Taking The Tour - Housing In AdventureQuest 3D - Part 2

AdventureQuest 3D is an odd game. Artix seems like an odd developer. I don't play often but when I do it often feels like I've slipped through the veil into another timeline, somewhere they just do things... differently.

I'll give you a for-example. Lots of games have instanced housing but I can't think of a single one where your room has no door. 

Oh, sure, there are games that only let you enter via a button in the UI. You can't go to an actual door in the shared space of the open world and click on it to go inside. Once you're inside your home, though, there's always at least a visual signifier of egress, even if it's only notional.

When I zoned into my free room in ADQ3 for the first time, I was disturbed to find there was no way out. The room has no door. It doesn't have much else, either. I don't think I've seen such a minimal floor-plan since the earliest days of EverQuest II and even then there was a choice of layouts available and most of the rooms came with at least a few features. And a door. Always a door.

As I was looking around my room, such as it was, yesterday, I put the austerity down to two things: it's a brand-new feature and ADQ3 is far from being a visual feast at the best of times. Either no-one thought having a door mattered or they hadn't gotten around to adding one yet. What never occurred to me was that someone on the team might make  getting a door to your room an aspirational feature.

But that's what it is in AQ3D. If you want a door you have to go buy one. I did. You can see it there in the screenshot at the top of the post, along with a couple of bushes and a big, lighted window. And my four-poster bed.

I bought all of those and none of them surprised me except the door. I have homes in many games and I've bought bushes and beds for most of them. Windows, too, on occasion. A door, though? That's a new one on me.

Okay, I've bought extra doors and special doors. Doors that open or fit a theme. I've just never had to buy a door so there'd be a door. 

But that's AQ3D for you. Want another example? Here's one.

After I'd seen my room and spent a few planks making it look homier... wait, what? Planks? Who pays for things with planks?

Okay, let's take a step back. I wasn't going to get into this but we may as well. It's another example of how odd this game can be. 

So, you can buy all kinds of fixtures and fittings from the B.U.I.L.D. vendors in the Trading District of the main town, Battleon but they don't accept either the in-game currency, Gold, or the cash shop variety, Dragon Crystals. No, they want either Sturdy Materials or Solid Materials. 

Cozy Inn Room

Sturdy is wood aka planks, Solid is stone aka bricks. There's a pair of daily quest to collect fifty of each. It's very easy. They drop from anything you can kill because of course all animals carry bricks in their non-existent pockets.

Even without the dailies, I had to hand in fifty of each type for one of the quests in the opening section of the Get Your House line. Somehow I already had enough of both on me for it to autocomplete. I still don't know if they were in my inventory from earlier or if the quest just added them on the spot.

Either way, I had loads left so I was able to buy what I wanted and while I was shopping I also noticed all the other house deeds you can buy for Dragon Crystals. I somehow have 1100DC although how I got it I couldn't tell you. It was enough for some of the cheaper ones.

Dark  Castle Room

I wasn't going to spend precious Crystals without seeing what I'd be getting for them, of course. Neither would anyone with any sense, which is why there's a Preview option. I started at the top of the list and worked my way down. There are only half a dozen, plus one you can only buy with Gold. 

Y'know what? Let's start with that one because I think it says a lot about whoever designs stuff in this game. The Gold-Only Deed is called Castle Room and it costs 2.5m Gold. That's right. Two and a half fricken' million! I have 27k. Alright, I'm only level 8 but still... Does income really ramp up that much?

Even if it does, I wouldn't spend twenty-five Gold on the poky little closet they're peddling, let alone twenty-five million. I'm not even going to waste a screenshot on it here. It's not like there'd be anything to look at. It's a boxy, square, high-ceilinged room made of rough stone, about the same size as the one you get for free. Maybe not even that big. That's it. Why would you even... ?

Anyway, moving on... 

Naturalist's Hut

I spent a while visiting all the properties and taking screenshots. You can see them here in the post, all labelled with the name of the Deed.

As you can see, they vary wildly. The first three are single, closed rooms much like the free version but with more character. I wouldn't bother with the not entirely accurately named Cozy Inn Room even at the knock-down price of 500DC but the Dark Castle Room has a certain, gothic appeal and I did seriously consider parting with a thousand Crystals for the Naturalist's Hut, which has some nice features including a small mezzanine floor and a big tree.

For just a couple hundred more you can have your own Warehouse. Why you'd want to live in a warehouse is another question but it's actually surprisingly attractive. At least it has good, natural light from some large windows and it might even have a view, if you could get up high enough to see out of them. You can see the sky with clouds moving across it and the tops of trees, at least. It's not bad at all.

Wiggly's Warehouse

If you can afford the extra, though, things take a dramatic turn at 2000DC. For a couple of grand you get not just a room but an entire zone, either the Greenguard Quarry (Actually a verdant valley.) or your own Tropical Island, complete with dock and moored sailing vessel (That you can't get to, sadly.)

It's a ridiculous leap. One minute you're locked in a single room, next moment you have a whole valley to yourself or a substantial chunk of coastline. 

Of course, what you don't get is a house. Just the land. I'm not sure how that works. The B.U.I.L.D. vendors don't sell prefabricated construction parts other than walls, and I'm not sure whether you can craft any. I think I'd at least want a roof.

Greenguard Quarry

As I said yesterday, you can slowly accrue cash shop currency for free from the Login daily. The 2k options are sufficiently attractive that I'm motivated to put AQ3D on my daily to-do list just to open my three, free chests each day until I get the extra 900DC I'd need for the island. I haven't had a daily login game since I stopped playing Noah's Heart. I could do with a new one. It does give my gaming day some structure.

About fifteen paragraphs back you might remember I said something about another example of how AQ3D does things differently. Perhaps you think we had it already. We didn't. Here it comes now.

As I was cycling through the previews, I was becoming increasingly irritated by the way the game put me back at the zone line every time I left the instance, meaning I had to run all the way across town to pick up the next preview. If you were designing it, wouldn't you put the player back at the same vendor who'd just shown you around so you could either buy that Deed or go look at another?

Tropical Island

Guess what? Artix did think of that. They just decided it would be more fun if you had to earn it. You can buy a Travel Crystal from the vendor that lets you teleport instantly back to the vendor who sold it to you, who just happens to be standing next to the Deeds guy. The Deeds guy himself doesn't sell one. That would be too easy...

Naturally you can't buy the Travel Crystal with Gold, either. That would be crass. Or maybe jejune. One of those. No, you have to buy it with planks and bricks. I don't know... maybe the vendor actually goes out back and builds the damn thing for you with the stuff you give her. I wouldn't be surprised.

Once you have it, you can slot it onto your hotbar and port instantly back to the housing depot. It's a lot handier than using the door. Especially since the door doesn't work.

Excuse me? Do I know you?

There's probably more I could say about AdventureQuest 3D's new housing feature but I think I've probably said enough. More than enough, really, even if I haven't mentioned the placement UI for furniture (It's not great.) or how I realize now I missed several steps out of that long-ass bullet point list yesterday, including the weirdest one, the bit where I had to go tell my roommate (Who I didn't even know existed...) that I was moving out, or the most pedantic part, where I had to go and collect some empty moving crates for all my stuff (As if it actually existed...)

As MMORPG housing goes, it's a long way from being the best I've seen. It's not even close to being the best I've seen in a free game. But it's not at all a bad start. Plenty there to build on, if you'll pardon the pun.

Hmm. Now I want to know what B.U.I.L.D. stands for. I mean. it has to stand for something, doesn't it? They wouldn't just put those periods there for show, would they?

Would they? I dunno. It's AQ3D. They might, at that...