Preface.

I’m pretty sure that I can guess what your first thought is when looking at this post: “what on earth is a ‘ftMLAU!?'” Never fear “ftMLAU” simply stands for “for the More Lazy Among Us.” First off, you have to understand that I’ve always been a chronically lazy crafter. About two years ago now, I bought the recipe for the “Treetop Getaway” with the intention of crafting it and short time later I wrote a post about it on “Lion’s Side.” The house was still very new at the time and in the post I wondered how to tackle the recipe, did some math, and talked about how scary the recipe seemed (if you want to read it you can here! But be warned, I was a pretty young…). Flash forward to about a year later and I finally succeeded I mean with the crafting, not the math…though the math probably took a while too…

I think when assessing how long it took me to craft this house it’s important to note that I started this series off with the “for the more lazy among us” in the title…

Anyway! I now want to share how I conquered one of the more difficult crafted houses in the game in the most lazy manner possible and actually succeeded…

The Treetop Getaway at a Glance.

First things first I’m going to take you guys through a quick overview of what this house is both to share my general experience while crafting this and to help out anyone who has never crafted a home before!

By Definition.

The Treetop Getaway is the Azteca crafted house. It’s modeled after that one area in the trees…*leaves to look up the name* Alto Alto, though slightly less leafy. It’s fully luxury size, with a 250 item limit. I believe that it was originally intended to be a house to play tag in as it comes with its own tag kiosk. This is especially evidenced by the lack of outdoor decorating space and abundance of ramps and tunnels. I will not lie, it took me a good long while to get used to the layout and stop getting lost in my own home. In that same vein, I have to say this is definitely one of the most challenging homes I’ve ever decided to decorate. However, its beauty shows through if you give it a chance.

The Recipe.

For those who haven’t attempted to craft a house before, at first glance this may not look like a difficult recipe. However, what you’re not seeing is that there are actually four recipes within the recipe for the home. In this case those recipes are for the Dino Pillar, Azteca Scaffolding, Azteca Archway, and Azteca Kiln. Don’t let this scare you though! We’re gonna break this down together. Aside from the items you’ll also need 40 mistwood (very attainable), 1 vine, 2 amber (paltry considering how much amber you need for some things nowadays), and three Sparse Fronds. The Sparse Fronds are actually a dropped housing item and when I bought this recipe initially they were a bit of a rarity.

Quick Tips:

• Notice that this recipe must be crafted at the Grizzleheim Crafting Anvil of light and wonder. The anvil is found in a cave directly across from Frode Silverscale, a fishing spell vendor in Northguard.
• This is the case with all other crafted houses…and the pot of soup…

I documented the moment in which I crafted the house! so yay for this post being able to have real photos…wooo to me… If you look closely you’ll see how many crafting elixirs I used the day I crafted this…I did say that I was a lazy crafter…

Crafting Time.

Crafting Time (for the more lazy among us): 1 year

I’m just gonna leave that right there…

To be honest, actually it didn’t take me the whole year to specifically craft the house- to grab all the ingredients and such. Actually I crafted a few things, became too busy to continue, did some other things, W101 released some more content, and suddenly the rare reagents and items needed for this weren’t so rare anymore and I had more gold than I knew what to do with. I crafted this house in under a week. (We’ll talk about how I did that in a second…)

Quick Tips | An Important Consideration

• I think it’s important to note that I’m doing all of this at max level. For any of you that are not at max level and want to attempt this recipe this will probably be more challenging for you…if you’re lazy like me you should probably just wait.

Breaking Down the Recipe.

I think the most important first step when you’re tackling a house recipe- or a more difficult recipe of any kind -is to break down all of the work ahead of you. Yes, this does mean doing math. I know, I hate it too. Every time I’m facing a more complex recipe I always break it apart, calculate all my totals (usually because I have to transmute), and do a little research. This may seem contradictory to my lazy nature, but I assure you it is not. You see, by calculating my totals I can now buy everything I can in bulk. *insert wink here*

Quick Tips | Things to Keep in Mind when Buying in Bulk

1. I can’t say this enough: I’m lazy, so I don’t want to sit and gather ingredients bit by bit. Instead, I try and buy as much as I can as quickly as I can. This means buying in bulk from both the bazaar and reagent vendors.
   • This is where having a list of grand totals comes in, so that you can, for example, buy all the shadow oil you need in one trip. (Don’t worry, I’ve already calculated the grand totals for this house and included it in this post!)
2. You will need a lot of gold. This will require you to have a source of funding. Halfang Bristlecrown is a favorite of mine.
3. If you’ve never tried to buy in bulk before I recommend signing up for a Costco membership someday look for the “Buy More” button in both the bazaar and at vendors. You can then select the number you want to buy so long as that number is actually able to be purchased.
4. If you have the crowns to spare, the crowns shop reagent bundles are great! The shop carries all of your base needs to transmute the harder reagents, just at a price.

