We Need Ways To get Guild Favor For Small Guilds

[Akisohida.8963]

It's frustrating that I made a guild for myself and a few RL friends, none of us PvP, and there's literally 0 ways to earn Favor to get a Guild Hall aside from PvPing.

I tried buying the PvE missions but...I can't figure out HOW to do that, nor if I need a Guild Hall first.

Why are there no default PvE ways to earn Favor for smaller, non-PvP guilds? Even the Puzzle says 'Required Players: 6'. Why can't a 3-man Guild have a PvP incentive they can actually acquire and do?

[Freya.9075]

There are doable missions. I don’t remember how or when I unlocked them, but I made my guild level 69 with only me, my boyfriend and a couple friends contributing now and then. Usually it was only the two of us, so having a small guild and level it up and do favors is possible. It will be expensive though and require time to do. If you want a guild hall, you can ask map chat and lfg for help to capture it if you cannot solo it or do it with your friends. 
 

Race, bounties and trek are usually easy to complete. Depending on which one you get. If you struggle, you can ask map chat for help as well.  Easy bounties and all treks you can also solo with wiki up. Races are best to complete during weekend when other guilds do them as well. If you only want the coin to shop with, you only need to finish one round with the races and one trek from the list. Good luck

[Gorani.7205]

If the Sentry, Dolly and Camp based WvW guild missions would be reduced to one participant instead of the three, they could also be a source for Favor and automatically create more player vs player conflict on maps (e.g. as two opposing interests could happen at a camp, one to hold and one to flip).

[Linken.6345]

You can do races with other guilds, the easy treks can be done by few people.

[Schimmi.6872]

You don't need PvP to get favor, you can switch to PvE-missions in the mission tab of the guild menu. Some of the PvE-missions can even be done alone (e.g. easy /mid track, hard track if you are fast, easy bounty), some can be done with other guils together (races and puzzles), for the rest about 3-6 people are enough, the highest requirement are 6 people for some puzzles.

One of my personal guilds is lvl 46, all missions done without additional guild members, so it definitly works.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Akisohida.8963 said:

and there's literally 0 ways to earn Favor to get a Guild Hall aside from PvPing.

There are soloable sources of favor in pve. Or the ones you can do for your guild while other guilds do their mission.

Edited July 16, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Akisohida.8963]

38 minutes ago, Schimmi.6872 said:

You don't need PvP to get favor, you can switch to PvE-missions in the mission tab of the guild menu. Some of the PvE-missions can even be done alone (e.g. easy /mid track, hard track if you are fast, easy bounty), some can be done with other guils together (races and puzzles), for the rest about 3-6 people are enough, the highest requirement are 6 people for some puzzles.

One of my personal guilds is lvl 46, all missions done without additional guild members, so it definitly works.

The missions tab says I need to unlock PvE missions.

The only 3 that it gave me were PvP, WvW, and a Puzzle that requires minimum 6 people.

[Ashantara.8731]

I also levelled my guild all  by myself and still earn Favor weekly. Don't really see the OP's problem with it. You can do the easy Bounty by asking people on the map to come help you for a minute, you can join other guilds for Races, and you can do the 5- and 15-Guild Treks alone.

Edit: Yes, you should get a Guild Hall first, and you can ask people in Lion's Arch and/or LFG to come help you capture it.

Edited July 16, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[Schimmi.6872]

6 minutes ago, Akisohida.8963 said:

The missions tab says I need to unlock PvE missions.

The only 3 that it gave me were PvP, WvW, and a Puzzle that requires minimum 6 people.

There is a cogwheel over the favor-bar, where you can switch between "no preference", PvE, PvP and WvW. When you switch the mission-type, it will change next week (so if you change it today, you will get the new ones tomorrow).

[Akisohida.8963]

Just now, Schimmi.6872 said:

There is a cogwheel over the favor-bar, where you can switch between "no preference", PvE, PvP and WvW. When you switch the mission-type, it will change next week (so if you change it today, you will get the new ones tomorrow).

Oh, I will try to look for it after dinner, thanks.

Edited July 16, 2023 by Akisohida.8963

[JTGuevara.9018]

2 hours ago, Akisohida.8963 said:

It's frustrating that I made a guild for myself and a few RL friends, none of us PvP, and there's literally 0 ways to earn Favor to get a Guild Hall aside from PvPing.

I tried buying the PvE missions but...I can't figure out HOW to do that, nor if I need a Guild Hall first.

Why are there no default PvE ways to earn Favor for smaller, non-PvP guilds? Even the Puzzle says 'Required Players: 6'. Why can't a 3-man Guild have a PvP incentive they can actually acquire and do?

So much for an mmo being "social" eh! You know...supposedly the entire POINT of this genre.

I guess "social" means the little people stay out and the big guilds get the goodies. We already had this conversation back in 2015 with the Guild Hall and its ridiculous grind for materials which just drive out any small group of people and actually participate in this game.

