How does YOUR guild handle flasks and food?

[Bigtime]

Hey all,

Just wondering how people's guilds deal with flasks and food. The reason I ask is that my guild master has recently made flasking mandatory - which is fine by me, I've been waiting for this change for a while!

However, there's some dispute about how we should handle it. On our server, both flasks and mats are fairly expensive at the AH (usually up to 50g each and actually more expensive for the mats on their own). Some people have suggested being offered cheaper flasks provided by the guild's herbalists and alchemists. However, this seems a bit over the top considering the amount of farming the herbalists would have to do.

I don't mind helping out farming mats for Fish Feasts, since each one is used by the entire guild (although I'd be interested as to how this works in other guilds too), but flasks are a little different.

By the way, would you recommend farmers earning additional DKP for their contribution to the guild's progress? (With a limit to how much can be awarded per week.)

How does your guild handle this?

[Theotherone]

With us, someone will bring fish feasts - but flasks, potions, elixirs, are on our own dime. I don't use fish feasts (I use specific buff food), but have two toons that are leveled in cooking so if I've been fishing I'll bring some.

My old guild was small and provided flasks, etc.

[vine]

People are expected to bring their own flasks, just like each person is expected to farm enough dailies to earn gold for repairs. There's a minimum level of commitment required for progression raiding.

However, we also sell any BoE epics that aren't rolled on by main spec. This money is used to buy fish feasts as well as flasks for those people that need them in a pinch. You probably think the flasks get leeched, but quite the opposite, they sit in the bank and never get touched.

One nice thing we were able to do by selling BoE's is pay for everyone's Dual Spec fee when they were introduced.

[Bovinity]

Our guild sells BoE/Recipes and takes donations. We use the gold to buy mats and make flasks that are for sale for 20g/each for raiders. Fish Feasts are generally supplied by various guild members on a largely non-official basis.

No one should just expect herbalists to go out farming all the time so that people who are frankly lazy can get cheap flasks. That's absurd and a pretty tremendous expectation to have.

Making sure you are well-stocked with your own gems, enchants, and consumables is often a good way to tell who is genuinely dedicated and who is just along for the ride. If folks are whining about having to bring their own flasks and such, you can start getting a pretty good idea about what category they're in.

[Proletaria]

Our raiders are responsible for their own flasks and food buffs. We generally have a few players who bring feasts, but it's not guild provided since a lot of us use other more particular food buffs.

Things get changed up for lengthy progression content (if we're going to spend a few days working on a certain boss). During that time we'll hand out flasks and open the bank for repairs on a given night.

[Pesko]

Im my old guild, I provided the raids with Fishies, while i used 40str/40stam my self.
Though, we had a rule saying EVERYONE should bring their own consumables.

[Darksend]

Care packages. But we flask on everything to upload good parses to wmo and wol (even normal 25 trial) so when the care package flasks run out we are expected to bring our own.

Those people who want the guild alchemists to make them stuff are just lazy, and as an herbalist I would feel no obligation to help them.

The guild bank sells all the patterns once at least one officer has it and BOE's that drop and are not used by main spec. We also get guild repair for progression raiding.

[nethervoid]

Disclaimer: My guild is a 10m exclusive guild. We only have like 13 slots for members. As such, it's much easier to do what our guild does. If your guild does 25m content, you probably won't have enough donators to do this and/or won't be able to keep up with how fast your raids consume your guild supplies (just another reason why 25m content is pointless, as it's the same content as 10m).

Our guild has a two prong approach:

1. Donations
2. Guild gem sales...driven by donations, which I'll explain in a minute

1. First of all, many people in our guild are very generous. If I say 'wow fish feast supply is getting low', 2 to 3 people will throw like a stack in there. Officers bring fish feasts from the guild bank to every raid. We almost always have enough [ > 95% ].

If I say 'wow flask supply is really slim', I'll generally get a little help there, but not as much as with the fish because flasks are much more expensive (20-30g on our server for finished product - much cheaper for raws).

If we have more than 2000g in the guild bank, I'll open up repairs at the end of a raid. I don't leave it open the whole raid. That would drain the bank too quickly. Our members are expected to have repair money. Opening the bank at the end is just a little bit of 'help' to offset that cost.

