Housing Guide

Buying and Maintaining a House
If you are in the market for a house in Norrath, visit the house you are interested in and click on the front door. The window will inform you of the houses features, cost and assuming you meet the requirements, let you 'Buy' the house. To tour the house, right click on the door and select 'Tour.' To visit another occupant, right click on the door and select 'Visit'. To buy and maintain the house, you must pay an initial upfront cost, as well as a weekly upkeep cost. This cost varies based on the size and quality of the house. Some housing is available in two versions, one with a coin cost and the other with a coin/status cost. If a character chooses a coin/status-based house, it is possible to reduce or eliminate the status portion of the upkeep by placing status reduction furniture in the house. The amount of status reduction is visible when examining the furniture item. Most mixed coin/status-based housing requires a character be a member of a guild. Currently, the most restrictive house requires a guild level of 30. The cost of weekly upkeep may be paid up to twelve weeks in advance. If the payment is not made, you and others will not have access to your house and your brokered items will not be available for sale to others. To restore access and bring your house payment up-to-date, you need only pay the current week's upkeep. You do not have to retroactively pay past due amounts.

Decorating
Decorating houses is an enjoyable and artistic pastime for many players. Players often use items in unconventional ways to create beautifully complex and layered designs. When you are inside a player's house in Everquest II, you can view item information by clicking the item. You can also find house items for sale on the broker and preview them in the in-game 'Dressing Room.' However, only select items are on the broker at any given time and the origin of the item is not always reasily apparent. This site, everseek.com, is designed to be a comprehensive database of house items, including the item's origin, so that decorators may quickly find the items they need.

Much to the dismay of decorators, each house has a limit to the number of items it can hold. Level 79 Carpenters who have purchased the Danak faction recipe book, 'Danak Arcana Volume II,' have the ability to craft a 'Dimensional Pocket Expander.' This item may be used once per home to increase the maxium number of items by 100.

Once inside your house, you can click on the door (or use the /house command) to view information about your house, access your vault, save and load layouts, pay upkeep, make escrow deposits, set access levels and other features. You can choose to 'Collect an Item' which brings up a list of all items in your house and allows you to either place an item in your inventory ('Retreive Item') or interact with the item directly in your house ('Move Item'). You can also choose to 'Collect all Contents' (beware! It does exactly what it says!), 'Pack Contents' (packs everything into a moving crate).

Two new (and slightly buggy) commands available to decorators are /save_layout and /load_layout. These commands allow designers to save and load the positions of furniture using text files and coordinates. However, understanding the coordinates is a bit tricky and there are a few bugs with item placement when the file is loaded. Items of the same type are sometimes erroneously stacked on top of one another, others seem to get 'stuck' in odd places or seem to 'disappear.' The command can be used to line up objects precisely for complicated designs but overall, there is a risk to using them, especially if your house contains a lot of meticulously placed items. Layouts can be used on the same floor plan within any given city.

Practical Uses
Houses are fun to decorate and display trophies but also have many practical uses. All houses have a vault with a fixed number of slots. You may place boxes in the slots for item storage. Level 79 Carpenters who have purchased the Riliss faction recipe book , 'Riliss Craftsmanship Volume II,' have the abililty to craft a 'Crafted Vault Expander.' This item may be used once per home to increase the number of storage vaults by one. Crafting it requires a chromatic essence, which is dropped from named mobs in Kunark as well as common T8 harvests. The Crafted Vault Expander may only be used once per house and may not be used to increase the number of storage vaults beyond six.

Houses also allow you to sell goods to other players via your city's broker. To sell items from your house, buy 'a market bulletin board,' place it on your wall and click it. You will be able to place sales displays into slots and fill those displays with goods. All items will be available on the broker as soon as you set a price and list it for sale. If you also place your sales displays in your house, buyers will also be able to visit your house, click on the display and purchase the item directly. This saves the buyer broker fees.

Houses may also hold other functional items, such as travel items, crafting stations, other interactive items and altars.

Moving
A character may only own one house at a time but can move at any time. You can move to a new home by clicking on the front door of the new house to buy it. Any escrow funds and advance payments made on the old house will be lost. When you move, you automatically relinquish your old house and all of your house furnishings are packed into a moving crate which appears inside your new house. The moving crate, just like the 'Collect an Item' window allows you to place an item in your inventory ('Retreive Item') or place the item directly in your house ('Move Item'). Items that belong to others can only be moved, not retreived. All characters have a moving crate available whether they've recently moved or not. Any item in your house can be stored in your moving crate by right clicking the item and choosing 'Pack in Moving Crate.' Each item in the moving crate counts toward a house's maximum item count, so while it is handy for storage, keep in mind that each item placed in the crate is one less item placed in your house.

If you are ever forget your address, use the Persona window to be reminded.

Access Levels
Access levels and lists may be set by owners of houses:

• Owner: You, the owner of the house. Only you can relinquish the ownership of your house.
• Trustee: Trustees have the same level of access as the owner. Trustees can place items, move items, and interact in every way like the owner with the exception of picking up certain items that are specifically tied to the owner. Trustees can also pay the weekly upkeep.
• Friend: Friends can interact with some items in your house as well as move items around, but they cannot place new items or take items out of your house.
• Visitor: Visitors can interact with some of your items and buy from your sales displays. They cannot, however, pick items up or move them.
• None: No one can visit your home when you choose this access level.

Tidbits on the Evolution of Player Housing
When Everquest II first started, merchants often sold better looking furniture at lower price than items than Carpenters could craft. Many items that the merchants sold for a few coins had the same apperance as items made with rare harvests. Overall, the appearance of furniture left a lot to be desired. Three was also no way to click on an item to see what it was in player's houses or any way to preview items in the dressing room. (This meant I had to do *a lot* of guessing at first to figure out what items were!) Furniture items also did not contain the amount of status reduction on the item. Moving from one house to another used to require a lot of bank and bag space because the convenience of a moving crate did not exist. With big houses, this was an almost impossible and definitely tedious task. Also, before GU53, most houses had one less room and many held 100 items less than they do now.

Since the early days, largely thanks to Domino, player housing, carpenters and Norrathian decorators have received a lot of love. All but a few house items were removed from merchants and the furniture design and selection improved dramatically. Items now contain status reduction information and can be previewed in the 'Dressing Room' in-game. Moving from house to house is easier than ever and advanced features like /save_layout and /load_layout have been added.