Understanding and Optimizing Garrisons

[drazzl]

Found an excellent forum post on MMO Champion detailing suggestions on how to set up your Garrison for your play-style. It opens with a lengthy description of each Garrison building and what it does as it levels, so you'll need to scroll roughly halfway through the post.

Link is here.


*Edit*

Garrisons are not optional, they are a central game mechanic. You need them to get access to the expansion's legendary questline and to Apexis Shards, the new form of VP. It also makes for easier access to the new PvP Zone and opens access to several quest lines in the world.

You will be introduced to your Garrison very early on. While what you do there can be kept to a minimum, you will grossly handicap yourself if you ignore it.

[drazzl]

Gonna toss in some other info about Garrisons here. Honestly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around some of this stuff as well. It's not entirely an intuitive system.

Ok, you've been hearing about these things called Work Orders and all sorts of buildings increase how many you can do. What are they and why do they matter? They are essential to crafting anything worth a dam in a reasonable amount of time.

For starters, you need to complete 250 work orders to unlock level 3 profession buildings. Level 3 profession buildings are what access epic recipes, so your craft professions aren't worth much until you jump through this hoop. Unlocking these is done via account-bound achievement, so you only need to do it on one toon for all of them to benefit.

Work Orders take 4 hours to complete, but only one can be worked on at a time. The increased work order limit is how many you can queue at once, freeing you to walk away for days at a time, and simply putting tons of resources into the hopper.

Work orders are the equivalent of the way in which you can circumvent the daily cd on high-end craft mats for a higher cost. Each profession has its daily cd, which btw now operates on a charges system. You get 3 charges of this spell and they regen at a rate of 1 every 24 hours. In other words, you don't need to micromanage your crafters every single day, but you have room to do every 3 days and not miss any craft cds. Work orders seem to cost roughly double the existing daily cd expense.

However, these work orders are crucial despite being resource intensive. It takes 100 materials gained from daily cds to make an epic item, 150 more to upgrade it and yet an additional 200 more to make the third tier. That sounds like a lot, but in reality it means it takes about 10 days to make a piece of lfr gear, 15 more days to make Normal gear and 20 more days to make Heroic gear - for a total of 45 days to make a piece of Heroic gear. As you begin to level your profession, you'll be able to start making these daily cds immediately and get about 5-10 items per day. Once you hit max level, you'll always get 10 per day. Still, you'll need the work order system to speed this up - because 45 days is a long ass time.

If you have a Follower who has a skill for the profession in question doing those work orders, you can get a better return for the resources you spend. So that 2-1 cost might become a 1.5-1 cost, or something to that effect. Said Followers also have the chance to create bonus loot that is vendorable for a moderate amount of gold.

You have an additional daily cd for your craft profession that creates a new form of currency akin to JC tokens. Your profession talented Follower allows you to buy epic recipes from him with said currency (once you have the building upgraded to level 3). He also offers you an additional use of this daily cd for recipe currency through a daily quest.

If you have a profession talented Follower working the profession building, but do not have the profession itself. You can still access the work orders and get those epic craft mats as normal. Once the building has reached level 3, your Follower will be able to craft epic recipes, but only the base versions (LFR level) of them, you will not be able to craft the items that upgrade them to higher tiers.

Lastly, once you're max level, work orders have a chance to yield Apexis Shards. So, intensive crafting will help you to buy epic gear faster for yourself as well, or to buy those weekly bonus rolls.



In closing, while I've said in the past that the resource market is going to be gutted because of how much of the stuff will be flying around, scratch that. After finally grasping how absurdly resource intensive crafting is becoming, this market glut will be balanced just fine by the rate of consumption. If anything, I'm expecting to see the prices of all things skyrocket to absurd proportions on the AH, both crafted goods and mats, especially in the early expansion.

I hope this has helped you all make a little more sense of the new craft system.

[drazzl]

So, more on the basics of Garrison and how they work. You've seen by now that your Garrison itself levels 1-3 which unlocks more buildings. You've also seen that each building levels 1-3.

How does your Garrison level?

It starts out at level 1 as you quest normally through the game when you unlock it. I've no clue at current how it reaches level 2. You pay to upgrade your Garrison to level 3 only after you reach level 100 and it costs 5k gold and 2k Garrison Resources (a new currency).

Each building itself needs to be leveled individually. This costs gold and Garrison Resources. It costs about 1k gold and 500-2200 Garrison Resources to fully upgrade any given building depending on the size. Additionally, you'll need to unlock blueprints to build any given building and a second set of blueprints to allow it to be upgraded to level 3. Level 2 does not seem to require a blueprint. 

