Garrisons 101: What are Strategic Assaults?
Strategic assaults are max level daily quests found within your garrison's Town Hall/Great Hall. You get to choose between one of two options every day -- a solo quest, group quest, or PvP quest. It appears that a solo quest will always be one of the two options. These quests are your primary means of obtaining Apexis Crystals -- 800 for the solo quests and 1000 for the group/PvP quests. Apexis Crystals are primarily used to purchase and upgrade armor but can also be used to purchase pets and mounts from certain reputation vendors.
Each zone in Draenor has level 100 areas to facilitate these quests. The quests involve going to the designated area and filling up a progress bar by killing mobs and interacting with objects. They are fairly time consuming, but the advantage is only having to do one large quest instead of many smaller quests. Don't worry, completing a single strategic assault is nowhere near the time commitment of patch 5.0 dailies. This will be a 20-30 minute venture for the average player.
You'll also receive an additional 50 or so Apexis Crystals as drops from the mobs killed to complete the quest. Other sources of Apexis Crystals include the Lumber Mill building, garrison invasion quests, and a rare follower mission. Overall, the strategic assaults will make up the bulk of your crystals. The cap on crystals is set at 20,000.
What can you buy with Apexis Crystals?
Item level 630 rare armor for 3,000-5,000 crystals
Item level 645 epic armor for 9,000-11,500 crystals (plus the original ilvl 630 piece)
Item level 655 epic armor for 14,500-20,000 crystals (plus the original ilvl 645 piece)
Seal of Tempered Fate for 1,000 crystals (this is used for bonus rolls)
The most expensive piece of armor will take you approximately 6 weeks to fully upgrade to ilvl 655, assuming your only source of Apexis Crystals is completing the solo daily quest every day.
You can view the full list of strategic assault quests here.
