Garrison

Garrisons are a new feature added with Warlords of Draenor.

Garrisons are highly customizable character-specific sub-zones, where players can arrange, construct and manage their own base of operations against the Iron Horde. Expansive and fully explorable areas featuring dozens of different buildings and characters, garrisons are brought to life by the player's followers, interactable NPCs who must be inspired (or bribed) to join the player's ranks. Detailed characters in their own right, followers can be grouped up and sent off to undertake quick quests, delve into dangerous dungeons or join with an army of allies to tackle special raids agains mighty foes. Successful missions can reward the player with epic loot and vital resources for the development of the garrison.

Each garrison building offers a special purpose - be it to improve the player's followers, grant access to professions, or provide the player with bonuses in the rest of the game. Buildings and followers can be customized, with every upgrade and specialization reflected in the appearance of the base.

As well as providing unique gameplay functions, garrisons also feature as extensive explorable areas in their own right, with standard fixtures such as merchants, quest givers and flight masters. Garrisons can also be entered by party members, whether to appraise the base's strategic planning, to interact with followers, or to trade in special resources.

Garrisons are intended to be part of the expansion's levelling experience, and are integrated into the expansion's zones and gameplay, with players frequently redirected to their garrison throughout the levelling experience.^[1] However, the feature are also an ongoing feature at max level.^[2] Garrison development is tied to key quest lines throughout the expansion's zones, with each character's garrison located in their faction's home zone on Draenor. Garrison play extends beyond the garrison itself, with buffs that affect play in the rest of the game, and discoverable elements such as followers found through exploring the rest of the game world.

Garrisons offer a high level of customization, with a number of possible buildings and followers from which the player must choose, each providing different rewards. However, these choices are not permanent and can be undone by the player.^[1]

Players first begin to build their garrisons shortly after completing Warlords of Draenor's Dark Portal introductory experience. Horde players can find their garrison, Frostwall, in Frostfire Ridge, while Alliance players can find their garrison, Lunarfall, in Shadowmoon Valley.

Official preview

As you progress toward level 100, you’ll open up the opportunity to create your very own Garrison—one of Warlords of Draenor’s biggest new features. Once ground is broken, you can decide which buildings to construct, which followers to recruit, and which missions they should undertake. All of this becomes integral in your ultimate quest to advance your character, and you’ll be returning to your Garrison frequently to further your goal of protecting Azeroth from the Iron Horde. ... Garrison will have specializations similar to talent trees, and will grow over three tiers.

Commissioned by their faction leader to establish a foothold on Draenor and bolster defenses against the formidable Iron Horde, each player will need to build and manage their own Garrison, a customizable fortress that serves as your personal base of operations throughout the course of the expansion. As you complete quests and win allies to your cause, your Garrison will expand and you’ll be able to choose which upgrades you’d like to construct from a variety of options. You’ll also meet and recruit NPC allies and followers who will join you at the Garrison, each providing different benefits.

For example, a miner rescued from a dungeon might take up residence and help gather Mining resources. A heroic warrior you quarter might embark upon quests at your command, with a chance to return with valuable treasures. Other characters might provide you with quests that expand upon their own stories or lead you to valuable assets in your campaign.

When it comes time to upgrade your Garrison, you might choose to build a Barracks to send more followers on missions simultaneously, an Inn to provide new recruits, or an Infirmary to speed up injured followers’ recovery time between assignments. You may instead decide to build a Smithy and recruit a Blacksmith to research new plans and craft valuable resources (such as those with daily cooldowns). You’ll also be able to invite friends to visit your Garrison to trade resources and see how your home base stacks up against their own.

Your Garrison exists seamlessly in the world, but you won’t need to go into an instance portal to visit your home base - as you travel through Draenor, you’ll see your Garrison looming on the horizon.

Garrisons and buildings

Garrisons - Building levels — Upgrading a building

Garrisons are real zones placed within the actual game world, which the player can explore in detail, entering individual buildings and interacting with followers and other NPCs. Players are able to enter garrisons seamlessly, without a loading screen, similar to Sunsong Ranch in Valley of the Four Winds. Each character's garrison is permanently located in their faction's home zone on Draenor - Shadowmoon Valley for the Alliance, Frostfire Ridge for the Horde. Players are given a [Garrison Hearthstone], allowing quick travel back to the garrison with a 20 minute cooldown.

Garrisons provide various plots for a selection of buildings to construct, allowing easy switching of buildings that share the same plot sizes. Each building features lavish detail, and will change - outside and inside - as they are upgraded, developing from simple tents and huts to grand towers and imposing fortresses. Buildings can be entered and explored by the player, which are filled with many feature related NPCs and objects which can be interacted with.