How do you acquire these blueprints?

You'll want to see the link posted in the original post for full detailing as it varies quite a lot. In general, you'll unlock all level 1 blueprints through questing.

Level 3 blueprints: 
Almost all small buildings require you complete the achievement of doing 250 work orders.
All other level 3 blueprints are obtained from completing other achievements associated with the activities of the relevant building. 

So, what are Garrison Resources?

Garrison Resources are a new currency used exclusively in your Garrison primarily for the purpose of paying to level your buildings. You can also use these to buy bonus rolls for raids and with the proper building, to trade for craft materials.

How do you earn Garrison Resources?

• Your Garrison passively generates 1 Garrison Resource every 10 minutes, that's 144 a day. 
• You can earn more through the medium building, the Lumber Mill, where you can harvest wood nodes out in the world like ore or herbs.
• Certain quests will award them as you level.
• Some missions you send your followers on will award them. Note, sending followers on missions costs some resources as well.
• Rare world mobs will sometimes drop them.
• You can find them just lying around on the ground while out in the world. These will work just like the Pandaria Treasures where each person could loot them once for valuable vendor trash. There are some 200 of these scattered around Draenor and there's an achievement for getting them all. It seems some of them can be really hard to get to requiring jumping skills - think Timeless Isle's chests where you had to walk on wires to get them.

Lastly, you can store up to 10k Garrison Resouces in your currency tab before maxxing out, so don't let them go to waste.

[kraggok]

Found this info graphic to be really helpful too.

blog.askmrrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Garrisons1.png

[drazzl]

A small note since people're asking - how do you visit someone else's Garrison. When you are in a group with them and they are the leader, right-click your portrait and by the dungeon settings there will be an option to view the party leader's Garrison. You can do undo this and return to your own Garrison in the same way.

[drazzl]

I had 2 goals at the start of the expansion. The first was to run all of the quests in order for the story and to learn the zones fully, no rush to level 100. The second was to max out my Garrison as quickly as possible.

If you're interested in doing the same, I recommend 2 things:

1 - Get a Lumber Mill as your first medium building and keep it running non-stop with work orders. This will provide about 120 GR a day, almost double the rate you passively generate.

2 - Hunt down all of the world rares. There's close to 100 of them and they each drop 10-20 GR which adds up very quickly. Additionally, the extra loot they drop has a lot of value in its own right for vendoring, disenchanting or using if you need it.

I highly recommend picking up the Addon - Handy Notes. This is a baseline addon that doesn't do anything by itself. Along with it, you'll want to pick up the Draenor Treasure module for it. This will mark on your maps where all of the world treasures and rares are. It will automatically detect if you've found or killed these and unmark them. The Treasures also provide gold, GR and loot.

*Edit* Check out this wowhead link for more details. The items, while marked on a map, are often hidden in nearby caves or on top of rock formations and stuff, so you may want some help referencing how to get at that.

[drazzl]

Important note to make the most out of your work orders. Followers attached to your profession buildings have an increasing chance to provide bonuses on work orders, doubling them, as they level up. The base chance to double the work order's output if 50%, and raises by 5% for each additional level to 100% at level 100.

[drazzl]

2 5ish min videos going over the 5 known addons for your Garrison. They're mostly centered on facilitating missions. Take a look.

Link 1 is here.

Link 2 is here.

[drazzl]

Triggered my first Garrison Invasion, so here's a bit of what to expect:

These are triggered by you doing apexis dailies. These dailies attack various factions. As you accrue a certain kill count, this will prompt a response from that faction in the form of a Garrison Invasion. 

These can be done once a week and are run like a scenario. While they can be completed solo, you will get more rewards for doing them in a 3-man group. They last just under 15 mins in total.

The layout of the invasion is identical to that of the one you did as you leveled. There will be an initial wave of scouts followed by a timed part where you need to survive and then mop up the remains before a final boss appears. The timer is 8 minutes here, up from the 5 you saw during the first one you ran.

You can earn a bronze, silver of gold rating by accruing points during the invasion. You earn points by killing things. During the timed part of the invasion, there are infinite spawns that stop when the timer runs out. So, kill rate will have a big impact on your points. Additionally, there are peons that get stuck outside during the fight, you will earn points for escorting them to your main building.

