Compact housing complex

A concept for a very convenient, compact and safe housing complex for all NPCs.

Description of what you see

• Valid housing for all 23 NPCs plus one for moving them around.
  
• Underground so that they are away from the main action on the surface.
  
• To the left is the hellevator.
  
• House format in 4/6 blocks height in order to allow movement on a UFO mount that makes moving in your house quicker.
  
• Four levels to make switching between the levels not too inconvenient, due to the platforms hindering you briefly. Also gives a good widescreen overview.
  
• All crafting stations (well, except the campfire for marshmallow-roasting, hah) fit easily due to the horizontal-based housing format. Which means you got some two-tile spots free for placing crates with crafting mats.
  
• The crafting stations are aligned in columns to have as many as possible within reach if you move there.
  
• If you use gemspark wall like in the example, you can turn the candles off as I did. Makes for a fancier look and more even lighting. In the picture you also see gemspark wall behind the crates.
  
• The plaques can be filled with items that indicate the profession of the NPC living there.
  
• The entrance is shown with actuator blocks, for space-saving purposes and because a door is only three tiles high while a tall gate is 5. Inactive blocks do not invalidate the house. (You can use pressure plates to activate it, and unlike doors, you can put them right next to the door on both sides without any blocking. But beware of accidental activation in battle. A switch might be safer.) - If you trust your flight mount, remove the platform in front of the entrance so that enemies in battle will not enter the house but fall down the hellevator.
  
• If you keep at least one floor tile in some or all houses free, you can also inactivate the required one solid block there to allow for even less obstructed travel, as shown in the picture. Otherwise you could put further chests there for easy crafting right out of them. (Try to position the most-used crafting stations closest to chests.)
  
• The 2-tile wide crafting stations are put on the ground floor because there you naturally have all solid floor blocks and thus more space than in the other houses with the inactivated blocks.
  
• If you place a minimum-size mushroom biome a bit to the right (still out of sight and active state as long as you stay in the center of the housing complex), you can assign the Truffle NPC to one of the houses on the right.
  
• For equally compact storage access, make a line of chests under the floor and behind the right wall. You could even add one on the surface, which might be convenient for quick loot stashing. Isn't visually appealing though. I prefer to plant colorfully painted palm trees up there and activate a beach music box.
  
• TIP for easily memorizing what stuff in in what chest, apart from naming them: Use paint to color each of a chest's four tiles to create colorings you can associate with the contents. Works particularly well with gold chests and such designs, but of course the chest type also contributes to this function, so use them when you have them.

Alternative housing layout from another of my worlds, showing a valid mushroom biome for the Truffle NPC and some other design details:

[j100j]

You need pylons and happiness.

[Dowlphwin]

@j100j - Why?

[j100j]

Well if you are not playing journey mode or are not in endgame this is completely useless.

[sparite]

yeah you could but not making seperate towns is pretty much just shooting yourself in both legs especially early game

[Dowlphwin]

@the hunger game: You don't need to make the NPC happy unless you want to unlock the teleport crystals. You could do that one and stash a couple of them and then still use this layout.

[sparite]

RIP

[GloDunkel]

That's rather nice I wish I had the patience to build it.

[Dowlphwin]

@Asdeligeon - It can be tricky to figure out why a house isn't legit. https://terraria.gamepedia.com/House might be able to help. The NPC location should not matter. And if you still can't figure it out, make a screenshot and I can take a look.

[chimaera.]

an NPC spawned in my hellevator. When I tried to move him to an actual house, it said "this is not valid housing." ....

[TheRoyalJudge]

AMAZING DUDE!! honestly i feel dum that i never thought of the underground part.