Freehold buildings

Velkor's Eye pre-order pack cosmetic Vek freehold skin.^[1]

Freehold buildings can be placed on a freehold plot.^[2]^[3]

Buildings will require blueprints and materials.^[4]

Basements in freehold buildings are to be decided.^[5]

Freehold buildings will not change in terms of footprint (within a specific tier of that building) but may increase in height.^[6]

Certain buildings will have multiple tiers, with different footprint sizes. For example: Small, medium, large, to mansion-sized homes.^[6]
- A mansion sized home may occupy up to 50% of a freehold plot.^[6]

Freehold building architecture is based on the blueprint for the building.^[7]

Cosmetics can also be applied to a blueprint based on the type of building.^[7]
Players are not locked into any particular race for freehold blueprints.^[8]

The way we look at it is the freehold is your space so we want you to be able to make it look the way you want it to.^[7] – Jeffrey Bard

Freehold building placement

There may be a grid-based system that freehold owners can use to place items/props and buildings on their freehold plot.^[9]^[10]

Players will need to manage how these are arranged to maximize adjacency bonuses.^[10]

Depending on where your place you're freehold, you're gonna have different environmental tiles available to you and those will kind of enable or buff existing structures that you place in your Freehold... I don't know that we would put like fish farming just for a freehold that's on a river. What we would probably do is give you a buff to fishing in that area. That kind of a thing. So there'll be more buffs for existing things rather than necessarily a special buildings just for that area. But again we're not fully baked in on that system yet, so it's very possible though we end up going down that direction.^[11] – Jeffrey Bard

Freehold professions

Professions such as Farming and Fishing.^[12]^[13]
Freehold buildings can be used to process gathered resources into processed goods, such as Animal husbandry and Metalworking.^[14]^[15]^[16]^[17]^[18]^[13]
Crafting stations can be located on freeholds.^[19]
Player owned businesses such as taverns can be placed on freehold plots.^[20]

Freehold farms

Alpha-1 freehold farm.^[21]

Crops are intended in Ashes to be a rotational profession that is dependent on having the appropriate seedlings and/or any of the necessary tools.^[12] – Steven Sharif

Freehold expansions and upgrades are available as node progression allows. Some of these improvements affects the size of freehold farm plots available for crop planting.^[10]

Artisan freehold features are also affected by adjacent terrain features. For example: building next to a river provides a nearby source of clean freshwater, and will have a positive effect on crops.^[22]

Processing buildings

Furnace that can be placed on a freehold.^[18]

Processing is one of the artisan classes in Ashes of Creation.^[18]

Processing involves the refining of raw materials obtained from gathering and item deconstruction.^[18]
The bulk of the time spent in the artisan system resides in the processing branch. The processing time varies based on the quality of the processed goods.^[15]
Some processing can be carried out in nodes, but the best processing can only be carried out on freeholds.^[23]
- Blueprints are required for the construction of the freehold buildings that are used to process resources into processed goods.^[24]^[14]^[15]^[17]^[18]
- The amount of goods that can be processed while unattended by the player is based on the rating of that particular processing station.^[15]
- The time spent processing can be reduced by upgrading the capabilities and quality of the processing station via a progression tier system.^[15]

That's going to be very important as you get to very late game processed materials that are required. Because some of these things might have days to process within a station, but if you have spent the time and done the work to advance that processing station you could cut that down considerably, perhaps even greater than 50 percent; and that's going to have a significant impact on your ability to either control markets or to create goods.^[15] – Steven Sharif

There will be a preparatory phase to provide the building with needed fuel or other materials to process the required grade of materials.^[14]

Processing as it stands for Alpha-2's implementation is that there is a certain amount of prep work that's required first for the industry-specific component, which is the building. That prep work might be finding a certain amount of lumber to light the fire in kiln or whatever, to a certain temperature in order for you to process a certain grade of ore; and that grade of ore being malleable then into an ingot; and that produces that ingot so-to-speak. Now, in that process there's a gathering component, there's a preparatory phase, there is a time-related component.^[14] – Steven Sharif

There will also be time-related and gameplay elements that require the player to interact with the processing building. These elements act to throttle for the introduction of processed materials from raw gatherables into the economy.^[14]

There's also possibilities that the machine you're using itself has some type of gameplay layer- should the kiln get overheated, and you have to throw some water on it or something. There are elements there in that process that we want to mimic this gameplay opportunity for players to interact; and not just be a time-sink. But time-sink is also a component of it as well, because that's the throttle for the introduction of processed materials from raw gatherables into the economy.^[14] – Steven Sharif

Freehold progression

Freehold buildings are able to be levelled up based on the length of time and productivity of the freehold.^[25]

Freehold progression unlocks new bonuses, abilities and capabilities.^[25]

We want there to be progression in many systems and part of the freehold progression is that when you establish these base buildings the longer and more productive you are and exist with that freehold, the more opportunity those buildings will have to both level up: offering new bonuses, new abilities, new capabilities; and just surviving in this world is a feat in and of itself, so it's rewarded by allowing progression with those things.^[25] – Steven Sharif

Player owned businesses

Shop sign concept art.^[26]

Our business owner system... grants players a meaningful existence in the world and rewards them for their persistence, dedication and survivability.^[20] – Steven Sharif

Taverns

Taverns provide tiered services.^[20]

Quests that might only be gathered from the player-owned taverns.^[20]
Meals that grant buffs for a period of time after a player leaves.^[20]
Recipes that could potentially be sold to cooking professions, that may only be obtained from a player-owned business in a certain area.^[27]^[20]

The longer the tavern is in business and the more patrons served, the faster the tavern will level up.^[27]^[20]

Q: What benefits do players receive for taking on the role of a tavern owner?

A: You will get noticeability with regards to your creations because that will be displayed to the characters that consume those things; but, in addition, you can get certain types of itemization rewards depending on the number of patrons that you serve. You can also reap economic rewards, such as gold from the inn that you are selling your goods at. And then you can unlock access to certain types of recipes and or vendors based on the level of reputation you build up in that particular node.^[27] – Steven Sharif

Naming buildings

Buildings will be able to be named. The custom name will appear as floating text when it is targeted.^[28]

Freehold building skins

Themed freehold skins were offered as Kickstarter and Summer crowdfunding rewards and are sold through the cosmetic store.^[29]^[30]

Building, ship, caravan and mount cosmetics require an in-game item to be obtained first to apply the cosmetic.^[31]^[32]

I had a meeting with the Design Team the other day (as they are working on further details for the Freehold System) to help clarify some of the answers to the questions y'all have been asking, and they will be sending me information. Once I receive this, I will be working on a content update to reflect that information, and going forward, we will provide those details on each individual cosmetic item. Updating all the past items to provide more clarity on what in-game item types you can place the cosmetics on will take time once this process begins, so please bare with us as we start from present to past items, updating their information.^[33] – Margaret Krohn