Have you always wanted to live inside the Lonely Mountain? Well, be ready for another adventure!
Hello everyone!
A month ago, Scenario announced that Erebor was going to be our next premium neighborhood. We even had a small tour of the neighborhood on his stream.
Recently, I had the chance to have a sneak peek of the area and Scenario was kind enough to answer a few questions and present to you his latest work.
I hope you’ll all enjoy this preview of Erebor neighborhood! I let the rest of this post to Scenario.
UPDATE : Discover the Erebor homesteads presentation page and more about U32.
An introduction to Erebor Housing
(by Scenario)
Introducing: Erebor Homesteads (Name TBD)!
One of Smaug’s last treasure hoards has been opened and the Dwarves of Erebor have moved to reclaim it! Join them in owning a piece of Midde-earth, in the Great Hall under the Mountain!
This new premium neighbourhood will include twelve Base Premium Houses, one special Base Premium House, six Deluxe Premium Houses, and one Premium Kinship house, along with a full suite of town services and social spaces for you to enjoy with your kinship and neighbors!
In addition to the new neighbourhood, Erebor Housing introduces new exterior music and dayfile hook types to allow players even more customization options for their homes and extends the usage of housing permissions to allow players to make their yards fully private from uninvited guests.
A note about the below property descriptions – all details regarding the number of hooks are subject and may be changed based on development needs.
Base Houses:
Seated along the Wyrmhoard Bridge, the smallest of the houses of the Erebor Homesteads are a great entry point into this neighbourhood, offering a full suite of housing features in a more affordable cost and beautiful “waterfront” views of the golden hoard.
These houses each offer 105 interior decoration hooks, 10 interior lighting hooks, and 38 exterior decoration hooks.
Geode/unique house:
A unique offering in the neighbourhood, the Geode House of Ironfoot Road is a special version of the Base House. Have you ever wanted to live inside a geode? Well, here’s your opportunity!
In addition to a unique yard, and some additional unique interior spaces, this home is placed near craft services and social spaces within the neighbourhood, making it a great space for avid crafters or party hosts!
This house offers 105 interior decoration hooks, 10 interior lighting hooks, and 39 exterior decoration hooks.
Deluxe Houses:
Deluxe homes along Ironfoot Road and Oakshield Way offer multiple levels of “outdoor” living with two different levels of yard, and an exterior balcony, all overlooking the Wyrmhoard and the hall itself. Those familiar with deluxe styles of housing in other premium neighbourhoods will find a lot to like in these homes!
These homes offer 183 interior decoration hooks, 18 interior lighting hooks, and 63 exterior decoration hooks.
Kinship House:
Anchoring the northern end of the neighbourhood, the Kinship Hall commands an impressive view of the homesteads. The most fully features of the properties, kinships can customize the exterior yards (four in total) and balcony with their own music and cave ambience effects.
The “under yard” gives a view of the Wyrmhoard at “water-level” while those seeking a more natural experience can enjoy the Dale-land gardens or blue-stone courtyard of the upper yards.
This house offers 183 interior decoration hooks, 20 interior lighting hooks, and 78 exterior decoration hooks.
Questions & Answers
Question (Yao): Why Erebor and when did you start development?
Answer (Scenario): As we neared the middle of Gundabad development, we (well, I) really wanted to start working on a new housing feature.
Housing, for me, should be an iterative feature – where each offering brings something new to the table that can, eventually, be brought back to other neighbourhoods.
I had a few big ideas in mind but knowing we were wrapping up our major Dwarf storyline, and that our plans for the foreseeable future take us far away from Dwarf-centric stories, it felt like the right time to do Erebor Housing.
I started planning Erebor Housing in September (2021), but a lot of the work that I had done in my Test Estate space came into play and helped speed along certain aspects of it. World Design work in the space began in mid October, and now I’m on the content and rewards portion of the work.
Q: What’s new with Erebor Housing?
A: There are a few new features and design processes being brought to Erebor Housing.
Thanks to our wonderful Palantir team, the Test Estate gave me a lot of great information about hook density and size of interior spaces. Thanks to their feedback, I have been able to take those learnings and apply to them this neighbourhood, and offer homes that feel about right as far as number of hooks to compared to the size of space is concerned.
