Please Make the Housing Grind Less Unbearable. You're Killing Me!

TeruKisuke

malatorius wrote: »

I Think a great help to lessening the grind would also be to:

Have Furnishing materials (ie: Heartwood, Mundane Runes, etc) be harvestable from breaking down raw materials like you get tempers, etc. Being able to get that Heartwood from breaking down your stack of 200 Rough Ruby Ash or whatever would help IMMENSELY.

That is a fantastic idea, and would only be fair since we can get Heartwood from chopping wood too. They are really determined to keep Furnishing Material to only one source. Even fishing lures were improved upon and given other means to be gotten, such as in Murkmire.

Ravensilver

malatorius wrote: »

I Think a great help to lessening the grind would also be to:

Have Furnishing materials (ie: Heartwood, Mundane Runes, etc) be harvestable from breaking down raw materials like you get tempers, etc. Being able to get that Heartwood from breaking down your stack of 200 Rough Ruby Ash or whatever would help IMMENSELY.

I would love this! I already harvest all the time. But it's still never enough. So getting the furnishing mats from refining would be wonderful.

K9002

I'm not sure asking for these materials to be obtainable from refining is a good idea. Monkey's paw rule - it might end up reducing the amount of tempering materials, which would be devastating for jewelry platings market. Instead I would like to see some way of trading refined mats for furnishing ones. Even if it's unfavorable rates such as 200 planks for 5 heartwood. It could be made somewhat immersive too, like a charity that collects bulk materials and returns smaller tokens of gratitude. Some of the daily writs already have flavor text about donating items to the war efforts, refugees and such.

Arguably it could be a minor gold sink too. IIRC a single ruby ash plank sells for 4 gold, so 800 for a whole stack. I sell this kind of thing to NPCs all the time, it adds up like gold from daily writs.

TeruKisuke

@K9002 I think that unfortunate scenario would only occur if the loot table voted to give you furnishing material [instead of] instead of [in addition to.] I think refining works like the latter, but I suppose I've never confirmed it. Is that true? I was always under the impression that refining guarantees Ruby ash, rubedo leather, etc. but also has a chance to get everything else, and that is why we have a ridiculous list of gained materials at the end.

100% I'm not being argumentative, I legitimately don't know. But if it were to be implemented then I would hope it would be [in addition to.]

In any case, I also like your suggestion to where we could trade in different material if we don't have need of it. Much of my Zircon Grains I keep in reserve for crafting Leyawiin Grand Bookcases, for instance. (By no means do I like it of course, given how expensive Zircon is, but personally I don't use my Zircon much.) And it would feel far more fruitful of gains. It would be an absolute dream.

K9002

@TeruKisuke I don't know how it works either but what is known is that ZOS has a history of questionable loot table implementations and a history of heavy-handed approach to problem solving. It's why I would rather request a brand new system than modifications to an already existing system. It's safer that way.

Another idea I had would be a green CP star that increases the chance of getting furnishing materials while harvesting, and it should stack with Plentiful Harvest. Or brand new passive skills in crafting lines that would do the same thing. There are many possibilities but I'm afraid that this scarcity is completely intentional. It could be resolved without the need for additional systems.

katanagirl1

I just wanted to add that Blackwood will be the first time I actually buy the chapter random furnishing envelopes from Faustina when they come out (except for Morrowind, for obvious reasons).

I was able to farm/buy all Alinor, Elsweyr, and Greymoor plans (except for purple Vampiric) because I was much more successful with farming them. (I have a lot of free time, lol!)

This seems like a step backward in terms of availability of furnishing plans to me.

I expect Fargrave to be more of the same based on what I’ve seen so far.

Deep_01

For style materials, treasure chest-farm gear that drops in that style and deconstruct.

As a housing fanatic who doesnt make millions a week but less than 250k gold a week, "items are not expensive, you are short-changed".

Don't let housing be so stressful. Take a break if needed.

K9002

Culanda Lacquer can't be farmed. There is no set that would drop in Sapiarch style and geyser chests drop the Psijic material too. As far as I know, it can't be obtained through criminal activities either, at least I never found it in safeboxes. The first 2022 event will feature Summerset, so we'll have to grind dailies with as many alts as possible for those double quest rewards. It's one of the now or never moments, because there are so many zones and DLCs that we see their respective events every two years on average. I hate how this game rewards playing only during specific time windows. It's also much easier to gather a heap of style materials during the anniversary event than it is to do the same dailies every day for many months.

