Freeport housing: what's the difference, and secret room question

Now that my main is a max level crafter and it's easy to make a bunch of money and status points, I'm looking at the more expensive freeport houses. I have a little decorated two-room I use for sales displays since it's so easy to keep rent paid up for the maximum number of weeks, but I want to have something bigger in the Freeport style that I can really go wild with. (It will still be a while because I have some questing and faction grinding left to do before I can unlock all the furnishings I want to buy, but I like to plan ahead.)

Looking at http://eq2decorators.com/housing/housing_freeport.php it's clear that most of the duplicates are "less coin but additional status point fee" options. Others are just multiples of the same house in case you're nuts enough to want seven of the four-room Freeport houses. But what on earth is the difference between the top two tiers of house? The one for 4p, 83g, 84s, 300,000SP appears to be identical to the one for 3p, 87g, 24s, 250,000SP, unless I've missed some tiny detail while touring both.

I'm also having trouble choosing between the upper tiers with the big open balcony and the one just below it with the giant walled-in outdoor space. The latter might be preferable for a necromancer doing who knows what at all hours (and a convenient place to build a pen for a mount), but the top tiers have that neat cellar space AND a secret room!

The problem with the secret room is that, as a sarnak, I can't stand up in there so it's essentially worthless to me except as a place to pile a big jumble of status reduction items, or maybe decorate as a hidden place to sleep/read/keep treasure chests. BUT it looks like there's a lot of space above those rafters and I know I can jump up between them - has anyone been able to build a "second floor" in that space? If I could crawl in there and then go up to a little room that's actually usable, I'd absolutely buy this house, but at the moment I can't afford to buy the place just to try an experiment that may not work if there's some invisible low ceiling.

I'm also eagerly awaiting the next city festival so I can pick up some teleporters and try this whole "breakout" thing in my Fright Manor. Wish me luck!

Freeport has two top-tier houses, with different layouts. The other difference is that the 250,000 SP houses used to have only 5 vault (and broker) slots, while the 300,000 SP houses had 6. When they gave all houses 6 slots, they didn't update the prices.

One of my guildmates decorated a large freeport home. She made the "secret" room into a 2 story apartment for her Arasai.
She has it posted on the leaderboards on the Everfrost server if you want to check it out. I don't remember the name of the home, but If you look it up under Hall of Fame using authors, her name is Crycket. I only remember the name Green Fairy, in the title.

I'm gonna need to look them over again then, since I clearly missed something re: the layout. The vault/broker thing explains a lot though.

Darn, I'm on Permafrost and don't have any extra character slots to go exploring. Have any of your guildies taken a sarnak over there to visit?

Pft. Sarnaks need to live in the huge Maj'dul house. Now that has tall ceilings..

Gotta work on my faction over there. But there's just something about that dreary driftwood look in the Freeport housing that screams "this is necromancer housing right here." (Well, in a subtler way than something like Fright Manor!) I'll probably end up decorating a Maj'dul place too on some character or other, I do enjoy the style.

I've been visiting other people's top-tier Freeport houses on Permafrost (those who paid their rent and didn't build over the secret room door at least), and while none of them so far have built a second floor in there I did find a couple with furniture I could jump up on for a better view. It looks like it might be possible to do what I'm planning in there! Probably helps that Mozil is the shortest possible male sarnak, too, lol.

Aha! I took screenshots and paid closer attention to the version numbers when zoning in and you're right, Lera, the layouts ARE slightly different. I guess it never really clicked that the stairs were moved around when I was looking at so many house types to begin with.

I went ahead and took the plunge - and it can be done! The trick is finding those weird sweet spots between the rafters where you can stand up (the game is picky about this and the rafters seem to be wider than they "really" are where crouching is concerned) and jumping up just right. Here are some screenshots I took with my awkward test stairs and floor in place.







I'm going to have to put the steps up somewhere along the room's center line, maybe fill those forced-crouch spots along the walls with storage chests or a bed. But it can be done!

I gave my ratonga alt visitor access and of course he can run around upright on both levels of the room, the jerk.

Mozil, there are several items out in the world that can shrink you down in size. If you are a gold member you can buy a Mystic Moppet Billy from the veteran merchant, which shrinks you and turns you into a little burlap doll. You can turn off the illusion so you just look like a mini Sarnak instead of a creepy rag doll. Or you can do a questline in Barren Sky that gives you a choice of a Fae or Arasai illusion item. I think the questgivers name is Constance Cloudpuff.
One of my alts is a Barbarian and I have to say being able to shrink her, makes my life a bit easier sometimes when I am trying to run around in a Halfing sized world.

