Tired of not having a bank on Korthos? Need a pawn broker who will buy your stuff at the harbor? Are you looking to improve XP, drop rates or ease of access to quests you repeat often, even through multiple TR's? Then this suggestion is for you!

What is this suggestion?

Short version: Do the right quests, and you can spend in-game currency to improve the public zone your in as well as quests that are in/nearby that zone. Happy?

Detailed version: When you complete a quest chain for a particular area (such as Korthos), you gain the ability to spend in-game currency in order to improve a zone to your liking. How, you ask? You can add certain things in each zone if it does not already exist, such as a banker, auctioneer, pawn brokers, vendors, guild airship towers, and more! In addition, you can add 'decorations' to each of your zones that serve as buffs to quests in that area (Relatively minor buffs, such as 5% more XP, 5% increased named drop rate, a portal that instantly takes you outside the quest entrance, slayer boosts to wilderness areas, exc.). You can also invest in workers to gather resources, such as platinum, crafting ingredients, certain items that exist in that particular area only, an astral shard or two, and much more! Finally, there's player housing: You can buy your own house in each zone which can prove very useful when you upgrade it!

I will describe the suggestions one thing at a time:

Requirements:

You will need to complete certain quests in that area in order to free the area of whatever problems plague that area. Usually, it's a quest chain, or whatever quests happen to be there. If the area has both heroic and epic quests available, completing one will unlock certain investment opportunities and completing both will unlock them all (The order does not matter, completing heroic and not epic or epic and not heroic both unlock the same things). Once you complete them, a usable NPC or object will appear in a certain area and allow you to add/modify things. If you TR, the upgrades you have already placed will remain, but you will be unable to add/modify anything in that area until you complete the requirements again; however, you will only need to complete either the heroic or epic quests to regain access to everything you had before in that area.

Adding/upgrading services:

If there is a particular service lacking in a area, such as a bank, auctioneer, pawn shop, special vendor, airship tower, stone of change, crafting hall, exc., you can add it! You will need to talk/use whatever allows you to construct things in that zone to allow you to view hotspots, then all you gotta do is walk up to that hotspot, select what you want to build at that location, and after paying for it, you can place it! Each zone will have its limits, but in general, the higher level it is, the more things you can place in that zone. In addition, if there is already a vendor in a particular zones that offers services, but you want them to offer more/better services, you can upgrade them to provide you better services based on who they are!

The 'decorations'

If you like doing quests in that zone, or even wilderness tasks, you can build decorations to improve the rewards you receive from doing these quests/tasks. Each zone will allow you to build buffs that will give a minor XP bonus to quests, increase loot level, and more, and each zone has unique buffs that can be put in place. For example, some zones allow you to build portals that allow you to teleport outside a particular quest, increase the drop % of a particular item exclusive to that zone, add a minor slayer boost that stacks with other boosts, and more! To balance things out, only certain things can be placed at certain decoration hotspots, although they can be swapped out for free like guild halls.

Hiring workers:

Each area has its share of people looking for work, and you can hire them to get resources for you! There are universal resources available for each zone, such as platinum and cannith essences, and then there are unique resources throughout zones, whether its astral shards, tapestries, runes, ingredients, and more based on the zone your in! To balance things out, what they can get for you is slower than if you had gone into the quest and farmed it yourself, and there's a certain limit on how many of these things they can hold for you before they are lost. In addition, some things may be bound to account if it is deemed necessary. Finally, if you TR, all resource gathering will be paused until you unlock that zone again; you wont even be able to withdraw resources until you complete the quests in that area.

Player housing:

Finally, each zone has a empty house or plot of land that allows you to build a house; price rates will vary based on the zone. However, once you buy a home, it is yours to customize! Right off the bat, you can choose a few different designs to build (or renovate) your home, which are purely cosmetic. Inside, you can add a variety of services in your home to make them useful, such as a portal to teleport to your other homes, shared chest storage space (Each home can have a chest that stores stuff on the astral plane, and somehow, the more chests you build, the more space available!), a guild buff bar to access all your guild buffs, a feast table to rest and regenerate points, a spirit binder, a upgradable bed that recharges your clickies/boosts (and can even give an extra boost/clickie!), and many other useful things any adventurer would want to make their home their own! Each zone has unique furnishings that can be ported to other zones, so buy a home in each zone you unlock! If you are in a party, you can invite others to your home if you wish in a similar manner to guild airships; when they are in the public zone and are close enough to the house/land plot, you can right click their name bar and invite them in! They cannot access certain things and if they use buffs in your home, they may get a lesser version, or none at all if they do not own the buff in their own home, if they have one. In addition, if you TR, you wont be able to access any particular home until you unlock the zone again, but once you unlock even one home, you can gain access to all storage space built previously.

As a bonus, homes can have what I call 'guild buff insurance'; certain upgrades have a added feature to allow you to gain certain guild buffs if you are not in a guild or the guild your in does not have a high enough level. The upgrades, at their best, will NEVER match the best guild buffs out there, but the idea is to have access to some guild buffs in case your guild standing changes, not all of them. Having access to limited duration and effect guild buffs is better than no access You can access these upgrades if your not in a guild/in a low level guild by using the guild bar in your home.

Other things to know

This suggestion is designed to be a resource investment that can pay you back in multiple ways across multiple lives. It will be EXPENSIVE to invest in these zones, especially if you pay in platinum, but it will be worth it. In addition, you wont be able to build every single thing in every single zone due to the limited amount of space, so choose what you build carefully. There will still be public instances with players inside them; the things you can build will not interfere with other players or the environment; for example, that stone head you see in the market can appear as a vendor to you, but a stone head or even something different to others, and it will take the same space no matter what. At worst, it may result in clipping issues, or players may climb/walk over the objects you replace, but we live in a world of fantasy and disbelief; many things can happen that differ from the real world! I might add that while most places will have investable zones, not all of them will, especially if its dead content or content with hardly any quests or things to do in them.

I really hope you, the player, approve of this suggestion. One of the greatest strengths of this game, when it takes advantage of it, is being able to customize how you play, and this strength is what inspired me to write this detailed idea. I encourage you to provide feedback, for I believe one day, some or all of these suggestions could be taken into consideration by the developers, although nothing is certain but death and taxes.