If you’ve been trying to clear Housing (Savage) in Final Fantasy XIV, you might live within the depths of despair. The FFXIV housing lottery is a rough road, requiring a good deal of money and some solid luck. The entire system also leans a bit towards favoring Free Companies, rather than prospective individual owners as well. Even if you have the money, the deck is stacked against you, just like real life!
It can be frustrating collecting all of these random housing items from quests, dungeons, and Ventures, but having nowhere to put them. Housing also offers some great perks, like a Chocobo Stable, personal summoning bells, and crafter work benches. There’s even a whole gardening system that you can’t access unless you have a home of some type!
If a house seems out of reach, you can still access some of these perks through a slightly different method. We present to you… apartments!
The Benefits of Apartments Over Housing
The biggest perk in favor of apartments is price. While a housing plot can start at a cool 1.5 million Gil — that’s before the cost of the house itself — an apartment will always cost 500,000 Gil. Doesn’t matter where you decide to live, if there’s an open apartment, it’ll always cost the same.
Once you buy an apartment, it’s yours forever. A house will be automatically deleted if the owner doesn’t visit it within 45 days due to the game’s auto-demolition policy. Likewise, a housing plot without a home on it will eventually be put back into the housing pool for the next lottery cycle. Apartments have no inactivity timer though; once you buy it, it’s yours.
The Drawbacks of Apartments Over Housing
That’s not to say apartments are a perfect replacement for housing. There are several drawbacks and issues that persist. First, apartments are meant for a single person. While you can make your apartment public for folks to visit, you can’t share the apartment with another player.
Second, that garden I mentioned before? You can only grow up to two plants in your apartment at any one time, using seeds and flowerpots. Each flowerpot can hold a single type of seed. There’s a whole crossbreeding system for gardening, however, and that can only be accessed by homeowners, because crossbreeding requires a full garden patch. Full garden patches can also hold multiple seeds, increasing your gardening yield. This restriction is why folks have high hopes for Island Sanctuary, coming in Patch 6.2.
Finally, there’s a space problem. An apartment will always consist of a single room. In contrast, even the smallest house has a room and a basement. You’re paying less and not dealing with the hassle of housing lotteries, but you’re also not getting as much as a full homeowner. Just like real life!
How to Unlock Apartments
So you’ve decided to go the easy route with regards to picking up your forever-home, or at least your temporary timeshare. What do you need to do in order to access apartments? First, you’ll need to get at least one Job to Level 50.
By this point, you’ll have chosen a Grand Company via MSQ. As for the next step, you’ll need to rank up to Second Lieutenant in order to access apartments. If you haven’t navigated the Grand Company ranks before now, you’ll have to do some Grand Company Seals farming in order to get there.
Finally, you’ll need to have 500,000 Gil lying around. You’ll get a good amount of Gil just reaching the level cap, so focus on that first. If you’re still struggling with filling your wallet, check out our guides; we have one for general Gil-making methods and another for converting Grand Company Seals to Gil to fill those coffers.
There are different apartment buildings in each of the available residential districts. That means you have five different options for your new home. Each one is in a unique region tied to one of the main cities. Here’s the name of each apartment complex, the unique region, the main city tied to it, and the actual, physical entrance to each residential district. (We’ve included pictures of each district below, in order.)
- The Topmost: The Mist, Limsa Lominsa
- Lily Hills: The Lavender Beds, Gridania
- The Sultana’s Breath: The Goblet, Ul’dah
- Kobai Goten: Shirogane, Kugane
- Ingleside: Empyreum, Ishgard
Where Are The Apartments Located? Or How To Access Each Residential District?
You can reach each location by taking the Ferry within your city, selecting “Residential District Aethernet” from the main Aetheryte within the city, or by going to the specific entrance to the region. (Given that Aetheryte access is far easier, we’ll skip giving you the physical locations.) Accessing any residential district will automatically ask you to choose which Ward you want to visit. Each Ward is a specific instance of that district, with a total of 24 Wards in total for each district type.
You’ll need to unlock the residential districts through certain quests. The first set of quests are largely the same and will unlock access to the districts from the main Aetheryte plaza in each of the starting regions. The latter two districts were added later in the game’s lifecycle and have higher-level quests for activation, meaning you need to be level 50 or 60 and be past a certain point in MSQ in order to access them.
- The Mist: “Where the Heart Is (Mist)” – Ahctkoen in Lower La Noscea (X: 31.6, Y: 20.2)
- The Lavender Beds: “Where the Heart Is (The Lavender Beds)” – Margeria in Central Shroud (X: 21.7, Y: 21.9)
- The Goblet: “Where the Heart Is (The Goblet)” – Imme in Western Thanalan (X: 26.0, Y: 24.1)
- Shirogane: “I Dream of Shirogane” – Tsurubami in Kugane (X: 12.0, Y: 9.9)
- Requires completion of the Stormblood main scenario quest “By the Grace of Lord Lolorito”
- Empyreum: “Ascending to Empyreum” – Gondelimbaud in Foundation (X: 9.9, Y: 11.8)
- Requires completion of the Heavensward main scenario quest “Litany of Peace”
How to Purchase An Apartment
Once you’re inside a residential district, you want to head to the local apartment building. It’s the largest, golden-colored icon on the map that looks like a stacked apartment. Enter the building and you’ll find yourself in the lobby. Talk to the Apartment Caretaker, hand over your 500,000 Gil, and you can choose an open apartment.
Now, there might not be an open apartment in the building. It’s rare, but it does happen. If that’s the case, just leave and jump to a different Ward. There’s a different apartment building for each Ward and its related subdivision. You’ll find that space eventually!
The best part of owning an apartment is that you can own both an estate and an apartment. One doesn’t preclude you from the other. That means you don’t have to let the dream of owning a house die. The apartment is just a temporary home until your luck hits and you can pick up your own home.
If You’re Still Striving For a House
If you’ve decided that a house is what you need to complete you regardless of how daunting the task is, we have help. Not only do we have a whole guide for the housing process, we also keep you updated with the upcoming house bidding schedule, so you know when you need to part with millions of Gil. The only thing we can’t give you is the luck to win the lottery.
