Houses in Shroud of the Avatar

The latest update to the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter campaign gives some much-needed information on how houses will work in the game.

Here are the meaty details:

House maintenance and acquisition can be paid for with in game currency (KS houses have no upkeep cost ever)
House deeds can be traded between players
Houses are 100% secure for items stored in them though not always 100% accessible due to nasty sieges by evil forces
Houses exist in shared spaces (not instanced) and everyone will see your house and its decorations
Houses can be decorated both inside and out
Houses will be fairly limited but more will be added over time as we grow the world
City houses > Town houses > Village houses
Vendors for houses will be paid a percentage of the item that they sell (KS vendors will not take a cut of the profits)

The remainder of the post expands on these topics; it’s actually quite a comprehensive information dump, much of which will find its way into our game guide at some point in the near future. In the meantime, why not watch this video, in which Brandon Cotton and Rick Holtrop discuss — what else? — housing.

Shroud of the Avatar: Lots of House-Related Information says:

March 22, 2013 at 9:19 pm

[…] Discuss! […]

Sanctimonia says:

March 22, 2013 at 11:02 pm

Don’t forget the slums, guys. Walled cities and towns had some of the shittiest excuses for houses that imagination alone couldn’t do justice to. Regardless, imagine these with the following modifications:

1) Smaller
2) Made of wood instead of concrete
3) Alleys often no wider than the width of your shoulders filled with mud created by urine and feces

The farther from the gate(s), main avenues and town center you traveled and the closer you got to the walls the crappier and more cramped the housing became.

Slums would also provide for some interesting quests, dangerous encounters and Avatarly acts of compassion:

“No man knows, I believe, who is worthy of charity;
But if we take good heed, we will see our neighbors’ need,
As prisoners in pits and poor folks in hovels,
Burdened with children and lord’s rent;
What they may earn by spinning is spent on the household,
Both on milk and meal to make porridge
To fill the stomachs of their children who cry out for food.
And they also suffer much hunger,
And woe in winter, and waking in the night
Rising to rock the cradle,
To card and comb, to mend and to wash,
To scrape and to reel, rushes to peel.
It is pitiful to read or tell in rhyme
The woe of these women who dwell in cottages;
And of many other men who suffer much woe,
Both cold and hungry, and keep a fair face
Out of shame, and who will not beg or reveal
To their neighbors their need at every meal.

This I know surely as the world teaches.
Those who are needy with many children
And have no wealth but their work to clothe and feed them,
Need many pence and earn few.
Bread and penny-ale is a special treat
And cold meat and fish roasted like venison.
Fridays and fast-days a farthing-worth of mussels
Or so many cockles are a feast to such folk.
These are alms to help those with burdens
And to comfort such cottagers, crippled, and blind folk.”

Eni says:

March 23, 2013 at 6:29 am

Sad to say this housing situation is the reason I won’t be backing Shroud of the Avatar, even though I really want to. Making housing too much of a prestige thing isn’t just harmful to both community and in game economy, it’s also harmful to immersion.

I get that the urban sprawl of UO was immersion breaking, but having the vast majority of people in a world completely homeless is just as bad, if not worse, to me. And considering it’s been twice now it’s been reiterated housing will be limited (once in the interview with Richard, and now this) it’s becoming clear to me they /like/ that kind of situation.

Share this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply