ESO Housing: Incomplete Houses Galore!

So I took a look at my list of houses today, and have come to the conclusion that I have enough houses in ESO to keep me busy for the rest of my natural life. Or at least it feels that way. There are forty-eight of the little bastards. They come in all sizes, from too small to hold a king size bed, all the way to holy shit, I got lost again! size. Bought with crowns, bought with in-game gold, a couple here or there received for free… and all of ’em sitting there accusing me of neglect. Because there just aren’t all that many of the suckers that are considered finished. Some are completely empty, a few have piles of furnishings heaped awkwardly wherever they happened to fall, and a very few of them are actually complete.

So, since this is NaNoWriMo and I’m supposed to be writing, I thought I’d do a blog post. Posts are made of words, words go towards the word count, right? Er, not really. So I’ll do something in between: Write a bit to get my hands into writing mode, put up a few pics, then get back to my NaNo project.

How about an inn room? This is the Pilgrim’s Rest, all dressed up for a Fall Harvest themed contest. It came in third, which totally surprised me, because I’m pretty lousy at the decorating thing compared to some people.

• 

Thieves’ Oasis

One of my guilds had a housing tour that happened to coincide with a random day off, so I actually got my butt in gear and finished my Thieves’ Oasis. This is the one and only big expensive ESO house that I don’t feel vaguely guilty about, because even though it’s perfectly true that it’s silly to spend big bucks on a digital home in a video game, I don’t care. I love this place! It is the absolutely most awesome home I could ever possibly imagine.

Anyway, I got the decorating job done, and took a bunch of pictures. The house is a shared home for my five current characters, with a guest bed for any new additions. I have two healers, two fighters, and one adventurer. Here they are:

Their names are Callisto Dawn, Serene Wind, Sweet Sunflower, Nythorse the Wylde, and Shorty McCorkle. Please don’t judge until you’ve had to name characters in ESO. 🙂

And here are the finished pictures of my lovely Oasis! Nothing special, it’s not got any kind of theme or anything, it’s just a sanctuary from the heat of the desert.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Vampire House That Isn’t

I mentioned a bit ago that I got the Bastion Sanguinaris vampire house in ESO. Not because I like vampires, which I don’t, but because the thing is located in Blackreach. That’s right, glowing mushroom-covered Blackreach, one of my favorite places in Tamriel. It was huge, and empty, and rather gloomy, but I had a notion to turn it into a pretty and glowy place.

Well, I did. I ran around to all my other houses and scooped up pretty much every statue I could find, bought mountains of glowing plants from the luxury vendor–or at least, decent-sized anthills of them. Those things are expensive!–and decorated at high speed to get ready for a guild housing tour. Then I put many of the statues back where they came from, without remembering to take any pictures of the shiny tour version of the place. Oops!

But now I’ve got the place pretty much the way I want it, and I actually remembered to take pictures. So here they come. I’m pretty sure in the future there will be more plants, but when I tried to put more plants in, my brain froze up and couldn’t decide what went where. At the moment, though, everything is shiny, bright, and pretty, in a most un-vampiric way.

A word about the giant walkways in there: I thought it would be cool to build kind of garden paths up in the air. I put a couple of platforms on them, where I’ll eventually have chairs to sit on and look out over all the glowing things. But I discovered that I fall off them all the dang time. Even though I know it’s a game and therefor not real, the walkways still give me vertigo. Crazy, right? But true. I’m getting better at staying on the stairs and not falling off, but wow, it’s wild going out there.

And I got another house. Don’t roll your eyes at me, this one was free! Everybody with Greymoor got the Antiquarian’s Alpine Gallery. I’ll be posting pics of it sometime.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Another ESO House

Okay, I confess: I don’t like vampires. I have never played a vampire character in an Elder Scrolls game. Every time one of my characters has accidentally gotten infected, I haul ass to find a cure.

But…

I bought the big vampire house in ESO.

I know, out of character and all that. But I don’t care. Because the thing is in Blackreach! I’ve always loved Blackreach, and wanted to live there. Now I can. So what if the house is an overgrown vampire’s dream, it has magnificent glowing mushrooms! And the architecture, although gloomy, is pretty cool. And right after I bought it, I had a dream that showed me what to do with the thing: turn it into a big, beautiful garden, with lots of glowy things. Reality confirmed that this is the right thing to do by having the luxury furnisher offer a bunch of glowing plants this weekend. 😀

So here are pics of the empty, naked vampire house, Bastion Sanguinaris. This one will actually get worked on pretty quickly because one of my guilds is having a housing tour next weekend and I signed this place up for the tour. Deadline! Must get to work!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Housing Stuff Is Happening!

