Category Archives: garrisons

Garrison Trading Post for Fun and Profit

I love my garrison, and one of my favorite buildings in it is the Trading Post.  Not only does the level three version get you a not-too-shabby reputation bonus, but every day a trader shows up and you can trade garrison resources (which I’m pretty much always maxed out on thanks to missions, I dunno about you) for raw materials that you can sell.

Here’s how to do it:

1.) Keep your missions rolling every day so you can bring in garrison resources.  Missions that pull in a good number of resources (like 300) are fairly common so keep checking back.  Have one or two followers with the Scavenger trait for an added bonus.

2.) Every day, check to see what the trader in your Trading Post is selling.  Only buy things that cost 4 resources per item.

3.) Buy a chunk of that stuff.  Stick it in your bank.  Dump it on the AH when you’ve got a stack.

4.) ????

5.) Profit!

Anyways that’s my tip for the day.  Remember, Pike loves you, and your garrison loves you too! <3

I Am Overly Attached to The Boats In My Shipyard

Yep.  Overly attached.  100%.  Especially the ones with matching crews/names.

I SHIP IT
I SHIP it. Haha. Ahaha.

Anyways, I get really antsy about sending ships I like on missions that are, like, below a 90% success rate.  Because I’m attached to my ships and they might sink!  And then all the little virtual people on my virtual boat will probably die!   I honestly feel bad when it happens.  It’s horrible.  Horrible I tell you.

…it’s not just me, right?

Pike’s Gold Making Guide For People Who Suck At Making Gold

I’ve mentioned on Twitter a couple of times that, although I am not even remotely one of those hardcore gold-making people, I find it fairly easy to pay for my subscription via the gold I make with just one garrison.  Anyways, a couple of people have shown interest in a guide for that purpose, so here it is!

Before I begin, I want to note the following things:

  • This will not teach you how to min/max garrisons.
  • This will not teach you how to use those super fancy TradeSkillMaster addons or whatever the gold makers use these days.
  • This guide is not intended for people who find it easy to hit gold cap or who like to sit around on the auction house all day doing their thing.
  • This guide is intended for the little guy.  Someone who doesn’t really care much about being in-game rich but would like a couple of WoW Tokens.

So without further ado:

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From One Garrison to WoW Tokens: Pike’s Gold Making Guide For People Who Suck At Making Gold

The set-up:

I use the following garrison buildings for my money-making purposes:

  • Trading Post
  • Inn
  • Salvage Yard
  • Herb Garden/Mine (of course).
  • Alchemy Lab (Optional)
Step One: Missions

I tend to send my followers out on missions twice a day.  Usually once before work and once after work.  Sometimes if I have nothing better to do I’ll do a round before bed but usually two daily check-ins suffices.  This ensures that you have people doing stuff for you and bringing you back things for delicious gold at basically all times.

You’re going to want to use your Inn here to recruit followers with the Treasure Hunter trait, so you can double the gold you get back on missions.  The Scavenger trait is another good one to have a couple of followers with, because we can turn garrison resources into more money.  (More on this later.)

Remember to send all your guys out on missions even if the only reward is experience.  This will get you salvage, which we’re going to cover riiiiiight… now:

Step Two: Salvage

This is the part where your salvage yard becomes your best friend.  You can turn around and sell just about everything you get to the vendor for money.

Occasionally you might get things you want to hang on to.  Herbs and ore, of course, but sometimes equipment can be sold for a better price on the auction house.  This does tend to be finicky.  Blues– even good ones– don’t often sell particularly well in a post-heirlooms world.  Epics do tend to sell but they can be slow-moving.  Keep an eye out for things that might make useful transmog gear.  I once sold an eyepatch with terrible stats for several hundred gold because hey, it’s an eyepatch, and those are cool now.  Kind of like fezzes.

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Step Three: Mine and Herb Garden

Every single day go hoover up all the mines and herbs that you’ve got and then stick ’em in your bank.  Once you’ve got about 300 of a single kind of herb/ore, take a 200 stack and stick it on the auction house.  (The reason I wait around to hit 300 before selling is because that way you always have extras for when the Ore/Herb/Whatever Trader shows up in your garrison.)

Step Four: Savage Bloods

The cost of these is down to a mere 25 Primal Spirits from your Primal Spirit trader and they’re still selling like hotcakes on the Auction House.  If you’re doing your dailies every day (in Tanaan or what-have-you) and hitting up the Ore/Herb traders, you should have no problems being able to stock up on Savage Bloods and re-sell them all on the Auction House.

Optional Step: Alchemy Lab

I keep my alchemist well stocked with frostweed and she provides me with tons of Alchemical Catalysts and Sorcerous Waters/Fires.  All of which goes straight onto the Auction House.  I have this listed up here as optional primarily because you may prefer to have a different building related to your profession or whatever.  Me, I just have it here for the extra money (and the flasks/potions are a nice bonus.)

