Guilding For Glory!!!

Galactic War Report’s guide to managing one of Star War Galaxy of Heroes’ hardest challenges: the social one.

Guilds are easily the most community-oriented aspect of Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. They really are a wonderful concept. 50 players from around the world work together seamlessly to bring down rancors, AAT tanks, and General Grievous, high-fiving each other afterward as each player receives their fair reward for a job well done. Players freely share gear in an exchange that maximizes everyone’s inventory, all while earning Achievements to earn Ally Points. Guild Currency flows as you climb tier after tier in daily Guild Activities.

…at least on paper.

The reality is that guilds can be tricky to navigate. Whether it’s in-fighting over when to launch raids, trying to motivate less active players, or making tough decisions on who stays and who goes, there are a lot of roadblocks to having the kind of warm, fuzzy experience described in the opening paragraph. While there’s no quick solution to send your guild to the top of the Leaderboards or instantly unlock raid-specific rewards, this guide is specifically designed to help you and your guild achieve your goals. While some of this information may be specific to officers or leaders, it is absolutely necessary that all the members of a guild do their part, too.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

The Many Kinds of Guilds

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how a guild “should” work, it’s important to note that not all guilds are going to have the same goals.

Pods

There are some guilds who live at the top of the leaderboard and operate like well-oiled machines. I like to call them Pods, as they’re often composed of whales (big spenders with rosters that command respect). These guilds clear raids almost as fast as they can launch them, optimizing every bit of Currency and often craft the very strategies that eventually trickle down to smaller guilds. Some of the resources mentioned in this post will reference those guilds.

Casuals

Then there are the casual guilds. Some guilds will never unlock General Kenobi and that’s okay. There are many play styles and I know several people who are in this type of guild. My guess is that, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not in this type of guild. Or at least you have interest in a more serious one.

Up-and-Comers

A lot of guilds do good work, but are always looking to improve. Maybe you can handle a heroic Pit raid, but you’re still unsure about heroic Tank Takedown. This is really who this guide is for. If you find yourself struggling to beat a heroic raid (Pit or Takedown) or you just can’t figure out how to get your soldiers to fall in line, this guide is for you. Read it, live it, share it with them.

Filling The Ranks

Before you can get a guild running smoothly, you have to get some active members. There are several ways to achieve this, as outlined below.

Get Social!

Recruiting on social media is probably the best way to get a guild up and running. There is no shortage of players to be found online and the nice thing is, if they’re already online looking for a guild, there’s a good chance they’re a pretty active player who will be excited to join forces with your new guild. How many Galaxy of Heroes Facebook groups do you think there are? Well more than you can imagine! Poke around and see if you can find one you like. Might I suggest Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes Cantina? (That’s the one I frequent.)

Reddit

The Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes Subreddit has a TON of useful information. You can find people posting for various guilds there on their Guild Recruitment Megathread or even the Guild Recruitment Subreddit. In general, those who are on the subreddit are probably going to be pretty solid guildies.

Don’t Forget the Real World

I know we’re talking about a game where you spend hours staring at a 5″ screen, but you may have friends, family, or coworkers who play as well. Real life recruits can be great since you may already know what they bring to the table. You’ve been chatting GoH with them for weeks already, right?

Check Your Traps

You may not have to do much of anything to fill up the guild. Why not let the players come to you? Don’t forget that there is a guild search in-game. This means that prospective guildmates can find your guild and send a request to join. These pop up fairly frequently and the quality of player you run in to can vary wildly, so be sure to check out their roster first.

The Cornerstones of Guilding

Have you ever gotten shade from your guildmates for really screwing something up? Attacking during a registration period, not earning enough Raid Tickets, or doing the wrong daily activities- there are plenty of opportunities to bork your guild without really meaning to (or even realizing it). It’s an embarrassing situation to say the least, but there are steps you can take together to make sure everyone is happy. After all, a happy guild is, well… happier!

Be Active

There really is no point in joining a guild if you’re not going to be active. There is a tool that Officers can use to track when a player’s last login was. It’s quite inaccurate most of the time, and can be off a day or more. But when it says you haven’t logged in for 14 days, they’re probably going to contact you- and rightly so. Most guilds don’t care how often you check in, just that you do it enough to get your daily tasks done and help out in raids (more on both of those later). You must remember: no matter how casual the guild, everyone benefits from more active players.

