Garrison "Twink" Set Up Advice?

[Kelzam]

Every now and then I hear people referring to Garrison "twinking", which I assume is using non-max level characters. My partner and I are just returning to WoW after a long break and I'd like to use the remaining time before the Legion pre-patch to try and make as much Gold as possible. Any advice on which buildings to use, the set up or how you go about maximizing your Garrison gold production would be really great. I do realize there are guides for Garrisons but many are out of date or have several 10's of pages to try to read through to discern current thoughts and strategies on this.

Thanks everyone

[Trindale]

My setup on all characters are as follows: (Garrison level 3)

Barracks level 3 - Increase follower limit to 25 (Up from 20).
Inn level 3 - Allows recruitment of treasure hunters/greasemonkeys/scavengers and more treasure missions.
War Mill/Dwarven Bunker level 3 - Follower gear upgrades and free seals.
Trading Post level 3 - Trade Garrison resources for mats + extra rep.
Salvage Yard level 3 - Salvage crates which provide mats + transmog/gear to vendor.
Herb Garden level 3 - Free herbs and chance for the pet + transmog gear from vendor.
Mine level 3 - Free ore and chance to get pet.

For the last 2 small plots you can use whichever profession building that you want.
I personally use 1 profession building and a Storehouse level 3.

Basically once you have this going, recruit as many treasure hunters as needed and reroll their abilities to get max mission success. If you see that you lack Garrison resources or oil, recruit Scavengers or Greasemonkeys to increase your overall gain.

After that, focus on getting your followers to 675 ilvl. Once that is achieved focus on gold missions and rare missions that provide rewards like "Huge Ogre Cache" or "Frozen Arms of the Hero" that you can sell on the AH. If you get lucky, the "Blingtron's Secret Vault" mission will pop up every now and then which (with 3 treasure hunters) will provide 4000 gold by itself.

If you want to get your Shipyard up and running alongside follower missions, I suggest the following fleet layouts:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...h-gt-90-Chance


EDIT:
If your followers are maxed and you aren't worried about seals for raiding, I would suggest getting the Mage Tower level 3.
You can complete work orders here that provide a scroll to instantly complete any mission. They also provide portals to zones which makes traveling less of a pain and a "buff" in the form of a rune on the ground that increases your crit chance by 100% in Draenor.

Hope this helps!

*Feign Death*

[Delaios]

I don't know if the garrison nerfs are coming with the pre-patch or not. If they do, you'll only have another 3 months left. That's hardly enough time to properly set up a garrison from scratch and make enough gold to recuperate it's investment. 3 months isn't a lot when you have to recruit followers, level them and gear them up. Getting 10 treasure hunters alone will already take more than 2 months. In whatever time you've got left you'll have to earn back all the gold you spent on upgrading costs and schematic costs. And there's a substantial opportunity cost from all the follower gear you've used and all the resources you've spent on upgrades, work orders and missions.

My advice would be:
- Keep the garrison at level 2
- Build a level 1 Trading Post
- Build a level 2 Inscription building with follower (1), ignore work orders if you don't have Inscription
- Build a level 2 Jewelcrafting building with follower (2), ignore work orders if you don't have Jewelcrafting
- (optional) Build a level 2 Mine

(1) Admiral Taylor is a follower that comes with the Inscription trait by default. The quests to unlock him are available once you set up your outpost in Spires of Arak.
(2) Both starting zones have a follower that comes with Jewelcrafting by default.

With this very simple and cheap setup you get ~300 gold each day just from the two profession buildings. You also open up a way to spend excess garrison resources. You can buy bags with ~14 gold for 50 resources, or buy raw materials for as low as 4 resource per material. If you don't build the mine, buy ores at the trading post when it's cheap. Otherwise just use your own supply. I'd personally not build it on characters with poor movement speed.

[Raiju]

I was tempted to say full garrisons aren't worth it at this point buy refrained, @Delaios is correct. Go for a lite garrison structure and spend the saved time farming cata 25 hc's or something.

