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Overview
One of the largest and most complex, but perhaps one of the coolest, features of Thay is the ability for person to claim a building, decorate it, improve security for it, or even place a merchant within it. As a result, this feature allows not only for someone to simply own a home in Thay, but can also be used as a base for people seeking to form a guild or faction of their own.
All of the information here can be discovered through in-game means by simply using various components of the player owned building system. However, due to the enormous scope of this feature, this guide is an attempt to consolidate information, tips, and how to use various parts of it.
Where to Begin
To start learning about this system, speak to one of the Deedmasters found in government buildings throughout Thay. They provide an overview of building ownership, collect property taxes from people who do own a building, and allow you to purchase a building deed if you are notorious enough. The more expensive the building, the more notorious you need to become for them to sell a deed of that type to you.
Types of Buildings
There are five categories of buildings in Thay, and each has its own building deed type: Small House, Medium House, Large House, Manor, and Tower. The size of each building type (measured in ‘tiles’ or ‘squares’) is: 2x3 for Small Houses, 3x4 for Medium Houses, 5x5 for Large Houses, and 7x7 for both Manors and Towers.
When examined, the entrance to a building will tell you what building category it belongs to. You can also find out if a building is claimed, or vacant and available to be claimed, by clicking on its entrance. If a building is vacant and you want it, simply use the building deed on the entrance. At that point the deed will be replaced with a key to your building.
Building Keys
A building key opens all exterior and interior doors to a specific player owned property.
In addition, anyone may use any building key on or near a piece of furniture to rotate, raise, lower, or pick it up (even if it is not their property). Note that it is considered theft if a skeleton key, or if a building key other than one of the property’s building keys, is used to pick up furniture. See the Security and Theft section of this guide for more information about the consequences of theft.
Finally, the owner of a property may use the building key for several other purposes.
1. Make copies of the key at a Key Duplicator
2. Use it on any of the property's doors to improve locks, door strength, and lock or unlock them
3. Use it on another person twice within 30 seconds to transfer ownership of your property to that person
4. If used on the entrance to a property, the owner may access general property options as described in the Property Options section of this guide
5. If used on the interior exit to a property, the owner may change the building's lighting and music
Building Floorplans
If a building has never been claimed before, upon entering the first time an interior floorplan for that building type is randomly selected for it. That floorplan then remains indefinitely, even if relinquished and reclaimed by you or someone else. However, if your building ends up with an interior floorplan that you do not want, you can remodel it, which is explained in the Property Options section of this guide. Screenshots and the in-game description of all available building floorplans can be viewed here on the Thay PW's OneNote under the Building Floorplans section.
Property Options
When the owner of a property uses their building key on its exterior entrance, they are provided with a variety of options. The standard door improvement functions are there to improve the lock, hit points, and hardness of the door, all explained in the Security and Theft section of this guide, but there are other property-wide options as well.
1. Rename the Property - You can change the name of a property (the name of the entrance) by using a writing quill on it. After you name a property, or if you unlock the entrance to it, anyone else clicking or opening this door will be told that the property belongs to you. Otherwise ownership remains anonymous.
2. Redescript the Property - You can change the description of this property (the description of the entrance) by using a writing quill on it. This can be used to post a "No Trespassing" warning on the door, announce the building’s purpose, or provide information about a guild house, store, temple, or public building.
3. Pickup all Furniture - This quickly picks up all furniture that has been placed within the building. Be careful using this as it can irrevocably destroy hours of work decorating, and any items that are still in storage containers will be lost!
Note that if your inventory cannot contain all furniture items within the building, they will be dropped to the ground at your feet.
4. Remodel the Property - When a building is claimed, the interior floorplan for it is persistently set and will never change, regardless of ownership. You may have got lucky and found this building with an interior you love. But if not, you can choose to gut and redesign the interior for half the cost of a deed for that type building.
5. Relinquish Claim - Using this option will render all keys for your property useless and return you a deed of the type used to claim this property.