TeruKisuke

K9002 wrote: »

@TeruKisuke I don't know how it works either but what is known is that ZOS has a history of questionable loot table implementations and a history of heavy-handed approach to problem solving. It's why I would rather request a brand new system than modifications to an already existing system. It's safer that way.

Another idea I had would be a green CP star that increases the chance of getting furnishing materials while harvesting, and it should stack with Plentiful Harvest. Or brand new passive skills in crafting lines that would do the same thing. There are many possibilities but I'm afraid that this scarcity is completely intentional. It could be resolved without the need for additional systems.

Unfortunately yes. This is honestly an issue with many game developers, where often times solutions are too harsh or in the wrong direction, with seemingly no perspective from the player base. I could name quite a few other games where certain changes tend to be... tone deaf.

Also unfortunately, the Green Tree is also infamously plagued with micro-management issues at the moment. Many slotables come across as mandatory quality-of life, slotables that were previously just passives, while other ones that are also "for fun" fill a slot too, among others that are near useless also taking a slot. (I am of the opinion that the "reduce repair cost" one in particular deserves to be more of a passive.) I find myself wanting another overhaul, but I don't know it it's likely.

Currently, I have the double plan drop chance as mandatory, and Treasure Hunter, Plentiful Harvest, and Meticulous Disassembly. I find myself a victim of "5 moveslot syndrome" because I miss out on picking up resource nodes faster, which makes resource node farming more laborious than before. I honestly think it should be a passive, or, better yet, scrapped much in the same way Rapids was and the "faster" speed becomes the standard. Because if I take off any of the others in favor of it, I'm either in my Green Tree way too often to the point where it becomes irritating, or I forgot to slot them when I needed them. MA in particular I'd always forget until after I refine my hard-earned mats. And Treasure Hunter I'd reach a chest and forget to slot it before looting it. So, I don't touch the tree anymore.

Point being, I would love if Plentiful Harvest was more useful. I think someone even did a study and showed that the gains weren't even that fruitful with it on compared to it off. In fact, I wish that Plentiful Harvest and faster harvest would be mixed into one slotable. Ultimately I just want furnishing material to drop more frequently.

TeruKisuke

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I just wanted to add that Blackwood will be the first time I actually buy the chapter random furnishing envelopes from Faustina when they come out (except for Morrowind, for obvious reasons).

I was able to farm/buy all Alinor, Elsweyr, and Greymoor plans (except for purple Vampiric) because I was much more successful with farming them. (I have a lot of free time, lol!)

This seems like a step backward in terms of availability of furnishing plans to me.

I expect Fargrave to be more of the same based on what I’ve seen so far.

My experience on the first day in the Deadlands DLC: I spent maybe an hour or two running around and scouting out Fargrave and the Deadlands for containers before I found the first container.

In Fargrave, out in the open there are no containers. There are only unobtainable merchant stalls (something that taunts me as a Houser, as well. I want those filled stalls and shelves as furnishings!) The containers that are there are behind loading screen doors. The three break-intoable homes are very small and don't have much to steal. There are two fruitful public buildings to loot.

I figured out after a while how to reach the Deadlands (I hadn't touched the main quest yet to "guide" me. I'm saving that for later.) I ran around and found the first delve as part of the daily, the one at the far right. Absolutely zero containers.

I was getting a bit antsy by this point. I ran around the rest of the expanse of the Deadlands, at least the best I could without knowing the place. I finally found the delve, which contained the first trunk found after all that time, on the far end of the zone. Which meant that in-between, I ran into nothing. I even had false hope by the backpacks accompanying the bodies of dead quest NPCs.

The structure plans are a bit more manageable (thank goodness) but Fargrave plans seem... bleak. As much as I am a dedicated farmer, there is one thing I do not do for the sake of my own sanity, and that is parking all my characters in one spot and just cycling through and opening containers endlessly with nothing. It is incredibly boring and even starts to get to me when I endlessly get no treasures or even base game green plans. If I go out of my way to a container grinding spot, it is quickly before being on the way to something else.

