I started a new Imperial character some time back and was immediately invited to a guild, which I joined. I did not play the character for several months, then just got back to it recently. I noticed there was nothing going on in the guild. I looked into it, and there are only 8 members. I've never seen any of them online. It seems to have been created by someone on a whim, and never really worked on. I decided to leave the guild and look for a more active one, but it turns out someone made me the guildmaster last week. I'm not allowed to quit the guild until I name a replacement. After a few minutes of being unable to figure out how to demote myself and promote someone else, I changed my mind and decided I would just run with this guild and try to grow it. I have a lot of questions about that, and would appreciate any expert advice you can offer, or even just a link to some web page describing how to run and develop a guild.

1) Can I change the name of the guild?

2) How can I change the heraldry? I can edit a new symbol/color combo but can't find a way to save it.

3) How can I increase the CXP bonus from 0%? What is the max I can increase it to?

4) How do I deposit credits into the guild bank?

5) Is there an online guide describing the guildmaster role, including what you can and cannot do?

Many Thanks!

1) Can I change the name of the guild?

2) How can I change the heraldry? I can edit a new symbol/color combo but can't find a way to save it.

3) How can I increase the CXP bonus from 0%? What is the max I can increase it to?

4) How do I deposit credits into the guild bank?

5) Is there an online guide describing the guildmaster role, including what you can and cannot do?

 

Many Thanks!

1) There is an item for 3,000 CC on the cartel market, that let's you (the GM) change the name. (I think it's called "Rename: Guildname or something like this

2) The guild bank must contain at least 1M Credits (1,000,000). That are the costs for the change. (Can anyone confirm this, part of that is guessing)

3) Increase the guild rank by collecting conquest points, you get them fairly easy but it will need time, the max. for CXP is 10% or 15%

4) Open a guild container on the fleet (the purple one) and there should be a "deposit"-button somewhere (I'm currently not ingame, neither playing with the english client.

5) I don't have a answer for that, Auntie Google led me to https://help.ea.com/en-sg/help/star-wars/star-wars-the-old-republic/swtor-guild-management/

Oh, the game made you guild master, you were the first to log in after the original GM didn't log in for 4 weeks.

Oh, the game made you guild master, you were the first to log in after the original GM didn't log in for 4 weeks.

OP: This bit is terrifyingly important. If you don't log that character in for four weeks, the leadership may (possibly) get passed to someone else, or other strange things may happen to the guild if nobody else is eligible.

You don't have to log in for long - a few seconds would be more than long enough - but you do have to do it.

 

2) The guild bank must contain at least 1M Credits (1,000,000). That are the costs for the change. (Can anyone confirm this, part of that is guessing)

Correct the guild bank must have 1m in credits for this. I just redid ours on both of our guilds.

The "someone" who promoted you to guidmaster was the game system. If the guildmaster is inactive and leadership gets passed to a different character ithe system just sends the message "<Old Guildmaster character> promoted <New Guildmaster Character> to Guildmaster" same as if you manually did it.

For future reference, to promote another character to Guildmaster, you simply right click the character you want to be guildmaster in your guild roster, and click Guild / Set Rank / Guildmaster. You will get a confirmation popup asking if you reeally want to do this. If you click accept, that character gets promoted, and the old Guildmaster gets automagically demoted to Officer (or equivalent rank, if your guild has renamed the ranks). You can't "demote" your Guildmaster character first, because then there wouldn't be any character in the guild who could promote another character to guildmaster.

1) Note above is basically correct. Cartel Market sells an item called "Rename: Guild Name" for 3000 Cartel Coins. To find it more easily, select "Consumables".under the "Categories" tab. (You may be able to find this on the GTN, but it likely will be expensive. May take a bit for them to show up, as the recent downtime/patch to fix an exploit cleared all listings from the GTN, and servers only came back up a few minutes ago, as I'm typing this).

>>---> Edit: There's now one listed on the GTN on Satele Shan, for 475 million credits.

2) Note above is correct. The cost to create/change the guild Heraldry is 1 million credits, and the funds must be in the guild bank.

3) Max bonus to CXP is 10%. (Bnuses to "regular" XP and Reputation cap at 15%.) You need guild rank 51 for the max CXP bonus (rank 40 for max XP & rep bonuses), so it will take quite a long time for that if you're the only one in the guild. Getting from 0 to rank 1 takes 1 million guild xp, and the amount needed to rank up increases with every rank. (1 conquest point = 2 guild xp, so half a million conquest points to get guild rank 1). The weekly cap on guild xp is 8 million, so in theory, you could go up more than one rank per week, at least early on, but it would take quite a few dedicated members to do that. If you're looking to boost your characters' CXP gains, you'll do better, faster, to join a guild that's already got the max bonus.

