I asked about housing in prior threads to Bhagpuss and Izlain, and finally I decided to jump right in. Firstly because I was getting a bunch of housing items that was taking up precious inventory space and secondly because I checked the /claim rewards and I indeed have a Mistmoore Manor prestige housing reward as the 7 year gift. Prestige housing has no upkeep so what did I have to lose?
A full day, apparently.
I of course have not fought in the EQ2 version of Mistmoore although I did in the EQ proper version. Thus, I had no frame of reference to what is normally in each of the rooms. I dind’t love the colors and all the checker patterns and at first I found that there wasn’t a proper bedroom. So I started setting up my bedroom in what my best guess was the throne room. I put the bed in, and a table, and a map on the table, and the candles on the corner of the table (which lit things up beautifully) and finally a small jar of honey on the other corner. I might get hungry reading that map. After those few, small moves I was hooked. You can scale, twist, turn – so much customization.
The second fun thing I learned is that some are interactive. Rubbing the bottle took me to a genie themed area, where, I have no clue, but I went and interacted with some NPC’s and learned some lore. I had to exit back to Antonica and run my way back to the prestige housing zone in (before I learned you could access your house from your character screen. Upon re-entering my Mansion I made a wrong turn and discovered there was a whole other wing! In this wing I found there was a better room for a bedroom. I am not sure why the bedroom is the most important room for me but it probably has to do with needing a place to sleep. By that logic, I should find the kitchen next.
Another interaction was with an Orb, and staring into it prompted me to concentrate further, and once more concentrated (ie: do it again) it would open a window into a different land. This was a different view the two times I did it – and the game warned me to be cautious. I don’t think I can travel through the window – it may have just been a view. Below is a gallery of my adventures working on my first house.
Of course, after all of that effort and time I looked deeper into my Veteran rewards and lo and behold there was a prestige housing – Starter Island. Yup, my own freaking island! Bhagpuss had mentioned this before but I wasn’t sure if I had qualified. The /claim section was in Alphabetical order – but not sequential. For example, it Goes Veteran Reward 1 hour, then Veteran Reward 10 years, back to back. It would have made far more sense to have them in sequential order – at least the annual ones. Still, there was an island, and since I did not love the Mansion I picked up everything that I had just done for a fresh start. I remembered there was a mage tower-y thing on the starter island which felt like a much better fit for my Enchanter – plus, hey – who doesn’t want their own private island? Bonus for me was that had a basement that felt VERY bedroom(ish). Plus, fire, and a pond – where I put all of the cool little things I had collected. Finally, I had a space I really liked! I setup my desk very similarly to how I did originally, including the pot of honey, in the top of the tower. I used the basement for beds and other items, and the pond of various treasures.
Bonus to the island is NPC plushies so I put animals and mobs throughout so I wouldn’t be quite so alone. The Gallery below shows all sorts of angles and pictures as I built out my homestead.
In the end I took all the Veteran Rewards with housing items and placed them all. Even the cheesy pirate flag. Now that I had a home it was back to adventuring for me – and looking forward to collecting more items and tidbits to continue to personalize my own very small slice of Norrath. No matter what people have said about EQ2Â the housing system is really fun and I spent a full day sorting through it – just with what I had found in the world and from various annual rewards. I haven’t read a single guide but sorted through enough of it on my own to really enjoy it. I don’t know how much deeper I will get into the housing but I know whatever trophies I find out in the wild I will definitely place there. The other bonus of the Veteran Rewards was finding a lot of free and large bags – no more worries about running out of Inventory space.
You are welcome to come visit, if you like.
I think the really large Prestige Houses are unsuitable for most players. They’re great for career decorators but the sheer scale of them is overwhelming for casual decorators. I have a few but I’ve never really used them.
I always found the larger, regular houses were more than large enough. I have a big Neriak property on Test that my Necro spent five years decorating and these days I mostly work on my Berserker’s Maj’Dul mansion and my Warlock’s suites in Gorowyn. Those both have a lot of rooms but I have also “broken out” of them both to use the surrounding areas. That’s a semi-legal (you won’t get in trouble for doing it but if it goes wrong you won’t get any help from customer service either) process whereby you fiddle around until you can drop a teleport pad outside the official playable area. Once you have it placed you can port to it from another teleport pad and then you’re outside the box!
I have most of Maj’Dul to myself that way and all the docks and shoreline of Gorowyn. The teleport pads used to be hard to come by but these days you can buy them at the monthly City Festivals from the vendors there. They’re also useful for fast transit within very large Prestige Homes like your Isle of Refuge.
I think you can have just as much fun decorating the basic inn rooms. They doubled the size of those a while back (you get two rooms) and they vary quite a lot from city to city so it’s worth shopping around. Also some of the cheap, original city housing is nice. One of the Freeport houses has a patio, for example. Hmm… I wonder if it’s possible to break out of that one?
I agree on the size being… intimidating. In the case of the Island of refuge I am really just using the tower, the basement of it, and the pool/fireplace outside. It’s quite nice actually. As long as I ignore the rest it will do quite nicely. Although, I did make another character (upcoming post) and to compare got the single room Inn in Halas and yes, it is quite homey!
I just need a place to put all of my quest items, afterall =) Maybe someday I will make it more of a mission to build the right space =)
It’s odd – the downside to regular housing is there is a cost, as compared to none for the prestige housing. Of course, who cares, it’s only a couple silver. That actually means a lot to me as a lowbie player but I suspect older players are overflowing with platinum to spend.