ESO Housing Guide: Getting Started & Benefits

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Human Made

Penned by Angus Green

Angus is our resident Elder Scrolls Online specialist. He lives in Eugene and is a teacher by day.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Many in the ESO community consider housing the true end-game option aside from character customization. Housing in ESO is loads of fun, and there are endless possibilities with all of the different houses and furnishings that they have to offer.

You can technically get started with housing at any point, but it may be more difficult to decorate as you want to. So the question is, where do you start? We’ll help you get started on all things from buying to decorating in this guide to housing in ESO. Let’s dive in. 

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ESO Housing: Where to Begin? Free Real Estate!

Houses can cost a fortune in ESO, but luckily, each character you make is given a quest that gives them one free apartment to start off with. They aren’t the most luxurious spaces, but they’re a solid start and will allow you to store some items there as a sort of extra bank space.

You start this with the quest “A Room to Spare,” which shows up in all new character’s inventory in the consumables section. Depending on your alliance, the apartment you get changes.

In addition to the base alliance zone apartments, each ESO chapter gives you a new apartment you can obtain for free through this quest. Aside from your first character you make in each alliance, use those that come after for the free apartments in the new DLC zones.

Here they are in order of DLC release:

• Vivec City, Vvardenfell: Abbey of St. Delyn
• Alinor, Summerset: The Golden Griffin
• Rimmen, Northern Elsweyr: Sugar Bowl Suite
• Solitude, Western Skyrim: Snowmelt Suite
• Leyawiin, Blackwood: The Kaladas Inn

Item Storage

You’ll only be able to fit a whopping fifteen items in the apartment with standard ESO, and the luxurious amount of thirty with ESO+. This only permits you to build a pretty barebones place. Think college dorm or studio apartment. This is nice to start off, as you’ll get familiar with only picking items that you truly want in your space. You can get away with storing random items in larger houses as the furnishing limit gets higher with each house size increase, but you’ll end up needing to fish a lot of those random items out later to put in the items you really want in. 

If you want to get to your houses quickly, press the U hotkey to get to collections, then mouse over to the third tab on the right that looks like a house to show you all of your houses. You can port to the inside or right outside of your house from here. 

Gold vs. Crowns

The pricing varies for each type of house size, as well as its relevant location. If you’re buying with crowns, you can spend some more to get it fully furnished. Unfortunately, you cannot get houses pre-furnished with just gold. Most houses in the game can be bought with gold, but there are crown store exclusives that can only be bought with crowns. If you really want one of these and don’t have the crowns, you can always pay another player gold and have them buy it for you at the current gold:crown ratio.

Remember that this isn’t foolproof. You want only trade with people you can trust, such as guildmates or friends. You can always have a guild captain broker the deal for you on one of these big trades, as it will likely cost you millions for the larger houses. 

ESO Housing Prices

This table shows the price ranges in gold and crowns for all of the current ESO housing prices. It should give you an idea of how much each category can cost.

Which Houses are Worth Buying?

It really depends on your needs, but I usually go for houses that have good space for decorating as well as vicinity to useful places in the game.

I like having some additional perks other than just the good looks of the house. Have it close to a wayshrine, crafting stations, guild traders, or undaunted enclave. After all, with real estate, it’s all about location, location, location.

I’ll outline some solid choices in different price brackets that you should check out. You may want to pick purely off of your favorite zone, and that’s okay too. My favorite house is the Lakemire Xanmeer Manor in Murkmire, and that’s leagues away from any useful wayshrine or crafting station.

9 ESO Houses Worth Investing In

Here are a handful to look at, if you’re curious!

1. Sugar Bowl Suite

There are a couple of houses that are simply a better bang for their buck. For example, the Sugar Bowl Suite in Rimmen, Northern Elsweyr is hands down one of the best inns to get in the game. It costs only 3,000 and is free if you complete the “A Room to Spare” quest while in Northern Elsweyr. It’s only a couple steps from the wayshrine in Rimmen, and also handily near all of the crafting stations, merchants, and bank. It’s nice to have real estate out in the wilderness with a great view, but it’s hard to compete with that kind of practicality. 

2. Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret

The Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret for 13,000 gold in Deshaan, Mournhold is a great apartment to get, as it’s also centrally located. It doesn’t have the best decorating potential with 50–100 furnishing slots, but if you want a quick port to Deshaan, this is the best spot for cheap. Getting to the undaunted quests has never been easier. You can also go for the large house, Quondam Indorilia, for 1,265,000 gold instead if you want the same great locale but more room to decorate. 

3. Snugpod

The Snugpod small house for 45,000 gold in Elden Root, Grahtwood has a similar vibe to the Flaming Nix Deluxe, but with better decorating potential. With 100–200 furnishing slots, you can really spice it up with some great foliage to turn it into a wonderful Bosmer-friendly haven. It’s also centrally located very close to the undaunted enclave, as well as the guild traders in Elden Root. Elden Root doesn’t have the best crafting station setup, though — if you’re buying it for that, consider somewhere else first. 

4. Cyrodilic Jungle House

The Cyrodilic Jungle House for 71,000 gold in Baandari Trading Post, Malabal Tor is a small house that comes with a decent sized courtyard. The roomside is definitely small, but it is a small house after all. The nearby Black Vine Villa for 54,000 is a good choice for a slightly bigger house with a smaller courtyard. With 100–200 furnishing slots, it will be easy to fill these places up to look homey. They’re close to the guild traders nearby, and that wayshrine to get you to the other places you need to be. Expect frequent storms here to light up your house! 

