WoW Forever Merchant's Favor and Waylaid Crates Guide

Every crafter in WoW Forever ends up at the same two camps sooner or later. The Alliance trades with the Azeroth Commerce Authority at Three Corners in Redridge Mountains, the Horde with Durotar Supply and Logistics outside the Crossroads in The Barrens. Both pay in Merchant's Favor, a per-character currency you earn by filling Waylaid Crates that drop from mobs from level 10 on. Favor buys more than 300 profession patterns, the account-wide Reins of the Pack Kodo for 6,000 Favor and a set of profession titles, while your reputation with the camp decides which of them you may buy. Since launch on November 4 the system has worked as it did in the beta, with one fix: on November 9 crates and writs started dropping inside dungeons too. Below you will find where both camps are, how to get and fill a crate, what each crate pays, how Favor differs from reputation, what the two factions do differently and the cheapest ways to farm Favor.

How Merchant's Favor and the Supply Factions Work

The two supply factions are new to WoW Forever and mirror each other: the Azeroth Commerce Authority serves the Alliance, Durotar Supply and Logistics the Horde. Each camp has a crate clerk, a supply officer, a mount handler and one recipe vendor for each of Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring and Cooking. Alliance players can follow every step on their side in our Azeroth Commerce Authority reputation guide, Horde players in our Durotar Supply and Logistics reputation guide.

Two separate numbers matter at the camp. Merchant's Favor is what you pay with. It sits in the Currency tab of your character pane, belongs to one character and cannot be traded or mailed. Reputation with the faction is the gate: a pattern can cost only 30 Favor and still require Friendly or Honored. You spend Favor, but reputation never goes down.

The catch is that the two come from different places. A filled crate pays Favor and a little silver, but no reputation. Reputation comes from a one-time bonus on your first crate, from Craftsman's Writs and from crates marked with a Forged Delivery Receipt. Here is what each activity gives:

The ranks are the classic ones: 3,000 points take you from Neutral to Friendly, 6,000 more to Honored, 12,000 to Revered and 21,000 to Exalted. That is 42,000 reputation for the Reins of the Pack Kodo, so the mount is a long-term goal, while the first recipes are a matter of one evening.

Where the Supply Faction Camps Are

Both camps sit at road crossings that low-level characters pass anyway. The Alliance camp is at Three Corners, the western tip of Redridge Mountains where the roads from Elwynn Forest and Duskwood meet. The Horde camp stands just west of the Crossroads in The Barrens, a short walk from the flight master. Some older guides put the Horde camp at 42, 34: the crate clerk and the vendors all stand at about 50, 29.

Alliance: the Azeroth Commerce Authority camp at Three Corners, Redridge Mountains

Horde: the Durotar Supply and Logistics camp by the Crossroads, The Barrens

You only need three NPCs at each camp: the clerk who takes crates, the supply officer with the pet, toy and tabard, and the mount handler. The seven recipe vendors stand around them.

Marcy Baker takes the sealed crates at the Alliance camp; Dokimi does the same job for the Horde

If you use TomTom or a similar coordinates addon, these lines put an arrow on both crate clerks:

/way #44 9.5 71.0 Marcy Baker
/way #17 50.0 29.2 Dokimi

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How to Get Waylaid Crates

A Waylaid Crate is a random drop. Any mob can carry one, rares and elites included, and battered chests in the world drop them too. Drop rates run between about 0.4% and 4% per kill, so expect a crate every few hours of normal questing rather than a steady farm. Many players report reaching level 25 or 30 without seeing one.

The crate you loot is unlabeled. Right-click it to read the label and it turns into one of 30 typed crates, such as Waylaid Crate: Apprentice Herbs or Waylaid Crate: Journeyman Parts. The tier follows the level of the mob that dropped it, and each tier has a level requirement:

The sealed crate you get after filling also has a quality: a white one pays the base amount of Favor, a green one pays double.

Crates in Dungeons After the November 9 Hotfix

At launch neither crates nor writs dropped inside instances. The hotfix of November 9 says it "fixed a bug that prevented Waylaid Crates and Craftsman's Writs from dropping inside dungeons", so dungeon runs now count toward your crate supply. In a group, crates go to the loot roll like any other drop.

Buying Crates on the Auction House

Empty crates are not bound, so the Auction House is the fastest source: search for "Waylaid" and you get every type at once. On November 12 most Apprentice crates sold for a few silver and the rarer types for up to about 30 silver, with no type listed more than a few hundred times on a realm. Once you fill a crate, it becomes a Sealed Crate that binds to you, so only empty crates can be sold or mailed to an alt.