4) In additon to the Guild Bank terminals on Fleet and elsewhere, you can purchase Guild Bank decorations, to add terminals to your Guild Stronghold and/or personal Stronghold(s).

5) GuildMaster can do everything related to guild management/activities. All guild management permissions are "enabled" for the Guildmaster. And you can't "disable" any of them for the guildmaster, either.

First thing you should do as GM is set all the guild permissions, particularly for removing items/credits from the Guild Bank. For starters, set it so only the GM can do this. That way if you invite new members, you won't have people jioning just to raid your guild bank and then leave. Do this right away, before you invite anyone else into the guild. IIRC, the default setting is to give all members, regardless of rank, unlimited access to guild bank items/credits. (The previous GM may have done this already, but if the guild has been inactive long enough for the GM to get reset, the permissions may have been reset also).

As the guild gains funds, set a small amount that folks can draw on for repairs. When you get to kow and trust people, then you can raise the repairs "allowance", start allowing them to pull items/credits from the bank, and so on.

Then set permissions for what ranks can invite, promote. demote, which ranks can see/post messages in Guild chat, Officer chat, and all that other stuff. Just go through the pages on the Guild management window, see what's there, and change it however you see fit. A lot of stuff likely won't be too important unless/until you start adding more members.

Thank you all for the great info. As usual, every answer breeds two more questions, so here are mine:

1) A few of the guilds I am in with other characters have websites on discord. Is this the best option? What other choices are there for easy to create guild chat rooms?

2) How do we start getting guild commendations?

3) I see 6 perks available on my flagship. How many need to match to get a set bonus? Can we get more than one set bonus?

4) Flagship plans look to cost 50 dark projects, but it also mentions they can be obtained from enemy commanders across the galaxy. Are these plans worth 50 dark projects? Or should we get them from enemy commanders exclusively? How important are flagship plans, and what benefits do they give?

5) The guild window shows conquest leader lists. How do you get the conquest points, and are these lists just for bragging rights or are the rankings important?

1) A few of the guilds I am in with other characters have websites on discord. Is this the best option? What other choices are there for easy to create guild chat rooms?

The Best Option is what works for you. For my guild I use a Mumble Server for voice coms (faster connection and lighter on internet usage than discord and it is open source if that is important to you) and Shivtr for my web hosting. There is also Enjin both shivtr and enjin provide an ad suported option (free to you with a small ad at the top of the site), guild forums for persistant messages, and a shared online calendar of events for your guild.

2) How do we start getting guild commendations?

Each character that compleats conquest will add to your guild's commendations. All game content now gives conquest points so even just being active will in many cases get you enough points to get conquest.

4) Flagship plans look to cost 50 dark projects, but it also mentions they can be obtained from enemy commanders across the galaxy. Are these plans worth 50 dark projects? Or should we get them from enemy commanders exclusively? How important are flagship plans, and what benefits do they give?

OK, this is a big one. Flagship Encryptions are used to make Flagship Frameworks. The frameworks take 50 encryptions to make. You need minimum 5 frameworks per door you open on your guild ship. for a small guild it is much faster to hunt for commanders to build out your guild ship. Commanders drop one encryption per person grouped to defeat them. If the commander has a name they also drop a framework. The drops are random and at the end of your unlock grind you will have extra to sell on the gtn to make up for credits spent starting the unlock process. Dulfy has a good guide on the guild ship process.

5) The guild window shows conquest leader lists. How do you get the conquest points, and are these lists just for bragging rights or are the rankings important?

The list in the guild window doesn't work so ignore it. If you want to track conquest points the 2 changeable dropdowns in the guild roster can be changed to show conquest points gained by guild members each week. Some guilds use this to track if members are contributing and to remove the ones that are not. The big number to watch is on the guild invasion tab of your mission log. It is there that you will see your guild's progress towards your committed guild goal for the week. It is also where you choose what that goal is for the week (I would recommend that with a new small guild you go for the small yeald as 5 toons can cover that with little extra effort beyond playing the game for a few hours a day all week).

OP: This bit is terrifyingly important. If you don't log that character in for four weeks, the leadership may (possibly) get passed to someone else, or other strange things may happen to the guild if nobody else is eligible.