Furniture
When you purchase a home, it is devoid of furnishings. The only things present are doors, and certain seats/chairs/tables that are part of the tileset. The rest is up to you. At various merchants throughout Thay you will find people that sell furniture of various types. Many have your standard tables/chairs/beds types of furniture, while others have more specialized wares like lighting effects, bones, torture equipment, flags and banner, and so on. Due to concern about server-side lag, possible database corruption, and spawn system limitations, no more than 325 pieces of furniture can be placed in a player-owned building.
Placing Furniture
To place a furniture item, use its unique power where you wish the furniture to be created. The furniture item will leave your inventory as you place it, and the furniture object will appear where you used the item. After it has been placed, you can then manipulate the furniture (raise, lower, rotate, or even move it) by using either, or both, of two methods.
Manipulating Furniture Using a Building Key
Anyone with a building key may use it on or next to a furniture object to select it. Once this is done, a menu-driven conversation will start that can be used to pick it up again, or else raise, lower, or rotate the furniture by set increments.
Manipulating Furniture Using Voice Commands
To manipulate furniture with a great degree of precision, voice commands can also be used. Note that with any voice command, it is not possible to move furniture to a location that is not within your line of sight, and it is only possible to move objects to a location within 5 meters of its position.
!nearest - Selects the nearest placeable to you. All other voice commands will only work if a placeable has been selected using this command, or if it was just placed by using the furniture item. You can also use this command to select one of the closest five placeables from the list that will be provided to you when you use it. Example !nearest 3 will select the third nearest placeable to you
!pickup - Picks up (removes) the furniture object and creates the furniture item for it in your inventory.
!moveto - Moves the furniture to a specific set of coordinates. Example !moveto 3.25 -4 1 will move the object to the spot with an X axis of 3.25, a Y axis of -4, and a z axis (height) of 1 meter above its current location.
!move - Moves the furniture by a certain amount. Example !move 2 1.5 will move the object by 2 meters from its current X axis, by 1.5 meters from its current Y axis, and will not change the Z axis (height). Note that not all parameters are required in this or the !moveto command if you only want to move the X or Y axis.
!turnto - Turns the furniture to face a specific direction. Example !turn 140 will turn it to face 140 degrees.
!turn - Turns the furniture by a certain amount. Example !turn -20 will turn it 20 degrees counterclockwise.
!undo - Will put the furniture back to wherever it was prior to the last command.
Using the Mini-Map Grid System with Voice Commands
An understanding of the grid system NWN uses is required to know where to place your furniture when utilizing the !moveto command.
Standard grid systems are comprised of an X and Y axis, and the starting point is at 0, 0. In NWN that point is always the southwest corner of the area. The X-axis numbers will progress higher as you move to the right (or east), and the Y-axis numbers will progress higher as you move to up (or north). In-game you have a visual indicator of where you are as well; the minimap.
Simply expand the minimap to the maximum resolution, and you will see grey cross-hatching lines revealed; this is the grid layout for that particular area. Your map marker will show you what grid area (or "tile") your PC is in, and simply calculate your position from that. Remember to adjust for position in case you are on another level, and not all the minimap is visible. The exact middle of a square will always have a value in increments of 5 (ie "5, 5" or "5, 15") and a grid junction will always have a value in increments of 10 (ie "10, 20" or "30, 40").
Unique Furniture
There are several furniture items which are unique compared to all others, and are explained in more detail here.
1. Hidden Chamber Entrance - Placing this, which is only allowed on the ground or basement levels of your building, will create a small hidden chamber below your property. This entrance can never be picked up unless using the Pickup All Furniture property option through your exterior door. However, the first time you place it *only* you can move it by using the !move or !moveto commands, in case you placed it and a part of it is not exactly where you want when it appears.
Anyone with your building key will spot the entrance if they get nearby, otherwise a Search roll is needed to reveal it. How difficult the entrance is to spot without the building key can be increased, for a large amount of gold, by manipulating it with a building key after it’s placed.
2. Tailoring Models - While technically classified as furniture, Tailoring Models are actually creatures that can be purchased from the Clothier of Bezantur and placed in your building. When placed, they will face the opposite direction of whoever is placing them, and they can be picked up by talking to them. No other furniture manipulation can be done on them.
3. Animated Furniture - Some items of furniture, such as animated statues, zombies, or skeletons, may be placed and will come to life and attack when someone nears them who does not possess a key to the building they are in.
