

Build House

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Main Page / Useful links for beginners / The "how do I build a house?" guide


One of the first questions asked in the kingdom chat is "How can I build a house?". The answer is quite long, so a guide has been set up to help new players, which is here. This guide should provide the information you need to construct a house. If you are new then before you decide to build you may want to make sure you have properly planned your location and other things, in order to avoid unneeded frustration. See House Planning Guide.

To construct your house, you will need:

This house would now be classed as "finished" and would be secure, but it does not have a floor and roof. To make these (from wood as it is easiest) you will need:

  • The mallet or hammer you made the walls with.
  • 4 small nails for the roof and floor.
  • 10 planks for the floor.
  • 10 wood shingles for the roof (they are made from planks, an extra 3 planks will be plenty.)

The largest house you can build is determined by how much Carpentry skill you have. To find the amount of skill you need to build a certain house add the total number of floor tiles and the total number of walls. This formula is a useful one to use:

(total number of floor tiles) + (total number of wall sections) = carpentry skill required

So for a 2x2 house you would need:

(4 floor tiles) + (8 wall sections) = carpentry skill of 12

Symmetrical doughnut house formula where x is the the number of tiles that make up one side of the doughnut hole:

(12 * x) + 12

Helpful tools can be found in the External Tools section towards the bottom of this page.

If you are in a village, you may be able to persuade someone with high carpentry skill to plan your house and then hand over the writ.

Finding a Location

When you think you are ready to make your first house, the first thing you are going to need is a suitable place to do so. Bear in mind that you will want some basic resources nearby such as water, trees, and exposed rock for making a mine tunnel.

Now that you have wandered around a little, if you believe you have found "The Spot" take a moment to check your local chat for other people. If no one is around, try to check around at least 30 tiles in every direction for existing houses and settlements. If you do find some sign of a settlement it is considered proper etiquette to contact the owner before beginning construction. While the established player does not own anything outside their deeded area, building on someone's doorstep is considered very rude. Normally, an established player will ask you to not build close, and may guide you to a location that is just as nice or better nearby. A good relationship with your neighbours improves everyone's experience in Wurm, and helps avoid misunderstandings.

For towns, however, it is considered to be rude to build with 50 to 100 tiles of the town if you do not have the permission of said town. Doing so can cause conflict and even hostility from a large group of players. It is always best to seek permission, and if declined, do not worry, there are more places to settle.

Note: You cannot build a house inside the perimeter of a settlement you are not a member of. Although you can build a fence, it is considered very rude to do so without the consent of the settlement owner. Examining the ground tiles before you even start cutting down trees and levelling the ground will prevent further disappointment on your side and bad relations with your neighbours. It will say "This is within the perimeter of Settlement X" in the event window.

Flattening the ground

After you find a suitable location you normally need to prepare the area. Before you plan your house the ground needs to be completely flat. In order to flatten the ground, "activate" your shovel by double clicking on it, then right click on the ground where you want the house. This should display a menu with a Flatten option. Select flatten and you will do just that. Note that flattening affects the eight tiles around the tile you flatten. If you do not have enough skill to flatten the exact spot you can dig dirt from nearby and drop it on the tiles to bring it closer to level. See also digging.


For the planks and mallet you'll need to get some lumber - this is easy - activate your axe and go to the nearest tree. It's a good idea to right click the tree and "examine" it before you decide to chop it down, as only very old trees will provide a good amount of lumber. When you have found a tree that you are happy with, simply right click it while your axe is activated and choose "cut down". You will need to do this multiple times before the tree is felled. Once it does fall you will see a felled tree on the ground (or just a log if the weight of the tree was below or exactly 24kg). Next you will need to chop up your felled tree in smaller pieces and thus create logs. Right click on the felled tree while you have your axe activated and select "chop up", now pick up the log and we will go on to planking and creating the mallet.

