Best POH layout?

[ForeverNight]

I'm working on a layout for my Player Owned House. I'm level 70 now, so I figure this layout has to be the one I stick with for the rest of my RuneScape days. I want something efficeint, but also something that looks like an actual house. I'll be posting some pictures later, but for right now, does anyone have any tips for me?

 

Thanks!

~Night

[ForeverNight]

Okay, so I feel like this layout is really boxy. But to make it un-boxy, I have to add a bunch of gardens and stuff, which makes planning out the second floor a little hard.

 

Here is the ground floor:

 

And here is the first floor:

 

I want to add a Games and Combat Room, but I can't figure out where. I'm also not sure where or if I want a Throne Room/Dungeon Entrance. I guess I would have to tack on a Throne Room near the Dining Room's Formal Garden. With a dungeon entrance in the Garden itself. Any suggestions?

[mlskid]

Well, I asked this question about a year ago and got an answer similar to this from quyneax.

In general its one of the best setups for just general use, as it has all of the important stuff touching.

 

Oh, and as you can see, all of my house is on one level, with whatever I need, and it all is enclosed iirc, or maybe it only has one door leading out. But it's pretty much all confined.

Edited July 12, 2012 by mlskid

[ForeverNight]

Hmmm... If I did everything on one floor like that, I could do the (Formal) Gardens, which I really want to do. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about not being ble to place rooms on the second floor. What does that do for a Quest/Skill Hall, though? Don't you need two floors to access all the Hotspots?

[mlskid]

Hmmm... If I did everything on one floor like that, I could do the (Formal) Gardens, which I really want to do. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about not being ble to place rooms on the second floor. What does that do for a Quest/Skill Hall, though? Don't you need two floors to access all the Hotspots?

 

Yeah, the quest hall just goes upstairs to another one and then i put a bedroom and some other things up there. I can't really remember. Those are the places where you can do what you want, and have a lot of fun, like a bunch of combat rings, game rooms, and such.

[ForeverNight]

Hmmm...(again) I could do the Quest/Skill Halls as towers, with nothing attatched on the second floor. Not sure how that would look, though. It would either be really cool or really fail. :D

[ForeverNight]

Hmmm...(again) I could do the Quest/Skill Halls as towers, with nothing attatched on the second floor. Not sure how that would look, though. It would either be really cool or really fail. :D

 

But I could use the Fancy or Dark Stone styles to make it look castle-y......... :cool:

[The Real ET]

No offense, mslkid, but that looks like a pretty bad design. And what I'm about to tell to ForeverNight will explain what I think is wrong with yours too.

 

OT: First and foremost, good house design stars, in my opinion, by making the most important rooms of your house as close to the entrance portal as possible. The most important rooms (again, my opinion) are: Chapel, Study, Portal Chamber, Workshop, and possibly Kitchen (depending on how you train Construction). Putting these rooms as close to the entrance portal as possible ensures that if you're training prayer at Chapel, making tele tabs in Study, teleporting in Portal Chamber, repairing armour or grinding flatpacks in Workshop, or grinding oak larders in the Kitchen, all of it will be as fast as possible because it's near your point of entrance. This changes depending on how you do things and how you use servants, but those are the rooms I consider most important.

ForeverNight, your formal garden (where I assume your entrance is going to be) is in a good spot, touching 2 portal chambers and the chapel. Since the number of ways to transport oneself around Runescape has increased significantly since construction's release, I think only 1 portal chamber is really necessary (mostly for the Canafis tele), but if you don't have a lot of transport methods unlocked or have specific plans for the teleports, having 2 portal chambers will give you access to 6 of 7 portal possibilities. But don't be afraid to cut one out if you don't need it.

Also, I would switch the positions of your Skill Hall and Quest Hall with your Workshop and Study. Alternatively, if you cut one of the portal chambers, put your Workshop or Study there depending on what you're going to use more often. Or if you're going to use your Kitchen when you train construction one day (always leave possibilities open or you might have to muck around the entire house), move the Kitchen close to the Formal Garden.

Okay, with that kind of efficiency out the way, you can focus on everything else. While good training spot management might make your house useful for you and others to use for training, it's all the other rooms that make a house fun and feel like home.

So, I do not think that Quest/Skill Halls look like towers unless they have an actual second floor. But the most important part you missed is that you can build them on top of each other. I would put the Quest Hall on the Ground Floor since you can get unlimited Glory teleports from it, but ultimately, it's not that big of a deal.

So maybe put a Costume Room, Games Room, Parlour, and/or Throne room on the ground floor where you want the first floor's rooms to be, then put 2 bedrooms, and whatever other fun rooms you missed on the first floor. Then surround some of the ground floor rooms with a Menagerie or two, maybe some gardens (possibly one with a dungeon entrance if you want a dungeon, though the best dungeons are built in houses that only care about the dungeons so they can allocate all room allowances to dungeon space).

 

It'll take some tweaking to get something you really like (my houses plans took fooooorever), but for the best house, it needs to be a personal thing for you. A great starting point is thinking about training possibilities that I mentioned, and then just use other advice and your own desires to just putting everything else down.

 

Wow, that was a much longer post than I meant it to be, but hope I helped.

[mlskid]

Yeah, that was an old picture i just realized when i went into my house to check. I'll make a new diagram and post in a bit.

