At the launch of WoD where going to have everyone leveling and gearing up to raid. In order to keep it fair for everyone and insure everyone is pulling their own weight we are making breakpoints that will be required to hit if you want to have a raid spot come WoD.

First by Monday the 17th:

All those planning to raid will need to have 2 characters at lvl 100. Main Raid one with the garrison posted in darks guide (Linked here). The other alt with a 2nd garrison with a lvl 3 barn. (Having more than 2 is better for more blood. (ALL SAVAGE BLOOD is to be placed in the guild bank to get the raid team fully maxed out we need 2400 to fully kit out a 20man team).

2nd By Monday the 24th:

All those planning to raid will need to have 1 Main Raid character at ilvl 640 at the bare MIN. It is possible to get a much higher ilvl (652) if fully maxed out.
With means you want to get 1 item of fully upgraded apex gear 4 fully upgraded crafted items (back(cloak) doesn't count to your 3 crafted) legendary quest ring (ilvl 680) and as much LFR gear from daily challenge modes as you can get.

On the Last Weekend before raids I will be posting the raid guides in detail for each highmaul fight (down to you is doing exactly what). By Monday Nov 1 You will need to post in each raid guide what you are doing for the boss fight to show you are prep for the raid.


Introduction

Garrison are one of the most important elements to Warlords of Draenor.

Garrisons are so important in fact, some elements of them are basically going to be mandatory to gear our guild up in a quick manner.

Building Sizes and Garrison Levels

Garrisons will initially start at level 1. You can level them up all the way to level 3. When you increase the level of your Garrison as a whole, the amount of building plots you can build on will increase. There is a certain limit to how many buildings you can have at any time in your Garrison, and this limit is a good deal smaller than the amount of available buildings. So, you have to make choices on what buildings you really want. However, if you decide at any point in time a building is no longer needed, or you want another one instead, you can simply just build over the old building to remove it.

There are three sizes of buildings in your Garrison: small, medium, and large. Once you have your Garrison at level 3, you will have enough building plot space for the following:

-3 small buildings
-2 medium buildings
-2 large buildings

In addition to these building plots, a number of buildings will exist in your Garrison that are there automatically, and won't take up plot space. These buildings are the following:

-Town Hall
-The Herb Garden
-The Mine
-The Fishing Shack
-The Pet Battle Arena

Before we go over all the small, medium, and large buildings, we will be going over the buildings that are there automatically and how to use them.

NOTE: All buildings are slowly unlocked as you level up throughout Draenor. The blueprints to build them typically are rewarded via quests. The buildings automatically in your Garrison will not have blueprints tied to them, but instead have a quest at your Garrison to unlock each one as you approach level 100.

Buildings level up, too, so you’ll want to raise both your Garrison and each building inside your walls to reach their highest potential. You do this by obtaining blueprints for the building and level you want from the blueprint vendor:

-Level 1 blueprints all become available to you when your Garrison reaches Tier 2.
-Level 2 blueprints become available at different times depending on their size:
-Small buildings: Reach level 96 or complete the Talador zone.
-Medium buildings: Reach level 98 or complete the Spires of Arak zone.
-Large buildings: Reach level 100 or complete the Nagrand zone.
-Level 3 blueprints become available as you complete certain achievements across Draenor.
-Level 3 blueprints are account-wide. Once you unlock one on a character, it’s available to all characters on your account.

Default Buildings

Town Hall:
This building acts as your Garrison HQ. You can send followers on missions from here, as well as building and upgrading all buildings in your Garrison. This is also where you can accept your daily level 100 Apexis Crystal mission.

The Herb Garden:
You can come here once a day to harvest a bunch of herbs that are grown here on a daily basis. You DO NOT need to plant anything to make it grow like the Pandaria farm. You also do not have to be an Herbalist to harvest the herbs either. On top of the herbs you get from here, you will get these items called "Draenic Seeds." You can turn these in to the head gardener at the herb garden to start something called a "Work Order" for additional herbs. After you start the work order, a few minutes later, a lootable crate will appear at your herb garden which will contain a bunch more herbs for you to use. You can also obtain these Draenic Seeds from herbing out in the world in addition to the Herb Garden's nodes in your Garrison.