ESO housing stuff, that is. Naturally. My real-world dwelling is still a crappy old apartment.

I took five days off as a birthday gift to myself. Needless to say, I’ve done nothing much productive, and spent a whole hell of a lot of time gaming. (I actually did some 3D artwork. Shh, don’t tell anyone I accomplished something!) And, wonder of wonders, I’ve started sorting out some of my housing disasters! Despite the frustrations of lag, frame drop, and miserable low frame rates brought on by the release of the latest chapter.

So. Two places got minor updates a few weeks ago that I completely forgot about until I used them for fast travel and surprised myself. Here they are, Linchal Grand Manor with its new purple-flowering trees, and Potentate’s Retreat with a big statue that has an amazingly bright light.

• 

• 

Stuff I actually did this weekend, as opposed to stumbling across by accident, was a whole ton of gardening. Daggerfall Overlook was a big mess up until a couple days ago. There were a couple things inside, and the big barn outside was packed with plants.

Yes, as a matter of fact, those big trees do stick right through the roof. I tossed ’em in there for storage. But they’ve all come out now, and found nice places to grow in. The inside of the house is still super empty, but I made one small improvement, something that goes along with the backstory of the family that currently owns the estate. The ancestor that earned enough money to buy the place killed a dragon, you see…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The other place to have a dramatic change was the Thieves’ Oasis. This overgrown and thoroughly awesome place is going to be a shared home base for all of my characters, at least the ones I have now. I plopped some random things in there a while back, and made, of course, a mess.

Today I used the house to travel to and discovered that I’d made an even bigger mess outside.

Once again, I dropped all the future landscaping in a big pile and ignored it. Today, encouraged by my success with the other big pile of plants, I dove right in and started planting. Then I even managed to start organizing the stuff inside.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

And yes, I know. It’s downright ridiculous to plant big trees on rooftop terraces. But that’s where I want them, and that’s where they’ll stay!

There you have it, folks, the result of me finally getting organized enough to do something with my virtual houses! Who knows when they’ll be finished, but at least they’ve been properly started.

ESO: Domus Phrasticus

*happy dance*

I got it, I got it! Yay! After months of trying to save gold, spending all my gold, remembering I was supposed to save my gold… I finally have the house on the edge of Craglorn.

It’s funny, I tend to feel a tiny bit guilty when I buy an ESO house with crowns, just because I don’t like people blatantly flaunting their ability to buy stuff, and some of the ESO houses are freaking expensive with real-world money. So I feel a little bit bad. Just a bit, because I earn every bit of the money I spend, but enough. But when I worked in the game for ages and ages to earn a pile of gold instead of just dropping some cash on crowns and buying it the easy way… suffice it to say I was really ridiculously proud of myself today.

So here it is in the raw, unfurnished state, the Domus Phrasticus:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

While I was rejoicing in my new acquisition, I also decided what my next housing project will be. Two of my characters are related, and one of the houses is their ancestral home, so I figured I’d better finish decorating that place. Since, of course, I already know the backstory of the characters, and what the ancestral home should look like, and precisely why one of them has been living in the Domus Phrasticus for the last ten years or so… Shh! Don’t tell anybody I just bought it! 😉

A brief update on my ESO housing project…

A while back, I decided “no more houses unless I can buy them with in-game gold,” at least for a little while, because I needed to focus on paying real-life bills and not spending more bucks on in-game houses that do me absolutely no good in the real world. That resolve broke briefly when I saw the Thieves’ Oasis–an absolute no-brainer, I had to have that house–but I’ve behaved myself very well.

And now, after much effort and the creation of three new characters to supplement my daily writ income, I’m on the verge of success. Tomorrow I’ll have enough in-game gold to buy the Domus Phrasticus. At 295,000 gold, it was a genuine struggle for me to save the bucks, because I tend to spend in-game money just as fast as I do real life money.

And just wait, someday soon I’ll most likely inflict whatever I go through decorating it upon you, along with the backstory of the character who’s going to live there! =^..^=

Hall of the Lunar Champion

The Hall of the Lunar Champion is a big home in Elsweyr. You get it from completing the main questline for the zone. Or at least, you get part of it from the main quest. The big hall, to be exact. There are three portals, each of which is opened by a tablet, and each is obtained from quests or dungeons. The portals lead to a great big porch, an impressive courtyard, and a shed. That’s what I call it, anyway.

