15 FFXIV house camping tips you NEED!

When I started hunting for my Free Company’s house, people told me that there aren’t any tips and tricks for acquiring the land, and I honestly had believed that, until I started digging deeper, and thought of my own. The knowledge acquired helped me acquire a cute, little cottage in Shirogane, against all predicted odds! In this guide, you’ll learn some tips and tricks that may help you get a house if you’re already camping those Placards and believe that just standing there is all that’s ever gonna get you the plot, which is not the case!

Every time you log into the game, make it a habit to go around all of the Aetherytes to check for new available plots, and you’ll know they’re available if they have the land price written instead of the name of the owner. It’s good to have at least one of those Aetherytes as a free Home point so you spend less gil on going back and forth between them. Do this even before you log out, and if you’re not too tired or in a hurry, try to walk up to those empty plots and make the purchase. You never know!

What people sometimes forget to do is to check the plots in the section 31-60, as the button for switching them is rather inconspicuous if you don’t pay attention. The plots that pop up in these ward sections are usually less packed with people, so make sure to check them as you’re looking at 1-30 ones.

When I started house hunting, I thought that night time is the best time to log in and try to snatch a house. However, it turns out that so many people think the same way, that the night time has become the norm for house hunting. After many nights of waking up at random times of the night to see if the endless packs of people have dissolved, I decided to start getting up around 6am to house camp. People who spend the night camping usually go to bed then, and the rest of the hardworking bunch goes to work in the morning, or just couldn’t be bothered to do it. If YOU want a house, though, you should be bothered, as the loneliest times are between 5:30 and 10:30am, if you can afford logging in then. Clicking while 15 other people are there doing the same thing is only exciting for the first four and a half minutes, and it becomes endlessly frustrating then, so I don’t recommend it. Late morning is when I was able to get a house, and I stood completely alone in front of a Shirogane placard that was in a really good location, and from my overall experience, those hours were the loneliest and with the highest chance for me to get the house.

If there happens to be a crowd, though, and you’re determined to make it work, that’s okay, but keep in mind that it’s both exhausting and demoralizing to stand there and click the whole time, knowing that the other people are doing it, too. Dedicate power-clicking minutes, or hours if you’re of the iron-willed people, and put as many clicks as you can within that time frame, even if it’s like 5 minutes or so. After that, take a break and come back to power clicking when you can or want to, if the plot is still there. This will give you a higher chance of snatching the plot, than if you show up and try to buy once, every 10 minutes or so. You’d have to be incredibly lucky to make it past all the other clickers in that time frame, so it’s not really worth doing it in the first place.

If you’re getting a house for your Free Company, it’s good for as many of you as possible to have about 4-5M gil on you, so multiple people can come by the Placard and try to get it. If you only have that much on one person, assuming you can fully trust your FC members, trade the money over to someone who’s logging in and ready to camp, if the person currently holding the money has to go. That being said, you can’t have the money in your FC bank, your retainers, or anywhere else. It has to be in the buyer’s inventory, so make sure to remember that!

Also, be proactive. If you’ve been alone by a placard for hours, and people suddenly start flocking in, don’t be afraid to teleport somewhere else and try to find a place less crowded with people. The fact that you’ve been there for hours doesn’t mean you’ll have a higher chance of snatching the plot. The fact that people are in one location means they’re not anywhere else, and the amount of buyers in every single moment is limited. You never know when there’s an opportunity no one else is taking advantage of, so be the one to do it and don’t sit on your eggs, and definitely don’t be picky about plots and locations, as that’s the luxury you can’t afford right now!

If you’re camping a plot but you’re unwilling to change your location, yet would like to know if there’s another plot popping up, have some of your friends or FC members check the Aetherytes and let you know if there’s a plot. There are even some Discord communities for some data centers where a new plot gets announced when it shows up, so you can follow that, but it also means there will be a lot more people camping those same locations.

Buying a house can get a little tedious, and it doesn’t necessarily have to stop you from playing the game. Queuing for your Duty Roulette is a good way to pass the time, and once you’re out of the duty, you can queue again while continuing to click on the Placard until you’re gone. Having a friend to stand there with you can also make it a lot less stressful, and it works to your advantage, as people will often get intimidated by the competition if they see more than one person standing next to the Placard and will most likely move on to search for another spot. It’s even better if your friend is from your FC, as that makes it look like you’re both hunting for the FC house!

Sometimes, people can be less than nice about their house hunting activities, and may try to prevent you from clicking by inviting you into a group, or opening a trade. Once you begin hunting, you should type /busy in chat, which will put you in Do Not Disturb mode, and will prevent that from happening. By typing it in the chat again, you’ll get out of the DnD, just remember to do that when you’re done clicking!

From time to time, people will simply stand in front of the Placard without clicking, and you can check that by focusing them and looking at whether they’re focusing the Placard or not. If they target it, then stop targeting, then target again, then stop, and so on – it means they’re in full-on click mode, and you should be, too. If they’re not targeting anything, or have the Placard targeted the whole time without actually clicking, you can be a bit more chill about clicking. But if there’s no one there, you can start clicking once you see someone approaching, but before they actually do. This doesn’t apply if you’re countering someone relocating, as they can do it from a distance as well, but there’s hardly ever a way to play around that. If you want to save a bit of energy and have an easier time, clicking vigorously only when there are active people around you who are clicking too, is a fine way to do it. That’s how I got my house and I managed to save some sanity along the way!

If you want to lower the chance of missing the target, zooming in on a Placard in front of you so it covers more of your screen is a good idea. And, if you want to get rid of annoyance, dismiss your minions as they sometimes fly around and get in the way of clicks. I’d even go as far as disabling the option called Look at target when speaking, in the General tab of Character Configuration, as that will stop your camera from re-centering all the time if you’re not looking straight at your Placard. You can even tell if people who have this option turned on are continuously clicking, because their heads move towards the Placard every few seconds. By turning this off, you get to save some bits of revealing information about yourself!

Getting a plot feels lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a good opportunity to make friends and chat with people who are doing the same thing you are, as you’re pretty much going through these difficult feelings together. If you’re on the sneaky side, you could try to chat your co-clickers up and have them click less while they’re responding to you, but it’s kind of not very nice to do that if that’s the only reason you’re talking to them. If you’re both super desperate though, you could end up in the same FC and split the costs of the house, while increasing the chance for your FC to get the house as you would both be clicking for it. Assuming it’s all legit and no one gets kicked out of the FC after buying the house, as that would be horrible and possibly even bannable, so don’t do that.

Not giving up is the key factor in all this. If you’re determined to get a house and log in whenever you can and try to be alone at Placards most of the time, while clicking as much as you can, you WILL get a house at some point, there’s just no way for that not to happen. Well, there is, but it’s ridiculously tiny if you’re just there every day and continue to try and put in the clicks. That’s really all it comes down to. 

Oh, and as a final tip, well… This is not something that will increase your odds in any way. But the fact that you’re homeless now means you probably shouldn’t look that way while house hunting, as you’re gonna be there a long time and people will be looking at you. Make an effort to look badass, even on a budget glamour, as housing is not the true endgame. Your glamour is.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got when it comes to house hunting. Let me know in the comments if you have some tips or info you’d like to share, as many people will appreciate any advice they can get their hands on, and if you’re more of a visual type, and you don’t mind getting easy wins in the game, you can check out all of this in my video – and subscribe for more awesome FFXIV stuff!