And people wonder I don't play mmos anymore...

[leila.7962]

6 hours ago, Akisohida.8963 said:

It's frustrating that I made a guild for myself and a few RL friends, none of us PvP, and there's literally 0 ways to earn Favor to get a Guild Hall aside from PvPing.

I tried buying the PvE missions but...I can't figure out HOW to do that, nor if I need a Guild Hall first.

Why are there no default PvE ways to earn Favor for smaller, non-PvP guilds? Even the Puzzle says 'Required Players: 6'. Why can't a 3-man Guild have a PvP incentive they can actually acquire and do?

I've leveld up my own guild from 1 to 69 doing the easy PvE missions every week, it took me a year of course (or maybe a bit more?) .. I soloed most of them, but for some other missions like jumping puzzles that required a minimum amount of players, I'd just ask a friend or two to help.. it's a little more difficult but not impossible.

Trek missions are pretty easy to do, considering that people have mounts nowadays you can solo the easy mission (only 15 places to go to), with time you won't even need wiki to know where the places are.

On Bounties, you can just use one of those united legions waystation to break their cc bar and dps it to death, even solo. It's quick and easy, specially as a reaper or condi firebrand.

On Races, you can do them on weekends, because a lot of guilds do them and you can earn credit by completing them only once while other guilds are doing it too. Their progress counts towards your mission, the annoying part is that you have to actually wait for the minimum amount of people from the other guilds to finish so you can receive your reward.

You can also solo some of the guild challenges, like the one that happens at Blazeridge Steppes and at Fields of Ruin. You can do the one at Timberline Falls with 2 more people, being each people responsible for 1 lane and gather up for the final one at the end.

The othe ones at Southsun Cove, Iron Marches and Mount Maelstrom are too difficult to do solo or with low men.. it's not worth it.

The real issue for small guilds is to build the upgrades on your own, because even though mats aren't expensive,Anet assumed everyone from your guild would help with donations. Mine was 100% my own materials and 95% solo missions lol.. it was a long project but I have no regrets!

Edited July 16, 2023 by leila.7962
Adding more examples

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

I've written it down a long time ago. So I will just quote myself here:

1.) How to solo guild-missions

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While people love to flex THAT they can solo certain guildmissions, they rarely tell you HOW. So here is how you get a couple of the tasks done alone:

 

1.) Easy Bounty (single target)

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Those are always either Poobadoo, Trillia Midwell or Brekkabek. Each of them has a rather small route and can be found quite easily. When you happen to hunt one of those three, your first steps are always checking the minimap for tags and asking in map-chat if someone already found them. Those are quite common bounties which appear in all difficulty scales, so there is a good chance another guild is doing them as well. If someone already found them, get there quickly and make sure to land at least one hit before the fight is over.

 

IF NOT? 

Search the route, counter the walking direction. When you look at the wiki-page of each target, you get a map with their walking path and arrows indicating their walking direction. By following the route in counter direction, you speed up searching a lot. Use Rollerbeetle and Raptor or Skyscale if available.

 

Depending on your shorcuts (Options), you can tab CTRL/SHIFT to make NPC names flash up. This can be helpful finding the bounty.

 

When you found the target, take a look on the walking path and the map. Are they close by a waypoint? How long will they take to get near a waypoint? If it takes too long, abandon the bounty straight and retry after cooldown. If do not belong to those superheroes who can solo a bounty without breaking a sweat, it is not worth trying it. You need a waypoint within Raptor leap-range, to instantly revive when killed without risking the bounty to lose aggro = fail. 

 

Before you start attacking, link the waypoint in mapchat and tell people what you are about to do. Again, there might be other guilds in need of the bounty as well. They may help you. Sometimes you also attract bored adventurers, who gladly lend a hand. If you want to go double-safe, /mentor up. So when people join you mid fight, they find you quickly.

 

Combat tips

- Never approach Poobadoo underwater. It is one of the weakest bounties that exist, but underwater it can eliminate entire parties quickly. Even if you have a small group, it is always a better idea to wait till Poobadoo reaches land.

- Trillia has two extremely annoying attacks. The first is a lightning ring, which does not damage at first. When you see it, dodge out asap! Else you get stunned. 

- When Trillia enters her tornado-form or summons multiple tornados, abort attacking and run. She has limited range with those attacks and the tornados vanish quickly after. As long as the timer is not close to 1 minute, it is not worth to risk fighting her during torando-mode.

- Make sure to place a United Legions Waystation when you are about to start the bounty. The bounties are quite susceptible for the EMP. You can cursh the breakbar alone with just that and maybe one strong CC of your own. The more players are nearby, the more CC you will need.

