I have spent quite a bit of time in the last few weeks helping others create their own guild and then get the 2500 influence needed to create an additional 50 slots of storage. I thought I would do a quick list of things we learned in the process:
- The 50 slots of storage you gain can only be used for storage of items that are not Account Bound or Soulbound. So examples of items that will store there are pieces of gear that have not yet been equipped; cooked products - final or intermediate items used later that will not store in your personal cooking collection; runes or sigils.
- PVE points earned from doing Events is the main way in PVE areas to earn guild influence. The amount of influence earned goes up significantly if two members are representing the guild and doing the Event as a team together. If you represent and do the event solo, you earn 2 influence. If you team up with a fellow guildie and you both represent and do the event together, you earn 20 influence. This amount though does NOT keep going up when there are 3 or 4 members teamed up and doing it, the cap is 20. You are better off going out in groups of 2 and doing Events.
- Grouping together as a team and doing WvWvW is the fastest way to earn guild influence. A team of 3 - 5 actively taking supply camps, killing caravans, participating in map events (killing veterans, helping the quagan, etc.) and participating in zerg keep takes when it fits can earn 1000+ guild influence in a few hours. This makes getting the full 2500 needed achievable by yourself and 4 friends in a matter of a couple of days.
- It will take you several days to get your final 50 guild bank slots due to the built in timers for the steps needed.
- The first step at 500 influence is to queue up Research Architecture Level 1 which takes 15 hours.
- Once you have another 1000 influence, queue up Research Architecture Level 2 which takes 32 hours.
- When the last 1000 influence is earned, you queue up Guild Stash, which takes 48 hours.
- You can only be a member of 4 guilds at any one time. Most times trying to join more than 4 guilds at once gives you a nonsense string of numbers error. If someone is having trouble joining and representing in your newly created guild, be sure they are not already in 4 guilds. The error messages this toss is nonsense numerical sequences and it took a while to figure out what the problem really was. We just worked the guild creation and leveling in rotation -- joining friend A's guild, getting 2500, all of us leaving friend A guild and then joining friend B guild.
I hope this information helps others out there trying to earn some extra storage space for 'free'. Good luck!