This is “a plain bookcase” – no longer sold by merchants, I bought it for 2p
The picture above may not seem that special or important, but to an avid house item collector like myself, it is something exceptionally unique and sought after. The image is of “a plain bookcase” and was once an item that you could purchase off of furniture merchants in Qeynos and Freeport. Carpenters at the time, were (understandably) upset. Who would bother to purchase their wears with items like these going for a few gold? When SoE announced that only carpenters would be providing house items in the future, it was generally assumed that the furniture found on merchants would be integrated into the carpenter recipes. Unfortunately this was not the case.
The change was pretty early on in the game, before I even cared about house items (what, such a time existed?!) and when a few gold was still a LOT of money to spend, especially on things for your house. A lot of the rare pieces were lost by people who stopped playing, sold back to merchants for some coin, or simply were just not around to begin with.
But. If you’re lucky, and know where to look, you can still find a few pieces for sale. Over time, a few select recipes have found their way back to carpenters, specifically the new counters made of ironwood, the Qeynosian dresser, the overlord’s chair, etc. They have the same graphic as other items in game, even if they don’t carry the same name any more. How do you find these items? Well, first of all, I have huge praise for this section of Everseek.com. It’s images (and names) of some of the “used to be in game but no longer is” house items. There are images missing of course, my bookcase and new plain wooden stools being two. The second method is pretty simple. Go to your local broker. Do a search for house items and set it to only search for ‘common’. This will eliminate any mastercrafted or hand crafted house items, leaving you with quest rewards such as the Christmas and valentines day items, along with any furniture that may have once been sold by a merchant or something that is other wise rare (like the blue shiny collection items, those are all tradeable and are typically house items). Arena pets also show up, if you’re a collector of those at all (which I am not, each one of my homes typically has one or two pets, but I find they clutter the space something fierce).
Some other semi-rare house items that can be found on the broker would be the miniature spires replica, from aiding in the building of the wizard spires. The Queen Antonia and Lucan D’Lere statues that talk if you examine them, of course baby dragons. These items came from the collectors edition of EQII and are typically priced quite high – though the statues hover anywhere from 50g – 20p depending on the day it seems. I paid 5p for my statue of the Queen, and 7p for the one of Lucan. If you’re not an avid house item collector, those prices probably seem very foolish to pay, but to each their own. I paid 10p for my piano, and in my eyes all the purchases were quite worth while. I take pride in decorating my home and adding bits and pieces to the “collection” of objects I’ve gathered. With time I eventually hope to add a museum type entrance way, once I work enough faction with Ironforge exchange to afford their display cases.
On a side note, home owners everywhere were delighted to hear the following:
Housing
It is now much easier to move houses!
- Just go to the new house and purchase it. Your old house will be relinquished automatically and all of your items will move to your new house.
- When you enter your house for the first time, you will notice a moving crate on the floor. You can move it around and retrieve items from it, but it cannot be picked up or destroyed.
- Items in the moving crate count towards your total item count in your house, but do not provide status cost reduction and are not useable.
- Items cannot be put into the moving crate.
- The moving crate will disappear when all items are removed from it.
You can find the full test notes here.