[Delaios]

Just to clarify, these are the numbers for a level 3 garrison with max level small, medium and large buildings (unless I made a mistake somewhere):

11.650 gold needed for construction and upgrades
10.750 gold needed for blueprints
22.400 gold total

10.050 garrison resources needed for construction and upgrades

[Amunrasonther]

I completely disagree that 3 months is too little time to get profit going from a set up garrison. It's especially easy with Frozen Arms ilvl boosts. You get one Champion's Honor (10-15kg) and you already have almost half of any investments paid for. In addition to what @Trindale said, get Harrison Jones asap to level up followers faster and use extra garrison resources to reroll follower traits and you'll be swimming in treasure hunters.

[Lei]

I think you are too late, too.
Getting a Champion's medallion is not guaranteed, the mission shares cd with other, crappier items. I'm doing missions on 7 chars, and in the last month I've only gotten 2.

I completely disagree that 3 months is too little time to get profit going from a set up garrison. It's especially easy with Frozen Arms ilvl boosts. You get one Champion's Honor (10-15kg) and you already have almost half of any investments paid for. In addition to what @Trindale said, get Harrison Jones asap to level up followers faster and use extra garrison resources to reroll follower traits and you'll be swimming in treasure hunters.

This is probably the worst advice.
1) Frozen Arms of the Hero costs around 5-600g each. to reach max ilevel, you need 2 per follower. With 25 follower, that's 50. 50x500=25.000 gold. Add that to the garrison upgrade. You need to spend around 45-50k gold before you even start.
2) Garrison resource is limited, if you don't plan to spend your time farming chests in the world + tanaan. I imagine it's not that fun without flying... Spending garrison resource on rerolls and hope for the best instead of buying stuff from trading post sounds like a terrible idea.
3) Hoping for Champion's Honor again sounds like a terrible time, the mission shares cd with 9 other mission. So you have 1/10 chance every week to get that particular mission.

Not to mention the time it takes to set it up. Recruiting followers, if not, reroll the ones you get from the wild (which as I mentioned doesn't seem like a good idea), level them up, even with harrison, and don't forget that even the char you are doing it on needs to be level 675 to get the Champion's Honor type missions.

I would do what others have said: farm cata raids, maybe the tier 2 garrison setup from 3rd post.

Edit: and yes, garrison nerf is coming with 7.0, so if trend doesn't change, 4-5 weeks before launch.

[Hypasonic]

Dunno bout you guys, but I'm still going ahead with maximising garrisons for profit, currently working on my 4th server of garrisons and its clear to see they are profitable from day 1, the gold you get by simply leveling is enough to get level 3 garrison which in turn allows lvl 3 salvage yard and lvl 3 inn (the 2 key buildings required for dat gold). Sure, you can say it takes time to level followers, but it doesn't take that long. Once you get 30/40k gold you can buy those Frozen arms to expediate the process, its amazing how fast you aquire gold this way. (The only outlier is time really, so aslong as you're commited, it will be profitable even at this stage).

[Fabinas]

This is probably the worst advice.
1) Frozen Arms of the Hero costs around 5-600g each. to reach max ilevel, you need 2 per follower. With 25 follower, that's 50. 50x500=25.000 gold. Add that to the garrison upgrade. You need to spend around 45-50k gold before you even start.

You never use 2 on the same follower. It would be a waste of gold. You use the 630 armor or the 615 one with some of your +3/+6/+9 items to reach 625 and THEN you use the Frozen Arms. You can also use the frozen arms first and then the +3/+6/+9 items to reach 675, vendoring the 615/130/645 armor.

[Amunrasonther]

This is probably the worst advice.
1) Frozen Arms of the Hero costs around 5-600g each. to reach max ilevel, you need 2 per follower. With 25 follower, that's 50. 50x500=25.000 gold. Add that to the garrison upgrade. You need to spend around 45-50k gold before you even start.

I would never recommend on using 2 Frozen Arms per follower. That would be a giant waste of item levels. Buying 3 of them to get you started (using them on 3 different followers and making sure Harrison is one of them) and then using the many many weapon and armor enhancements from missions is what I was referring to.

