The World of Warcraft expansion Warlords of Draenor launched not long ago, and one of the big features is the new garrison system. If you don’t play WoW, it works like this- As you level your dude up from 90 to 100 in the latest expansion, quests are constantly linking back to building your own individual customizable base. Your garrison serves as a hub for crafting and questing, particularly as you start unlocking the ability to add specific buildings to your garrison which cater to your interests in the game. There’s PvP centric buildings, buildings for farming up mounts, buildings for battle pets, and more. Additionally, in your garrison you gain followers which you’re able to send on missions for various perks and different types of loot.

It’s pretty cool, and I actually like it a lot more than I thought I would. Blizzard did a particularly good job integrating interaction with your garrison into the game, so it genuinely feels like a useful addition instead of just another time sink- Even though it very much is that.

Garrison functionality hinges on timers, as a lot of the stuff that’s going on in the background of your garrison is very reminiscent of free to play builder games. Buildings produce crafting materials via realtime timer, and the missions you send your followers on work in a similar way- You dispatch your dudes and the mission they go on can take anywhere between 30 minutes to 10 hours. The longer the mission, typically, the greater the reward.

Min/maxing your garrison output involves being really on top of these timers, and that’s where the Wowhead Garrison Timer (Free) comes in. You download the app (and optionally pay $1.99 to remove unobtrusive ads) then install the companion addon like you would any WoW addon. From there, you load up the game, use the /garrisonqr command, and then scan that using the Wowhead Garrison Timer. Instantly all your timers are pulled over to the app and if you hit “Yes" to the push alert prompt when the app loaded it’ll notify you when they’re done.

It’s super handy, and is a way better solution than just keeping WoW running all the time in the background waiting for the mission completed noise. It also has the ability to handle your crafting timers as well, but considering you really only need to re-up those production queues once every couple days that feels less useful.

Oh, and it’s also available on Android. Additionally, in case you missed it, another super useful thing we already posted about is the WoW Queue Notifier app which sends you a push alert when your looking for group or looking for raid queue pops. Highly recommended!