The luxury furnishing vendor suffers from a variety of problems. Ultimately, it’s a FOMO-based system that players don’t interact with much, whether directly or through secondary markets.

The luxury system would benefit from a structural overhaul to increase player engagement and to keep these important furnishings more reliably accessible. Some small changes could take place independently of each other, and other changes would be a more integrated cascade of recommendations.

Small independent luxury recommendations:
-Increase visibility of the NPC vendor. Zanil Theran is very easy to miss–he’s out of the way and only up a short time. The addition of rotating persistent vendors like Filer Ool in Infinite Archive makes it seem like Zanil should probably be available for more than 2.5 days. Something like 5-6.5 days would still allow a gap in which people could gather to celebrate his re-arrival. I’d also recommend sprinkling Zanil across additional zones to increase the chances of players discovering this system. A good option would be to place him next to each of the three faction Writ Voucher areas since that system has a lot of housing interest overlap.

-Lower the prices on most furnishings. Some time back it’s obvious that a new pricing standard was implemented–newer items are about ⅓ the price of older comparables. This leaves the older items (many of which are still great) relatively overpriced. A pass through to reduce the prices on many of the furnishings would be welcome. Other one-time adjustments could be made based on internal data and objectives.

-Trim the current rotation. There are currently 56 weeks of offerings, which is making the vendor less reliable. Consolidating a couple of the two-week themes into single weeks could help. Another idea would be to remove a few weeks of offerings and separate the furnishings out among other relevant vendors or reward systems. For example, move the riekling items to the Orsinium and Markarth furnishing vendors.

Restructure the luxury system

I propose a reimagining of how the luxury system operates. Make all the luxury furnishings available year round at 2-3x the Zanil vendor cost. Zanil then would be the discounted sale option that still offers at least one new item each week. This would preserve the hype of anticipating the vendor re-arrival each week while making the bulk of the furnishings accessible perpetually at a premium. This would also provide a more predictable price range for trading in secondary markets.

The best place to put such a menu of furnishings would be under Collections with a similar tiled formatting like the Outfit Styles. Furnishings could be previewed from here to inspire builds. Perhaps to actually make them collectible, players would need to “eat” (destroy or Bind) one purchased from Zanil (or guild traders) in order to directly buy more from the premium Collections menu.

Add a comprehensive furnishing catalog with an emphasis on collectability

A Collections menu of furnishings could be expanded into a comprehensive furnishing catalog, separated by sourcing type with different rulesets for how each type can be collected and purchased:

-Crafted furnishings would effectively be a list of all the furnishing recipes in the game. Learning the recipe would count as collecting for this purpose. Tooltips or submenus could include which zones the plans are generally sourced from. Additionally, Crown Bind-on-Pickup equivalents could be directly purchased.

-Home Goods furnishings could be made collectible by directly purchasing one of each from respective zone vendors or “eating” one of each, and then they could be directly purchased from this menu instead of having to travel around.

-Achievement furnishings on this menu would be a great “thing-to-do” list of furnishings to unlock. Since these are all Bind-on-Pickup and mostly require DLC purchase anyway, these would be best to just be directly purchasable from this menu at current costs once the respective achievements are earned.

-Stolen/laundered items would require a creative ruleset. Directly stealing one of each item might be too daunting, so “eating” one of each might be more reasonable, allowing dedicated thieves a pretty good specialized trading market. Once collected, additional Bind-on-Pickup versions could then be purchased with a new scrap currency (more later).

-Luxury furnishings would list out all of Zanils offerings, purchasable at 2-3x original cost, or potentially with scrap currency. To keep things easier to maintain, this could be updated just a few times per year.

-Treasure Chests, fishing, and other sources may be large enough to warrant their own categories.

-Miscellaneously sourced furnishings could include anything else that isn’t already categorized (especially things like one-off quest rewards) and could provide tooltip hints on how to acquire them. Scrap currency could be utilized extensively for these.

-Crown-exclusive furnishings could include a big list of everything that generally really isn’t attainable through gameplay, but it would be good to include for comprehensiveness and opportunities to buy items directly. A subset of these could potentially be purchased with the new scrap currency.

Introduce a furnishing recycling system

Players generally don’t like destroying furnishings and end up being bogged down with furnishings they’ll likely never use, which becomes an unfun inventory management chore instead of a fun creative game. Allowing players to get value from cleaning up their inventories would allow them to focus more on what is new. This would keep players more engaged and generally keep housing fresher.

It would be a big task, but a furnishing recycling system could be accomplished by assigning values to all current furnishings based on input crafting materials, original vendor costs, and sourcing rarity. Current crafting stations, new NPCs, and potential assistants could pull up a furnishing inventory menu very similar to the Deconstruct Equipment system. Furnishings could either have set values or a range of potential outputs. I’d recommend these be fairly generous.

Players would receive a new scrap currency from the output, which could then be used with great flexibility to purchase furnishings directly from the new collectibles menu. Anything that is purchasable with this currency would be in greater spotlight.

Benefits

A luxury overhaul would encourage creativity, allowing players to work on their builds whenever instead of having to wait.

A furnishing catalog would provide direct ways to preview furnishings, plan out builds, and figure out how best to acquire items. Collectable furnishings would be a big “thing to do” similar to the gear stickerbook.

These changes should also improve game monetization. The catalog would allow players direct ways to purchase Crown items. Sourcing information in the catalog would be a driver of DLC sales. Additional monetization could come from a new furnishing scrapper assistant. Generally cycling out of old furnishings into new furnishings would have players looking at newer Crown items to fill the void.

Overall, these changes would help keep housing more engaging and relevant.

I hope I’ve been able to convey my vision on this. There would be lots of ways to tweak any parts of this, and I’d be very welcome to talking to devs about specifics.

-JHart