Blueprints for [Fusion] so you can build a guild like this...(Edited 2-1-15)

The following has been an ongoing project, so it will include information from start to present.

This thread will take the average reader 10-12 minutes to read. My apologies. However, if you're in it to win it, with leading a guild, then read on. I would like to lay down some successes for anyone who wants to start a guild that caters to new players...

Let me break down my progress so far, what I did for resources, and what's working and what's not. I really want to see some of you start something like this. It would make this game better, as far as many of the social/leveling aspects and will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside too.

Step one: I farmed normal and cruel for about 3 months, with a friend, and filled 30 tabs (14 guild tabs and 16 personal) full of level 1-50+ rares, uniques, and gems. I vendored a lot of rares and kept the best ones of all levels 1-50+. I did this, while leveling a few different toons, so I have some ideas about builds. If you have a high level toon or two on this, it will go much faster for you.

Step two: Built website. http://www.poefusion.guildlaunch.com for more info. I find guildlaunch to be an excellent wysiwig site builder with plenty of resources to help you make your guild more interactive and social. As of 2-1-15, our site has well over 300 registered users and our forums have over 250 topics and over 650 posts. I can't stress enough how helpful having a guild site is over limiting yourself to just a forum.

Step three: Recruitment time. Filled guild up by advertising on forums, mostly, for helping new players. Filled guild up very quickly and had a waiting list. Recruited mostly new players with a small few veterans who like to help out. Your forum thread should be professional. Go here to learn how to make it so: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1194041 Once you are done with your thread, I recommend adding it to the Guild Directory, here http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1192567

Step four: Set up a donations system via a donations tab. Donations poured in. Guild now has lots of resources. I also gave all my own personal currencies toward this.

Step five: I added 20 new member slots to eliminate our waiting list to join, which started filling back up that same day. Until there are a few guilds like this, I expect the waiting list will always exist.

Step six: Currently hooking new players up with good gear to level with and getting them to leetness! My officers and I upgrade member gear about every 6-7 levels. The old gear gets turned back into the guild. It's that simple peeps! Update 2-1-15 We now have a request system, in place, which can be found, here: http://poefusion.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2723779&gid=397460

I highly recommend you put a system, in place, to remove inactive members, after X amount of days. I do 10 days because I figure if they haven't logged on for 10 days they probably aren't going to anymore. If they come back, my members know they can just whisper for an invite back into the guild. I currently use a login tracker, which isn't 100% accurate, but I developed a work around system to help prevent me from kicking active members from my guild due to a false reading. I will share this system, here, in the near future. Until then, I suggest you come up with some sort of system to determine who is active and who isn't or your guild will slowly die to inactivity, unless you keep adding member slots.



In the near future, I'm going to hold a guild wide drive to get as many points collected, as possible, to purchase additional guild upgrades. I'm going to set the limit at 50 points so no one can go overboard and show everyone else up. I like fairness like that. I already had a guildy take the initiative, before I even mentioned this, and gave the guild 125 points. I primed the guild with my own cash (to date 6-17-14 $120), but from here on out, I'd like to see the guild pay for itself as much as possible. I'm quite sure you can start this off with a lot less money as I spent, but I was in a hurry ;-) (update: decided to remove limit and accept larger donations. The guild grew much faster and I've even had a couple 300 point donors)

Eventually, I want to start mapping (I have about 50 maps or more saved so far-most donated) as guild runs, to teach players mapping. I also want to do some pvp, which my old wow guild was doing and within 9 months we got 1,000,000 honorable kills. I will also be going over things like crafting, playing the market, etc. Pretty much I want to touch on about every aspect of the game. We'll be that jack of all trades, master of ONE thing and that will always be taking new players and turning them into vets.

One thing that will be completely different from anything you know about guilds is that players will have three choices when they reach the point where they got what they need out of this guild. They can either leave and join a more leet guild (there will be absolutely no hurt butts unless they cause problems on the way out), they can stick around and help out, or they can start their own guild (they will learn from me, too). I really don't care either way. There will be plenty sticking around to help so it doesn't matter either way. I did the same thing in world of warcraft with my guild. My WoW guild was the wow school guild, just like this one will be. If you are going to do a guild like this, your attitude needs to be the same or your ass will be hurting a lot.



