Loot Council vs DKP: Choosing a Guild Loot System

Loot council and DKP differ in who decides where an item goes. With a loot council, officers decide. With DKP, points decide. This guide compares the two for guild leaders and officers, covers three other systems and the common hybrids, and shows how open-world loot in Monsters & Memories affects the choice.

The short answer

A loot council is a small group of officers who choose who gets each item. DKP gives members points for showing up, and members spend those points on items. Neither system wins in every guild. The right pick depends on how much your members trust the officers, how big the guild is, and how much time your officers have.

Pick a loot council if your guild is small, your members trust the officers, and you want each item to go where it helps the group most.
Pick DKP if your guild is larger, people join and leave often, or you want a rule any member can check without asking an officer.
Pick a hybrid if you want officers to place a few key items and points to handle the rest.

How loot council works

A loot council is usually the guild leader plus a few officers. When an item drops, the council looks at who wants it, weighs each person against a written set of criteria, and votes. The item goes to the winner of the vote. Nobody spends points.

Who sits on it

Keep the council small, with an odd number of voters so a vote can't tie. A council of three or five suits most guilds. Try to cover every role: a healer upgrade should be judged by someone who knows how healers play. Some guilds give one seat to a trusted regular, so members can see how calls get made.

A council member sits out any vote on an item they want for themselves.

The criteria

Write the criteria down and post them before the first item drops. Common ones:

Size of the upgrade. How much better the item is than what the member wears now.
Main or alt. Main characters come before alts.
Attendance. Members who show up often get more weight than members who rarely do.
Group need. Gear that keeps the tank or the healer alive helps everyone at the camp.
Recent loot. A member who won something last week waits behind someone who has won nothing.

Rank the criteria too. If attendance counts for more than upgrade size, say so.

Keeping records

Log every award in one place: the item, who got it, the date and a one-line reason. Let every member read the log. A council that keeps its reasons private gets accused of favoritism even when its calls are fair.

An appeals path

Give members one clear way to question a call, such as a private message to the guild leader within a day. Decide in advance that a finished award stands. An appeal can change how the council handles the next item, not who got the last one. That rule stops old calls from being reopened every week.

How DKP works

DKP stands for Dragon Kill Points. Each member has a balance in a ledger. You earn points for attending, arriving on time or other work your guild rewards. You spend points to win items, either at a fixed price or through DKP bidding, open or sealed. Many guilds add decay, which takes a share off every balance on a schedule so old points lose weight and new members can catch up.

The strength of DKP is that the rules decide. An officer runs the auction, but the highest valid bid wins, and anyone can see the balance that paid for it. For earning rules, bidding styles, zero-sum DKP and decay in more detail, read our guide What Is DKP?

Loot council vs DKP side by side

	Loot council	DKP
Who decides	A few officers, by vote	Points and bid rules
Transparency	Only as open as the published log	High: balances and bids are on record
Speed per item	Fast when the council agrees, slow when it argues	Set by the bid window; a short sealed round is quick
Officer workload	A discussion on every item, plus explaining calls	Keeping the ledger, running bids and setting decay
Drama risk	Claims of favoritism	Hoarding, bidding wars and items going to an off role
New members	Can gear up fast if the council chooses	Start behind until they earn points
Best guild size	Small to mid-size, with high trust	Mid-size to large, or guilds with steady turnover

A loot council can put each item where it helps the group, as long as members trust the council. DKP is easy to defend, but points can send an item to the member who saved the most instead of the one who needs it most.

Other loot systems

Free rolls

Everyone who can use the item rolls, and the highest roll wins. Most guilds split rolls by need, so a main spec (MS) roll beats an off spec (OS) roll. Rolls need no ledger and almost no officer time, which suits pickup groups and items nobody fights over. The cost is that rolls ignore attendance: a member at their first event can win the best item of the month.

EPGP

EPGP tracks two numbers per member. Effort points (EP) go up when you attend or contribute. Gear points (GP) go up when you receive an item, by a value the guild sets for that item. Your priority is EP divided by GP, and the member with the highest priority who wants the item gets it. Both numbers decay over time. Nobody bids, so there are no bidding wars, but an officer has to keep a value list for items.

Suicide kings

Suicide kings replaces points with a ranked list, and many guilds set the starting order at random. The highest-ranked member who wants an item takes it and drops to the bottom of the list. Everyone who was below that member moves up one place. Guilds that use suicide kings often keep two lists, one for major upgrades and one for everything else, so a small item doesn't cost a top spot. The list is simple to follow, but it ignores how much a member needs the item.

Hybrid setups

Many guilds end up with a mix. Three setups come up often.

DKP with an officer veto. Points decide, but officers can block a win that hurts the group, such as a tank item going to a member who will only use it in an off role. Write down when the veto applies and use it rarely.

Council for key items, DKP for the rest. Officers place the few items that change what the guild can kill. Everything else goes through DKP bidding. Publish the list of council items before the first drop so nobody is surprised.

Rolls for leftovers. When nobody bids, or the council passes, open the item to an MS/OS roll. The item goes to someone who can use it, and officers spend no time on it.

How to choose for your guild

Go through these five points with your officers before you announce a guild loot system.

Guild size. In a small guild, officers know everyone's gear and a council works well. As the roster grows, a written rule scales better than officer memory.
Officer time. A council talks through every item. DKP needs someone to keep the ledger and run bids. Choose the work your officers will keep doing every week.
Trust. If members already question officer calls, a council will add to that. DKP takes officers out of the result.
How often loot drops. When good items are rare, each call matters more, and members want a rule they can check. When items drop often, a quick roll costs little.
How fast loot has to go out. If you have minutes rather than hours, pick a method that settles an item in one short step: a fixed price, a short sealed bid or a roll.

