Did not get House after completing "Room To Spare" quest

HumbleThaumaturge · July 12

Update 2: Think problem has been figured out: For the three free rooms in the base-game alliance zones, the character applying for the free room must be belong to the Alliance in which the room is located (AD for the free Mara's Kiss Public House room; EP for the free Ebony Flask Inn room; DC for the free Rosy Lion Inn room). If a character cannot get one of those three room (because they are in the wrong alliance), there is currently no indication that they cannot get the house (the get the quest from the Crown Store, and they go through the quest steps with the NPC). Would be nice if ineligible characters got an error message instead.

Update 1: This post reported my inability to obtain the Rosy Lion Inn free room in Daggerfall after attempts with four characters. Well, the fifth time is the charm! I tried a fifth character, and it worked: I was finally able to obtain the room. There must be some "flag" that is set on a character that prevents obtaining the room free from the NPC. If so, then that "flag" should also prevent: (1) receiving the "Room To Spare" quest from the Crown Store (it should be greyed out); and (2) prevent interaction with the room-giving NPC (i.e., prevent the Quest marker over their head). I do not know exactly why the other four characters were able to start and complete the Quest, yet were not able to obtain the free room.

Original Post:

This may not be a "bug": maybe I just do not understand all the variables involved.

On three different characters on my account:
-- Traveled to Glenumbra (Daggerfall city)
-- Obtained "Room To Spare" quest from Crown store
-- "Room To Spare" quest appeared in quest log and quest marker appeared
-- Went inside The Rosy Lion Inn and spoke with quest NPC
-- Completed all quest dialogue
-- At end, obtained "Anthology of Abodes," but I did NOT get the house.

With a fourth character, I went to the Rosy Lion Inn without first getting the "Room To Spare" quest from the Crown Store. There was a quest arrow over the head of the housing quest-giver inside the inn. Interacting with the NPC gave the same results: Dialogue completed, "Anthology of Abodes" offered, but no house ownership.

For some characters I initially tried, the "Room To Spare" item in the Crown store was unavailable (greyed out). One would assume that if the Crown Store issues "Room To View" to a character that said character could successfully complete the quest and obtain the house. For the three characters who tried to obtain the Rosy Lion Inn house, all were able to obtain the quest, so I assume they had not previously completed the quest.

Note: I obtained several other "free" houses today using the "Room To Spare" quest from the Crown store. (I have a surplus of characters, you see, compared to available houses). I had no problems obtaining the other houses; I only had a problem with the Rosy Lion Inn house.

So: Is this a bug? Or what? No big deal for me personally: my cast of Characters can live without the room.

LootAllTheStuff · July 12

The only thing I did differently was, I picked up the "Room for Rent" handbill in the Rosy Lion when it became available rather than go into the Crown Store. After that, it's the same - talk to the NPC, complete dialogue, get room.

The only thing I am aware of that screws this up is if your character had previously picked up the handbill in another town, since that locks the NPC and room to that town even if you already own that room. It's an annoying bug that seems to have been around forever - I'd prefer it if the NPC showed up in all available inns when you travelled there until you spoke to her in one of them.

katanagirl1 · July 12

Did you check the Collections tab to see if you already own the inn room?

HumbleThaumaturge · July 12

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Did you check the Collections tab to see if you already own the inn room?

Good idea, but:
Yes, I checked the Housing tab under Collections . . . and I checked the Map (which shows the room in Black instead of White). Also, when I entered the room, I pressed F5 . . . and got the option to buy it, instead of the option to change stuff or set permissions. All these seem to indicate that the "flag" for ownership has not been set.

SeaGtGruff · July 12

If you don't already own it, you should be able to purchase it for 3000 gold on any character, but to get it for free I think it must be on a character who has not already visited another house that you own. My recollection is that when a character visits one of your owned homes-- whether or not that particular character bought the housing-- it earns a housing-related achievement, and my recollection is that a character who has already earned that achievement cannot obtain a free inn room. But it's been a long time since I've tried-- nowadays I just buy the new inn rooms for 3000 gold when they're added to the game-- and I don't know if or how that achievement was impacted by the conversion to account-wide achievements years ago. But my memory is that characters cannot get a free inn room if they'd already gotten one in the past, and that visiting an owned home seems to preclude a character from getting a free inn room.

katanagirl1 · July 13

HumbleThaumaturge wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Did you check the Collections tab to see if you already own the inn room?

Good idea, but:
Yes, I checked the Housing tab under Collections . . . and I checked the Map (which shows the room in Black instead of White). Also, when I entered the room, I pressed F5 . . . and got the option to buy it, instead of the option to change stuff or set permissions. All these seem to indicate that the "flag" for ownership has not been set.

OK, I couldn’t tell if you had from what you wrote.