Garrisons also look very different depending on the character's faction, featuring iconic design from Warcraft tradition. The Alliance buildings strongly reflect human architecture, while those of the Horde reflect traditional orcish designs. However, the developers are currently working on incorporating some "racial hints" from other races into the professions buildings.^[3]

Garrison - Champion of the Arena — "Champion of the Arena", one of the zone-specific effects unlocked through constructing buildings

Garrisons can also be entered and interacted with the player's friends that are in the same party. This allows players to show off their garrisons and also have their friends help fight off invading forces. Any number of friends can come in to your garrison, up to a 40-member raid.

Garrison development and building choices will be integrated into the leveling and questing experience. For examples, players questing in Gorgrond are given the choice of constructing a Lumber Mill or a Sparring Arena outpost. This choice will be reflected in the actual construction of the chosen building in the zone, and the player will be offered quests related to that building. Completing the construction of the building will unlock the Blueprints for that building type, allowing the player to add it to their garrison, and will also grant them a permanent zone-specific special effect related to that building, such as the ability to summon a temporary guardian NPC to assist them in battle. These effects will only be usable within the corresponding zone.^[4] Players will also be able to purchase Blueprints for all zone-specific buildings at level 100, allowing players to eventually explore all building options, and ensuring that the questing experience is not mandatory in order to fully explore the garrison feature.^[4]

Interaction

While at lower levels, garrisons will require a reasonable amount of player interaction in order to recruit followers, gather resources and take on missions, as players progress garrisons will become less time-intensive, aiming to reduce player fatigue while continuing to reward participation.

"As you begin building up your Garrison, we expect that you’ll interact with it quite a bit. However, over time, it’s expected that your interaction will become more casual. At lower levels, your missions are on shorter time cycles (minutes, hours or days); once your followers have reached high levels, it’s likely that you’ll send some of them off on longer raid missions for a week at a time. We want garrisons to be important, but our goal is a system that’s easy to enjoy without being extremely intensive."

Plots

Garrisons - Level 1 Alliance — A level 1 Alliance garrison

Garrisons - Level 2 Alliance — Level 2 garrison with spaces for more buildings

Garrisons - Level 3 Alliance — A level 3 garrison with more plots to fill

Garrisons have a number of plots for creating buildings. These come in three sizes: small, medium and large. Each building matches a certain size of plot, with the limited number of available plots forcing players to choose which of the many possible buildings to construct. Players can place buildings according to their own wishes, allowing for a huge number of possible garrison designs. Buildings of the same sizes can easily be swapped at the architect table, allowing for refined customization.

Completing specific quests will allow the garrison to update to the next level. Garrison buildings can be upgraded from level 1 to level 2, then level 3. Each level will grant a number of bonuses, such as increased work order number, increased mounted travel speed and specific buffs. Most importantly, higher level garrisons also open up more plots for buildings.

The player's garrison will offer 1 small and 1 medium building plots at level 1; up to a maximum of 2 large, 2 medium and 3 small plots at level 3.

Buildings

Buildings are the individual "pieces" of each garrison. They improve and expand the functionality of the garrison, such as by improving the player's ability to recruit, use, and train followers; to craft; to complete missions; and to run missions more quickly by reducing followers’ downtime. Buildings can also grant bonuses for play in the rest of the game, including player buffs, once a day free resurrections and access to professions. Players will be able to choose from 21 unique building types in total.

Buildings can be upgraded from level 1 up to a maximum level of 3. Upgrading buildings will alter their appearance, causing them to grow larger and more impressive. More importantly, doing so will improve their function, granting additional or increased effects. For example, an upgraded Barracks increases the number of followers the player is able to send missions at a time.

Profession buildings allow players with that profession to purchase recipes using a profession-specific currency (which is on a daily cooldown). All players can place work orders to transform baseline materials into high-end materials for that profession. Players without the profession will be able to get low and mid-level crafted gear/enchants/consumables from an NPC at the building, but high-end items will only be available from players with that profession. Having a profession building will be similar to having that profession trained, although the limited number of plots will force players to choose which professions to focus on. All professions buildings are small buildings.

Some buildings offer work orders, allowing the player to trade in baseline profession resources for refined resources or more [Garrison Resources]. A level 3 building can have up to 21 work orders outstanding, and a level 3 Storehouse increases that by 15 to 36.