There is a reward bag for each difficulty you clear with slightly increasing rewards. The bronze bag had about 25 GR and apexis shards, with silver having 35 and gold having 50 with an additional 80 gold. About 120 GR and apexis shards in total. All participants earn these rewards, not just the person who has the quest. It seems you can only earn these reward bags once per week on a toon. So, while you help out with multiple invasions, you will only get rewarded once. To be clear, if you only earn bronze on one invasion, you will get the bronze bag. If you earn silver on a second invasion later in the week, you would get the silver bag, but not bronze since you'd already gotten it for the week. 

[drazzl]

Some pointers I've picked up during play regarding Garrisons and Professions since the two are quite tied.

1 - Garrison invasions are basically a big dps check to reach gold. A simple way to boost your output is to have as many of the 3 participants use a dps bodyguard from their level 2/3 Barracks to act a boost. Additionally, the person whose Garrison it is can talk to another Follower and ask them to join in the fighting as well, giving them 2 pets to fight with. This secondary Follower is weak, but every bit helps and its free dps.

2 - I have a main crafter focus on making the tier 2 upgrade for crafted gear while an alt builds the profession building and cranks out the basic 640 version. The main toon can crank out the prepared mats at about double the speed so they should finish around the same time. The secondary toon is only able to produce 640 gear, so you're better off outsourcing it. It is very easy to procure excess mats to fund both toons doing this.

3 - Viv directed me to Preach's video on Garrison optimization. One of the most helpful tips there was that you can leave your craft skill follower outside of their associated building running missions and then assign them to the building only when you go to claim the crafted components. The follower bonus is only applied at the time the materials are collected. It takes more micromanagement, but does yield better results. I'm not a fan of micromanagement but have embraced this in the short term to level a toon to 100 before leaving them permanently assigned.

4 - Stockpile quest items you would otherwise vendor, especially as you are leveling. You can build an enchanting building in your Garrison and use the cauldron to disenchant WoD gear (does not work on items that randomly upgrade to epic quality). If you don't have the slots to make this building, you can visit a friend's Garrison who does and use their cauldron. This provides a staggering amount of mats for enchanting that will be necessary over time as there's less supply going around this expansion.

5 - Moreover, high-end enchants, particularly weapon enchants are very costly to make. This comes two-fold from scarcity of mats but also rate of production. A weapon enchant which takes 15 crystals to make, takes a full week for an enchanter to acquire using both daily cds and their Garrison building with level 100 Follower. It is highly recommended an Enchanter with alts set up 1 or 2 alts with profession buildings to add to the rate of crystal production as these are not soulbound and can be passed along to the master crafter to create enchants at more then a snail's pace.

6 - The 3 charge daily cd for craft professions does not kick in until you max out the profession.

7 - The fishing daily in your Garrison now yields +15 skill making it very easy to power level the profession. If you want to make this even easier, you can buy the fish off the ah or have a friend farm them and then "use" them to get the eggs and complete the qest and return the flesh to your friend or resell it. There are still some whole fish in the gb one can easily use for this purpose.

8 - Fishing lures are a must this expansion. More fishing skill means greater chance at catching large fish, meaning you gather flesh faster the higher your skill. You need to boost your skill to 850 to have a 100% chance of a large fish. Fishing is important to both Alchemy and Cooking this expansion.

9 - If you're juggling a lot of toons, an efficient way to handle this is cycle between these toons as they accrue rest xp. Some useful benchmarks/stopping points:

Level 92-93 - Complete Ga'nar's Vengeance storyline to access Garrison level 2. Unlocks the Mine. Mine level 2 blueprints are available immediately from the vendor, but empty your level 1 mine first as the upgrade will reset all of the nodes.
Level 96 - Unlock level 2 profession buildings where you can assign a follower to enhance crafting. Unlock Herb Garden.
Level 98 - Unlocks Herb Garden level 2. With an assigned Follower you can talk to the vendor and specify what herbs you want grown.

10 - Level 3 blueprints must be unlocked via achievement each. Look into these achievements early on and plan ahead to see what you need to do. For the most part these are gated by time so the first choice buildings you make will be the first ones to unlock. These achievements are account-bound - meaning all of your toons contribute to earning them and once achieved all of your toons are treated as having it and thus the blueprints are unlocked already. This allows you to fast track growth in both the initial unlocking but with building up your Garrisons on alts.