The only problem I have had with getting the free room from the level up rewards is you get the room in the zone you open the envelope in. For instance, I had a character in Daggerfall when I opened it but I had intended to go to a dlc area to get a free room there. So I ended up trying to get the Daggerfall room I already had. I knew that because the quest tracker pointed me to the Daggerfall inn room location. If I had waited until I went to the dlc area to open the envelope it would have worked.

SeaGtGruff · July 13

If you have a character you believe ought to be able to claim an inn room for free, go into Achievements on that character, go to the Housing category, select the Property category, and look for the Permanent Tenant achievement, which is described as "Obtain and enter any of the following inn rooms."

If it shows that you've earned that achievement, I don't think you'll be able to claim an inn room for free on that character, but I'm not 100% certain about that. The achievement was definitely impacted by the conversion to account-wide achievements, because when I hover the mouse over the achievement on my alt characters it says "Earned by:" my main character's name.

However, when I drop down the achievement to actually view the list of pertinent inn rooms on one of my alts (the one I just happen to be logged in on right this moment), there are three inn rooms which are grayed out, and I've definitely obtained all three of them (but not by this alt) and visited them with one character or another-- just probably not with this particular alt. So I've just ported into one of those three inn rooms, and now it's checked off on the list of inn rooms under the achievement.

So it looks like maybe the actual checklist of inn rooms which have been visited might still be character-specific even though the achievement itself is account-wide. So check that list on the character you think ought to be able to obtain a free inn room and see if any of those inn rooms have been checked off for that character, because I suspect that this might be why you're unable to claim a free inn room on that character.

Addendum: Okay, maybe I should have checked on a few more characters, because it looks like the list is not character-specific after all. All of my characters-- even my main-- are showing the same two inn rooms as being unvisited, and the third one which I just visited on an alt is now checked off for everyone. But I've definitely visited the interiors of the two "unvisited" inn rooms before, so I'm thinking that maybe the conversion to account-wide achievements affected the checklist somehow, such as clearing it entirely or maybe copying each character's checklist onto the achievement when the conversion occurred, if that makes sense. And now the checklist gets updated as any character visits inside one of the owned inn rooms. So maybe I've just never visited inside those three inn rooms following the conversion, until just visiting one of the three. That seems a little far-fetched, but I guess it's possible, since most of the time when I port to an owned property I'm porting to the outside rather than the inside.

In any case, I do think this particular achievement is the culprit here.

HumbleThaumaturge · July 13

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If you have a character you believe ought to be able to claim an inn room for free, go into Achievements on that character, go to the Housing category, select the Property category, and look for the Permanent Tenant achievement, which is described as "Obtain and enter any of the following inn rooms."

Thanks! Very helpful post.

LootAllTheStuff · July 13

Thanks @SeaGtGruff - helpful as always!

So basically, if you want a free room in a specific location, you have to claim it using a new character that has never visited any other abode you already own.

SeaGtGruff · July 13

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

Thanks @SeaGtGruff - helpful as always!

So basically, if you want a free room in a specific location, you have to claim it using a new character that has never visited any other abode you already own.

I'm not certain about that, but it seems like it might be the case-- or at least, has never visited any of the inn rooms which are listed for the "Permanent Tenant" achievement, which would be the three in the base game (one per alliance), plus the ones that were added by each of the chapters. I'd have to create a brand new character to see how it works, and I already own the new inn room added by SotWC, so I'd have to wait until another inn room gets added to the game.

LootAllTheStuff · July 13

I think I can probably check that out, as I still have unused save slots.

I *do* know that I couldn't get the one in Skingrad until I started a brand new character and took them effectively straight there. I had some issues with the Rosy Lion as well, which I think I only resolved by starting a new DC character. Right now thanks to this issue I have 6 characters but have only been able to claim 4 inn rooms.

Edit: 5 rooms - I also got the one in Summerset when I started a new character and they happened to start there for some reason. Hmm - going to have to look through them all one by one before I do anything else!

HumbleThaumaturge · July 13

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

Thanks @SeaGtGruff - helpful as always!

So basically, if you want a free room in a specific location, you have to claim it using a new character that has never visited any other abode you already own.

I'm not certain about that, but it seems like it might be the case-- or at least, has never visited any of the inn rooms which are listed for the "Permanent Tenant" achievement, which would be the three in the base game (one per alliance), plus the ones that were added by each of the chapters. I'd have to create a brand new character to see how it works, and I already own the new inn room added by SotWC, so I'd have to wait until another inn room gets added to the game.

I have tons of characters on both the North American and EU servers. I will do a little experimenting when I get some free time. I might wait until my EU characters are once again on the test server (PTS).

