Welcome to my 2024 guide on the most useful player homes of The Elder Scrolls Online, perfect for both new players and housing enthusiasts! Whether you’re new to ESO or a veteran just looking to improve your in-game quality of life, these homes are essential for quick access to major cities and top amenities.

Why These Homes?

Each house on this list provides your characters with a free and fast way to travel throughout Tamriel while gaining quick access to major city services in ESO, along with all the in-home crafting and storage offered through furnishings. Forget about missing out on Undaunted Dailies, swapping armory builds, or leaving items in storage – these houses have got you covered!

What’s New in 2024?

I’ve updated my rankings to reflect the latest changes in Necrom and Gold Road, ensuring my ratings are relevant in ESO Gold Road in 2024. I’ve considered not just the furnishing limits inside each home but also the proximity to city services and Wayshrines, making this list all about functionality and utility, not aesthetics.

This guide is all about enhancing your ESO experience by saving you time and hassle. Watch the video above to discover the best homes in The Elder Scrolls Online for efficiency and convenience or read on if you prefer a written guide! You can also check out my full rankings for all 100+ homes here: https://bit.ly/esohomeranking

Best ESO Inn Room – Sugar Bowl Suite

Despite two very nice inn rooms in the form of Journey’s End Lodgings in Necrom and Rosewine Retreat in the West Weald, the Sugar Bowl Suite in Rimmen remains my top inn room. Rimmen is the chapter hub of the Elsweyr expansion and is located in a nicely laid out city that has a few killer features.

First of all, the Sugar Bowl Suite is the only inn room in the game with an exterior facing front door, this means it is the only inn room in the game where quick traveling to the outside of it will put you within steps of a wayshrine without having to go through any additional loading screens.

Rimmen also benefits from the fact that it was the last chapter hub city added to ESO that wasn’t broken up into multiple sections with loading screens between them. Ever since Greymoor, cities in ESO have been split up into 2 or 3 different micro-zones that can result in loading screens when switching between them. Once you’re in Rimmen, you can quickly visit all the major amenities of the chapter hub, get your daily writs done, and get back to adventuring without needing to wait for extra loading screens.

The Rimmen crafting area remains one of the better ones in the game with a very satisfying loop and plenty of long site lines to make navigation earlier. The stablemaster, battlemaster and impresario are also conveniently located just outside the front gate of the city and the bank, while indoors, does load fairly quickly.

Best of all, you can claim inn rooms for free by completing the ‘Room to Spare’ quest so this one won’t cost you a thing. Even if you do buy it for some reason, it’ll only set you back 3,000 gold. The main downside of inn rooms are the furnishing limits of course. Even with ESO+ the Sugar Bowl Suite doesn’t sport enough furnishing slots to fit all the convenience furnishings you’d probably like to have on hand.

If you’d like to see how I furnished mine, be sure to watch my house tour for ESO’s Sugar Bowl Suite next!

Best ESO Apartment – Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret

There are only 3 apartments in ESO, all added at the introduction of housing with no new apartments since. Apartments have the same number of collectible and special furnishing slots as inn rooms, so they aren’t much more useful when it comes to outfitting them with convenience furnishings, but all 3 are in very convenient locations. The Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret of Mournhold takes the top spot for me though thanks to the fact that it’s in one of the original capital cities and relatively close to the Mournhold crafting area.

This apartment has always been in my top 5 overall picks and its value continues to increase as ESO improves the rewards from daily quests that can only be picked up from the original capitals of Mournhold, Wayrest, and Elden Root which host Undaunted Enclaves, Mages Guild dailies and the Fighters Guild dailies. As the capital of the Ebonheart Pact, Mournhold is also one of the busiest trading hubs in the game and you will be visiting regularly to buy items from guild traders. The Mournhold crafting area and writ turn-in isn’t quite as optimized as newer cities, but if you prefer to keep all your business in one spot, it’s sufficient. Regardless of your daily routine, I always recommend picking up the Flaming Nix since it’s so cheap and pretty fun to decorate with that slightly more generous furnishing limit without being overwhelming like larger homes.

I turned my apartment into a small tavern, you can check out my full tour for ESO’s Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret apartment home here.

Best ESO Small Home – Snugpod

I’m sure this comes as no surprise, but once again Snugpod of Elden Root is my choice for best small home in ESO but also comes in as my number one overall pick. You simply cannot beat that location in the heart of a base game capital city. Snugpod is the closest home to a stablemaster as well as an undaunted enclave. The Elden Root wayshrine, Outlaw’s Den and master writ turn-in are also extremely convenient, just a few steps away.

Elden Root has remained an important trading hub as the capital of the Aldmeri Dominion, and also sports all the amenities that come with any capital city. Snugpod was already a must buy in my opinion, but once again the ever-increasing value of Undaunted, Mages Guild and Fighters Guild daily quests only serves to further boost the value of homes in the OG capital cities. Snugpod is a small home that you can’t get for free but at 45k, it’s very affordable. If you’re an ESO+ subscriber, it has enough furnishing slots to fit all of the housing storage chests, all of the service NPCs, and just enough room for crafting stations and training dummies. This is probably the cheapest home you could theoretically turn into a well outfitted Guild Hall. I’d probably go with something a bit larger though!

My Snugpod has gone through a few designs but I settled on an indoor botanical garden featuring many rare and hard to find plant furnishings. If you’d like to see more, this is my ESO home tour for Snugpod in Elden Root.

Best ESO Medium Home – Sleek Creek House

While I don’t love the aesthetic, it’s tough to argue that the Sleek Creek House isn’t the best medium home in ESO. Rawl’kha is a solid base game city for crafting and daily writs with a conveniently located banker and wayshrine, but the key feature here is the immediate access to an Outlaw’s Den with no patrolling guards between your front door and the den.