Communicate

Let’s face it: The in-game chat ain’t perfect. Just try typing “Humbling Blow”. You can communicate a bit there, but with lag issues, no archiving, and zero out-of-game notifications, there are better options. Many guilds use a messaging service like Line or Discord. Facebook Messenger can work well also if you’re all in the same Facebook group. Whatever service you choose, make sure everyone gets signed up. Make it a rule if you must, but the ability to have independent conversations can be a huge benefit for disciplinary contact as well as coordination of attacks, which I’ll talk more about in the Raid Etiquette section.

Work Toward Your Goals

As stated above, there really are a lot of different styles of play. Some guilds will have very stringent goals and may even map out when they plan to be able to achieve something such as a heroic raid. Just as long as everyone is on the same page, it’s all good. Planning for a Tier V Pit raid is exactly the same as planning for a Heroic Tank Takedown in that it requires everyone working together to achieve it. Take a look at your roster. Does your raid clear phases 2-4 of Tank Takedown pretty easily but struggles with phase 1? Maybe you should focus on your jedi team. Or maybe you need to get some good Potency Mods on your Teebo to help bring down the rancor in the Pit. Whatever it is, don’t forget: always be improving something.

Know the Schedule

There is a lot of stuff to do when you’re in a guild. It can be a little overwhelming at times, and each guild can be a little different here, too. But it’s important you know when things are happening so you don’t miss out on a raid or screw your guild out of Guild Currency. Some folks in my guild use a Google Calendar to automatically remind them every day what the current Guild Activity is and what the next one is as well. I personally set alarms on my phone to go off when it’s raid time.

Follow the Rules

I’m not going to explain this really, but it’s worth mentioning. Officers and leaders (for the most part) don’t like having to boot people.

Be Nice

It’s easy to forget sometimes that it’s all a game and we’re all ultimately trying to have fun. When someone breaks a rule, don’t shame them. Don’t blame one player’s weak roster on your failure to clear a raid. Instead, work together on improving that roster. Let the officers deal with “problem children” for the most part and do what you can to make the whole guild stronger.

The Daily Grind

There’s always something to do in Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. When you’re in a guild, there’s even more. But you have to know how and when to do some of that stuff to make your actions benefit the guild. A good guild can give you so much: raids, Guild Currency, and gear from the Exchange to name a few. Give back by doing your daily activities.

Understanding Raid Tickets

Spending 600 energy by the Guild Activity reset time (based on your guild leader’s time zone) is what creates Raid Tickets. These are the currency officers use to launch raids. If everyone spends 600/day in a full guild, you’ll generate 30,000 of these daily, letting you launch a Heroic Pit raid every other day. (600 x 50 = 30,000 | Heroic Pit costs 60,000 to launch.) Tank Takedown is a bit more expensive to launch, but the tickets are earned at the same rate, up to 30,000/day. This is one of the most important things to contribute, and also one of the easiest- just play a lot!

Daily Guild Activities

Every day in Galaxy of Heroes, one activity takes precedent over others. This changes at Guild Reset Time (around 6:30, depending on your leader’s time zone.) For instance, on Sunday, the activity is spending Cantina Energy. This means that after Guild Reset Time, you all get rewarded with Guild Currency for spending Cantina Energy. If you spent all your energy early in the day, you kind of shot yourself in the foot. You also shot your guild in the foot (though maybe not as hard) since there are Tiers of rewards based on how much the entire guild has spent. If you must, set a reminder or enter it in your calendar, it’s easy to goof up otherwise.

Here’s a great page from SWGOH.GG to bookmark to keep track of it: Guild Activities Schedule

Some Guild Activity pro tips:

Ship Challenges count toward your Thursday Challenges activity, but Fleet Arena Matches do not count toward your Saturday Arena Matches activity.

If you save your Galactic War from Monday, you should have a full board plus a Restart available when it becomes the Guild Activity on Tuesday. This gets you 24 nodes to play, and then an additional 12 after midnight when you earn an additional Restart. It should be noted that if everyone in guild does 24, you’ll still hit the highest tier, so some guilds mandate that everyone only does 24. The problem here is that if one idiot does 36, everyone gets hosed on rewards.

