Homestead

This article is about the customizable personal housing feature introduced in Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds. For the instanced area related to the Personal Story, see Home Instance.

“

Your journeys will lead you to your own homestead, an account-wide personal housing instance for you to develop as you complete its associated Mastery. Homesteads present you with an area of land and a permanent structure to increase your comfort level through various activities such as harvesting nodes, tending a garden, fishing, swimming, chopping trees, watching cats do cat things, and much more.

Customization is at the heart of the Homesteads feature, so you can decorate the homestead – inside and out! New and existing decorations will be craftable through the new personal scribing crafting discipline. Additionally, your homestead includes a stable for your mounts, bringing them into the space with you. Alt characters will also be making an appearance, adding another personal touch to each homestead.

— Official description

Homestead is an account-wide personal housing instance located in Hearth's Glow, with structures and land for the player to decorate and cultivate, exclusive to Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds. Upgrades to the Homestead will unlock additional rooms, decoration recipes, and collection boxes.

Getting there

Conjured Doorway

• Players can place then enter a Conjured Doorway using the   Summon Conjured Doorway mastery skill, unlocked during the Home Sweet Home chapter of the Janthir Wilds story.
  • The skill can be activated by one of the following methods:
    • Clicking on its icon in the Mastery Skill pop-up menu.
    • Using its own keybind "Conjured Doorway" (unassigned in the Control Options by default).
    • Using "Activate Mastery Skill" keybind (default J) after setting "Summon Conjured Doorway" as the active skill by right-clicking it in the Mastery Skill menu.
  • The skill cannot be activated under certain conditions.
• Players in the group can be invited to join a Homestead when the instance owner travels through the "Conjured Doorway".
  • It is also possible to join from any map by right clicking on the instance owner in the party menu.
  • It is not required to own Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds to join a Homestead instance.
  • It is not possible to visit when the instance owner is not in the Homestead.

Unlocking

Janthir Wilds

1. Complete the third chapter of the Janthir Wilds story, Home Sweet Home.
2. Unlock the corresponding masteries to unlock new rooms in the Homestead and new recipes for the Handiworker crafting discipline.
   • No mastery: Unlocks access to the Homestead instance, novice recipes, and home upgrades.
   • Novice: Unlocks access to a new room and level 75 Initiate recipes.
   • Initiate: Unlocks access to a new room and level 150 Apprentice recipes.
   • Apprentice: Unlocks access to a new room and level 225 Journeyman recipes.
   • Journeyman: Unlocks access to collection boxes and additional level 225 Journeyman recipes ^{[verification requested]}.

Features

Homesteads present players with an area of land that can be customized with decorations and serve as a personal space for players to hang out and showcase their mounts, characters, cats, and decorating skills.

• Characters left in the homestead will gain a resting bonus that grants bonus PvE experience and PvP/WvW reward track progress.
• Mounts can be found in the stable to the East.
  • The mounts will use the skins equipped by the current character.
  • Treats can be bought once a day from the stable master in the stable and fed to corresponding mounts while mounted for Mastery experience.
• The skiff will be docked at the pier behind the lumber mill, with fishing holes available along the river.
  • The skiff will use the skin equipped by the current character.
• Players can interact with Deft Lahar to change homestead options, but changes will reset to default upon leaving the instance.
  • The instance features a day/night cycle and can be set to either day or night.
  • It is possible to toggle fall damage, mounting, and gliding through the movement options dialogue.
  • It is possible to toggle the presence of ambient wildlife.
• Leaving the instance via the user interface ("Click to leave the instance") will return you to your exact previous location before entering the homestead.

Alts

• Players can place their characters in the homestead by logging out while in the instance.
  • Regardless of the total placed in the homestead, only 30 random characters will be visible while in the homestead.
• The characters will appear in several default locations:
  • Guardians, Warriors, and Revenants can be found outdoors near the house.
  • Engineers, Rangers, and Thieves can be found across the bridge to the South, by the path to the asura gate hub.
    • The adventurer character that was most recently placed in the homestead will be mounted on the Raptor and cannot be instructed to Follow or Stay.
  • Elementalists, Necromancers, and Mesmers can be found in an open cave slightly Southeast of the farm, accessed via stone steps in the cliff.
• The instance owner can instruct characters to "Follow/Stay", but they will return to several default locations upon next entry.
  • If multiple characters are instructed to "Follow", they will attempt to align themselves symmetrically in a row on either side of the player (up to 12 on each side) when standing still.