- If you want to go double-safe, in case you feel you are a little too far away from the waypoint, use Fire Elemental Powder, an Ogre Pet Whistle or a Pocket Jade Armor. They can maintain aggro while you return from the waypoint and actually tank for a while. Especially the Jade Armor has quite an impressive stamina.

- When you are getting downed, reach out for the minimap with your mouse while smashing the 1-key. When your HP is < 30 %, rapidly click on the waypoint. In that case you will instantly respawn once you are dead and the aggro 'should' not be interrupted.

 

 

2.) Guild Trek

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Use a character with almost full map-completion in Core Tyria. Before you start the the trek, teleport to Divinity's Reach. That map has a couple of easy targets, but can take a while to load. So you can get those targets done with almost no loading time. The other cities can also pop up, but DR appears to be the one with the highest player population - as far as I noticed.

 

Personal loot is achieved for completing a single target, not the entire list. If you just want to get some quick loot for your guildmates, just stack up on the golden glowing symbol. When all are there, one person presses 'F' and all get the participation = loot. This works for all treks.

 

Do not be afraid of aborting a Guild Trek, even an easy one. The cooldown is quite low and the RNG can be quite annoying sometimes. Do not bother with avoidable stress.

 

Before you start the mission, open your browser with Guild Trek List (wiki). There do exist other guides and lists, but the wiki has one huge advantage compared to those = it eats very little resources of your computer/connection. In most cases a quick look on the minimap is enough. To speed things up, open the "search page" function in your browser. In most browsers, this pops up a small search box in one of the corners. The common shortcut is CTRL+F. 

 

In addition, you can save some loading times switching to windowed-mode (client), so you can quickly swap between the list and the game. I did that in the beginning, then realized how convenient it is and kept it until today. 

 

Easy Guild Trek can be soloed.

Medium Guild Trek can be soloed, but requires significant experience and speed. If you happen to suffer from extended loading times, better do it with another guildmember.

 

When you do the medium guild-trek, always take your time and read through the entire list once. If you find something bad, like Portmatt's Promontory, just abort the trek, retry and hope for a better RNG. A good draw is when you have at least 5-7 locations you can find without looking them up, because you have memorized them. If you know less, retry. Looking up locations consumes a lot of precious time. 

 

If you want to be sneaky, head to Fawcett's Porch, before you start the medium trek. It appears quite often and can be quite annoying to reach when you are under time pressure. If your draw is lucky and that location is in it, you have a good start.

 

 

3.) Guild Race

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Always check the location(s) for guilds who already started the race. If you happen to see a group of players gathering at a banner with 2-3 minutes time-remaining, they are likely to retry when the current one failed. So tag along. Participate when you are certain to reach the 15/15 within the time-limit.

 

Let us assume you have found a map where the race has 15/15 completions, but the timer is rather low. Is it worth to try:

- 3 min + = Spider Scurry, Devourer Burrow, Chicken Run, Quaggan Paddle (if the path is cleared)

- 4 min + = Quaggan Paddle, Ghost Wolf Run, Crab Scuttle

 

I know the experts and veterans can easily break those rookie numbers, but once again I am not here to flex. With those timers you can savely try with regular speed.

 

When you are at the start/flag, stack up:

- Swiftness 30 seconds

- Stealth and Aegis are optional, but useful

 

Stealth allows you to ignore traps, you can walk straight over them and fear no damage. So make sure to stack up as much as possible of that or get a helping player nearby who provides you with that. There is however one exclusion: Crab Scuttle, those traps ignore stealth. 

 

race-specific tips:

- Ghost Wolf Run, the wolf-transformation can jump. You can skip a lot of the traps by just climbing up rocks and other obstacles and use your glider.

- Bear Lope, the stealth-orbs can be re-entered to stack up stealth-duration. If you do that with every stealth-orb, you can skip most of the traps and neglect the snowball skill completely.

- Chicken Run, there is a shortcut right after the Separatist's Camp, at the cage right before the tunnel with the traps. It is that small burrow. Step in an interact, you spawn behind the traps.

- Chicken Run, Swiftness is enough to ignore the rock-traps. You can run right through them, as long as no one runs before you.

- Chicken Run, the stealth-skill of the chicken stacks with regular stealth. So you can stack up right before transforming and then use the skill right away to extend the duration even further.

- Devourer Burrow, the spider-web right before the goal can be bypassed by dodging through it.

- Quaggan Paddle, you can dive in curves and go farer to the left, right and up to bypass mobs. You only need to touch the gates somehow. 

- Crab Scuttle, when the Onyx Field is contested, get the checkpoint at the entrance, then turn back and head south-east. Get up the rocks, there is a walk-able path, and drop down to the flag/burrow from above. 

- Spider Scurry, the hookshot can be use to get past enemies as well. You can teleport behind a dredge that prepares to shoot you. If you are struggling with low HP, this can save your life.