Upgrading and constructing buildings requires the player to have learned the blueprints for the building they wish to build or upgrade, and costs various amounts of [Garrison Resources] and gold. The player can get a few blueprints by completing specific quests in zones around Draenor that reward a token redeemable at a vendor in Warspear or Stormshield. The rest of the blueprints may be purchased from a vendor inside the garrison once they have been unlocked. Once the player has learned the blueprint, they may go to the architect table in their town hall and construct or upgrade the building.

Stationary buildings

These buildings are given to the player for free after completing quests related to the buildings. They are unable to be moved around the garrison, but can still be upgraded.

Small buildings

Small buildings are constructed on small plots, and mostly are for professions. Most grant partial access to the corresponding profession, while the Storehouse helps out by proving the player with access to a bank, and the Salvage Yard has a chance to provide crates of salvage upon mission completion, with a chance to contain items to increase follower's item levels.

Medium buildings

Medium buildings are constructed on medium plots, and provide a variety of benefits around Draenor and in your garrison. The Inn allows the player to find and add followers with specific traits or abilities, and offers another rested area in the garrison. The Barn allows for the trapping of Draenor beasts, providing ways to gain leather, cloth and [Savage Feast]s.

Large buildings

Large buildings are constructed on large plots, and provide a more specialized benefit to the player. The Mage Tower allows the player to open ogre waygates around Draenor, with up to 3 spots for portals around different zones. The Barracks provides an increase in follower capacity, and also lets the player pick a follower to accompany them out into the world to help combat the savage wilds of Draenor.

Construction cost

Constructing buildings costs varying amounts of gold and [Garrison Resources]. The gold cost is determined purely be level, while the Garrison Resources cost is also affected by the size of the building.

Size	Level	Cost
Town Hall	Level 1	free upon completion of quest chain
	Level 2	200 after completing Quest:Bigger is Better
	Level 3	2000 after completing Quest:My Very Own Castle
Small	Level 1	50 and 150
	Level 2	100 and 300
	Level 3	300 and 500
Medium	Level 1	100 and 150
	Level 2	300 and 300
	Level 3	600 and 500
Large	Level 1	150 and 150
	Level 2	900 and 300
	Level 3	1200 and 500

Construction sequence

After completing the Dark Portal counterstrike chain in Tanaan Jungle the players will find themselves in Shadowmoon Valley/Frostfire Ridge. They will immediately be presented with a quest chain that ends with the construction of a level 1 garrison. They will quickly get a quest to build a Barracks in their only Large building slot.

garrison level	Large	Medium	Small	prerequisite
G1	1		1
G2	1	1	2	from Quest:Bigger is Better
G3	2	2	3	level 100 and Quest:My Very Own Castle or Quest:My Very Own Fortress

goal	criteria
Frostwall Mine or Lunarfall Excavation	level 92
first level 2 medium building blueprint from [Outpost Building Assembly Notes]	Complete the quest chains for Putting the Gore in Gorgrond
Fishing Shack	level 94 and Quest:Anglin' In Our Garrison which requires fishing
first level 2 large building blueprint from [Comprehensive Outpost Construction Guide]	Talador outpost complete
unlock level 2 small building blueprints at vendor	Talador outpost complete or level 96
Herb Garden	level 96
second level 2 medium building blueprint from [Outpost Building Assembly Notes]	reward from Quest:No Time to Waste or Quest:The Ebon Hunter
unlock level 2 medium building blueprints at vendor	Spires of Arak outpost complete or level 98
Garrison Blueprint: Salvage Yard, Level 1	reward from Quest:Flame On: the end of the goblin -vs- fungus quest chain in southern Spires of Arak
second level 2 large building blueprint from [Comprehensive Outpost Construction Guide]	Nagrand outpost complete
unlock level 2 large building blueprints at vendor	Nagrand outpost complete or level 100
Menagerie (Garrison)	level 100 and defeating several level 25 Battle Pets within your garrison

Followers

Garrisons - Hamfist — Hamfist Facewrecker - does exactly what is says on the tin

Main article: Garrison followers

Followers are the life and soul of garrisons, NPCs that players can recruit to join them in the battle against the Iron Horde. Followers can be sent on missions to improve the garrison and earn player loot. They can also be allocated to complete tasks such as crafting or gathering resources. Followers' actions take place whether the player is online or offline. Management of followers will be a key feature of garrisons.

Each follower has a name, character level, item level, class and specialization. There are uncommon, rare, and epic followers, and their rarity affects the number of abilities and traits they can have. Followers also come in types, such as melee, ranged and caster, and players can choose to recruit tank, DPS and healer followers.

Followers also have several traits that affect missions and tasks. For example, if a follower has the Mining trait, players will be able to assign them to a Mine in the garrison to gather resources. Some followers will be better suited to production tasks within the garrison while others will be well suited to missions and combat.^[4] Each mission will also have certain factors which will make them easier for certain followers to accomplish. For example, when tackling a dungeon filled with dragons it might be a good idea to choose followers with the Dragonbane ability, which boosts their damage dealt against dragons. Matching followers to fitting missions is a mini-game in itself.

Garrisons - Beds — Followers need /sleep too

Followers will be able to increase in level and item level by running missions. Followers start at level 90 and have a maximum level of 100. Increased level will improve the follower's abilities and increase their chance of mission success. Each follower also has an armor set and weapon. The player can equip them with special follower-specific gear, with increasing item level an intended form of progression once max level is reached. Follower gear also has a larger role to play in their overall effectiveness at level 100.

Followers exist in the garrison game world as NPCs, and will feature more dynamic behaviour than found in other NPCs. Players will be able to see unoccupied followers walking around their garrison, while sending a follower to work in a specific building such as the Mine will cause the NPC to physically travel to that location.^[4] Followers will notice and walk around, rather than through, the player, and can also be interacted with, with followers /waving to each other and /dancing with the player.^[2] Follower behaviour will respond dynamically to inputs such as placement of buildings and even player commands.^[4]

Followers are intended to be "dynamic and interesting". Followers will also help the player defend their garrison when it is attacked by hostile NPCs.

Recruiting followers

Followers must be recruited by the player, which can be achieved through various means. While some will present themselves to the player without effort, others can be attracted through the Inn; won over by increasing reputation with their faction; discovered through completing quests and storylines; or even found in the wider game world and persuaded to enter into the player's service.

Missions

Garrisons - Mission types — Selecting a mission type

Main article: Garrison Missions

One of the main uses of followers is to send them on missions. Missions are special undertakings which the player can send groups of followers to fulfil, ranging from 15 minute Quests to week-long Raids featuring dozens of followers. Successful missions can reward resources for developing the garrison and crafting reagents, as well as actual player loot usable by the character. In addition, missions serve to earn followers experience, slowly increasing their level and improving their abilities.

Each mission has its own name, follower level (similar to player instances), specific duration, group size requirement, and other characteristics. Players can view available missions through the interface and choose which followers to send on a mission. Some missions are unlocked through having specific buildings. Missions are specific to the garrisons feature, and are not related to any playable content.

Players can choose to send their followers on four different types of mission:

Quests

Garrisons - Dungeons preview — Choosing a dungeon to run

Time: 15-30 mins

Quests are very quick and generally used to level up your followers. Higher level quests can yield player loot.

Scenarios

Time: 2-3 hours

Sending your followers on a scenario will take longer but has a higher chance to yield player loot.

Dungeons

Time: 1-3 days

Dungeons are much more difficult and take longer but are guaranteed to yield player loot.

Raids

Time: 4-7 days

Raids unlock when you get 10 followers to level 100. Occasionally you will receive transmog missions for older raids.

Rewards

Each mission offers a special reward, available only if the mission is successfully completed. There are several types of reward, including player and follower XP, player and follower gear, Garrison Resources, and others such as contracts granting new followers.

Player gear granted by missions will include some normal mode raid pieces and maybe a few heroic raid quality items towards the end of the raid tier.^[5] Mythic raiders will be fine without making use of their garrisons.^[5]

All missions also reward experience (XP) for followers, allowing them to level up. This XP is rewarded regardless of whether the mission is a success or a failure. Many missions also offer bonus XP as a reward for successfully completing the mission. Followers that are 3 or more levels below the mission level will only receive 10% of the mission XP and bonus XP.

Garrison Blueprints

Garrison Blueprints are plans used to learn how to construct or upgrade buildings around your garrison.

Obtaining Blueprints

Blueprints are obtained in a few different ways, depending on the level and size of the Blueprints. Players may level through zones, allowing them to pick a building as an outpost and receiving that building's blueprint for the garrison, or at level 100 players may purchase blueprints from a vendor to acquire those that they missed during the leveling process.

All level 1 Blueprints become available once the Garrison reaches Tier 2
- Because you get them all for free at Garrison Tier 2, you might consider hanging on to the small building blueprints that come from the profession-specific dropped item quest line so you can sell the redundant blueprints for gold.
Level 2 Blueprints become available at different points depending on their size:
- Small: Reaching level 96 or completing Talador
- Medium: Reaching level 98 or completing Spires of Arak
- Large: Reaching level 100 or completing Nagrand
Level 3 Blueprints become available upon completing various account-wide Warlords of Draenor achievements
- Level 3 Blueprints are account-wide, with all known level 3 Blueprints automatically known by all characters on the player's account.^[6]