The Mine:
This place is just like the Herb Garden, only for mining ore! Throughout the mine there are mining nodes along with mine carts full of ore for you to harvest. You DO NOT have to do anything to get these nodes to spawn, just mine them daily. You also don't have to be a miner to get the ore from here. There is a similar item to the Draenic Seeds in the mine called "Draenic Stone." You can turn these in to the head foreman at the mouth of the mine to start a work order. A few minutes later, a lootable crate will spawn near the mine that will be full of ore for you to use.

The Fishing Shack:
Fishing a real big deal in Warlords. So, the fishing shack will definitely come into play. I do not have a bunch of information concerning the Fishing Shack right now, so I'll update this section later. Do note though that this building will be just as important as the herb garden or mine.

The Pet Battle Arena:
This building has a bunch of stuff involving Battle Pets of course. Seeing as this building isn't crucial in any way to gearing a guild, I will not go over it here. But I will say if you like pet battles, this building will have you doing plenty from the little I've messed with it.

Small Buildings

There are a total of 10 small buildings that can be constructed in your Garrison. Remember you may only have three of these when your Garrison is at level 3 at any point in time.

Small buildings fall into one of two categories: Production Profession-linked and Non-Production Profession-linked. 8 of the 10 small buildings are linked to production professors (one for each production profession) and are the following:

-Alchemy Lab (Alchemy)
-Enchanter's Study (Enchanting)
-Engineering Works (Engineering)
-Gem Boutique (Jewelcrafting)
-Scribe's Quarters (Inscription)
-Tailoring Emporium (Tailoring)
-The Forge (Blacksmithing)
-The Tannery (Leatherworking)

Each of the buildings work in a fairly similar manner. If you build a production profession building for a production profession you currently know, you will be able to go to a vendor at the building and purchase all the Draenor recipes for your profession there. You do not learn any Draenor recipes from your profession trainer. All of them will be available via recipes from the vendor. They are typically able to be purchased through gold or a specific profession currency that is acquired out in the world.

If you build a production profession building for a profession you currently don't have, the vendor typically there will instead be a crafter npc, who is able to craft any of the recipes available to that profession in Draenor. You just have to give him the mats for it.

You might be asking yourself "How do I get mats for a production profession I might not have a gathering profession to efficiently supplement it?" Well, there are a few options.

First, you could simply buy the mats off the auction house. But that's the old school way! There's a couple new ways to acquire materials in Draenor.

Another option is to use the materials you obtain from the Fishing Shack, Herb Garden, and Mine. These will provide you with a healthy amount of materials on a consistent basis. Things like cloth (called fur in Draenor) and leather that aren't able to be obtained from the Default buildings can be obtained from a medium sized building called the Barn (which we'll get into later). Fur (cloth) can also be looted from corpses as per usual in previous expansions.

The last new option is another medium sized building call the Trading Post, which we will also get into later. For now though, it will essentially let you acquire various materials on different days in exchange for other resources.

Now, you also might be thinking "Well, what about all those awesome rare crafting mats you won't be able to get from the default buildings? I'll surely need those, too." And you would be correct. However, there is an easy way to obtain these in Draenor.

Remember the work orders from your default buildings? Yep, they exist at your production buildings as well. Here you can use basic materials like herbs, ore, fur, leather, etc. to start work orders instead of the seeds or stones. A few minutes later, a lootable crate will arrive at your production building, which will contain rare crafting materials (think like Golden Lotus, Living Steel, Balanced Trillium Ingots, Sha Crystals, etc. in Pandaria terms) for you to use. This will be a very big way to generate lots of high level stuff to craft high level items.

The remaining two buildings are not linked to any production profession at all. These two buildings can be found below:

-Salvage Yard
-Storehouse

Here's a brief overview of each of these buildings and how they help your Garrison.

Salvage Yard:
The Salvage Yard will enable you to obtain something called Salvage from when your followers go on missions. From the little I know about this now, I believe salvage is a bunch of grey items you can vendor for gold. As you level up the Salvage Yard however, you can find follower gear and even player gear within the salvage. No word on how good the gear is yet, though.