4. Containers - Containers can be placed to persistently store items within your home. This persistent storage is made using the *exact* location of the container. As a result, if you pick up a container without taking out the items within, they will be lost unless you can somehow replace it to *exactly* where it was before.
Security and Theft
It is possible to steal items from a container or furniture from another person’s building using either a building key or the voice commands to pick up furniture. If furniture is stolen, it is flagged as such permanently and most merchants will not buy it.
Improving Interior Doors
Use your building key to lock or unlock doors within, or the entrance to, your building. This is your first line of defense and, by default, all doors are locked when you claim a building. In addition, you can improve a door’s lock, total hit points, and hardness. Through these improvement options, you can make a door virtually impregnable to anyone without your building key. However, no matter how strong a door’s lock is, note that the Knock spell always has at least a 10% chance to open a door.
Placing Traps
Traps can be placed on the floor, useable furniture (such as containers), and doors within in a player owned building, and will remain until tripped.
Unfortunately, due to a NWN engine limitation, when the person who places a trap leaves and re-enters the building, the trap will be ‘hostile’ to them and as a result it could be tripped by that person. However, as a workaround to this problem, all traps placed by someone will be immediately revealed to them as soon as they re-enter the building. Just be careful not to step on them...
Theft
With each furniture item picked up by someone who does not possess a key to the building, or bash made to force open a door, there is a slightly-increasing chance that someone else hears and calls guards to the property.
If a guard is called to a property, they immediately attack the perpetrator.
Words of Caution to Thieves and Burglars
While stealing from player owned homes is permitted, remember that you are essentially taking another player’s money and wiping out any work spent placing the furniture. There needs to be a good in-character reason your PC would do so and take furniture from someone else’s property. Simply claiming ‘I’m a Rogue’ is not reason enough.
The secure measures detailed previously are a homeowner’s responsibility to implement to keep their building secure, but they are not meant to make a building impregnable. However, if another player is found to be OOC greifing by using a PC(s) to clean out a player owned building(s) for no good IC reason, their ability to steal furniture with any their PCs will be turned off. And yes, there are players who already have that ability turned off.
Setting up Shop
If you own a building and are not affiliated with any Thayan faction, you can purchase a merchant license from a Merchant Master in Thay, and use it anywhere in your building you would like your merchant to be located. Merchants placed in buildings function the same as merchants placed in designated market areas.
See the Merchants of Thay feature thread for full details about managing your merchant.
Property Taxes
Property taxes are set based on the size of your home and are required to be paid on a yearly basis (84 real-time days) to ensure that a building is being actively owned and maintained. Speak to a deedmaster to find out what you owe and when taxes are due. In addition, if your taxes have not yet been paid for the year, you will receive notification they are unpaid when you enter your building.
If property taxes are not paid, the building will get repossessed by the government of the tharch it is in, and anyone can claim it - including the original owner. However, any furniture that was in the property when it was repossessed due to late taxes will be confiscated by the authorities.
Tips and Recommendations
1. Due to how the player housing system is designed to save valuable space in the Thay PW module, building floorplans are shared by the system. Because of this, if you logout in a building and then log back in, you will be jumped to the exterior entrance of the building to avoid appearing into another person’s house if the floorplan you were in is now used by them in a different property.
As a result, vampire PCs should *never* logout in a player owned building because when they log back in they could be jumped outside and it could be daylight - which will quickly destroy them!
2. Red Wizard Apprentices and Thayan Knights cannot own property as they are beholden to their Red Wizard masters and stay with them.
3. Upon exiting a player owned building, it is immediately wiped clean of everything and the floorplan is released so someone else can use it if they enter a building that uses it. Therefore, do not place any items on the floor of your property or they will be lost.
4. Voice commands are structured to avoid accidentally sending furniture off into the void. Basically, if you cannot see the destination location, it will not allow the move. So in the case of stacked or grouped furniture (more than one at a given location), if you desire to sink one into the ground a bit (out of sight, as it were), place that furniture down first. Then you may use voice commands to position it exactly. After that, use the building key method of manipulation on the furniture to sink it down into the ground the desired distance. Finally, place your other furniture on or around it.