I originally overlooked Sleek Creek, but if you’re a Khajiit looking to lead a life of larceny, this one is a must buy. At 335k it’s going to set you back a bit but it’s still a great pick if you need a little bit more space than smaller homes. All these factors together contribute to its continuing popularity with the player base and despite its less prestigious nature as a city, it also remains a key trading hub.If you do not have access to ESO+, you will also need a Medium home to have enough furnishing slots to place all the service NPCs and housing storage chests making Sleek Creek a great choice.

Best ESO Large Home – Gardner House

In order to complete your collection of homes in the original capital cities you’ll want to pick this one up next. The Gardner House in Wayrest is my pick for the best overall large home when it comes to utility and convenience. Wayrest features all of the same amenities as Mournhold and Elden Root, just with a more traditional medieval fantasy aesthetic. The Gardner House gets extra points for its extremely close proximity to the master writ turn-in and the Wayrest bank.

It’s an expensive house coming in at just over 1 million gold, but it’s the only home you can buy in Wayrest, and it provides access to all the standard services of an alliance capital as well as the 7 guild traders calling Wayrest home. If you can afford it, this is probably the highest utility large home you can buy and it’s the only way to unlock free quick travel into the capital of the Daggerfall Covenant. You’ll also benefit from more generous furnishing limits making it much easier to squeeze in all of your fancy furnishings, crafting stations, training dummies and more. If you’ve only got enough cash for one large home, this is a great one to pick up!

Best ESO Manor Home – Hall of the Lunar Champion

It’s time to talk about the largest homes in ESO. There are only 6 manors you can acquire without spending crowns and one of them can be had for free! Luckily, it’s also the one with the most utility. I’m talking about The Hall of the Lunar Champion of course!

If you’re curious about how to get this house for free, be sure to check out my video tutorial on how to acquire free homes in ESO next.

The Hall of the Lunar Champion benefits from all the same perks as the Sugar Bowl Suite since it is also located in Rimmen. It does lose a few points since its entrance isn’t quite as conveniently located as the inn room. If you just wanted to get back to a wayshrine, stablemaster, battlemaster or impresario, you would definitely use Sugar Bowl, but it’s close enough to those key city services that it still provides far more convenience than the other manor homes you can acquire for gold. But the Hall of the Lunar Champion gets bonus points for the extra storage and furnishing slots. Given that it’s free, there’s really no reason not to pick it up. I also love how it has separate wings you can unlock and decorate separately.

Now, just like the Sugar Bowl Suite, you will need to own the Elsweyr expansion to get this home but at this point if you don’t own Elsweyr, you probably should. Northern Elsweyr and the Season of the Dragon storyline remain some of my favorites in ESO with so many beautiful vistas, cool characters and memorable encounters.

I’ve only recently completed furnishing this manor home. I wanted it to serve as a sort of collector’s den, where I could display most of the trophies you can collect from completing content in ESO. You can tour the Hall of the Lunar Champion house in ESO on my YouTube channel.

Best ESO Premium Home – Highhallow Hold

Longtime viewers will know I’m not a huge fan of premium homes in ESO. I would never recommend dropping $40 or more to buy a digital house. But if you’re sitting on a pile of crowns from your ESO+ sub, and you’re curious about which premium home offers the most utility, there’s a pretty easy answer. Most premium homes are tucked away in scenic locations and offer little to no utility beyond their interior furnishings. On the other hand, Highhallow Hold of Gonfalon Bay is leagues more useful.

I never picked it up because that utility is sort of redundant if you own the High Isle inn room and the Hall of the Lunar Champion, but if you want a manor home that’s located in the heart of a major city with a quality crafting hub and easy access to the Tales of Tribute daily quest giver to boot, well Highhallow Hold is the way to go.

I don’t like how much the interior of this home is broken up, but you can still create some pretty cool interiors and the courtyard is very nice. At the end of the day though, this home doesn’t really offer anything utility-wise that you can’t find elsewhere, so there’s no need to spend your crowns!

ESO Gold Road Homes

Rosewine Retreat and Merryvine Estate are the newest homes to ESO at the time of recording and both have their merits. The Rosewine Retreat inn room narrowly missed unseating Sugar Bowl Suite as my top pick for an inn room thanks to the fact that Skingrad currently has the most efficient crafting hub. It’s really only held back by the lack of an exterior facing door and the placement of the stablemaster, battlemaster and impresario outside the Skingrad city gates. If those things aren’t that important to you, Rosewine Retreat quickly overtakes Sugar Bowl in my opinion. Even with that second soft load to get outside the inn, it’s still a quicker trip to the wayshrine, bank and crafting stations than most other homes in the game. Plus, you’re probably going to be grinding out West Weald dailies to get scripts for a while anyway. I absolutely recommend grabbing Rosewine Retreat before diving into Gold Road content to make your life easier.

Merryvine Estate is almost the exact opposite, a spectacular home for decorators with almost no utility thanks to its location in the West Weald countryside. If you have the gold, this is definitely worth picking up to get your Colovian Windmill furnishing and I think this would make an excellent guild hall despite the fact that it’s only a large home but it’s not one to pick up if you don’t care about furnishing a home for aesthetics.

Conclusion to ESO’s Best Player Homes in 2024

I hope you’ve found this writeup useful. I know many players find ESO’s housing to be a little overwhelming, and choosing your first home to buy can be daunting. Of course, housing is primarily a creative outlet, so don’t let my list stop you from picking the house of your dreams. Of course, in ESO you can collect them all! So eventually you might just end up owning these homes and more.

If you’re not already familiar with my YouTube, be sure to check it out for more ESO content. I cover everything from ESO housing and character customization to addons and new player guides on my channel.

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