How to Fill and Turn In a Waylaid Crate

Filling a crate takes one bundle from its list, not the whole list. The label shows two to five options, such as 20 Peacebloom or 10 Briarthorn for an Apprentice herb crate, and any single one completes it. You do not need the matching profession: a warrior with no professions can fill a herb crate with herbs bought on the Auction House.

1. Right-click the labeled crate to open it, then click the materials in your bags. You can add them in several steps, for example 10 now and 10 later.
2. When the bundle is complete, the crate turns into a sealed crate, such as Sealed Apprentice Crate, which binds to you.
3. On your first crate, a Shipping Label appears in your bags as well. It starts a one-time quest at the camp worth 50 Merchant's Favor and 2,000 reputation, and it does not use up the crate.
4. Take the sealed crate to Marcy Baker or Dokimi. Each crate is a short repeatable quest, A Sealed Crate, that pays Favor and silver.

The payout depends on the tier and the quality of the sealed crate. These are the amounts players get on live servers, and they match the beta values:

The game files also hold Elite and higher-quality versions of every sealed crate, but nobody has reported their payouts yet.

One bundle caused trouble at launch: the Apprentice Textiles crate asks for 40 Linen Cloth, and some players could not place it because Linen Cloth stacks to 20. If it fails for you, use the 20 Light Leather option instead.

What Each Waylaid Crate Takes

The table lists every bundle for every crate type. Pick the cheapest one you can get, since all bundles of a crate pay the same.

Merchant's Favor vs Reputation

Most players hit the reputation wall before they run out of Favor. Crates keep paying Favor, but after the 2,000 points from the Shipping Label the reputation bar only moves with crafting orders, so a character with 500 Favor can still be locked out of half a vendor's list.

What Each Reputation Rank Unlocks

The recipe price and the rank requirement go up together. Leatherworking, Tailoring and Blacksmithing patterns cost 30, 60, 90 or 120 Favor, Enchanting and Alchemy 45, 120, 180 or 240, and the top Engineering schematics reach 360. The cheapest tier never asks for reputation; the rest are gated like this:

Craftsman's Writs: The Reputation Source

Craftsman's Writs are crafting orders that drop from mobs the same way crates do, either as a sealed envelope, such as Sealed Journeyman's Writ, that opens into a random order, or as a named order like Craftsman's Writ: Shadow Goggles. Accepting one marks a customer on your map, somewhere in the world, who wants a specific crafted item. Writs are not tied to your professions and can be bought and sold on the Auction House, and every faction can deliver every writ.

Every writ is a daily quest: each distinct order can be handed in once per day, and the timer on an order you already delivered counts down to the daily reset. Different orders share no limit, so you can deliver as many of them a day as you find. That makes Friendly quick, about 14 Journeyman writs after the Shipping Label, while Honored takes around 80 more and is spread over several days. The Diplomat Legacy talent increases reputation gains by 10% if you plan to go all the way to Exalted.

A slower but limitless option opens at Friendly: the Uncertified Scribe at each camp sells the Forged Delivery Receipt for 15 Favor. It turns any empty crate into a Notarized Shipping Container worth 50 reputation, so the cheapest crate on the Auction House becomes a way to turn spare Favor into reputation.

Alliance vs Horde Supply Factions: What Differs

The two factions are built as a pair, and the differences are smaller than the names suggest. Crates, payouts, reputation thresholds, writs and reward prices are identical, and players of both factions fill the same 30 crate types. What changes is the place, the faces and a few cosmetic rewards:

The Pack Kodo is the same account-wide mount on both sides, sold by the mule handler in the Alliance camp and the kodo handler in the Horde camp, each for 6,000 Favor and Exalted with that camp's faction.

The recipe lists match profession by profession, with one gap in the data. The vendor data lists three Blacksmithing plans, Plans: Arcanite Blacksmith Hammer, Plans: Cracked Blacksmith Hammer and Plans: Mithril Blacksmith Hammer, and Formula: Enchant Boots - Speed only at the Alliance vendors so far. Horde crafters who need them should check Gor'mak and Beneris in game before planning around them.

Each faction has its own guide with the full recipe list, every reputation gate and the writ route for that side. Alliance players can follow our WoW Forever Azeroth Commerce Authority reputation guide from Neutral to Exalted. Horde players get the same walkthrough, with the Barrens camp and the Horde writ route, in our WoW Forever Durotar Supply and Logistics reputation guide.

Merchant's Favor Rewards Overview

About 95% of what the camps sell are profession recipes, and almost all of them are new to WoW Forever. The rest is a short list of collectibles and two utility items that turn Favor into reputation.

