Arelith

Quarters are so competitive and rare to find. There are no spots that I can find for my forest gnome to live like a forest gnome.

Finding empty quarters can be hard, but I suggest you do 2 things.

1.) Leave a letter on the door, explain who you are, why you are interested of the quarter, ask to be contacted and sign the letter. (You can make a letter by using writing paper, sold by scroll merchants and sometimes found in barrels next to notice boards. Use finished letter on a door to leave it there and/or to a notice board nearby, and copy the letter by using it on an empty sheet of writing paper.)

2.) Note down the Character Name in the quarter sign, find a speedy messanger NPC and try to send the quarter owner a Runner, again, asking to meet.

That way, you can make friends with other nature-attuned characters or people who prefer to live in the wilderness. Perhaps one is willing to share their house, or when they are ready to move on elsewhere with their character, they know you are and migth be willing to pass the quarter over. Regardless, you can get good friendships out of those contacts.

Connections are a King. You just have to make them. Sure, it requires some effort on your part, but ultimately less than checking the uarters you'd want every single day.

You can also ask other PCs if they know places a Forest Gnome would find comfortable. Perhaps you do not know of all quarters in existence.

There is not enough player housing on Arelith for the massive player base it sports. There wasn't enough player housing years ago when we had half this many players. It's highly unlikely someone will just give/sell or let you move in their quarter just because you leave a note on their door or send them a speedy. I've shared quarters with people in the past but we were part of the same IC family or faction or very close friends that had bonded over doing most of our writ work together.

Wilderness quarters in particular, or any quarter that you cannot be evicted from, have been sold for as much as five million gold pieces, for a small wagon. Most of them have been squatted on by the same players or groups of players for years and recently when Grumpycat announced they would crack down on quarter logging some of them did immediately change hands but I have my suspicions they were just handed off to a more active player in the same group.

Even if that's not the case the fact that they were immediately snatched up that quick just goes to show how much of a demand there is for wilderness or neutral quarters. The new city does have a decent amount of quarters but again they were all immediately snatched up, when I checked yesterday they were all occupied. I happened to luck out and find a half decent quarter in supposedly neutral territory, but am still looking for an upgrade to something more evil so my evil character can do evil stuff without having to worry about pissing off their paladin landlord.

I don’t really have an opinion on how many quarters the server needs.

I can say that any character I’ve wanted a quarter I have eventually gotten on. It may not be the quarter I wanted, but it was a quarter with a locked door and a chest. Sometimes you just have to scoop whatever quarter you can, and keep looking.

I will say that a non city warehouse type storage situation would be welcome.

Lately many new quarters have been added, the new city added a huge number of new ones, that is really great! But notice what OP says: "There are no spots that I can find for my forest gnome to live like a forest gnome." I'm afraid they are right, there is a lack of appropriate quarters in the wilderness for nature characters. Besides the Cricket Caves and the Heartwood Grove (in the case of the Grove, if you're not going to interact with the local faction, I don't think you should get a quarter there at all, but that is just my opinion), there are only a few others about, and we all know how they pass hands.

As a forest gnome it's understandable that not just any quarter would do. I've always had trouble finding a quarter (anywhere), more so a shop, but I don't think it's unreasonable to find someone who might share. I know I would if I was a woodsy type and a forest gnome came knocking. Bendir or Brog might even be welcoming, but it's probably a stretch lore-wise to really even hang around those settlements too long.

It would be cool to have a "forest stash" someplace for characters like the OP - not a house but similar to a settlement vault. Maybe make it hidden to other types.

Yeah, Arelith and quarters is a weird beast - in some ways, it's a good way to foster RP and factions, in an ideal world where there's one quarter per faction, as you need to make connections in order to gain access to it (with the accompanying resources and plot elements that entails).

But if you don't really feel drawn to any of the established groups or they've metastasized and claimed most of the quarters/shops on the server, it makes it both harder to get quarters and kind of shoehorns you into "I live in the Inn" RP.

I would say check out the grotto, it's set up FOR gnomes so... gives you an in.

Cricket caves due to there location there are often empty quarters they tend to be used for abit until the current owners get fed up with the location and move somewhere more central.

