Ok, so... garrisons and gold.

[This Sesshomaru]

Hi OP, in case you still want to read opinions here's my 2 cents:

It's too late to set up the Garrisons to earn good gold with Treasure Hunters, not only because you get just 1 follower per week but because the setup is REALLY time-consuming at the beginning, most low level follower quests are less than an hour long, so in order to maximize leveling times you will have to log pretty much every hour to every toon garrison to finish missions and re-send followers.. Not to mention the huge amount of gold needed to place and upgrade buildings and the garrison itself.. Only to make profit for like a month or two? Not worth it imo

On the other hand there's 2 easy things you can do that will still net you a nice amount of gold:

Both of them require at least 5 alts, which you probably have since you wanted to make the garrison strat.

1- Run Cataclysm raids on 25H, all of them.. Thats 10k per toon.. So with 5 alts 50k per week.. Not bad at all!
2- Place a level 1 trading post on every garrison and log with every alt every 2/3 days to collect the GR cache, and check the trading post vendor to see the value for the enchanting dust.. When its 4GR per unit buy stacks of 200 till you run out of GR on every toon and sell them on the AH.

The profit on the second strat depends on your server, on mine they usually sell for 450/500g per stack so selling 30 stacks nets me 14k gold give or take

Hope this info is useful and good luck

[Hypasonic]

Debate all you want, I'm still in the process of lvling 6 more toons on my final realm just to milk gold, again it requires effort if you don't mind that (It's like playing AH just more laborious) then go for it.

[Bodom]

Essentially, YOU have to decide whether that advice is worth it. Don't trust these guys, because they just said it is worth it.

The dailies can be done without any Treasure Hunters and they are 1/3 of what a fully maximized follower setup makes in gold missions, so it's not too bad.

I leveled 22 100s 3 months ago and they have already seen a few Champion's Honor, Medallion of the Legion, Elixir of the Rapid Mind and 2-3 Blingtron Missions, as well as having vendored Card of Omens for a few hundred k and made Hexweave Bags worth a similar amount. Herbs especially are very cheap, so cheap that you can almost turn them into Savage Blood and trade in the SB's to the Trading Post vendor for profit, so if Sumptuous Fur is too expensive the Alchemy building is worth considering because you can vendor 620 alchemy trinkets for 25g instead (5 alchemical catalysts + 1 true iron ore). Follower wise all those characters are very far behind, but the income is still pretty good. Haven't bothered with Shipyards on them, but if I wanted to make as much as possible before Legion I'd get them because even without proper ships they're good earners on my older toons.

[Cæli]

How much millions did you made out of garrisons since launch (not counting AH obviously crafting is another thing) ? Let's see how high those gold generated could get :P

[Djuntas]

Im just happy to see that most people dont even sell stuff on the AH anymore. Just means less competition for me.

I still make most of my gold from AH sales, but it depends on your realm ofc. But it all down to what you also find "fun"....I like AH playing

[Denkou]

But the costs involved for getting a level 2 garrison, a level 1 trading post and 2 small garrison buildings to level 2 are next to nothing. Combined construction and upgrade costs are 1050 gold and 600 garrison resources (you don't need to buy blueprints if you are level 96). It's also a very fast and easy to setup. There is a guaranteed follower for both professions for both factions, both unlocked after a very short quest chain. Follower level, quality and gear doesn't matter for the dailies. After that it's just a matter of logging in once per day and re-stocking on ore/herbs when they cost 4 resources at the trading post.

Leveling up your garrison and the buildings isn't the time consuming part, getting the right followers and leveling them up is. Ideally you want a good chunk of treasure hunters, but the only "guaranteed" treasure hunters are Harrison and the ones you get from the inn. Harrison requires a bit of RNG luck (or garrison hopping) and you can only recruit from the inn once a week. It may take a month or even longer to get 10+ treasure hunters.