5. Mournoth Keep

The Mournoth Keep for 325,000 gold is a medium house in the Northern area of Bangkorai that boasts a much larger property than most other medium houses. It’s on the higher end of costs as far as medium houses go, but you get a huge courtyard and a decently sized two-story house out of it. The 200–400 furnishings you can put inside might not even fill it up. You might be in the middle of nowhere, but there’s a wayshrine directly outside your house. All in all, it’s a solid choice. 

6. Sleek Creek House

The Sleek Creek House for 335,000 gold is a medium house in Rawl’kha, Reaper’s March that is more courtyard than house. It’s central to the trading hub and crafting area of Rawl’Kha, allowing for quick access to the Outlaw’s Refuge as well to sell your ill-gotten gains without the chance of getting caught by a guard on the way there. You can put 200–400 furnishings inside, but most of them will have to go in the courtyard, as the inside area is fairly snug. Out of the medium houses, I think Sleek Creek definitely has the best views of the nearby landscape, allowing for some great complementing customization options.

7. Gardner House

The Gardner House for 1,015,000 gold in Wayrest, Stormhaven is a large house with three stories and a courtyard inside the city. It’s a great central location to crafting stations, as well as the undaunted enclave. With 300–600 furnishing slots, you can do a lot with the area to make it your own. You can even block off the lower level with a carpet or wall furnishing to really fit up two of the floors to the brim. 

8. Proudspire Manor

The Proudspire Manor for 1,050,000 gold in Solitude, Western Skyrim is a great large house that’s a total throwback to Skyrim. With 300–600 furnishing slots, you can make it look just like how you had it back in Skyrim. It has three stories with a small patio out back with a view of the castle and some fairly geometric landscapes in the distance. Just don’t look too close — the rest is pretty! It’s close to the Solitude wayshrine and other resources the city has to offer like crafting / banking. 

9. Hall of the Lunar Champion

The Hall of the Lunar Champion in Rimmen, Northern Elsweyr is a manor that’s truly priceless. And I mean that literally. You can’t buy this house, but you can certainly earn it! That’s right, no need to pay for this house with a furnishing limit of 350–700. Instead, you’ll need to earn achievements.

From the main quest line in Northern Elsweyr, completing “Two Queens” will reward you with mail that gives you both Hall of the Lunar Champion and the tablet “Behold the Lunar Champion” that allows access to other areas in the home. To unlock all three sections of the house, you’ll need to complete the quest “The Heir of Anequina” in Northern Elsweyr, complete Lair of Marselok and Moongrave Fane dungeons on normal, and the quest “Return of the Dragonguard” in Southern Elsweyr. 

Crafting or Buying Furnishings

Most furnishings in the game are craftable, but there are some that are crown store exclusives. You can find the items you want either on guild traders already crafted, or you can find the item’s recipe.

Of course, these players are finding the recipes by opening up containers throughout Tamriel. Most of the time, you’ll find some grains or apples, but occasionally you’ll find crafting recipes. You can also get a decent amount of crafting recipes as rewards through turning in daily crafting writs. Each crafting station has a different “recipe” name for items you can craft as furnishings through them.

At the guild bank, you will find them all under the Consumables tab in the “Furnishing Plan” section. The standard furnishings that all players can learn to make are:

• Alchemy: Formulae
• Blacksmithing: Diagrams
• Clothing: Patterns
• Enchanting: Praxis
• Provisioning: Design
• Woodworking: Blueprints.
• Jewelry: Sketches (you’ll need Summerset or ESO+ to unlock making these)

Most Jewelry Sketches aren’t worth making, as the components cost much more than the item itself. This can happen with the other crafting types, but it occurs with Jewelry especially due to their bizarrely inflated material costs.

If you want the item, however, it’s worth however much you’re willing to pay for it. Look around at different guild traders or check Tamriel Trade Centre to get an idea of a fair price for the items you want. You can also buy furnishings off the crown store, but it’s not always worth it if you can find similar items you can craft or buy with gold. 

Setting Furnishings

Inside your house, press F5 to interact with furnishings. You can set furnishings from your inventory or move them once you set them down. Don’t set them down too low, as sometimes they become impossible to interact with.

You can always go to the third tab over “Retrieve” to place anything from your house back into your inventory. This saves time in a large house in general and also gives you a good idea of what items you have and wear. This menu will also show how far away the item is from you and in what direction in meters. 

Right clicking will quickly align the furnishing flat to the ground on whatever surface you are mousing over. This will usually set the item as you need it when doing so on the actual ground as its use is intended for. However, it will not work when aligning items to walls. The base of the object will orient itself against the wall like it would to the ground, making it appear to hover sideways. While great for making stairs out of stone pillars, it’s not so useful for most other furnishings.

Using the mouse wheel will pull the item closer or push it further away. Number keys will twist the object around on its set plane. It’s easy to accidentally hit the wrong key, causing it to spin around in the wrong way, and it’s often best to quickly stow the item with R and start over again.

Join the High Ground

Good luck to all of you house hunters, and I hope this helps to get you started on making your dream home! For more information on all of your favorite games and the latest in all things ESO, follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter.

Happy decorating!

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