Gold and the Garrison

Warlords of Draenor brought me back to WoW, Garrisons are one of the big draws. But I'd be lying if I didn't say I miss a few things from the old days. Still, I see enormous opportunity for gold making in this expansion. And yes, Garrisons are a big part of it...

WHAT WENT BEFORE
Once upon a time I decided to flesh out my gold making enterprise by exploiting Transmutation Mastery. I'd already been levelling a couple of alts to give myself access to other professions, and at the time it just made sense to ensure that every single alt I had could generate additional revenue via 24 hour cooldown. This was hardly an earth shattering revelation, nor was the extreme that I took it to (I eventually had 38 Alchemy transmutes per day). It didn't get me my first million gold, but it certainly helped. It along with other areas of the business generated revenue and that bankrolled further expansion into new markets (Glyphs for example).

At a certain point, I reached the point of sustainability, that is I would log on run through my list of alts to creating items/transmutes. I'd list everything with specific AH alts (I had to run several to manage the inventory, it also helped me track profits by market). Then I'd go on with my day, eventually managing the monster became tedious, I'd already made a ton of gold. And there was raiding to do, etc. I stopped focusing on the AH game, withdrawing from it entirely just before I quit the game for a couple of years. But my army of alts was still there, waiting...

HAIL, COMMANDER!
Since I've been gone, a whole new class has been added. So another alt to level. But not a large barrier, in fact that was one of the first things I did upon getting Warlords of Draenor: I used my free boost to 90 on a level 1 Monk, named Futaba. He's currently level 92, sitting in his own Garrison accumulating rested experience while I play catch up on my other 9 alts. With the profound changes Blizz made to professions you might be thinking it's silly to have that many alts, it's not like I can do transmutes anymore. The 24 hour cooldowns that exist currently are for materials that aren't tradeable generally. Fair point, Alchemy is less attractive for the army method I've used in the past so what does that leave me?

Looking at the state of the professions, one thing immediately stood out. Having the ability to upgrade crafted items is a good thing. So, I decided to approach this with a fairly even spread initially, with enough redundancy to ensure that when I craft a new Weapon or Necklace, I've also got another guy on hand to upgrade or reroll the stats on it. The exceptions of course are Alchemy, Enchanting, and most notably Tailoring. A little extra redundancy here is nice, especially for tailoring. Since I can make a cloak and 3 bags at a time, or go all in on the bags.

Extra Alchemists mean I'm covered if Transmutation, Elixirs, Potions comes back in. And enchanting just means I have more daily cooldowns for creating Temporal Crystals. In fact, the temptation was high to simply switch Alchemy with Enchanting here. Dust however is still fairly pricey, so we'll see. Either way, I've got a whole second account I can always supplement with later if need be.

That made the whole of my army's capabilities look like this:

 PRIMARY
Alchemy - 3
Enchanting - 3
Jewelcrafting - 2
Engineering - 2
Tailoring - 4
Leatherworking - 2
Blacksmithing - 2
Inscriptions - 1

SECONDARY
Herbalism - 1
Mining - 1
Skinning - 1

The redundancy allows me to focus on crafting items with one character and "upgrades" with another. Having said that, I might switch over a couple of Enchanters to Leatherworking and Blacksmithing respectively to maximize this. So, consider this a preview of what's to come.

In the upcoming weeks I'll be talking more about the individual eleven as well as how I'm utilizing the garrison and professions.

XOXO

Khaas the Kingslayer