Hrm, help with Castle placement?

[Alyssa of ATL]

Hello!

I'm pretty sure that there is a spoiler house that is blocking my upgrade to a Castle.

I'm not good enough at house placement to be certain, though.
It's a bit of a mess, because I own several houses on the screen, and the Castles on other shards are not all in the exact same spot.

Would someone be willing to take a look at my location and give me an opinion as to a possible upgrade?

Thanks!!

 

[Lyconis]

Sent you a PM. Remember if you resize a house into a castle be sure to use the resize command (everything will drop like an idoc but you will be the only one that can place). I also recommend a tracker/detect to scope the area ahead of time.
Before you get ready to place make sure you have a last target macro setup for the location the castle will land. Also I'd recommend having the gameplay window in the upper left corner (alt+enter twice on the 2d client)

 

[Sarsmi]

Just to add a little to Lyconis' good advice, when you use the resize command use it on the most central, largest property of where you want the castle. If you use it on more than one property you will be blocked from placing on the spot of the account you are not using to place (if that makes any sense).

Something else you can do in the meantime is to consolidate space. If two of your properties are fairly small and next to each other you can drop them both and place one large property. Make certain you aren't giving up any valuable territory that you will need for the castle if you do this.

If you find out that you absolutely need some of the land that your neighbor's house is taking up you may have to buy the house from them. In which case leave them messages on their board or leave piles of 6 gold with a book on top "want to buy your house" and be prepared to pay for the space.

Going this route will require a great deal more caution, IE waiting before you upgrade to a castle (for several weeks if you have to), only trying to upgrade right after server up, tracking for animals, monsters, and people many many times, etc. Now that there is someone who definitely knows you are going for a castle spot they might be inclined to hang around and see if they can't make a little bit more gold by dropping another inconvenient small and trying to sell it to you.

Sorry if this all makes you paranoid! Probably you will get your castle with no issues, but better safe than sorry.

 

[Lyconis]

If you do resize the "outer rim" houses DO NOT USE THOSE ACCOUNTS TO TEST PLACE DURING THE RESIZE PLACEMENT TIMER. That means if you plan to place a castle at location a, which is overlapped by an 18x18 which you resize to a 16x11 do not use the account with the 16x11 to test placement to see if housing is available at new location between the houses.
When you are in the resize house mode you do not receive a confirmation gump and can place as many houses as you want and will be forced into a 15 minute timeout to drop each house.