Since the buildings are behind loading screens, it makes it way more cumbersome to do my method though. It's a bit discouraging.

As far as Vampiric plans, nothing is more disheartening than struggling through (sometimes even soloing, when nobody shows up) a Harrowstorm, then getting the excitement of getting a Document Pouch, only to get a Counterfeit Pardon Edict out of it. I feel this exact same slog fighting World Bosses for style material.

TeruKisuke

Deep_01 wrote: »

For style materials, treasure chest-farm gear that drops in that style and deconstruct.

As a housing fanatic who doesnt make millions a week but less than 250k gold a week, "items are not expensive, you are short-changed".

Don't let housing be so stressful. Take a break if needed.

I appreciate and am grateful for your concern. In fact I appreciate everyone's input on this thread thus far. I haven't done zone dailies in the past three days after one of my comments on this thread saying I'll take a break. It is both very freeing, and mildly stressful lurking in the back of my mind that the more I hold off, the less material I'll have for any housing contest deadlines that I'm interested in.

For Clasps that decon method isn't too terrible, though I think whenever I decon gear I get very few guarantees of clasps compared to how much I'm deconning. A friend of mine, a fellow Houser, and I farmed dailies all the way up to the Leyawiin structure plan release and we built up maybe 300-400 clasps. I have a mansion build and, to drastically reduce slots, the Wainscot walls were very useful, but I ran out of clasps with just that build alone during the overhaul. Sad, I know. Using alternative furnishings would take more slots and defeat the purpose, buying them would be very expensive, and farming is always soul-draining given how many long grinds in the game there are.

As @K9002 has mentioned though, Culanda can't be deconned for gear, as they specifically wanted it to be scarce. (Why else would Sapiarch and the other sets drop Vitrified Malondo and Tenebrous Cords instead?) You can get it from the occasional antiquity though as a chance from bonus rewards, though I haven't tried to dedicatedly grind that considering that is also RNG.

Deep_01 wrote: »

"items are not expensive, you are short-changed".

Is this a quote from somewhere, or did you come up with it yourself? I see some truth in it. Expensiveness is relative; to a new player, everything is expensive. To the rich, it is inconsequential. Funnily enough, the "rich" players I come across or know of are either: those who play a lot but never invest in Housing, Bot farmers (against TOS of course), crown sellers, or those who invest in the ESO economy at any waking breath. But I've never known a Houser who was rich for long, if they ever are to begin with (and I mean a Houser who constantly works on houses, not ones who make one house and are satisfied.)

Some little insight about me, but Housing is currently a very happy place for me. My friends got me into this game but eventually fell off. I was really excited to learn Housing was a thing. I could make practically anything. I was in a dark place at the time and I secluded myself, but then Housing came along and it started making me appreciate the world more, I feel. I started paying attention to locations more taking pictures of mundane yet aesthetic things to take inspiration from. I started wanting to recreate some iconic fantasy locations that give me joy, and run around in them. Bilbo's Hobbit House, Luigi's Mansion, Link's House in Breath of the Wild, and so on. My latest passion project is Cafe Enchante, a game that I enjoyed very much earlier this year, about a coffee shop connected to different fantasy worlds, and is a beautiful place I'd want to sit down in. I take a lot of joy in designing things, and also like to draw and write/make stories, and Housing fulfills a nice facet of that.

I say this all to say: A part of the stress is not being able to execute my ideas faster than I get them. I'd love to go back and polish my old builds too, but I also have ideas for new builds, and do not have the gold nor materials to remake my player home that would really benefit from an overhaul with all the new furnishings. And with all the time it takes to grind materials and plans and dailies, well I feel bogged down and discouraged, that's all.

P.S.: Sorry for my long-windedness. I like writing and it bleeds into when I talk to people. It's very TLDR, I know.

Ravensilver

TeruKisuke wrote: »

The three break-intoable homes are very small and don't have much to steal.

