It’s finally here, the day we’ve all been waiting for. After years of hoping and another couple of years of grinding out our crafting and gathering, Empyreum—the Ishgardian housing district—has opened its gates.
This morning, Shane and I were busily entering ourselves into draws for our FC house and my own, and now, we just wait to see how my luck holds out. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve learned about Ishgardian housing!
The lottery isn't that bad.
Although I was nervous about the housing lottery being a new feature, overall I found it really simple. Just like the Square Enix team said, you walk up to a placard, click to enter, and then you’re done! One piece of advice I do have for my fellow adventurers is to shop around; we managed to find a draw for our FC that didn’t have any entries, though most of the others did.
In hindsight, too, it’s really good that they introduced it.
See, a couple of years ago when they expanded the existing housing areas, I was on a mission to get a large house for Shane. Just accomplishing that with the system at the time meant logging in as soon as the game was back up from maintenance—and even though I was on and looking for plots within a minute, I still barely made it in time.
Last night’s patch ended up completing close to an hour and a half early, while many of us were still asleep. So I’m sure it would have been heartbreaking to wake up and find nothing left!
There's a lot more room for FCs than individuals.
As yesterday’s final patch notes explained, Empyreum is split up by ward for FCs and individuals—with 18 wards dedicated to FCs and only 6 for individuals.
Overall, I do think that’s a good thing. Though it’ll make it highly competitive for individual players, and I’m not super thrilled about that, it does mean there are lots of opportunities for so many FCs to get a home after all.
The interiors were worth waiting for.
I can’t be the only one who’s been wildly curious about what Ishgardian interiors would look like. Since, of course, we won’t be able to find out about houses until the first draw completes on Saturday morning, I may have taken the liberty of checking for any open-door apartments to see if I could get a sneak peek!
Here’s what I found:
Honestly, that’s just made me even more excited to see what the insides of the houses themselves look like, too. Especially if the large’s lobby is going to look anything like the apartment building’s lobby!
2 thoughts on “Happy Ishgard housing day!”
I only started playing last year and had no hope of getting a house on my temporary NA server (as an Aussie I knew I’d be hopping over to the OCE servers as soon as they opened, which I did). I got lucky and avoided the ‘zero’ lottery bug and just managed to get my very first house, in Ishgard! I’m so excited!
Now I’m trying to devour as much info as I can about the mechanics and aesthetics of decorating my house and property, and as I was searching I kept hitting articles on your blog, so I just decided to go through the entire thing, lol.
Everything is beautifully presented and all the info and pics are great. Thank you very much for sharing! I feel impossibly far behind everyone who’s been decorating houses for years, but one day I hope I start approaching your knowledge and skill levels.
Awh congratulations, that is so fantastic to hear! I hope you enjoy your new home 🙂
And thank you so much for your lovely words about the blog, that is so nice. I’m glad I could help you start your decorating journey, and don’t worry, it’s much easier to learn and master than you might think! If you ever need a hand with anything, just let me know 🙂