Whenever I’ve talked about player housing in New World, my coworkers have requested tours of my in-game homes. Being a lazy worker looking to fill my column quota a generous writer who cares about the fans, I decided to turn this into a whole column so I can also share my creations with the community. [He’s not lazy! Videos take more time, not less! -Eds]
I thought doing this with screenshots would be a bit dull, especially considering how much of New World‘s furniture is animated and/or interactive, so I put together some short video tours of each in-game home I currently own.
Everfall – Arcane library
My first home in New World was the two story house next to the church in Everfall. I picked it mainly because it had a backyard with an unobstructed view of the surrounding forests. If you want to see that original home, check out the final minutes of this installment of Backseat Streaming from a ways back.
Sadly, when the zone was revamped and the town converted to Victorian architecture, a massive brick wall went up, cutting off that view. I was then left with a relatively small home with a gloomy yard covered in the eternal shadow of the wall, so I sold that home and moved to another tier 4 in Everfall. This one didn’t have a view of the forest, but it did have a big balcony with a lovely view of the town, and more interior space.
I think of my main character in New World as a paranormal investigator and magical researcher. She studies the powers of both life and death to keep the world in balance. Both of her homes reflect this in some way.
Her house in Everfall is more dedicated to the theoretical side of magic. It’s features a library of lore both common and forbidden, and as well as a small observatory outside for charting the movements of the stars and conducting divination.
Of course, she also needs a place to lay her head. I have two pet peeves with the housing in New World: most houses don’t have a view, and even the most expensive houses are too small. The balcony solves one of those, but for the second problem, I just took matters into my own hands and built a new room onto the back of the house.
Building your own structures isn’t something the decoration system was originally designed to support, but with creativity and patience, you can pull it off. I used armoires turned backwards to create wooden walls, and overlapping rugs formed the floor and ceiling. It might not be quite as pretty as the other rooms, but now I have a bedroom without giving up my library or kitchen.
Reekwater – Swamp witch hut
Despite its name, Reekwater is one of the prettier zones around. It’s also an endgame zone that’s a little less punishing than Brimstone Sands or Shattered Mountain, so it’s a great place for farming faction missions or topaz gypsum. Therefore I chose it as the location of my main’s second home, which I have taken to affectionately calling her “swamp witch hut.”
As you might expect, it’s a bit rustic, but charming in its way. I bought a bunch of ivy trellises from the trading post and put them in the windows and gaps in the walls, partly to make the place more private and cozy and partly to send the impression it’s a structure that was as much grown as built.
Like most of the homes in Reekwater, this is a treehouse, and its elevated balcony offers a lovely view of the surrounding town. It was very lacking in floor space, but once again I found a way around this, and the elevated balcony was the key.
You can’t place housing decorations in mid-air in New World. But what you can do is place stuff hanging on a wall or peeking off a ledge, then place items on the edge of that, and so forth. In this way I was able to extend my balcony into an entire second floor. Learning how to do this was actually how I was able to build the additional room on my Everfall home, which came later.
If the Everfall house is devoted to the theoretical side of magic, I see her house in Reekwater as being more built for the practical side. The ground floor has a series of shrines devoted various natural forces, while the upper floor is an indoor garden, where I imagine her growing herbs to use in various potions and tinctures (farming minigame when, Amazon?).
Ebonscale Reach – Cliffside villa
Finally, we come to the most recent addition to the roster, the first home purchased by my Covenant alt. I knew I wanted to settle this character in Ebonscale, but it’s a high level zone, so she had to suffer as the archetypical murder hobo for quite some time.
I will admit I don’t have a particularly clever or creative backstory behind her settling in Ebonscale or how I decorated the house. My backstories for my New World characters are generally pretty barebones, but I do try to at least give some thought to where they came from before arriving on Aeternum; my main is Finnish, my seldom-played Marauders alt is a Bronze Age warrior from what would later become Ireland, and my Covie is Chinese. So, I did the obvious thing and set her up in the zone full of Chinese refugees, with mostly Asian-themed furniture.
If you’re looking to copy the look, most of the furniture in this home is from the Teak set, which can be crafted or bought from the trading post. You can also get this set in at least two recolours I know of — Rosewood, which is red, and Jade, which is green — but those do tend to be significantly more expensive.
Aside from fitting my character’s heritage, this is also just a lovely house in general. You’ll note that this is probably the biggest exception to the “houses in New World don’t come with a view” rule, and while the rooms are still fairly small, at least there’s three of them to work with, plus the spacious balcony. A lot of homes in New World can feel a bit claustrophobic, but this one is pleasantly cozy.
New World’s Aeternum is a land of many secrets. In MassivelyOP’s Vitae Aeternum, our writers delve those secrets to provide you with in-depth coverage of all things New World through launch and beyond.
