) Shattrath or Darnassus, you have to take the long way around.  Setting your old hearthstone to the main shrine in Pandaria is a much easier solution.

One of the features you'll notice with garrisons is that you do (ugh) get the old "city chat channels" by default.  One of the NEW things you'll notice is that they've limited how frequently you can post something to the chat.  There's less stupid "impress the world" chat and a bit more useful information on it.

BUILDING THINGS
The first building you will learn for your garrison is your barracks, which teaches you how to put buildings in the garrison.  Once it is finished, a reward announcement shows up along with a button that you can drag to your action bar.  You will want to keep this on your action bar -- if you get in trouble or you're trying to take down an elite, clicking on this button gives you reinforcements.

When you go into new areas, you will be able to build a "garrison outpost."
I built the Guardian Orb at Ft. Wrynn because the damage from this lasts longer.
I built the Shredder at Highpass because it gave me a mobile "tank"
I built the Trading Post in Spires of Arak
I built the Tank in Nagrand because it gives you a nice solid fighting vehicle for ten minutes.

 I'm not wimpy, but I don't like dying and I don't like repair bills.

 Shortly after you garrison is in place, other building plans will drop for your professions (though there's no 'kitchen' for cooking.)  You will find that your professions act in very different ways now.  You will eventually get a mine where you can mine ore, and a fishing shack.   At level 95 you can build a lumber mill, at 96 you get a herb garden.

These three professions give you a unit of currency called "garrison resources" (and later, apexis shards).  Gold is not that hard to collect in Draenor, but other things like the apexis shards and garrison resources can be a hard grind. 


LUMBER MILL:
Build this rather than the other choices.  Lumber mill generates Garrison Resources.  The other buildings don't.

DAILY TASKS:
If you are undergeared or don't like wasting time (or are a caster with low DPS), get one of the people in your garrison to follow you around as you collect herbs from your herb garden or mine or do other collection tasks.  Occasionally you get jumped by mobs, and your follower will help you kill them quickly.  Anytime there's a quest inside your garrison (the "seismic" one, for example), get a follower to help.


FOLLOWERS:
Be choosy about which missions you send them on.  Each mission costs (usually 5-10 garrison resources) and you can choose ones that give YOU (yes, you) experience or the occasional epic object or gold (most often) or garrison resources.  My first time through I sent them off on every available mission.  When I hit level 100, I found myself resource-short for garrison upgrades.

At level 95 (or near there) you will get the quest that gives you blueprints for a level 2 barracks.  When you do this, you can go to your "architect board" and assign yourself a bodyguard that follows you all over Draenor and helps you kill things.  This is a great timesaver, because things die faster with help.

EXTRA RESOURCES:
Not everyone in your garrison is honest.  As you prowl around, you will find pilfered supplies (the guy in your fishing pond, the pug... and so forth.)  These are "one time" resources but still pretty handy.