2. Myself and one other member are pretty much fat cats from working our professions like a clock. Due to this, we spend about a quarter of our profession making time to make money for the guild. It really doesn't take much time. Just have to make stuff and then sell it on the AH. We also sell any BoE epics that drop which nobody in the raid needs (this is pretty rare as we only do 10m - We don't get patterns and trophies and crap - IMO this is retarded but that's for a different thread).

We then dump that gold in the guild bank. It adds up pretty fast (I think we have about 4k in the guild bank ATM). With that gold we suppliment our flask and fish feast supply via the AH when we really are running low on resources and donations alike.

In addition to this, we put a lot of enchant mats in the bank from runs. We give these away to guildies, specifically people needing enchants that use more than 2 epic shards. We also have a person in guild with all the enchant patterns and JC epic cuts. These two keep costs down quite a bit.

That's pretty much it. Easy, low-overhead system that really does make raiding much less of a chore for everyone.

Again, this probably won't work very well for a 25 man team. We go through about...20-30 flasks per raid night, give or take (3 hours of raiding) x 2-3 days a week = 40-90 flasks per week. For a 25 man that would be 50-75 flasks per night x 4-5 days a week (more HC raid schedule) = 200-375 flasks per week. lol Good luck!

[Umtha]

Hi there.

Our guild tries to accomodate a lot for their members. We're a 10man focusing guild with weekly trips to 25's.

Basicly our guild is a small community and this week I kinda put it to the test. I send a mass mail to guildies to tell them the guildbank is looking for specific mats. 2 days later there was close to no room left (6 tabs, organized ofcourse) with raw mats.

We use herbs like Icethorn and Lichbloom and buy frost lotus on AH. All the mats will be converted to flasks which we sell at ((Price of all frost lotus / amount of flasks crafted)-2g) for Full Members and +2g for Trial Members. That way the guild bank makes a small profit which we can use for the fluctuating market of flasks.

30 minutes before the raid we open our "flask shop" where we sell up to 1 flask per raiding hour to all raiding members.

Our plans are to make this happen with Gems as well, but as you may know Gems are in higher demand so we have to work that out still.

We have 3/4 people fishing for Fish Feasts by doing dailies. If we are low we gather up all fishermen to fish a certain material for 30-45 minutes. If you do that with 5-ish people then ye got about a 100 fish feasts. Cooking Tokens are used for the Spices.

I understand this system might not work for every guild since it requires dedication from the members. But all and all its a great system to boost morale and have people feel like a part of a community

just my 2 ct.

[Nurasha]

I raid lead most of the runs in my guild. We run a DKP system, giving 10 dkp/hr and 10/boss. If someone fails to use their flask or have their foodbuff up, I'll wait for it to happen and deduct 30dkp/minute. Needless to say, I very rarely have those problems.

[anywherenotes]

Agreed with other posters, it's absurd to ask from herbalists more than from other raiders.

Our guild sells flasks for 25g each. Our guild also gives EP (we use epgp system) for money and frost lotus donations, along with some non-herbal donations. So basically guild uses alchemyst's skill to make flasks, but the mats are bought by the guild (through donation money).

We are also required to use flasks, but we buy them during the raid, and the fish feasts are provided by the guild as well (from donations).

We award same amount of EP for 1,000 gold donation (cap at 2,000 gold donation per week), as a clearing of ToC or the first 4 ICC bosses.

So yes, if you can contribute to the guild you will have more EP for getting epics, but truthfully with the EP decay of 20% every week, it's not a big deal. Donations are rewarded, but you'll get the gear without it as well. And the item cost is so high that someone who never donates will get an item before the person who donates will get the second item (pretty much no matter how often they donate, unless new item isn't dropping for weeks).

[Airowird]

As an average 25man guild:
All d/e and BoE (including recipes) is either AH'd or sharded and then sold.
Flask mats & fish feast mats are bought with this gold, either at ~80% market value from guild members or straight from the AH.
Fish Feasts are dropped in raids by officers (or someone who can do it for them)
Flasks are sold at 300g per stack to members (not allowed for trialists or alts)

[Sorastoro]

We take the simple approach. Everyone is responsible for their own flasks and food. I make a standard deal with all of the raiders. I'm an Elixir spec Alchemist and "Chef". If they bring me mats, I craft food and flasks for free. They are responsible for their own mats. There are several of us that bring fish feasts, but for those that prefer another food effect, if they bring it, I'll cook it.

