NPCs change houses

I've been having some difficulty lately with NPCs swapping houses, typically into my crafting area.

Their current houses seem to be fine, but I believe something in my decorations is causing them to switch places. I decorated my Guide's house with chain lanterns, books, and a candle on the table, and he just teleported to my craft area. After removing the chair, he still stays there. Annoyingly he refuses to move back, even after I removed all decoration (sans chair and table) and put up a torch.

I'm certain my walls are airtight, my dimensions are fine, and so on. I'm fairly experienced with this.

I'm slowly arriving at the conclusion that either chain lanterns or books invalidate an NPC house. Does anyone have similar experiences? Moving NPCs is possibly the most frustrating thing in this game and it's really ruining the experience of building a base for me.

Yeah, it can be frustrating at times...

Which is why I think each NPC should have a specific item that you can place in a room to attract it there! It would just make things a little easier...

I doubt either of them mess a room up by themselves. Did you perchance "renovate" the house in some other sort of way (rearrange blocks, accidentally break walls, etc)? Did you save and quit after trying to force them to "move out" of the new home or give it a day or 2 in Terraria so they can move (it takes a bit of time)?

This happened to me once before after I added windows, so I was very picky this time. I literally did not have my pickaxe or hammer on my hotbar while I was decorating.

The other thought I have is that it might be the wood platforms. Perhaps the NPCs treat those as walls for house purposes.

NPCs treat Wood Platforms as Doors for house purposes.

They do now...?

Excellent to know!

My NPCs seem to have specific houses but the ones who are close to each other always walk into each others' rooms, and sometimes they walk around the rest of the house too.

Here, a good example:



I had the Merchant move into my freaking attic. Why? Because the game counts that Wood Platform as a door, even though the room has no real Door to speak of.

Cool. Nice house, by the way.

What a great idea!

Yeah, too bad you can't see the Dryad hanging out in my bedroom in that screenie. She likes to wander off towards my Guard Tower on the left, but when she's not there, she's standing around by my bed. I wonder if she's trying to tell me something?

But she's 500 years old!

I would try breaking a little part of the wall in your crafting area, maybe the NPC will move out.

That explains much. So I need a "house"-sized area that doesn't have platforms in it. I had been using them for shelving.

I use Wood Platforms as shelving and staircases and ladders all the time. The thing is, if you want to use them in the ceiling or floor, they can't be the ENTIRE ceiling or floor: there must be Bricks or Blocks as well. See my screenshots here, you'll notice I'm using Platforms as "doors" to connect stories of my house, but it's okay since there's Obsidian Brick on both sides of every platform.

Also, 500 years old or not...

I think they should just work on the NPC arrival system. Like, if there was a menu for arriving NPC's, "A Merchant is waiting to move into your town but needs house!", then you could build the house and mark it for him, and he could move in. Maybe you could set it so if you wanted more merchants, they would keep coming as long as you built houses for them. I would have so many clone NPC's in my world, then. haha

Heh. Good luck...

Speaking of that, I need to make a better house...I've outlined my entire current one in Dungeon Bricks to make it indestructible from the outside (more or less) but need a truly indestructible house sooner or later. Maybe I'll move my storage somewhere or something.