Creating planks

Planking is just as simple as any other action in Wurm, which is lucky since you will need a lot of planks to build your house, 20 for every wall actually. To make planks you activate your saw (starting to see the logic yet?) and right click on your log, choose "create" and then "weapons" and "plank" in the sub-menu of create (plank being in the sub-menu of weapons). Planks can be failed when you try to create them, be patient with this because it will happen a lot - it's completely normal. Repeat the log cutting and plank-making to create the amount of planks you need for the amount of walls you have.

Creating the mallet

Equip your Carving Knife, right click the Log in your inventory and select Create/Weapons/Shaft. Do this twice. Then right click one of the shaft in your inventory and select Create/Miscellaneous/Mallet Head. Equip the Mallet Head and right-click the shaft, and select Create/Tools/Mallet. If all succeeded, you now have either a mallet or an unfinished mallet. If you have an unfinished one, you can try finishing it (examine it to see what it needs) or create a new one. There's a 20% chance that you'll create an unfinished one.


Next up is iron, this is the hardest part.

To find iron activate your pickaxe, right click on a tile that says "rock" and choose "prospect" from the "mining" sub-menu. Iron is the most commonly occurring ore in Wurm, but it can be a challenge to find. You may have to search through a lot of rock tiles before you manage to find an iron mine - but prospecting can help narrow down your search.

If you are unlucky with finding an iron vein you can also rummage many rock tiles and collect the iron rocks which weigh 3kg and give 0.2kg of iron when melted. This is not much but may be enough to make the nails needed for building the house. This method is very useful for those without a public mine to use, or those who do not want to start a mine. You can easily get enough iron for your entire house, but it will be low quality nails. This way can also be alot faster if you only need a low amount of iron and have many rock tiles around but no premade mine or luck with prospecting any iron.

Prospecting for Iron. When you prospect a rock tile it show all ore veins within a 7x7 area, you can use this to approximate the location of the ever elusive Iron Vein. Once you get the message there is iron nearby you can start to tunnel for it. The first rock tile will break after mining it approximately 60 times, all further tiles inside the cave take around 50. After your two tiles in you can start mining at different angles (up, forward, or down). Only the last action will decide which angle the mined tile will be, so once you receive the message 'the wall will break soon' start mining up, mining down or mining forward. There are many methods of building a cave, one of the most thorough method is to make your main shaft about 10 tiles long, then mine side shafts every other tile going in both directions.

When you have found your precious iron vein, it's time to start mining it to get to the ore. The "mine" option is also found in the "mining" sub-menu. Each mining action will deliver 20kg ore. You'll want to get to the iron inside the rock of these ores so you will have to smelt them. You do this by getting yourself another of those fancy logs and with your axe "create" a kindling from it. Once you have this little nifty piece of wood you select your steel and flint, right click on the kindling and create a campfire with it (its under the container sub-menu). Now that you have your camp-fire its time to get smelting! Right click on your camp-fire and "open" it, drag the ore from your inventory to the camp-fires inventory. Next there's waiting - lots of it. MAKE SURE TO FEED THE FIRE WITH WOOD, OTHERWISE THE FLAMES WILL GO OUT AND YOU WILL HAVE TO START THE SMELTING PROCESS OVER FROM SCRATCH! I suggest you mine more ore while you do this but of course if you want to idle you can do that too. Right click on the ore and examine it to check how hot it is, once it reaches "glowing hot" you are very close to get your Iron Lump. When the ore has smelted it is replaced by a 1kg Iron Lump in the camp-fire, you will need at least 2kg for the next step.

Iron Anvil

The Small Anvil is a crucial tool in Wurm and this is what you will create now. Get your 2x1.0kg Iron Lump from the camp-fire, (they have to be glowing hot for this to work) and activate one of them, right click on the other and choose combine. Activate the mallet you made earlier and right click on the 2kg Iron Lump, again choose create and pick iron anvil. If you are lucky you will pull this off at the first try, so just repeat until you have your anvil.


