A Look at Personal Rooms in FFXIV
I love in game housing! I’ve always been a housing enthusiast! While not having housing in an MMO won’t keep me from playing it (see GW2), I feel far more attached to a game when I own a little piece of it.
I’ve been saving up for personal housing in FFXIV ever since I started playing the game. I’ve been dedicated to the idea of my own little place in Eorzea, and put in time and effort to earn my gil and save it. I knew housing wouldn’t be cheap, and I wasn’t sure what kind of housing I wanted to splurge on.
With the latest patch, FFXIV released personal rooms that allow you to attach your housing to your Free Company home. A new door appeared in every FC house. When you click that door, you can see a list of FC members who own a home, and choose to visit their room (if they have made it public). You can also purchase a room for 300K Gil or enter your room through this door, if you already own one.
There are requirements, aside from the gil cost, before you can buy a room. You must:
- Be level 50 in at least one job
- Earn the rank second lieutenant with your Grand Company
- Be a member of a Free Company (obviously)
There are enough rooms to accommodate every member in the FC. Each room allows you to place up to 50 furnishings, including any furnishing you could place in a FC house (crafting stations, NPCs, etc). These can only be used by the owner of the room, however.
Room or House?
I was torn for a while on whether I wanted to purchase a room or a full personal house. The full house is a feature that will be released in an upcoming patch, and allows for much more customization. Chances are, though, it’ll also be much more expensive!
While I had saved over 1 million gil for housing, there was always the risk that whatever neighborhoods released would become full, or that I simply wouldn’t have the funds to purchase the house. I’ve also been working much more closely with my FC lately, so I finally decided to purchase a room, after seeing a fellow FC member’s room as example.
The room isn’t huge, but it has more space than I expected. I was able to place down all of the furniture I’ve gathered from my retainer’s ventures, along with some I was able to craft.
The decorating system is a bit like EQ2, though not quite as flexible. You can’t change the scale of items or tilt them, but you can dynamically place an item anywhere in the room and rotate it. So, there’s no frustrating housing “hooks” like in LOTRO to bar your creativity.
You can change the wallpaper, flooring and the light fixture, along with placing items in your room.
One neat option you can use are partitions. You can place these as items, but they work as walls. This allows you to shape the flow of your room, as well. For example, I used a few partitions to block off a corner to use as a “bedroom” area.
Overall, the housing isn’t as robust as games like EQ2 and Wildstar (haven’t played, but from what I read, housing looks awesome there). The permissions settings are very basic — either open to the public or not. I didn’t see an option that allowed you to give someone else decorating rights to your room.
I feel the housing is functional as a place you own in the game, and decorating is fun. There’s lots of (expensive) furniture you can place, and I can see options expanding in the future. I’m content with my room and happy that I chose this route in the end.
The one thing I am worried about is that the room is tied to the FC. If something happens to the FC, or you decide to leave, I guess that means you lose your room, wallpaper, floors and any of the special furnishings that you can’t recover from it. That kinda sucks. It also kinda sucks that once a member buys a room in the FC, there’s no way to remove them from the FC.
Aside from those little worries, it’s a nice system that helps to build community in your FC. Just make sure you’re with a group that you’re dedicated to.
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