3) Hoping for Champion's Honor again sounds like a terrible time, the mission shares cd with 9 other mission. So you have 1/10 chance every week to get that particular mission.

Champion's Honor (though the most profitable) isn't the only rare item you can get each week to sell on the AH. And even then, getting just a few of these covers the cost of a lot of gold you'll need to put into the garrison to getting it running faster.

don't forget that even the char you are doing it on needs to be level 675 to get the Champion's Honor type missions.

PvP gearing (which is what any new character should be doing) makes this relatively easy.

- - - Updated - - -

You never use 2 on the same follower. It would be a waste of gold. You use the 630 armor or the 615 one with some of your +3/+6/+9 items to reach 625 and THEN you use the Frozen Arms. You can also use the frozen arms first and then the +3/+6/+9 items to reach 675, vendoring the 615/130/645 armor.

Beat me to it....

[Deleted]

I find the salvage yard, mine and herbs not worth the effort. I can probably make more gold by camping the action house on 1 character than going through that. I don't have many level 100 alts yet (I may have a few soon but they won't be taken care of much) but the 1 alt I have has a maxed inn, good followers and a trading post for making some gold.

Frankly, the gold isn't impressive for someone that knows how to play the auction house (I think I made only around 100k after many weeks of reloading to that alt) but I can understand why people think it's easy when they don't have experience at playing the market well.

[Lei]

You never use 2 on the same follower. It would be a waste of gold. You use the 630 armor or the 615 one with some of your +3/+6/+9 items to reach 625 and THEN you use the Frozen Arms. You can also use the frozen arms first and then the +3/+6/+9 items to reach 675, vendoring the 615/130/645 armor.

You are aware that it takes WEEKS to get that amount of armor tokens right? It's all RNG that you get enough or not, it's rng if oyu get the champion's token, or the cinder pup/void satchel back to back. It's rng that you get the right follower from the wild, or that you reroll into one that is not crap, while you are wasting garrison resource on it.
If it takes 3-4 weeks to set it up with not even the best followers, that means you have 2 months to run after your gold, and maybe turn your invests into minimal profit.

[Fabinas]

You are aware that it takes WEEKS to get that amount of armor tokens right? It's all RNG that you get enough or not, it's rng if oyu get the champion's token, or the cinder pup/void satchel back to back. It's rng that you get the right follower from the wild, or that you reroll into one that is not crap, while you are wasting garrison resource on it.
If it takes 3-4 weeks to set it up with not even the best followers, that means you have 2 months to run after your gold, and maybe turn your invests into minimal profit.

Weeks? Are you sure you're answering to the right quote? With the Bunker/War Mill the follower armor flows and the salvage yard can also provide some extra.

[Lei]

Weeks? Are you sure you're answering to the right quote? With the Bunker/War Mill the follower armor flows and the salvage yard can also provide some extra.

Not sure what you're on about, even at the start, before salvage crate nerfs it took weeks to gear up followers. But that's just one aspect. What about leveling up followers, and getting followers with the right trait (TH)? What about the garrison resource that's needed for it not to mention that's needed for buildings? The OP can't fly.

And don't forget: if you already have many characters that have their garrisons fully maximized, you probably won't notice how much you spend on a new char's garrison, or how profitable it is. He will have ONE garrison, probably.

[Fabinas]

Funny, i have been swimming in 615 follower armor and weapons with the occasional 630 armor/weapon proccing from the work orders of the bunker/mill. Every second work order you get at least a +3 ilvl weapon/armor upgrade, possibly a +6 or a +9. To get one follower to 675 you need one frozen arms token, which you buy, then you need 9x +3 armor and 9x +3 weapon. If you get a +6 or a +9, you need even less. 42 work orders in a week will give you at least 18 armor/weapon buffs and remember, you got a guaranteed armor/weapon buff each day from the daily. So, i definitely think you must be doing something wrong to not be able to make the new follower +675 in one week.

