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Warlords of Draenor: Garrison Followers and you

Anne Stickney
Updated ·6 min read
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One of the largest and most highly-discussed features of Warlords of Draenor is the garrison -- a stronghold on Draenor that you get to construct and customize to your heart's content. Hand in hand with the garrison are a multitude of other things to look forward to -- missions, quests, blueprints, profession buildings, building bonuses, followers, and more. You aren't going to necessarily be spending a lot of time sitting around in your garrison, but you'll be ducking back to it periodically in between everything else there is to do on Draenor.

You can kind of think of your garrison as your own, personalized capital city in a way -- you can customize it with whatever buildings you want, and you can switch those buildings out if you decide you're better off with a different kind of building. As for your followers, they are the citizens of your garrison, the NPCs that wander around doing various tasks and spitting out conversations with passers-by. But followers are far more than just eye-candy for your garrison -- they are useful tools to help you get the most out of what the expansion has to offer.



Missions

Your biggest use for your followers are missions -- tasks for your followers to complete. Think of yourself as the all-seeing, all-knowing quest giver for your followers and you've got a general idea of what that means. All missions are handed out via a table located in your Town Hall, where you can look at what kinds of randomly-assigned missions are available, and choose who to send where, or whether or not you really want to attempt a particular mission at all. Each mission has its own objectives and enemies that your followers are going to have to combat during the course of the mission.

And each mission has a series of threats that you'll need to counter. Your followers will have two different attributes you need to pay attention to -- abilities and traits. Both abilities and traits are designed to counter particular threats. Building a team for a mission is pretty easy in this aspect -- you want to choose the follower that can best counter the threat that the mission poses. The more of these abilities you counter, the better the chances of your followers successfully completing the mission.

So why send them on these things at all? Because missions offer some really awesome rewards. Gold, armor, weapons, toys, and even grey vendor items that sell for a lot of gold. If you have the Salvage Yard built in your garrison, your followers will also bring back salvage in addition to whatever other rewards are offered for a mission's success. You don't have to actually go with your followers on these missions, either -- you simply assign them to a task, click a button, and they head out of your garrison and off on adventure. That's the end of your involvement with the process. So you can set your followers up to go complete things for you while you're off doing whatever you like.


Buildings

Some followers can also be assigned to the different buildings you construct in your garrison. Assigning a follower to a profession building will make that building better, whether it be by increasing work productivity, or selling valuable rewards that you wouldn't be able to get any other way. For example, assigning a follower to the Engineering building will turn that follower into a vendor that sells cool and unique engineering items. You don't have to be an engineer to take advantage of the vendor, or use the vendor's items.

There's a drawback to this, though. If a follower is assigned to a building, they naturally aren't available for going on any missions. You're only allowed 20 active followers at a time, and a follower that is working in a building counts towards that total. It's up to you to decide if the trade-off is worth it -- but more often than not, it absolutely is.

Of course your followers are just as flexible as the buildings you construct, too. Assigning a follower to a building is never a permanent thing, you can always have them stop working at that particular building, if you'd rather send them on missions or other tasks. Items that you purchase from building vendors will still be in your bags if you take someone off of a building assignment -- you just won't be able to buy anything new until you put them back to work.


Bodyguards

One of the coolest things followers can do is simply be your bodyguard and patrol the world at your side. Not every follower has the Bodyguard trait, but those that do can be assigned to work at the level 2 Barracks building. Once working there, you can talk to them and ask them to follow you and help you out as you quest and take care of errands around Draenor. They won't follow you into instances, but they're very handy to have out in the open world as additional dps.

More importantly, Bodyguards have a friendship bar similar to the ones found on the fine folks of Halfhill. However, this friendship bar doesn't take gifts to fill. Instead, to gain reputation you simply kill things within your level range. Bodyguards have three levels they can obtain, and each level is about 10k reputation -- but since all you're using your bodyguard for is killing stuff, it's not really something you need to actively think about grinding out.

Why go through all this trouble? Because each level of reputation you have with a bodyguard unlocks a special perk. Level two perks are either additional damage, CC, or even healing. Level three perks are far more useful than that -- some bodyguards will create portals directly to your garrison, others will allow you to access your mission table from anywhere on Draenor, others even offer portable mailboxes or repairs.


Gaining followers

Getting followers is ridiculously easy -- many followers are tied into quests you're already going to be completing while you level through Draenor. Some are found by sending your followers to complete missions. Some are harder to find, and require a little exploration or quick thinking. Chances are, if you see a random NPC in trouble out in the world, helping that guy out isn't just an act of kindness, it's also likely to nab you another follower for your garrison, too.

Followers gain levels just like you do, via experience gathered through the missions they complete. Once they reach level 100, that's not the end of their journey -- you can level them from Uncommon to Rare quality, or Rare to Epic quality after they've reached max level. And you can customize your followers with special gear enhancements to increase their ilvl right alongside yours, making sure that they can complete even tougher missions for even better rewards.

But beyond all that, it's just fun having a garrison full of people that salute you when you walk by and are constantly ready to help you out. It's cool seeing a visual, tangible reminder of all the good you're doing while you're out there in Draenor. And it's really, really fun to consider the fact that you're making the leap from hero running ridiculous errands, to commander assigning ridiculous errands for other people to complete. For more on obtaining rare and hard-to-find followers, be sure to check out our previous guides.