I mentioned this briefly in another thread as one of the problems with consumables, but I thought the topic is big enough for its own thread. Prior to the expansion, there were lots of ways for guilds to make gold for their banks to cover expenses like potions, flasks, and respecs - selling MC BoEs, MC materials (cores/leather/etc), Elementium Ore, and MC/BWL/even Naxx BoP items. So far in TBC, none of the raid zones seem to drop unique sellable materials or BOEs, so those options are no longer available. The reduction in the raid size from 40 means that selling slots for BoP gear is more of a real cost to the raid group, and the existing 25 man content (barring Maulgar) is already difficult enough without someone tagging along to buy loot. The most realistic zone to sell BoP items from is Karazhan, but as a 10 man, it's even harder to make room for someone who's just along for the ride, and it's less of a guild effort and more of a sacrifice for that particular group.

So my question for discussion here is - since the 'traditional' avenues for funding a guild bank are largely obsolete, how have you managed to keep the resource available? How do you handle tank flask/pot costs and possible fight-specific respecs?

Honestly, I don't see a good way to do it without relying on the membership to just come prepared with their own consumables. Its too annoying to ferry people in for gear drops. Personally I cut in my group whenever I sell something that took a Primal Nether, not that its a ton, but it gives folks some extra free cash just for running instances.

Unlike in EQ where spells and runes for spells dropped which provided an actual source of income for the bank, it doesn't seem to really be the case here.

On the plus side, farming flasks/most potions now really isn't shit, and anyone serious about raiding might as well give up a profession slot for herbalism right now because nothing else will probably help you in the long run as much as just being able to pick plants when you need to.

We used to rely very heavily on running people through MC/BWL in order to fund our expendable usage in Naxx. As noted this is no longer really an option, so guess the few of us in the guild that aren't already herbalists will have to start making herbalist twinks =/

Quite simply, we don't, but then as an entirely new guild as of TBC we weren't able to exploit BWL and MC. Will it be possible to exploit Karazhan? unlikely. Gruul's Lair, definately in a month or two. But at present we're just relying on a lot of contributions, and with regards to herbs i'm spending a lot of my non-pve time grinding gold to buy them and then making 50% of the raids requirements myself.

Actually is there a way to ensure that the gold from a boss goes to one person? I wonder how fast one could plow through BWL on a saturday morning or something and just loot all the money to the guild bank. The problem I'm seeing is that many guilds are newly formed and its not a question of how to keep the money flowing, but how to even establish a guild bank fund.

Karazhan drops Soul Essences. We've been collecting them; I haven't tried to sell any, since I don't know whether Arcane Resist will be important for later raids.

However, this is a fairly minor nitpick. Soul Essences are only used for three cloth items with AR, and those items aren't a requirement for progression in Karazhan. I don't expect them to have the same kind of aftermarket that cores did.

We're currently sitting on a fairly small cash balance that we made from running Molten Core and selling Sulfuron Ingots to people with more money than ability to predict Burning Crusade 2H weapon DPS. We supplement this to a small degree by selling the Arcane Dust that piles up from greens.

Given the Karazhan difficulty level, I think this'll get us through that instance. Gruul's Lair worries me. If it gets retuned before we get there, which is completely probable given our speed of progression, things will be okay. But this may be simply putting off the day when we go broke.

Any sign of salable crafting components in Serpentshrine?

Yes, make the master looter leave the raid group, pick up the gold and then rejoin the raid.

We had a pretty filled guid bank pre TBC and sold everything when we did our server transfer, so I suppose we have some funds to rely on atm. That being said, consumables (other then flasks/tank stuff) are at the moment the member's responsability. We had a dkp rewarding system for herbs, and I suppose that will be reastablished once we start using dkp again.

Primal Vortex

We have no way to fuel guild banks atm, so people have to provide their own flasks and consumables (even our prot warriors) for raiding, aswell as respecing for Gruul.

