Player Housing

Where available, players may build houses in which they can possibly rent and store equipment. There are high costs associated with owning a house, so buyer beware.

Getting Started Maintaining Your House Instructions for Clans

Getting Started

Find the location
To determine whether or not a particular room will allow housing, type "build" and the mud will tell you. You can have up to 2 houses, and clans can have up to 6. Remember, you must wait until you are level 15 before you can buy a house.
Check for options
Type 'build query' to see a more verbose description of the housing options each room has. Remember that each option has an additional cost associated with it. All of the descriptions, locations, and features are set by the builder.

The number of rooms you might build on to your initial housing installation is also builder-determined. Some will allow you to add on to them, others will not. Some will allow you to rent in them, others will not. If you want a feature that you don't see, you might consider dropping the area's maintainer a note via mudmail. Not all types of rooms will be available. For example, deathtraps, safe rooms, no-flee, and no-magic rooms will not be available. However, rooms which are outdoors, private (two people max), or behind hidden doors or tunnel doors, will be possible.

Some builders have provided their areas with helpful pamphlets and acts -- keep an eye out for these, often associated with administrative type mobs.

Make your purchase
Type build where keyword is the unique room name shown in build query, and the direction is the direction you want your house to sit. If the direction you choose is not valid, the game will tell you. Your house will be instantly built, and you can move in immediately.

The cost of the house and the rent will be deducted from your bank account on a regular basis.

Maintaining Your House

Paying Rent
Your rent will be deducted from your bank account. You cannot use this system to share the costs with anyone unless you are a member of a clan. This does not prevent you from sharing the costs in a less official manner -- simply go to a banker and give gold to the official owner, who can deposit it in their own account.

In addition to your room rent, you pay item rent, equivalent to the rent cost of each item you store in your house. A room can store up to 50 items. This limit includes items kept in bags.

Customizing
You can customize your house in terms of layout, and choose from the preset room descriptions. You may want to consider furniture (some houses will come with furniture, but not all), strung zip, or regular strings, to add atmosphere.

Some houses will automatically put your name in the room title (for example, JoeBob's House, if your name is JoeBob) while others will not. If you want your name in a room title, or you want it removed, ask an imm to set it for you. You might add your name and your spouse's name, or include a personal title, such as Sir or Mrs.

You can connect rooms within your house -- typing connect will tell you which ones can be connected to each other.

Letting Others In or Keeping Them Out
You may want to purchase a door for your house -- without it, anyone (including mobs) can get in. Even with a door, your house can still be entered. You may want to purchase a lock, which are available with different levels of complexity associated with them. All housing locks will be pickable, but the locks will have "pick timers" on them -- i.e. the person can't just sit and spam picklock over and over, they will only be able to try to pick the lock a certain number of times per tick.

People on your befriend list can automatically get into your house and pick up items contained in it. If they drop something, it will be set to being owned by you, and you will have to pay rent on it. Please choose your friends carefully.

If someone breaks into a non-pkenabled person's house, they won't be able to steal anything, just wander around and look at things. So while locks are not totally necessary, you may want to have them for the sake of protecting your privacy.

The ACQUIRE command enables the owner of the house, or the GM, to obtain a nonrentable key to the house.

Problems
If you want to get rid of your house, you can DEMOLISH it. If you archive, or if you run out of money to pay for your house, it will disappear, along with the contents.

With the SELL_HOUSE command you can sell your property. You must be in the main room of the house in order to sell it, and the person you are selling to must be with you. This transfers ownership of the house and everything in it to the target.

We've added a few new commands to help people deal with housing. One is EXPEL -- it allows you to kick anyone out of your house. Another is DITCH -- it forces someone to stop following you, and can therefore be used to keep someone from following you right into your house against your will.

Future Features
We hope to add the ability for players to run shops without it costing a great deal of daily rent, and the ability for players to run inns. In addition, we will be adding "guard" type mobs for pkenabled housing. The guard mobs will follow the same rules of engagement that pkenabled players follow. Killed guard mobs will repop, and be worth 0 exp.

Your suggestions are appreciated, please let us know what you'd like to see!

Instructions for Clans

Definitions Acquiring a Hall Maintaining the Clan Problems

Definitions

Clan Bank Account: bank account which all members of a clan may put money into, but from which only the housing system may withdraw money.
Clan Hall: Housing which draws its rent from a clan bank account.
Clanned: Part of an official, in-game organization.
PK Clan: clan wherein all the members are pkenabled. This distinction only determines under what listing the clan will appear in the help files.
Pkenabled: player with the ability to kill other players.
Pkenabled Housing: housing belonging to a pkenabled person OR a pkenabled GM. If a pkenabled housing room is also set with the INN flag, befriended pkenabled persons may rent there.
RP Clan: A clan wherein the members may be pkenabled or not pkenabled. This distinction only determines under what listing the clan will appear in the help files.

Acquiring a Hall

Current clan halls vanish upon the installation of housing. That puts old clans and newly forming clans in a similar position with respect to a clan hall.

Choose a spot for it.
Remember that you have a maximum of 6 total sites, though expense may limit you to fewer than that. You can see what options are available by typing "clanbuild" in a room. Many areas have in-game helps and guides to the housing options, so be on the lookout for these. Remember that location can be key to your clan's survival.
The centrality of the location will help keep your clan together, while the area you choose will affect where your members spend time. For example, if you are a clan which has Arabian roots, you may wish to choose an Arabian location. Do you want a high-traffic location, or a place to get away from it all? Is this an area that your clanmates are familiar with, or will they always get lost on the way?
If you have pkenabled members: Don't build too close to other clan's halls, unless you want a fight on your doorstep on a regular basis. Consider the proximity to shopkeepers, inns, safe rooms, sources of healing, and time travel quests. Being close to these amenities may be very convenient, or very deadly, to your members.

Build the house, by typing "clanbuild ." You may also wish to purchase doors and locks, and guards (if pkenabled) at this time.
Check what kinds of secondary rooms you can build, and consider adding on to your hall, or saving clan funds with that goal in mind.

Maintaining Your Clan

In addition to clan members, you can have 'clan friends' -- set by the GM. Clan friends work with clanned housing the same was as friends of individuals work with individual housing. Clan friends can enter the hall whenever they like. But they will not have access to the clan channel. Some clans may wish to use this capability to expand their membership, while others may use it to develop a two-tier clan system -- perhaps with an executive council of the 15 members, and general members, in the clan friends list. It's up to you.
Money deposited into a clan account can only be used by the clan housing system and cannot be withdrawn.