I have heard a ton of people complain about this house. They hate it! They complain about the size, and how stupid the portals are, and how boring it is, and… I don’t get it. Let other people hate the place. I love it! I’ll confess, the shed was a disappointment at first, but it makes a damn fine crafting area. And decorating the hall was my first real foray into housing. I’d bought Twin Arches in Bangkorai already furnished, thinking that would be plenty house for me. But the great big free house in Elsweyr showed me how truly wrong I was. It became my primary residence, and is the only large place I’ve actually finished.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Like a doofus that couldn’t predict the future, I didn’t take many empty pics of the house. Why should I? I had no idea I’d become addicted to housing! I did get a couple empty shots of the Halls of Colossus, though, so you can see how bland it started before I went bonkers and turned it into an out-of-control garden and living space. There are also a couple of the Moongrave Fane space before it got filled up.

Oh, and by the way: I’m still a colossal weirdo. Despite being addicted to housing, I still and always run my game naked. Vanilla. Bare of add-ons. So no, I can’t do any of the truly spectacular things that people with add-ons do.

Confessions of an ESO Housing Addict

I haven’t had much chance to play around with my houses lately. Been too busy doing everything else under the sun. (Like work. And more work. And a whole crapload more work. No, I don’t get to stay home, I’m considered essential. Damn it.) But… just about as soon as a new one came available, I lost all self-control and bought it. So much for my “no new houses until finishing the ones I’ve got” plan. Also, so much for my “only buy new house if Princely Dawnlight Palace or Colossal Aldmeri Grotto come back” plan. Both got shot straight into the crapper, because I instantly fell in love with the new Thieves’ Oasis. Not to mention they were having a sale on crowns, so I could invest half my grocery money and get a good deal.

What? You think food is better than a new in-game house? Nope. No way.

Anyway, all blathering aside, what I discovered yesterday was that I kind of screwed up my intentions for this blog. I planned to have a nice, orderly series of pictures, showing each house as it progressed from empty to homelike. But I kind of forgot to organize the screenshots. Not to mention, I haven’t done any work on any houses since… January? I think? Until this weekend, at which point I noticed the mass of disorganized pics and chaotic piles of crap all over the unfinished houses.

When the hell did I get all those plants, anyway?

Big pile o’ chaos… and plants

So. Starting afresh. I’ll plop some images down here, try to remember where they came from, and swear to organize myself better in the future. Quit laughing, you! I mean it!

Lights waiting to go into Lucky Cat Landing

Flaming dragon at Potentate’s Retreat

The balcony at Grand Psijic Villa, turning into a mage’s lair

Library at Grand Linchal Manor

And of course, kitties in the Sugar Bowl Suite!

My Houses

ESO houses, that is. I still don’t have even a single house out here in the real world. At least I can pretend in the game…

I have a ton of ESO houses. Got ’em over the last year with a combination of crowns (aka real money) and in-game gold. There was one day I remember quite gleefully, when I had a huge quantity of gold for some reason, and I ran around buying at least half a dozen houses… 🙂 That was fun! But now I’m trying to furnish them all, so I’m totally broke in game, just like real life.

List of my current houses, in alphabetical order. Pics are taken from the entrance, except for one. I’m afraid there are an awful lot of images with my bear’s butt in them. He kept jumping in front of the camera.

Alinor Crest Townhouse

 Autumn’s Gate

Barbed Hook Private Room  (from the windows, not the door)

 Captain Margaux’s Place

Daggerfall Overlook  (And yes, the storage area is, in fact, full of trees sticking through the roof. I dropped them there to await planting.)

 Enchanted Snow Globe Home

Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret

 Golden Gryphon Garret

Grand Psijic Villa

 Hall of the Lunar Champion

Hammerdeath Bungalow

 Linchal Grand Manor

Lucky Cat Landing

 Mara’s Kiss Public House

Moonmirth House

 Potentate’s Retreat

Saint Delyn Penthouse

 Sisters of the Sands Apartment

Sugar Bowl Suite

The Ebony Flask Inn Room

The Rosy Lion 

Twin Arches

That last one was the first house I bought. My original intention was to only use the free inn room, which was the Golden Gryphon Garret for me, because I started playiong in Summerset. I bought the place furnished, because I figured I wouldn’t have much interest in ESO housing. It’s not like Skyrim, after all. You can’t do half as much.

But… it didn’t work out like that. I eventually wanted the Grand Psijic Villa so bad I broke down and bought it, then the Hall of the Lunar Champion came free with Elsweyr, and now look what happened. Houses, houses, everywhere houses!