Home is where the heart is
Have you ever wandered around Aeternum, peeking into other players’ houses? Or wondered what all the fuss was about when someone groaned, “Oh no, I forgot to pay my taxes!” in the middle of the Hive of Gorgons? This article will introduce you to the marvels of housing in New World and provide information about why, where and how to buy one.
Contents
Why should I buy a house?
We’re here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, so why would we be thinking about housing? Well, first of all, housing provides bonuses that include helping you kill bad guys faster. If you’re not into flexing your muscles so much, there are also bonuses for crafting and gathering available to homeowners. Plus, you’re going to need somewhere to put all the stuff you find in your travels, and finally, a place to express yourself creatively.
Trophy Bonuses
The thing most people use houses for is to place trophies. Every size of house can have up to 5 trophies placed in it, and each trophy gives a bonus. You can only have one of any given type of trophy in a house, but you can have up to 3 houses, so buffs can stack up to 3 times.
Max level combat trophies provide 5% damage bonus against a creature type, e.g. Angry Earth, Ancient, etc, for a total of 15% if you have three. That’s like being able to equip an extra Finisher on your off-hand
You can also place crafting trophies, which give up to +5 gear score to crafted items each. As well as trophies that increase your luck while gathering or looting. For more information about trophy bonuses, check out our Trophy Hunt article.
Extra Storage
Houses provide you with extra storage in the settlement you purchased it in. When you place a storage chest in a house, it adds the additional weight limit to settlement storage. Storage chests can hold from 400 to 1050 weight. You can access storage through the chest or through the normal storage shed in town.
Town Buffs
Homeowners get access to buffs put up by the company that controls the territory the house is in. These buffs include bonuses to crafting gearscore and gathering yield, or reduce damage from Corrupted. Town buffs are global, which means you can craft or gather anywhere, you just have to own a house in the town that has the buff.
Do I really get a free house?
Yes! Well, sort of. There’s a first home buyers discount of 9,000 gold, so if you choose a house that costs less than that, it’s free. The thing is, the only house that costs less than 9k is a T1 house at 5,000 gold. So you’re losing 4k of your discount.
What's the difference between the houses?
There are four tiers of housing, and all of them allow the placement of 5 trophies for buffs. Higher tier houses hold more items, have a faster Fast Travel Cooldown (which you can reset with azoth so it’s not really a factor), and cost more to purchase and have higher taxes.
| Tier | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Cost | 5,000 gold | 10,000Â gold | 15,000Â gold | 20,000Â gold |
| After first house discount | free | 1,000Â gold | 6,000Â gold | 11,000Â gold |
| Standing required | 0 | 10 | 20 | 30 |
| Tax per week | 50 gold | 100 gold | 150 gold | 200 gold |
| Furniture Items | 100 | 125 | 150 | 200 |
| Storage Chests | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Pets | 5 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Lights | 30 | 38 | 45 | 60 |
| Fast Travel Cooldown | 4h | 3h | 2.5h | 2h |
| Trophy Slots | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Wait, taxes?!
Yes, you do have to pay taxes. It’s not a huge amount, especially compared to how much it was at launch. If you have territory standing points put into Housing Tax, you’ll get a discount.
What if I don't pay?
The good news is that if you don’t pay your tax, you don’t lose your home or anything in it. All that happens is that you lose the benefits of the extra storage and trophy buffs. Your storage shed in that territory may become overfull if you’re at capacity, which means you can’t put anything in but you can still take it out. As soon as you pay your taxes, the benefits are returned.
How do I pay?
You can go into your house and press N for Upkeep, which will take you to the Property Management page. You’ll see a few other options here, including how to get rid of your house. Note that you get half of what you paid, so if you used your discount to get a free house, you will get nothing when you abandon it.
You can also wait until your tax is overdue and pay it from the map. This is my preferred method, as I have all my tax due at the same time and can pay them quickly, without having to jump around to each house.
Where should I buy a house?
This question is asked a lot. There is no one correct place to buy a house but there are a few factors to consider when making your choice.