One of the largest and most complex, but perhaps one of the coolest, features of Thay is the ability for person to claim a building, decorate it, improve security for it, or even place a merchant within it. As a result, this feature allows not only for someone to simply own a home in Thay, but can also be used as a base for people seeking to form a guild or faction of their own.
All of the information here can be discovered through in-game means by simply using various components of the player owned building system. However, due to the enormous scope of this feature, this guide is an attempt to consolidate information, tips, and how to use various parts of it.
Where to Begin
To start learning about this system, speak to one of the Deedmasters found in government buildings throughout Thay. They provide an overview of building ownership, collect property taxes from people who do own a building, and allow you to purchase a building deed if you are notorious enough. The more expensive the building, the more notorious you need to become for them to sell a deed of that type to you.
Types of Buildings
There are five categories of buildings in Thay, and each has its own building deed type: Small House, Medium House, Large House, Manor, and Tower. The size of each building type (measured in ‘tiles’ or ‘squares’) is: 2x3 for Small Houses, 3x4 for Medium Houses, 5x5 for Large Houses, and 7x7 for both Manors and Towers.
When examined, the entrance to a building will tell you what building category it belongs to. You can also find out if a building is claimed, or vacant and available to be claimed, by clicking on its entrance. If a building is vacant and you want it, simply use the building deed on the entrance. At that point the deed will be replaced with a key to your building.
Building Keys
A building key opens all exterior and interior doors to a specific player owned property.
In addition, anyone may use any building key on or near a piece of furniture to rotate, raise, lower, or pick it up (even if it is not their property). Note that it is considered theft if a skeleton key, or if a building key other than one of the property’s building keys, is used to pick up furniture. See the Security and Theft section of this guide for more information about the consequences of theft.
Finally, the owner of a property may use the building key for several other purposes.
1. Make copies of the key at a Key Duplicator
2. Use it on any of the property's doors to improve locks, door strength, and lock or unlock them
3. Use it on another person twice within 30 seconds to transfer ownership of your property to that person
4. If used on the entrance to a property, the owner may access general property options as described in the Property Options section of this guide
5. If used on the interior exit to a property, the owner may change the building's lighting and music
Building Floorplans
If a building has never been claimed before, upon entering the first time an interior floorplan for that building type is randomly selected for it. That floorplan then remains indefinitely, even if relinquished and reclaimed by you or someone else. However, if your building ends up with an interior floorplan that you do not want, you can remodel it, which is explained in the Property Options section of this guide. Screenshots and the in-game description of all available building floorplans can be viewed here on the Thay PW's OneNote under the Building Floorplans section.
Property Options
When the owner of a property uses their building key on its exterior entrance, they are provided with a variety of options. The standard door improvement functions are there to improve the lock, hit points, and hardness of the door, all explained in the Security and Theft section of this guide, but there are other property-wide options as well.
1. Rename the Property - You can change the name of a property (the name of the entrance) by using a writing quill on it. After you name a property, or if you unlock the entrance to it, anyone else clicking or opening this door will be told that the property belongs to you. Otherwise ownership remains anonymous.
2. Redescript the Property - You can change the description of this property (the description of the entrance) by using a writing quill on it. This can be used to post a "No Trespassing" warning on the door, announce the building’s purpose, or provide information about a guild house, store, temple, or public building.
3. Pickup all Furniture - This quickly picks up all furniture that has been placed within the building. Be careful using this as it can irrevocably destroy hours of work decorating, and any items that are still in storage containers will be lost!
Note that if your inventory cannot contain all furniture items within the building, they will be dropped to the ground at your feet.
4. Remodel the Property - When a building is claimed, the interior floorplan for it is persistently set and will never change, regardless of ownership. You may have got lucky and found this building with an interior you love. But if not, you can choose to gut and redesign the interior for half the cost of a deed for that type building.
5. Relinquish Claim - Using this option will render all keys for your property useless and return you a deed of the type used to claim this property.
