Tools

Equipment

You need to be prepared at all times to buy the house you want. When it comes available you need to be prepared to buy the house, immediately. You will not have time to go get the needed items. So while you are looking for houses you should not be questing with a group that is relying on you. I have found running "Ascus" on my tradebot on a second computer while carrying my supplies while tooling around works well. I only used manual house checking on my main character and used "Ascus" for portal and lifestone detection while traveling.

You need to be ready to buy any house your interested in. You should arrange the items in packs so you can use the can place the items on the buy line with one movement. The packs should not have pyreals or other trade notes in them. They will cause the load to have an incomplete amount. Namely Pyreals load first, so spare pyreals will cause a situation where the correct amount to purchase cannot be placed. I normally keep my packs at the bottom of the 7 slots so it’s the least amount of movement to get to them. Here are my recommended packs for a villa, cottage and mansion purchasing. Which you carry depends on what you are looking for.

The Villa Pack

• 5+ Writs of Refuse
• 8+ MMD Notes
• Ivory Tooth Dart -- Made from Ivory Gromnie Tooth, One tooth makes 10 darts and they stack
• Mint Monougat Chew -- made from peppermint stick and a Monougat Nugget, requires cooking skill (the stack)
• Carenzi Stalker Pelt -- From Carenzi Stalkers on Marea Lassel
• Armoredillo Hide Bracers -- Only use ones that do not have workmanship. These are made from small dillo hides found on brown and spiny armoredillos. I found small dillos mostly around Yaraq inside the border.
• Gold Phyntos Wasp Wing -- I had some many for just adventuring, I never had to look for them; I just kill them when I see them.
• Crude Lockpick -- I bought mine in Holtburg from the lockpick salesman on the Northwest side of town. I am sure other cities have them.
• Large Armoredillo Hide -- Comes from Many of the Larger Dillos, Bronze, Shore and Freshwater. I hunted them around
• Samsur and the northern edge of Yaraq Desert.
• Jungle Phyntos Wasp Wing -- The bottom of the Underground Farm in Rithwic, is a good static spawn of jungle wasp.
• White Virindi Jewel-- These can come from ... Virindi that can be found in many places.
• Ash Gromnie Tooth -- from ash gromnies
• Mattekar Hide Sleeves -- made from small Mattekar hides off white and snow mattekars, Mattekar caves is a good place to hunt for these

The Cottage Pack

• 1+ Writs of Refuse
• 3+ M Notes
• Fine Armoredillo Hide Shirt -- These are made from Island Armoredillo's Sturdy Armoredillo hides. They can found along Eastham beach and in the Island around the Jungle Sub
• Armoredillo Hide Coat -- Made from Large Armoredillo hides from bronze, Shore and Freshwater Dillos.
• Fine Armoredillo Hide Shirt -- (old style)
• Gromnie Hide Shirt -- Made from Thick Gromnie Hides off of Ash Gromnies
• Armoredillo Hide Breastplate -- Made from Armoredillo hides from Spikey and Stone Armoredillos, best place I found is around the Yaraq desert
• Reedshark Hide Leggings -- From Reedshark hides. I usually could find enough in a couple passes through the Swamp Gardens at 22.5S, 45.8E(where the plants are turned in)
• Mattekar Hide Sleeves -- made from small Mattekar hides off white and snow mattekars, Mattekar caves at 65.3N, 16.5E is a good place to hunt for these
• Reedshark Hide Greeves -- From Small Reedshark hides of reedshark pups, I usually hunted reedshark pups in the Reedshark lair at 12.3S, 48.3E
• Bunny Slipper -- Turn in a rabbit corpse to a the guy ... outside of Lytelthorpe for one of theses
• Golem Jo -- Give to a Wooden Golem heart to trophy smith for one of these.
• Iron hearts -- I got mine from the Iron Golem Room in Metos
• Copper Hearts -- Off Copper Golems. Do not know a good hunting spot I seem to get enough just casual hunting.
• Swamp Stone -- Almost any Mosswart will drop a swamp stone, I got mine from around Wahjou and on the islands
• Shore Armoredillo Spine -- There is are three static spawn of Shore Dillos at 42N, 69E, Spending 10-15 minutes there I could get 2-3 Spines.
• Bronze Armoredillo Spine -- I gathered these while hunting the desert, I consider these the hardest cottage items to get.
• Littoral Siraluun Claw -- There is a static spawn at 49N,72W (bottom level) and many spawns around there
• Timber Siraluun Claw -- They spawn close to the Littoral Sirrauuns. above
• Sclavus Tongue -- The Sclavus Temple will net you more than you ever need in a half hour