Actually, there are seven... ^^;;

And yes, only one delve has even a few containers that are lootable. Though I only managed to get two blues out of those, despite farming them daily.
So far, most of what I've gotten was the same greens over and over again. I wish I knew where the people selling the purples for astronomical prices on the guild shops are getting them from... I've been farming steadily, daily, since the chapter came out. And no luck so far.

K9002

Wretched Spire has a few unowned containers inside the spire itself, dark elf furnishings. It's not much at all, maybe 7 in total, but I saw people coming there to farm. There is an area near the Abomination Cradle boss that has 9 or 10 urns in a cluster around a column. It's about as bad as trying to farm that ship in Murkmire.

Ravensilver

K9002 wrote: »

Wretched Spire has a few unowned containers inside the spire itself, dark elf furnishings. It's not much at all, maybe 7 in total, but I saw people coming there to farm. There is an area near the Abomination Cradle boss that has 9 or 10 urns in a cluster around a column. It's about as bad as trying to farm that ship in Murkmire.

Yeah... then you go up to the area near Abomination Cradle and what do you find? Khajiit Frame, Arched... >.> I can't even *give* that away...

kind_hero

malatorius wrote: »

I Think a great help to lessening the grind would also be to:

Have Furnishing materials (ie: Heartwood, Mundane Runes, etc) be harvestable from breaking down raw materials like you get tempers, etc. Being able to get that Heartwood from breaking down your stack of 200 Rough Ruby Ash or whatever would help IMMENSELY.

Hey, that's a fantastic idea. I see this thread was moderated, so I am hoping that at least this idea is forwarded to the devs.

@TeruKisuke Thanks for all the time you put to answer to my reply and to everyone. If only the housing team would pay at least half of the effort you make to read the community posts!
I mean no disrespect. Some of the recent creations in the housing department are gorgeous. The list of furnishings is getting longer with each update. Deadlans is the first to include structural elements like windows and ceilings, besides many variants of stairs and other much needed elements. Unfortunately not everyone likes Daedric gloomy stuff. However, the most requested features are still not anywhere to be seen. Like, how hard is to release some filled planters, without plants? Or some soil patches, to fill the existing urns and pots?

The building mats is the most pressing issue in my opinion. I was lucky to make a quick profit with Deadlands, but otherwise, I could not afford to decorate even a medium house. @TeruKisuke , I know what you mean when you say how gold draining is decorating just one house. A year ago I started working on a contest build. I made an ancient Greek inspired temple on the shores of the Psijic Villa. It set me back about 1 mil gold in mats and plans (but mostly it was mats). More than half of that gold was spent on mundane runes. The build needed a lot of structural furnishings. I think I spent about 1k runes on that build.

With regards to crafting, I am lucky to be in a wonderful housing guild with very passionate builders. Several of them are collectors, they can craft mostly everything, so if I need something more special, I tend to ask for help. But housing is a tedious grind. Many times, I feel drained after finishing a housing project because of all the hassle. By that I mean farming, managing mats, traveling to traders and browsing, going back and forth to traders to find the lowest price, bothering people with crafting requests and sending the right amount of mats by mail. Btw, there is no way to pull out of the crafting bag, the right amount of mats needed for a blueprint, which is quite annoying. Also, there is no official catalog of furnishings (no bestiary for monsters, as well).

kaisernick

I agree and im aslo confused

im sure i read a long while ago that they chaged it so plans would drop where they are supposed to from now on and yet i keep getting things like dark elf plans in summerset and the deadlands.

the drops from dailys are also a nightmare the only time i managed to get a decent amount of blackwood plans was from the event there and only because you got 2 reward coffers, now i have had zero drop since.

Ravensilver

kaisernick wrote: »

I agree and im aslo confused

im sure i read a long while ago that they chaged it so plans would drop where they are supposed to from now on and yet i keep getting things like dark elf plans in summerset and the deadlands.

the drops from dailys are also a nightmare the only time i managed to get a decent amount of blackwood plans was from the event there and only because you got 2 reward coffers, now i have had zero drop since.

Last pass through the Fargrave bank: 2 green Khajiit furnishing plans. >.<
I'm getting Nord, Khajiit, Dark Elf stuff, mostly greens, occasionally blue. What am I not getting? Fargrave or Deadlands.

So, I think they forgot to implement that plans are dropping from the zone they belong to...

