Exploring Neighbourhood Homes: A Decor Adventure

Posted on by
4

One of the housing features I loved in Elder Scrolls Online was their open house navigation system. It was awesome being able to visit other people’s houses for inspiration and to see all the different ways they were arranging items in their space. My favourites were the one set up like real houses; bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens etc.

To make up for the lack of a formal housing tour system in WoW, I’ve been knocking at my neighbour’s doors to see if anyone has unlocked their doors for curious visitors to come and have a a poke around. I’m not sure of the ethics of just popping in unannounced but I do get really excited if a house is open for visiting!

So far in my neighborhood, there are 3 permanently unlocked houses which I love to pop into to see the changes they have made from week to week. I’m not sure what I’ll do if someone is at home one day; it might be a bit embarrassing to be caught out as an uninvited guest.

One of the neighbours has a beautifully decorated front yard, but their door stubbornly stays locked. I’m so curious to see what it looks like inside! I actually went as far as trying to send them a letter to ask if they were open to giving a tour but the mail system just could not find them to send the letter.

To be honest I’m not sure if I’m relieved about that or not. Curiosity is one thing but maybe that’s crossing a fine line from curious to nosy neighbour, trying to get a squiz when they’ve locked the doors. .

Logging in today after reset, I found the neighbourhood weekly quest was to go visit other houses. Thank goodness for the custom group finder; it was so easy to find people who had happily listed their house open for a tour. At last my chance to check out other people’s houses without feeling like a peeping tom.

It was very cool to have people open their houses and to be able to have a chat to the homeowner. Hopefully being able to easily list your house open for tours is a feature WoW brings in. There are some really talented house builders/decorators out there and it would be great to easily be able to pop around for inspiration and admiration.

In my own house decorating adventures, I’ve moved on from Draenor after collecting the greenhouse, and am now spending lots of time in Legion. The Suramar themed decor is so beautiful, so I’ve been working on building up my collection. My Troll Druid has all the reputation maxed out to buy the vendor items which is helpful, and the small troupe of crafters are working their way around the Legion zones, slowly leveling up their professions.

My Night Elf Druid is so close to being able to make the Alchemy Arcan’dor Cutting Fountain, but it needs a lot of Demonsteel Bars, so off to dust off my Blood Elf Paladin to get her Blacksmithing level up.

I really loved Legion, and it’s been such a long tine since I’ve been there, questing feels really nostalgic. I think I’ll be out farming in the Broken Isles for a long while as I build up my stash of decor and rediscovering the place. Collecting decor is a great way to go visit old zones!

. My small Suramar dining room work in progress!

What’s your housing style?

Crafting Decor and Exploring Old Expansions in WoW

Posted on by
8

On the hunt for pretty decor, I’ve been spending a lot of time in Warlords of Draenor, killing mobs to raise my rep to exalted with the Council of Exarchs to get a very cool Greenhouse for the garden. At 5rep a kill, it took a while but it was worth it to get the pretty glass greenhouse.

Once I got it though, I promptly ran out of outdoor decor space so need to do some re-arranging to actually be able to fill it up!

I also had my enchanter run around gathering up Warlords mats to make some sparkly purple party lights.

I have a long wish list of crafted decor items from across the full gauntlet of professions (yay for alts) which is going to take a really long to fill as some of the items I want come from expansions I’ve never been in before.

I spent an incredibly long time running around in Outland zones looking for Khorium ore to make the Glazed Sin’dorei Vial. Heads up before you get invested in this decor like I did – Khorium Ore is incredibly difficult and time-consuming to find and I had the most luck cutting laps around the Isle of Quel’Danas.. many many laps … to get enough ore to smelt into 4 precious bars. This is likely to be the one and only time I make this decor.

A decorative vase with a geometric design, featuring a combination of purple and blue colors, and a metallic base.

Crafting my own decor from the expansions I’ve missed is giving me a good opportunity to tick off leveling up some of the newer races … meet Aghlen my new Dark Iron Dwarf who is leveling through Shadowlands with the ultimate goal of becoming a Shadowlands Blacksmith just to make some shiny wine glasses.

What has Blizz done to professions though? When I left they were relatively easy to max out just by gathering materials from the world and patterns from a vendor… but now in the newer expansions it seems to be difficult to find recipes to level up with and the cost of the vendor requirements… ouch!!


Early impression is that these are not fun or easy anymore and probably going to cost me a lot of gold to get them up to the level needed to buy the decor patterns… maybe I’m missing something in the process though? Let me know if I am!

Profession gripe aside, WoW is still such a pretty game; my screenshot folder is quickly filling with new pics.

Bastion in all it’s dreamy glory. If only there was Kyrian decor, I’d never stop farming in this zone until my house was full.

