Following Up

Aw, crap

Heyas, I came back from a few days away from home to discover Xfinity clobbered the wires to my apartment complex. And nobody knows when that will be back. I tell ya, it's hard to live with no data. And it means that I have to take my laptop over to a friend's house to post anything. He's not even a WoW player and is sitting here, slowly shaking his head at me.

Anyway:

There's been a bunch of small things that deserved a bit of follow-up comment and I wanted to knock a few of those out today:

Garrison Resources:  

Right after the expansion opened, I did a run through on ways to collect garrison resources on a more efficient level. I was very hyped about sending followers with a Scavenger trait on missions that were paying in resource. This took a while to ramp up, but finally, I can sometimes stack two scavengers on the best missions and bring back 500-700 resource at a time. But this is not every day. And again, it took forever to get this mini-squad ready, between leveling them to 100, and getting them to have useful skill sets. And now, the Patch 6.1 changes have nerfed the scavenging trait in half, so the scavengers will bring back 100% instead of 200%.

Gorgrond, in particular is full of treasures that deliver garrison resources. Those will take a while to uncover, but are ultimately finite. 

The Stables:

You can get a lot of garrison resources out of the quests for training your new mounts. But those end suddenly; you get your buncha new mounts. And then I can't figure out why I haven't deleted the stables. It's kind of a shame: the Stables is one of the best-looking elements in the Garrison, but once you finish training mounts (and the two associated achievements) I don't think that place can justify its continued existence. On the other hand, there's nothing else I really want to put in its place either. So it stays for now, gathering resentment.

The Mage Tower:

It hasn't produced one of those rune-power-boost proccs yet for me. Ever. Not one. Meanwhile I collect ogre waystones but since they are capped at 60, I end up throwing them away by closing portals and immediately reopening them just so I can clear my stash and make some progress towards that 500 waystone achievement. What design snafu led to this? First they commodity the item with huge numbers, then cap the number you can collect at a small number. And then give you very very little to do with the collected item. Sometime soon, I'll start chucking waystones at the barn to synergize the various parts of the garrison that have earned my resentment.

Nat Pagle Innahouse!

In my fishing report, I announced my intention to get Nat Pagle under my roof. I can report that following the quest series is quick and speedy enough, though there are numerous steps involved. In particular, catching the first round of "lunkers" was surprisingly easy to finish. It was all good until we settled into our regular routine. Regular lunkers appear at a rate of only 1%. And I can verify that rate after a couple of weeks resulting in thee lunkers to give to Nat. On the plus side, I'd always joked with friends that Nat must have some brain damage since he never recognizes me despite our 8 years of history, but no more! He shows up every five minutes or so while I'm fishing now to ask how it's going.

Garrison UI:

I've become extremely happy with two add-ons for garrison control. The first, Breeze, does just one thing: it removes the murder animations from your mission reports. It's a small thing but a huge quality of life improvement, I believe. The second, Master Plan, is absolutely brilliant. It does so much to streamline how you manage followers, and it does it so well, there's a wealth of information and options, and it sorts missions in ways I wouldn't have thought of before. 

I couldn't help but notice Blizzard released a picture of its revamped 6.1 garrison UI and has totally ripped off the Master Plan design. I doubt they are, but it looks like they should be paying money to Master Plan's designer. So like, everybody will have this soon, and the world will be a better place. 

Garrison Jukebox?

Okay. It's a jukebox.

This is not exactly a case of technology run amok, but close enough. Why does the garrison need a jukebox in 6.1? It seems like the most obscure thing I could have thought up. Why a jukebox and not a gaggle of minstrels, maybe led by Russell Brower. Why not Level ?? ETC stopping by on tour?  It's another thing to do, I suppose. And the music tracks will be another collection. But it feels a little like Blizzard couldn't figure out a way for us to spend less time in the garrison and figured they might be able to enhance the time we're stuck there a little more. Still... I'm disappointed. I'd have much preferred to roam around recruiting musicians than locating pieces of technology that ought not exist. 

Or, I think I'd have preferred any number of other fixes or improvements before needing to micromanage tunes in my keep. Plus...there's this thing: if I hang out in an Pandaren inn and get sick of the kazoo tune on repeat in there, I tell myself there's not much I can do about it myself except leave. If I get sick of the same tune in my garrison jukebox, then I can only blame myself. And I want neither the the responsibility nor grief of having to deal with that myself.