If you’re not gung-ho about a certain character that can only be farmed from Hard Mode, just do Normal battles all week until Wednesday, when Hard Mode is the Guild Activity. Set aside that one day a week to finish up your First Order Stromtrooper or Clone Sergeant while freely acquiring gear the rest of the week.

Keep an eye on how much energy you’re spending on days when normal energy becomes the Guild Activity. It’s easy to hold onto all your energy and forget to spend your 600 to earn Raid Tickets, which definitely outweigh Guild Activity.

Guild Exchange

The Guild Exchange is a useful feature that allows players to donate pieces of gear that others may need more than they do. There are a few things to keep in mind to maintain a healthy Exchange:

Remember the rule of supply and demand: If you keep asking for Mk 3 Czerka Stun Cuff Salvage (yeah, those) you’re going to keep getting 1 or maybe 0 donations. Make it something reasonable and you’ll stand a much better chance of receiving what you want.

Don’t be afraid to request an incredibly common piece of gear. There are achievements tied to how much you’ve donated and this allows all your guild mates to donate freely and work toward their achievements, which award Ally Points.

Maybe coordinate with a few others in a guild chat what top-end pieces of raid gear you have a surplus of. Even though it’s highly sought-after gear, you could maybe work out a little trading ring for it. I.e. you need Scanner salvage, but they need Fusion Furnace salvage. It’s a fair deal if you can get others involved.

Don’t be afraid to play Santa Claus. Sometimes, it’s nice to go in and just donate whatever people are asking for, however rare. You’ll get more, and they’ll be happier for it.

Raid Etiquette

Whether you’re stalling a pig, dropping a door on a rancor, or shocking six battle droids, there’s a lot to understand when it comes to raiding. This will not be a strategy guide, there are plenty of guides online that cover in gross detail all the strategies involved with succeeding individually. This is more an overall guide to the manners, or etiquette, of beating a pig to death.

When to Advance in Tiers

It can be difficult to gauge when a guild is ready to move from a Tier V Pit raid to a Tier VI. This is another area where having a solid communication channel like Line or Discord is important. You really need to gauge it on how easy the current raid is as well as how eager the guild is to try the next tier. One tool that can help a LOT is Pete Butler’s Roster Progress Indicator. In order to use this, you first must sync your account over at swgoh.gg (notice how often that site is coming up?). Once your account has been synced, you can enter your swgoh.gg character name in a text field and it imports all your character data and shows in color-coded charts which characters of yours are ready for a raid and which ones are not, organized by the standard raid teams. This site is one of the most useful raid tools on the web. Period.

When a Heroic Raid Becomes Too Easy

What once seemed an impossible feat is now something that is finished in 20 minutes. If raids start clearing too quickly, people start missing out on them if they’re no legged in when they’re launched. Not all of us can be glued to our phones 24/7, so guilds have come up with solutions to this problem.

One Attack in the First 24 Hours

Some guilds employ a rule whereby each player is allowed to attack only once in the first 24 hours. This certainly still favors those who can log in first, since Phase One of the Pit raid is by far the easiest to manipulate, therefore racking up more damage, but it makes it so that the whole thing doesn’t get finished in the time it takes someone to mow the lawn. The problems here is that some folks may not respect the rule, and it can be hard to keep track of who has attacked once and who has maybe gone a few times. Monitoring the leaderboard all day is not a fun thing to do, so let’s look an another popular option:

0-Damage Registration Period

The 0-Damage Registration Period is much simpler than the One Attack method. In it, players are given a time period (usually 6, 12, or 24 hours) in which they can send in one terrible awful character to score 0 damage. This is most common on Pit raids, where you can target the side pigs if for some reason you must attack, which will still score a 0. The idea behind this is that if, when the Registration Period is up, you are unable to play, you still get last place rewards. This is a popular practice because 1) it ensures that everyone has a chance to at least get something out of each raid, and 2) It’s obvious when someone doesn’t comply. Any number other than 0 by their name on the leaderboard means they goofed. What to do about that in the Dealing With Conflicts section.