Storehouse:
The Storehouse is a very interesting building. It will initially enable you access to your bank and increase the amount of work orders you can have at each building at any given time by 1. As you level it up, it will enable you access to your guild bank, void storage, and a transmog npc. It will also increase the amount of work orders you can have at each building at any given time by 2 at max level. So, definitely an interesting building.


Medium Buildings

There are a total of five medium buildings able to be constructed in your Garrison. Remember you can only have two of these built at any given time. Medium buildings focus more on the output/efficiency of your Garrison along with content you are able to do out in the Draenor world. The medium sized buildings are the following:

-The Barn
-Gladiator's Sanctum
-Lumber Mill
-Frostwall Tavern
-Trading Post

The Barn:
By far probably one of the most mandatory buildings for gearing up and preparing a guild for raiding. When you construct the Barn, the building gives you an item called an [Iron Trap]. This trap can be used on various types of beasts throughout Draenor to capture them and use them for meat, fur, and leather.

At level 1, the Barn lets you trap clefthoof, elekk, wolves, and talbuk for fur and leather. So if you are not a leatherworker or even a tailor, and you want to build Tailoring Emporium or Tannery, this building is a great way for you to acquire extra fur and leather.

At level 2, the Barn lets you trap Riverbeasts (hippos) and boars for rare meat. This will of course be used in top level cooking recipes.

At level 3, the Barn lets you trap all previously mentioned creatures and have them potentially drop Savage Blood. This is the material that basically makes this building mandatory. Savage Blood is an epic crafting material that can be used to craft high levels of crafting gear in Warlords. Note that there is an item you must use on the initial ilvl 640 crafting gear to upgrade it to 655, then another to upgrade it to 665. Each of these item upgrading items requires 10 Savage Blood to craft.

The last thing to mention about this building is how to trap beasts out in the world with the Iron Trap. All you have to do is bring an animal to low health (<~30% hp), then put down the trap, and have the beast walk into the trap. The easiest way to do this is to simply face tank the animal until it gets low, drop the trap, and let it get captured (seeing as the trap automatically gets put right in front of your toon's location when you use it). A bunch of your followers will then grab the trapped animal and haul it off to your Garrison. The annoying part is you can only trap up to so many animals (~3-5 depending on your Barn's level and if you have a Storehouse or not) at a time before you have to go back to your Garrison, pick up the materials from the beasts your followers got from the Barn, and return to the world and trap more animals.

Gladiator's Sanctum:
If you like PvP, this building is for you. It essentially lets you obtain titles and PvP quests via the building, along with providing world buffs for your character like less fall damage and reduced damage when you drop below 35% health. This one is not very important to gearing up a raiding team because of it being PvP focused.

Lumber Mill
This building can really kick up the production speed of your Garrison. Your Garrison runs off a resource called "materials." It's used pretty much in everything you do. You need it to run follower missions, construct and upgrade buildings, start work orders, etc. You accumulate 1 material every 10 minutes passively at your Garrison. This really isn't a lot, as constructing some buildings requires several hundred material, while upgrading your Garrison's level can take up to 2000 material to do so. You can acquire material through doing quests, finding it on rare mobs, etc.

You can also get more material for your Garrison through this building. The Lumber Mill enables you to mark various sizes of trees (the higher the Lumber Mill level, the bigger the trees you can mark) for your followers to cut down out in the world for additional material. These trees will appear out in the world just as an herb or ore node would (aka viewable and markable by everyone). The trees can provide a good boost to getting things done faster when it comes to running your Garrison however. So this is a very good building to get things up and running.

Frostwall Tavern
The Tavern is a building that focuses more on the follower and adventuring aspect more than profession and pure production rates. There will be an npc there who will give you a dungeon daily with rewards. Once you hit level 2, you can start recruiting followers who are just "passing through" your Garrison for the week and assign them to tasks, helping your other followers do missions and whatnot. Once you reach level 3, your followers will be able to take on Treasure Hunt missions, which sound interesting. I don't know too much about this building yet, and will update this section once I learn more about the specifics of the dungeon daily rewards and Treasure Hunt missions.

