If You Had A $50 SEN Card…
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
I’ve never added up all of the money I’ve spent on Home because I’m afraid to find out the total. The most I’ve added to my wallet at one time was fifty dollars, when I received a PSN card as a birthday present; my largest single purchase was around fifteen dollars, when I bought the Anime/Planetland package from the Sony store.
I don’t even want to think about my monthly average multiplied by the last twenty months I’ve spent on Home. Even if it was only twenty dollars…oops, stop that, self.
So, if you find yourself fairly new to Home and with a fifty-dollar SEN card, I have suggestions for you. You will want to make the most of your money and get everything you need to take the noob shine off.
First, a warning. There are many stores in the Home mall full of everything imaginable. Just like real life, your money will go faster than you expect it to, so plan ahead. I recommend that you make careful notes and total all of your planned purchases before you hit the “confirm” button. You will most likely want a personal space, furniture, music, a game, a companion, several hairstyles and clothing. You can find a lot of bundled items in the Sony store, but the combinations can be fairly random. Shop wisely.
Personal space: There are over seventy-five personal estates in Home now, so how do you choose one?
First, tour an estate before you buy. Home, itself offers tours of many of the new spaces. Also, Guides (Home Community Volunteers or HCVs) give tours, as do other Home groups and citizens who are easily located on the Sony forum. Your friends (or friends of friends) may have a space that you’d like to visit, and they would probably be happy to show it to you. As a last resort, YouTube offers video tours; this publication has recently joined in on the video-tour bandwagon as well.
One caveat about video tours: with these you will only be able to see what the video maker shows you, obviously, and there is no chance for questions to be answered. Estates come in all sizes from a tiny record studio to an immense prehistoric land, and size does not determine cost. Many factors affect the price, including any extras that are offered, such as the free furniture with the Dream Yacht or a built-in game or games, such as the Tron space offers. You need to consider what you want from a personal estate. Will you be having parties with lots of friends or decorating for yourself and a special someone to share some quiet time? Perhaps you will want to play games there. Also, consider your personal taste. Do you like modern, woodsy, spacey or something else? Home has something for everyone.
Furniture: There’s a wide range of furniture available, from the sleekly modern to the wacky and everything in between. Check out Originals in the furniture store for six really interesting bundles of furniture. Other stores such as LOOT and Lockwood offer great furniture packages, also. Many estates also have complimenting furniture packages for sale, if matching styles are to your taste.
I recommend buying a furniture package for the best price available. Actually, I recommend a package for almost every purchase, when available. Take a look at the three hundred-item packages being offered presently.
You will definitely want to consider one of the estate/furniture/clothing bundles now being offered in the Home store, if you like any of the following themes. Choose between the Pharaoh’s Tomb with seventeen pieces of furniture and thirty-five clothing items; Planetland with twenty-two furniture items and sixteen clothing items; the Luxury Weekend Lake House with nineteen furniture items; Anime Style with thirty furniture items and twenty clothing items; the Luxury Racing Box with twelve furniture items and eighteen clothing items; or the Paris Clocktower Apartment with seventy-six furniture items and thirty-five clothing items.
Music: The music store presently offers thirteen music items, of which twelve items retail for only $1.99. One item (Phonograph Music Box) retails for $2.49, but includes the “Slap Happy” game. Five of these items are boom boxes and the other eight are assorted items from a Valentine’s Chocolate box to the Scariachi Band. When next the season comes, Christmas items, such as stocking and presents, are also offered with holiday tunes. Two of LOOT’s spaces presently offer RadioIO, with multiple choices of music genres, as well as EOD (Entertainment on Demand) and it has been announced that LOOT will be offering a portable EOD device this summer.
Games: There are thirteen different types of games. There are a variety of cabinet games that range in price from $1.99 to $6.99 and many, if not all, offer rewards. You will also find solitaire, checkers, chess, pool tables, and dart boards for sale there, usually priced at $2.49. Some of these items offer rewards, also. There is even a “life sized” chess board for $2.99 that makes quiet a statement about your commitment to the game. Some games like pool offer color choices, and some, like checkers and chess, offer various furniture styles.
Companions: The average cost of a companion is $2.49, though some are $2.99 and at least one is less. With over 175 companions for sale, you may have a hard time choosing just one.
I’ve determined there are six basic categories of companions, which may help narrow your search. These are mythical, such as fairies, mermaids, unicorns and cupids; animals, such as tigers, elephants, puppies and kittens; machinery, such as air fleets, UFO’s, and mechs; cartoons, such as mice, pigs, cat boys and balloons; mini-people, such as paparazzi, detectives and zombies; and miscellaneous items such as Cody Knightmare and Thing in a Box. Remember, they follow you faithfully almost everywhere you go.
Hairstyles: Do not walk, but run to Shears and get at least one or two hairstyles. Nothing screams “noob” like a bad (default) haircut. There are over seventy male styles and over ninety females styles to choose from there, in all lengths. Many are pinned up, braided or pony tailed and some have colored highlights. Consider one of the packages here that bundle three or more styles.