The Mansion Packs

• 10 Writs of Refuse
• 40 MMD Notes
• 20 Golden Gromnies (make sure they are not Inscribed by Ulgrim)
• 15 Lucky Golden Letters
• 7 Idol Gems
• 2 Dread Mattekar Paws

Traveling Supplies

• Portal Gems: You will want one or more to each of the starter cities
  • Al'Arqas one of the largest collection of portals, but mostly desert dwellings.
  • Holtburg -- only a couple portals but all nice
  • Lytelthorpe -- has a good number of portals plus access to Uziz via Residential Quarter
  • Rithwic -- Has some nice portals
  • Samsur -- Like Al-Arqas, lost of portals mostly desert locations
  • Shoushi -- few portals, but closest to run to Sawato
  • Yanshi -- Good number of portals in nice places
  • Yaraq -- just a few portals, but they are to larger settlements.
  • Wedding Invitation -- Fastest way to Plateau Village, where a number of portals are. It also makes Baishi a one hop city using the Foundry.
• Copper Scarabs & Prismatic Scarabs, They will be all the components you need. Keep enough but not too many to be burdened.
• Good set of running armor, no-drop GSA or Sharded GSA is good. Many places you will have to run through a gauntlet of monsters, which can hit hard. You need to just take the hits and keep moving.
• Items to buff Quickness and Running. Items are best here; you will not have time to buff. Just keep these ready, you can apply the mana stones while running.
• Death Items -- Carry a good selection of death items, the portal gems you are carrying are valuable and if you loose them it can be difficult to resume the race.
• Health Elixirs -- It’s a good idea to keep a couple on a hot key, only carry a couple and use them sparingly.

Travel Plans

You should have a plan of getting to every city. When the house pops up is not the time to lookup the path. You should know the way to most of the cities without external references. Below is a quick path to the cities that have settlement portals. There are four

How to get to each city

Some cities are straight forward how to get to them, some are not. Let’s start with the obvious ones, the starter cities. Each of these cities has a gem available at the master mage, so use them unless you are right next to the city portal. These gems can be purchased at any of the master mages and are key in getting to a town quickly. I recommend having multiples of each, so you do not have to restock. When you get down to you last one of any open, restock, and never run out, this can cost you a house. At 5K each they are a deal. Also keep a couple master gems for death items and getting back to buy more gems when needed. I found I used the most Al'Arqas, Samsur and Lytelthorpe Gems. You do not need any Nanto Gems; it does not have any settlements. I recommend keeping them in order in you main pack so you can quickly get the right gem.

• Al’Arqas
• Holtburg
• Lytelthorpe
• Rithwic
• Samsur
• Shoushi
• Yanshi
• Yaraq

Next up are the subway cities. These cities are highly camped by other people buying houses so to compete you need to know you way quickly. When jumping do the shaft, don't stop and jump take a flying leap and spin to the direction you need to be running while in the air.

• Arwic
• Cragstone* This may be faster as a one hop city
• Glendon Wood
• Herbian-To
• Mayoi
• Qaliba'r
• Zaikhal
• Only if you already are in the sub,: then Rithwic, Yaraq, Shoushi, Holtburg

Next are one-hop cities these cities are easy access to either a subway city or a Gem city, unless you really desire a house of these cities its best just use your feet to get there.

