I'm going to have next week off, and I'm looking to murder some Skyrim. I've always liked the construction idea in RPG's, and I'm wondering how its worked out in Skyrim. The add-on is only $5, and I'm more than willing to pay that for one of my favorite RPG aspects in my favorite RPG game.

I've read about it, but was disheartened to learn about the lack of customization.

What do you folks think? Is the lack of customization a dealbreaker?

I just bought it yesterday, actually. It's pretty addicting to see your house going up bit by bit and then filling up insides of the house through the in-house workbenches. I'm definitely enjoying it so far.

There was a tough choice that I had to make and I may go back to previous save and start the house over or just build another house somewhere else. The choice was between an armory or a kitchen. There are other similar choices where you can add on to the three sides of the house that don't have a door. But once you choose it, as far as I know, there's no tearing it down and building another choice. So the armory was only available on one side, but that was also the same side for a larger kitchen so I had to choose. I'm not too disappointed as it's a cool kitchen, but I sure wanted some mannequins. There was another choice I had to make between trophy and storage room (looking for more mannequins). I chose the trophy room and do regret it (no mannequins, just pedestals for stuffed animals).

I would say that it is worth it to buy it, especially if $5 isn't that big of a deal for your budget. I'm definitely enjoying it so far.

My advice would be to, number one, do a little checking to see what the possible configurations are for each house so you have a plan going in (obviously, I didn't) or save before you choose, always a good idea when building a house , and number two:

Buy all the iron ore and iron ingots. Seriously. Stock up on that stuff.

Thanks for the tips. Glad to hear that you're enjoying it thus far though. It's encouraging. I'll probably buy it Friday or Saturday when I get in. If you opt out of building a kitchen, is there still a small one? I mean...a hungry Nord warrior and his family have got to eat.

The tower thing looked neat too, pretty pumped for it.

There is some customization, since you can choose what and what not to build. A spartan house, or a lavish one. And the wings that suit your personality, too.

Are you on PC? If so it may be worth getting just for mods that require it later on.

There's a cookpot by the fireplace. There's also mods that turn one of the Main Hall's rooms into a kitchen so you don't have to use a wing.

If you're really into role playing like me, so much yes. If not, you can pass on it and be fine.

I don't even have it and I'm already not willing to keep playing Skyrim without it. So my answer is obvious enough.

You can build all three houses and get all three different options for each Wing.

The Kitchen Wing has an Oven which you need to make the new food items.

If for no other reason, what makes it "worth it" is the fact that you can have everything you need for Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy in one place. This includes a chest and a Smelter right next to the Smithing gear (at Lakeview, the Smelter is much further away at Windstad and I don't know about Heljarchen). None of the vanilla housing options offers this.

For my style of play and being a "hoarder", I wont play without it.

It has everything i would ever need for my role-playing.

Yes, there is a fireplace option for the main hall, with a cookspit. The kitchen wing does however come with the new oven, with new foods that can help health and stamina. Also, no kitchen and cow outside....no milk.

If you're playing on PC, you can get this mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/25068 which will allow you to craft every item in Hearthfires and hand-place it literally anywhere. You can also steal furniture from other buildings and move it to any house you want.

Sadly I'm playing on the 360 -___-

I am on the 360 as well, and while there are some things I wish we had a little more choice in, I think it's more than worth it, yes! It adds so much more depth to the game, and yeah, it's fun building your house. Save often, so that if you don't like a particular configuration, or piece of furniture, just reload and do it over or differently. In my opinion, if you build everything the dlc lets you build in the house, it's too cluttered. Don't feel you have to put everything in, that's where you can customize. Read as much as you can stand of the threads here in the Hearthfire forum, they will help you a LOT. I hope you get Hearthfire, I think you will enjoy it!

Not really, unless you want to grind smithing early on. Making smithing such a hard grind in one of the patches was probably a ploy to sell Heathfire, I suspect.

Totally worth the $5, It adds a bunch of cool stuff. You can build three houses that are larger than any of the ones in the regular game. They have multiple smithing stations, it adds the ability to plant a small garden, or build a greenhouse, you can have a fish hatchery, all of which can be extremely useful. It adds some new ingredients like salmon roe for alchemy, which can make some really cool potions. If your into RPing, you can adopt kids, keep multiple pets, hire a bard and a private carriage. There's more to it than that, but for me it's a good buy. Hearthfire is like, you don't realize how much the game was missing until you played with it, at least for me.

Hmm... This might explain why my Smithing is still only at 55 on my level 31 Warrior despite making stuff at every available opportunity and the fact I have used more Iron on this character than any others. I never abused Smithing before and was able to upgrade enchanted items by about level 15ish on previous characters. Getting one-shot at lvl 31 by bandits, while wearing a mixture of found ebony and full steel armour is kind of depressing

your smithing will increase making all the iron stuff you need to build your house. LOL

Smithing is always my first to 100 so maybe I'm doing it wrong and building a house does help level up. I think Hearthfire is well worth the money, it adds a lot to the game for so little cost.