Garrisons are one of the new features coming in the newest World of Warcraft expansion; Warlords of Draenor. Highly anticipated, Garrisons, promise to finally give us a chance to have personal player housing. Existing seamlessly in the world, Garrisons are much like Sunsong Ranch. Players will have the ability to place, build, staff, and manage their Garrisons. Thus, making them uniquely their own little piece of the world. Your friends may even be able to visit your Garrison!
Want to know more about Garrisons and how they work? Read on for more details.
Placing Your Garrison
The first step in creating your Garrison is, of course, choosing where you want to place it. Garrisons may only be placed in the new lands found in the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Unfortunately, you cannot just pick any area in a zone. Instead, each zone will have multiple places where Garrisons can exist.
The benefits of picking a certain zone is currently unknown. however, rumors have it that different zones will provide different benefits for your Garrison. Players will also be provided a means to quickly transport themselves back to their Garrison, something to keep in mind when picking a location.
Expanding Your Garrison
With your Garrison in a spot of your choosing, it is time to get down the the real work; expansion. Each Garrison is given a number of plots that can hold buildings. Each building your place in your Garrison can be upgraded to make it better effective and more visually appealing.
Starting Buildings
Each Garrison will begin with a set of stater buildings. These buildings should be present as soon as you get your Garrison up and running. Buildings players can expect to find inside their Garrison from the start are:
Town Hall – Main point of player interaction.
Mine – Mine for ore.
Herb Garden – Grows herbs.
Fishing Shack – Provides Fishing Dailies and Vendors.
Plots
Besides the expected starter buildings, your Garrison will have a variety of empty plots. These plots can hold more buildings and come in three sizes; small, medium, and large. Buildings will also come in these size variates and must be matched up with the correct sized plot to be placed. For example, a medium sized building cannot be placed on a small sized plot. Filling all empty plots will upgrade the Garrison to the next tier. There are three separate tiers, that will each allow more plots, better bonuses, and more buildings.
Building Functions
Each building you place in your Garrison will have a unique function. What this function will be will depending on the building built. Some will allow crafting, others will allow for the completion of missions and much more. Buildings can also grant bonuses for play in the wider gaming world, including player buffs.
To increase the function of your buildings, you must upgrade them. Buildings can be upgraded a total of three times. Each upgrade will increase the buildings function and also change the visual appearance. Upgrading buildings may require plans or blueprints which may come from various sources throughout the world including faction rewards, world drops, quests, and more.
Specialized Buildings
Besides the standard buildings found inside a Garrison, players can choose to specialize a building. This will allow you to choose a variant on the bonuses and abilities the building provides. Specialization will only be available for max level buildings and can be changed once a day.
Garrison Followers
It stands to reason that you can’t take care of a huge Garrison by yourself. The answer to this dilemma is the Follower. Special NPCs that can be recruited to join your Garrison, these fellows are really the lifeblood that makes your Garrison come alive.
Recruiting Followers
Some followers may automatically find their way to your Garrison, but if you want your humble abode to be epic, you are going to need to recruit more. Followers can be obtained in these ways:
Upgrade your Inn.
Progress through the game’s storyline.
Complete quests.
Pay for them.
Each follower will have their own name, character level, item level, traits, and rarity. Traits a follower has are affected by the follower’s rarity of common, uncommon, rare, and epic. The more rare the follower, the more traits he/she will have. While rarity of the follower will stay the same, players will be able to customize many aspects of their followers. Typically, followers hold down posts at your Garrison and you can visit them at anytime, unless they are on missions.
Garrison Missions
One of the main uses of your followers is to use them to complete various missions. Missions are special Garrison-related undertakings and essential to building up your Garrison. Besides building up your Garrison, completing missions give you the chance to earn powerful loot for your character. followers will also earn experience for each mission they successfully complete.
A special interface will be put into place where players can view potential missions. These missions will show how long they will take, how many followers it will require, and the desirable traits for that mission. Choosing a follower with those traits will result in a bonus. The time and followers needed for a mission vary greatly, from short quests using 1-2 followers, to long raids that will employ many followers and take days at a time. As you might expect, harder missions reward better loot.
Missions can continue while players are offline. In fact, followers can even team up with other followers while the player is offline. Garrisons are not made to be time-intensive, especially at higher levels.
Powering Up Your Followers
Just like your Garrison, your followers can grow in power. As you progress, so will your followers. From levels 90-100, followers will gain character levels, which determine how successful they will be at missions and what abilities they have. You can also equip them with gear, to increase their item level. Equipment has a larger role once followers have reached level 100.
With the information above, you can feel pretty confident that you are ready to get started with your Garrison. Be aware that any and all information could change before the final release of Warlords of Draenor (and perhaps even after). Please keep checking back for updates as more information becomes available. In the meantime, feel free to share any tips, tricks, information, or ideas you have concerning Garrisons in the comments section below!
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