• Al'Jalima -- Subway->Arwic, Al' Jalima Portal is right at drop
• Tou Tou -- Subway->Arwic, Tou Tou Portal on north side of city -or- gem->Lytelthorpe, Tou Tou shares RQ with Lytelthorpe
• Uziz -- Gem->Lytelthorpe, Uziz shares Haven RQ with Lytelthorpe
• Plateau Village -- Subway->Mayoi, Plateau Village shares the Oriel RQ with Mayoi Also accessible via a wedding invitation
• Khayyaban, Subway->Mayoi, Kayyaban shares RQ with Mayoi or Samsur(Gem)->Victory RQ which also has exit to Khayyaban
• Baishi, Enter Mammet Foundry from Arwic, MacNiall's Freehold, Mayoi, Plateau Village, Sawato, Stonehold or Tufa, then take exit will be in Baishi Subway->Qalaba'r, Shares RQ with Qualiba'r
• Cragstone Enter Effigy Foundry from Al-Jalima, Eastham, Glenden Wood, Hebian-To, Khayyaban, Lin, Tou Tou, Uziz or Zaikhal, then take exit will be in Cragstone

The specialty Cities I have no way of covering all the following cities, so pick your favorites and know when you see one come up, you have a better than normal chance of getting it.

• Kara -- There is a lifestone just to the west of the town.
• Crater Village -- A tieable portal exist and a lifestone is available
• Eastham* -- A portal to Eastham is in the Jungle sub and has a lifestone.
• Stonehold -- A tieable portal does exist as well as a lifestone.
• Sawato* -- Not portals to city, only option is lifestone tie. There are no real shortcuts there
• Uziz* -- Popular since it is accessible from Ayan, via the portal just south of city
• Baishi* -- Also accessible directly via Ayan. Plot a coarse using a navigation program.

Alternate Routes. Always be on the lookout for alternate routes to the cities. Many cities accessible from one city are close to settlements of another city or another drop. Such as Neydisa's Castle, many Crater cities can be accessed from there, and it is accessible via the jungle sub.

Organizing Ties To be efficient on getting your destination, you need to organize the few ties you have. When a house pops up, its not time to beg for a sub portal. So you should have one tie to the subway. The second tie is up to you, my favorites are jungle Sub and the Mayoi RQ. Next you have two lifestone ties; these ties need to planned as well. Another option is if you have a particular settlement you want, tie to that one. That way will be the first there. Please note, you can get to almost any house faster than you a logout and log back in, so don't rely on secondary characters for all but the most remote places such as Kara, Sawato, Stonehold and Crater Village.

You will not be casting many spells during the run, so just make sure you have the copper scarabs and prismatic tapers your need. If you want buffs, get those before the house is available.

Rookie steps--How to get to the settlement portals from City Portal Drops

Once you arrive at the city, you have only started the race. You have to make it to the portals and select the portal you want. You should have a path planned for each portal path. In the future I will document my favorite routes to each drop to portal, for now I will leave that for homework.

