A day or two ago, I man­aged to earn enough gold in LotRO to acquire both a horse and a house.  While the trans­porta­tion fea­ture isn’t a new thing for me in MMOs, player hous­ing cer­tainly was, and I found myself glow­ing with accom­plish­ment that afternoon.

At first, I thought houses were over­rated in the sense that they were an addi­tional money sink into the game, and  that houses didn’t do much except give you the option to get more expen­sive stor­age than banks. Thing is, while that may be true in cer­tain respects, there’s also a hook to player hous­ing that I didn’t get from an outsider’s per­spec­tive: mak­ing a house a home is an adven­ture in and of itself.

In addi­tion to the gen­eral quest­lines to acquire the house, it seems pur­chas­ing one opens up some starter quests to deck your house out in liv­ery. While the start­ing accou­trements are com­mon, such as birch trees and rugs, they offer a chance to spruce up a liv­ing space that starts out rather dull and dreary.

Lit­tle by lit­tle, as you add items you’ve acquired like tro­phies, beds, and paint­ings, you get a sense of your own indi­vid­ual style and pref­er­ences, and infus­ing a house with your own per­son­al­ity cer­tainly makes you want to live in the home you’ve made your­self. For instance, if you live in Thorin’s Halls, but want elven fea­tures in your home, then you can buy paint­ings to rep­re­sent your styl­is­tic desires!

If you haven’t thought about buy­ing a house in LotRO just yet, I encour­age you to do so. The expe­ri­ence is worth­while, even if it does cost you a pretty penny to spruce up your home.

That said, before I go, here are a cou­ple of tips/observations I’ve made regard­ing LotRO housing:

Tip 1: If you have util­i­tar­ian lean­ings like myself, and want to pick a place for its gen­eral prox­im­ity to a city, the dwar­ven home­stead is the place to be. It’s a much shorter walk to the main city than in Bree, though you’ll have to con­tend with hous­ing that doesn’t look as styl­ish as the elven homestead.

Tip 2: If you’re look­ing to get free hous­ing items for the com­mu­nal home your char­ac­ters will live in, do the hous­ing quests on mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters and make sure they all have trav­el­ling rations. I’ve decked my starter home out in birch trees and each of the indi­vid­ual quest rewards from the start­ing hous­ing dec­o­ra­tions quest because of it, which makes my house a hodge­podge of var­i­ous cul­tures, but ulti­mately makes my house more invit­ing, as it didn’t have any chairs or dressers previously.

Tip 3: Wait for the horse. My kin­mates advised me to save my money first and wait till I earned enough to buy a horse and a house so that I could make up money faster and level up a lit­tle bit quicker by sav­ing on travel time. If you’re the really patient type, you could save up your cash to buy a deluxe house after buy­ing the horse.