How to level up your house in World of Warcraft Player Housing

One of the tent pole features of World of Warcraft: Midnight is Player Housing, which is now live for early access with the launch of patch 11.2.7. And because there’s nothing the Warcraft systems designers like more than a leveling system, it’s no surprise that you’ll need to level your house with an interface much like a Renown track.

Leveling your house unlocks the ability to place more decor, so housing enthusiasts will want to get on it as soon as possible. But the game is a little vague on how, exactly, you level your house — and you have limited options during early access — so we’re here to explain. This is what you need to know about house leveling, and what benefits you get from leveling your house.

Why do I need to level my house?

When you first log on in patch 11.2.7, you’ll have a series of quests to unlock your house and learn about the system, including how to acquire decor, where housing vendors are located, and how to pick out a vacant lot to acquire a house. But initially, you can’t place many rooms or add many items to your home… you have to level up your house up in order to place more decor and add new rooms.

In early access only five levels are available, with level 6 marked as “coming soon,” and we don’t know how many levels there  may eventually be. Here are the currently available levels and features that come with them:

Level 1 – 0XP required

• Basic room type options
• Exterior Decoration Budget: 200 points
• Interior Decor Placement Budget: 910 points
• Room Placement Budget: 19 points

Level 2 – 10XP required

• Adds Square Room (Medium) to room types
• Exterior Decoration Budget: 200 points
• Interior Decor Placement Budget: 1155 points
• Room Placement Budget: 24 points

Level 3 – 1200XP required

• Adds Daylight Circle Room to room types — not available in early access
• Exterior Decoration Budget of 200 points
• Interior Decor Placement Budget of 1450 points
• Room Placement Budget of 30 points

Level 4 – 2400XP required

• Adds Octagon Room (Large) to room types
• Exterior Decoration Budget: 200 points
• Interior Decor Placement Budget: 1745 points
• Room Placement Budget: 36 points

Level 5 – 3700XP required

• Adds Square Room (Large) and Evening Circle Room to room types — Evening Circle Room not available in early access
• Exterior Decoration Budget: 200 points
• Interior Decor Placement Budget: 2050 points
• Room Placement Budget: 43 points

What are these housing placement budgets?

You can’t just place an infinite number of items in your home. Every decor item has a placement budget cost of 1, 3, or 5 points. Typically larger or more intricate items, or items that project lighting or particle effects, have a higher cost, meaning you can place fewer of them. Scaling an item up or down in size does not affect its budget cost; the cost of the item is fixed regardless what you do with it. As you level your house, you’re able to add more rooms and place more items inside.

Because the game client needs to load in each individual asset on the fly, the number and types of objects you can use are limited to ensure your game will function — which is very likely the reason the exterior decor budget is currently fixed at 200. A low exterior decor budget helps prevent lag so people can move around the neighborhood don’t get bogged down due to complicated house designs. Currently lighting items are all configured for internal placement only while a technical issue is resolved around too many lighting objects causing neighborhoods to grind to a halt (thanks to Taliesin and his fire brazier garden). It’s possible the external budget will be increased later when it has been determined whether it will negatively impact other players.

The current exterior placement budget can feel very restrictive: you may need to plan carefully to get a design you are happy with that works within that limit. Once you hit your budget cap you won’t be able to add new decor items unless you remove something.

How do I earn house XP?

There are two ways to earn experience for your home (that we know of):

• Learning new unique decor items that are uncommon (green), rare (blue), or epic (purple), giving 10 XP per item.
• Completing Neighborhood Endeavor activities, though how much XP these will is unclear . This appears to be where you’ll do most of your leveling, but Endeavors are not available in early access so you’re limited to leveling by collecting decor.

So for now, you’ll be reaching the early levels by collecting decor items from vendors, boss drops, or from achievements. At 10 points per item, you would need to collect 369 unique decor items to unlock a level 5 house. At time of writing there are 1143 items in the database that can give house XP (out of a total of 2,278 items). Not all of these items are going to be accessible with early access as they come from Midnight zones, reputations, or professions. Leveling this way will prove to be a significant — or an expensive — grind.