• Al'Arqas -- Run SSE to 33.6S, 13.2E
• Al'Jalima -- Run SW to up the mountain and the head WSW to 5.7N, 4.3E
• Arwic -- Run WSW to 32.9N, 59.4E
• Baishi -- Run SSE to 50.1S, 63.5E
• Cragstone -- Run Due West to 26.2N, 46.3E
• Crater Village -- go counter clockwise around the lake to the 2oclock position 66.4, 14.3E. Watch for fire elementals. (These portals are not in "Ascus")
• Eastham -- Run Due West, They are just to the SW off the crater at 17.5N, 61.5E
• Glendon Woods -- Long Run, run ESE from drop to 27.9N, 29.5E. There are lots of portal be careful to take right one
• Herbian-To -- Run Due South to 41.4S, 82.1E, watch out for the Mattekars that hang out there
• Holtburg -- Run Southeast to 40.2N, 35.1E
• Kara -- The portals are to the east of the city at 83.0S, 25.1E (these portals are not in Ascus)
• Khayyaban -- Run Due South from the portal drop to 49.4S, 26.0E
• Lytelthorpe -- Run Due West to 2.2N 50.4E
• Mayoi -- Run North West from the subway drop. It's past the apex of the two roads in town. 60.8S, 80.3E
• Plateau Village -- Run North West to 45.4N, 42.3W, some gold golem or equivalent hang out there.
• Qalaba’r -- Run West the portals are just past the first hill at 74.8S, 17.8E
• Rithwic -- Run SE to 8.7N, 60.9E (head away from town at the drop)
• Samsur -- Run due North to 0.8S. 19.8E, should run past the Holtburg portal
• Sawato -- From the lifestone run NNW to 27.2S, 59.9E
• Shoushi -- The portals are north of town and Run through town to the north to 31.3, 72.6E
• Stonehold -- The portals are surrounded by impassable mountains, the entrance to the area is just east of town, NE from the town's lifestone. The portals are around 69.6N 20.2W, Serious mobs sometimes hang out here, I circle the edge of the valley.
• Tou Tou -- Fairly good run NNE through the town, the portals are just past the city to the North of he Sciveneers. (27.1S, 96.0E)
• Uziz -- Run Due east from the drop at 24.8S, 29.7E
• Yanshi -- Run North East, the are just west of New Yanshi at 19,3Sm 45.7E
• Yaraq -- Run ESE to 22.4S, 0.2E, they are just up the hill
• Zaikhal-- Run on west past the north side of city, once past, turn left and run south right at the Meeting hall, there is a place you can scale the hill. Run around the mountain to on the north side to 12.7N 1.7W, watch for riff-raff like gold wasps

You are almost there -- Managing Landblock loading

Now comes the part that many of the serious house hunters get the edge over the casual house hunters. Entering the Settlement. A serious house hunter will visit each settlement to do tow things, the most important is preload the landblock, and the second is to inventory the houses there.

Preloading landblocks.

Nothing is more frustrating is to beat someone to the settlement and be stuck in portalspace while another person materializes and buys the house. When actually running to a house, you should have the render radius set to min (5) to make this as fast as possible, but when you are walking out your plans, set to max (25); this will preload the most blocks. Remember to reset this to 5-10 when playing or you will constantly get lag hits upon changing landblocks.

The final Step-- Buying the house

You should not be worried here, don't check what the item is just try to buy it. As you approach the housing stone, you should have the proper backpack ready to go, open the stone, drop the pack on the buy bar and press "buy". The game will select the proper items out of the pack and place them on the item slots.

If you have time you may want to check the place out first and see if you want to buy it. Don't forget you can check the chest's burden. If it weights 9000 or 9015 its empty.

Things that can go wrong

• Already Own a house -- Verify you are not on the account that has a house, if not type "/house abandon" again. Some houses, especially apartments seem to forget they were abandon.
• You are blocked from entering the house -- Occasionally you will get to the house and the house shield will stop you from entering. The only way I have found to get around this is to exit world and re-enter.
• No Covenant Stone -- This seems to happen often to villas in larger settlements. You can exit the world and re-reenter. I would just running off the land block and back, that normally corrects it.
• The "owner" returns -- Verify the house is there’s by either the inscriptions on the items on the wall or them knowing the contents of the chest. Return the house for a token payment, to cover the writ and items you spent. Leave the contents intact. Taking a house from someone will cost more than you ever make from the contents of even a villa.
• Dangerous Monster in the Way -- If you have a decent running skill and do not run right by monsters, you likely will not get more than twice. Keep you distance on wisps and wasps, and slide side to side using 'Z' and 'C' while running from casters.
• Get Killed by Monster -- Don't worry about the corpse initially try to get back to the house, once the house is purchased, start making arrangements for corpse retrieval.

Etiquette

• Its a game

  When I was active on Wintersebb, most of the people that either buy and sell villas or loot cottages are very courteous players and see the race to get to a next house a game within a game. Congratulating people on their "wins" helping friendly hunters when they are not active. Obnoxious hunters usually inspire many of the inactive players to activate their hunters to ensure the obnoxious player gets few if any houses.

