Homes in Final Fantasy XIV have always been exceptionally limiting for designers. I remember telling some of my Palia-playing friends once about the 400-item limit for a large house, and it boggled their minds. What would you even do with that few item slots?
Luckily, we don’t have to worry about it (as much) anymore.
As I very happily learned with Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 7.5 release last week, we’ve got a whole new set of item limits for homes—which of course means I’m champing at the bit to build something new.
But before I do that, I wanted to take you on a tour around the last build I did with the 400-item limit!
What you'll read about
Rebuilding a classic ceiling
It’s been nearly seven years since I started trying to learn the finer points of home design in FFXIV. And in June 2019, I shared the design that I learned how to float partitions for: My true blue beach house.
I still remember how painful that cross-hatched ceiling design was.
It took me probably four days just to get the beams to line up. I had to take it down and do it over at least twice because I just didn’t know some of the rules about floating. I definitely lost at least one rug into my actual ceiling.
But despite that, and despite the fact that I wasn’t super happy with how it lined up at the edges, I loved how it turned out. And now that I’ve had a smidge more experience, I figured I’d tackle a similar design again.
Thankfully, it was a lot easier this time around, and I’m really happy with the final product. Especially now that I know how to fit the beams into frames properly!
Creating an open beachside patio
One of my weak points in FFXIV housing has always been building outdoor spaces indoors. Some people can do it beautifully, and I always end up feeling like I could have done better.
I wanted to tackle that particular insecurity with this build, and took some inspiration from my most recent Chocobucks iteration (which I don’t think I’ve shared yet, so I’m adding that to the post list now!) and used pudding rugs to try and create an oceanside scene.
I was a little disappointed with how the light rays turned out from the phasmascapes overhead, but overall, I think the beach worked—and I have some ideas now for what I can do better next time.
Using more of the house’s space
A fun side effect of limited item slots has always been that if you’re going to do complicated builds (which, yes, I’m going to), you’re not going to be able to use all of your house’s space.
Ever since we got the minimalist partitions, however, I wanted to see if I could use them to push the limits of items and space. After all, they could theoretically cut my white rectangular partition usage in half, at least, and probably save me a ton on general-purpose pure white dye, too.
There are a few areas where I stuck to using white rectangular partitions purely because of the trim features on the minimalist partitions, but they did let me extend the build up into my house’s second floor. So that was new and exciting and a win!
