Player Housing

Player Housing consists of three player built cities that are scheduled to be implemented in FFXIV: A Realm Reborn during the first major content patch after launch. While it is possible to play the game without ever touching the housing system, we recommend that you do not because a lot of work has gone into making this a one of the biggest and best housing systems in an MMORPG ever. Here is what we know so far.



Building a House

The housing system will be instanced, which means players will zone out into an area designated for player houses. There will be one housing area for each of the three city states of Gridania, Limsa Lominsa and Ul'dah and once any of these instances are filled a new instance will open up. This means there is no limit on how many plots of land are in the system.

Housing will cost a lot of gil. It has been said that in order to buy a medium sized plot of land you will need to spend the equivalent of levelling a class to 50 on quests three times and put all the gil you earned into your house. Large plots will be insanely expensive and there will only be 3 such plots per instance. It may be better to start small and work your way up. But there is a twist. Land prices will fall over time if the plot has not been bought up. So it is effectively a good gil sink, the rich will buy early and high while the less well off will wait until the prices are more in line with their savings.

Two types of housing will be available. These are free company housing as well as individual housing, however free company housing will make it into the game first. These are essentially the same thing, except that with free company housing any bonuses (more on this later) will be available to everyone within the free company. There will also be a shared item safe within free company housing. Free companies can increase in rank and this will bring more housing features to them over time.



Customising the House & Adding Bonuses

Houses will be highly customisable and expandable. For example you can change the styling and colour of the roof, you can move objects and furniture around, you can add trophies and decorations to the rooms and hang banners around. Each house will have a yard which will also be customisable. Here you will be able to place a chocobo stable which will give you the ability to breed and raise chocobos. What's more, is a lot of this will be player driven, for example a Carpenter can make furniture while another crafter could create a roof.

In each house you will be able to build parks and towers, which are used to give bonuses to all members of your free company, or in the case of individual housing - yourself. This may be one of the most attractive parts of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn's housing system as it gives it a sense of purpose. Some examples of possible bonuses that producer Naoki Yoshida has mentioned include a 25% bonus to experience points earned, making crafting faster to level, to aid in HQ crafting or to increase the rate of gil acquisition.

One final point worth mentioning is that housing will be a system that Square Enix plans to expand over time. Its initial implementation is only the beginning.