Silvermoon at night. The Inky Black Potion is still one of the best items I’ve come across for making the world look extra special.

Fungara Village (also inky)

I think I need to take all the sitting photos with my Panda, her pose is much more refined than the hunched over grumpy Night Elf.

How are your housing adventures going?

Just a casual 7 year break…Housing has Zee bopping around in Azeroth again

Posted on by
6

Six years is a long time to go quiet on a blog and 7 years since playing WoW… long enough that I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d ever dust this place off again.

But here we are!

Housing in WoW has pulled me right back into Azeroth. I’ve spent a happy few months bopping around Azeroth, pulling my Night Elf Druid out of storage and wandering around questing in old (new to me!) expansions, decorating my little in-game home, and taking far too many screenshots of cozy corners and unexpectedly cute moments out in the wild. So this post is a bit of a “hello again”.

Even though my husband is the most patient person I know, I suspect there’s a limit to how many times I can drag him over to admire each new decor addition before even he runs out of convincing “oohs” and “ahhs”.

So this blog springing back to life is purely practical: I need somewhere to share the screenshots and show off a new rug, plant, or perfectly placed candle without completely exhausting the one person who has been very politely pretending to understand why moving a chair two pixels to the left was absolutely necessary for the past few months.

I’m putting the pictures out into the world so I can feel like I’ve properly shared the excitement, and my husband can be spared the 47th house tour of the week.

My own personal moonwell! Once I get some more troops recruited over at my Legion hall, I’ll have a fancy Cenarian Arch to add here.

World of Warcraft Midnight player housing - moonwell

Books and Tea.. Art imitating life!

World of Warcraft Midnight player housing interior - books and tea pot

How can she look so glum in that well stocked kitchen?

More art imitating life here.. I get to collect eggs from my own hens each day, so Zee had to have her own chicken coop. If only I could add a chicken wandering around! Instead I get invading boars!

World of Warcraft Midnight player housing outside

My big bear butt getting a guided tour around Voidstorm; she stole aboard a ship, took out the pilot and happily floated around taking in the sights.

Catching up with some old friends!

Until the next batch of screenshots … whenever that may be!

Skyrim, 1000 years apart

Posted on by
Reply

The new chapter in Elder Scrolls Online launched a few days ago and it has introduced a bit more of Skyrim into the game. A small part of Eastern Skyrim, made up of Eastmarch and The Rift were already in the game but the new patch has brought in parts of Western Skyrim:  the Imperial capital city Solitude and its close surrounds.

I’ve spent a bit of time running around and comparing and I think the ESO team have done an awesome job of making it feel like you are really visting the same city, just a millennia apart.

Solitude itself

Out and about

I can’t wait to dive in and start the quests and see a bit more of this place in a brand new time.

A lucky night for an unscrupulous Elf

Posted on by
2

In ESO, I’m playing a High Elf, so for this play through in Skyrim, I thought I’d make a High Elf as well.

High Elves belong to the Aldmeri Dominion; in Skyrim times, the Aldmeri Dominion are the bad guys who have launched a war against the Empire, including Skyrim, to take over the entire place under Aldmeri rule. So far, my race hasn’t really affected anything in Skrirm, though when NPCs are telling me how bad the Aldmeri Dominion are, I wonder if they think I’ve defected or something?

I was wandering through the countryside heading towards a city I hadn’t explored yet, when some Thalmor, a branch of the Aldmeri Dominion, came across my path. I was going to keep going on my way but something I said to them angered them and they attacked me.  I managed to walk away with a gorgeous shiny set of Elven Armor after killing all the wicked elves.

Then just a few metres down the road, I found a NPC who had got off their horse to investigate something, which meant the horse was free to “borrow” and I got to finish the rest of my long journey, riding in style.
Btw, this photo is lacking colour as it’s night time in the game (not a filter)

 The only issue when you steal horses is they tend to try to walk back to their owners when you dismount them so it’s a very temporary borrow, unless you refuse to get off the horse.

I would think about buying a horse to keep for myself, but I remember last time playing this game,  I had a lot of trouble with horses either getting killed or lost and being a rather large waste of gold. Much more fun to borrow them when the opportunity presents.

New armor and a free horse made for a very lucky Elf.

Returning to Skyrim after months of Elder Scrolls Online

Posted on by
2

I’ve had a bug to buy a new house in Elder Scrolls Online lately so over the Easter holiday weekend just past, I gave in and bought a lovely little Nord race themed house. I spent a good weekend crafting up all the Nord themed furniture and decorations I could make.

Immersing myself in Nord zones and crafting Nord items sparked a craving to go back and play a bit of the actual Skyrim game. I decided to start a fresh game as it’s been a year or two since I last played.