<edit> forgot to say which merchant sells billy...

+1 to Mairzy's ideas about ways to be shrunken down.

It can make doing deco a lot easier too, to be able to change your size as need be.

There is also a tinkered item that makes you a halfling height sized little clockwork, too. It's a really useful size for decoing in smallish places.

Hey Mo (sorry, couldn't resist ;->): another benefit if you're a Gold account holder is being able to do the Daily Quests and rack up Loyalty tokens; it takes only 5 to get a "Small Bag of Platinum Coins" or some such, and there's 75 in each bag. So paying for plat rent shouldn't be an issue. ;->

My question is this: do all the biggest Freeport houses have status costs as well as coin rent? :-/

Uwk
who at first grumped about not being able to get into his 6-room Qeynos place, but really prefers the lack of status rent in his New Halas joint (not that he couldn't meet it and beyond, but he's about the only character I have that could) ;->

Usually by the time you have your house furnished and decorated, you have enough status offset from the furnishings to offset the status portion of the rent.

Not always, though. Status-free housing, even if more expensive coin-wise, is my friend. ;->

Uwk
who only has one character up to level 85 in anything ;->

Thanks everyone for the size-changing suggestions! I still want to make a room usable at my normal size just for the sake of the challenge, although given that the character is a mage I'm sure if I get frustrated enough I can justify him using size-changing magic if he wants. But I am DEFINITELY doing this for some of the actual decoration process, because being normal size in there tends to bug out the camera when I'm trying to get a good angle to see where the floor panels are going.

Not a gold member, alas, or I'd really be abusing the loyalty for plat, but Billy must not be locked to golds as I have one in my backpacks that I actually forgot all about. Does anyone know if the "hide my illusion" option also hides the illusion from other players? I've always wondered that.

Yep, the biggest you can get without status is the one with no cellar or secret room and the high walls around the outdoor balcony. Which is definitely an annoyance now that we can buy a -25% coin cost reduction chest off the loyalty vendor and earn a week's worth of plat rent just doing a couple of tradeskill dailies or something.

However, even just dumping my unused status reduction items around the house got the status costs of 1 Justice Road down below two level 95 tradeskill writs per week, so I guess that's not too bad. Mozil will be able to get into the place whenever I feel like working on it until I level up my carpenter (yay for trade exp bonus for my alts!) and can nuke the costs further.

I'm kinda second-guessing my location choice though. Is it just me, or is the outside of 1 Justice Road NORTH Freeport? I wanted a place near the prestige portal and a broker, but that's going to drive me nuts lol. Maybe I should do a handful of rush orders and switch to a different location before I get too much work invested in this one. I can just put a portal to one of my prestige houses for when I want a shorter broker trip, I guess.

Heh. Anyone else remember the herds of halasian rugs in the basement we used to use, before they nerfed the status reduction on those?

You can get the status to nothing once you get more items in, Mozil. What server are you on? If you are on AB I don't mind looking thru my storage and seeing if I have some spare status rent reduction items for ya.

Thank you, but I'm on Permafrost.

I have that all on my Houses page. Each house type has the addresses, the cost, and the upkeep, so if one layout has some addresses with status and some without, you can easily find it there.

The five-room Qeynos and Freeport houses all have status cost, except for the ones from LON.

Not sure about that, either (can always try it out with a different pair of eyes watching, like a guildie or someone), but the Billy thing, creepy as it is, is one of the best "fluff" things they've come up with, IMHO. It can be a real life- (or at least time-) saver! ;->

Must be nice; like I say, Uwk's my highest level at 85 adventurer...he's only like low 70s crafter. :-/

It may be like the situation with the 6-room Qeynos houses; no matter what your address is (I was at 5 Karana Court, back when I could still get in it), be it 2 or 4 Bayle Court, 5 or 8 Erollisi Lane, or the LoN rent-free place you get into through the Mage tower, all the "outdoor patios" look exactly the same, like you're in one of the Bayle Court places...specifically, a little to the right of the Mage tower when you look out from your second-story balcony (between the tower and the statue of Antonius Bayle, visually. Physically, you're "up against the wall" of the city, pretty much). It's the one picture from there that Lera doesn't have on the EQ2 Furniture page, so it's hard to tell without actually Touring, but I imagine Freeport has the same sort of "limitation." :-/

Uwk

The billy doll is also a veteran reward. From the 4-year Veteran Reward, to be precise.