Undoubtedly the most distinct feature of last year’s Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds expansion was the new homesteading system. Of course, one of the first questions that came to mind when it was initially being revealed was, “OK, this map is cool and all, but what if I’m not into the cottagecore bearpeople theme?” It seemed like only a matter of time until more house maps would become available, and when Visions of Eternity releases October 28th, players will get their hands on the first new house map since the system’s launch. It also brings with it a variety of housing quality of life features that will be particularly useful when packing up and moving your living space.

Play Guild Wars 2ArenaNet’s Sarah Davies was kind enough to take us on a guided tour of everything coming, so let’s dive in!

The new house map itself is a big tropical private island. It is roughly the size of Janthir Wilds’ Hearth’s Glow map, but features much more varied terrain. Davies explained that one of the goals with the original house map was to give players lots of flat space to work with, but that already exists, so the devs wanted to do things a little differently this time.

At the center of the island is a small mountain with floating rocks all around. Woven throughout it are leylines, which players can ride like any others in the game if they have the masteries. Diving into the cave mouth at the top of the mountain will bring players into a beautiful cave system filled with luminous plants and ley magic-infused water that reduces gravity. It looks like something out of Avatar – in a good way! It’s especially beautiful at night. We weren’t shown it with the shimmering aurora skybox recently added to the cash shop, but I bet it goes perfectly with the swirling leylines.

The house on the island is an upended ship with several floors and an outdoor bar/patio area out front. If that makes you think old Lion’s Arch, you’re not wrong, but these ship structures are a bit less rickety and more tropical-looking.

The real headline about the house part of the homestead plot, though, is that it is entirely crafted from decorations! This means that not only can you remove the whole thing entirely if you wish, but there are a variety of new walls, windows, and stairs that you can use to make your own bespoke buildings. The devs are especially proud of the placeable door, which actually opens and closes, a much-requested feature. Even the ship is made of modular furnishings, so you can make even taller ship-towers or flip it on its keel and place it back in the ocean where ships belong.

More good news is that the new homestead plot will be available immediately on the launch of Visions of Eternity, no mastery or story progress needed! All you need is to have unlocked the original housing system in Janthir Wilds, and you can ask Deft Lahar to pack up your house and switch your plot to the new one.

Speaking of Deft Lahar, there’s a new housing vendor on this map more appropriate to the tropical island locale: a pineapple choya. Given the continuing popularity of the weird little cactus guys, I’m sure a lot of players will be obsessed with this new iteration.

If you were hoping that Visions of Eternity would let you simply have two separate houses, sadly, you are out of luck. However, this release also brings with it the next best thing: the new layout saving feature. With the click of a button, you can save everything in your homestead plot as it is right now, then either load up a new one or start fresh.

Layout files are stored locally in XML files. This means that if you play on multiple computers, your layouts won’t follow you automatically (although you could theoretically use a cloud storage service or the like to sync them), but the upside of that is that you have access to the layout files. Davies demonstrated opening up the file in notepad and copying some or all of the values into a new file to make a backup or move furnishings to a layout on a different homestead. Having access to the files also means that you can share layout files to your friends! There is also a new permission you can turn on on your house to allow guests to copy your current layout in-game. If you try to import a layout that you don’t have all the furnishings for, you will be given a list of what you don’t have, and you can even ignore the warning and it will load up as much of the layout as it can with everything you do have.

Sadly, layout saves are for your whole homestead plot all at once, so if you were hoping you could draw a box around a particular structure and just paste it into your new house, this isn’t going to do that. However, Davies demonstrated that players can save their current layout, clear everything out, then build a specific structure, save it, and copy the XML from that file into multiple other saved layouts. If that sounds terribly fiddly, well, that’s because it is, but at least it’s something players can do. And it wouldn’t surprise me if some ambitious players step up and create some external tools to help make some of this less cumbersome.

I was also disappointed that a preview window for furnishings still isn’t coming with this expansion, as I feel that this is the biggest quality-of-life upgrade we need. I asked if that was something that might be possible soon, and Davies explained that this is something the team is aware that players want and has looked into, but apparently it is non-trivial to implement, and when it came down to prioritizing adding a preview feature and adding new stuff, new stuff won out in the end. Disappointing, but fair!

I’m excited to decorate my new private island home and relieved that I can continue to work on my current house with the knowledge that as soon as Visions of Eternity launches, I will be able to save my current layout and flip back to it whenever I’m feeling more “alpine cottage” than “tropical vacation.”

Flameseeker Chronicles is one of Massively OP’s longest-running columns, covering the Guild Wars franchise since before there was a Guild Wars 2. Now penned by Tina Lauro and Colin Henry, it arrives on Tuesdays to report everything from GW2 guides and news to opinion pieces and dev diary breakdowns. If there’s a GW2 topic you’d love to see explored, drop ’em a comment!