Final Fantasy XIV Blog Explains How To Get Your House In Ishgard Via The Housing Lottery

If like me, you’re one of those Final Fantasy XIV players who have been waiting for your chance to grab a house in Ishgard’s upcoming housing district, Empyreum, then you may want to take a peek at the latest two blogs to appear on the Lodestone. The other one is about data center travel, but we’ll talk about it in a bit.

First, housing! Now, everything you need to know about trying to grab your own plot in Ishgard is available in one handy guide. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s a lot here we didn’t already know in some way, but it’s good to have it all in one place when we’re ready to go.

What do you need to do? Well, first, you’re going to need gil – at least 3 million, I’ve checked. That’s the cheapest plot available. You will need this money ahead of time because you’re not just bidding, you’re actually paying upfront and then getting the money back later if you don’t win the house. The good news is that you get 100% of your gil back, so you don’t lose anything.

If you do win, a few things can happen. First, obviously, you can finalize the sale. The game will keep your money and you’ll get the plot. (To keep the plot after that, you’ll have to build on it, but that wasn’t explicitly addressed in the post.) If you’re transferring plots and you confirm the purchase, you’ll receive a bit of a refund – approximately 15% of the value of the old plot. This is less than the previous 30% because the devs have decided to do away with the price reduction system – or devaluation of old plots.

Here’s the catch though: You have a limited time to do both bidding and confirming in and, if you miss the deadline for the latter, you only get 50% of your deposit back. The rest is considered a cancellation fee, so you’ll want to keep an eye on things. For those wondering, there will (generally) be 5 days allotted for entering the lottery. Once that period comes to an end, players have four days to check their results and confirm they do want the plot. Then the whole thing starts over again. There will be some periods where downtime will shorten the entry period by a day, so keep that in mind as well.

There are requirements to be able to enter beyond having the gil necessary and keeping track of timing. For private buyers, the requirements are not that complicated. First, you’ll need to have leveled a class to 50. Second, you’ll need a rank of second lieutenant or above with your grand company. If you’re attempting the lottery on behalf of your free company, you’ll need to meet a whole different set of requirements. The FC needs to be rank 6 and must have four or more members. You’ll need to have authorization from the free company to purchase the land. And – this is a new one – whoever the free company decides to have act as their representative must have been a member for at least 30 days.

To be sure you’re doing the whole thing correctly and have as good a chance of grabbing a house as everyone else, definitely read through the official post on the site. Be prepared.

On another note, a much larger post dropped regarding data center travel and Japanese DC World redistribution. This feature will be added in patch 6.1.8, at which point players can begin visiting their friends on other data centers. In addition, the Meteor data center is scheduled to be added to the Japanese roster in June, making a total of four data centers for the region. The post goes into great detail on how everything will work, so be sure to read through the whole thing at your leisure, if it’s something you’re planning on using.