Customization

Primary article: Decoration#Usage

• It is possible to place up to 1,000 ^{[verification requested]} decorations in a homestead.
• There are 3 decoration-related options available:
  • Clear All Decorations: Clears all decorations (including default decoration) from the instance.
  • Restore Homestead: Resets the instance to its default decorations.
  • Enable/Disable Party Decoration: Enables/Disables the functions of placing, modifying, and erasing decoration for players in the group.

These can be accessed by clicking on the gear icon, above the 'Decorating/Stop Decorating button'.

Decorations

Primary article: Decoration/Homestead

• Decorations have to be crafted through the Handiworker crafting discipline.
  • The recipes will generally require new resources obtained through refining ore, logs, and plant materials at refinement vendors in the instance.
  • The decorations will be immediately stored in the homestead decoration storage when crafted and has a limit of 250 pieces each.
• Handiwork Workbenchs are only available in the instance and can only be used by the instance owner.

Home instance upgrades

Primary article: Home Instance#List of home instance upgrades

• Players can access account-wide home instance upgrades in the Homestead.
  • Resource nodes can only be gathered once per day per account regardless of instance, and it is not possible to have copies of the same node.
  • The Journeyman Handiworker Crafting and Collection Boxes mastery will add collection boxes to the mine, the lumber mill, and the farm.
    • The instance owner can interact with them to instantly gather every ore, log, or plant nodes attached to it.
    • The collection boxes can be upgraded with Material Gathering and Currency Gathering Glyphs via a vendor window and can be extracted through the dialogue box.
• When entering as a group, the upgrades of the instance owner can also be used by visitors.
  • The garden plots will only be available to visitors if the instance owner have not harvested them for the day. (This does not affect other harvesting nodes.)
  • The Enchanted Treasure Chest is only available to the instance owner.

Cats

Primary article: Hungry cat scavenger hunt

• Hungry cats can be adopted throughout the world of Tyria and will be found around the homestead afterwards.
• The cats may be petted.

Related masteries

Homesteading

Mastery	XP required	Points	Description
Novice Handiworker Crafting and Homestead Expansion	381,000	1	Unlock the ability to use Novice Handiworker Crafting recipes. Also unlock additional homestead space and a resting bonus.
Initiate Handiworker Crafting and Homestead Expansion	635,000	2	Unlock the ability to use Initiate Handiworker Crafting recipes. Also unlock additional homestead space and a higher tier resting bonus.
Apprentice Handiworker Crafting and Homestead Expansion	1,016,000	3	Unlock the ability to use Apprentice Handiworker Crafting recipes. Also unlock additional homestead space and a higher tier resting bonus.
Journeyman Handiworker Crafting and Collection Boxes	1,524,000	4	Unlock the ability to use Journeyman Handiworker Crafting recipes and gain access to collection boxes.
Total	3,556,000	10

Gallery

Icons

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  Icon on the sidebar.

Screenshots

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  Homesteads

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  Homesteads

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  Homesteads

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  The Workshop

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  The Workshop (Interior)

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  Stables

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  Farm Shed

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  Homesteads (Interior)

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  Homesteads (Interior)

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  Homesteads (Interior)

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  Homesteads (Interior)

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  Homesteads (Interior)

Related achievements

• Janthir: A Season for Work — Spend 5 continuous minutes decorating your homestead in Ground Mode. (3)
• Janthir: Busy Bee — Spend 5 continuous minutes decorating your homestead in Fly Mode. (3)
• Community: Cozy Creator — Have an ArenaNet employee visit a homestead. (0)

Notes

• Additional decorations are planned for quarterly updates of Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds.

Anomaly:

Visitors can hide Mr. Quiggles.

Bugs:

• Completing the first mastery track of Homesteading will unlock the space behind the locked door on the bottom floor, but the "Homesteading Mastery Unlock" icon will disappear from the door on the upper floor.
• While visitors cannot instruct characters to "Follow", they can instruct characters to "Stay" while they are following.
• "Autoloot: Quick Interact" does not pick up all resources when extra gathering strikes occur.^{[verification requested]}

Trivia

• Joel Eckert, a former game and technical designer for The Sims 4, has been working on this feature.

See also

• Hearth's Glow
• Homestead Services
• Homestead Upgrades
• Decoration

External links

• Homestead Essentials: Living in Janthir Wilds, GuildWars2.com
• A First Look at Homesteads: Exclusive Preview from PC Gamer, GuildWars2.com
• Guild Wars 2's new player housing will add a hang-out for your alts, a stable for your mounts, and comes with a massive overhaul to the decorations system, pcgamer.com