Exploring the Boundless Opportunities of Freeholds

Come make your glorious mark on the world of Verra! Freeholds are the pinnacle of achievement for player housing in Ashes of Creation. While all housing contains a high degree of customization, Freeholds also serve as the epicenter of master level processing, and can become destinations for other players to visit during their adventures!

Freeholds have a few primary purposes. These are ways for players to express themselves and show their creativity in-game as they organize their space, construct buildings, and decorate the area as they make it their own. While processing will be available within Nodes, Freeholds are where the highest levels of processing are available, which plays an important role in refining raw materials needed for crafting professions. Also, Freeholds are places where players can set up businesses that can offer services to other adventurers.

Housing takes several forms in the world of Verra. However, Freeholds are the highest tier of player housing available. Acquiring a Freehold is a major accomplishment, and it will take a large amount of effort and strategy to get a Freehold of your own. Since there is a limited amount of space available to place Freeholds in each node’s region, these are symbols of prestige for those who are able to acquire and maintain their Freeholds.

Getting a Freehold

Acquiring a Freehold of your own is no small endeavor. The path to Freehold ownership starts with a Lord’s quest that proves to a node you are trustworthy, and fit for lordship over an Estate. Once this quest is complete, you will receive your bound Freehold Deed, and then be able to bid on an Estate. The Deed is a bound item that exists within the character’s inventory, and is used to place your Freehold within the Estate.

Bidding on an Estate is done through an auction system. Nodes have a limited number of Freehold Deeds available based on that node’s level. A player may only bid on an Estate if they own an unplaced Freehold Deed. Once you have successfully acquired your Estate, the next step is choosing a location within that Estate to lay down your Freehold Deed’s footprint.

Barony and Estates

In the region around each node, there are parcels of land that are reserved specifically for the Freehold and Guildhall systems which we call Baronies. A Barony is a predetermined area of land near a node, or in that node’s vassal structure. It can be helpful to think about these Baronies as counties where many Freeholds will be placed. These Baronies may contain a single Guildhall which are similar to Freeholds, but may only be obtained by Guilds. Within each Barony, several Estates exist that may be bid on by individual players. After you’ve successfully bid on an Estate, your Freehold Deed will be available to place within the boundary of the successfully purchased Estate.

Once the Deed has been placed, this will start your Freehold, and gives you access to the shed. Bringing materials to your Freehold can be stored in your shed as you prepare to build your home and other buildings.

Developing Your Freehold Home

Your Freehold isn’t your home without a house, and a house is the first building you will be prompted to build on your Freehold. To build a house, you’ll need a Freehold house blueprint, and the required materials for constructing your home. Building blueprints can be acquired in various ways, and each blueprint has unique benefits for the types of services provided through the building. A Freehold can only have one single house building, but house buildings can be small, medium, or large for Freeholds. Bigger houses have more floors, and more room for things like furniture. It is also important to note that the blueprints save the progress made on upgrading a building to higher tiers. If a Freehold ever falls due to the successful siege of the Node in which the Freehold resides, all blueprints for housing, artisan buildings, or businesses are returned to the player, and blueprints save their progression and upgrades.

Furniture in your house can be for more than just looks, as some furniture can have a functional purpose on your Freehold. For example, your bed can be something that helps people get rested experience. After they’ve rested up, this rested experience will increase their experience gains for a period of time. Some furniture can augment the benefits received from consumables, enhancing their power or extending the duration of their effect.

After you build your house, you can build other buildings on your Freehold. Each building needs the blueprint to start the process. If you have a cosmetic skin you want to use on a building, this is used after placing the blueprint. Once this has been placed, the building will be shown in a non-functional, construction state. Players will need to provide the required materials needed to complete the building construction, for each building on their Freehold.

No Freehold has room for every possible option, so players will need to choose how to develop their Freehold by choosing to build specific artisan buildings, business buildings, and creating room for livestock and crops.

Artisan Buildings

If you want your Freehold to play a part in crafting and processing, artisan buildings will be something you’ll want to make room for on your Freehold. Since the highest levels of processing can only happen on Freeholds, having artisan buildings that benefit processing, and the stations associated with those artisan buildings, can make your Freehold an important component of the world’s economic chain.

Constructing an artisan building will allow players to place the profession stations related to the profession of that building, and those stations can be placed anywhere on your Freehold where the surface allows. Profession stations do not need to be placed within the artisan building specifically. In addition, artisan buildings provide their bonuses to all stations on the Freehold.

All Freehold buildings, except for housing, require a permit from a node of a certain level, and that may add an additional upkeep cost to keep the building running.
 

Business Buildings

If you want to offer sales and services to players visiting your Freehold, consider making room for business buildings. Setting up a potion vendor near a popular hunting area of the game may make your Freehold a destination for adventuring players. There are numerous services your Freehold can offer to other players, such as item shops, consumables within taverns, and resting inns. These services can work without the owner being present.

Maintaining businesses requires licensing and payments to the node your Freehold is associated with. This permitting system allows for a certain number of buildings to be constructed on a Freehold. Permits can be obtained from the same node the Freehold was certified from, and buildings that require permits will have an additional upkeep cost.

Farming and Livestock

If farming and raising animals is important to you, then know that having room for this on your Freehold is a balancing act. Since Freeholds have space constraints, players will need to make choices about how much room they want to set aside for buildings, and where they want to do things like crop placement and rotation, and where to put livestock animals.