Town layout
If you’re planning on doing crafting and refining, consider the layout of the crafting stations and how they suit your needs. Until we get global storage, crafting stations will draw from your inventory or local settlement storage. Since buying a house means you can hold more in that town, you’re likely to use it for storing crafting materials.
Towns I like the crafting station layout of include Windsward and Mourningdale – I especially like the river for easy access to water. Other popular crafting towns are Brightwood, Everfall, and Brimstone.
Town Maps and Housing availability
Another thing to consider is what tier house you want and how many options you have for that tier in each settlement. For example, Everfall doesn’t have a Tier 1 house. Ebonscale and Reekwater only have one Tier 4 house each, and Edengrove only has Tier 4 houses. To help you find your perfect home without having to stand on every doorstep, I’ve done it for you and created some housing tier maps.
Owners and buff activity
As mentioned above, town buffs can be one of the benefits of home ownership. But not if the company that controls the territory doesn’t put them up. You can go into the Town Hall and interact with the Town Planning Table to see whether there are any active buffs. If not, that’s a red flag about the territory owners. The issue is, territories change hands more often than houses do. On most servers, the core buff territories are Windsward, Everfall, and Brimstone Sands, so those are usually a safe place to buy.
For dedicated crafters, it can be a good idea to just keep a small house for your third, and move when you need a buff.
Town style
Towns come in different styles, from the lofty castles of Prydwen, to Everfall’s solid brick and iron, or the rickety Twillen swamp houses. Some people prefer a town with a unique character, like Fortune’s Crossing in Ebonscale Reach or New Corsica in Brimstone Sands. Others prefer the familiarity of the traditional towns, like Corinth or Spyglass Ridge. It’s worth exploring the map and finding out what you like the best.
Territory ownership
Finally, if you are in a company that owns a territory, buy a house there. You’ll get a 20% discount off the purchase price, and it’s the closest thing we have to company housing.
How do I get Standing?
So, you’ve decided to buy a Tier 4 house, to make the most of your discount and set yourself up for storing lots of goodies into the future. But what’s this? You need 30 territory standing?!!
Getting the standing to purchase a large house can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’ve chosen a settlement that you haven’t done much in. Here are a few tips for getting your standing up quickly:
- Play the Territorial Triumph song for a 30% bonus to standing gain (or ask someone to play it for you and tip them for the buff).
- Eat a Mac O’Malley food for a 15% standing gain bonus.
- If you’re ready for a dedicated 2-hour session of standing gain, consider consuming a Territory Standing Booster for 2x XP (it also doubles the other buffs).
- Complete all the town board missions you can – town boards are near the Town Hall and reset every 30 mins.
- If you’re in a faction, complete all the faction missions you can in that territory.
- Ask if you can refine motes for anyone. Refining large volumes of motes will raise standing quickly, doesn’t require skill to start, and you can give the refined product back to the owner.
- Any kind of crafting will give standing.
- If you’ve already got high-level refining skills, refining T5 mats gives a good amount of standing.
- You can also make Territory Standing Supplies – the higher your stonecutting skill, the higher level you can make for more standing yield.
- Closing Corruption breaches in the territory.
Buying my house
Once you have the standing and enough gold, buying the house is the easy part. Just walk up to the house you want and interact with the entrance. You’ll have the option to press T to purchase the house. Confirm your choice and you’re done!
Decorating Tips
The fun part of house ownership is decorating. New World has some amazing furniture assets and a deep end-game for collecting and crafting them. For more information about rare furniture, check out this article on the Hidden Treasures of New World.
When you place an item in your home, it adds points to your decorating score. For the points to count, you have to make sure the outline is green when you place. Yellow placement will result in a negative score. Placing too many of the same object also results in a lower score. Your score is combined with your activity in the territory to create a housing leaderboard for each house. The top house is displayed publicly, and the top 20 are available for viewing if you enter them. This can be a good way to get some inspiration for your own decoration ideas.
You can also visit the houses of people you are in a group with. This is a good way to share “illegal” placement houses, which are often the most creative in design. Ask your friends if you can visit their house today!
Check out our housing section for more ideas and feel free to contact us if you’d like to give a house tour for a feature article.
