[Balanor]

Almost 500 new placeables were added to NWN in the last update, of which there were several hundred that I felt would make good furniture options for player housing. But the current process we have to add new furniture choices is very cumbersome for players to find them, and time consuming for me to add. As a result, there is going to be a significant change to how furniture items can be purchased. 

More details follow below, but the most significant change is old furniture items will no longer work to *create* furniture in a player-owned building after November 8. As a result, please make sure that if you have purchased a furniture item, you place it in your building *before* November 8. You will be able to sell it at any point, however.


The Details -

A furniture catalog is going to replace the process of finding a furniture merchant and buying a furniture item from that merchant. A PC can purchase a catalog, and then browse through the 38 categories of furniture in it, getting a list of furniture showing the name and price. Entering the number of an item from this list will instantly deliver (take that Amazon) the furniture item to your PC.

This should making the buying process MUCH easier for all players with buildings. Plus, furniture ordered from one of these catalogs will have the option to be returned at full price, if returned before the server resets - so it's no risk buying for people to at least see what a furniture item looks like before truly committing to it. As an added bonus, we're increasing the number of furniture/decorations you can purchase from 510, spread across dozens of furniture merchants, to 1073 all conveniently available from the furniture catalog.

To accommodate this change, on November 8 the server will go down for some time as I will need to make database updates to ensure all existing furniture in buildings are properly updated to work with this new process. I will also be spot-checking various buildings after these changes to ensure that player furniture placed in them is still properly replaced on every server reset. So if you do have a building you'd like me to check after this migration on the 8th to verify its furniture was properly recreated once the server is spun up again, post or PM me its name and/or location. 

Again, after this migration old furniture items will no longer work, so place them somewhere in your building beforehand if you want to keep them - or you can always sell them.

[SharranAes]

This sounds like an awesome addition
Will old furniture merchants be removed/repurposed as a result of this, or will they still be around and potentially offer better deals for the limited selection they do carry?

If you have the time and/or lack player buildings to spot check;
Eltabbar - Northeast; Tower of Eltabbar

Also curious if it would be prudent/advised to move items stored in home containers into pack slaves/personal inventories just before the reset?
(And if so, is it OK to potentially go over the 150 item limit cap for that? Would naturally get down to below the limit as soon as possible afterwards)

-SharranAes

[Balanor]

Sounds good, SharranAes, I'll make sure to check that building before and after the migration.

Old furniture items are going to be removed from the module. You won't be able to buy them anymore after November 8, but if you have those items in your inventory or persistent storage somewhere, they will still be there. You just won't be able to use them to create furniture in your building at that point. The existing furniture merchants....yeah....that's kind of a problem I'm wrestling with. They will no longer sell any individual furniture items, however some of them will be repurposed as general merchants, and the DM team has given me some thoughts/ideas on which ones. Others will be removed from the gameworld.

As for removing items from storage in home containers; that is not necessary. But if you are concerned/worried, please feel free to do so. However, the database for persistent storage will not actually be touched. Persistent storage is determined by the exact location of the container in a person's house, so the only way something stored in it will be missing is if the entire container is missing - in which case the migration failed in some way which caused the container (and likely most/all other furniture within the house not to load from the database). In the case of a worst-case scenario where buildings are not getting populated with furniture, I will likely roll back the module and the player houses databases to a pre-migration version and work to figure out what happened.

[Miscr3ant]

Wow, outstanding change. Player Housing has always been one of my favorite systems done here in Thay; how it was designed to put it all in the player's hands. This sounds like it is going to be wonderful addition, in that it allows players to furnish a house, without schlepping things back and forth.

Kind of handy when you're not as strong as Aethon and hauling a single statue puts you over the encumbrance limit. lol

Thank you, Balanor. :)

[WilliamDraco]

I'll certainly add to chimes of "This is awesome". I've not messed with furniture much (at all), but I'm well aware of what a mess it seemed like, both for extensibility as you've mentioned and also for players to source and install all the varying bits and bobs.

Big thumbs up for the concept and effort to transition to this new system!

[OldBear]

This sounds like a fabulous addition to the world, and Thank You!. I do have a question since on November 8th there are 2 dm events scheduled. Are they being cancelled or we just should figure the server down before or after the events?

[Miscr3ant]

This sounds like a fabulous addition to the world, and Thank You!.  I do have a question since on November 8th there are 2 dm events scheduled.  Are they being cancelled or we just should figure the server down before or after the events?

Ooh!  Good question!

[Balanor]

The server won't be going down until well after the events are over - please attend them if you can!

[Balanor]

The migration is completed. I spot checked a few buildings like The Eltabbar Tower and Mountain View Trading Post (both are *really* nicely decorated, by the way!) and things *appeared* correct. However, due to some edits I ended up doing which I was hoping to avoid, it is possible that an individual piece (or maybe 2 or 3) of furniture may be missing, or might be facing an incorrect direction. This may be unlikely, but those of you with buildings, please do check them as soon as you can since, at this point, I'm planning to push forward using the migrated database unless there end up being numerous reports of furniture missing or other problems you cannot correct without spending money and/or lots of time.

A good test now will be to verify that when/if you pick up any of this existing furniture, it does properly create a furniture item for it in your inventory.

Regardless, furniture catalogs are in-game already prior to an "official" server update. So homeowners, feel free to purchase one and see all it has to offer and/or try out placing newly purchased furniture from it and returning it within one in-game day of purchase to ensure you get your money back (this is a slight modification from my initial post as you don't have to worry about the server reset preventing you from selling back a bunch of furniture you may have just purchased).

[Miscr3ant]

Korgan's house was put back into place exactly as decorated, so looks good to me!