The simplest thing to do is to make your most often played character GM. It's easy to change GMs, so you can just change GM to whatever character you want, whenever it suits. (There could be some situations where you don't want to change GM because some other Guild members could get confused.)

There could be some situations where you don't want to change GM because some other Guild members could get confused.

This is true.

For my guild I have a rank "Guild Master" that I use for all of my alts. It clears up any confusion about who I am when I am logged in. You can issue almost all the same authority to this other rank except the ability to change the guild bank options and the ability to edit ranks. Then the hardest thing to do is remember to log into my main.

Thank you all for the answers so far. Here's some more questions:

1) How do you send messages to the guild? The officers?

2) I've renamed all the ranks to better suit the guild. Is everyone above the lowest rank considered an officer? If not, how is that determined?

3) Is there a guide for all the cool little things you can do? I managed to invite someone into my group, but couldn't disband the group. I found the option of kicking the other player out, but that seemed kind of rude. Is that the way it's done? Also, other players salute and do all sorts of cool stuff. Where can I learn about that aspect of the game? It seems like tribal knowledge. Is that the case?

Thank you all for the answers so far. Here's some more questions:

 

1) How do you send messages to the guild? The officers?

2) I've renamed all the ranks to better suit the guild. Is everyone above the lowest rank considered an officer? If not, how is that determined?

3) Is there a guide for all the cool little things you can do? I managed to invite someone into my group, but couldn't disband the group. I found the option of kicking the other player out, but that seemed kind of rude. Is that the way it's done? Also, other players salute and do all sorts of cool stuff. Where can I learn about that aspect of the game? It seems like tribal knowledge. Is that the case?

If the group is just you and the other player, and you don't want to be rude by kicking him, leave the group instead.

The salutes and stuff are "emotes", commands you type into chat, prefixed with a slash. Examples:

* /dance = Your character dances

* /clap = Your character claps

* /yes = Your character says "Yes"

* /inquisitor = Your character shows his inquisitorial nature (available on all your characters if one has completed the Inquisitor class story)

In some cases, your character actually says the things out loud, which is only slightly annoying for people around you.

To see a full list of all the emotes, click the small "waving guy" icon in the top-left of the chat window to see a menu of menus full of emotes, although initially you won't have many of them available.

To see a full list of all the emotes, click the small "waving guy" icon in the top-left of the chat window to see a menu of menus full of emotes, although initially you won't have many of them available.

You can also use them directly from that menu, without needing to type anything.

1) How do you send messages to the guild? The officers?

It depends on what you intend to do. There is the message of the day option from the main guild window that is good for things like letting people know about upcoming events or telling them what to focus on for conquest etc. You can send guild wide mail from your mail terminal now if you have a longer static message you need to get out. If you haven't found it yet there is a guild chat option in game from the chat dropdown or by using /g to swap to it instead of regular chat and there is /o I think for officers but I honestly never use officer chat so I don't know off the top of my head.

2) I've renamed all the ranks to better suit the guild. Is everyone above the lowest rank considered an officer? If not, how is that determined?

What determines if a rank is considered an officer are the permissions you grant when setting up each rank. One of the options is access to the officer chat option. Also whatever the lowest rank on the list is, that is what people are set to by default (just make sure you don't give too much bank access to this rank or you will learn quickly how many people join guilds just to rob the bank).

3) Is there a guide for all the cool little things you can do? I managed to invite someone into my group, but couldn't disband the group. I found the option of kicking the other player out, but that seemed kind of rude. Is that the way it's done? Also, other players salute and do all sorts of cool stuff. Where can I learn about that aspect of the game? It seems like tribal knowledge. Is that the case?

There is no guide that I am aware of but as Steve and Quaker both already said there is a list of emotes available for you to see what you can do also if you right click your picture when grouped it gives some options and if you click the group members picture it shows you options for them. A few commands you should know are :

/ginvite Name = Invites a person to your guild (you don't need to be grouped or even on the same planet)

/gkick Name = Kicks someone out of your guild (if it is for bad reasons you may want to use the ban option so they can't get back in)

/whisper Name: = to whisper a person anywhere in the game (they don't need to be near you and yes this one needs the colon)

/say = anybody within 30 meters of you can see the message even across factions

/yell = same as say only 60? meters (I'm not sure about the distance on this one)

Right clicking names in the chat window will also give you options of how to interact with people.

I hope some of this helps