Gathering and processing professions like Hunting, Taming, and Animal Husbandry can benefit from having room for animals on a Freehold. In addition, crops and livestock animals can provide harvestable items in more than one way. For example, a cow can be interacted with in different ways to either be harvested for milk or for meat. How you choose to raise livestock on your Freehold is up to you!

In addition, people with permissions to your Freehold can also harvest the crops and livestock on your Freehold.

Setting Permissions

A Freehold can be a lot to manage on your own, and having your family help can be advantageous to making your Freehold as productive for everyone as possible.

Permissions to help manage your home are handled through affiliations like your Guild and family system. When setting permissions for your Freehold to do things like enter the house, interact with furniture, access Freehold storage, interact with crafting and processing stations, and harvesting gatherables on a Freehold, you can set if your Guild or family members should be able to do these things.

Losing a Freehold

Many things don’t last forever, and there are two ways that players can lose their Freehold. If a node is destroyed during a siege, for a period of time the Freeholds in that node’s zone of influence can be attacked, destroyed, and pillaged. When pillaging a Freehold, players can take resources. Stored and placed props on a Freehold, like furniture, as well as all Blueprints will be returned to the Freehold owner.

Another way players can lose their freehold is if they neglect to keep up with paying property tax. If you don’t pay taxes and other fines, your Freehold property will be foreclosed. When a Freehold is foreclosed on, stored and placed props like furniture are returned to the previous owner. Materials that were stored on a Freehold will be included in the auction for the Deed to that Freehold.

When it comes to losing Freeholds like this, one person’s loss is another person’s gain. While there aren’t enough Freeholds in the world for everyone to have one at the same time, this cycle of players losing Freeholds creates opportunities for other players to acquire one.

Learn More and Join The Discussion

If you want to learn more about what we’ve shared regarding the Freehold system, don’t miss our Development Update with Freehold Preview we shared during the June 2023 livestream.

Freeholds are the highest-end player housing available, and a way that players can make their mark on the world outside the walls of a node. We hope everyone is excited about the opportunity to own a Freehold in-game! All of us here at Intrepid Studios are excited to see how players express themselves through this system, and how things with Freeholds will play out differently based on the player politics on each server.

If you want to share your feedback on Freeholds, or see what other players are saying, join the player discussion on the forums! Also, you can keep up-to-date on Ashes of Creation development progress over on your favorite social media sites.

FAQ
 

• Q) If I don’t have a Freehold, does that mean I can’t own a home and miss out on content related to this?
   
  • A) Not at all! There are several types of player housing available in Ashes of Creation. While Freeholds are the highest-end processing housing available, players will be able to get citizenship at a node and customize their home by acquiring any form of player housing. Other player-owned housing options include static housing options available inside of a node, instanced Apartments, and renting a room in an inn. Static housing and Apartments provide other best-in-slot access to certain furniture types, as well as unique bonuses only available to those types of housing.
     
• Q) Can my Freehold protect me from player vs player (PvP) situations?
   
  • A) Your home building is safe from PvP. While on the footprint of your home, you can not be harmed by damage from other players. You are literally, a literal God! (Not really).
     
• Q) Can players steal from your Freehold?
   
  • A) Only players given permission to do so will be able to do things like access your Freehold storage, and harvest crops and animals on your Freehold. These permissions are capable of being individually assigned per interaction. Note that if the node associated with your Freehold is successfully destroyed during a siege event, attackers will be able to assault Freeholds, and have a chance to pillage them for their resources.
     
• Q) What happens to animals on my Freehold when it’s lost?
   
  • A) Livestock are considered resources. These can be pillaged after a siege. If a Freehold is foreclosed on due to the owner not being able to pay taxes, they’re included with other materials and the Freehold Deed when the foreclosed Freehold goes up for auction.
     
• Q) How close can Freeholds be to each other?
   
  • A) There’s a minimum distance of 100 meters between Freeholds.
     
• Q) What is the maximum number of buildings I can have on my Freehold Plot?
   
  • A) On a Freehold you can have your house, and up to six additional buildings. The additional buildings can be artisan and/or business buildings. Larger buildings may take up more room, reducing the total number of buildings that can be built on a single Freehold.
     
• Q) What is the maximum number of Freeholds available on a single server?
   
  • A) The number of Freeholds on a server will vary on a number of factors, such as how player actions advance nodes. At the moment we are targeting the low thousands for Freeholds on a server, but as we continue to test these systems during Alpha Two, we anticipate making adjustments.
     
• Q) Does a Freehold Building Cosmetic need to match the building it’s going on?
   
  • A) Freehold Building Cosmetics have types, and they can be put on any building that matches that type. For example, cosmetic skins for business buildings do not have to match a specific business. Any Freehold business building cosmetic skin can go on any business building.
  • Also, artisan cosmetic skins do not have to match a specific profession. Any Freehold artisan building cosmetic skin can go on any artisan building. Note that artisan cosmetic skins go on artisan buildings and not the individual profession stations themselves.
     
• Q) What can I do if a Freehold building cosmetic that I purchased doesn’t work the way I thought it would?
   
  • A) As we get ready to launch, we’ll have a way for players to exchange Freehold building cosmetic skins purchased prior to launch for Embers, a currency that can be used to purchase other Ashes of Creation cosmetic items from the shop.
     
• Q) What does every Freehold Building Cosmetic go on?
   
  • A) Going forward, you can now find the building type listed on each Freehold building cosmetic item in the shop, and associated articles.
  • For Freehold cosmetic skins purchased prior to this article, we have created a list: