The Queue: Did anything happen this week?

No? Okay then. Let’s have a nice, calm Queue and answer your questions this nice, calm Wednesday.

This makes me a little crazy. The neighborhood plots are numbered 0 to 54, without a single sequential number

It seems several of us are having this problem, as I saw Xerianne also confused by this change. Ostensibly the game should pop up a confirmation box when you first log on, but I never got one and the default behavior is to switch your turning and strafing hotkeys.

Which seems unnecessary. You can switch them if you want to — there’s no need to force the change on the whole playerbase.  (I suspect this is the new default, a type of button setup that may be easier to understand for new players… but I’m used to what I already have and hate change!)

However, if your hotkeys changed you have to reset them manually. Go to the game menu, then options, then keybindings, and then movement keys. You can change your turn and strafe buttons by selecting the hotkey you want to change and then clicking the key you want it bound to. Easy, but it feels unnecessary.

As demonstrated, I hate change! But sometimes change can introduce you to new ways of playing that you may find you enjoy… so there’s a balance. You don’t want players to feel like they’re suddenly playing a totally different game, but you may want to teach them new mechanics or encourage them to try different approaches.

But the key is options. These episodes should maybe encourage you to try stealth but let you smash your way through (or show you that you’re just going to get in over your head if you don’t try to be at least a little stealthy). This can be a fun change of place to shake up the game, but they need to be in moderation.

And I’m afraid it’s been so long since I’ve played Skyrim that I can’t offer you any advice on whether it’s worth pushing through it.

Gotta get good and level up your house! Yep. We’re leveling houses now, and it’s actually extremely grindy to do in early access because the primary way of leveling your house isn’t available, so the only way to get house XP is with the +10xp you get every time you learn a brand new piece of uncommon (or rarer) decor. There’s tons of decor to collect, but it can get expensive (in gold and time and other resources) to collect.

Your maximum house level is 5 in early access, which is probably good because even leveling that much on collection bonuses seems like a substantial (and boring) grind.

At level 1, you have a room placement budget of 19. At level 5, you have a room placement budget of 43. But that doesn’t mean you can build up to 43 rooms, as different rooms have different costs, with larger rooms typically costing more.

Early access really is early access, as a lot of features (like leveling) aren’t fully implemented. We’re getting a head start, but the system is still fairly limited. (My Winchester Mystery House plan is not going to work… yet.)

Almost every rep vendor. There’s not anything for Timbermaw, even after I spent all of that ti me grinding reputation back in vanilla! What a rip off!

All lighting is currently indoor only because Taliesin made an outdoor fire garden in the alpha and apparently it caused problems. (And might cause even more problems with the number of players in housing right now.)

It was a really nice fire garden, though I can’t find the video it was in so someone else is going to have to link it.

Housing is a long game. There’s no need to rush. If things in your collection inspire you, then start building! If things not in your collection call out to you, go track them down!

There’s going to be a lot of building and rebuilding (and rebuilding again) here, which. means there’s plenty of time to experiment and try things out. Why not start now with what you have on hand?

Our current site design is a little clunky. We are in the middle (maybe?) of a much delayed redesign, because everything takes a lot more time than you want it to. (Dan initially thought we’d get it done for our anniversary… in February 2025. I thought this was a little optimistic.)

The new site should be easier to customize and change, so it may turn out to be easier to toss up some digital boughs of holly… though then we’d need to find art assets to use. But it will be much easier to make tweaks in the future, I just don’t have an ETA on when that future is happening.

That’s all for today everybody. Thanks for being here, and I hope you have a great day.

I’ll see you in the comments section.