Even more important is having Harrison Jones in your roster though, so you can level the new recruit to 100 with 2 or 3 missions (2 days max).

[Delaios]

I don't know why, but the generic daily output of my bunkers has been consistently 2-3 items on average. That's with 11 characters that all used the bunker until their followers were geared. And most of those items are green, with plenty of the basic sets of 615 gear that quickly become useless. As far as actual upgrades go (+3, +6 and +9 tokens), I got most of those from the bunker daily.
You can buy rush orders for the bunker to speed things up, but you'll have nothing to spare while you're still in the building up phase. Let alone buying re-roll tokens for your followers. Unless the OP has been regularly looting the cache on alts, he won't have a head start with 9k+ resources.

Are the Harrison dailies still random or are they on a rotation now? Last time I did them they were completely random and I had one alt that had needed two weeks before the right mission finally spawned.

[Lei]

Funny, i have been swimming in 615 follower armor and weapons with the occasional 630 armor/weapon proccing from the work orders of the bunker/mill. Every second work order you get at least a +3 ilvl weapon/armor upgrade, possibly a +6 or a +9. To get one follower to 675 you need one frozen arms token, which you buy, then you need 9x +3 armor and 9x +3 weapon. If you get a +6 or a +9, you need even less. 42 work orders in a week will give you at least 18 armor/weapon buffs and remember, you got a guaranteed armor/weapon buff each day from the daily. So, i definitely think you must be doing something wrong to not be able to make the new follower +675 in one week.

Even more important is having Harrison Jones in your roster though, so you can level the new recruit to 100 with 2 or 3 missions (2 days max).

You are talking about one follower to 675 per week. I was talking about setting up a healthy roster of followers with good traits (Treasure hunter) and abilties.

[Fabinas]

I am talking about AT LEAST one follower to 675 per week. The rest will be on 650 (with just Frozen Arms), 665 (with 615 Armor/Weapon, THEN Frozen Arms) or 675 (with 630 Armor/Weapon, THEN Frozen Arms), depending also on extra procs of +3/+6/+9 Armor/Weapons from Bunker/Mill and SY. It really isn't as difficult as you make it seem if you use Frozen Arms. Now, if you'd want a 600 follower to 675 with just the 615 Armor/Weapon (which are very common drops from Bunker/Mill) i'd agree with you.

As for the "healthy Roster with traits and abilities", of course it needs luck, the tavern and GR farming if you want it fast.

[Raiju]

I mean put it this way, you make less than 10k leveling up if you do the fast method (and terrible time spent/gold earned ratio). It's going to cost you 20-40k depending on how much you hardline the garrison. Given you are spending most of the first month just attainin things, you aren't making it back in the slightest there. You will likely hit profit sometime in the second month (usually on the tail end, but RNG is RNG) - and the third month is pure profit.

This is all well and good, assuming you get the full 3 months. We've had both 1 month & 2 month prepatches, so 3 months is the absolute maximum. a 2 month prepatch would make the profit so small it'd be completely wasted effort for what you made. On 3 months you make a fair profit, but that becomes a matter of how much time you had. If you had lots of time for the initial setup then go for it. If you don't, there are much better gold making methods for a <=3 month period.

[Delaios]

Dunno bout you guys, but I'm still going ahead with maximising garrisons for profit, currently working on my 4th server of garrisons and its clear to see they are profitable from day 1, the gold you get by simply leveling is enough to get level 3 garrison which in turn allows lvl 3 salvage yard and lvl 3 inn (the 2 key buildings required for dat gold). Sure, you can say it takes time to level followers, but it doesn't take that long. Once you get 30/40k gold you can buy those Frozen arms to expediate the process, its amazing how fast you aquire gold this way. (The only outlier is time really, so aslong as you're commited, it will be profitable even at this stage).

It might be profitable for you, but that doesn't mean it will be the same for the OP.

The OP doesn't have healthy supply of garrison resources.
The OP doesn't have any of the level 3 blueprints unlocked.
The OP might not have the gold required to expedite the building up phase.
The OP might not be in a position to send out followers multiple times per day.