Open-world loot in Monsters & Memories

Monsters & Memories has no instancing. Groups camp and pull in shared zones, and other players may be nearby when your target drops. The developers say single-group content stays the main way to play. Content for more than one group shows up as world events and targets out in the open world. When two guilds want the same spawn, the developers say their GMs handle contested spawns.

Since the release patch (0.30.2.1, September 30, 2026), the corpse of an NPC above level 60 stays for 28 minutes. Before that patch it stayed for 8. The community wiki lists raid-level targets in that range, such as Lord Ga'Duuz, a level 62 dragon in Glass Flats with a reported respawn of about three days. The official patch notes say he has world rewards.

What this means for each system:

Loot council. A long debate can run past the corpse timer. Agree on the criteria before the pull, and name the likely recipients for each big item ahead of time.
DKP. Short sealed rounds fit. Members place sealed bids, the round closes on time and the winner is known. CoGM's quick sealed round preset for Monsters & Memories closes in 2 minutes.
Rolls. The in-game /random command rolls dice, for example /random 1-18 or /random 3d6. It works for leftovers and for groups that skip points.

Check item flags before each call. Items can carry flags such as No Drop, No Rent, Unique and Lore. A No Drop item can't be traded, so the winner should loot it from the corpse. A member can carry only one copy of a Unique item. Lore items are unique-equip, so a member who already has one equipped can't equip a second copy.

As of October 2026, the first week of Early Access. The corpse timer comes from the latest patch notes and can change with any patch. The level and respawn for Lord Ga'Duuz are community-reported, may date from beta, and are not official.

For creating the guild in game, planning camps and setting up DKP, see our Monsters & Memories guild guide.

Switching systems without a fight

Announce early. Post the new rules in full, explain why you are changing, and take questions in one thread. Give members a few weeks to read and ask.
Pick a start date. Switch at a clean break, such as the first day of a month, and don't move the date once you set it.
Decide what happens to old points. You can reset everyone to zero, carry balances over, or turn current balances into a starting order, for example by using DKP standings to seed a suicide kings list. Say which one you chose and why.
Set a review date. Tell members when you will look at the new system again and what would make you change it. People accept a trial more easily than a permanent change.

Run either system on CoGM

CoGM keeps your DKP and runs loot calls in Discord. DKP, decay and loot auctions are Pro features, at $10 a month per guild.

DKP ledger. Members earn DKP from attendance and quests. Decay runs on a schedule you choose: daily, weekly, every two weeks or monthly, at the day, hour and time zone you set. Each run posts a summary to your announce channel, and officers can also run decay by hand and undo it. Members check their balance and the points held in open bids with /auction status.
Discord auctions. /auction start puts up to 5 items in one post, open or sealed, with a minimum bid, a step, anti-snipe and an optional buyout on open auctions. /auction bulk takes up to 25 items. New Monsters & Memories guilds start on quick sealed rounds: minimum bid 1, step 1, each winner pays their own bid, and attendance breaks ties. Presets include a 2-minute quick sealed round, a quick open round, a 24-hour sealed auction and a 24-hour open auction with max bids.
Council calls. CoGM doesn't hold the council vote. Once the council decides, an officer can record the result with /auction award. It gives an unsold item to a member, meaning an item that got no bids or whose sale an officer reversed. The officer adds a reason that other officers can see, and can charge DKP or leave the price at 0.
Rolls. /auction rolloff runs a recorded roll-off for an unsold item or any item name you type. You can add Roll MS and Roll OS buttons, and main spec beats off spec.

CoGM's /auction is a Discord command. It is separate from the in-game /auction channel, which is zone-wide trade chat.

On the Free plan, the DKP ledger is read-only and attendance and quests pay 0 DKP. See the DKP tracker, loot auctions, the DKP docs and pricing.

Whichever system you pick, run it in one place. CoGM keeps the DKP ledger and runs Discord loot auctions, with awards for unsold items and MS/OS roll-offs (Pro, $10 a month per guild). Your first Monsters & Memories guild gets 14 days of Pro free, with no card needed.

Create your Monsters & Memories guild

Or compare plans.

FAQ

Is loot council better than DKP?

Not in every guild. A loot council puts items where they help the group most, but only while members trust the officers. DKP is easier to defend because points decide. Small guilds with high trust often prefer a council, and larger guilds with turnover often prefer DKP.

What is EPGP?

EPGP is a priority system with two numbers. Members earn effort points (EP) by attending and gain gear points (GP) when they receive items. Priority is EP divided by GP, and the member with the highest priority who wants an item gets it. Nobody bids.

What is suicide kings?

Suicide kings is a ranked list. The highest-ranked member who wants an item takes it and moves to the bottom. Everyone who was below that member moves up one place. It uses no points and no bids.

Can a guild mix systems?

Yes, and many do. A common mix is a loot council for the few items that matter most, DKP bidding for everything else, and MS/OS rolls for items nobody bids on. Publish which items fall under which rule before the first drop.

Which loot system fits Monsters & Memories?

Any of them can work, but loot has to be settled quickly. Since the September 30, 2026 patch, the corpse of an NPC above level 60 stays for 28 minutes. Short sealed DKP rounds, rolls with /random, or a council that agrees on criteria before the pull all fit that window.

Sources: Monsters & Memories official gameplay page, new player guide and FAQ, patch notes 0.30.0.0 and 0.30.2.1, and the community wiki (written by players, not endorsed by the developer). Loot system descriptions reflect common guild practice.