Choosing your officers is one thing that you need to have a system in place for. Once, in place, it should be improved upon, whenever possible. I plan on fine tuning mine a little more soon enough. For now, this is what I do: The initial qualifier is you have to have beaten the game in Merci on at least one toon. After that, you go read our forum and review and familiarize yourself with both the "Officer Duties" thread and the rules. If you can handle what is expected, you're in, if I feel I have judged your personal character to be honorable enough. Simple and so far effective but it will need fine tuning later, as I said.

Breakdown of our guild vault: 2 tabs rare and unique armors from gloves to boots to chest etc, 2 tabs of all sorts of rare/unique weapons, 1 main gem tab where I put only one of each gem we have, and excess gem tab where I take from when there are duplicates, 3 tabs of good craftable 4l low level white gear, one tab of 5 socket whites, one tab of 5 and 6 socket whites (update: this was noob-I learned ;-), officer tab, flask tab, ring and amulet and misc stuff tab, and lastly but most importantly, the donations and returns tab. These last tabs are for members to put old guild gear in or donate something new. Feel free to glean this system to get your guild primed up with a good balance of guild resources. By the way, only officers can take stuff out of the guild stash, for ninja reasons. I'm the only one that can put stuff in, besides the donations and returns tab. This prevents garbage being stuck in valuable space.

I think I have around 700 (edit 6-11-14: I actually counted them and actually have 504) or so gems now for the guild. I found a seller willing to sell level 1s for 1 alt each. I've been buying all he has for over a month now. Plus the guild donated around 100 or so gems and then I threw most of mine in too. My stock is about where I want it, for a while, so I'm willing to share my source to a GM who starts a successful guild like this, to help them on their way. I just don't want to give my source up to the first person coming along and saying hey I want to start a guild...I want to make sure you are in it and have something going already. (update: I'm finding that this game shits out gems more than a rabbit with two asses shits and members like to donate lots of them.)

Update 2-1-15 We now have over 6K gems, in total-over 700 of them are always available in our stash on Standard. If anyone wants to start a guild, on Standard, I will be more than happy to hook you up with a few hundred gems to fill some gem tabs with. I've been saving them just for that. Having a lot of gems available, for your guild, is very helpful and very appreciated by your members.



When I set up my gem tabs, I have one main tab and an excess tab. Neither of them have any duplicate gems in them, although both tabs have the same gems in them as the other, but I try not to have more than one of each gem in either tab. You get the most out of your tabs that way. It's a pain in the ass to keep it sorted that way but it's the best way of both presenting your gems, at first, until you can have one tab for each color or something and keep track of what you need. I just store the rest of the gems on storage toons.

Update 2-1-15: We now have 5 total gems tabs, in both leagues-2 level one gems tabs, 2 leveled gems tabs, and an adopt a gem tab (take em and level em for the guild).

I kept all flasks I found, since day one, and upgraded them up to the highest possible, while keeping the superiors for crafting. Before I opened the guild, I transmuted/alted/augmented a lot of them and put the best flasks of the bunch in our flask tab. When we get low on a specific type, I create a few more. Having a good selection of flasks is very helpful to your members.

I think another good tip for you guys is, from day one, I saved all my perfect and near perfect base mod white rings and amulets. I knew to do this from my years of Diablo II playing. I ended up buying 40 alchs and a few more misc crafting orb and stuff and used quite a lot of alchs on crafting rings and amulets. I now have a very nice collection of them for my guild to use. (update: we always have a full tab of these)

I'm also holding a charity event, currently, for the guild to find me perfect to near perfect base mod rings and amulets, because my collection is nearly depleted. I totally expect to get what I need, because my guild rocks like that. If you want to see how I set it up, please visit the forum post I made, on our site, here http://poefusion.guildlaunch.com//forums/viewtopic.php?p=36211695&gid=397460#36211695

Whenever you have something on your website, that you want your guildies to see, you have to let them know it's there. I usually announce things for a couple days or so, depending on how important they are or how effective the post is, in the cases of needing something or a planned activity or something. If you stress, to your guildies, that bookmarking and using the site is part of being in the guild, a lot of them will follow direction. Until GGG gives us more in game tools, for guilds, a website will work fine, if you plug it right.

For information on what I call "guildomercials" (copy paste guild chat messages) please see this thread: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1119560

I chose Standard League to start in because I thought it was the best place for new players to learn the game before branching out to other leagues. However, every league can use a guild like this and I'm sure there is a great enough demand, on every league, for new players type guilds.