It's where i would try and find a place with a nature based character that doesn't want to link to the grove.

The Impregnable Derp wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:00 pm It's highly unlikely someone will just give/sell or let you move in their quarter just because you leave a note on their door or send them a speedy. I've shared quarters with people in the past but we were part of the same IC family or faction or very close friends that had bonded over doing most of our writ work together.

Yes. If you leave a note I would either make a +very+ generous offer to give up the quarter they might like or ask nicely to be kept in mind when they're ready to leave (to hand it to you instead of abandoning it). If you suggest you deserve it more for whatever reason- especially suggesting they aren't active players because you personally don't know them- you'll probably get the response this deserves. I think those letters are nuisances and can't see them working too often and most who get them seem irritated, not swayed to sell. Getting to know the other residents of an area works better and then they may help you out. Posting ads on message boards too. Nothing works better than constantly checking quarter signs to see what opens up.

Otherwise when you play a character with a lot of restrictions there will be restrictions. There actually is a heavy amount of turnover with housing if you just want a room. If you are a forest gnome who has to be in nature and you won't settle in the Grove, The Grotto or Bendir (which is rather rural and ought to be considered) your options get very limited. You may ask yourself if you're putting too many rules on the character and if these limitations are helping or hurting. Taking a place in Bendir and struggling to adjust to life in a small farm town could open up a lot more RP for you than living as a reclusive hermit in something more lore appropriate.

I do think a wilderness stash option for non civilized types who don't want citizenship or a city quarter would be a grand idea. Maybe if it is limited to druids/rangers/wild elves/wild dwarves/forest gnomes so it's not a way for others to avoid citizenship.

Ninjimmy wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:13 pm Yeah, Arelith and quarters is a weird beast - in some ways, it's a good way to foster RP and factions, in an ideal world where there's one quarter per faction, as you need to make connections in order to gain access to it (with the accompanying resources and plot elements that entails).

But if you don't really feel drawn to any of the established groups or they've metastasized and claimed most of the quarters/shops on the server, it makes it both harder to get quarters and kind of shoehorns you into "I live in the Inn" RP.

I would say check out the grotto, it's set up FOR gnomes so... gives you an in.

I'll have to find the grotto and leave the rest for in-game! But I really would like a nice little forest gnome area in the woods some day.

Duchess Says wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 6:20 pm Yes. If you leave a note I would either make a +very+ generous offer to give up the quarter they might like or ask nicely to be kept in mind when they're ready to leave (to hand it to you instead of abandoning it). If you suggest you deserve it more for whatever reason- especially suggesting they aren't active players because you personally don't know them- you'll probably get the response this deserves. I think those letters are nuisances and can't see them working too often and most who get them seem irritated, not swayed to sell. Getting to know the other residents of an area works better and then they may help you out. Posting ads on message boards too. Nothing works better than constantly checking quarter signs to see what opens up.

Otherwise when you play a character with a lot of restrictions there will be restrictions. There actually is a heavy amount of turnover with housing if you just want a room. If you are a forest gnome who has to be in nature and you won't settle in the Grove, The Grotto or Bendir (which is rather rural and ought to be considered) your options get very limited. You may ask yourself if you're putting too many rules on the character and if these limitations are helping or hurting. Taking a place in Bendir and struggling to adjust to life in a small farm town could open up a lot more RP for you than living as a reclusive hermit in something more lore appropriate.

I do think a wilderness stash option for non civilized types who don't want citizenship or a city quarter would be a grand idea. Maybe if it is limited to druids/rangers/wild elves/wild dwarves/forest gnomes so it's not a way for others to avoid citizenship.

I agree with just about everything you said. Getting letters basically saying, "Give me your house plz." are annoying. Don't ask if you're not willing to offer a substantial amount to buy them out. Especially if it is a wilderness/neutral quarter or a nice mansion or something, then you better have millions of gold, and even then you'll probably be turned down. I've had a friend offer ten million or twenty million gold for these quarters and still be turned down.