Another consideration when collecting items is that the decor catalog has a current cap of 5,000 objects, after which you can’t collect any more objects. Unlike some other games, in Warcraft’s implementation of housing you need to own multiple copies of an object in order to place multiple copies of an object in your house. So if you want to place six chairs around your in-game dining table, you need to acquire six chairs, and they will use six slots in your decor catalog. You may need to balance out collecting multiple items for your desired builds against collecting unique items to earn XP.

Collecting uncommon or higher quality unique decor items will also let you earn achievements; currently, the last decor collection achievement is Fully Furnished for 500 items, which also gives the title of “name the Furnished.”

If you pre-ordered Midnight, you have early access to the Player Housing neighborhoods with patch 11.2.7, but even if you haven’t pre-ordered you can still collect decor and earn XP. Jesse Kurlancheek, the Blizzard lead designer on the Players Housing feature, has confirmedon the Architects of Azeroth Discord server that everybody can earn house XP, stating that “the collection XP is saved and isn’t wasted regardless of if you own a house (or the expansion).” So there’s no need to rush.

But what about Endeavors? When they go live with Midnight, these will be neighborhood-wide events that look very similar to the Traveler’s Log activities that you do for the Trading Post every month. Fill a bar by completing different activities, many of which you will be likely to be completing anyway in regular play. As you complete events you’ll earn Community Coupons you can exchange for event-themed decor from the Endeavor Trader.

The biggest difference between this and the Traveler’s Log is that the bar you’re filling is a part of a community-wide activity shared by your entire neighborhood. As everyone in the neighborhood works to fill the bar, you’ll earn access to new items at the trader and be able to collect additional rewards from the Endeavor Chest next to the Neighborhood Manager.

How to upgrade your house

Your house doesn’t level up automatically: once you have filled the bar for your current housing level, you have to speak to the General Contractor in your neighborhood to level up. Don’t worry if you don’t do this immediately, as any house XP you earn will continue to accrue in the background even though the XP bar appears to be stuck until you level up.

Once you have earned a new level, to unlock the features associated with that level you must visit the General Contractor in that neighborhood at this location:

/way #2351 53.53, 56.59 – Rotha, General Contractor Razorwind Shores
/way #2352 54.02, 39.60 – Jorvan Longmoor, General Contractor Founder’s Point

Talking to the General Contractor for your neighborhood will send a crew of eager workers scurrying off to upgrade your house to the next level. It doesn’t cost you anything to upgrade at the General Contractor, and the upgrade is instantaneous. Congratulations! Your house has now leveled up!

Because all sources of house XP are shared across your Warband, if you own a house in both the Alliance and the Horde neighborhoods, both will have upgrades available at the same time. Be sure to upgrade both to unlock new features for each home! (We have seen issues in the beta where XP gains can stall on one side or the other; you should submit a bug report if this happens.)

Player Housing is a marathon, not a sprint!

There will be plenty of players racing to max level on their homes, grinding tedious decor collecting tasks until they manage to get to level 5. These housing devotees may be showing off amazing (and intimidating) builds — but don’t let them make you feel like you need to keep pace. Player Housing is an evergreen feature that will continue to grow with the game. Play at the speed that works for you, and remember that early access is the hardest time to level your house. You don’t lose anything by taking it easy and focusing on earning XP when Endeavors launch.

Player Housing is also designed around you resetting, rebuilding, and experimenting as you come up with new ideas to try. There will be people who do a new build weekly or monthly or seasonally — there’s no fixed end state or final goal other than to build and have fun. I know I will be doing a full redesign when Blizzard finally adds elven housing types in Midnight.

Play at the speed you enjoy, and don’t burn yourself out. Housing isn’t going anywhere, and these decor items will be there when you’re get around to them.

Have fun and see you in Azeroth.