I think they did a great job with nearly everything about Hearthfire. My only complaints would be the locations for the steadings are a bit remote.

I chose Falkreath and built my home up as much as I could, adopted a couple of urchins, got a steward, a dog, a housecarl... the whole works. But before long I decided to move back to Breasehome. I preferred my humble little house and living in Whiterun is much more convenient. But I missed my armory and having the other optional rooms. Two of the rooms in Breasehome are completely wasted for me. I don't use the alchemy lab, or the spare bedroom (Lydia joined the Blades).

What I think would be great is if I could refit those two rooms to something like the options available to the manors. For example I would like a kitchen where the alchemy lab is, and a armory where the spare room is. They already allow you to refit a room for a child's bedroom so you can adopt. Why not take that further? You'd just go to the steward and say you'd like to refit one of my rooms, and he shows you the options. He could furnish and decorate it for you, or even better just strip everything out and place a carpenter's table and allow you to do it yourself.

Wouldn't that be great? Imagine the possibilities; take Honeyside in Riften for example (the only other house I've owned). I'd like to take out the enchanter's bench and convert that large room to an armour or trophy room. The back bedroom downstairs could be a smithy, and you might keep the alchemy lab there or turn it into a library. It wouldn't have to be every room. The main room, dining area and master bedrooms would stay as default, you'd just have an option to customise one or two of the other rooms.

What do you reckon?

I also have a couple of other suggestions. As I said I think two of the plots are too remote and too far away from a main road. So when you hire a carriage it just plonks down outside the house with no way of getting to or from the house. The one in Falkreath is ok, you could get a carriage past the pond to the road. But why not have the option to add a driveway (if it's possible, I'm not sure if it is) complete with a sign post at the end with the estate's name. Or for the one in Hjaalmarch, maybe a boatman would be more appropriate than a carriage driver.

Also why not include one of those neat little hand carts you see everywhere with the garden? And a well might be a nice addition. Although it would serve no purpose in game terms, it would add to the lived-in look of the homestead.

Thank you for your time.

Lydia can join the blades? Woah.

Just about any follower can.

I wouldn't mind them. I probably wouldn't change things around all that much but I like being able to have choices.

Almost any follower can join the blades. All Hearthfire needed was more locations, Winterhold, Main Cities.




~BGN

Ah, I had no idea that they could. I didn't do anything with the blades in my only main quest play through.

I would love the option to upgrade other homes in the game. However, I don't think that's going to be possible. The reason is because the renders are already constructed.

The only reason we got the three houses as we did is because it was easy to add them. If you haven't noticed, the game load screens take a bit more time to get through, and that's because the renders of Hearthfire are being added. A small price to pay for the awesome of living next to Riverwood. I'm sure adding more plots to the game would have extended the load times. It's just a shame we couldn't pick up to three plots out of "x" in the game.

The other disappointment I have is the fact carriage destinations weren't upgraded to all carriages. I'd love nothing more than to be taken directly to my house, since I own a carriage.

I wish there were more customization options in the vanilla houses as well.

That "storage" room in the basemant of Proudspire Manor in Solitude for example is utterly useless.

It should at the very least be a legitimate bedroom for Jordis the Housecarl.

Every alchemy table should have an 1 or more Alchemists satchels to store reagents/ingredients and there should be 1 or more chests by every enchanting table to store soul stones and enchantable/enchanted gear.

Ahhh, yes, the Blades. The perfect way to rid yourself of those pesky housecarls.

I agree, a greater level of house customization would have been welcome, even in the vanilla game. That way my non-enchanter characters could have furnished their whole houses. And since all of my characters use Alchemy heavily, losing my lab won't be fun.

So far, only just started building my home though so I don't have much experience with Hearthfire, I only really want to have the garden for each plot to be expanded upon. For example, my home in Falkreath is looking nice, but the garden is tiny, especially compared to the home I'm building. I want to have a big garden with lots of plants and other garden features. I'm a bit gutted with how small it is in game. :/

how about the mages college?
once you are archmage there should be away to add extra rooms for kids
with pets!
i would love to drive the orc in the library crazy!

and for those who play as a mage it is the best option

I've just had a thought, a brainwave if you will. I was playing Skyrim just a while ago and I saw you can make shrines to the divines, sweet. But what about Daedra worshippers? Why cant they make a mini shrine to the Daedra they worship? I role play a vampire right now and she would more than likely have a small shrine to Molag Bal down in her cellar if she could. I know there are no active effects from praying at an altar of a particular Daedra but it shouldn't be too hard to think up an effect for each daedric prince and then create a small altar/shrine that you can create in your home that can grant these effects. I think it would be awesome for roleplayers.

She generally ends up joining a blade in most of my playthroughs.

@CaptainSlayer

Not necessarily, I never did that and I still shipped Lydia off to the Blades.

I think that there are three kinds of omissions in Hearthfire (and Skyrim in general). As indicated here:

1. Necessary/wise omissions. Many people have mentioned the ability to have natural children that age, a la Fable/Sims. However, this would not work in Skyrim, because of the different types of marriage (gay or inter-species), the lack of time compression, and the limited mechanics (all children are about the same age, and no advlts age or die of natural causes). I've expounded on this in the topics devoted to having natural families, no need to go into it further.

2. Understandable omissions. The ability to build a house in elvish, dwarvish, or orcish style would have been cool. The ability to empty Honorhall by adopting everyone in it would have been as well. So would the ability to build a huge, sprawling estate. But since they were putting together a $5 DLC, they could only have so much data. And limitations within the game's engine limits how many children you can add to your household. Also, the abilitry to rebuild Winterhold or Helgen has been mentioned often. It would make a great DLC in and of itself, but doesn't really fit the theme of Hearthfire.

3. Ill-advised or stupid omissions. Bethesda's people are brilliant, and produce amazing work. No one does open-world like them. But even brilliant people are fallible, and I am not afraid to say when I think they got it wrong.

For instance, I don't think it would have been that difficult to have a more customizable style of house-building: if you want only one child's bed, you should be able to put, say, an alchemy table where the other bed would be. Any items that are reasonably similar in size and shape should be interchangable, within reason (things that typically go in the cellar or outside could not be parked in the living room). It wouldn't be that much harder, you'd be using the same sets of polygons, just allowing a greater level of manipulation. The number of house combinations would increase from hundreds to trillions, allowing the player to know that his/her pad was unique.

Also, I completely fail to get why Aventus Aretino cannot be adopted. What I got from scuttlebutt was that more people wanted to adopt him than any other kid in the game, but he's the one orphan who can't be given a home. Why this is is completely incomprehensible to me. I mean, they added several new orphans, for one thing, and added a mechanic that made other children (like Gralnach) adoptable if their parents died. Compared to this, simply having Aventus auto-relocate to Honorhall (as soon as the player finishes "Innocence Lost" and leaves the Aretino house) and adding in the appropriate dialogue would be simplistic. The same mechanic is used when the Dragonborn adopts any other child.

On the same page, it seems odd that when you're hiring your personal bard, you can't pick your favorite from one of the inns. I would think that that would actually be easier (no need to record a whole new set of songs), and would use the same transport mechanic involved in marriage or adoption. Just pay them, say, 500 gold and they're yours. If you chose to dismiss them, they'd return to the inn.

More later, I'm on a timed computer.

Or how about the fact that you can give the children outfits and they change, but your wife/companion/bard/etc either won't change or takes higher rated stuff to get the companion to change.

Sometimes even giving them higher rated armor or weapons doesn't work. I wish I understood how the selection mechanic functions.