Furniture
When you purchase a home, it is devoid of furnishings. The only things present are doors, and certain seats/chairs/tables that are part of the tileset. The rest is up to you. At various merchants throughout Thay you will find people that sell furniture of various types. Many have your standard tables/chairs/beds types of furniture, while others have more specialized wares like lighting effects, bones, torture equipment, flags and banner, and so on. Due to concern about server-side lag, possible database corruption, and spawn system limitations, no more than 325 pieces of furniture can be placed in a player-owned building.
Placing Furniture
To place a furniture item, use its unique power where you wish the furniture to be created. The furniture item will leave your inventory as you place it, and the furniture object will appear where you used the item. After it has been placed, you can then manipulate the furniture (raise, lower, rotate, or even move it) by using either, or both, of two methods.
Manipulating Furniture Using a Building Key
Anyone with a building key may use it on or next to a furniture object to select it. Once this is done, a menu-driven conversation will start that can be used to pick it up again, or else raise, lower, or rotate the furniture by set increments.
Manipulating Furniture Using Voice Commands
To manipulate furniture with a great degree of precision, voice commands can also be used. Note that with any voice command, it is not possible to move furniture to a location that is not within your line of sight, and it is only possible to move objects to a location within 5 meters of its position.
!nearest - Selects the nearest placeable to you. All other voice commands will only work if a placeable has been selected using this command, or if it was just placed by using the furniture item. You can also use this command to select one of the closest five placeables from the list that will be provided to you when you use it. Example !nearest 3 will select the third nearest placeable to you
!pickup - Picks up (removes) the furniture object and creates the furniture item for it in your inventory.
!moveto - Moves the furniture to a specific set of coordinates. Example !moveto 3.25 -4 1 will move the object to the spot with an X axis of 3.25, a Y axis of -4, and a z axis (height) of 1 meter above its current location.
!move - Moves the furniture by a certain amount. Example !move 2 1.5 will move the object by 2 meters from its current X axis, by 1.5 meters from its current Y axis, and will not change the Z axis (height). Note that not all parameters are required in this or the !moveto command if you only want to move the X or Y axis.
!turnto - Turns the furniture to face a specific direction. Example !turn 140 will turn it to face 140 degrees.
!turn - Turns the furniture by a certain amount. Example !turn -20 will turn it 20 degrees counterclockwise.
!undo - Will put the furniture back to wherever it was prior to the last command.
Using the Mini-Map Grid System with Voice Commands
An understanding of the grid system NWN uses is required to know where to place your furniture when utilizing the !moveto command.
Standard grid systems are comprised of an X and Y axis, and the starting point is at 0, 0. In NWN that point is always the southwest corner of the area. The X-axis numbers will progress higher as you move to the right (or east), and the Y-axis numbers will progress higher as you move to up (or north). In-game you have a visual indicator of where you are as well; the minimap.
Simply expand the minimap to the maximum resolution, and you will see grey cross-hatching lines revealed; this is the grid layout for that particular area. Your map marker will show you what grid area (or "tile") your PC is in, and simply calculate your position from that. Remember to adjust for position in case you are on another level, and not all the minimap is visible. The exact middle of a square will always have a value in increments of 5 (ie "5, 5" or "5, 15") and a grid junction will always have a value in increments of 10 (ie "10, 20" or "30, 40").
Unique Furniture
There are several furniture items which are unique compared to all others, and are explained in more detail here.
1. Hidden Chamber Entrance - Placing this, which is only allowed on the ground or basement levels of your building, will create a small hidden chamber below your property. This entrance can never be picked up unless using the Pickup All Furniture property option through your exterior door. However, the first time you place it *only* you can move it by using the !move or !moveto commands, in case you placed it and a part of it is not exactly where you want when it appears.
Anyone with your building key will spot the entrance if they get nearby, otherwise a Search roll is needed to reveal it. How difficult the entrance is to spot without the building key can be increased, for a large amount of gold, by manipulating it with a building key after it’s placed.
2. Tailoring Models - While technically classified as furniture, Tailoring Models are actually creatures that can be purchased from the Clothier of Bezantur and placed in your building. When placed, they will face the opposite direction of whoever is placing them, and they can be picked up by talking to them. No other furniture manipulation can be done on them.
3. Animated Furniture - Some items of furniture, such as animated statues, zombies, or skeletons, may be placed and will come to life and attack when someone nears them who does not possess a key to the building they are in.
