Stop Building New Garrisons Now!

So I ended up having a little bit of an exchange on social media yesterday about when the break-even point might come with respect to constructing new garrisons.  I had done a little bit of analysis last year to determine how long it took to break-even on a garrison in pure gold terms, but that analysis assumed an unlimited amount of time.  (And by the way, as a quick refresher, that analysis showed that it took 21 days of operating with a fully built out garrison and slate of followers to recover the approximately 10,500g investment for fully building it out).

So just to level set, here is what I'm generally looking at in terms of a fully stocked garrison for gold-making.  It is a level 3 garrison, a level 3 inn (for the treasure hunter missions) a level 3 salvage yard and a level 1 trading post.  It is also a full slate of 20 followers with the ones with specific i-level requirements for particular gold missions geared to those points.  Note that you could increase that to 25 followers with a level 3 barracks, but the cost of doing that in both gold and garrison resources would be higher, and it's not going to change the answer at this point.  The cost of building that out is approximately 10,500g and 3,550 garrison resources.

Now, if I'm leveling a toon from scratch, I am typically finishing up that process with around 1,000 garrison resources (that assumes that I'm using them to buy experience potions from my garrison quartermaster as I go).

So now it comes down to how long it would potentially take me to get to that break-even point.  One of the gating items is how long it would actually take to accumulate the garrison resources to fully build out the garrison.  At 2,550 net garrison resources needed, and an accumulation rate of 144 resources per day, that works out to 17 days, or just slightly under 3 weeks.  You could speed this up by building a lumber yard, but this would take quite a bit of extra time every day on that character to go out and collect the lumber, and at this point, that's not a time investment I'm willing to make.  You can of course feel free to choose differently.  In my case, my next max level character is going to be my 23rd 100, so I've got less willingness to invest additional time in those alts.

So between building, and then accumulating gold, that brings us to 6 weeks total. The real gating item from a time perspective is accumulating the followers.  I am typically finishing the leveling process with somewhere between 9 and 10 followers, just from working through the typical leveling process.  I am not generally going out of my way while leveling to collect specific open world followers because generally those followers do not have the traits that I'm looking for - which are scavenging and treasure hunting.

So using my inn to recruit one follower per week, it is going to take me at least 10 weeks to pull together the full slate of treasure hunters.  Now the three week time frame to accumulate the garrison resources to fully build out your garrison runs simultaneously with this, and you will be accumulating some gold while you are recruiting those followers, but not enough to make a significant dent in the break-even calculation.  It will likely also take you at least a week to fully level those 20 followers to max once you have your full slate of 20 collected, unless you're doing nothing but garrison mission for this particular toon.

So if I assume it takes 10 weeks to accumulate the followers and then 3 weeks to break-even on the gold (assuming the gold accumulated while recruiting helps to offset the additional time needed to level those followers to max), you're at a minimum of 13 weeks to break-even, which from today, puts you at July 29th.  So if you think 7.0 is going to drop on or before July 29th, it is likely too late to break even on a new maxed out garrison at this point.

What I would recommend instead, is to go ahead and upgrade your garrison to level 2, and build out a level 2 salvage yard, a level 1 trading post and a level 2 inn (or conversely, don't worry about the inn and just head out into the world and grab some followers), continue to accumulate garrison resources to use at the trading post and sell, and then do whatever base gold missions you can.  The cost of doing that is only 2,800 gold with the level 2 inn and only 1,350 gold if you ignore the inn, so is much more likely to be profitable over the next few months until launch.

Ding! Level 100 #22

So I just hit level 100 on the alliance warrior, giving me my 22nd max level toon.  The sad thing is, I really used to enjoy leveling and playing as an arms warrior, but that was definitely not my favorite this time.  He seemed fairly squishy the entire way.  Not a particularly fun leveling process.

Next up is going to be the alliance monk, who is currently sitting at level 61 in Hellfire Pensinsula somewhere.  I expect with the monk xp boosts, this one should be really fast.

After that, I will likely start working on a third hunter if I still have time, and maybe then a fire mage.

My total leveling time on the warrior was 2 days, 10 hours and 16 minutes, which is about the same as the last couple of toons that I've finished.

Not Quite There Yet

A week long business trip to Europe delayed my plans on my Alliance Warrior, but he's back in the swing of things, and just started working his way through Gorgrond today.  That was my 22nd toon to run through the Tanaan Jungle starting experience.  Ugh.

It's a busy week this week, so not sure I'll be able to finish him up, but should be in relatively short order.  Then it'll be time to finish up the monk and finally nail down the goal of a level 100 of each class for each faction (plus one extra warlock, and maybe an extra hunter if I have time)

I'm still doing a little bit of the garrison thing, but not with the same level of urgency that I have in the past.

I was excited to see a release date for Legion as well.  August 30th will be here before you know it, so I've now got a fairly limited amount of time to get these last few toons done.