K9002

I just discovered something related to housing. Deadlands chests drop random vanilla paintings, the one I got was Winter, Bolted. One of the major patches earlier this year changed the chests to drop only paintings from their zones, and this worked fine in all zones up to and including Blackwood. This means that there are either no Deadlands-themed paintings, or that Deadlands chests are bugged. In both cases that's disappointing.

Pixiepumpkin

housing is fun but it cost to much real life money and to much gold. i wish we could get the cool houses in game like the werewolf house and the dark brotherhood cave.

kind_hero

K9002 wrote: »

I'm not sure asking for these materials to be obtainable from refining is a good idea. Monkey's paw rule - it might end up reducing the amount of tempering materials, which would be devastating for jewelry platings market. Instead I would like to see some way of trading refined mats for furnishing ones. Even if it's unfavorable rates such as 200 planks for 5 heartwood. It could be made somewhat immersive too, like a charity that collects bulk materials and returns smaller tokens of gratitude. Some of the daily writs already have flavor text about donating items to the war efforts, refugees and such.

Arguably it could be a minor gold sink too. IIRC a single ruby ash plank sells for 4 gold, so 800 for a whole stack. I sell this kind of thing to NPCs all the time, it adds up like gold from daily writs.

Trading refined mats at a vendor for furnishing mats is a good idea.

More suggestions:

1) I would be happy to further "refine" refined mats to get heartwood or runes. I have hundreds or thousands of runes, piles of sanded wood, and so on. These refined materials are so cheap now. They could be used somehow to get housing items.

2) Have a housing hireling that delivers random housing mats every day

3) Decon furnishings

4) Salvage nodes - there are plenty of ruins across Tamriel, like shacks, abandoned or ruined houses, broken statues, etc

But the most obvious and simple way is to simply increase the drop rate for those items that are ridiculously expensive right now. I remember when one mundane rune was about 300-400 gold and at that time I thought that was expensive. Right now on the PC-EU server runes can sell for 1.4k a piece or more. Hearwood and Decorative Wax are in a similar situation.

Kwoung

IMHO the material issue could be solved by ZOS simply not requiring them year after year for events like the New Life festival. If they took the time to switch up what might be required to complete those writs each year, no one would risk buying up all the furniture mats throughout the year and sit on them until the festival, just to make a fortune in one fell swoop. It used to be the market stabilized after the events and things returned to mostly normal. But now with a huge influx of gold and the rich getting richer, players can afford to buy up every Heartwood they see at a reasonable price and sit on it until the price spikes. If they changed the requirements for this years festival, I am pretty sure we would see a huge dump of materials back into the market at highly reduced rates by everyone scrambling to minimize the losses on their market speculation, that didn't pan out.

As for recipes, yeah the drop rates suck. While I don't agree with them doing this, it is probably by design, for numerous reasons. For one, I can't think of a single part of this game that isn't a grind, and the further you get into something, the more of a grind it becomes. I have run Arx over 300 times now easily, I still don't have all the weapons. I earned or purchased all my motifs in game for gold, and I easily spent over 25 million gold on that alone and even then, some were extremely hard to find and it was months before I finally obtained some of them. I just recently earned the Legate title and the color to go with it, my account is as old as the game itself, and there are colors / skins / mounts I will never be able to earn. I also just got the wading kilt, and that was so over the top I took a short break from the game after spending literally 48+ hours picking water/plants in Shadowfen to obtain a single lead for it.

The bottom line, housing is easy to get into, there are thousands of easily obtainable recipes and you can decorate a really cool home without having to use any rare, hard to find ones. However, you may want to use those rare hard to find ones to create your vision, at which point it becomes like every other thing in this game at that level, a huge pain and ungodly grind. And of course, they want you to buy those items from the crown store instead.

Not defending ZOS on any of this, but it seems fairly obvious that they don't consider housing or fashion to simply be a Casual Gameplay option that should open and available to everyone regardless of skill, gold or the ability to buy crowns.

Edit: Also keep in mind, there are a *HUGE* number of players who are not into housing or fashion, and simply vendor or eat those recipes & motifs, because they have no clue what they are worth, which doesn't help either. I can't tell you how many times I offered a small fortune to buy a recipe from a group mate that dropped, and they had already used it, even though they didn't have the slightest interest in housing and most definately could have used the gold.