Trading Post
The Trading Post is yet another unique building for your Garrison. It will enable you to buy and trade crafting materials for Garrison resources, unlock a building specific faction (Laughing Skull Clan), and increase reputation gains with Draenor factions.

As far as the buying and selling of crafting reagents for Garrison materials, there is an option every day to either give the trader at the Trading Post a specific crafting material that changes day to day for Garrison material. There is also an option to buy a specific crafting material that changes day to day for Garrison material. So, it's important to watch this building from day to day if you have it if by chance a material you need becomes available for purchase, or one that you have an abundance of becomes available to sell for material.


Large Buildings

There are a total of five large buildings available for your Garrison. Remember you can only have two of these buildings built at any given time. These buildings seem way less "mandatory" than some of the medium buildings. So, you have much more freedom what you choose here.

The five large buildings are the following:

-Barracks
-War Mill
-Goblin Workshop
-Spirit Lodge
-Stables

Barracks:
The Barracks is all about followers. It lets you unlock Patrol missions (which reward a ton of experience for the followers to help them level up faster), increases your follower cap, and even lets a follower accompany you around Draenor as a bodyguard (great for healers and squishy dps!). This building could be considered "semi-mandatory" for leveling up your followers faster to get them to level 100 to get them to high level missions where they might award you decent loot faster.

War Mill:
This building has some nice bonus that might help out the lazier folks out there, along with cool stuff for the transmog crowd! This building increases your chance that quest reward items will be higher quality than normal, along with granting one of your raid rolls (you can obtain 3 a week just like the runes/charms now in Pandaria) automatically with no effort used to obtain it once per week. There are various different ways to obtain your 3 raid rolls every week, and this will just make it quicker to do that by removing the need to work for one of them.

In addition to those bonuses, this building also lets you gather armor scraps out in the world that you can spend at the War Mill. This will grant you special transmog armor that each of the Orc Clans in Draenor wear! Some of these armor sets/models are very polished and look very cool. So, definitely a great building for the transmog hunters out there.

Goblin Workshop:
Want to make your day to day grind in Draenor more interesting? This is the building for you. This building enables you access to one random engineering invention (missile turrets, jetpack, etc.) a day. You can use this invention anywhere in Draenor for the next 24 hours on a cooldown that varies from device to device.

In addition to the daily gadget, this building will also construct you a siege vehicle on a daily basis, which you can then drive all over draenor and smash your opponents with it! I have a feeling these will be really fun to use during group Apexis Crystal missions...

Spirit Lodge:
Oh man, no flying in Draenor? How will I ever get anywhere quickly? Have no fear! The Spirit Lodge is here! This essentially acts as a portal hub you can use to navigate quickly across Draenor. You will have access to up to three portals here. You can choose which zones in Draenor these portals go to. You have to activate the portals before you start using them, however. You do this by killing ogres out in the world and obtaining items called "Ogre Waystones." Once you have 25 of these, you can go to a deactivated Ogre Waygate in any zone across Draenor, and activate it to link it to your Spirit Lodge. You can use the portals for free when doing from your Garrison to the Draenor zones, but they require 25 more Ogre Waystones when wanting to go from the Draenor zone to your Garrison right now on the beta. This might change, however.

Stables:
This building is like the Order of the Cloud Serpent or the Netherwing in a building. This building will enable you to capture and train unique mounts from all across Draenor so you can learn them just like you would all your other mounts. It also looks as if you can obtain older mounts from previous expansion from this building in some way, but I'm not quite sure if that's possible yet on beta.

In addition to that mount collecting, this building will also enable you to remain mounted while doing things such as harvesting a mining or herb node, and increasing your mount speed while traveling in Draenor. Once again, a very cool building for everyone.

TL;DR on What's Mandatory and What's Not

Below is the current optimal garrison.
everyone with alts should be getting their alts a garrison and using the medium plot for a Level 3 Barn, all Savage blood needs to be sent to the Guild bank for crafting upgrades.

Small
plot 1: Salvage yard
plot 2: pick a profession
plot 3: pick a profession

Medium
plot 1: lumber mill
plot 2: Tavern

Large
plot 1: Barracks
plot 2: War Mill