Building your custom home The Age of Shadows has brought one of the nicest features of housing in Sosaria: the ability to design and build your own home! At last you can tailor the house design to the things for which you use your house, in a style that best suits your taste or fits the surroundings. You can also opt to live in the biggest eyesore on the block. The choice is yours....   Before you begin Everything in your house will be safe while you work on the design and even when you commit the design and alter the house. Vendors, barkeeps, add-ons, secure chests with their contents, and locked-down items will all be placed in the moving crate when you change your house. You should be aware that add-ons such as forges, tapestries etc. will go into the moving crate when you enter design mode... even if you do not commit your new design, these items will have been removed. Locked-down and secure items, vendors, and barkeeps will remain in place until you actually commit a new design. To enter customisation mode, chose Customize this House from the house menu, in the Customize section.   Using the Customization Tool Using the tool is pretty much self-explanatory. Below is an overview of the menu and the function of various buttons: Here you can select the various sets of building elements: Walls, doors, teleporters, stairs etc. With some items you will need to further specify the desired set of elements, by choosing the wall material for instance. Use the Eraser to remove elements When you use the Eye Dropper tool and subsequently click on a building element in your house, the indicated element will be selected both at your cursor and in the customization tool. This brings up the customization menu, which allows you to backup or commit your design. Go up one level in the item selection, eg. return to the wall material selection. This toggles between windowless walls, and walls with windows in them Here you select the building element to place into your design. Use the arrows to the left and right of this window to see more choices. With this you can make the walls, and floor tiles of each level in your house opaque or (semi) transparent. This can help you place floor tiles behind a wall, for instance. With this you select the floor level in your house to build upon. You always work on only one floor at a time. This indicates the total value of your design. Note that when you commit, most of the value of your current house will be deducted from this amount, and the remainder is charged or refunded to your account. This indicates the number of building elements (the first number) and the number of doors and teleporters (the second number). You can cancel customization and return to your current design by right-clicking on the Customization Tool window, thereby closing it and exiting house design mode. The UO playguide has a more detailed explanation of the tool if you need it.   The Customization Menu The Customization Tool Menu has the following functions: Backup This saves your current design. You can cancel any changes you have made or continue designing, then return to the saved design at any time by pressing Restore. Restore Restores the last design you have backed up. Clear Clears everything and leaves you with a bare plot. Commit This commits your current design, charging or refunding the difference between the value of your current house, and the cost of your new design. Synch Synchronizes the housse design you have on your computer with that on the game server. If you have problems placing or deleting certain items (especially doors), pressing this button sometimes fixes the problem. Revert This resets the design you are working on to the last committed design, ie. to how your house currently looks.   The moving crate During or after customization, items in your house will be placed innto the moving crate. You can bring up this crate by choosing 'relocate moving crate' from the House Sign Menu, which will make the crate appear at your feet [image]. If you want to move the crate somewhere else, simply use the relocate function again. Secure chests and locked-down items will appear as-is inside the moving crate. Anything that was inside a secured chest or locked-down container will still be there. House add-ons such as forges, banners, tapestries and so on, will appear in the moving crate in deed form. Vendors and barkeeps will not appear inside the moving crate. Instead, you can replace them by standing in the intended location for the vendor, bringing up your context menu by clicking on yourself, and select Get Vendor. You'll be presented with a list of vendors and barkeeps that were present in your house before you customized it. Vendors will appear with all of their merchandise still in their packs. When you have removed everything from the moving crate, it will disappear.   A word on costs When you build on an empty plot or change an existing design, you will be charged for the total new value of your home, which is the value of the empty plot and the cost of each element you have used in your design. You will be reimbursed 90% of the value of your old design, so making many small changes to your home and committing them eparately is an expensive hobby! Note that the house value shown in the house menu (under Information) already takes into account the 10% deduction, so the value shown there is the value that you will be reimbursed if you demolish the house or commit a new design.