Your Garrison on Draenor is your own personal fortress, a stake of land in the savage wilds of this unfamiliar world. Garrisons can be customized to suit your needs with specialized buildings that offer useful buffs, resources, and more. In addition, as you travel throughout Draenor, you can obtain followers to populate your Garrison and complete missions for resources, XP, gold, and other valuable rewards.
Building your Garrison is easy. Upon arriving in either Shadowmoon Valley (for Alliance) or Frostfire Ridge (for Horde), players will be led through a brief series of quests to collect building materials for their Garrison, and claim their plot of land. Once unlocked, you will organically continue to build and expand your Garrison as you quest through Draenor. Quests can reward you with followers, resources, or even additional quest items to unlock special buildings in your Garrison. In addition, various Garrison rewards and tasks can be found hidden away all over Draenor. Don’t be afraid to explore!
In order to perform any tasks with your Garrison, you need Garrison Resources, which will be gathered throughout your journey on Draenor. Although small at first, your Garrison can be expanded up to three times its size by upgrading your Town Hall, growing larger and more populated with every expansion. Each upgrade opens up new plots in which to place additional buildings, collect followers, create useful items, and more.
Buildings
Once your Garrison has been established, you may begin to place buildings in it. To create a building, you’ll first need a blueprint. Right-click the blueprint to add it to your list of learned blueprints. After you have learned the blueprint, visit the Architect’s table within your Garrison to choose your building, and drag it on the map to where you would like that building placed. Garrison buildings take one hour to complete, at which point you may sign off on your building to complete its construction. There are three different sizes of buildings available to choose from, and as with your Town Hall, each building can be upgraded a maximum of two times as well.
While level 1 and level 2 blueprints are fairly easy to obtain, level 3 blueprints are far more difficult, and are rewarded from completing certain Garrison-related Achievements. Once you have learned a level 3 blueprint, all of your characters will have it learned. You won’t have to complete the associated Achievements more than once.
Small Buildings
Small buildings primarily involve professions and the creation of work orders to provide you with items and materials. These buildings may be upgraded up to three times with Garrison resources and gold, and each tier of upgrades offers more bonuses. Note that although these buildings deal with the same professions you can train and learn, you are not required to learn the profession that the building promotes.
This means that your Garrison can be effectively used to perform profession tasks and crafting that you yourself cannot perform. Although you are limited in how many professions you can personally learn, small buildings allow you to craft helpful items that you ordinarily would not have access to.
However, there’s a catch: You will not be able to craft the best possible items from a Garrison building. The absolute best crafted items will always come from learned professions, as opposed to items offered by buildings.
If you choose to create a building that works with a profession you have already learned, you’ll gain an additional daily cooldown that allows you to craft gear twice as fast as someone who has created that building, but hasn’t learned the associated profession. You’ll also gain access to the highest level of crafted recipes you can learn.
Medium Buildings
Medium buildings primarily concern gathering resources and materials for both yourself and your Garrison, as well as unlocking certain perks within the Garrison itself. These buildings may be upgraded up to three times with Garrison resources and gold, and each tier of upgrades offers more bonuses.
The level 2 blueprints for medium level buildings are learned a little differently. While you are questing in Draenor, you will encounter areas that your forces have found suitable for building outposts. In each outpost, you’ll be able to choose from two different types of buildings. These buildings will give you specific zone-wide buffs, so choose carefully. Completing quest chains in your outposts will reward you with an item that you can trade in for level 2 blueprints.
Large Buildings
Large buildings offer valuable personal rewards that directly affect you and your followers. These buildings may be upgraded up to three times with Garrison resources and gold, and each tier of upgrades offers more bonuses.
Your first large building will always be your Barracks, which is automatically learned as part of the process of establishing your Garrison. Once you upgrade your Garrison to level 2 and open up another large plot, you will automatically learn the blueprints for all other large buildings. Level 3 blueprints are unlocked upon completing Garrison-specific Achievements.
Fishing Shack, Herb Garden, Menagerie and Mine
There are four unique Garrison structures that are unlocked as you level your Garrison. The Fishing Shack, Herb Garden, Menagerie, and Mine are all in stationary locations. You don’t get to choose where they are placed, but they don’t require blueprints to initially build. Instead, you will have to complete a quest to unlock the structure. Once unlocked, each of these buildings can be leveled up, just like all the other buildings in your Garrison.
Both the Mine and the Herb Garden will allow players to gather and produce herbs and ore, even if they do not have a gathering profession learned. However, players that have the appropriate gathering profession learned will be able to obtain these materials at a much faster rate.
The Fishing Shack allows players to fish for Draenor fish from the privacy of their own Garrison, without having to travel around the world. Unlocking the level 3 blueprint for the Fishing Shack is a fairly lengthy process, but once you have done so, you’ll be able to recruit a very famous fisherman as your follower.
The Menagerie is an area specifically for your pets, and for Pet Battles. Once you have unlocked the Menagerie, you’ll begin attracting elite pets to defeat for special rewards. Unlocking the level 3 blueprint for the Menagerie also unlocks a daily Pet Battle quest, which has the chance to drop even more unusual pets for your collection!