Starting on Standard and the 3-4 month leagues, both, can be beneficial, resource-wise. When the temp league ends, your Standard league inherits all that stuff! The more guild tabs you have the more Standard resources you get when the league ends. Buy those tabs! Your guild members will help by donating points toward some. Just know how to ask them.



Usually, when I get a new recruit, I give them a warm welcome then move onto forcing the guild website on them ;-)~ I let them know that there is a ton of resources, on our site, especially for new players and then spam out our site address. Then I force them to check out the guild stash, while telling them that everything in there is available to them, for free, including gems, but the gear comes back to the guild when they upgrade. So far, I've been getting far more donations and returns than I'm putting out and am currently running very low on space, out of 34 tabs, as of 6-11, we're at 18 guild tabs, and 16 personal tabs. Time for more storage. BTW I don't force them. I do highly recommend they visit and bookmark our site and give them compelling reasons why. As far as the guild stash; I shouldn't even have to tell them to check the loots.

Btw everyone, guilds take work, time, resources, dedication, good leadership, and much more. If you want to lead a guild, unless it's just you and a few friends, you need to be ready to sacrifice game time for others. If you can't do this for your guild, it's probably going to suck. I would love to see as many of these types of guilds, as possible, start and get some healthy competition going. Some of you will make it and some of you will fail. It all depends on you. It's not as much work as you would think, once you get going. As always, I'm here to help.

I don't want to scare anyone away from leading a guild. You don't have to give up ALL your time. This is what I do: I do whatever I need to do whether real life, level toons, post to forums, etc. and every now and then I check in on my guild, throughout the day, to see if anyone needs anything and chat with them for a while. Then, I go back to doing what I'm doing and the guild runs itself the rest of the time. I don't have to give up my life to run this thing. However, as said above, it's work. Don't be lazy. (update 10-21-14: I'm so busy now-only because I choose to be. You can get away with a lot less work than me. I now have almost 190 active members and 38 guild tabs on standard and 35 on rampage, plus storage. If you scale down what I did you will have plenty of time to play and still have a successful guild.)

Things will eventually get much busier, for me, as I max out the members, increase storage, and start doing guild activities. Only bite off as much as you can chew when planning new things for your guild. Your officers should be willing to pick up a little slack, each, which combined=lots of slack. Don't try and do everything yourself or you'll go nuts. Delegate by finding who has the best aptitude for what you need done and put them on it. If they don't work out, find another person to do it. You'll find that a good chunk, of your work, as a leader, is delegation. The more your guild does, the more delegation you'll need.

This is easier than you think, people. You don't have to be leet to do this, either. I started playing POE on Feb 18, 2014, got my first guild tab on Feb 28, and by the third week of May I was ready to open for business. Consider that I did this with my highest toon being level 59. I've leveled a few more toons to various lower levels, too, in order to farm normal and cruel to get resources and get familiar with basic toon building. I might not know the game very well, now, but that's what my officers are for, at least for the time being, until I go pro.



Captain's Log

6-8-14 I'm up to 61/70 members. I added two more guild tabs, for a total of 17. I split the donations/returns tab into two tabs and added a map tab. The map tab is filling up fast with donations. We're already ready to do some lower mapping. Yay! Also, got 75 more points donated and put the last 25 together with it and got 10 more member spots.

6-9-14 I've somewhat taken care of my active player problem and we now have about 12 players on at 4pm EST. I still need to do some weeding. Players are interacting and giving stuff to each other and all is right in the universe.

6-10-14 As of yesterday, we're now 70/70 into week three.

6-11-14 Holding point drive as of two nights ago. Raised 110 points so far. My goal is 500. I posted information for my guild to read about it on our website forums/news area at poefusion.guildlaunch.com Before I started the drive, 3 players already took the initiative to donate for a total of 200 points, there, too. This is 310 points in less than one week. If you provide something worth investing in, you will get investments.

I'm going to spend the first 400 points we get on 40 more member spots. If we get more than that, I'll get some stash tabs, too. It's all about players, resources and storage.