I don't agree there is a heavy turnover on all quarters. There is on the smaller rooms you find in taverns and such. Some are even in neutral territory and are pretty nice and spacious. When it comes to the guild houses, mansions, towers, etc. there is almost no turnover at all, and when there is it's because the DM's threatened to evict a barely active player, and then they just hand it to a slightly more active player in the same group as them usually. Some of the nicer quarters people could actually use to establish guilds or factions have not left the same OOC social group in the past 3 years.

It is true that placing restrictions on your character limits the number of quarters you can live in, but it is also true that the majority of quarters on the server have a ridiculous number of restrictions on them, many of which you won't realize until you play a notoriously evil or even slightly controversial character. Even outside of settlements or in neutral territory, you probably don't want to live under the same roof as a paladin on your warlock or necromancer. And there are paladins living in Hell. So an infernal warlock might not even be able to live in Hell without worrying about being killbashed by his neighbor. That's pretty sad. But you can't even blame the Paladin because people from Cordor own the majority of the quarters in the Radiant Heart and use it for their guard RP or whatever, so even the Paladin has nowhere else to go, except to literally live in Hell. Sad.

A room in a tavern is nice for storage or whatever. But nobody is going to join your church or army or whatever if that is where your faction is based. So I'm not sure what kind of great RPR 30 deserving RP we are supposed to do there. It would be nice if the players who have the time, energy, and ambition to start up factions had readily available housing instead of waiting real life years for one to clear up only to never have it happen.

zombniac wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:17 am Quarters are so competitive and rare to find. There are no spots that I can find for my forest gnome to live like a forest gnome.

The answer to that is to use settlement storage in the settlement that makes the most sense for your forest gnome to have a 'locker' in, for heavy things, and just live without a quarter until you find one. I'd assume it's naturally Bendir. The good news are there's less demand for the quarters in foresty areas away from the main hubs and the planar portals, etc, so if you stick to your character for a while you should have a quarter sooner than later, I think. There is quite a number of them too, hidden in many places so that the chance none of them are up for grabs is actually not that high. You can also try leaving notes on the door and maybe one of them wants to sell.

You dont have it nearly as bad as someone who wants to play a merchant in Cordor.

End of the day, there will never be "enough" quarters. The answer in past is that, even if the dev team we're inclined to add one quarter per player, they couldn't due to technical limitations on server resources.

That said, I do recall hearing that an Arelith forest rework might be in the pipeline, and I would be surprised if it didn't include a bit more housing. Which will immediately be snapped up, of course, and won't actually solve anything.

For a wilderness-loving character, there are a few different places you could call “home” for RP purposes. However you can’t mechanically own them and would have to use citizen storage.

For example in the Arelith Forest there is a little ranger shack you could bunk in. There’s also a similar place in the wilderness between Bendir and Guldorand.

Not exactly a solution but could work as a head canon solution until you find something better

To clarify my post, with letters to quarters I was thinking more along the lines of "Hello. Can we be friends?" Instead of "Can I have your quarter plz?".

Not to beg, but to try to establish a character connection. Roleplaying can lead into many places. Even a discussion on "why do you live in a place like this?" can open the doors for something. And, if you successfully make a friend, you will definitely be higher on the list on who to give the quarter to when and if they eventually decide to move on. It migth even get you invited to the faction that has been keeping that location as long as they have.

It really depends on how you present yourself.

I once met a character named Ixin. They played a Kobold Commoner and started with basically nothing, maintaining a temporary shop. Later through merchantilism and RP, they managed to secure themselves property on a prime location and a shop aswell.

Sure, a lot of gold might have changed hands as part of the transaction, but I am a firm believer that roleplaying had its part in it aswell.

My point? Do not expect a quarter to free up by itself. Be proactive. And if what you hope for does not work out, there are plenty of other opportunities that stop emerging only when you cease to try.

Thanks for all the tips, I'll probably just set up a table or something and treat a random tree as my character's house or something.

Skarain is right that you can better your chances of getting a nice quarter by role playing and making friends in the area. I've gotten nice homes and quarters myself doing this. My major grievance with the system though is this. Lets say I spend 3 rl months making friends in a settlement, getting a decent quarter, getting promoted through the ranks, eventually somehow earning an even better quarter, and establishing a very fleshed out character with a rich storyline that manages to include many other players there.

Question is answered.