ESO is set 1000 years before Skyrim so while the story itself doesn’t overlap, the lore does. Wandering around getting back into the swing of the Skyrim, I found that multitudes of the history books scattered around refer to the events and timeline of ESO, events I’ve just played through!

It didn’t take too long of playing before I started to remember how rich this game is. The story and quests are really engaging and there is just so much to the game. So many quests, crafting, exploring, and house buying/building and decorating!

I think I’ll put a bit of time back into this game and remind myself where my love for ESO was sparked.

 

A home.. decorated at last!

Posted on by
2

Oh Boy it’s been a while… I’m still here, still playing games, though not quite as much as I have been due to real life but it’s still been all good.

ESO is still going well. Its the Halloween festival again which was on when I started playing a year ago! Happy anniversary to me. I can’t believe it’s been a year!! ESO has worked it’s way into my heart.

I’m still working my way through the many many quests on offer. I’ve finished the base game and got my Cadwell’s gold achievement for completing all 3 faction’s base game quests (still love that faction choice only matters in PVP, not PVE faction) and am now off in the snowy lands of Wrothgar, home of the Tamriel Orcs.

In the meantime between questing, I’ve been working on finishing decorating the Snowglobe house. It has a housing limit of 600 items and I’ve put in 400 so still a bit of room to go but I’m really not sure if it needs much more, so I feel it’s finished (for now).

I entered it into my housing guilds weekly challenge this week. The theme is cozy home and I think it’s so cozy!

Luckily doing a lot of questing rewards a fair bit of gold because decorating this house has not been cheap.

I’ve already got my eye on the next house though, I’m just waiting for inspiration to strike and then I’ll be off on another decorating journey.

Stay Tuned!

 

Darkshore Warfront: First and Last time

Posted on by
2

With 8.2 dropping and seeing lots of blog posts and hearing friends talk about the new content, I thought I’d resub for a month and have a look at what’s new.

I started out by catching up on the older war campagin story I hadn’t finished and and went along to see what the Darkshore Warfront had in it as I hadn’t seen it before.

That was the first and only time I’ll be stepping foot into that place. It was non stop killing of Druids and Druid grove protectors.

Not for me at all.

Hopefully I’ll be able to skip the rest of the 8.1 campagin content and jump straight into 8.2 where hopefully it won’t be so focused on the faction war and more us against the big bad again.

I dont’ always link my twitch account but it’s mounts when I do!

Posted on by
Reply

Bethesda was at E3 this past week and ESO had a promotion to receive a mount if you linked your twitch account and watch the Bethesda special annoucements.  Since I was going to watch anyway, a free and pretty mount thrown in was a bonus!

Isn’t my new regal Senche Tiger gorgeous!!

Snugpod.. a new house!

Posted on by
2

One of the guilds I’m in in ESO is focused on housing and holds regular design challenge with different themes. This month’s challenge is to decorate a house in the Wood Elf style.

I haven’t quite finished decorating my snow globe house as I’m about out of ideas of how I want to finish it.  so decorating had stalled for a few weeks until I read the new challenge theme and got all motivated to decorate (and finish) a Wood Elf house.

There aren’t that many Wood Elf themed houses in the game but one of them is Snugpod,  a very small little egg shaped tree pod,  I’ve been thinking about buying for ages.  It’s in a great location, you can step out the door and you’re right next to a way shrine (teleportation portal), crafting station and the daily dungeon quest giver and it’s super cute to boot.

Snugpod has quite a small floor base but stretches vertically for quite a while so I decided to work across 3 levels, and go up.

The base house very empty!

In ESO, Wood Elves, or Bosmer as their official name, are forest dwellers who have chosen to live by the “green pact”. This means they won’t harm living  plants or trees or eat anything plant based. Meat eaters only, they’re  vegans in reverse essentially. Their furnishings mostly relies on stone, leather and bone.

I created two mini forests on the ground floor and set the rest of the bottom space aside for a cooking and dining area.

 

I’m thinking the Bosmers must have great night vision because I can’t find too many lighting options in their style, so the entire house is a little dark. I might look into some other options for lighting that doesn’t break the Bosmer style, like hiding candles in the garden.

The second floor I set aside for a small bedroom; furs under a leather tent to keep the traditional Bosmer house feel. While Wood Elves won’t cut living wood, they have been known to trade with races who do use wood, so I’m using that as  technicality to explain the  wooden flooors on the two levels. I can’t find a decent subsitute in stone for the platforms, so wooden planks it is.

I’ve set it aside the very top level for a storage area but so far it doesn’t really hold too much.

 

 

The house has space for 200 furnishing items and so far I’ve only used 81 so I have tons of room to add more pieces if I’d like but I’m pretty happy with my little house as it is for now.