Clothing: Check the Sony store for clothing packs before shopping on Home. However, although there are descriptions provided for items, you will not be able to try the clothes on before you buy, as you can in the Home mall stores. Before shopping for your wardrobe, determine not only your personal preferences in styles, but where you will be spending most of your time on Home and shop accordingly. If you love the beach, you will want to have extra swim suits. If you want to dance the night away, look for clothing that is attractive, eye catching and stylish. You will find everyday clothes in a variety of styles in the Threads Originals store, and some of the best bargains are to be found there also. Lockwood has some very smart styles in their various stores. If you are looking for the unusual I recommend that you try the Costumes store.
My last suggestion is that you avoid the Exclusives store with their much higher prices for now (or forever, depending on your taste and disposable income). Now that you have decided to shop on Home, you will want to make the best use of your funds, and hopefully this guide helps you. Happy shopping!
March 12th, 2012 by Kassadee Marie | 9 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
I started on Home around May 2009. Back then, there was not as much of a selection as there is now. If I was to star all over with a $50 card I would start off by:
1. Find a new Personal Space with some really cool features. For me, Games would be first, Movies would be second and theme would be third. I like my guests to be entertained so that’s why built in games take precedence over aesthetics. Now that we have Crackle, I would also give movies spaces serious consideration like the Sunset Yacht and Space Apartment.
2. Furniture would be next. First, I would find a few nice Arcade Machines and Games to play. Then I would add in furniture that appropriately blends in with the Space and theme it to work with my Game Room. I would also take the size and item limits into consideration in order to best fill up the space.
3. Last, If there is enough $$ left over, I would look for or put together a costume or outfit that best describes my interests and represents my individuality. Since I love video games and practice Iai-do, I would most likely start with a full Samurai outfit from Granzella, Ninja Outfit from nDreams, or the Samurai Bot costume from Lockwood.
Once the whole card is spent, I would hit up the Internet and research as many free Home Items as I possibly could. Then I would go back into Home and collect them. I would most likely start up with the Namco Museum Essentials Demo and then work in other stuff from there. Since the Streetfighter X Tekken event is going on now, I would do everything I can to get all of that sweet swag. As a matter of fact, my first three costumes were the Ninja Outfit, Samurai Armor and Ryu from SF IV.
I just happened to add $50 to my wallet last week. A chunk of that is going to Journey.
If I had the full $50 and no Home items, I’d probably buy the following:
Sunset Yacht for the E.O.D. and the atmosphere.
Blaster’s Paradise for the built-in minigame.
Cutteridge Estate because I like horror.
That leaves me what, about $32 to play with? I’m grabbing a Sodium Chili Red Pilot’s jacket to unlock that game and all of the stuff I can get with Sodium credits, and the Trigger Happy and Cabin Boy cabinets, as well as Brimstone Poker or Darts to play with friends.
I think I’m now in the vicinity of $22. I need some furniture and clothes. I can get by with about $6 in clothes, because I’m a guy and I only need jeans and two pairs of shoes: One formal, one casual. The rest goes to furniture that I like.
There are a bunch of value bundles in the PlayStation Store for Home that are worth checking out. You can get a ton of clothes, a ton of furniture, or a selection of clothes, furniture and sometimes a personal space for much less than you’d spend on these items in Home.
Yes, I briefly mentioned the bundles available in the Sony Store. The problem is that you can’t see what you’re buying here before the purchase and you can’t try on the clothes. I wish these bundles were available in the Home Stores, so you could “look before you buy”.
Nice job Kass. If I were a new person and I wanted to see the clothes in the bundle packs before I buy I would take the time to read the descriptions them go into Home and find the stuff in the stores and try them on first. It might take a bit of patience but it is better than buyers remorse afterwards.
AlphaZone4 is the place to go for freebie info and I would actually suggest that people go there and collect the free stuff in Home before they buy anything at all, this will give them a better base to build their inventory on. I still have my freebie account I used to write about that and I still add to it with new things that come out. I have furnished my entire harbor for free and collected quite a range of clothing as well.
I would like to second the suggestion to check out Home’s free and unlockable content. It’s not just about extending the budget. I find that the items that give me the most pleasure in Home are the ones I have had to work for. My gold EA Poker bracelet is still one of my favorite hand items. I use the lamps I bought with Sodium credits everywhere. And my new Underwater Apartment is one of my favorite personal spaces, because I had to work to get it.
And of course there is every Homeling’s favorite unlockable item, the glorious Echochrome Suit! (Echochrome arcade game, Bowling Alley or Indie Park, 2000 points. You can do it! We all did…)
Fifty dollars doesn’t go anywhere near as far as you think it’s going to.
Nice article, wisg i had it to read 6 months ago, when i 1st joined
For some reason when I was reading this, I got the song…If I had a Million dollars by the Barenaked Ladies stuck in my head.
I just got a shiny new $20 PSN card for Journey. (Not the band the game) Also, the Midway space is free and as you play games, you get a ton of free stuff for it. Spaces like this can really stretch your money because I agree with the comments it doesn’t go as far as you think
You could always buy the 4 mansion spaces, the Jetsetter apartment and still have 2 bucks left over.
OK, maybe not.
I’d start with the Sunset Yacht and the Sodium pilot jacket for the reasons that HIW mentioned. A $5 bundle or 2 would really help to stock the inventory.
The Dolphy Room is also a good recommendation for newbies because it yields the personal space, the racing game, some rewards and great opportunity to make some friends for $4.