 

Personal loot:

- If you run a race just for personal loot, no favor, it sometimes happens to trigger if you complete the race around the 5th or 7th completion. I have not figured it out completely, but if the race is close to one of these and you only want personal loot, give it a try.

- If you run with guildmembers who are not enjoying races, make sure that one leader/officer with mission rights completes one round and camps at the end at the NPC for the finish-early option. Tell your other members to just transform and go through the first checkpoint/gate. When the finish-early option is triggered, everyone who crossed at least one gate will get full loot. Requires complete 15/15 however.

 

Bonus - Bypass the difficulty limitation

Example: You happen to have Bear Lope in your weekly selection, but Bear Lope hard. You come to Lonar's Pass and find a Bear Lope that is 15/15 with 17 minutes left, an Easy Guild Race obviously. Instead of leaving the map, you start the race and start your guild-race (hard) in the guild-panel. Then talk to the NPC, finish early and you are done. 

 

This method works every time and even works if you happen to have the same race twice with different difficulty levels. I was quite surprised how many guild-leaders and veteran players have no clue about this trick. You can even combine this with the personal-loot tip above, letting your fellow guild-members cross one gate/checkpoint before you interact with the NPC. 

 

4.) Deep Trouble

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The 31 minute challenge can be soloed with a character & build that is designed for underwater combat. It is one of the most neglected parts of the game, but there do exist quite powerful builds which are capable of fighting multiple enemies at once while escorting a puny Quaggan.

 

If you really want to try this, make sure to have:

- plenty of area attacks

- pulls/interrupts

- an option to heal the Quaggan

- access to Swiftness or even Superspeed, preferably with a group-buff option

 

I have done it a few times with my Open World Scrapper, which is neither a healer nor a DPS and finished around 11 minutes each time. With a proper build and a little more focus, it should be possible to even solo the 20 minute challenge. 

 

 

6.) Obsidian Sanctum

It is just a Jumping Puzzle. By far the most complex and dangerous we have in the game, but you can completely solo it. Opposite to the chest, the Guild WvW Challenge is completed right when you reach the final building. Which is nice, because that final steps can be quite annoying when you happen to notice enemies incoming. 

2.) Additional notes about favor-farming via Guild Puzzles, Obsidian Sanctum (WvW Challenge) and Races

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Puzzle is rather easy. Here is how it works:

1.) You enter the Guild Puzzle with another guild and run through the whole thing.
2.) Upon entering the final section, usually after the last puzzle, you get a promt on your screen to "Accept credit" or something similar.
3.) Accept and walk back into the previous room.
4.) Open your guild-panel, switch representation to your own guild.
5.) Activate the guild-puzzle.
6.) Head towards the final section of the area again. You get the prompt again.
7.) Accept.
This can be repeated with as many guilds as you want.

Where does the prompt trigger:
- Proxemics Lab = upon entering the cheese room
- Langmar Estate = after walking through the broken gate after the ram-puzzle. Iirc you have to walk a little further uphill.
- Angvar's Trove = upon entering the ice-crystal room

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The exact same mechanic also works for the Obsidian Sanctum WvW mission. Just without the screen-prompt. The progression/completion triggers around the last area with the spike-traps when you reach the area with the Aetherblades. Not at the final chest. This can also be repeated with as many guilds as necessary.
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For the races, if you are after the guild-favor only, it is even more simple. All you have to do is finishing the guild-race one whole lap. Once that is done and the progression has crossed 15/15, head to the end of the race. Switch to your own guild and acitvate the guild-race. Talk to the NPC which only appears once the 15/15 was triggered and select the option to end the guild-missions early. This can also be repeated with as many guilds as necessary. 

Note: The game does not even care about the original timer. If you have e. g. bear lope on the list 2x. A hard one with a short timer and an easy one with a long timer, you can do this method for both. You only need one complete lap to interact with the NPC. Start the first mission, end it early. Start the next mission, end it early.

Note: If you want to do this with your whole guild = for personal loot as well, it is rather easy as well, it is slightly more complicated. Everyone who wants loot has to go to the beginning of the guild-race, transform into the animal and walk through AT LEAST one flag. This has to be done between activating the race and interacting with the NPC.

If the person who triggers the NPC wants personal loot as well, they have to finish one lap before interacting with it. We usually do it like this: We run the race as the whole guild, but tell our officers to park right before the final gate. We finish the first race early. Then start the next. The person who finished early, heads to the start and does the one-flag in transformation with the others. The next officer steps through the final flag, heads to the NPC and finishes the mission early. Then everyone who did the 1-flag + the officer who just finished get personal loot and the guild gets the favor. Rinse and repeat 
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I use those methods frequently to powerlevel up to three guilds and speedclear multiple guild-races in a row with my main-guild. Figured these methods out on my own.

sources: 

Edited July 16, 2023 by HnRkLnXqZ.1870