Spry Fox Making Happiness

Greetings, wanderers! 

If you’ve been in our Alpha testing for a while, you’ve probably noticed that not a lot has changed with the player housing since the start of Alpha. And although Roomie’s little apartment – and later yours – has its cozy aspects, it’s never been intended as our final answer to Spirit Crossing’s personal real estate plan. 

Housing has been waiting its turn behind a few other higher priority things – like the new Entry Lands – but as we rapidly approach Beta, you can look forward to a lot more changes happening in that little slice of the Crosslands that you call home!

The Goals

The first job on the table was to sit down with Roomie to make a list of what was and was not working, and most of all, how to make it better.  The high level list we came up with was:

• Make it easier to visit people’s homes
• Make it easier to invite people to come admire your home
• Make it possible to upgrade (including expanding) your home in a meaningful way
• Allow access to your house earlier! Day 1 of playing! 
• Allow the folks who love micro-managing decorating to go wild with creativity…
• …but also allow the folks who just want a nice looking home to be able to achieve that without stress.
• Allow maximum room for creativity and building whatever you want to build.
• And if that includes building a 27-room bagel warehouse, so be it! (Okay, this last goal was all Roomie’s. But still valid. Thanks, buddy.)

An ambitious list, you say? Absolutely! But in MY home Roomie gets what Roomie wants, and so…

The Plan

Improve access

• We’re going to decouple the permission to visit someone’s home from your friendship level with that person. Maybe you want to invite strangers in! Maybe you DON’T want your friends visiting! Either way, we’ll give you the power to choose who’s allowed in (or not) directly through a setting in your home. 
• We’ll also improve the travel menu so that you can directly find and travel to other players’ homes via the trolley. 

Get home sooner

• As we approach beta we’ll be doing more updates to the new player experience based on your feedback and our learnings. This will include introducing you to your new home on day 1! 
• And yes – this obviously has implications for Roomie’s quests, so there will be changes around how and when you meet Roomie also. If you’re already well past that point it shouldn’t affect you, but new players will probably have a different set of problems to help Roomie with. 

New layout!

• Not only will you get to your home earlier in the future, but your home will be getting a pretty significant glow-up also. And we’re not just talking splurging on new wallpaper and flooring around the ol’ inn room (although, new wallpaper and flooring options are on the way too). Nope, if Roomie wants a 27-room bagel warehouse that’s gonna take some SPACE.
  • Outdoor space to build on – and not just a teeny back yard area. Think big! Your own personal mountain peak sanctuary, on which you can build modest his ’n’ yours cabins for Roomie and you; a luxury mansion with a floor each; or, yes, an industrial style bagel warehouse. The choice is yours (and Roomie’s). 
  • Modular style rooms will allow you to easily expand your home as much (or as little) as you wish by choosing and placing entire rooms. They’ll look good placed as is, but decorating fanatics who just love to tinker will also discover they’re made out of modular building kit pieces which you can disassemble and reassemble to your heart’s content.
  • And yes, there will be more different visual styles of building kit coming in the future so you can have completely different appearances in different rooms (or mix and match).

But what about my current home?

A change to your home on this big of a scale is unfortunately going to make it impossible for even Roomie to reliably pack up and re-position all your decorations exactly as you had them before. And with the new flexibility of building new rooms, we’re pretty certain that you’ll end up wanting to redecorate anyway. So, all items that you’ve placed in your current home will be automatically packed away into your house storage, and you’ll be able to re-place them in your new home once you’re in it. 

Those Alpha pioneers who, in lieu of having available outside space, went ahead and started creating “void builds”, not only is this new layout an answer to your wishes, but yes, items placed outside your actual walls should still be packed up into house storage also. 

In preparation for the move, if you have something particularly complex like a mural, you may want to take some photos of it before the change, to make it easier to re-create if you want to.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but hope that the overall improvement to your home will be worth it in the long run!

And Roomie?

• Don’t worry! Roomie will still be an important part of the new player experience and your favorite messy roommate. 
• Roomie will also soon be freed from his spot by the door in your home all the time; you’ll be able to move him around to more convenient locations. (Whether he stays there or not when nobody’s looking is a question nobody but Roomie can answer.)

For the moment, all this is still a work in progress, so we’ll keep you updated on when you can expect to see them in game.  But we hope you’re as excited as we are about these changes, and look forward to sharing more with you when it’s ready.

See you next time, wanderers! 
Spry Fox

This blog was written by Emily, a Senior Content Designer at Spry Fox.