As I said in my post, if a specific character cannot get one of the free rooms (for whatever reason), then ZOS should code the game so that character: (1) Cannot get the "Room To Spare" quest from the Crown Store; and (2) cannot interact with the room-giver NPC (i.e., the NPC only has quest-arrow over their head, if the room can be obtained). I actually did have some characters that could not get the "Room To Spare" quest (it was greyed out); but other characters did get the quest, could complete the quest, but were not awarded the free room at the end of the quest. That still seems like a "bug" to me. The quest should never be able to start, and the NPC dialogue should not occur, if the room is not available.

HumbleThaumaturge · July 13

I think I know what's been happening. And it's so easy. The confusion comes because the game allows the NPC room-givers to interact with ineligible characters (obviously, NPC room givers should only interact with characters that are eligible to get the free room).

After a little more experimentation, it may be . . . the 3 free rooms in the base-game cities (Mara's Kiss Public House room, Rosy Lion Inn room, and The Ebony Flask Inn room) can only be obtained by a character that belongs to the Alliance in which that room is located (AD, DC, and EP, respectively). It would seem that characters of any alliance may obtain the rooms in the DLC zones. Don't know if all this is true, but it seems to be.

For example, EP and DC characters could not get the free Mara's Kiss Public House room, but an AD character could. Similarly, it took an EP character to get the free room at The Ebony Flask Inn, and it took a DC character to get the free room at the Rosy Lion Inn.

Just one example of experiments: Took DC character to the Mara's Kiss Public House (Auridon), without first initiating the "Room To Spare" quest. Inside, the NPC room-giver had a Quest arrow over her head. Interacted with quest NPC, completed the quest up to last step when loot given, but the room was not included. Took DC character to Mara's Kiss Public House and got "Room To Spare" quest from Crown Store. The quest step for "Room To Spare" directed me to go to the Rosy Lion Inn in Daggerfall (in a DC zone).

LootAllTheStuff · July 13

That would actually make sense. I've often wondered if there was some sort of hidden requirement, since I've only ever stumbled across the free room quest organically. I think there's still a restriction that the city you pick it up in locks you to that city's free room though?

LootAllTheStuff · July 13

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If you have a character you believe ought to be able to claim an inn room for free, go into Achievements on that character, go to the Housing category, select the Property category, and look for the Permanent Tenant achievement, which is described as "Obtain and enter any of the following inn rooms."

If it shows that you've earned that achievement, I don't think you'll be able to claim an inn room for free on that character, but I'm not 100% certain about that. The achievement was definitely impacted by the conversion to account-wide achievements, because when I hover the mouse over the achievement on my alt characters it says "Earned by:" my main character's name.

OK interesting. XB-NA, and I see "Permanent Tenant" as having 4 rooms unlocked, and a separate achievement "Skingrad Tenant" for the Rosewine Retreat. There's also a separate achievement for Journey's End in Necrom and the Sleepy Sloth in Sunport. The four rooms unlocked under Permanent Tenant are all indicating my first character as having unlocked the achievement, so I guess it's not possible to see which ones unlocked the second through fourth ones. The Crown Store "Room to Spare" starter quest is greyed out for all 6 of my characters, so I obviously missed out with one of them.

SeaGtGruff · July 13

I don't remember whether I was able to claim each of the three free inn rooms in the alliance zones on characters belonging to alliances other than where a particular inn is located. I do remember making characters just so I could claim all three inn rooms, but that was after I'd already claimed the free room in Vivec City, and all of my characters started out in Vvardenfell (until Summerset was released, then Elsweyr, etc.) because I started playing ESO right after Morrowind was released.

My first four characters on PCNA are a Nord/EP, a Breton/DC, a Nord/EP, and an Orc/DC-- except the Orc is a Necromancer, so I created him when Elsweyr was released. I may have simply purchased the alliance inn rooms with gold on PCNA due to not yet realizing that there was a way to get them for free despite having already gotten a free inn room, but I collected most of the chapter inn rooms for free by creating a new character who began with that chapter's tutorial quest. In any case, I didn't create an AD character on PCNA until long after I'd already collected the three alliance inn rooms, so if I did get the AD inn room for free (which is questionable) then it was with a non-AD character.

On PCEU, my first five characters are a Redguard/DC, an Argonian/EP, a Khajiit/AD, a Dunmer/EP, and an Altmer/AD. By that time I'd figured out how to claim all of the inn rooms for free, so it looks like I may have used the first three characters to get the three alliance inn rooms, then created the Dunmer to get the inn room in Vivec City (he is a Warden and his backstory is that he's from Vvardenfell), then created the Altmer to get the inn room in Alinor (he was created after Summerset's release and his backstory is that he's from Summerset). In any case, it looks like I did use characters of a particular alliance to get the free inn room for that alliance, but I don't remember if I did that because it was actually necessary or because I was just trying to conform to the lore for reasons of immersion.

katanagirl1 · July 14

HumbleThaumaturge wrote: »

I think I know what's been happening. And it's so easy. The confusion comes because the game allows the NPC room-givers to interact with ineligible characters (obviously, NPC room givers should only interact with characters that are eligible to get the free room).