11 - Tier 2 and 3 crafted upgrades require 15 Savage Blood each. There are only 2 ways to get this, a level 3 Barn and trading Primal Spirits. These tiers of gear are raid level and will provide an ample edge during the gearing process, it is highly recommended to invest in procuring Savage Blood. At the very least, they sell for quite a lot (currently 1.7k each) and should retain a good level of rarity for the coming months since it requires a coveted medium Garrison plot and the trade-in cost in Primal Spirits is 50-1. The Barn only provide a 1 in 3 chance to get a Savage Blood per work order, one more reason they're so rare.

12 - Follower missions are extremely potent once your Followers reach level 100. These will provide ample amounts of 615 and 630 gear out the gate. The best stuff comes when you begin adding item levels to your Followers. 

13 - These item level boosts come in a few forms. The first distinction is between armor and weapon upgrades, the average of which is your Followers item level. The second distinction is between upgrades which outfit your Follower with gear of a set level vs enhancements that add a few points. There are 3 tiers to each of these. Gear assignments come in 615, 630 and 645 strength. Enhancements which give points add 3, 6 or 9 levels. 

14 - When using these items, a few points on efficiency. Always use the items which give a set item level first as a baseline, then begin using the other ones which add points. Second, stockpile these for awhile, then pick one of your purple quality Followers to reach item level 615, this will unlock a new tier of missions. Then apply upgrades to Followers as needed to complete the missions you want. Purple/Epic quality Followers are your highest priority here for the flexibility they provide in responding to the abilities needed for a mission. Repeat this process for the 630 and 645 benchmarks. Build up your Followers evenly or you'll miss out on a lot of opportunities.

15 - There are 3 ways to acquire these item upgrades for your Followers. The first is from running missions. The second is from the Salvage Yard. Missions at level 100 are now guaranteed to return salvage. The third is by spending garrison resources at the War Mill through work orders. It is important to note that both the Salvage Yard and War Mill are not guaranteed to give item level upgrades, but have decent chances to.

16 - It takes a ton of xp to level a Green quality Follower to Blue and then to Purple. When you have to start deactivating Followers for having too many, it is a good idea to prioritize deactivating Green quality ones while keeping Purple and Blue ones active regardless of their level. It takes less time to get a Follower to level 100 then it does to improve their quality. 

17 - Look over your Followers and their abilities. You'll likely need to resort to pen and paper here, but you want to make sure you have an even spread of coverage to counter all abilities needed for missions. If you're missing something, look through your deactivated Followers, look to see what ones are easily acquirable in the world or purchasable. Also consider the level 2 Tavern allows you to recruit Followers with an ability of trait of your choosing, but these Followers are usually Green and always level 90.

18 - Bow before the awesomeness of the Scavenger trait. It will triple the reward from missions that award garrison resources. Some of these missions allow for groups and award over 100 garrison resources. In this case, if multiple Followers with this trait go, the effect stacks. A second Follower turns this from a 300% return to a 500% return.

19 - Remember, missions cost garrison resources to run. It is very easy to spam missions if you're on for awhile and garrison resources faster then you can earn them. Keep an eye on your garrison resource use in this way and for what you may be planning to spend it on next.

20 - The Trading Post vs the Lumber Mill. These medium buildings are designed to provide you with a boost to production in garrison resources but offer trade offs. The Lumber Mill turns 10 timber into 20 garrison resources per work order. Timber is found out in the world like any ore or herb. At level 3 you can get a Follower who alters this exchange to 10 for 30. Additionally, each level allows you to chop down bigger trees which allow for faster collection of timber. At level 3 I can collect by 250 timber cap in about 15 minutes roaming Nagrand and need to do this about every 4-5 days which is pretty efficient. Alternately, the Trading Post, at level 1 allows for work orders that turn basic craft materials such as cloth or ore into garrison resources at a conversion rate of 5 to 30. This is a much higher exchange rate starting, but can be costly in resources starting out. Also note, the resource used for work orders changes daily, so it is best to max out work orders when you have the option to use a plentiful resource and leveling the building to hold multiple days worth of work orders will allow for this. Lastly, the Trading Post allows for purchase of craft materials with garrison resources, but the price will vary every day, so shop smartly and wait for deals.

[drazzl]

This time around I'm going to layout some side benefits benefits of having your followers assigned to profession buildings you may not be aware of. You need to talk to your Follower at the building to obtain these.

Blacksmith - 2x 4 hour buffs. The first has a chance to summon an elemental add to fight for you for several seconds. The second prevents incurring a repair bill from normal wear and tear. The first buff is only active while out in the world.

Leatherworker - Sells tents for free that are account-bound. There's like 2 dozen different cosmetic designs to choose from. Sitting in the tent for 10 seconds grants you a 10% stat buff that lasts while you're outdoors in Draenor.

Tailor - Sells 2 soulbound Banners for free. The first acts as a taunting dummy to block incoming attacks, while the second gives a close range 30% health buff to allies. Each of these lasts for 1 minute and can only be used out in the world.

Jewelcrafting - A daily quest worth 300 gold to craft something or turn in materials. Turns a tidy profit on excess materials.

Enchanting - Allows you to place a cosmetic illusion spell on your weapon having it mimic the appearance of other weapon enchants.

Inscription - A daily craft cd to make 2 random receipts. Combine 2 receipts of the same type to make a vendorable item worth 75 or 225 gold. Costs 10 herbs worth of ink to make, so fairly profitable with current market prices and worth more in time. 

Alchemy - A daily gift package awarding a few random potions.

Engineering - Followers sells disposable trinkets with use-based effects, disposable mail and bank access for a gold.

[drazzl]

A few other tidbits.

1 - It seems they nerfed the Leatherworker tents and they are no longer given for free but must be crafted for 5 leather each.

2 - Captured animals from for the Barn count as craft mats can be stored in the reagent tab of your bank. Moreover, as they count as extended bag space, you can leave them there while still applying them to work orders.

3 - It's clear we're drowning in ore this expansion, herbs are fairly plentiful, but enchanting mats are rarer then before. So, a handy trick to unload all that ore. Have a Blacksmith or Jewelcrafter turn it into blue quality gear at a rate of 60:1. Then, hand it off to an enchanter for disenchanting. This yields about 10 Draenic Dust on average, so about a 6:1 conversion of ore:dust. Consider that ore sells for about 50 silver on the AH, while Dust can sell for 4-8g each. That spells profit. To be clear though, you need to have an enchanter for this, the enchanter building will not suffice. See #4.

4 - While the enchanter building is great for getting rid of soulbound items and turning them into useful craft mats, it is pretty awful for disenchanting non-soulbound items. The building only gives about 30% of the returns an enchanter gets.

5 - The Trading Post is an excellent building to have if you have patience. Work orders for it cost 5 of a resource - herbs, ore, dust and return 30 GR. The building also comes equipped with a vendor that changes each day and offers different exchange rates for all of these goods and more. The price varies between 20 and 40 GR per 5 of a resource. This differential struck me very clearly yesterday when the work order was for Draenic Dust at a 30:5 ratio of GR:Dust...and the vendor of the day was selling Dust for 20:5. So I bought a bunch of Dust and filled out my work orders with a net gain of 10 GR per work order, for nothing.

While the baseline function of this building is to provide GR to build up your garrison and to offer stop gap mats for your crafting, if you master this building, it becomes a whole gold making scheme capable of upcycling worthless materials and turning them into a variable valuable ones. You just need to wait for the right time to buy. For example, I have more Herbs then my alchemy and Inscription can hope to use, so I use my herbs to pay for work orders. I stockpile the GR and then mass purchase Draenic Dust when it's at its cheapest. Mind you, this conversion is not equal. I am not getting 5 Dust for 5 Herbs. Because work orders yield 30 GR and I buy the Dust at 20 GR, the conversion is actually 7.5 Dust for 5 Herbs. Or I can pocket the GR for other uses. Yesterday I bought a little over 2k Dust across 4 toons to ensure my 5 enchanter building had mats for work orders and to restock the GB.

6 - Who doesn't want more gold? Here's how to structure your garrison to provide 500-800 gold a day. Consider it cost you 15-20k gold just to level your garrison up all the way. Consider that as an investment and your garrison is yielding you daily allotments of resources and gold which within 2 months will pay for itself, and then you have the rest of the expansion to rake in the profits.