• Don't Jump Trades

  You come up to a place that is obviously being traded. Don't buy it see if you can help the trade get through. If there is any question or another house hunter is coming don't be afraid to buy the place and hold it. But if you do buy it, be ready to endure some foul language and still return the house (with ALL items intact). Remember you may have just taken the prize possessions away from someone, so just ignore the insults. A quick verification of the "owner" by looking at the inscriptions or owners of trophy items if any should do, if not the owner should be able to tell what’s in the chest. Many people do stupid things to loose their house, so be nice you will make money on the next house.

  I usually asked for a token payment for my "service" of holding the house for them usually two sing (or replace item and one sing) for a cottage and 5 sings for a villa. If they don't have it, and you believe them (usually judging from house contents) just ask they pay you in the future. If they don't pay you later, you know someone not to trust, if they do you know they are a very trustworthy player.

• Please don't sell on eBay or for real life items

  I made this program to help play a game, not to make money. Although I cannot tell you not to sell items on eBay, it is against the CoC. Please, just don't do it. You will make plenty of in-game wealth, more than enough for you and your friends. There is no reason to spoil the fun by bringing real world economics into it.

• Help out the casual player

  Finally if you are just in it for the loot, give the cottage to the guy that shows up after you just looking for a cottage for a couple token items. This does a good dead, makes a player happy, and frees you up to buy the next house. But most of all it is one less competitor, once they find out how lucrative house looting is they will start and likely will get a house that you would have gotten later.

Dirty Tricks

Since this is a game, no game would be complete with dirty little tricks to play on the other house hunters. Most were meant to misdirect or have other house-hunting players waste time getting more grief items. Here is list of the games I played with them and were played on me. I debated listing these, but I felt that if they where known you could figure away around them.

Decorate the house with expensive but useless items before abandoning. I normally did this with houses that had hard to get items. After collecting all the items I wanted to keep, I would decorate the house with "only wielded by" items or items that where hard to get but worthless in use. to give the appearance of a loaded house.

Release existing house at start of run. This may have another runner go to a cottage I already have looted. Run to houses even though I don't want it. I would provide the needed item to another non-house-hunting player for some token item in the house. I did this mainly with places I knew used easy to get items they had more than enough of. Many of the regulars would stop running if they saw me approach the house with the slightest of lead.

These tricks were targeted at other house-hunters, and usually received in jest and I took them. Leaving a note saying you owned the house is a nice touch as well.

But I Just Want A Cottage

If you just looking for a cottage, collect a couple of the items needed and/or a couple sings and head to the next open house you see, If you see it sold, keep going, when you get there ask if they are willing to sell it.

Many players buy a cottage, loot it and release. You should be able to pick up the cottage right there for fairly cheap. Many times they will give it away or trade for a couple housing items and/or sings. Items sought after are Bronze and Shore Dillo Spines, Timber and Littoral Claws and Reedshark Greeves and Leggings. These are a pain to come up with. As a house looter, its hard to pass up an offer like that, because the time involved with getting those items. You should not have to pay more than 2-3 Sings for the cottage to a looter. If they want more, just wait for next house. Or just remember this place, it will likely go up for sale again soon. Now that you have definitely preloaded the land block you can be there fast.

Conclusion

None of the above information is a replacement for knowing the game and knowing your way around Derreth. You likely will be a little later than others getting to your first couple houses, keep trying and practicing. Watch your burden, and don't forget you can only get one house at a time, so when two or more open up, each person can only get one. Its usually the best prepared one that gets the house, not always the fastest. A typical house will yield better treasure than ANY sing chest.

I hope you find this page helpful in locating a residence or just enjoying the sport of house hunting. I hope you find it as enjoyable, entertaining and rewarding as I did. For all my customers that purchased houses from me, I thank you. Now go enjoy the game. -- Ascus, Retired Realtor of Wintersebb.