The housing market in Final Fantasy XIV has been one of the most controversial in all currently playable MMORPGs for years. MyMMO author Sophia Weiß is a proud owner of a home in one of the most desirable neighborhoods there. How did she acquire it? With intelligence and math!
Unfortunately, if you want to own a house in Final Fantasy XIV, you need much more than just enough in-game currency. On the one hand, most plots are already in firm hands. On the other hand, new residential land is only sparingly unlocked.
However, I have managed not only to secure one or even two, but a total of four houses for my Final Fantasy friends and me. And you can do that too. However, you need to understand how the system works.
Bureaucracy comes before fun
To even qualify for a house purchase in Final Fantasy XIV, you must meet certain prerequisites in addition to possessing the required purchase price. Depending on whether you want a house for your free company aka guild or just for yourself, they differ.
For company houses, you need to meet the following points:
- The guild must have over 4 members and at least guild rank 6
- Your character must have the authorization to purchase a plot; however, you must not have a guild house that is to be kept
- Your character must have been in the free company for at least 30 days
Private houses are primarily intended for decorating and also a bit for showing off. For this, you need to meet the following prerequisites:
- Your character must be level 50 or higher
- You must be at least a second storm lieutenant/snake priest/legion ensign in your state company
- Your character must not own another plot that is to be kept
You can buy houses via a First Come, First Serve
principle or via lottery. In the first case, it’s simply about being the first on site. In the second case, you need to proceed with a bit more system to have the best possible chances in the lottery.
You can read how the purchasing process works on the official guide page of Square Enix. How do you choose the right house and secure it? This is how I did it.
Buying a house made easier
I organized the first house upon release of Shirogane, the Japanese-inspired district from the Stormblood expansion. Afterwards, I worked with my guild to devise a sprint for our dream house in one of the A-Realm-Reborn districts. For both houses, the rule back then was still that the first to come had the right to buy. So our timing was the big challenge.
The crowning achievement is the two houses standing side by side in the sky city, the residential area in my favorite city Ishgard. Players unlocked these with the last endgame content for crafters and gatherers, by the way.
These are the four little houses I’ve secured. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking:
For the first two houses, there was a simple strategy:
- Choose desired house
- Find the fastest running route
- Strategically place character before the server downtime
- Log in right at the server go live after the patch
- Run the selected route as quickly as possible
- Buy the house
The current lottery system takes the stress out of having to be online during the patch go live. Unfortunately, this almost always falls on a Tuesday morning, which is not a regular gaming time for workers and students in Germany. You don’t have to sprint to the plot anymore, either.
However, the lottery system requires system and effort in other respects:
Armed with a large notepad and pencil, I walked through the districts in the new sky city just a few hours before the lottery deadline and noted how many people had registered in which instance for my desired plot.
Since two friends suggested securing a neighboring house, I looked for one for them as well.
After about two hours, we could identify three districts where no one had applied for our almost houses so far. We agreed on one and threw our hats into the respective rings. By this point, my head was already buzzing.
Only a few hours later, there was the result: We were happy owners of digital plots.
But why is the living space so limited and contested?
Intensified housing shortage where it shouldn’t be
You might think that there should be enough space in a video game for everyone to have their own home. If a game offers instanced housing, it is also quite simple. However, in Final Fantasy XIV, you don’t live alone, but in large neighborhoods. Everyone can decorate their own house with skins and decorate the garden.
However, this also means that during the loading of one of the many housing districts, not just one, but all houses must be loaded – including all decorations and individual changes. This creates increased server load.
The number of available houses per server is thus limited to avoid overloading the servers. Although Square Enix continues to implement new districts, it will probably never be enough for one house per player or even character. Thus, a persistent intensified housing shortage prevails in one of the largest MMORPGs in the world.
All current rules, such as the 45-day demolition timer, the limit of one house per character, and the lottery are measures to distribute living space among more, and above all, active players.
Those who want, get – special requests unfortunately have to wait
My strategy requires a lot of time from a player. Naturally, not everyone is keen on that. Moreover, it works best when new districts have just been released. Then demand spreads over several hundred plots rather than concentrating on a few that have become available.
Anyone who wants a house in Final Fantasy XIV can get one. However, the personal dream house in a certain size in a great location will likely only be possible with newly released districts.
Would it be better if houses were more readily available? Of course. At the same time, the beautiful neighborhoods are indispensable to me.
This should in no way downplay the housing shortage in the game. It would be a dream if every player could have their own house. The developers of WoW are probably currently trying hard not to repeat the mistakes of Final Fantasy XIV to avoid ending up in a similar situation.
However, there is hope that Square Enix will revamp the housing system again. With the relatively freely available apartments, the team has already made a step in the right direction years ago. Perhaps they are also observing what the Blizzard team is currently doing and are looking at what can be adapted for a potential Refurbished Housing System
.
Whether that happens is currently uncertain. What is certain are the first new features that will come with Patch 7.2 at the end of March. In addition to a new endgame for collectors and crafters, there will of course also be a new main story in the wings. However, the star of the patch will probably be the new field expedition. You can read all currently known information here: Final Fantasy XIV will finally bring back the popular MMO content that everyone has been waiting for after a long content drought
