Skyrim: Hearthfire woes make buying land difficult
Should be able to get it to work eventually.
Skyrim: Hearthfire might have only released this morning, but some users are having difficulties locating and buying plots of land in the freshly-released content.
After installing the 400 Microsoft Point DLC, a courier is supposed to deliver you a note when you next enter a city detailing the process of visiting a Jarl to buy your new plot of land in the Minecraft-inspired add-on. But some users are receiving another note that instructs them that they can now build a Child's Room in one of their existing properties, such as Whiterun's Breezehome.
Land deeds, which cost 5000 gold a piece, can be snapped up from the Jarl's assistants in Morthal, Falkreath and Dawnstar. It appears you do not need to be a Thane to buy a plot of land, but some users are having difficulties in doing so from these areas - we couldn't buy land in Falkreath and Dawnstar, though we managed to get ours from Aslfur in Morthal's Highmoon Hall (thanks, IVG!)
If you actually manage to get a plot of land, you should trigger a Miscellaneous quest to visit your new plot of land.
Once you've finally built a house you'll need an ample supply of various building materials, with the most important being logs, clay and quarried rock. Logs can be delivered to your property by visiting a mill, with the generous woodcutters bunging in free shipping. Clay can be mined, like ore, from clay veins that are near your house - rummage around a bit and you'll find it. The clay vein appears to never-ending, though knowing Skyrim this could just be a bug. Quarried rock can also be located near your house.
Skyrim's Hearthfire also lets you adopt a child, which is exactly the kind of responsibility every budding adventurer wants.
User Comments
maive
skyrimpilgram
Clockpunk@ squidman
That is most disappointing to hear.
squidman@ Clockpunk
Clockpunk
Shame it didn't 'grab you' (as it were). While the 'build you own home' idea is a really nice concept, balance of required materials is a hard thing to get right... perhaps were materials (aside from a wood) a little harder to attain, might it have held your interest more? Make the building of a hall/house the centre of a mini quest unto itself?
squidman@ CheekyLee
The biggest problem people are having is that they're not getting a third letter from the courier after installing the DLC, and are then getting bugs in actually being able to buy the plots of land. Like I said, Morthal was the only one of the three that worked for me but, since then, I have been able to buy plots of land at the other two locations.
My grudge against Hearthfire is because it isn't really that good.
CheekyLee@ Suicidalllama
draytone
martinK
The Pale
Hjaalmarch
Falkreath
(Source: http://orcz.com/Skyrim:_Deed )
The jarls in other holds wont sell you land
FantasyMeister
Bethesda have dropped so low in my opinion that I'm not even looking forward to Elder Scrolls VI. I'm actually dreading it.
Suicidalllama
The expansion to Breezehome is meant, when the player owns Breezehome a letter is automatically sent to upgrade to allow children.
To purchase a plot of land you do not need to become thane, but need to get the individual hold to the point where you can purchase property. (Isn't that surprising!) In other words you need to do two quests for the Jarl, which when purchasing a plot in Falkreath took the whole of five minutes.
The clay and stone veins are meant to be never ending to ensure that the player can pretty much build what they need without having to rummage around in the wild to find the veins, if you notice every other material required can be found in an easily accessible location such as a blacksmith, mill or general goods store.
Whilst there may be a lot of bugs in Skyrim (the same can be said for any RPG of this scale, and in fact most that are not RPG's) it still has people playing it to this day, some 10 months after the release date with only two expansions to boot, one which is simply to build a home. Which compared to the playtime of some games which are glorified (i believe MW3's campaign took the whole of five - six hours on the hardest difficulty) is a remarkable achievement.
Put simply, this article is incorrect. From what I can tell from the author they seem to have a grudge against the game and therefore should not be reporting on it. Find someone else to submit the article who is willing to actually research the subject.
s_h_a_d_o@ Redguard
Redguard