TeruKisuke

Ravensilver wrote: »

TeruKisuke wrote: »

The three break-intoable homes are very small and don't have much to steal.

Actually, there are seven... ^^;;

And yes, only one delve has even a few containers that are lootable. Though I only managed to get two blues out of those, despite farming them daily.
So far, most of what I've gotten was the same greens over and over again. I wish I knew where the people selling the purples for astronomical prices on the guild shops are getting them from... I've been farming steadily, daily, since the chapter came out. And no luck so far.

Apologies. I meant the homes that are labeled as "trespassing" after breaking into. I wasn't able to find many of them in Fargrave, though admittedly I did get lost from the many loops in the city. Not that I hate it, but I'm not used to it lol. Granted though, I have not run out to see the settlements in the Deadlands yet, and I haven't had a chance to play as much.

I think the delve is decent, though they didn't spread out the containers well. The containers are only on the left side of the map, and they could've at least placed some of them on the right side. I guess they wanted to make the distance for Housers to run around shorter? But I would've liked the option for more.

TeruKisuke

kind_hero wrote: »

@TeruKisuke Thanks for all the time you put to answer to my reply and to everyone. If only the housing team would pay at least half of the effort you make to read the community posts!

Thank you for your compliment! I'm quite passionate about the subject so I figure might as well respond to everyone who contributes. You guys have been quite awesome and supportive of what I was worried would be a one-off rant thread. I only worry that my responses are too TLDR (I recognize I write a lot, and am very long-winded.) Ironically the past few days I have been a bit busier though, but you guys have been keeping the thread alive. Thanks for all the discussion!

kind_hero wrote: »

I mean no disrespect. Some of the recent creations in the housing department are gorgeous. The list of furnishings is getting longer with each update. Deadlans is the first to include structural elements like windows and ceilings, besides many variants of stairs and other much needed elements. Unfortunately not everyone likes Daedric gloomy stuff. However, the most requested features are still not anywhere to be seen. Like, how hard is to release some filled planters, without plants? Or some soil patches, to fill the existing urns and pots?

I agree. I made a review for every furnishing and quite a lot of them are high quality. And I agree not everyone is into gloomy, but it has its uses, and some of them add much-needed elements. Ceilings, inner and outer corner stairs, HUGE stairs, structured supports.

I think one complaint I would have though is that it seems the Fireglass window is not in the Housing Editor, likely to be held hostage behind a limited time furnishing pack. I really hope they will learn that I will buy something many times individually than in a pack that I can only buy one of, and likely for several years. I see many uses for it.

Empty Planters were requested all the way back in Vvardenfell. There were thread outcries about the deletion of planter boxes from Amaya Lake Lodge. That thread was responded to as being a "possibility to re-add them in the future," but it's been maybe five or so years now. They know we want them, but they keep being filled. I like to think they have the best intentions though. But I wonder why we are constantly deprived when asked for simple things. We even had it, but it was taken away.

kind_hero wrote: »

The building mats is the most pressing issue in my opinion. I was lucky to make a quick profit with Deadlands, but otherwise, I could not afford to decorate even a medium house. @TeruKisuke , I know what you mean when you say how gold draining is decorating just one house. A year ago I started working on a contest build. I made an ancient Greek inspired temple on the shores of the Psijic Villa. It set me back about 1 mil gold in mats and plans (but mostly it was mats). More than half of that gold was spent on mundane runes. The build needed a lot of structural furnishings. I think I spent about 1k runes on that build.

I'm admittedly not lucky enough to pull such a rare find, and I think even then I might eat it lol. I did follow your advice of selling on the first day though. I got the Deadlands Door plan and sold it to someone for 100k, then I got the plans two more times that week so I used it and gave my friend the other. It's not much, but it's still a bit of profit. I think I'd be too scared to sell something like the Lightning Rod plans though, as I see myself using them a lot for their effects and have some friends who would too. But, that is if I'm lucky enough to even get them.

