Skyrim’s Hearthfire DLC doesn’t add story to the base game, but instead adds more options for housing and family. While you can buy already built houses in most holds, usually the ones surrounded by protective walls, there are other holds that didn’t give you that option. If your Skyrim character has never really been a loner, and doesn’t mind putting in a bit of effort, you can now buy up to three properties in most of those other holds, leaving Winterhold the only one left out.
Customize your home to your heart's content, making the most out of your new land as you pour your character's blood, sweat, tears, and money into building their own home, slaving for hours real time to fully deck it out. When it comes to building your home, it’s definitely better to work smarter, not harder.
10 Pick A House, Any House
With three different plots of land available, each with their advantages and disadvantages, it’s best to think before you act. Since you will need a lot of resources and time just to build and furnish one home, you might not want to buy and build all three unless you’re trying to do everything you can in one save.
With different locations that might be closer to the towns you frequent, and a handful of unique attributes for each house, it’s worth weighing your options before picking which one you want.
9 Lower Levels Are Not Ideal
Though there are no level locks on obtaining any of the houses, it’s best to make sure you have a few levels under your belt for several reasons. First, before you can even buy the land you have to befriend the jarl of the hold, after which they will have the dialogue option to buy your land. This means you’ll have to do the necessary quests to become thane.
Second, because your house is secluded and not near the actual hold, there are all manners of random encounters you can run into. From bandit raids to giant attacks, to even your spouse getting kidnapped, you want to make sure you can defend your house.
8 Spend Money Or Materials, Not Both
Once you’ve built up the frame of your house, the inside is deserted and completely empty. There are two possible ways to get your decorations inside, and it boils down to what you would rather collect, as the amount of time it will take is about the same. Either collect as much gold as you can to furnish the inside similarly to how you would any other house, or collect the materials yourself in order to craft each item.
Some items can be very expensive to collect craft, like enchanting tables, which makes building everything yourself difficult, but your rooms will only be furnished over time if you pay for it, so choose wisely.
7 Stewards Are Essential
Not only do you need a Steward around if you want to furnish your house using money, but there are a lot of other things you need a Steward for. They’re easy enough to hire, and there are plenty of options for you to choose from. Once you have one you can finish the outside of your house that you can’t build with your own supplies, like the horse stables, and buy farm animals to live on your property too.
The carriage is almost essential to get from your Steward, especially if you don’t like fast traveling, as not only do you have to pay to hire them only once, but they will take you virtually anywhere, from the large holds like normal to the smaller settlements. Your Steward will also help protect your home when necessary, an added bonus during those bandit raids.
6 Choose Your Add-Ons Wisely
Your house has several customizable options, from sticking with a small, single room to building a grand house complete with three wings of your choosing. If you’re already planning on building the bigger home, don’t spend your materials and money furnishing the inside of the first, smaller home, because it will be turned into the entryway, meaning certain furnishings will no longer exist.
Your additional wings can’t be changed once you begin building them, either. There are many options to help customize your experience, from an armory to a gardening room, or alchemy and enchanting towers. Make sure you know what you want before you put down the foundation.
5 Don’t Forget The Children
Hearthfire isn’t just about building homes, but it’s also about building a family. In the DLC, you can adopt up to two kids in the game, whether they be orphans running around the city streets like Sofie in Windhelm, or from the orphanage in Riften. If you plan on adopting and want to move your family into your new house, you’ll need to make sure you have two beds for your kids, as well as a chest.
Adopting kids is definitely recommended, as they will liven up your house and also bring the option for a multitude of family pets to be unlocked and adopted into the house.
4 Save Your Hunting Material
There’s always at least once when running around in game that everyone tries to attack the nearby animals, peaceful or not. Whether you’ve attempted to run them down with just a sword in hand, or taken them out stealthily from a distance, you know what they usually have on them. If you plan on building your house with your own materials, you’re going to want to hold onto these instead of selling them or turning them into crafting materials.
Inside your house, there are plenty of wall decorations that will hang the heads of popular animals on the walls, and you’ll need to collect these items to do so. Even if you plan on buying your decorations, they’ll be handy in the basement, where you still need to create everything on your own.
3 Don’t Forget To Loot Bodies
There are many places within your house that you’ll be able to proudly display trophies of all kinds. From armor stands to display the armor you like but can’t wear yourself, to display cases you can arrange whatever you want inside of them, you’re not going to want to ignore some of the loot you may find that easily.
You’re going to want to collect as many amulets as you can as well. With the amulets you can build an altar to that god in your basement, collecting them all so that you can easily get their blessing whenever you need or want to.
2 Avoid Frivolous Spending
Stop buying certain materials and instead save your money for materials you can’t find anywhere other than a shop, or for letting your Steward decorate your house. Everything you need to build the basic structure of your house, from the foundation to the roof, can be found organically, and most of it is close by as well. Each house has a quarry you can mine a seemingly infinite amount of stone out of, and there is a clay deposit nearby for your needed clay bricks.
Even your sawn logs can be collected instead of bought. Just befriend any of the sawmill owners, usually by completing radiant quests, and you can talk to them to let you use the sawmill. Each animation gives you ten logs, so it doesn’t take up too much time to do so.
1 Raid The Mines
The material you’re going to need the most is, without a doubt, iron. You need it to complete your rooms, as you need it to build locks, but you’ll also need it in almost every piece of furnishing in the house in the form of nails or hinges. It’s unlikely you’ll have enough iron already for all of that, and not only can it be expensive in shops, but it’s hard to find.
Consider the Embershard Mine near Riverwood, which has a decent amount of ore that resets monthly, or explore around yourself to see what’s out there.