6-13-14 As of this morning, we're 77/80 members, 3 of those being in the invite que. We're up to 18 guild stash tabs plus my 16 personal stash tabs. Activity is up at a happy level and what I spent all that time priming, is just about running itself, now. very happy :-)

6-14-14 Worked on stash space today. You'll have to do this every now and then to stay organized and keep some room for new stuff coming in. So, I vendored all the worst stuff we had, and now will take the alts I got to buy gems. Then, I eliminated the 5 socket craftable whites tab and made it a new armor tab. then I split the 4 armor tabs I had into separate item type tabs. Gloves & Boots is one. Chests & Shields the other and so on. So, we're purged of garbage and the guild stash is more user friendly.

The white ring and amulet drive was a very fast and huge success. I'm now preparing to hold an alchemy orb drive so I can fill the jewelry tab all the way up for everyone. I can't wait to see how that goes. Website forum thread here: http://poefusion.guildlaunch.com//forums/viewtopic.php?p=36215798&gid=397460#36215798

6-17-14 After realizing that there's not much demand for good low level craftable whites, I changed those tabs to specific weapons tabs along with my two existing misc weapons tabs. I now have 5 tabs of specific weapons and the stash is even more user friendly now. We're also 90/90 into week five. There's still a waiting list. My doubloons are running low, so I'm waiting for the crew to surrender some booty to help add 10 spots.

6-18-2014 I sold 10 vaal gems, lastnight, for 30 alchs and crafted up nearly 30 more rings for the Jewelry Tab. Also added a few donated rare rings and amulets. We currently have only 6 spots left empty, in that tab, which is rares and uniques only. The guild has responded very positively about it and they're using a lot of them and donations are still coming in for them, too.

I also changed the name of the Staves and Misc to Wands and Staves and filled a chunk of it with various kinds of rare wands of all levels. When you have a storage system, you want to not only make it as user friendly as possible, but organized at the same time, which, in a lot of ways, are the same thing. One thing I'd like to see happen, is being able to move your tabs around so you can better organize things, instead of having a mess of disarray and colors scattered everywhere.

Also see this thread, for in my strong opinion, is the best way to keep your stash more secure from theft and over-excessive requests: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1098603

I made our tag today. FUSION (with a ' above the o) I'm very happy. Look for us around town and say hello. We're a friendly bunch of buccaneers!

Our waiting list grows...

6-21-14 I've stepped back to evaluate my creation for the past few days and have done little to nothing for my guild, just to see how it operates on it's own. It appears to be primed up good and strong and I have faith that if the queen's men catch up to me, the ship will sail fine without me-at least for a while. This was a great litmus test which has come back with positive results.

Again, peeps, this is easy peasy stuff. The hardest part is getting it going, raising the sails, and waiting for the wind to carry you off. You, as the GM should be around as often as you can but make it so you are not needed all the time. Good luck.

6-23-14 I'm still evaluating how the ship sails without me at the helm all the time while I work on my playlist. La la la la easy guild to run lalala happy happy. Smooth sailing all around. I think I'll level up a little today so I'm not such a noob.

6-28-14 Been busy with other things lately, outside the game. The ship's still sailing smoothly. I'll be stepping things up, as far as guild activities, in July, to make things more fun for everyone. Phase two begins.

6-28-14 Evening log entry: I managed to make 23 new spots on our roster by throwing inactive players overboard. We had a waiting list and I managed to send 22 invites out. We're now at 89/90. The ship should sail a lot better now. Activity here we come!

7-3-14 I upgraded our guild stash today. I vendored the worst things and refilled the tabs with much better quality stuff. I also organized our gem tabs again so there aren't any duplicates in either of them. It seems you'll have to do this every now and then. You'll need to stay organized or things won't run like a well oiled machine and you'll have less time to play your toons in the long run.

I also added 10 more member spots so we're now at 93/100 members and I expect those spots to fill in less than 24 hours. We'll see. I won't be spending any more guild points on guild stash tabs as I feel that what we have currently is plenty adequate. Don't be in a big hurry to fill up your guild with members. 100 seems to be a good amount to manage if you don't have the dedication to spend a lot more time on your guild if you were at 250.

7-5-14 My guild now has 246 maps to use. I think it's time to start scheduling map running times as our first official guild activity. I think this will prove to be very fun for everyone who can map now. I have a full map tab, a bunch in one of our donations tab and stored the rest on a storage toon. You will need one of those eventually, for your maps.

I also added 20 more member slots and am recruiting when I can this weekend. This was done with donated guild points. Things are picking up. As I said before, if you have something worth investing in, players will invest.

