Advice for beginning a Guild?

Hi guys!I'm a pretty new player and I made a Guild, mostly to act as a hub for friends to meetup ingame, but I had some questions because I couldn't find any guide on starting a Guild that was up-to-date.

Creating the Guild

I created a Guild with a few friends, but we would like it to be something more than just a hub for meeting up ingame, we would like to do Guild Missions, doing all kinds of content together and to obtain a Guild Hall and Guild Upgrades and stuff! But I find it rather hard to figure out how to start the right way! So does anyone have good advice on leveling up the Guild?

What do I have to do to let our Guild "grow"?

Which upgrades should I buy (how, which order, ...)?Which events should we be doing and how to get started with them?How does the "Representing" function work in direct terms?How do you obtain a Guild hall, and how well prepared must your Guild be to do the expedition?How do you get such big amounts of Gold to fund all these upgrades and expeditions?Some other things I looked over but are maybe worth knowing about?

All advice is appreciated, thx so much in advance!!!

Invite friends > ask friends to invite friends > ask friends, friends to invite friends >

I would start a guild but I don't have any friends :cry:

@Arton Leirra.9760 said:Invite friends > ask friends to invite friends > ask friends, friends to invite friends >

I would start a guild but I don't have any friends :cry:Well, that will definitely help with increasing the size of the Guild!(You could try to invite some players you meet in the maps or if you really wanted to I can invite you :smile: )

At first you should travel to Lion's Arch and visit the Guild Initiative Headquarters, located in the Postern Ward (EAST) at the Guildbluff Waypoint. It is a large building with a portal-entrance, opens to an instanced area. Inside you will find a couple of useful NPCs.

In the large room to the left are the three NPCs which offer you an overview over the three accessible Guildhalls at the moment. If you want to go for one, you need 100 gold for the unlock and a group of people to claim it. The unlock is permanent, so you can try as often as you want without using more money. For the group? Small groups work, < 10 is good. Some do it with 20 ppl, last night we did it with a small group formed in LFG with 7. Should not be much of a problem nowadays, thanks to the powercreep. It is a basic claim-event, kill Vinetenders (as in Auric Basin), kill Vines, repeat a few times, kill a boss, done. There is a time-limit. But with mounts navigation is mostly a walk in the park nowadays.

The Guild Registrar can be found outside of the building and at the spawn-point of every WvW map. There you can purchase member-capacity upgrades. However you need to have ~ 80% of your current capacity used to purchase the next higher tier. Maximum is 500.

In the main corridor inside the building are a couple of vendors. Not much useful at the moment. In the room to the right is a Norn where you can purchase the first basic upgrades. If you want to go for something, try the Guild Stash (= guild bank tier 1, 50 slots).

But to build upgrades you need Guild Favor, which can be obtained by doing Guild Missions. Therefor open your Guildpanel (G). Third Icon from top is Guild Missions. If you click on the Sprocket you can select what type of missions you want to do. PvE you are probably looking for. Wiki Guild Missions

The Favor listed at the missions can be aquired once per week. The missions change per week.

Representation is not really important anymore. A lot of guilds still ask their members to represent them 100 % of the time. What does it do? If a member represents your guild, you can see his yellow dot on the worldmap IF he/she is not in an instance. You can also see the yellow dot if the person is invisible, that is why some players represent no guild when they are in stealth. The guild gets nothing from a player who actively represents it, not anymore. Back in the old days we gained progress with this, but the Favor system does not work that way. If a guild owns waypoint-discounts (upgrade), it only works when a player represents. Also active representation means advertisement for your guild. For a leader it is not really motivating if all of your members represent other guilds but yours, although they are technically your members. Some guilds are more serious about this topic than others. The decision is up to you.

The upgrades are a giant gold sink. Once you have the guildhall unlocked, you can contribute spare materials to the NPC directly next to the waypoint at the lobby. If you want to collect money for the guildhall, get your tier 1 guild bank.

Best is not to rush certain upgrades and keep in mind things take time. Set yourself small goals. Set priorities to useful & necessary upgrades. The Mine for example is necessary and inevitable. It should be created early, as the Aetherium mined in it, increases over time. You do not have to mine it yourselves. The Tavern is useful and the Workshop. The Warroom and Arena can be neglected at first. Also keep in mind that tier one of every stationary upgrade in the guildhall only has a visual purpose. The tier 1 tavern offers no buffs, the tier 1 workshop is a tent, the tier 1 arena unlocks an NPC babbling about how awesome an arena is ... pretty disappointing.

The market is one of the more useful upgrades, even at tier 1. You can unlock another guild-mission slot, a couple of vendors and the 2nd tier of the bank.

Guildhall is a group-project. Some very rich people try to get it done alone, but the costs are just ridiculous. Some guilds ask for contributions directly (members), some just say "We plan to purchase ... next, we could need a couple of spare ..." which also works. Most guilds I have been in have a bunch of motivated people (3-8) who are interested in upgrading things and willing to contribute stuff. The others just stand by and watch, but gladly applaud to you when the buffs get unlocked.

Flax can be farmed in Verdant Brink, below Jaka Itzel. You need tons of it. Farm it daily, with several characters. If possible ask a few of your members to do the same. At least at the beginning, it is all about Flax (Vials of Linseed Oil & kegs). Some materials can be bought off the LFG. For example the Silverwastes Shovels. There are often people in the LFG offering shovels for a few silvers. Shovels are needed for mine-upgrades.

One last thing about the mine. As long as you are not in a hurry, the mining rate can be neglected. The first few tiers might help you, but the final tier is mostly just a sink for resources. By the time you can unlock it, most of the important upgrades are done anyway.

as an experienced player, you can take each of those guildhalls solo. therefor with a little group it should be more than doable. easiest to take solo/with very few would be the newest guild hall Windswept Haven*, simply because you dont have to deal with a ton of adds (of wich some hurt alot) in the prephase , aswell as the IMO easier bossfight.if you have enough people contributing to the guildhall, then you will be more limited by favor/aetherium, then by the materials. so i would advice to unlock the additional mission slots as fast as possible.

@"Speedylord.2798" said:How do you get such big amounts of Gold to fund all these upgrades and expeditions?the amount of gold might seem alot from the views of a rather new player, but after a while you will only 'need' your gold basically for skins. the gold price in the hall is about ~4-5 gen2 legendaries and id say there is plenty of players who have 4 or more of them. the price also doesnt scale with the number of players contributing, so get enough people and the price wont seem as much.

depending on what your guild does, you might have a greater interest in certain upgrades over others. for example if you play a lot of WvW, you will want to get claiming, objective aura and guild siege. to get to more desired upgrades as fast as possible, i would advise to use the gw2efficiency guild site. there you can simulate how you build you hall to a desired state and see how much that will cost you.

. * if you change the hall later(by claiming another), you will keep the upgrades.