Thirteen more glitches. That's how many of even the lowest end bog houses that are on the Real Estate market. So only 13 more glitches can buy bog houses. Then they're all sold.
What's a shell character? I had many problems getting my bog house. When I looked first of all, there were very few (maybe three or four) 7.5K bog houses left. When I sold my old home, all of the 7.5K houses had gone so had to buy a 5K bog house. Then I watched the real estate listings like a hawk. When a 7.5K house became available (being sold by its previous owner), it would get bought within the hour. Whilst this was happening, the remaining 5K were going. I eventually got a 7.5K bog house, but now there are very few cheap bog houses left. Very high demand as that is the only way to get herbs. Too expensive on the auctions, I guess.
However, that would explain why the price of herbs (and corresponding essences) have dropped a lot in recent weeks! I sold a rubeweed essence for 4K a few weeks ago, now I can't even sell one for 800 currants!
Anderella - the flux in sales for rubeweed essence has more to do with the changes in the rube recently than anything else, FWIW.
Shell characters are also known as Alts - which is against the rules, and if the original poster honestly thinks the houses are being purchased by alts for the purposes suggested by Sturminator IX, then they should be reported.
HOWEVER it is VERY hard to prove unless you ARE staff, so be a bit more certain before you waste staff's time for paranoia.
ETA: yes, i mispoke, I should really learn to not type in the forums when i'm medicated, rofl. I did mean fake alts, empty alts, specifically for cheating purposes.
Having alts with houses is not against the rules. Having more than one character for the purpose of getting something for your "main" character that they could not otherwise get is against the rules.
If you want to play a second glitch you can and they can certainly buy a house, but if you give a key to your main glitch that's shady, and if you use your alt's house with your main glitch to grow crops or herbs that's definitely out.
While I'm sure some of the problem is people with herb alts (possibly including people who created herb alts before there was a clarification that this was not allowed and then abandoned their alts without selling the houses), I think the real problem is just not enough bog houses. I would imagine the intent of this post is to highlight that fact in the hopes that TS decides to add another block of them somewhere.
I know its hard to not just make up your own shiny rules for this game but really before you do so you should scour the forums and comm. guidelines because I think for th most part staff has been very good about putting "rules" where they need to be :)
Give me a break...for the longest time the bog houses sat empty...many times there was only one glitch per street and many streets were completely empty of owners. It's probably why they reduced the price of them (they used to be 5K, 7.5K and 10K in alpha and the first beta). Now with the additional herbal skills and options for herbs, there are often not many left. But it's no worse than the cottage house issue has been - for quite a while there was few of them available, but people didn't seem to get as freaked out since they have regular garden plots.
If there are no bog houses they can *poof* make more. It's really not that big of an issue. Just ask the devs nicely, and they will probably add more. There are plenty of streets available to add residential areas, and there are probably even a few current residential areas that may still need streets on their residential grid/matrix (haven't checked them all to see if the entire grid is filled on all of them yet).
I look forward to the housing renovations finally being released so we can stop all this freaking out over certain types of housing or this attempt to 'tattle' on folks that aren't really playing the game improperly. Just seems like a lot of misplaced drama over nothing.
I ask more bog houses...especially the expensive ones...
I think prices for houses need to be set really high...1 million currants for amazing big bog house...lol :)
now I feel extremely lucky to have moved into a bog house the moment I was just able to afford one. there was no potion-making then, just thought the bog houses were a lot cuter :D