Finally, this terrible NDA is gone! You have no idea how awful it can be to not be able to talk about something that excites you so much, like the housing in WildStar. But that’s over now! Now you get the full load of Cortyn, with everything you ever wanted to know or not know about your home in WildStar!
But where do I start?
- With the countless furnishings?
- With the hours, if not weeks, that you can spend perfecting your house to have everything just the way you want it?
- At the almost endless design possibilities that the developers have built in? Or even with the various details and cool challenges that each expansion of the property brings?
But hold on, Cortyn… keep yourself and your Aurin in check, approach the whole thing a bit more orderly and start with our house in the sky. The ground would be too boring, wouldn’t it?
Just like Minecraft – only better
After you reach level 14 in WildStar (which, by the way, takes quite a while!) and enter your faction’s capital, you gain access to your own property through a simple quest line – initially a green plot with a few rocks and trees and nothing else.
By this time, you usually have the necessary gold coin to afford one of the standard houses. Depending on the race, they look different and offer more or less space – your first house will consist of only one room or two half-rooms, like with the Aurin.
And that is when the fun begins: You can decorate your house to your heart’s content and change and move every item to the pixel. The wooden table should fly diagonally in the air with a flower vase balancing on its edge? Sure, if you believe it, why not!
The possibilities for customization are almost endless; the only limits are your imagination, the size of your house, and the limitation to 800 objects within the house – mine is already almost full with around 300.
So many items!
In the shop alone, you can purchase hundreds of furnishings for gold or “Recognition” (a currency earned from group play, such as dungeons or quests together). Approximately the same amount can be crafted by skilled architects, and the rest can be found in the world, which roughly totals to over 1000 different furnishing items that can all be adjusted in size. A statue of the Eldan can either fit on the nightstand or fill your entire property.
But you can do so much more than just placing flower vases and statues in the corners: Clever players quickly discovered that with the regular wooden beam you can buy from the merchant, you can add entirely new floors, rooms, and hidden spaces to your house!
Particularly small details stand out positively here: Many lamps can be turned on and off, some even project beautiful patterns on the wall. Statues, known as “Mannequins,” can be decorated with your equipment of choice and then pose heroically to decorate the hallway – a perfect display space for old raid sets that otherwise just clog your inventory because you can’t bear to part with them.
The only downside is the chairs – they can also be wonderfully customized, but unfortunately you cannot “use” them to sit on. Too bad, because everywhere else in WildStar, you can.
My house, my spaceship, my Lopp party
But your house isn’t everything – it only takes up about a third of your land. Yes, you heard that right. On the rest, you can have various “extensions” and further personalize your home, and even here, the selection is huge, albeit not as large as with the furniture. Want a few examples?
- Currently, my Cortyn has a weather station where you can start a mini-game in which you have to avoid lightning strikes for 60 seconds. Right next to it is a small spaceship that takes me to a short instance for 1-5 players, only accessible through this housing item.
- Another ten meters further, the space rabbits, the Lopp, have set up camp and are throwing a big party from morning till night; if you join in and take a hearty puff from their pipe, a funny mini-game starts where you have to collect some items in a short time – but all the keys have been remapped, so it takes a while for Cortyn to stumble to where I want her to be.
- Another 15 meters further stands a gigantic tree with a portal that takes me to the new home area of the Aurin, Celestion.
Everything so useless! I want loot!
Evil tongues might say that the housing itself is just “play” and doesn’t bring any added value to the rest of the game.
Because what good is a nice home and mini-games if I’m not a role-playing fanatic?
A whole lot! Depending on which items you use to furnish your house, you get an increased rest bonus if you log out in your four walls. The empty spaces around the house can also be filled with useful things, like a mine where miners can get new ores free of charge every few hours, or a garden where you can grow plants for cooking or crafting.
The aforementioned mini-games (or “challenges”) also always come with a reward; you almost always have the chance of a small amount of recognition, a special housing item, or even a rare color with which you can customize your clothing so you don’t jump around Nexus looking like a clown.
Everything so social here!
An important aspect of housing that is often forgotten is, of course, the social one. If I spend hour after hour on my home, I want it to be seen by someone in the end! And of course, WildStar has an answer here too: You can designate neighbors and roommates.
Neighbors can visit your house at any time and view it, try out the various challenges on your property, or harvest your garden, for which they receive a share of the loot (the exact percentage can be determined by the homeowner).
Roommates can also contribute to the design of the house; they can buy new items, place them, and of course rearrange existing objects – but be careful, they might just throw everything in the chest and you’ll have to start over – so choose your roommates wisely (also a good tip for real life, by the way!).
The playful possibilities that arise from this simple but very effective system are, of course, fantastic.
[pull_quote_center]You could declare a player’s house the “guild house” where all guild members can work or use it as a base to plan raids or role-playing.
Alternatively, you can also set your house to “public” if you want to play a tavern or if you have built a jumping puzzle – so anyone interested can simply drop by!
Conclusion: Oh, you already know my opinion by now…
No matter if the house is just a “quick stop” for some bonus XP or if you want to create a dream apartment that makes every role player green with envy, housing is cleverly designed and counts for me as one of the greatest long-term motivations ever.
During the beta, I must have invested well over 100 hours into my house, knowing that it would be deleted – I can only imagine how much time my house will take in the live version.