That said, as we are entering beta with this soon – there’s still plenty of time to adjust the size of the interiors to make them feel better for the number of hooks if needed (which will more likely mean some interiors get more cozy, if that is indeed where feedback pushes us).
On the new features side of things, there are some new and revamped hook types that are being made available for the first time in Erebor Housing.
- Exterior Dayfile Ambience Hooks (Cave) – Erebor introduces the Dayfile Hooks to the exterior spaces of each home. Players can customize their dayfile from a set of Cave Ambience dayfiles. Any ambience changes will only be in effect while you are standing within a given property.
- New Music Hook Tech – Previously, music hooks only worked in interiors and an interior could only support one music hook at a time. We’ve moved music hooks to be able to support volumes, which means houses can potentially support multiple music types. Additionally, this means that music is now supported on the landscape! Like dayfile ambience, this music will only be in effect while standing within a given property.
- Mobile Exterior Hooks – In order to make the exterior hooks behave correctly in a space that used structures for walkable surfaces instead of terrain, we needed a different style of hook for exteriors. All of Erebor’s exterior hooks behave like interior hooks – they can move on the X/Y/Z axis, instead of moving relative to the “House Keeper”. These hooks have variable movement ranges, in order to keep them within the boundaries of a given property.
- Private Gates – Players are no strangers to house permissions that keep uninvited guests from entering the interiors of their homes. With Erebor, each property has a front gate that uses those permissions and only allows people with the correct usage permission to open it.
Q: Will some of these new features be transposed to the “old” neighbourhoods?
A: Assuming I have time, I’d like to bring Music and Dayfile hooks to Rohan and Belfalas, and lighting to Belfalas. But – those are stretch goals, and I’m not going to begin work on them if Erebor still needs work.
Q: Are there other new features to be expected in the near future (after launch/2022)?
A: We have some high-level plans for the next neighbourhood, along with a new style of housing that I’ve been planning and quietly filing requests for over the last year and a half. However, there aren’t any new things we are ready to make a specific announcement about yet.
That all said, I have a number of new hook types that I’ve got ideas for, they are just waiting on the right time and place to be introduced.
Q: Can we expect improvements in non-premium areas in the future?
A: Outside of maybe bring the lighting, dayfile and music hooks into the original neighbourhoods, we don’t have any huge plans. But retrofitting those features is an “as I have time” task so I have no timeframe in mind for that work.
We are interested in finding ways to make purchasing multiple non-premium houses a thing, along with purchasing multiple kinship halls. But, like the retrofitting of hook types, I don’t have a timeframe I can speak to.
That’s all for today ! I hope you enjoyed this presentation by Scenario and don’t forget to comment here, or on our discord channel!
Many thanks to Scenario, Cordovan and Rainina for making this preview possible.
~Yao
5 Responses
Thank you so much for sharing Yao, and thanks Scenario for being so devoted! There’s not a single decorator I talk to who isn’t happy with his efforts! Cheers to you both 🙂
The mystery of the “Mobile Exterior Hook” is explained! Have been seeing decor items with that as a hook option so was interested to see what it was.
Thanks to all for taking the time to provide us more info about Erebor.
I’ve been walking through the Erebor housing and decorations on Bullroarer and saying Erebor housing is epic is like calling the Pacific Ocean ”moist”. From a house decorator’s perspective, it’s..artistically overwhelming, mind-blowing, takes your breath away…pick one.
Better yet, take the time to download the Bullroarer client, copy your fastest moving character to the Bullroarer client, and check out the Erebor housing and decorations yourselves. You won’t be sorry. SSG has gone far above and beyond on this one. (Now if only they would increase the number of hooks in Rohan mead halls. wistful sigh)
One caveat though..the green stone trim (i.e. malachite) in the pillars is currently not changeable. So you’ll have that malachite look regardless of what wall surface changes you make. Some of the new wall surfaces look good with the malachite but some really, really do not.
Thing is some of the new Erebor wall surfaces look great in other, non-Erebor houses; especially some of the Belfalas houses.
Have they announced pricing?
Still subject to change.