And, yes, gold is incredibly draining. And I'm sure it is by design, of course, but none of us are arguing to delete the grind, only give us some quality of life. Currently Housing takes time, effort, gold, real money, but all of that is still victim to poor RNG, so no matter how dedicated we are, it can still not be enough. I think I would be 100% fine with how much gold I spent on houses if things were improved regarding certain things like not having to do dailies every day for style mats, or getting furnishing material more often, like through surveys.

kind_hero wrote: »

With regards to crafting, I am lucky to be in a wonderful housing guild with very passionate builders. Several of them are collectors, they can craft mostly everything, so if I need something more special, I tend to ask for help. But housing is a tedious grind. Many times, I feel drained after finishing a housing project because of all the hassle. By that I mean farming, managing mats, traveling to traders and browsing, going back and forth to traders to find the lowest price, bothering people with crafting requests and sending the right amount of mats by mail. Btw, there is no way to pull out of the crafting bag, the right amount of mats needed for a blueprint, which is quite annoying. Also, there is no official catalog of furnishings (no bestiary for monsters, as well).

Admittedly some of that hassle is why I collect plans myself. Yes, it is economical to go to other crafters for help with our housing needs, but a little bit of social anxiety combined with the time it takes, the hassle to get out mats, finding an actual crafter who knows the plan, and tipping the person in question for their time (not to say they shouldn't be tipped but it does start to add up), well I would much prefer to be able to craft myself on the fly.

That "drained" feeling we all feel after throwing ourselves at a house is the worst feeling. I can throw myself at a house for days on end trying to finish it, but it will not matter if I run out of materials, or even worse, gold. I think materials is what bites the most. And it is assuredly intentional, to make us actually buy furniture with crowns more often, but it shouldn't be to the point where it discourages us from housing. I am of the mind they would make a lot more money off of me if I was actually in my homes building.

Good point about the catalog and bestiary. That would be so useful to keep track of everything, and a bestiary would be so fun. (I would even appreciate a furnishing book version to read in our homes. Y'know, for immersion.)

TeruKisuke

kaisernick wrote: »

I agree and im aslo confused

im sure i read a long while ago that they chaged it so plans would drop where they are supposed to from now on and yet i keep getting things like dark elf plans in summerset and the deadlands.

the drops from dailys are also a nightmare the only time i managed to get a decent amount of blackwood plans was from the event there and only because you got 2 reward coffers, now i have had zero drop since.

Yeah... I believe there was an update about that a long time ago. Last night I kept getting base game greens from Fargrave lol. Definitely not working like intended, if that is indeed true.

TeruKisuke

K9002 wrote: »

I just discovered something related to housing. Deadlands chests drop random vanilla paintings, the one I got was Winter, Bolted. One of the major patches earlier this year changed the chests to drop only paintings from their zones, and this worked fine in all zones up to and including Blackwood. This means that there are either no Deadlands-themed paintings, or that Deadlands chests are bugged. In both cases that's disappointing.

It is quite disappointing. I remember that same disappointment in Markarth, as it also drops base-game paintings. The same is being done here.

I think Markarth should be able to drop Greymoor paintings, and Deadlands DLC should be able to drop Blackwood paintings.

TeruKisuke

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

housing is fun but it cost to much real life money and to much gold. i wish we could get the cool houses in game like the werewolf house and the dark brotherhood cave.

I agree that Housing is fun, but the grind itself isn't. I wish it would be a bit more reasonable for a game that I am already spending all my time in.

As far as those Crown-Only houses, yeah the prices for Notables are a lot, and makes Housing a bit less accessible. I imagine a lot of fans would buy the Dark Brotherhood house, if it weren't a bit over 100 dollars. But the current model is "sell a lot to the few who can afford it" than "sell a lot to the many," and in a limited time window at that, so people cannot even save up their money for goals. And even then they're made to wait over a year.