A Return to Garrisons and Leveling

So as I foresaw in my last blog post, I think I've finally reached the point where I've lost interest in SWTOR again, so I've started to pick up my garrison activities and leveling in a bit more earnest now.

I've got two toons to finish up in order to reach the stated goal of having a max level toon of each class for each faction.  My alliance warrior is current at level 87 and working his way through Pandaria.  I've then got a pandaren monk that is sitting in Hellfire Peninsula at level 61.

I've gone back to looking working on my garrison's more regularly to keep the flow of gold coming.  All 11 of my characters on the Horde side have fully outfitted garrisons with all their followers at 675 and all are essentially always maxed on garrison resources as well so they can continue to use the Trading Post to make lots and lots of money.

With those 11 toons, I tend to average somewhere around 6-10K gold per day, so if Legion goes live around the end of September as expected, I should be able to conservatively add another million gold to the pile by then.

I've also started to do the same thing on the alliance side.  At this point, I've only got 6 toons that are fully equipped, 3 that I'm working on and then the two that are still leveling, so needless to say, things aren't nearly as lucrative alliance side for me, but I'm still amassing a pretty reasonable cash horde on the alliance side as well (see what I did there?)

I'm hoping to finish up the alliance warrior sometime in the next week or two and then focus on the monk.

Cheers

Slowing Down on Leveling Alts

So I've really slowed down on leveling all of the various alts.  Without any new content coming out of Blizzard any time real soon, I'm not in a big rush to get a few more alts to max level, only to then wonder what the heck I'm going to do with all of those alts once Legion drops.

I've also actually gotten to the point that I feel like I've accumulated enough gold, so don't even feel compelled to keep logging in for the regular garrison chores.  I'm still accumulating some on my alliance server, so when I do these days, it's typically to just work through the garrison stuff on the 9 max level toons that I have sitting there.

I still have both my alliance warrior and monk to finish up in order to have a different character from each class from each faction at max level.  Plus I've got my 3rd warlock sitting on yet another server.

Right now I've been playing a fair amount of SWTOR, just for the fresh content and storylines, but I expect I may exhaust the solo play end of that in another month or two, which will likely then give me some time to finish up those last few alts before Legion.

Or it's possible that I'll get tired of SWTOR like I did before, although they've really made a lot of improvements to the questing experience and storyline that may keep me engaged for a while.

So that's the update on the Warcraft front for now.  Not much to talk about, because there is really not much going on.  Such is life in the World of Warcraft these days.

Analysis of the Q4 Earnings Release

So instead of my normal blog-based analysis of the Q4 Earnings Release, this quarter I did it in podcast format with Alt from Alternative-Chat and Mick Montgomery from The Starting Zone podcast was kind enough to put it up as an episode of The Starting Zone.

So a big thank you to both Alt and Mick.  And here is the link to the podcast analysis of Activision-Blizzard's Q4 Earnings Release:

Starting Zone Podcast - Q4 Earnings Release

Playing Some Rift

So yesterday I went in and started playing a little bit of RIFT.  I'd run through my normal garrison activities for the day, and started working my warrior through Mt. Hyjal, and then just stopped and decided I wanted to do something else.

RIFT is a game that I've played since launch and really enjoyed.  I got a mage to max level in the original game, and even did a bit of experts and raiding, but once Storm Legion came out, I started falling behind.

So now I'm playing a little bit of catch up.  My mage is finally finished with the Storm Legion content and working his way through the Nightmare Tide leveling zones.  Those have been fun so far and I'm about half way through 61 at this point.  I'm leveling as a Harbinger / Chloro build.  You Warcraft fans out there are going to snort your drink out of your nose at this point, but this is actually a melee build for mages.

See, the interesting thing with Rift is that any "calling" (their word for classes) can basically play any role - tank, healer, melee or ranged.  So you can have a ranged warrior, or a healing warrior, and a melee mage, or a tanking mage.  There is a warlocky option for mages in Rift, but I was really enjoying the Harbinger through the Storm Legion zones, so I'm sticking with it for now.  I've also heard good things about Pyro builds (think fire mage), so I may try that out soon.

I've got toons in various states from the other 3 callings as well.  I've got a cleric at level 28 (who I play like a shadow priest), I've got a rogue at level 25 (who I play like a hunter), and a warrior at level 6.  Yeah.  I've never been much of a warrior guy.

So I may work on getting my mage to max level and then play through the content in the Planetouched Wilds, just to see what that's like.  Stay tuned for updates.

Ding, Level 100 #21, And More Gold-Making

So I managed to hit level 100 yesterday on my alliance shadow priest.  Not a bad way to start off the month of February.  I'm working on my alliance warrior next, saving the monk for last.  The warrior is currently working his way through Howling Fjord of all places.  I wasn't sure I'd ever done that on the alliance side, but now that I've started through it, I realized I had.  