     A) Level 3 Inn provides access to new missions which award gold. Add this on to the existing missions offered which do and you can earn 300-500 gold per day this way.
     B) Level 3 Salvage Yard provides a large crate of salvage for every successful level 100 mission. By the time your followers are maxed, this is almost all of your missions. Creates contain vendor junk worth a few silver to 6 gold. They also contain power ups for your followers. Gearing your followers grants access to better/more lucrative missions at the 615, 630 and 645 tiers. Additionally, salvage also contains magic items of all levels. I choose to vendor anything not WoD-level and disenchant all the WoD-level stuff. All-in-all, this earns me easily 50 gold a day, upwards of 100.
     C) Gladiator Sanctum at any level is actually quite lucrative. You wouldn't expect this from a pvp-associated building. The work orders cost 10 Broken Bones, earned from world pvp (Ashran is your main source) and award about 15-20 gold per work order (about 100-120 gold a day) along with some honor and a chance at conquest points and pvp gear. You get about 5 Broken Bones from all Honorable Kills, which means anything you kill, hit once, or anyone if your raid kills. The simplest method of farming this is to get into Ashran and join any raid group that is fighting on the main road (event groups will help you get some but specialize in farming artifact fragments for honor and rep). In about 1 hour of play in Ashran, you can get about 2k Broken Bones, which will last you for 1 month of work orders. While this may only yield about 3-4k gold over the span of a month, the ratio of effort to gain is extremely high. Additionally, the gear you obtain, 1-3 pieces a day, can be vendored for extra gold or used for disenchanting. The Honor can be used to purchase at least 2 of your pve bonus rolls each week - or you can buy more pvp gear for vendoring or disenchanting. The conquest points have little value to a pve player, and maybe you'll get enough to buy a piece of gear, but more likely it'll roll over to Honor points come next pvp season.
    

[drazzl]

Some updates on the information here:

1 - The Barn now has about a 50% chance of giving Savage Blood at level 3. Working with the barn has gotten much easier as it now support 5-man groups that can clear captures at about 100 per hour, easily double or triple what a solo player can handle.

2 - Work bonuses from having a follower assigned cannot be gamed anymore, the check for a bonus is now performed when the work order is completed every 4 hours, not at collection.

3 - For disenchanting purposes, it's not really worth it to d/e green quality items, the vendor sell value usually outstrips the 2-3 dust they provide when d/e-ing. Blues have a tipping points around the 45 gold mark.

4 - I've seen no evidence that the charge-based system for daily cds actually exists. I suspect this was an intended feature that was never actually implemented.

5 - Treasure Hunter is a new trait, doubling gold rewards from missions. This is particularly lucrative with all the gold missions awarded from a level 3 inn.

6 - Inn dailies can be stored up over days. There's 3 per dungeon, so they'll eat most of your quest log over time, but can be lucrative over time. Stockpile the quests and run a random daily heroic every few days with someone else. By waiting a few days, you should have 2-3 inn quests giving random rewards but 30 gold from the turn-in. The random heroic will award 50 GR. It will also award 70 gold, plus an additional 70 for queueing with someone else. By now, you can be getting 170 gold. Additionally, if you get the Saurfang daily to line up with your heroic, that's an additional 175 GR. Lastly, there's a questline the starts with the goblin who starts the jukebox quest to give another quest to meet the Heirloom vendor in Undercity. This quest is to collect drops from doing random heroics that will award heirloom upgrades. Lots of rewards for continuing to run random heroic dungeons.

7 - Speaking of gold, LFR awards 150 gold per wing. LFR queue times have gotten much shorter ranging from 3-15 mins and award 150 gold for the wing. Highmaul wings are easier then heroic dungeons and can be completed in about 30 mins each. Additionally, you will get an extra bag of gold for queueing with a friend, which can double the 150 gold reward.

8 - Level 3 Garrisons now have random npcs visit each day offering assorted quests. You can complete multiple of these quests per day, they are not on a shared lockout. The easiest way to access the quests you don't have for the day is to use group finder and look under custom groups. There are usually a dozen or more groups offering access to their Garrison for these missions. The players set these groups to auto-accept any people looking to join while they afk.


Ok, this brings me the last bit of info: Harrison Jones is an OP follower and you should go get him...

How do you get him? Complete all 6 Harrison Jones dailies available through your Garrison.

Why is he OP? An vaguely worded and confusing ability: Mentor. Mentor means that however powerful Jones is, so is everyone else on the mission he's on. If he's ilvl 675, so is everyone else...regardless of their level. You can have a level 90 toons accompany him on a mission and they are automatically treated as a level 100 follower at whatever ilvl he is. This has 2 uses. The first is that his ilvl transfers to others, making him a focus for using upgrades on as he will make tackling high-end missions much easier. Secondly, because a low level follower is jumped up in level, this circumvents the reduced xp rules based on level. When a follower is below a mission's level they take increasingly less xp for it. Jones breaks that. Therefore, a level 90 follower is treated as being at or better level then the mission and receives full xp. It is possible for a level 90 follower to jump several levels from a single mission. This greatly reduces the time needed to level toons you may be getting from the inn each week.