Player Housing Endeavors are getting more rewarding

While there are a number of highly active Neighborhoods that have fully unlocked the Neighborhood Favor track already, one week into the first Endeavor cycle, Blizzard is speeding up Endeavor progression. Now players will earn Favor more quickly, and earn more house XP from Endeavor Tasks, which will hopefully help all of us complete this month’s Endeavor and level our homes.

Endeavors have gotten off to something of a slow start. The immediate goldrush of players grabbing a neighborhood plot when housing early access dropped with patch 11.2.7 hasn’t fully translated to neighborhoods of people actively engaging with Endeavors, which just launched with the Midnight pre-patch. Many public neighborhoods had only one or two people choosing to work on Endeavors, while guild neighborhood activity could vary greatly (and additionally, guild neighborhoods need a guild master who’s paying attention and sets an Endeavor for the neighborhood). Additionally, the amount of Neighborhood Favor granted per activity seems to scale based on the number of claimed houses in the neighborhood, meaning a full neighborhood needed more tasks completed to progress the bar than a lightly populated one… which could really stymie big neighborhoods, particularly if your neighbors weren’t very excited about Endeavors.

On top of this, the house XP gains for completing tasks was capped at 1,000 XP, which discouraged players from continuing to participate in Endeavors. Endeavor activities also had substantial diminishing returns, rewarding less Neighborhood Favor, less house XP, and fewer Community Coupons, which could further discourage players from completing tasks. Even with more than a month to complete it, that set up many Neighborhoods for a painfully slow grind.

But Blizzard has made some adjustments, and hopefully they’ll be for the better.

Changes to Neighborhood Endeavor progression

The first, and possibly most sought after change that Blizzard is raising the house XP cap from 1,000 to 2,250 XP per Endeavor. With the bonus 250xp granted from completing the Neighborhood Favor track, this will let you earn 2,500 XP per Endeavor cycle (approximately every month). If you’re working on progressing two different houses, remember that house XP gains for each Endeavor are specific to that neighborhood, and only accrue for the Endeavor you’ve set as active in your housing dashboard.

The second significant change is that diminishing returns have been significantly reduced. Where Endeavor rewards used to taper off to a mere 20% of the original reward, the new floor value will be 50% of the starting value, and it will decline more slowly. Added to that, the diminishing returns will reset weekly starting from next week’s server restarts, so everyone has reason to keep doing Endeavor activities. Some tasks are also having their base rewards increased from 10 to 50 XP, making them more rewarding in general.

Blizzard initially said that to balance out the neighborhoods that had completed most of the quests already for the active players, they would adjust the Neighborhood Favor track for this month down from 1,000 to 400 XP total required to complete it so everyone could make their way to a finished Endeavor quickly. However an updated post indicates there were some technical issues with the change, so instead Blizzard will set tasks to grant significantly more XP.

When will these Endeavor updates be live?

Changes went live on Wednesday with the EU weekly server restarts, and a bonus server restart for the NA realms on Wednesday off-peak. Everything should be live right now.

So when you’ve killed all the rares in Twilight Highlands and are casting around for a change of scenery, consider giving the Endeavor Tasks another spin — you may find them far more rewarding than before.