After a little more experimentation, it may be . . . the 3 free rooms in the base-game cities (Mara's Kiss Public House room, Rosy Lion Inn room, and The Ebony Flask Inn room) can only be obtained by a character that belongs to the Alliance in which that room is located (AD, DC, and EP, respectively). It would seem that characters of any alliance may obtain the rooms in the DLC zones. Don't know if all this is true, but it seems to be.

For example, EP and DC characters could not get the free Mara's Kiss Public House room, but an AD character could. Similarly, it took an EP character to get the free room at The Ebony Flask Inn, and it took a DC character to get the free room at the Rosy Lion Inn.

Just one example of experiments: Took DC character to the Mara's Kiss Public House (Auridon), without first initiating the "Room To Spare" quest. Inside, the NPC room-giver had a Quest arrow over her head. Interacted with quest NPC, completed the quest up to last step when loot given, but the room was not included. Took DC character to Mara's Kiss Public House and got "Room To Spare" quest from Crown Store. The quest step for "Room To Spare" directed me to go to the Rosy Lion Inn in Daggerfall (in a DC zone).

Ah, I had forgotten about that. Yes I did create a character for each alliance so I could get all three rooms for free. That was a long time ago, though. Good detective work.

LootAllTheStuff · July 14

So an update: I created a new character and ran through the initial zone quest. I just checked, and the achievements are the same as the others (which is what you'd expect for account-wide achievements), but the Crown Store starting quest for housing is indeed available.

Alright: so the three alliance zone inn rooms are already acquired, along with the Skingrad one; guess I'll try visiting either Necrom or Sunsport and then take the Crown Store quest.

Edit: That worked - new room obtained.

Thinking about it, the one character I can't get the quest on accidentally picked up the Room for Rent flyer in Ebonhart, when my first character had already claimed the Ebony Flask room. That aspect of this quest is a major pain! If you can pick up the quest in multiple locations regardless of which rooms you already own, then you should be able to complete the same quest in multiple locations. Just have the NPC spawn into the inn when you enter if you have the quest and the room is available!

virtus753 · July 15

The inconsistency with Permanent Tenant and its list not always being accurate to your experience is because when they used to add rooms to it with each chapter, that actually replaced progress from the old version of the achievement. Each inn room would have to be visited again for credit after each update to the achievement. Adding unique achievements for the most recent inn rooms rather than replacing the original achievement with a new list has addressed this issue.

You can see it noted here as well: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Permanent_Tenant

jle30303 · July 23

One thing I discovered: You can ONLY obtain a free inn room - ANY of the free inn rooms - from the "Room to Spare" quest by taking the quest from Felande *in the specific inn whose room you want to buy*.

If you start the quest by talking to her elsewhere - or by reading a notice elsewhere (e.g. near Vivec City wayshrine, where there is a notice pinned to a post that starts the quest) - you won't get the free inn room when you talk to Felande, even though you can complete the quest this way.

LootAllTheStuff · August 6

One more observation to add to this thread: I have a character (XB-NA) who claimed the room in the Skingrad inn fairly early, but is an EP race and gets parked in the Ebony Flask inn room. When they passed level 20, the "Room to Spare" leaflet in the Ebony Flask (top of the stairs just inside the corridor leading to the room) started glowing. Obviously I already own that room (unlocked on a different character).

So it looks like there's a bug where the Room to Spare quest seems to become available even though it's impossible to actually take/complete it if the character claimed their free room outside of one of the base game zones.

SeaGtGruff · August 6

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

One more observation to add to this thread: I have a character (XB-NA) who claimed the room in the Skingrad inn fairly early, but is an EP race and gets parked in the Ebony Flask inn room. When they passed level 20, the "Room to Spare" leaflet in the Ebony Flask (top of the stairs just inside the corridor leading to the room) started glowing. Obviously I already own that room (unlocked on a different character).

So it looks like there's a bug where the Room to Spare quest seems to become available even though it's impossible to actually take/complete it if the character claimed their free room outside of one of the base game zones.

I have two observations that might be pertinent to the glowing leaflet.

When a new house is added to the game, sometimes the leaflet which lists available housing gets updated, in which case it may show up as though it were an uncollected lorebook, and reading it will say you've discovered the lorebook even if you'd already discovered an older version of it.

Also, some lorebooks just seem to glow no matter how many times you read them.

LootAllTheStuff · August 6

That might explain both the glow and why some players end up confused. Overall, it's a bit of a mess!