941075__safe_solo_card_filthy+rich_hearthstone_super+richStep Five: Convert Garrison Resources into Sellable Things

If you’ve been playing for more than a few months, then you probably don’t really have much to use your garrison resources for anymore.  This is where your Trading Post comes in handy, because you can use it to turn your garrison resources into ore, herbs, Draenic Dust, or whatever is selling on your server.  For maximum profits, be sure only to buy what is on sale rotation for four resources a pop that day.

You can also experiment with converting garrison resources into rush orders for your mine, which gets you more ore and thus more things to sell.  I honestly haven’t looked into which method is more effective yet.

Step Six: Do Your Tanaan Dailies Every Day:

For Primal Spirit drops, as well as getting a chance to mine/pick/skin/fish everything you see for Felblight.  Which you sell, of course.

Step Seven: Make Out Like a Bandit

By following this guide you should not only be getting money back from missions and salvage every day, but also be able to successfully toss stacks of ore, herbs, and other assorted items (like Savage Bloods, Felblights, Alchemical Catalysts etc.) on the AH basically every single day.  Upon taking all of this into consideration I’d say I average about 1200g a day in profits (give or take), or about 36k in a month.  A WoW Token is ~25,000g so that leaves me with 11k extra every month as well as a paid subscription.  Honestly looking at it now I probably average even more money than that.

And all this with just one garrison!

So yeah, that’s how I do it.  Like I said, this isn’t going to tell you how to min/max, how to have ten alts, how to play the Auction House, or whatever.  It’s just tellin’ ya Pike’s Tried and True Method to get WoW Tokens with Minimal Effort.

Hope this helps!

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So for real, what’s up with those garrison missions that give you honor?

It all started with an innocent question I asked on Twitter, about those garrison missions that give you honor.  You know, the ones like this: http://www.wowhead.com/mission=338/domination-of-nagrand

Everyone gets these, right?  Except past 6.2, which was what my question involved.  To my surprise, though, many people promptly replied that they had never seen a garrison mission that gives you honor before.  How unusual!  I used to get these all the time.

There’s not a lot about this on Wowhead although one or two comments seemed to suggest that the frequency of appearance of these missions has to do with how often you PvP.  And since there was a stretch of about a month there where I was desperately trying to win AV, well, maybe that’s why I started getting the honor missions.

In that case, guess I’d better start doing some battlegrounds again and see if my honor missions start popping up again.

My question to you is: Do you PvP often and do you get honor missions?  Let me know!  I want to solve this mystery.

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Update: I Still Love Garrisons a Whole Heckuva Lot

I feel like it’s kind of unpopular these days to like garrisons, but so far the love affair that I’ve had with mine over the last six months has yet to wane.  I do not feel that it keeps me away from the rest of the world in any way, shape, or form – I’m only in it for twenty minutes a day, or maybe thirty if there’s an invasion – and it’s just a fantastic hub to return to every so often, spend a minute checking on and sending out missions, and then run back out into the rest of the wide world.

I love everything about it; I love that my pets are running around, I love that my followers (who I’ve grown strangely attached to) are in it chatting to each other, I love that I can make it play a variety of in-game tunes, and I love that because of it I don’t have to pay real world money for WoW anymore.  That’s some GOOD STUFF right there!

Oh, and it’s also excellent for dancing.

Are garrisons perfect? Nah, I wish you could have like five more activated followers at all times and I wish you could have more buildings. Further, I wish that the buildings were customizable because I figure my blood elf is getting tired of this Warcraft 2 orc campaign BS. I mean, he has a very strong sense of style, you know?

But other than that, nope, I still love my garrison. A++++ would love to see it again in more expansions.

I Just Love Garrisons So Much

I was thinking about this the other day – I needed to make some buff food but I didn’t have quite enough of the correct kind of fish, so I ran up to the trader and exchanged some garrison resources for some.

And it was just perfect.  It’s just perfect for if you need a little bit of something.  You can snag it right there in the garrison without even running to the auction house or anything.  I love it.  I love it so much.  It’s so streamlined.

I love garrisons in general.  I know some people say that it takes away player interaction, and I guess I can sort of see it a little?  But ultimately I don’t spend much time there, and I only ever do invasions with another player.  (I hate doing invasions alone, in fact!)  So for me, anyway, I don’t feel any sort of loss.  If anything it’s relaxing to have a safe place to retreat in-game every so often.  I am a nerve-wracked and high-strung soul, at heart.  It’s nice to have a personal little sanctuary, and a centralized hub to return to between all the other stuff you gotta do.

So yeah.  GARRISONS.  I love them and I’m going to miss them when Blizz inevitably pulls a Pokemon and retires a good idea.  But maybe next we’ll get something better?  Who knows!

 

Fast Facts

Fast Facts

  • Unhealthy diets and the resulting malnutrition are major drivers of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) around the world.
  • Malnutrition includes undernutrition, overweight and obesity, and other diet-related NCDs like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease (heart diseases) and stroke, and some cancers.
  • What people eat has changed dramatically over the last few decades. This has been driven by shifts towards calorific and fatty foods, eating out, and an increase in food portion sizes, combined with a lower intake of fruit, vegetables, and high-fibre foods.
  • Healthy diets are unaffordable for the poor in every region of the world and people are increasingly exposed to ultra-processed, unhealthy foods and diets that lead to poorer health.
  • Policy solutions to tackle poor diets are considered low-cost. The World Health Organization (WHO) ‘Best Buys’ include interventions to reduce salt and sugar intake, such as front-of-pack labelling, fiscal tools and educational initiatives, and measures to eliminate industrial trans-fats. Check out these ikaria lean belly juice articles.

