Book of Housing - by Flippy; edited by Xena Dragon
Part 6 - Upgrading
The questions have been asked many times. "'Can you explain the footprint of a large tower" or "'what is the deal with the wings" or perhaps you are thinking of buying a few houses near you and upgrading to a large tower. Well, you're not the first. This is to help you decide if you want to take the risk of upgrading. On this page we'll use a large tower as an example.

Let's first setup a tower's footprint by placing colored clothing around where the foundation should be, along with a few other tricks.

First I arrive and place the pieces of cloth all around the foundation of the house. (I call these Markers)
Figure 6.1
I had to work a bit on the wings, the South side is easy until I try to figure out when to stop! How?
First I got up next to the wall on the East Side Corner
Figure 6.2 Notice how you can see inside of the tower, and that there is no support beam above me? Next I take 2 steps forward Figure 6.3 Now you can see the support beam of the wing! The support beam acts like the foundation does, It is picky about what can be under it. Next, I lay down a few Blue pieces of clothing to mark the area under the wing. But the question is how do I know where to stop? How do I know where the edge of the wing is? It's easy; I take one step forward.. Figure 6.4
Now I see the wing in its wholeness, my theory is this 'While I am under the foundation I will only see parts of the foundation. Once I'm out from under it I see all of the wing.' Using this theory I place my white pieces of cloth on the tiles going South to North, in other words, the tiles I'm standing on in the Figures 6.2 thru 6.4
Figure 6.1

Figure 6.4
Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3

Figure 6.5

In Figure 6.5 I place blue markers under the west wing also. Now we take our markers to the Rook and Mark the Wings.
To the right on Figure 6.6 I have placed Yellow Markers for what I note has the floor of the east wing. I also placed Red markers on the outer foundation. When the tower is taken down, the theory is the yellow will fall on top of the inner Blue markers on the ground, the red should fall on the outer blue markers on the ground because those outer blue markers represent the outer foundation of the wing. Well when the tower was deeded the Yellow markers fell right where I thought they would, the Red markers however stayed where they where, due to being on the foundation and not on the floor.

Figure 6.6
 

The next step is re-deeding the house.. Even on the Test Rewards 1 Shard, the shard that has time warped every night, I felt nervous deeding the place... BUT I did!.

After deeding I had sort of a panic attack.  Someone out of the blue showed up, and I wanted to deed the tower to see the stuff moved out of the way, so I was quick in taking pictures, and then I placed the house in the same spot. Kinda easy when the outline is already there.

Notice the Red Markers? They all got put under the sign, since they were 'floating' in the air, and did not fall to the ground.

Figure 6.8
Figure 6.9
Figure 6.10

  This testing, laying of clothing and deeding, has created a footprint for us to use when placing a house. Although there are still some question has to what plants can be under the wings and on the white marker area, it is still useful just to know if you have the space or not. I took a picture of the ground after the house was deeded. I show this to you know, but with a lot of lines that represent the conclusions I came to.

Remember :
Don't test deeding your house while the server is saving. Wait until it has stopped saving and then try.

 
Unlike its smaller version, a small tower, the large tower is not a "perfect" square or rectangle. It is composed of rectangles. 3 to simplify.
Going from South to North we have
1. The stairs leading to the front door
2. The largest rectangle after the stairs that includes the wings foundation, known to me has the front half.
3. The back part.

We can simply say that including the stairs and 'free for walking' tiles around foundation, a towers footprint is
26 West to East by 18 North to South (26x18)

But we do not live in the land of ample space. So let's take a closer look at the footprint.

The Black line is the outer foundation for a large tower, this is including the wings.
The Bright Green line is front side of the tower, the Blue is the back side.
You should consider the footprint to be the following : 26x9 + 18x7
The front side rectangle is 26x9 and the back side is 18x7
I've numbered it all for ya..
Heck you can even make your own outline in minutes. Just reference my picture for the inner corners and your set!

Figure 6.11 Legend
Black Line = Foundation
Black line surrounded by Blue = Inner Foundation
Clothing Squares Required the area be walk over able. (free walking area)
Clothing Squares with 2 Red Bars = Inner Required free walking area.
Clothing Squares with Black Dots = Grey area with Rules.
Green rectangle = Front side of tower
Blue Rectangle = Back Side of tower.
Yellow and Blue Clothing Squares = Defined Later.

A few rules to recap..

The foundation cannot have any house blocking terrain, this includes uneven terrain, some plants, most rocks, and the bumpy area of a fallen log.

The tiles directly outside of the foundation (the white markers) require that a person be able to walk through anything that might be on the square.

Other houses need to be clear of your tower by 5 tiles on the North and South facing walls, this rule applies to the wings also.  If a house is on the same tile lines as your stairs are, (the middle 2 tiles on the stairs that are right in front of the doors) your tower will need to be 6 tiles away from the house, not 5.
 
Some ground objects that normally block house placement have been know to be under the clothing squares marked with black dots, such as small rocks and bushes.