How to get started with housing?

Athan1 · November 2020

I feel really overwhelmed regarding housing... There are tens of houses and thousands of furnishing options... I see some amazing super-complicated player houses online and think wow that's great... but have no idea how to get there and could use some help.

I have already bought several small to medium houses and collected several plans I picked up along my journeys or bought for cheap from traders. My main house was bought using crowns so it's furnished too. However, all items I have so far are very basic. How do I get more complex plans or furniture? Is there a comprehensive list of available furniture?

Also how do I change the layout of the house? I see people add new floors, separate rooms or add hills and stairs to their houses but I have no idea how to do all this. Is it too late to catch up and should I just give up on housing?

Any advice helpful. TYIA!

katanagirl1 · November 2020

Hi there, I’m still fairly new to housing myself - no custom building, just the normal furnishings and decorating.

Some people like ESO Fashion furnishing webpage, but here is my favorite housing online source:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Furnishings

Each section is all on one page so you can scroll instead of clicking multiple pages.

Generally the green and blue plans are more simple than the purple plans, but easier to find.

The DLC areas have furnishing plans that are different from the base game zones and will have to be found there. Be sure to open every container you see: backpacks, wardrobes, urns, nightstands, trunks, dressers, etc.

Hope this helps

DarcyMardin · November 2020

I can totally understand why you’d be feeling overwhelmed, but don’t give up! Housing is one area of the game where you can really exercise your creativity and artistry, but it has a bit of a steep learning curve. If you’re fairly new to the game, it can also take a while to acquire both the in-game gold and the crafting skill/recipes that you need to either buy or make various furnishings.

I’m no expert myself — I own a bunch of houses, but I, too, have been awed by some of the magnificent creations I have seen people put together, so my houses are used mostly as warehouses to store furnishings I’ve acquired while waiting for a great decorative or architectural idea to strike!

But I do know that folks with visual artistry skill find extremely clever ways of using a furnishing, a block of stone, or a plank of wood in unusual ways that I would never have thought of to create everything from a new style of fireplace or staircase to awesome creations like a fire-breathing dragon, a train that runs on tracks, a modern kitchen, a pirate ship, a city in the clouds, etc., etc.

Anyway, there are a few housing guilds on most servers where you can find inspiration and advice. Also search these forums — there are threads with housing ideas and info. The devs have slowly added more construction materials to help in the creations of new buildings and they’ve also improved our tools for moving and placing items. There are add-on that help, too, if you’re on a PC. Furniture recipes can be acquired from containers (particularly urns, for some reason), achievement vendors (work on those achievements), guild stores, writ vouchers, holidays event drops, pick-pocketing, antiquity hunting, dead mobs (rarely), and other game events.

For making your own furniture, it helps if your crafter is an expert at several different crafts.

Best of luck and have fun!

Batgirl · November 2020

If you're on PC, addon Furniture Catalogue is a big help, its a list of all furniture in game, and you can sort by its source, craftable known/unknown, gold purchased, acquired from other source like pickpocketing etc. You can sort by item quality, crafting station, and theres a search box, if youre looking for example for a table and want to check all tables in game.

There are many sources of furniture, but most popular are either crafted (you can ask someone to craft it for you or buy in guild stories) or bought from npcs- look for a chair icon on map mostly in major cities, but sometimes theyre put at smaller towns. Generally there are always at least 2 sellers per zone, one has achievement furnishings, other is called home goods furnisher and usually has some nice cheap trees and other plants characteristic to that zone. Also npcs like woodworker, enchanter, black Smith etc have few furnishings for sale connected with their proffessions.
Another source for more fancy stuff is the luxury furnisher. Its an npc that appears only on weekends in coldharbour near cicero store (outside).