The Right Team for the Job

Some guilds have so many Teebos that there’s a mad scramble to see who can clear Phase 1 of aPit raid the fastest. Others don’t really have a good Turn Meter squad put together and are just starting to strategize. Still more are struggling with Tank Takedown phases that punish you hard if you don’t bring an appropriate team. Whatever the case, it’s a best practice to try and bolster in whatever are your guild is weakest. Take the Tank Takedown, of instance: If you have several good Jedi teams and everyone burns through the easier phases (2 & 4) you’re going to have a much bigger impact on the success of your guild by working on a Chirpatine (see the Roster Progress Indicator mentioned above) team or a jawa with TIE Fighter Pilot team to bring the hurt to Phase 3. Clear communication with the guild and paying attention to what is needed go a long way in raiding.

Wasting damage

Did you know that if you end a phase while someone else is playing, all the damage they do will be wasted? Oh sure, they’ll still get points for it, but as far as clearing the raid goes, that damage could have been applied somewhere else. This is only ever an issue when you’re attempting a raid that is just within your guild’s capabilities and you’re near the end of a phase, but it happens and it can be the difference of finishing or not finishing a Heroic raid. In this type of situation, it is of the utmost importance that you’re calling out when you’re going in and when you’re finishing your runs in your group chat. This is the single biggest reason you need good communication.

Sandbagging

In the Pit raid, each Phase gets progressively harder, so there’s no point in waiting to go in. Each phase that passes makes it harder and harder for you to do good damage. The Tank Takedown doesn’t exactly work like that however. Any experienced Tank Taker-Downer can tell you that the big damage comes in Phases 2 and 4. What that can lead to is people waiting to send their teams in until Phase 1 is cleared by someone who takes one for the team. They then send their best squads in to rack up huge scores in the easy phases.

Look, this is human nature. People want to be number one, and this is a strategy to help them get there. All I can really say is to try and be considerate. Not everyone is awake at Roster Refresh Time (midnight in your leader’s timezone), so a lot of folks only ever get to play the harder phases. If you get a couple good runs in on Phase 2, maybe it’s time for bed. *steps off soap box*

Dealing With Conflicts

Being an Officer isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s fun being the one who launches the raid, recruits new players, cheers your troops on to victory, and clarifies rules or strategy. But another part of being an officer is fair discipline. Handing out punishments is always awkward, but it’s an important part of any healthy group of people. Those who don’t follow the rules must pay the price.

Types of Offenses

It would be impossible to create an exhaustive list of what can go wrong within a guild. But the most common issues are:

Violations of Raid Etiquette – As in attacking out of turn or during a zero-damage period.

Inactivity – If they don’t play enough to meet minimum guild requirements, they’re not going to be devastated when they log in and see nothing in the Guilds area.

Bad Attitude – Whether your guild has spelled out a Code of Conduct or not, some people are just bad apples. If someone’s being a jerk in-game or in chat, you may just be better off without them.

How To Handle Offenses

It really is up to you to decide what rules make sense for the type of guild you’re in. For instance, an offense punishable by dropping in one guild may be fair game in another. The important thing is that you’re clear with the rules and expectations and that you’re consistent with enforcement. Some enforcement tactics that have proven effective in the past are:

Talk to Them

You set up a group on Line or Discord, right? Have a one-on-one with the individual and see if you can get an explanation or if there was just a misunderstanding or something. Quite often, contacting an individual member about something they are doing wrong corrects the behavior without much need for punitive action.

Sit out the Next Raid

If a player’s not following the rules of a raid, making them sit the next one out is a form of punishment that doesn’t involve banishing them entirely. It’s easy to tell who participated in a raid even after it’s completed, just as long as you don’t start a new one of the same type and tier as the one in question. Just go to where you would launch a raid of that type and tier and it should still show the Leaderboard from the last instance. If the party involved’s name isn’t on the list, they didn’t participate and they’re in the clear.

The Dreaded Boot

There are some situations that you’re not going to be able to resolve. If someone fails to sit out a raid when that is their sentence, for instance. Harassment isn’t a huge problem in my experience, but it’s certainly something that could get someone dropped. Just remember: recruiting can be a lot of work and it can take a while to find a good guildmate, but if someone has to go, they have to go. If someone is such a problem that they have to get booted, whoever you recruit to fill their spot will almost certainly be a better fit.

While every guild is different, we do all share a few things: we all want to have a good time and we all like to earn rewards. No matter what kind of guild you’re in, we should all be striving to improve in some way. Otherwise, what’s the point? Hopefully this has helped in some way to shed some light on the inner workings of guild life. Happy guilding!

Have any other best practices? What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below.

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