Garrison Resources and How to Get Them

In order to build your garrison's buildings, you'll need two things - Gold and Garrison Resources. It should be pretty easy to figure out how to obtain the former - basically do anything in the game - but the latter is a new currency that will serve as a limiting factor on how quickly you can build up your garrison.

So how do you get it? There are several methods.

The Garrison Cache:

Over time, you garrison will slowly accumulate resources on its own. Porter NPCs will walk over to the spot near your town hall and deposit boxes, adding to your cache. At any time, you can go gather the resources from the cache that have been accumulated. If you do this very frequently, you won't find much in it, but if you leave it alone for a couple days, you'll find up to 500 resources gathered. The cache itself will change in appearance as it gets closer to that cap, and its name will change from Garrison Cache to Hefty Garrison Cache, and then Full Garrison Cache. This is the most reliable way to gather resources, but it's purely time-based, so you'll have to be patient to get the amounts you want.

Vignette Encounters:

Rare spawns aren't exactly rare in Draenor. Instead, at least for most of them, the "rare" mob will usually be there, and be marked on the map. However, after defeating it once and claiming its loot, you'll get somewhere around 15-30 resources and the piece of loot that that mob drops. Each of these vignettes drops the same piece for all players, so you'll often wind up with some nice blue-quality vendor trash. Once you've completed a vignette, the mob will still appear to you, but it will no longer be marked on the map, no longer have a silver dragon portrait frame, and no longer give you that loot or the resources.

Quests:

There are tons of quests in Draenor that will award garrison resources. Some of your first quests in FFR or SMV will give you the resources you need to build your Barracks, for instance. Garrison resources will pop up as a common quest reward throughout Draenor.

Follower Missions:

Most follower missions reward one of three things for a successful attempt - gold, bonus follower xp, and garrison resources. There are even some traits that followers can get to double the garrison resources that they bring back from missions that reward them.

The Lumber Mill:

The Lumber Mill, a Medium-sized building, is designed specifically for the acquisition of garrison resources. It essentially grants you an additional gathering profession, allowing you to cut down certain trees in Draenor to gather lumber, which you can then turn in for work orders that will produce garrison resources. As you upgrade the building, you'll be able to cut down larger trees, which will grant greater amounts of lumber, and thus allow you to process more work orders.

The Trading Post:

Another Medium-sized building, the trading post primarily allows you to spend garrison resources on all manner of professional materials. But in addition, you can place work orders, turning in some of those materials in order to attain garrison resources. The required material changes every day, but if you, for instance, don't have any need for all those herbs growing in your garden, you can sell them off at the trading post in order to get more resources to upgrade, say, your mine.