picture cred. Wizard101 Central

• Three Sparse Fronds

I really quickly wanted to address the sparse fronds needed for this recipe. These are a housing item and aren’t craftable. I remember when I was initially tackling this recipe I read the wonderful W101 Central guide about it and the author mentioning that these were rare and difficult to find. However, it seems that with the addition of fishing and other new content these have become easy to attain. When I crafted this I bought all the fronds I needed from the bazaar with many more to spare. However, I’m currently in the bazaar to check numbers and there aren’t any available, so it is possible I got lucky.

• Six Azteca Scaffolding:

  • 12 Rebirth
  • 6 Earthquake
  • 180 Mistwood
  • 48 Agave Leaves
  • 120 Leather Straps

As I mentioned before, I had started crafting this house a bit already when I…

*insert gratuitous tea break here*

…got distracted. Anyway, after a while I had dismissed the idea of crafting the house altogether and had started to actually use these as housing items. So, when I decided that I’d take another crack at making the house I just gathered up the scaffolds I already had and made any of the additional ones I needed. In the current game, agave leaves- which were once one of the hardest aspects of this recipe -are plentiful and leather straps…I’m not really sure…but after crafting this I still have 29 left and I’m pretty sure I haven’t used them for anything else.

Quick Tips

• These scaffolds actually do have a lot of practical use in housing decoration in the game because they add some really lovely height, which then adds variation in levels. I totally plan on continuing to craft these for use in my other homes!

• Eight Azteca Archways:

  • 64 Stone Blocks
  • 40 Sandstone
  • 40 Sunstones
  • 80 Agave Leaves
  • 80 Blood Moss
  • 16 Grendleweed
  • 80 Bone

Ok, this one was a bit harder, because the blood moss and grendleweed are still pretty rare reagents- at least for me. However, if you sit in the bazaar long enough and you have gold to spend you’re bound to get some which you can then transmute. These definitely do take some time, but I basically transmuted as much as I needed. Like the agave leaves, I used to have such difficulty with sandstones and sunstones, but honestly at max level they drop a ton! Right now I have enough of both of those to craft all these archways again. If you are having trouble with those, they’re another bazaar buy if you’re patient.

• Four Azteca Kilns:

  • 4 Efreet Treasures
  • 100 Black Coal
  • 4 Fire Traps
  • 80 Ghost Fire
  • 4 Furnace Treasures
  • 20 Sandstones
  • 40 Stone Blocks

Two words: bazaar and reagent vendors. As far as the Sandstone is concerned, just factor it into all of the other sandstone you have to collect for this recipe. 20 Sandstone pales in the face of the high numbers in the next item’s recipe. The same goes for the Stone Blocks.

• Ten Dino Pillars:

  • 40 Colossus Treasures
  • 250 Shadow Oil
  • 200 Perfect Sapphire
  • 80 Stone Block
  • 100 Sandstone
  • 50 Sunstone
  • 20 Golden Pearl
  • 10 Fossil

When originally looking at this recipe this one was easily the most intimidating for me. However, this is another case of max level reagent drops. Simply moving through the game at max level should give you plenty of these reagents. What you don’t get you can buy or harvest from gardening. As for the reagents you can get from vendors (ie. Shadow oil, perfect sapphire) this is where having a lot of gold to spare comes in handy. You can indeed buy 200 oils and sapphires in one go, but obviously having the funds to do that is necessary.

Quick Tips | Gardening Really Does Make Things Easier

• Even after crafting this home I have a high enough count of the rare reagents that I could craft all of these pillars again, granted that I’ve been questing recently -and- I garden a lot. This is a serious testament to the many, many benefits of gardening.

*takes another gratuitous break from writing to move my character around in-game*

Grand Totals.

So, after all of that, what are our grand totals? Well, I’ve compiled them all for you in this cute, little list! I know this list may look pretty daunting, but trust me, it’s not. Next to all the reagents I’ve noted a few places that you can find them [in no particular order]!

All in All.

It’s always seemed to me that the crafted homes are somewhat neglected by players in the game, in favor of the magnificent, readymade bundle homes. I think that considering the current state of the game- with even more new content than when I finally crafted this -this house is absolutely attainable without too much heartache. I urge you all to give this house or any of the other wonderful crafted homes a try! Additionally, for anyone that really enjoys decorating and wants a challenge I seriously recommend this house for you! I had a really interesting experience decorating this due to all of its twists, turns, and tight spots…but more on that in my next installment!