If guilds in SK had any advantages besides being a second friends' list and a private meeting hall, energy wells would have some purpose.

As of now guild members are usually charged weekly for being in the guild. This is because most guild members do not contribute to their guild(as they have no sense of belonging in their guild or are repulsed by it). The only contributing members of a guild are usually veterans and mostly officers and guild masters.

If guilds provided exclusive bonuses or features(excluding the advanced² training hall), guild members ranging from members and above would contribute their time to improving the guild.

It would be better(in my opinion) if HoH was removed(or at least the NPC recipe providers) and a private(an AH showing auctions made within the guild) auction house was added, thus re-adding specialties to certain guilds.

EDIT: [Forgot to add the most important point] Once a guild has its specialty, it would be better to allow weekly energy well withdrawal for certain ranked members to reward them for their contributions.

Hopefully, I made some sense

What about: random 'mist tank' drops, as rare as orbs, that scale with depth. The more lower the more mist that contains...

Said mist tanks can only be deposited into mist well and only be use by guild masters for furniture buying/crafting or even upgrades.

The mist tanks will generate mist periodicly that scales with the current amount of mist in the well and/or the upkeep of the guild.
Futhermore, said inputs and output of mist should be logged like crowns and matts are.

This could induce guilds to run with other members (maybe a greater percentage of drop per guild member on team) and if not Arcade could be revive by making said tanks only drop there.

Lastly, theres should be a tutorial or missions upon guild creation, introducing this function that gives away a sample tank to help guilds start generating mists.

Dahall's statement about new recruits not being invested enough to help pay upkeep has been problems to me across several currently dormant guilds.

I have a suggestion but i fear to create an OP because several GH improvement posts have been done with better ideas, plus my ideas are rather short not really worthy a full new thread

Anyhow, Guilds should have bonuses toward new recruits: when a member joins another with equal or lower ranking, the lower ranking player(if none all) will receive a bonus.

What bonus you ask? Well one could simply give a meager crown/heat/item drop increase but to make the guild upkeep more worth paying: Grants.

Players will receive grants as a percentage of when collecting crowns. Later, members can purchase item(what kind? I personally don't really care nor know but you can happily suggest a few.) at a new guildhall shop NPC, named Grant(better name up for suggestions), the rating/rarity of the items sold by Grant is dependant on the amount of upkeep on has paid, eg. someone who paid 1k may get twisted thorn blade but the other bloak who paid 100k may get a BTB.

Grants cannot be traded but if you have an absurd amount of grants, one could trade it(in a ratio) into crowns which will be instantly deposited into the treasury of the guild. Giving late-game players a point in collecting grants with the newbies. a win-win.

Lastly, SK could sell grant-boosts that either boosts oneself or the whole guild, the guild boost obviously being more expensive but effectivly more efficient if one has 10 or more busy grinders. Win-win for you and you and you, Win-wins for all!