Most rigorous house requirements for advancement?

Allara

Hi there! 

Newbie to Achaea here and I find myself terribly curious about advancement within houses. It's not feasible for me to make a new character to join every single house just to satiate my curiosity so I thought I'd ask you guys here! Also, HELP HOUSES doesn't tell me much of what I want to know.

Of course many of the houses are secretive and such, so I'm only asking at a high-level here. 

So I'd like to hear your opinions on what you think are the most rigorous, well organized house "curriculums" for advancement. Which houses have the longest lists of "tasks" or requirements for advancement? Which houses are the most scholarly, with heavy reading and writing requirements? Which houses require the most participation in Achaea at large, which could include sailing, doing quests, pvp, and more? Which houses are the most difficult to achieve the highest rank in? Which houses are the most populated and active? 

Much of this is mainly curiosity, being an Outrider myself, not so much of a "which house do I want to join" sort of thing. 

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Torinn

It's refreshing hearing someone who wants to do this sort of thing in Achaea.  I don't have an opinion about which house does that thing the most, and think most have been going more toward eliminating steps for ease of access lately.

Allara

Torinn said:

It's refreshing hearing someone who wants to do this sort of thing in Achaea.  I don't have an opinion about which house does that thing the most, and think most have been going more toward eliminating steps for ease of access lately.

It's a shame not to with 20 years of history and lore and player contributions! If just wanted to kill stuff and level up and make money, I'd play something with graphics hah. 

So far I think the outriders do something like this pretty well so I'm just curious about the rest of them. Like what about your house? 

Jiraishin

My House, the Luminai, is closed entirely to novices (though we do train them for future membership if they're interested!) and any non-novice who hasn't sufficiently proved not only their loyalty to the city but also their suitability for the House itself. We run Targossas's intelligence apparatus  as well as being scholars, scouts, and so forth.  So we're pretty damn rigorous in that sense. On the other hand, if you -do- get in, you're inducted at Houserank 11.

Promotion from that comes about if you have some specific position (project head, etc.) that warrants it.

Rispok

Jiraishin said:

My House, the Luminai, is closed entirely to novices (though we do train them for future membership if they're interested!) and any non-novice who hasn't sufficiently proved not only their loyalty to the city but also their suitability for the House itself. We run Targossas's intelligence apparatus  as well as being scholars, scouts, and so forth.  So we're pretty damn rigorous in that sense. On the other hand, if you -do- get in, you're inducted at Houserank 11.

Promotion from that comes about if you have some specific position (project head, etc.) that warrants it.

If you're inducted at rank 11, then it would seem rank means almost nothing.

I can't speak to other houses, but in the Merchants we have a whole process from novice to HR5. Advancement beyond that is much like the rest of our attitude, and it comes from within through self-motivation. We've tried several systems to gain ranks beyond 5, but they haven't been successful for us. In the end, we more or less decided that having a series of hoops to jump through just to gain ranks was not a good fit for our organization.

Sophi

In most houses, ranks are meaningless past hr5 anyway 

Torinn

I'm in the Harbingers of Redemption in Targossas.  It's gone through a few iterations but I know hatt rituals and written works are well rewarded.  Not necessary though - the House has many options for advancement.

Allara

Sophi said:

In most houses, ranks are meaningless past hr5 anyway 

Hm well I can say that in the Outriders, hr5 is where the fun stuff starts. They're definitely well organized, yet still open ended so you can focus on what you like, but there's just a lot of direction given for whatever that might be. 

Laedha

If you are looking for difficulty and level of work to get to HR5, the Virtuosi and Consortium are fairly rigorous. The Virtuosi is the art house and getting to HR5 involves a set of tasks and most of them require at least one round of revision. It would only suit you if you enjoy polished writing. I've heard the Consortium has well organized tasks for HR3, 4, and then a character audit to HR5 that's pretty far-reaching. 

If you're looking for well-organized tasks that required participation with the world, the Outriders have that but my understanding is that it doesn't take most people too terribly long to get to HR5 if they work at it. 

I don't know much about the Hashan/Mhaldor/Eleusis houses. 

Arin!

The Outriders tasks get a lot more rigorous and far-reaching after HR5, really

Laedha

Oops that's my bad for not reading the OP fully, obviously the Outriders fit what she's looking for since that's where she is!