Unhealthy diets and malnutrition

Malnutrition occurs when the body is not receiving enough of the right nutrients to function properly. This can present as under-nutrition, such as wasting and stunting, but also as overweight, obesity, and diet-related NCDs such as cardiovascular disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

Many countries now experience a ‘double burden’ of malnutrition. This is where under-nutrition occurs alongside over-nutrition, where unhealthy diets are contributing to unhealthy weight gain and diet-related poor health.[1] These unhealthy diets consist of food and drinks with high levels of energy (calories), salt, sugar, and fats, notably industrial trans fats (also known as trans-fatty acids, TFAs or iTFA).

Around the world, 1.9 billion adults are overweight or obese, while 462 million are underweight.[2] In a study that looked at global deaths from 1990 to 2017, it was found that one in every five deaths were the result of poor nutrition. Visit sfgate.com.

What is a healthy diet?

According to the WHO, healthy diets are rich in fibre, fruit, vegetables, lentils, beans, nuts, and wholegrains. These diets are balanced, diverse and meet a person’s macronutrient (protein, fat, carbohydrate and fibre) and micronutrient (minerals and vitamins) needs depending on their stage of life.

Generally, healthy diets contain:

  • Fat intake of less than 30% of total energy. These should be mainly unsaturated fats, with less from saturated fats. Trans fats should not be consumed.
  • Sugar intake of less than 10% of total energy, but preferably less than 5%.
  • Salt intake of less than 5g per day.
  • Fruit and vegetables intake at least 400g per day.[4]

Food systems and changes in the way we eat

A person’s ability to maintain a healthy diet is often not within their control – it is influenced by the food environment where they live, early life nutrition, income, and accessibility.[5] The ‘food system’ refers to all processes of getting food from production to our plates. The food system is often dictated by location, climate, culture, consumer behaviour, industry practices and the regulatory environment, among other factors.

Rise in ultra-processed foods and drinks

Over several decades, dietary habits have changed dramatically around the world. Globalisation and urbanisation have paved the way for a rise in convenience food and drinks products, junk food, and eating out, with fewer people growing or making their food from scratch.

These cheap and ready-to-consume food and drinks products are often ‘ultra-processed’ and high in calories, fats, salt and sugar and low in nutrients. They are produced to be hyper-palatable and attractive to the consumer, like burgers, crisps, biscuits, confectionery, cereal bars, and sugary drinks.[6]

Ultra-processed foods and drinks typically have a long shelf life, making them appealing for businesses like supermarkets, rather than highly perishable fresh goods. Intensive marketing by the industry – especially to children – has also increased the consumption of these types of goods. Increasingly, these products are displacing fresh, nutritious, and minimally processed goods, shifting population diets and food systems.

Vulnerable populations and poorer people in all parts of the world struggle to access and maintain a healthy diet. It is in these settings where ultra-processed food and beverage products are most prevalent. An estimated three billion people cannot afford healthier food choices with poverty negatively impacting the nutritional quality of food.[7]

The Most Important Feature Missing From Garrisons

Blizzard successfully managed to put just about anything your character could ever need into Garrisons.  There are even outhouses so you can answer nature’s call in private.

WoWScrnShot_030915_125930
H… hey… I was here first! Excuse you!

But you know what Garrisons are missing?

A bed.   Seriously.  Where is your character supposed to sleep?  The floor?

WoWScrnShot_030915_130312Your followers get all those little cots in the Barracks, at least, but can your character fit in one?  Of course not.  Sorry Althalor, it’s the floor for you.  At least he’s used to getting the short end of every stick.  Poor guy.

So yeah.  Beds.  Get on it, Blizzard.

Garrisons are an interesting study.

IMO, Garrisons are, by and large, absolutely fantastic.  It’s basically player housing except that you’re the quest giver handing out quests to your underlings, and it’s just really, really fun.

And that’s weird.

Because those of us who have been gaming for just about any length of time can recognize the way Blizzard has gamified the entire process of, well… work.  Mobile and Facebook games have the art of “waiting” and “upgrading” down to a science, and garrisons are no different.  It’s all just Farmville with a fancier skin.  And yet, it’s something I can live with.  Why?

Because my garrison feels like home.

That sounds cheesy but it’s true.  You can customize it (to a degree – of course we’d all love to see more customization), it’s got your pets walking around, and it’s got NPCs and friends that you met along your journey hanging out.  It’s your own little place – when you’re tired of dealing with people out in the world, you can go to your garrison and just chill.

WoWScrnShot_030115_121811

And so, once again, I’ve let Blizzard sucker me into something.  My mind says “No, Pike, this is just Farmville,” but my heart… my heart sais “No, Pike.  This is home.”