In the September 2010 update, the addition of Home was introduced to Atlantans. Houses can only be purchased through the NPC called Caitsith, found in Rome in the “My House” area. You can quickly access the My Home area by clicking on the Rome icon and you should now see a menu listing for “My Home”.

When you are ready to buy a house; You will see that there are 3 different houses to choose from. The house plan is the same for all homes; the only differences are the colors of the roof and the design of the front yard.

After you buy your house, the next thing you’ll want to do is choose which facility you want to add to your front yard. The facility offers items that are needed to make furniture and home decor. The facilities to choose from are a farm, a mine, a garden and a sawmill. Each of the facilities offers their own items that can be purchased from them. A sawmill produces Ginko wood, and to gain logging skills, you will need to visit the NPC named Jack Lumberman in the Rome My Home area. A specific skill is needed for each of the facilities, so you’ll need to locate the various NPCs in My Home before you can acquire the skill.

You level up your facilities using your facilities and others using them. As your facilities are used, the percentage yield on purchased items will decrease. You can view your installation information by right-clicking on the installation and choosing “manage” from the menu. As the yields drop below 100%, you will be able to water it and transplant it, which will help you level up the setup. Once your facility reaches level 30, you can occasionally collect high-quality items. The higher the level of the facility, the higher the chance of obtaining high-quality products, and the chance of collecting more of them will also increase.

One of the best benefits of having a home is that you can place up to 3 mercenaries to stay in your home. To place a mercenary in your home, you must first visit your home and place the mercenary of your choice in the mercenary room and then you will see an option that says “send home”. There is no level cap for a mercenary to be sent home. Every 2 hours exactly at the even hour mark, your mercenary will ask you for a gift. Sometimes they ask for atlas fragments but almost always they ask for elements. If you give them the gift they ask for, they will receive experience. The experience is much less for mercs below level 80, but they can still level up fairly quickly via the house gift method. To increase the amount of experience they receive, you will need to furnish your home. It is still speculated that the more comfort you have in a home, the more experience your mercenaries will receive. I think it is not based on comfort, but depends on a balance between culture and comfort.

Another benefit of having a home is that you will get an experience buff from resting in your bed and this buff lasts for one hour. You can receive this benefit up to twice a day. It is also speculated that the more comfortable you are at home, the more experience bonus you will receive when resting. Housewarming furniture only offers a 1% experience bonus, but as you place more furniture around the home, that percentage will increase.

Houses are quite expensive and can only be purchased through Caitsith for 500 million gold. Although they are expensive, they are definitely worth the cost.