Hearthfire Review

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

It's actually a worthwhile investment. For just $5, you get to build, design, and furnish your own home. Truth be told, I bought it primarily because I thought my kid would think it's a hoot. And he does. But I'm having quite a good time with it as well. I'm presently furnishing Lakeview Manor, near Falkreath (and yes, the house does overlook the lake). The building itself is done, but it's not move-in ready yet. The first floor is almost done, but the upstairs I haven't got around to doing yet.

There are up to three houses you can aquire this way. In addition to the aforementioned Lakeview Manor near Falkreath, there are also homes available for purchase near Dawnstair and Morthal. Meaning you can now purchase up to eight houses (the five originally available, and now these three). It also means you can own property within or near every city of significance except Winterhold.

It basically works like this: First you purchase the land for 5,000 septims. You show up at your property and you discover a drafting table where you can get to work. First you build a basic cottage. Then you can change that basic cottage into an entry way, when you attach a main hall directly behind it. It's two floors, dining room and general living area in the downstairs, with some bedrooms upstairs. After that you get up to three wings onto your main hall. So there's 9 different combinations of houses you can build. But the selections are mutually exclusive to one another. While you CAN furnish the wings to be specialized for each of the three crafting skills, you can get an enchanting table, an alchemy lab, and a fully functional blacksmithing station outside (including a smelter) regardless of which home layout you pick.

They've added a bunch of new crafting materials. For the house itself, you need quarried stone, clay, sawn logs, and some iron to fashion into nails, iron fittings, locks, and hinges (all of which raise your blacksmithing skill!). Fortunately, there is a rock quarry and clay deposits located nearby, so for those materials, all you need to do is go out and mine them. It would appear that the clay and stone is available in limitless supply. I've already mined hundreds of each, and it doesn't look like they run out. The sawn logs are the only thing that is going to take some legwork, as I haven't found any means of acquiring them short of purchasing them from a lumbermill. They deliver them to your home at a cost of 200 septims per cartload (each cartload contains 20 logs). You'll need hundreds of each of these crafting materials to fully furnish your house. And the thing you need the most of is sawn logs. A couple of hundred for the house itself, but many of the things you make to furnish the house require a sawn log as a component (for example, wooden table and chairs).

There's also more crafting materials to make some of the other furnishings for your house. Glass for display cases, goat horns for making torch sconces to light your property, and straw for taxidermy. Yes, you can make mounted specimens from your kills. There's no room for a full dragon within the house (although you can mount a dragon skull on your wall, along with elk, wolf, and bear), but just about any other creature that drops some usable ingredient you can mount. For example, if you want a taxidermy snow bear in your trophy room, all you need to do (assuming you already have the mount built in the room) is to bring a snow bear pelt and two bear class, along with some straw, and you have a very menacing looking stuffed snow bear. And you can do this with just about anything. Some bone meal, an ancient nord sword and an ancient nord bow gets you a draugr. You can even mount a stuffed skeever with a skeever tail and skeever hide.

Anyway, you can build three wings onto your house. But they are mutually exclusive lists. You have three different choices for each wing, and building one prevents building others. For example, the west wing can be used to build an Enchanter's Tower, Bedrooms, or a Greenhouse. The Enchanter's Tower comes with an arcane enchanter, so you don't have to pay for a separate one within the main house (and a lovely view overlooking the lake on the second floor loft). The bedrooms include a master bedroom if you don't like your normal sized one upstairs, as well as providing guest berooms for any stewards, bards, or housecarls you hire, and children's bedrooms if you want to adopt children. The greenhouse allows you to grow alchemical ingredients. Just bring a sample of each of the ingreidents you want it to produce, and it will regularly produce more of it about once per week in game time. Of course, it actually has to be something you can plant, like a flower, bush, or mushroom. You can't go there with a giant's toe and make a giant's toe tree.

The north wing options are a Trophy Room (for the mounted specimens), a storage room (general purpose weapon racks, shelves, barrels, etc) or an Alchemy Lab, which would allow you to not have to build one in the main room. Finally, choices for the east wing include an Armory (huge number of display cases, weapon racks, armor mannequins, etc.), a library (self explanatory), or a Kitchen (which apparently also includes a new fangled invention called an "oven" - cannot confirm because I didn't build that).

Anyway, because of so many choices - not just the building itself but the choice of furnishings - the ability to hiring servants, including your own personal bard to play for you at your command - and basically having everything you want your house to have that all the prebuilt ones are lacking in some regard, make Hearthfire a surprisingly fulfilling experience. I took a very *meh* approach to Dawnguard - it didn't do much for me, and I considered $20 quite a bit for what you got. But for just $5, when you consider what Hearthfire brings to the table, is a very worthwhile investment. Aldeth gives it two thumbs up!

[Marceror]

I read your entire post, but I have to admit that I'm really stuck on the 8 houses point. Really? 8 of them? And before this expansion there were already 5? And the only idea they had for the expansion was to add 3 more, if even they are more customizable?

At least, instead of another 3 houses, they could let you build your own fast food joint, or something.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Hearthfire certainly isn't an expansion. At best it's an add-on, a glorified mod. Bethesda charges $5 for it - there's no way one can reasonably interpret that as an expansion. Dawnguard is the expansion, and given that Bethesda usually charges $30 for their expansions, and Dawnguard was $20, even there they were sort of saying that Dawnguard isn't a full expansion (and I felt it was rather short). Anyway, you can't really say that Hearhfire only gives you a little more customization optionis, as there was NO customization in the previous 5 houses. Sure, you could purchase some stuff for your houses like an enchanter's table and an alchemy lab, but all the stuff that came inside the house was as-is.