Now, if you have good RNG with traits on your "regular" followers it may take shorter. On my main, luckily I had 8 treasure hunters just naturally pop up, not including Harrison or the inn recruits. I have a total of I think 13 treasure hunters, and with that amount I'm able to max out gold rewards on basically every gold mission. On my mage, on the other hand, I literally have 4 treasure hunters and they were all inn recruits. The fact that inn recruits start at level 90 means it'll take a bit longer to get them to 100 and geared up, as well. And yes, you can always use the trait reroll item, but that's a lot of RNG as well; I've used maybe 25 of those and have only gotten treasure hunter once.

Given that Legion is still about 3 months away, OP can easily set up a garrison with a good amount of treasure hunters before then, so I would say that it's worth it. It doesn't take much effort at all, it's just time consuming, but it's not hard by any means. Of course, he'll have a really short window of time to make gold in, but it's still better than nothing.

[ElDoorO]

You don't want every follower with the gold buff. There's a balance to be made.
There's also the reduce mission time follower if you login more than once per day.
If you want to play the AH a little you'll need two addons (garrison mission manager and mission planner) to help manage which followers to get.
It's too late to have an ideal garrison but it's not too late to get gold rolling.

Also don't forget to do Kazz every week and sell the mats.

Everything else I could add has already been said.

- - - Updated - - -

How much millions did you made out of garrisons since launch (not counting AH obviously crafting is another thing) ? Let's see how high those gold generated could get :P

If you aren't selling things from your missions in the AH, you're doing something wrong. Things like the XP buff potion.

[Cæli]

If you aren't selling things from your missions in the AH, you're doing something wrong. Things like the XP buff potion.

Doing garrisons is a loss for me since I play the AH, I was just curious how much millions the garrisons did generate for players that put time into it (AH is not gold generation just gold re attribution)

[Bodom]

Doing garrisons is a loss for me since I play the AH, I was just curious how much millions the garrisons did generate for players that put time into it (AH is not gold generation just gold re attribution)

According to my Accountant addon it's roughly 11 million across 33 characters in the last 13 months from gold missions alone. I also play the AH though and do quite a lot of crafting so my total is much, much higher.

[ElDoorO]

Doing garrisons is a loss for me since I play the AH, I was just curious how much millions the garrisons did generate for players that put time into it (AH is not gold generation just gold re attribution)

That number will vary widely. I have all 11 classes with level 3 garrisons at about 75-95% efficiency each. I usually don't herb or mine. All ore gets sent to one toon that has the JC + follower for the bag 'o gold. I may change that to two toons but we'll see. I was also unsubbed for about 5 months so that's a shit ton of money I missed out on. Not that it *really* matters.

Excluding all the free stuff I can sell in the AH, I'd say I pull in about 2-4k per toon per week averaged out. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on which missions show up. That does include salvage yard and jc+follower on one of my alts.

Again, that's excluding all the stuff I could easily sell in the AH that was generated purely from my garrison. Pretty much anything generated in my garrison sells within 12h but I undercut like a mother fucker because I don't care, I just want to move shit.

Because I plan on also having a DH, I've lost some revenue by holding back some things like medallions and such.

The number I'm more curious about is how much gold has been generated from tokens that's now in the game but that's not really relevent to this thread.

[Fabinas]

The dailies can be done without any Treasure Hunters and they are 1/3 of what a fully maximized follower setup makes in gold missions, so it's not too bad.

I leveled 22 100s 3 months ago and they have already seen a few Champion's Honor, Medallion of the Legion, Elixir of the Rapid Mind and 2-3 Blingtron Missions, as well as having vendored Card of Omens for a few hundred k and made Hexweave Bags worth a similar amount. Herbs especially are very cheap, so cheap that you can almost turn them into Savage Blood and trade in the SB's to the Trading Post vendor for profit, so if Sumptuous Fur is too expensive the Alchemy building is worth considering because you can vendor 620 alchemy trinkets for 25g instead (5 alchemical catalysts + 1 true iron ore). Follower wise all those characters are very far behind, but the income is still pretty good. Haven't bothered with Shipyards on them, but if I wanted to make as much as possible before Legion I'd get them because even without proper ships they're good earners on my older toons.