 

Here is what my current layout looks like now:

 

In this setup what you need is all in place, for training oak larders, you have the bell-pull right there in the next room, about six squares away. The chapel is right next to the menagerie as you can then restore both prayer and summoning points, and then go tele with your glory, or with any of the town teleports that you may want only another room over. This includes nearly every type of room, and I'm not done designing my dungeon and first floor yet. The first floor has one bedroom a quest and skill hall just because i needed another bedroom someplace in my layout while I was creating this.

Edited July 12, 2012 by mlskid

[Quyneax]

@Deathlord: The most important rooms are the chapel, menagerie and teleports (2x portal & quest hall). Nobody uses studies or kitchens and you certainly don't need to run between portal and kitchen very often (butler service). Workshops require very little banking too, as you recharge armour maybe twice a month.

 

The idea of that design is that you run east for summoning restore, south for prayer restore, then west/northwest/twice west for the teleport you need. It's the most efficient setup for slayer and bossing.

[Arcley]

The idea of that design is that you run east for summoning restore, south for prayer restore, then west/northwest/twice west for the teleport you need. It's the most efficient setup for slayer and bossing.

I know I'm nitpicking but since you said the most efficient and I know the efficiency ppl like to argue about details (just look at the 200m thread)... If you swap the chapel and the menagerie, you can utilise all four exits of the latter and reach all the portals going through three rooms rather than four. I know. It's groundbreaking.

 

Anyway I think the best advice is what rooms are best to have near the entrance and that's already been given. Specific room arrangements aren't really that important because let's be honest. The best exp isn't about saving two seconds here and there walking a slightly shorter distance. It's about playing a few extra hours instead and getting a thousand times higher benefit. So I think most of Deathlord's advice is good for a full featured easy to use POH, even if some of the possible activities aren't the best use of a player's time. Gotta have fun sometimes too.

[The Real ET]

Anyway I think the best advice is what rooms are best to have near the entrance and that's already been given. Specific room arrangements aren't really that important because let's be honest. The best exp isn't about saving two seconds here and there walking a slightly shorter distance. It's about playing a few extra hours instead and getting a thousand times higher benefit. So I think most of Deathlord's advice is good for a full featured easy to use POH, even if some of the possible activities aren't the best use of a player's time. Gotta have fun sometimes too.

 

Arcley knows what's up. And yeah, Quyneax's design is the best for bossing, but I am primarily a skiller and have access to almost every re-usable transport option in the game, so that's what my advice focused on. Also, not everyone uses butler service (I certainly didn't in my days of poverty). So that's where I'm coming from. I still stand by Workshop and Kitchen being important for whichever method of Construction training is used, as well as a Study for teletab making. But it's all down to what ForeverNight wants to use the house for.

[ForeverNight]

@Aes Sedai, I use my study a lot. Teletabs are huge with me, so I might switch the Study to the Menagere's location, and move the Menagerie to the Garden next to the Chapel. That way I can use mlskid's Prayer+Summoning points idea. In terms of portals, I like having all six possible locations available. My house is already in Yanille so, for me at least, I have all location easily available. For the Skill/Quest Hall towers thing, I just meant if I do a two-storey Hall, but don't connect any rooms to the Halls on the second floor, they would stand out from the rest of the house. It would've looked wierd if I used one of the cheaper styles, since all of the rooftops are slanted. But if I go with the Fancy or Dark stone (probably Fancy), you get that Falador-castle look.

[ForeverNight]

I'm primarily a Skiller as well, but I do like bossing when I have enough materials. I also use Prayer and Summoning constantly, so that's another reason why I want those room closer to the portal. I duno... I might expand the house one square up. It doesn't make sense to put the Menagerie next to the Chapel, really. If I just need to restore Summoning, then I need to run through the Chapel to get there.

[ForeverNight]

I think I like this one... a lot of the general first-floor layout is the same, though. It isn't boxy, and boxiness is something I can't stand, so I like that. I also have a ton of room upstairs to expand, seeing a how I'll have 7 usable doors between the Skill and Quest Halls.

 

 

What does everyone think?

[Hedgehog]

Switch your quest hall with the formal garden south of it.

[The Real ET]

I think I like this one... a lot of the general first-floor layout is the same, though. It isn't boxy, and boxiness is something I can't stand, so I like that. I also have a ton of room upstairs to expand, seeing a how I'll have 7 usable doors between the Skill and Quest Halls.

 

What does everyone think?

 

Looks as good as any house I've seen. As long as the door alignments work out and you like it, go for it.

[ForeverNight]

As far as I know, the doors match up. I don't like that the Menagerie only has three usable exits, but it's all good. I think I'll use this layout, but I dunno... I might mess around with a few other plans first.

 

EDIT: Well, I guess if I turned the Workshop so the doors face into the Menagerie instead of the Skill Hall, it would work. Either way, the Workshop is only accessable from one door. But I'll have easier access to it from the Portal. Which is good; I make a lot of Flatpacks. :D

[Zooey C. Deschanel]

Keep portals workshop and altar near garden portal for ease of acess if needed.

[ForeverNight]

Bah... I messed up the measurements. I only had room to go up to the Parlour. I had to delete almost my entire house so I could go three 8 x 8 squares down. x_X