About the placing items itself, there are several options: when you Press T while placing furniture, you turn off/on the collision, so you can sink it in floor/walls or in other furniture pieces - thats often used when creating custom builds. Pressing F enables precision editing Mode, it kind of detaches camera from characters body and allows you to rotate and move and align it very precisely. Pressing right Mouse button when placing furniture aligns it to a closest surface.

Out of curiosity, which is your main home? Housing takes some time and can be a huge gold sink, but can be super fun. If youre on PC and have acces to PTS, you can buy many furniture pieces for 1 crown (those are fake PTS-only crowns, so dont worry, it doesnt affect your live account) and play around with them, test things, try to build something.

Happy housing

Raideen · November 2020

IMO, dont spend your gold on patterns. I have not seen a furnishing pattern yet that you will make a return on. I have farmed and purchased a TON of patterns and decorated a number of homes, some of them 700 slot homes. In every example I would have faired better if I would have just purchased the furniture from the Guild Trader outright instead of the patterns.

I totally get the feeling of wanting to be self sufficient and I agree with that sentiment but it depends on the furnishing item.

For example, if you are using a lot of candles, trees, lamposts etc then owning those furnishing patterns will be helpful. But for items where you make a handful, it might be cheaper to purchase the furniture outright.

When you look at the price of most furniture at the guild traders, its often sold very very close to the material cost, and often cheaper. Meaning even if you did have the pattern, you would be better served to sell the raw materials and just purchase the furniture.

I have invested millions of gold into patterns and none of them have proven to be lucrative. There might be some gold patterns from writ traders that do allow for some gold to be made, but the average pattern in game is not going to yield that much.

I find this website very helpful. https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/furnishings/
The nice thing about the person who runs it is that they take a screenshot of their character next to the furniture to help understand the scale. I don't know why ZOS does not implement this into the game, seems like a pretty basic necessity to me.

As far as decorating techniques, the best way is just to jump in and start placing stuff. Don't be afraid to find inspiration online to help you get ideas.
I would also start small. Decorate a single room space like Captain Margaux in Daggerfall. The smaller the space, the more immediate gratification you will get as you start placing furniture. Starting on a large home can be intimidating and cause you to give up because it will take a LOT of money/furniture and time to get it sorted out. Smaller spaces are more forgiving. You can do some really fun stuff in just on evening with basic furnishings.

For example. I purchased the Snugpod in Eldenroot so I could have fast access to the master writ vendor, a wayshrine and the undaunted. For weeks it sat as an empty, function only space. But the other night my GF commented it would be cool if it was a travelers waystation, so with that in mind I started on it. I did this in one evening. Its not perfect, there are somethings I would like to change/add but it helps to show what can be done even in a small space. I have ESO+ so I get 2x the furnishing amount (imo this is necessary) but in this house I am just under 50% of the available furnishing slots meaning this would be achievable without ESO+
NOTE: large homes will just about always end up feeling empty, they really need 1500 slots minimum to make them immersive and detailed like we see in game. The best way to handle large homes is to only use a portion of them.

Jump in and have fun!

TheImperfect · November 2020

Get watching StabbityDoom and others on Twitch and YouTube. She has instructive videos and tours homes every day which helps with knowing what furniture is available. JHartEllis and Ninjamonkey0169 are good too although Ninjamonkey0169 isn't always furnishing but he has some good videos and ideas and is always very chilled out to watch.

ivelbob · November 2020

I second the suggestion to watch StabbityDoom, JHartEllis and other housing streamers. I've found it immensely helpful to get into Housing

Just to start you off, here's a StabbityDoom video that lists sources for all kinds of furnishings you might not know about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtUpY_p5Sto

Rynd33 · December 2020

I play on XBOX NA, so housing options are more limited than pc, but still enjoyable. The way I started with housing was to buy a furnished home, Twin Arches, and played around with the furnishings provided, adding furnishings I had discovered/purchased along the way.
Twin Arches, the inside is pretty standard, but the garden was added outside

Once I felt I had mastered most of the tricks of housing, such as being able to place items outside the set housing zone and recall them, I began trying to somewhat imitate some of the designs I saw on this forum.

