{"id":795501,"date":"2025-12-04T06:01:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T06:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jSBWhGsKtfJVuapG9ZvPDo"},"modified":"2025-12-04T06:01:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T06:01:47","slug":"the-elder-scrolls-onlines-ingenious-housebuilders-are-creating-impossible-frankenstein-wonders-out-of-game-assets-and-duct-tape-and-they-took-me-on-a-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-elder-scrolls-onlines-ingenious-housebuilders-are-creating-impossible-frankenstein-wonders-out-of-game-assets-and-duct-tape-and-they-took-me-on-a-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"The Elder Scrolls Online’s ingenious housebuilders are creating impossible Frankenstein wonders out of game assets and duct tape, and they took me on a tour"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Elder Scrolls Online is having its 10th birthday this week\u2014to celebrate, I was invited to have a chat both the game's creative director Rich Lambert, as well as several players deep in the housing community's paint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To be clear, I haven't played this game since 2019, but I've always been sinking time into at least one MMORPG. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14\u2014I even had a surprisingly-long stint on the now-official City of Heroes private server<\/a>, Homecoming.<\/p>\n

Despite being super familiar with how incredibly creative these communities are, though, ESO's housing artists still managed to surprise and delight me\u2014which is mostly owed to the game's hands-off, chill attitude towards clipping objects into each other. A form of digital sculpting the community's affectionately named “cobbling.”<\/p>\n

The art of the cobble<\/h2>\n
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\"An<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Zenimax, Bethesda \/ House by Futerko)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nordenheim, a Twitch streamer and overall Elder Scrolls Housing enthusiast,<\/a> is showing me around an ice-cream parlour built by Futerko. “That candy cane striping?” he says, directing me to the darling little barbershop sign out front. “That is literally a wood elf trough of slop, but just turned to only show the candy-cane.”<\/p>\n

Every base I'm shown has the same kind of ingenuity powering it: Beds shunted into the ground to form casino tables, a warhorn turned on its side next to an inverted, clipped candle to represent a spilled ice cream. I'm even told there's a “giant pachinko machine” that fully works, though that's on a different region's server. He was kind enough to send me a screenshot, though:<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Zenimax, Bethesda \/ House created by Trasse)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“It's just your creativity and imagination. That's the only limit,” I'm told. Under any circumstances, I'd be sceptical\u2014but staring at these builds? I'm starting to believe that might genuinely be the case. Limitations exist, sure, but limitation is the mother of creativity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Zenimax, Bethesda \/ House created by Futerko)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every peek behind the curtain only impresses me further. To be clear: these mosaics aren't just premade assets slapped together on grids. ESO players have honed the art of smashing models into each other to, essentially, sculpt entirely new models like 3D mosaics. To demonstrate this, Nordenheim pulls apart a tree he's created right in front of my eyes, which feels like watching someone huck their Lego Death Star at a wall just to see it explode.<\/p>\n

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Image 1 of 2<\/span><\/p>\n
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\"An<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

Before… <\/span>(Image credit: Zenimax, Bethesda \/ House created by Nordenheim)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Image 2 of 2<\/span><\/p>\n
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\"The<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

… and after! <\/span>(Image credit: Zenimax, Bethesda \/ House created by Nordenheim)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The game has this neat mechanic in housing areas\u2014if you press F5, your cursor will tell you what objects you're looking at, giving you a proper appreciation for just how complex some of these builds are. I assumed one oak tree was a premade asset, until I activated my newly-acquired gamer vision and realised it was like, 50 logs, just\u2026 folded into each other.<\/p>\n

“There's a lot of creative professionals who actually joined the housing community just because of the sheer creative aspect of the game \u2026 we have illustrators and architects and all sorts who end up diving into the [system]”, Nordenheim explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also spoke with Futerko, a housing enthusiast and Youtuber<\/a> responsible for that trough-powered ice cream sign. She also happens to create some beautiful stuff, like this fairy landscape complete with wise ents<\/a>. “I've never before encountered a game with such freedom in building,” she tells me. “Cobbling in this game is unprecedented. What you can create is practically infinite, of course, as long as you have an idea for it!”<\/p>\n

One of her favourite personal builds, an underwater house called “Into the Unknown,” sports statues of both Poseidon and a giant Hydra\u2014which are similarly cobbled together from spare assets, forming a sum greater than their parts. “Constructing the stone effigies of Poseidon and the Hydra from scratch proved to be a nice challenge,” she writes, which feels extremely humble considering what I'm looking at.<\/p>\n

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