Since on the horde side, I'd leveled my warrior as fury, on the alliance side, we're going arms.  All of the characters that I've been leveling lately, seem to have been taking right around a total of 2 days played to get to 100.  That just really blows my mind when I step back and consider that way back in the day, a total of 6 days played to 70 was absolutely bonkers fast.

How things change.

Beyond the leveling stuff, I'm continuing to crank out the gold horde side with 11 fully functioning garrisons.  Things are starting to crank up alliance side as well.  I've got follower groups fully geared on at least 3 different alliance toons, and working my way there on another 5.  It's the usual mix of treasure hunters and trading posts to keep the gold flowing.

Beyond that, there's not a ton going on for me in Warcraft these days.  Just peeking into alpha news now and again and waiting for the beta to come out.

Space Oddities and Glass Spiders

So it was August 1987, and I was disappointed.  Seriously disappointed.  For an artist like David Bowie, clearly Red Rocks Amphitheater (which was coincidentally 2 miles from my childhood home), was the perfect venue for a David Bowie performance.

But it wasn't to be. This tour (the Glass Spider tour) was simply too big. Heck, the Serious Moonlight tour hadn't even set foot in Colorado, so understandable that they'd want to reach a wider audience.  so instead, I found myself sitting at Mile High Stadium.  Oh hell yes, I still went to the concert.  I may have been disappointed, but I wasn't nuts.  And it was AMAZING.

So this week, I'll be leveling to the accompaniment of the legendary Mr. Bowie.

So there's been a little bit of progress on the leveling front so far this year.  As mentioned in my "Year In Review" post, I did manage to get toon #19 to 100 before the end of the year, and I also managed to get toon #20, my alliance rogue, to 100 pretty quickly in the New Year.  I'm now working on my alliance shadow priest who is working his way through Northrend.  Next up is going to be the alliance warrior, and then the monk to round out my full set of 11 alliance max level toons.

I may comment more on this later on, but I've been findings a bit rougher going in Northrend leveling dungeons lately.  Things that used to be easy and lots of xp seem to be causing groups a lot more trouble these days.  It's the normal suspects - pulling too much, standing in bad, ignoring mechanics, not staying with the group (general rule of thumb - stay with the tank and healer, not that complicated folks).

I have typically run a lot of dungeons while working through the Northrend zones and then stopped once I hit Cataclysm zones, but I've been looking closely at the impact the new normal is having on my xp per hour, and really debating whether that still makes sense.

2015 Year In Review

So as is my tradition on this blog, I've decided to do a quick year in review for 2015.  Interestingly enough, as I finished up 2014, the Warlords of Draenor expansion was relatively new.   Has it really only been a year?  It feels like forever.  At December 31 of last year, I had managed to level exactly 3 characters to 100.  I will likely finish up #19 sometime this week (and #20 probably sometime next week), so you can do the math on that.

Unlike previous years, I didn't have any shiny new MMO releases that I tried.  Last year involved a brief flirtation with Wildstar and some time spent on Diablo.  This year, while I did play a little bit of RIFT, there wasn't really any major attention spent to other titles.

A lot of this year was spent on Garrisons and using them to accumulate gear and gold.  That's been fairly successful with really minimal effort and has really replaced inscription as my low effort gold raising technique.

I did the legendary quest chain on 3 different toons, and then promptly asked myself why the hell I bothered doing that.  The effort burnt me out on raiding and LFR pretty badly, and as a result, I haven't set foot in LFR in meaningful way since August.

But I'm enjoying the leveling scene, and I'm looking forward to Warlords.  My rogue is currently sitting at 91 in his garrison accumulating garrison resources and will probably push to 100 next week.  After that it is alliance priest, warrior and monk, probably in that order.  Then I may do a third hunter and a third mage if time allows.  I may level this one as fire just because I've never ever ever even tried that.  So why not, right?

Cheers,

Joar

Rogue Progress

So I managed to finish up Northrend yesterday on my rogue.  Rogues are an odd conundrum for me, because I really enjoy leveling rogues, but it's not a class that I enjoy at all at end game.  But every time while leveling I always find myself wondering why that is.

So the rogue will be heading off to the Cataclysm zones now shortly and hopefully not too much longer until he's safely parked and accumulating Garrison Resources while I finish the push on my warlock from 91 to 100.

Next up after the rogue will be my shadow priest, followed probably by warrior and then monk.  And then if I still have time after all that, I may start a third hunter.

Garrisons continue to be very lucrative with only a minimal time investment, not only in terms of gold generation, but the added benefit of improving my alts' gear, which should make leveling them in Legion that much easier.  Of course, if there ends up being some kind of loot pinata as part of the pre-expansion event, all that time gearing up followers may have been essentially wasted, but that's okay.  Not everyone will need to take up the stick and whack the pinata.