Housing Item Limit and Building Blocks

Housing Item Limit refers to the number of items that can be placed in any home owned by character. There are two numbers that have separate item counts; one is for "normal" furniture and one is for a variety of items known as Building Blocks. How these two numbers function is described below. Guild halls also have item limits with slightly different "rules", addressed here as well.

Overview
Items count is a term used to describe the item limit (the base number of items that can be added to any home owned by a character minus the number of items placed in a house while decorating that house. For example, if you have a house that starts with a 200 item limit and place one item, your item count is reduces to 199.

In the early days of the Everquest 2, both Housing and the item count that limited decorating houses was pretty straight forward. Houses came in a few sizes, determined by the number of rooms they had, and the number of rooms indicated an item limit. That has changed!

General Changes
As these facets of the game gained popularity, significant changes to housing changed how both housing and "rooms" are perceived.
 * Additional rooms were added to were added to all Standard Houses in 2010 and large houses gained a balcony.
 * Though items like A tax-free Freeport residency license (which requires no need to use in-game currency or status to purchase or pay upkeep) have been around for ages, more houses that function in the same way have been added as well. This newer category, known as Prestige Housing added homes of various sizes and, because many are based on playbable zones within the game already and lack pre-built structures, Prestige homes lend themselves to much higher item counts and flexibility than players had seen in older housing zones.
 * The older housing remains very relevant due to the ease with which it can be obtained, but is now referred to as Standard Housing.

What Counts Toward the Limit?
Item count can make your head spin if you try to look at each house address and attempt remember which one has which limit. This is for many other reasons (in addition to those listed above) but the following factors come into play as well.

Over the years, many changes have also been made to item limits a few include:
 * Most books no longer count against item limits.
 * A Player-made charm, called Dimensional Pocket Expander can add 100 to any base item limit of any house your character owns.
 * After using the player made version, you can add even more by using one of two expanders purchased from the Marketplace. Personal House Item Limit Expander (100) add 100 items to the limit and Personal House Item Limit Expander (200) add 200 to the item limit.


 * And to complicate things further (in a good way) a new category was added in 2013 for house items that function differently, known as Building Blocks, described it its own section below.

About Size and Room Count
Floorplans and room counts have changed in older cities. As a result, the old system of counting rooms is confusing at the least and completely misleading if you're looking for a house with the maximum space for decorating.

The User Interface (UI) related to housing had a significant redesign and a system called Housing & Leaderboards introduced: As a result, houses are published in categories by their size, rather than a generic number of rooms or locations.
 * The freedom to easily "publish" (share) homes you decorate
 * Visit those published by other players
 * The potential to "win" house item rewards like the House Rating Trophy when published houses are well received by the decorating community.

Though there are no absolute "rules" for what determines a size, especially when Prestige Housing is taken into account, it often (more) accurately indicates a relative size compared to other housing.

Room count may always be somewhat debatable, but the counts listed in the tables below list interior rooms separate from any outdoor areas.

Building Blocks
Over the years what does and doesn't count as an "item" that reduces the item count has changed. In late 2013, one item category was slip off into its own and given an item count that matches the item count of "normal" furniture. All such items are known as building blocks because they are used to build unique structures of all kinds and can radically alter the appearance of any house.

Types of Building Blocks


 * Tiles are any square (equal on all "side"), flat building block items that can be easily places on the floor.
 * Rounded tiles are hexagonal in shape, rather than round, but function in the same way as tiles. They tend to be smaller in size when initially placed.


 * Walls were the first type pf building block added to EQ2. The first kind still have the name "Room Divider".
 * Room dividers these are walls that can easily be placed to divide up areas in a room. Walls with this name will always have a small ledge along the bottom portion of the wall, while the one described nest do not.
 * Narrow dividers are walls that will appear taller than the tall version in the examine window, due to the fact that they are an elongated rectangle that's taller than it is wide. The name can be confusing, but once you place the next type described, the name of these tiles makes sense.
 * Tall dividers appear larger in general than the Narrow walls described above and, when initially placed they do take up more overall space. They are still rectangular in shape, but each side of the rectangle is more "balanced", making them appear less narrow than the Narrow dividers.


 * Blocks (not to be confused with the general category name) come in two types:
 * Full blocks are cubes, equal on all sides and larger than the next type described.
 * Half blocks are quite literally half of a normal Full block.


 * Stairs are flat and rectangular and, like tiles, can easily be placed on a floor. They have a slight bit of depth to them, like an individual stair you'd find in the real-world.
 * Railings are small and very narrow, but not unlike a miniature version of the stair building blocks. In scale they mimic the size of real-world railings relative to the other building blocks, but they are flat on all sides.
 * Columns are pillars similar to those seen in real-world classical Greek architecture. There are many types that include the word column of pillar in the name, but most will have a wider base and top.
 * Tall Column are typically smooth cylindrical pillars that are more narrow than they are broad.
 * Short Column are just like the tall version, but they are broader than they are tall.


 * Doors come in a wide variety of styles, most of which can be opened and closed after they are placed.

Guild Halls and Item Count
Yes, there are a few different rules, that I will describe here shortly.