Hello, Nekos! It’s time for another semi-monthly guild newsletter.
May has seen a lot of growth, including continued climbs in gear score, numerous new members, and regular participation in Luscas/Abyssal Attack and Mistmerrow. We’ve also been through another (short-lived) war, and enjoyed numerous top-tier boss kills with our allies. Many of our members have been progressing along their Dream Ring quests thanks to Nazar, Riesig, and Kraken kills. We’ve been able to get many of our members the Earthen Roar mount and have nearly completed three Harrod sets for our plate wearers. Serpentis is able to be run fairly regularly, and we can often knock out Weekend Dahuta in ten minutes or less. Finally, we’ve begun slowly collecting Enoan Galleon scraps with the eventual goal of building our own in the far future.
This month’s goals in brief:
- Keep pushing that gear score! We need more 4k+ members for top-tier raids.
- Regular guild income generation through a more formalized donation system and consistent Abyssal Attack raids.
- Serious PvP practice at Mistmerrow, Diamond Shores, and Luscas/Abyssal Attack.
- Increased participation in scheduled guild raids.
This month’s Neko Hero candidates:
Please reserve your upvotes and election votes for one of these members, and pass public raids lead to them. Elected heroes must reach 4,000 Leadership by the end of the month to receive payment for their services to the faction, so be sure to help them earn leadership whenever possible!
- Azelle
- Venumos
If you’d like to be an officially sponsored Neko hero candidate, please speak with Azelle before soliciting upvotes from guild members.
Q&A
Since we have a lot of new members, I feel it appropriate to do a different format for our newsletter this month. Below are some questions and concerns that have been brought to me frequently over the past few weeks.
Why does Neko have sponsored heroes?
Neko attempts to consolidate our hero candidates in order to 1) maximize our chance of getting heroes and 2) ensure those heroes get the required leadership for the top tier hero reward boxes. If we split our support, thumbs, and votes between more than about three members, we are increasingly less likely to benefit as a guild. We choose our hero candidates based on the same criteria as we chose our officers: they must present a good face for Neko, benefit our guild through participation, and demonstrate excellent leadership capabilities. Sponsored Neko heroes are required to give 10% of their hero reward box gold to the Guild Fund.
What is the Guild Fund and how does it work?
Our Guild Fund is also variously known as the guild treasury and guild coffer.
It’s filled in the following ways:
- It’s recently begun to receive a consistent inflow of gold through donation of one Abyssal Attack trade pack per raid member.
- Effective immediately, officers will be required to give a minimum of 50g per week to the guild fund, payable each Friday.
- Members are not required, but are strongly encouraged to donate a weekly stipend based on income, especially if you are unable to participate in guild income-earning events.
- As mentioned above, sponsored heroes are required to give 10% of their hero reward box gold to the guild.
Our plans for the guild fund are:
- to continue upgrading ship components, starting with clipper sails and propellants, so every member who participates regularly in guild naval actions has a capable clipper.
- to purchase Red Dragon Scales for creation of the ring and harpoon needed for the Red Dragon fight
- to purchase pots and ammo for emergency distribution in raids.
- As the fund grows, we will also begin purchasing Enoan Galleon Scraps towards the 5,000 needed to construct the ship, and we can consider purchasing castle siege scrolls (see below).
Even if none of these uses for our gold particularly interest you as an individual, they are vital for our continued growth. Every member benefits either directly or indirectly from the expenditures from our coffers.
Do we have any plans to hold a castle?
Yes. As we grow in not only numbers, but strength, there is no reason we should not be able to hold a castle of our own. We are not currently strong enough, although I believe we are close.
What needs to happen before I will consider holding a castle:
- Our average guild gear score needs to be around 5k. We must be able to hold our own against the strong members of every faction during a siege.
- Our guild coffers must be able to support bidding on castle siege scrolls. We currently hover around 1-2k gold; that number needs to be closer to 20k.
- Members must show themselves willing and able to participate in guild-scheduled raids. There is no reason to expect people to be present for a castle siege if they are not currently showing in force for much easier, more consistent, and less crucial raids.
In order for this to be viable, it is absolutely vital we continue to push ourselves in both gear and in participation in organized raids and PvP. If you want us to hold a castle, you, the members, need to work with me to make this happen.
I want to run [insert boss/dungeon here]! Why don’t we?
We currently have an official raid schedule here. Before I will add more to it, I need to see more participation in the existing events. Even if the event doesn’t benefit you directly, please have a broader view of how it may benefit the guild as a whole and therefore you, indirectly. In particular, I want to see more participation in Abyssal Attack, because that feeds our coffers, our Enoan Galleon goal, and our PvP practice.
Raids I would like to begin regularly not included on the raid schedule are: Dahuta (10 man), Library floor bosses (at reset), and Anthalon (on the schedule but on hold). Additionally, we were farming the bosses needed for the Ayanad cloak with our ally, Awakening; they have a stockpile now, so I would love to be able to start farming them by ourselves. If we can get another ship geared up, I will negotiate with Awakening about splitting the Delphinad Ghost Ships and Kraken between us.
Speaking of Awakening, aren’t we getting a bum deal?
Short answer: no, we are not. We receive numerous tangible and intangible benefits from our alliance with them. I will enumerate them below:
- When we help them kill dragon, we receive the same treatment as their guild. We are able to bid on the drops at their guild discount (roughly 50% off auction house price) and roll on the dragon statue, and every raid member receives a cut from the sale of the drop.
- For helping them kill Ayanad cloak mat bosses, they give us the mats as we need them. If you have all the other mats together to upgrade your cloak, send me a mail in-game with your cloak-name and I’ll get it for you.
- We are the only guild on the server they are forbidden to steal from, a benefit that should not be overlooked. But our help isn’t just a so-called “protection tax”; they also come to our aid when other guilds attempt to pirate us.
- They augment our raids as we do theirs. This is seen less because they organize more top-tier content than we do (for reasons already explained above).
- Killing mana towers in Auroria benefits the faction more than it does Awakening. It allows farming of the Queen’s Coin Purses and completion of the Hunting Orders quest (which members of Awakening can’t even get).
- They allow us to participate in actions when our help isn’t needed, such as Delphinad Ghost Ships and Kraken — things we can not do on our own (until we get better ships and greater participation) and they otherwise have no reason to share.
We are a large guild, hovering at near-cap, with more applications coming in every day. However, that doesn’t in itself make us as strong as the other, more hard-core guilds, such as Awakening. We are the lesser partner, plain and simple. If we want to be on truly equal footing to them, we need to push ourselves and grow in strength. In the mean time, I will continue to use diplomacy to our advantage so we are able to engage in top-tier content, and I need our members to honor and support the arrangements I negotiate.
I want more/better content.
Great! So do I! Let’s work together to make this happen.
Here is what I need from our guild members:
- Come to our PvP raids, lessons, and OMGHELPME raids. Mistmerrow, Abyssal Attack, and Freedich Gold Trader are prime examples. Also do some arenas with guildies. If you’re not interested in participating in PvP…
- Go to a few PvP raids (not just one!) and give it a shot before you write it off. Ask for some tips from our experienced PvPers (TeamSpeak is easiest for this). Nothing beats the rush of a good battle with your guildies at your side. With the event gear, everyone can get 4k gear score and be at least viable. If you give it a shot and still don’t like it…
- Come to our PvE raids, specifically those on our official schedule. Everyone, PvPers included, needs to try to make time for these. We are in serious need of more participation so we can get mats, gear, and gold. If you can’t make the raid because of the timing…
- Donate to the guild coffers. Pick a stipend or percentage or number of pack turn-ins to donate every Friday and do so consistently. Even if you don’t see the returns directly (we won’t be gearing people who don’t come to guild actions), you will reap the benefits by being in a strong, happy guild. And finally, every member should…
- Help your guildmates. Help them run dungeons, packs, grab land, and get their questions answered.
If you can’t do any of these things consistently, then you should find a different guild which exists as a community of individuals rather than one with shared goals. Neko is playing a long game, but we are still interested in continued progress.
Diverse, but Strong
Perhaps half our members are semi-casual, and our interests range widely. I believe this diversity is crucial to the community we have built, but it does limit our raw strength. It means it will take longer to achieve certain goals, and it means our hard-core members need to push even harder. But that doesn’t mean our “potatoes” are dead weight. As listed above, everyone can — and should — contribute.
We have come a long way from the quiet little guild we started a year ago to Aranzeb’s second-to-the-top East guild. I believe we can go farther, so let’s do it!
<3,
~Azelle
Shortlink: j.mp/npjune2016
Please use this forum thread to discuss this newsletter.