Profession Recipes

Each of the seven vendors sells its whole list from the start, and only the price and the reputation gate change along the list. The counts below are the Alliance vendors as of November 5:

Most of the armor and weapon patterns are bind-on-pickup, and so is the gear they make. They are meant to be crafted once for your own character, with set pieces for tanks, healers and damage dealers from about level 12 to level 58, and the hotfix of November 10 cut the vendor price of these items so crafting them for vendor gold no longer pays. The patterns you can earn with are those whose results other players use: enchants, consumables, bags and engineering gadgets. Several recipes also drop in dungeons as tradeable copies.

We list every pattern with its skill, level and use in our New Recipes in WoW Forever guide, profession by profession. Before you spend Favor, check your trainer: a few of the vendor recipes are also taught there for gold.

Mount, Pet, Toy, Tabard and Titles

The collectibles are where the big Favor numbers are. Every price below is the same at both camps:

There are six certifications: Alchemy Certification, Blacksmithing Certification, Enchanting Certification, Engineering Certification, Leatherworking Certification and Tailoring Certification. Each one unlocks its title, such as "the Alchemist", for every character on your account, but a character still needs 300 skill in that profession to display it. Cooking has no certification.

The Pack Kodo is the long goal of the system: 6,000 Favor means 600 white Journeyman crates, on top of 42,000 reputation. Once bought, it is learned by every character on your account, and we compare it with the other collectible mounts in All WoW Forever Mounts and How to Get Them. If the grind is more than you want to take on, our WoW Forever Pack Kodo service covers it.

The Pack Kodo, the 6,000 Favor mount sold at both supply faction camps

Fastest Ways to Farm Merchant's Favor

You cannot farm crates directly, so the fastest Favor is bought Favor: cheap crates and cheap bundles from the Auction House. The habits below are what experienced crafters use on live servers.

Work Out the Price of One Favor

Every crate has a cost per Favor, and comparing that number is the whole trick. Add the price of the empty crate and of its cheapest bundle, subtract the silver the crate pays back, and divide by the Favor it pays. A white Apprentice herb crate at 2.5 silver, filled with 20 Silverleaf for 2.5 silver, pays back 2.5 silver and 5 Favor: 50 copper per Favor. A Journeyman herb crate filled with 10 Bruiseweed came to about 1 silver per Favor on the same day. Prices move daily and differ between realms, so redo the sum before you buy in bulk.

The Waylaid Crate Helper addon on CurseForge does this math for you next to the Auction House window and sorts the crates from cheapest to most expensive Favor.

Tips That Make Favor Cheaper

• Fill only one bundle. The label lists alternatives, not a shopping list, and they often differ in price by a factor of ten: one option can cost a gold while another costs a few silver.
• Start with herb and cloth crates. Herbs, cloth and leather are the cheapest bundles in the early tiers, while ore and bars are usually the most expensive.
• Price your own materials. Herbs you picked yourself are not free; if they sell for more than the Favor they bring, sell them and buy a cheaper crate instead.
• Sell crates you cannot fill cheaply. An empty crate is tradeable, so a pricey Ingots crate can go back on the Auction House and pay for two herb crates.
• Never vendor or delete a crate. Even a crate you will not fill is worth a few silver to another player and gives 50 reputation with a Forged Delivery Receipt.
• Engineers fill Parts crates. Four self-made Bronze Framework complete a Waylaid Crate: Journeyman Parts, which is cheap Favor for anyone who already crafts them.
• Hand in on the way. Sealed crates stack to 5, so keep them in your bags and turn them in when your route passes the camp rather than flying there for one crate.
• Buy only the recipes you will use. Gear patterns are bind-on-pickup and quickly outleveled. Pick one or two for your level range and save the rest of your Favor for enchants, consumables or the Pack Kodo.

Performance Bonus: The Legacy Talent for Favor

Performance Bonus is a three-rank Legacy talent in the Professions tree. Each rank gives a 5% chance to receive 100% more Merchant's Favor when you turn in a crate, up to 15% at rank 3. It sits below Bountiful Harvest, which you need at 5/5 first.

On average, rank 3 adds 15% to your Favor income, or roughly 900 extra Favor on the way to the Pack Kodo. That is worth the points only if you turn in crates in bulk, and a later respec to move them costs gold. Our WoW Forever Legacy Points guide shows where the talent fits in a full Professions build.

If you need recipes now rather than in a week, our WoW Forever Merchant's Favor service fills the currency for you.

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More Guides on Supply Factions and Professions

The recipe guide lists every pattern your Favor can buy, and the enchants guide shows which of the new formulas are worth learning. Performance Bonus and Diplomat are Legacy talents, and our Legacy Points guide explains how to earn the points for them. The Pack Kodo sits with every other new mount in the mount guide, and the gold guide covers the rest of the crafting economy.

WoW Forever Merchant's Favor FAQ

These are the questions players ask most often in the first week of live servers.