Nails! This is what you need to keep your house together, large iron nails. Pick up a Iron Lump of at least 0.3kg and activate it, right click on your anvil and create, tools, large iron nails. When you succeed with this you will get a handful of Large Nails, you'll need one of these handfuls per wall of your house. You'll also need 2 small nails for the floor and one small nails for the roof.

Planning the house

For every tile your house will occupy, you'll need 1 carpentry skill. Also, for every wall you'll have you'll need 1 carpentry skill. So if you want to build a 1x1 house (the smallest house possible), you'll need 5 carpentry (4 walls, and 1 tile). To plan the house, go to your flattened piece of land, activate your mallet and right-click a tile, and select 'Plan building'. You can plan additional (adjacent) tiles in the same way; selecting 'Plan building' on a planned tile will remove it from the plan. When you're satisfied with your building shape, right click on it and select 'Finalize building'.

(to be able to plan more than 1 house, you either have to wait for server reset, or finish the first floor walls of the current plan)

Building the house

Finally we can start to actually build the house. Activate your mallet and make sure you have at least one handful of large nails and a plank in your inventory, right click on a side of your house and select build, pick door, wall or window after your choice (remember that you need a door to be able to enter the house though) repeat this on all the walls, but don't move while attaching the planks or you will lose one of the planks (because you will stop creating as soon as you move and you attach the plank 1 second into the action).

Next you will have to pick up more planks and continue to build, 19 more times on every wall to be exact since they all need 20 planks total.

The majority of the work is now over. You now need to add a roof and a floor to your house. Right-click the ground with your mallet activated and click "plan floor," then right-click the ground again and click "plan roof." Then right-click each plan with your mallet activated and plan a type of floor and roof. A Wooden Plank Floor is probably easiest along with a Wood Shingle Roof. You'll need 3 Small Nails and about 15 planks (some of which will need to be carved into wood shingles to complete both the floor and the roof.

Inner walls

Inner walls can only be planned once all the exterior walls of a house are complete. To plan inner walls activate a mallet or trowel, right-click a tile border inside the house and select Plan > Inner wall. On the wall plan select a wall type and continue as explained above.

Multi-story housing

Your house is now complete with a roof, floor and finished walls. It's probably quite simple; but when you're a more skilled player you could make something much better, fancier and with more than one floor! See multi-story housing for more information.

Repairing your house

Your house walls may become damaged in time by decay, or can be damaged by someone trying to break into your house (except on Freedom servers). To see the damage on one of your walls, right click the wall and select examine. This will display quality and damage of the wall.

To repair your house walls, activate a plank, right-click your house wall, and select repair.

Improving your house

The higher the quality of your walls, the slower they decay, and the harder it is to break them for an attacker. To see the quality of one of your walls, right click the wall and select examine. This will display quality and damage of the wall.

Tip: To improve your house walls, activate a Plank, right-click your house wall, and select Improve. Success and amount of improvement depends on your carpentry skill.

Managing your Writ and Securing your Home

A Writ of Ownership will appear in your inventory the moment you click 'Finalize Building'. Writs are used to control who has access to your home or building, to lock or unlock all doors with a door lock on them, to change the name of the building, or to destroy the whole structure (and the writ with it). Just right-click the writ and select 'Manage'. Add other players to your friend list, and they will appear on your writ management screen. To allow access, simply select them as guests. :) Writ also acts as a key for all the doors on your building.

No player can pick up items from a finished house without being added as a guest on the writ of the building. Any player can get inside a finished house (but not pick anything up) unless relevant doors are locked with a door lock.

Writs cannot be dropped, even if you die, but can be traded to another player.

Stone houses

It's possible to build a house made of stone following the guide above (premium players only), however the material requirements are different :

Basically once you have planned the layout of your structure you activate the iron trowel and start building the walls. It is even possible to mix stone and wooden walls in the same house (based on which tool you start the wall with).

External Tools