Khajiit temples placed out of zone at Hunding's Palatial.

Cyrodilic Jungle House based on a design I saw on this forum.

Now I generally buy houses with a specific build in mind.

Kragenhome Clockwork Lab

However you chose to go about it, I wish you the best and hope this helps.

KryoKitten · December 2020

Athan1 wrote: »

I feel really overwhelmed regarding housing... There are tens of houses and thousands of furnishing options... I see some amazing super-complicated player houses online and think wow that's great... but have no idea how to get there and could use some help.

I have already bought several small to medium houses and collected several plans I picked up along my journeys or bought for cheap from traders. My main house was bought using crowns so it's furnished too. However, all items I have so far are very basic. How do I get more complex plans or furniture? Is there a comprehensive list of available furniture?

Also how do I change the layout of the house? I see people add new floors, separate rooms or add hills and stairs to their houses but I have no idea how to do all this. Is it too late to catch up and should I just give up on housing?

Any advice helpful. TYIA!

My biggest advice when things start to feel overwhelming is to pause. Look at all of the amazing complicated housing you see and remind yourself that it might not happen over night for you. Many of these awesome ppl have been at this for a very long time and have a really good feel for what does and doesn't work well together. Even then there's a lot of work that goes into these labors of love. Don't pressure yourself to measure up against others. I consider myself pretty ok but there are some crazy insane ppl in this community that I will never stack up with.

I strongly recommend starting small so it's not so overwhelming at first. There isn't a reason to go hog wild on patterns to start, pick something that's easy and affordable to work with. Autumn's Gate is great and it's only 60k. Pick a room you want to build (bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, etc) and set your self a budget and hit the traders for some furniture on the cheap. Use your first house to learn how to place furniture and experiment. Essential Housing Tools (EHT) is an amazing tool but I personally would stick with the games default settings (the in game "precision edit" is amazeballs) until you start to feel confident.

I hope that's helpful!

Athan1 · December 2020

Very helpful suggestions guys, thanks a lot. Screenshots help too. I'll try playing around with my main house, Mathiisen manor, which I bought furnished, and experiment with the one room apartments.

Jaimeh · December 2020

I concur that https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/furnishings/ is an amazing resource, you can search furnishings by many different criterias, or just browse for ideas. I don't think anyone started with complicated builds, and it can get overwhelming at first, if you mail for something massive and complicated as your first decoration. I would pick a house I liked, and then tour it for a feel of what kind of house I'd like it to be; for example, a cozy cottage with a vibrant pantry, comfortable living room, lots of books, and a yard with animals, etc. From there, you can use furnishing catalogs to see which items would go nicely with your idea, and start decorating with them. A lot of housing is trial-and-error: something might seem like a good fit in your mind, but then when you actually go to place it in your house, you might not like it. That's why for expensive items, it's a good idea to check them first on the PTS (if you are on PC), before you craft or buy them. After you have some experience with how to place items, etc., just try to see how different items look when they are rotated, stacked on top of each other, embedded in walls or other furnishings, and so on, and basically that's how you start to get ideas for different decorations. I think the most important part for beginners in housing is not worrying too much about the end result, but just jump into it and start decorating!

kargen27 · December 2020

What helped me with the homes I have done so far is to pick one of my characters as the owner of that house then decide what type of home that character would want. Kind of create a basic theme and feel the build around that.

I have a few ideas kicking around for places that won't be decorated for my characters but other than stacking stuff I might want to use I really haven't started on any of them. I do know I want to do an outdoor bazaar in one of the large houses and have a general idea of where to set up booths and other things. Just need to start placing. I have all the houses in the game that can be purchased in game and a couple from the crown store I got with crowns from ESO+ but so far I only have four of them finished.
I like to randomly visit guild mates homes and borrow ideas from them.