What you suggest needs a lvl 100 character, a lvl 3 garrison, gathering and levelling of followers to 100 and ilvl'ing them to 675, gearing your toon to 675 as well... There's not enough time for someone who starts now to make his gold back. And if he does, the profit, considering the time spent, will be miniscule. Now if he enjoys this, wants achievements and stuff, that's something else. Building a garrison from scratch now is not going to have great returns.

[Deleted]

Players should not underestimate that time is money, that if you enjoy something you do it more productively, and that other sources of income exist. In this particular topic all three apply very strongly. Garrisons spend time to level, they spend time to relog and they spend time to manage, they are often very annoying compared to regular trade, and regular market trading can be more profitable than a few K a week.

[Sazabius]

I'm presuming most of the billions made from garrison missions were done so pre-blingtron's vault nerf. So yeah you literally have zero chance to catch up with people that have been doing this since the start since the prevailing mechanic was fixed 6+ months ago. I've still made the majority of my gold this xpac from the AH /shrug even with my 20 lvl3 garrisons.

[Fabinas]

I'm presuming most of the billions made from garrison missions were done so pre-blingtron's vault nerf. So yeah you literally have zero chance to catch up with people that have been doing this since the start since the prevailing mechanic was fixed 6+ months ago. I've still made the majority of my gold this xpac from the AH /shrug even with my 20 lvl3 garrisons.

You presume wrong. Bling Mission was never the bulk of Garrison gold income. It was and is a nice rng boost to your income, nothing more.

[Delaios]

Given that Legion is still about 3 months away, OP can easily set up a garrison with a good amount of treasure hunters before then, so I would say that it's worth it. It doesn't take much effort at all, it's just time consuming, but it's not hard by any means. Of course, he'll have a really short window of time to make gold in, but it's still better than nothing.

That's assuming the nerf only happens at Legion launch and not during the pre-patch. That's a pretty big assumption. Most likely scenario is that the pre-patch will come with the garrison nerf, leaving you with just two months. Going for a fully built and optimized garrison might be profitable still, but is it worth the effort that you put in? You're looking at a very large amount of log-ins to get your followers to level 100 and epic.

[Blayze]

A full garrison isn't worth the time or effort, but getting to level 96 so you can get the JC and IN dailies is worth it.
Take a character through the first two zones, finish Gorgrond for the free building token (level 2 Inn equals a guaranteed Inscription follower without needing to do any of Spires), then do the mine and garden daily to level to 100 while you focus on other characters to get them to 96...

[schwarzkopf]

A full garrison isn't worth the time or effort

Very little effort required to get the garrison to a money making point... sure it takes 2-3 weeks of real time, but that is maybe 5 minutes a day of playing.

Once you are at that point - money just turns up on your doorstep 4-5k/week per toon with no effort at all.

[Blayze]

Very little effort required to get the garrison to a money making point... sure it takes 2-3 weeks of real time, but that is maybe 5 minutes a day of playing.

Once you are at that point - money just turns up on your doorstep 4-5k/week per toon with no effort at all.

That's what I'm saying. It's not with pissing about with follower iLevels when you can get the JC and IN buildings manned; you don't even need to hit 100.
Most of my alts don't even have level 3 garrisons; I preferred to spend that gold on tokens directly and getting other alts' garrisions churning out a few hundred gold a day.

[Bumbac]

If you aren't selling things from your missions in the AH, you're doing something wrong. Things like the XP buff potion.

Is it wrong when I use them on my lvl 90 alts to bring them to 100 and setup another gold making garrison?

[ElDoorO]

Is it wrong when I use them on my lvl 90 alts to bring them to 100 and setup another gold making garrison?

I'd argue yes, yes it is.
You're talking 25 weeks to get a single garrison fully stocked with and that's excluding fully leveling them all.
Unless you plan on power leveling like a mother fucker across a weekend and starting right now, then I'd sell those xp buff potions and wait for legion.

Again, this is assuming the last bit: "and setup another gold making garrison"

If gold is your primary objective, then you need to sell those xp pots. Remember they are 15 minutes each. That's a few thousand gold for a pitiful 15 minutes. At the end of an expansion where there's almost no way you'll be able to finish out all your followers in time before the next expansion let alone get them to epic level *and* geared for the lucrative missions.

Just my two cents.