I've heard that a fair amount of people have now turned to account shareing in order to have access to Herbalism.
Leveling an alt to 70, then getting him a flying mount, and then an epic flying mount because the normal one drives you mad after getting used to the epic one, is not fun just to enable you to farm so you can raid on your main character.

I personally tried this, and decided its not worth the risk, my old rogue (62) is a tailor and makes me 250g per 4days with Mooncloth(spec) & Spellcloth, which I splash into herbs off the AH - simple.

Only thing our 'guild bank' can do atm is provide our melee with Void Crystals which we get from Karazhan for their Mongoose enchant.

You pretty much need a hardcore group of people (5, 10, 15?) who don't mind farming herbs 10-20 hours a week for the entire raid. A herbalist on a epic mount can farm a dozen stacks in an hour of various herbs.

Of course keeping those people motivated to farm week after week, especially after a series of unfortunate wipes, is tough...

Assuming nobody does anything dumb and causes repair bills, what would be the minimum number of lvl 70s that could fully clear BWL, and how much gold could be earned and how long would it take?

My income on full BWl (in 40 raid ofc) was around 50g if i recall. Even doubling that, its still not efficent as trivial farming for motes/netherweave/whatever. But probably not that boring.

Well if the entire run was worth 50g x 40, that's a very decent haul for the guild bank if it can be farmed in say, 2 hours tops by maybe 25 or fewer people.

~2k gold from bosses if only 1 person looted it (iirc going with 40 people I'd come out with a 50g profit or so from bwl, 50x40 = 2k)

Good to know, that might actually be a viable way to farm gold rapidly for a guild bank if the values haven't been changed at all.

If you had the same 20 something people that you were gonna take to clear bwl go grind primals / rep items / whatever for the same amount of time as the BWL would take you will make far more gold just farming.

Exactly.

The only reason things like BWL ever were a source of money is that they offered comparatively scarce resources. Take that away, and they are a poor gold/hr investment. At best you're just dressing up organized farming with a nicer coat, at the expense of efficiency.

If you took a 25-man TBC raid and told them to go off and farm, pairing up the pure healers with AoE casters for duo farming, and letting the herbalists just pick herbs, and after two hours you had everyone mail all their herbs, primals, greens, etc., to the guild bank to use and/or AH, you'd end up with far, far more gold than a BWL run would yield.

One other option to increase money from Karazhan- the chess event chest. You can invite someone after the event is over, and they can zone in and loot the chest. This week, one of our groups had the plate boots drop and didn't need them. We spent 5 minutes in Trade channel trying to sell them, and quite easily found a warrior who paid 1k gold to zone in and loot them.

It's far from guaranteed, and the person has to be kara keyed, but it's definitely an option, especially if you have 2-3 groups that clear Kara weekly.

I know this may sound particularly unpopular, but has anybody had experience just using a 'Raiding Tax'. I know just using the word 'taxes' probably conjures all sorts real world rational, and irrational feelings.

But I mean, lets call a spade a spade, raiding requires X gold per week from the raiding population in order to be successful. All the past schemes of raising gold typically involved acquiring and selling materials/drops that only raiding guilds could get their hands on to sell. In absence of those kinds of exclusive services, most organizations/governments tax their members to raise the necessary operating funds.

If you need 1000g/week to raid, why not just have all (25 or so) active raiders pay 40-50g/week in taxes. Then they can chose on their own how they pay that. No need to tax people's time with guild fund raisers, etc. It also has the additional benefit of making the weekly cost very clear to the raiding population, and they can make informed choices about what they want to do.

We run Kara on FFA loot, and all loot (the only exception is gray items) is picked up by a designated looter, and it all goes to the guild bank.

What is the accepted 'best' class for being an herb farmer? Hunters?

Rogues or druids for instance only herbs

I think the presence of an epic flying mount pretty much closes the gap between classes farming herbs. Instances however, I'd say Druids and Rogues.