4. Containers - Containers can be placed to persistently store items within your home. This persistent storage is made using the *exact* location of the container. As a result, if you pick up a container without taking out the items within, they will be lost unless you can somehow replace it to *exactly* where it was before.
Security and Theft
It is possible to steal items from a container or furniture from another person’s building using either a building key or the voice commands to pick up furniture. If furniture is stolen, it is flagged as such permanently and most merchants will not buy it.
Improving Interior Doors
Use your building key to lock or unlock doors within, or the entrance to, your building. This is your first line of defense and, by default, all doors are locked when you claim a building. In addition, you can improve a door’s lock, total hit points, and hardness. Through these improvement options, you can make a door virtually impregnable to anyone without your building key. However, no matter how strong a door’s lock is, note that the Knock spell always has at least a 10% chance to open a door.
Placing Traps
Traps can be placed on the floor, useable furniture (such as containers), and doors within in a player owned building, and will remain until tripped.
Unfortunately, due to a NWN engine limitation, when the person who places a trap leaves and re-enters the building, the trap will be ‘hostile’ to them and as a result it could be tripped by that person. However, as a workaround to this problem, all traps placed by someone will be immediately revealed to them as soon as they re-enter the building. Just be careful not to step on them...
Theft
With each furniture item picked up by someone who does not possess a key to the building, or bash made to force open a door, there is a slightly-increasing chance that someone else hears and calls guards to the property.
If a guard is called to a property, they immediately attack the perpetrator.
Words of Caution to Thieves and Burglars
While stealing from player owned homes is permitted, remember that you are essentially taking another player’s money and wiping out any work spent placing the furniture. There needs to be a good in-character reason your PC would do so and take furniture from someone else’s property. Simply claiming ‘I’m a Rogue’ is not reason enough.
The secure measures detailed previously are a homeowner’s responsibility to implement to keep their building secure, but they are not meant to make a building impregnable. However, if another player is found to be OOC greifing by using a PC(s) to clean out a player owned building(s) for no good IC reason, their ability to steal furniture with any their PCs will be turned off. And yes, there are players who already have that ability turned off.
Setting up Shop
If you own a building and are not affiliated with any Thayan faction, you can purchase a merchant license from a Merchant Master in Thay, and use it anywhere in your building you would like your merchant to be located. Merchants placed in buildings function the same as merchants placed in designated market areas.
See the Merchants of Thay feature thread for full details about managing your merchant.
Property Taxes
Property taxes are set based on the size of your home and are required to be paid on a yearly basis (84 real-time days) to ensure that a building is being actively owned and maintained. Speak to a deedmaster to find out what you owe and when taxes are due. In addition, if your taxes have not yet been paid for the year, you will receive notification they are unpaid when you enter your building.
If property taxes are not paid, the building will get repossessed by the government of the tharch it is in, and anyone can claim it - including the original owner. However, any furniture that was in the property when it was repossessed due to late taxes will be confiscated by the authorities.
Tips and Recommendations
1. Due to how the player housing system is designed to save valuable space in the Thay PW module, building floorplans are shared by the system. Because of this, if you logout in a building and then log back in, you will be jumped to the exterior entrance of the building to avoid appearing into another person’s house if the floorplan you were in is now used by them in a different property.
As a result, vampire PCs should *never* logout in a player owned building because when they log back in they could be jumped outside and it could be daylight - which will quickly destroy them!
2. Red Wizard Apprentices and Thayan Knights cannot own property as they are beholden to their Red Wizard masters and stay with them.
3. Upon exiting a player owned building, it is immediately wiped clean of everything and the floorplan is released so someone else can use it if they enter a building that uses it. Therefore, do not place any items on the floor of your property or they will be lost.
4. Voice commands are structured to avoid accidentally sending furniture off into the void. Basically, if you cannot see the destination location, it will not allow the move. So in the case of stacked or grouped furniture (more than one at a given location), if you desire to sink one into the ground a bit (out of sight, as it were), place that furniture down first. Then you may use voice commands to position it exactly. After that, use the building key method of manipulation on the furniture to sink it down into the ground the desired distance. Finally, place your other furniture on or around it.