7-10-14 I recently set up space for guild currency in one of our donations tabs. I donated most of what I had and a few other guildies donated a bunch, too. So, we now have a large assortment of crafting materials to improve certain items, which will be approved by me. I also adjusted the guild tab control on the two donations tabs to where I'm the only one that can remove items, for security reasons.

I've also noticed a growing economy, within our guild. Members are buying and selling items to each other more often. I'm going to hone this more very soon. I've been trying to give what trading tips I can to my crew.

I topped off our gems tab and the rest of the tabs. Everything is stocked nicely.

We're 120/120 members with a growing waiting list. We're also up to 20 guild tabs. Things are going well. I'll be adding 20-30 more member spots within the next few days.

I appointed another officer today. I used a nomination system and asked my guildies who they think would make a good officer. Two of them nominated the same person so I had this player go review a couple forum posts on our site and then promoted them. I think they will do a good job.

7-13-14 I now have a new system for purging the guild stash of the worst stuff to make room for better stuff really quick. I grab two officers, have them start on each end of the stash, and grab what they think isn't good enough. They drop them in any of the two donations tabs, which I previously emptied out. I pick through and vendor most of it because yes, it's garbage compared to what we have now. The stuff I want to keep I put back in the tabs they belong, then fill in the rest out of our stock in my private stash. I now have a lot of room to stock back up in my personal stash.

7-23-14 I'm finding out that it's too easy to get more helpers than newer players needing help. So, I put a header, on my recruitment thread, which pretty much says we're only taking new players with their highest toon being level 40 or under. We certainly have plenty of players to help any new players who join!

8-1-14 I added 2 more guild tabs, today, to bring our total to 22, thanks to a 100 point member donation. Current breakdown of tabs: 1) flasks, 2) gems 1, 3) chests, 4) axes, 5) leveled gems & currency, 6) claws & misc weapons, 7) maces & sceptres, 8) bows & quivers, 9) swords & daggers, 10) gems 2, 11) shields, 12) boots & gloves, 13) miscellaneous, 14) uniques 1, 15) rings & amulets, 16) uniques 2, 17) maps, 18) helms, belts, & more, 19) wands & staves, 20) donations & returns 1, 21) donations & returns 2, 22) chests 2

So far, this system is working quite well for us.

I also added two more officers by using a nomination system so my members have a say, which I feel is best.

10-12-14 We're now up to 34 guild tabs and are on both Standard and Rampage Leagues and even slightly on Hardcore. All three stashes are set up. Storage stays full, especially on Standard and we now hold hundreds of EX worth of assets. We also have more than 170 active members.

2-1-15 53 tabs on both leagues/consistently 240-250 active members, most within a day or two. We have evolved ;-p You can do this, too. It took us almost 9 months to get here. Take your time and be patient.

There's a BIG demand for these kinds of guilds, peeps. A new guild like this will do well. I have seen it five times, already. I don't mind competition either.



Be sure and contact me if you have any questions. I'm here to help. Also read the following urls for more info:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/938880

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/928747

If you read all the way down here then you might just have what it takes to do this. Good luck!

Here's almost 15 minutes of Piratey Musical Bliss...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRh-dzrI4Z4

I updated the original post more. Will do more when I feel better. (was hung over)

Post updated again. I'll be adding more as we evolve. I'll try and not make this too long but I'll also include everything I feel is relevant to building this type of guild. Btw everyone, guilds take work, time, resources, dedication, good leadership, and much more. If you want to lead a guild, unless it's just you and a few friends, you need to be ready to sacrifice game time for others. If you can't do this for your guild, it's probably going to suck. I would love to see as many of these types of guilds start and get some healthy competition going. Some of you will make it and some of you will fail. It all depends on you. As always, I'm here to help.

Happy Trails

Edit: I added part of this post to my OP

Updated OP with a breakdown of our guild vault to give you an idea how our system is.

Updated gem information

Today is my 43rd birthday and to show my dedication to my guild I'm going to get drunk and be available most of the day helping them out. I'll also be adding to this post so please pay attention if this thing interests you. To paint a horrible picture in your head, I'll be wearing my birthday suit ;-)~ Just kidding. I'll be barbequing with friends and drinking Four Locos.

Put an update on 6-8-14

Added a paragraph on collecting and crafting rings and amulets for my guild.

added info on another recruitment technique

K I added a lot of new info. Read again to see all of it. ;-)~