There was even someone who raged on the forums because the Colossal Aldmeri Grotto still hasn't returned to the store yet, and it has been perhaps 2-3 years. It's very unfortunate and the current model is frustrating. But it is what it is, I suppose.

kind_hero

You mention the lightning rod plan... That's the one I found while peeking into containers in the Wretched Spire area. There are some backpacks scattered around the residential area. I was like what the hell, this isn't real. I thought about learning it and selling the rods, but every rich crafter was doing so at that time, the market was full of rods. Then I said to myself.. well, this rod is great, but how many of them will I need eventually? Most likely a few. So, I sold the recipe for quite a lot (or so I thought). At that time there were about 10 people selling that. Mine sold quickly, and after a few hours there was one person selling 4 rod plans for 5 million gold each. Because this is how it goes.
Sometimes I think that the devs should do something in the lines of EVE online economy, to create opportunities for the people who are super rich. I do not play EVE, but I know that in EVE very rich players can create alliances and work on very expensive projects like capital ships and all sorts of epic things. Problem in ESO is that very rich players are free to drain the market of certain mats, create artificial demand and so on. Which is not something that I would like to be stopped, I am saying that people do that because they have nothing else to do with their heaps of gold.

I do hope this thread has brought some attention from the housing team, and they can take some suggestions from here. One of the reasons I keep playing ESO is housing and character customization through outfits, costumes and dyes. I find this fun and relaxing when I do not want to engage in more active playstyles such as vet dungeons or pvp. But waiting for certain furnishings or grinding takes way to much time for what it's worth. The devs should see that. Even though some things are available through CS, the offer is small compared to the number of assets we see in game (structural furnishings and clutter that everyone is talking about). I wouldn't mind paying for some of these in the CS if such items would be available. But putting desirable items like doors or butterflies behind crown crates or gems is very greedy and unfair to players.

Why am I saying "unfair"? Because the ones who are likely to buy crates or use gems, are the same who already pay a sub and purchase very expensive houses. I have bought several houses with crowns, and am paying a sub for about 4 years. On rare occasions I have also purchased crown crates. For me it is a hobby, so I do not regret these purchases. However, I do not feel that I am getting much by paying these money. When paying even $100 alone for a house, a player should get access to much more stuff... Other companies or games offer life time bonuses and premium tier benefits for less. And I am not asking for "premium" stuff... I am just saying the offer in furnishings and features for the money we put in the game (for housing mostly) is low. Devs should offer far more furnishings, packs and real deals for those who spent a certain amount of real cash per month. I mean, a 20% off is low for someone who spent $300/year in the game (some people spend more, I just picked a number). I am sure that most people do not touch housing because of how expensive and tedious it is. This could be changed if at least up to the blue plans, housing would be much cheaper and easier to get into.

Raideen

Housing is definitely pay to win. In fact I often wonder if all these housing contests put on by official stream team partners is done to drive folks to the housing crown tab. Furniture patterns are near impossible to farm and the material cost to make anything is so absurd right now that the only way to really decorate is to keep using the same old stuff one has been able to make for years, or buy new items through the housing crown tab.

In my observations in most of those contests, the winners are usually a crown store exclusive 350 slot home all with ESO+ and a metric ton of items only found in the housing tab. The "judges" all seem to prefer 700 slot homes slammed with housing tab goods. The buy in price to even be considered to be judged is easily over 200 dollars.

maximusrex45

malatorius wrote: »

I Think a great help to lessening the grind would also be to:

Have Furnishing materials (ie: Heartwood, Mundane Runes, etc) be harvestable from breaking down raw materials like you get tempers, etc. Being able to get that Heartwood from breaking down your stack of 200 Rough Ruby Ash or whatever would help IMMENSELY.

Yes! You should get these mats from nodes, from processing node mats, from breaking down unwanted furnishing items, from daily writ reward boxes, and from Surveys. I have tens of thousands of processed wood, but I am starving for heartwood. And Surveys feel like wasted time because I don't get furnishing mats from them.

Ravensilver

Raideen wrote: »

In my observations in most of those contests, the winners are usually a crown store exclusive 350 slot home all with ESO+ and a metric ton of items only found in the housing tab. The "judges" all seem to prefer 700 slot homes slammed with housing tab goods. The buy in price to even be considered to be judged is easily over 200 dollars.

I guess that depends on who is running the contests. In Tamriel Homes (EU), we have all kinds of housing contests: small houses, big houses, appartments... We have different themes and as far as I know, the contests aren't being streamed, unless a guild member wants to stream their own house.
And the judges are the members of the guild. We *all* get to vote on the contest houses. There is no buy-in.