The other point is that the original five houses available for purchase were simply houses. These new pieces of property you can purchase are more like estates. You can get your own farm working, complete with animal pens, gardens, stables, your own carriage driver, bard, and steward. None of those things were available with the original houses, and each of the new houses have specific improvements you can make to them. For example, the one I purchased in Falkreath you can have your own bee farm. (Apparently those straw things they keep the bees in (they look identical to the ones in Goldenglow during the Thieves Guild quest) are called "apiaries" - who knew?)

Here's the other thing that's good about the new houses - you have EVERYTHING in one place once they are fully furnished. Stops to merchant shops are now only necessary to sell things. You don't have to do your crafting there, as you have everything you need conveniently located in one place.

All of the original houses are lacking some key item. For example, none of them have smelters for turning your gold ore into usable gold ingots for making jewelry. For places like Solitude and Riften, there isn't a smelter in the whole damn city. The only conveniently located smelter for any of the original houses is the one in Whiterun, as the house you can buy is right next to the town blacksmith. However, the home in Whiterun is also the only one that you cannot get an enchanter's table as an improvement. And the closest one is all the way in Dragonsreach, which is the exact opposite end of the city to where your house is. So you've only traded your walk across town to the blacksmith to a walk across town for the enchanter.

Finally, the other thing I don't like about the original houses is that there was never enough display space. I want to proudly hang all my dragon priest masks on the walls, and all of my unique weapons I find on weapon racks, plaques, display cases, etc. None of the original homes come with anywhere near enough such display options. I already like the number of weapon racks I've been able to build, but I still picked the armory as one of my wings just in case.

The bottom line here is if you don't like Skyrim (and I know you have your issues with it Marceror), Hearthfire isn't going to make you like it. OTOH, if you like the game the way it is, Hearthfire is $5 for a way to conveniently organize all your stuff you gain through adventuring, not to mention it's one load screen to wait to do all of your crafting - you can't beat that.

[Blackthorne TA]

Apparently those straw things they keep the bees in... are called "apiaries" - who knew?

I don't believe that is correct. The boxes the bees are kept in are called hives; the place the hives are kept is called the apiary.

Not that it really matters

[Marceror]

At least there is a practical benefit with these houses over the others. So can I ask Aldeth, of the 8 possible houses available to purchase in Skyrim, how many do you own? Be honest now.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Well, I have played several characters, and so I have over the course of those characters tried out all of the original five. But I'll speak of my current game. My character is pretty far along - presently level 48. Of the original 5, I own two of them - specifically the ones located in Whiterun and Riften. Of the three new ones, I only own the one just outside of Falkreath, and seeing as how this is my first playthrough with Hearthfire installed, I have not tried the house near Dawnstar, nor the one near Morthal. Given what I have read about Hearthfire, the houses are only different based on which additions you pick. If for some reason you decided to build the same three additions to all three houses, it sounds like they would all be identical.

Like I said, there are pros and cons to each of the original five. The most over-rated one is definitely the one in Solitude. It's by far the biggest of the original five houses, but it's not laid out very well in terms of ease of access. I also don't like that there's no smelter in the city - which is a major con of Riften as well. I transmute a lot of ore for the purpose of both raising money and improving my smithing skill, and you need a smelter to make that work.

The Whiterun house has a smelter right next door with the blacksmith and is probably the easiest to access as it's right by the main gate to the city, but you have to go all the way across town to get to an aracane enchanter. Markarth has everything you could want in terms of shops, but the way the city is laid out it takes a long time to navigate from your house to the other places you want to visit.

Which is why I'm inclined to pick the Windhelm house as the most practical choice of the original five. It's not that far to get to from the main gate, and it's just a short distance from the blacksmith, apothecary, and even a thieves guild fence in the marketplace. The only downside is that it's also one of the harder ones to acquire compared to the others.

[Marceror]

Sounds pretty cool overall Aldeth, in all honesty. In a way I'm disappointed (and always have been) that I wasn't able to get more into Skyrim. I know I took a lot of pride in NWN2 in building up Crossroads keep, and enjoyed that little subgame. I'm sure that owning a number of homes in Skyrim represents a real feeling of accomplishment, in addition to the practical benefits the homes provide.

Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll give this game another crack.

[dmc]

One thing on the houses, though. I find the Whiterun the best for the simple reason that it has everything I need except the enchanter right there or next door. As for the enchanter, you just fast travel to Dragon's Reach rather than walking and fast travel back (unless you need to stop at the skyforge for some reason). So you have to take 15 seconds to enter the building and sprint to the enchanter, but it's a no-brainer.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Yeah, I always fast travel as well, although it's still not that fast. You have the load screen for the fast travel, and another load screen for entering Dragonsreach. In fact, if you need to go up to the marketplace to the alchemist or general goods store, I'm not sure fast traveling is significantly faster than running, as you're considerably closer then. But I agree that Breezehome does have it's merits, especially if you're buying soul gems and would need to visit the court wizard anyway. And it's location - right there when you enter Whiterun - is another big plus.

That said, I still prefer Herjim. It also has everything you need, and its close proximity to both an outdoor blacksmith and thieves guild merchant with no load screen in between is super convenient, and the alchemist (albeit with a load screen) is right there too.

EDIT: I should be able to move into Lakeview Manor tonight. I have nearly the entire thing done. The only thing I haven't got done is in the basement where I need a few more goat's horns for torches, and I still need to collect the amulets to place on the shrine. I also have a couple of more animal heads I can put on the wall, but it's just a matter of time to get them from combat (I've maxed out the number of bear and wolf heads I can do - so now I have to go dear, elk, or goat). But all of the major stuff I need has been installed, including the fully furnished bedrooms, dining rooms and armory.

Hopefully Ysolda will dig it.

[Rawgrim]

Heartfire is a nice addition, really. Fun to be able to build my own house.