[Bodasafa]

Raiders should be responsible for their own consumables.

[Keona]

In my tank's guild, we use my shaman (which is in a different guild) as the guild alchemist. I make the flasks free with mats or offer them at half the auction house price to guilds. We also use an EPGP loot system allowing members to earn up to 1,000 EP per week through donating to the guild bank. You gain 5 EP per 1 G value donated. So basically on Borean Tundra, flasks are going around 30 G each. I sell them to the guildies for 15 G each. Or they can be donated to the guild bank for 150 EP each. We also offer people to buy the flasks from the guild bank for 1/2 the AH price.

As for fish feasts, most of the officers have at least 1 450 cook / 450 fisher so we stay pretty stocked up on mats with our own farming. However, it would be pretty much the same rules. You donate and you get EP. But the feasts would be picked up by an officer or raid leader out of the guild bank for each raid. Specific food (+40 Agility or +40 haste) can be requested with the same rules as flasks; buy for 1/2 the AH price from the guild bank.

All funds go back into the guild bank, just in case we don't farm one week and mats need to be bought. It's also saving up for future repairs; if we choose to open those up as well.

[dakoto70]

When I was running my guild and we started raiding on a regular basis. I had all my regular raiders donate mats to the guild bank. What ever their profession was or their alts profession was they could go farm a stack of what ever and we had enough high lvl to perform the duties that needed to be done with them. My tank is an alchemist and GM and my warlock was an enchanter, both have the cooking maxed. I am a freak , I guess because I don't mind going out and mindlessly farming stuff we needed and I was very very fortunate that I had a few other people who did not mind it either. We didn't charge for our services but if someone used us for something they knew that they had to donate back to the GB via money or mats for something. GB was always open for repairs during raid progression nights. I even had a few people refuse to use it because they said " if they wanted to raid they needed to be able to raid and paying for the repairs was part of raiding". It worked for us.

[Hoochieswif]

One way we keep up our stock of flasks in the bank is farming Ulduar. If you have 10 people who are bored, and just want to kill something, form a group and kill up to Freya. Make sure you bring an alchemist. Her alchemy sack has tons of flasks, pots, etc. Not to mention all the lotus and herbs you pick in the conservatory of life. It is free, and easy...Plus fun!

We also have "fishing parties" where a bunch of us will go out to wintersgrasp together. The time flies when you have a few people helping you. Jump on vent and fish, instead of less productively standing in Dalaran. At the end of our session, they hand me the fish and I cook em up and drop them into the GB for people to grab for raids.

[Pitstarter]

We're a 25 man raiding guild.

Raiders are responsible for their own flasks and they are expected to be used unless some theorycrafter uses a combination of elixirs that serve them better. We provide fish feasts but again, some folk prefer to have their own raid food. We do try however, to supply flasks to anyone that has to raid out of spec or on an alt for the night to plug a hole with a last minute cancellation. A minor way of saying thanks for making sure we can raid that evening.

One of my alts is an elixir master and will happily craft flasks for raiders, likewise my main is a chef and fisherman so can usually pop off for some fishin'.

[Bung]

I got it pretty good. All Boe drops get sold to pay for repairs/flasks. Someone always drops fish. Flasks are free from g bank. Nice huh?

[Meldwyn]

We rely upon the generosity of Core members. We provide flasks and feasts as needed, although, not surprisingly, most folks bring their own and are not needy. We are a small community of raiders who are less than elitist but more than casual. We also have a written Guild Charter and Code of Conduct everyone agrees to before joining, so having a common vision and purpose helps keep everyone focused on what's most important... we succeed by helping each other. Someone else said this earlier, but it doesn't take long for us to see who fits and who doesn't fit in our environment.

Bottom line. Make a policy and stick to it. Write it down and make sure everyone buys in to it.

Good luck!