The Palace on the Nile

Each level is a floor higher, has more room, holds more furniture and more guests, and brings a bigger gift of the house. To move up you need debens and a player level: press “Move up” in the Palace on the Nile window, and you arrive on the new floor with your furniture standing in the same spots. Anything that would land on a wall or a column waits in the storeroom. There is no moving down — and no need: every level is roomier than the last.

The “Furnish” button at the bottom of the screen turns your chambers into a plan: a grid appears on the floor and the catalogue opens below. Put a piece on any free cell, turn it, send it to the storeroom or bring it back. Shelves, panels and mirrors hang on the back wall, a figurine or a lotus lamp stands on a table or a chest, and hanging lamps go under the ceiling. Garden pieces — benches, flowerbeds, a pool, an arbour — go outside on the terrace and on the roof.

The catalogue has more than sixty pieces after objects from Egyptian tombs and palaces, from a plain stool to a golden throne, and every level adds new ones: chairs and benches, a scribe’s table, a lion-legged bed like Tutankhamun’s, a bronze brazier, a canopy bed, a model of a sacred boat, the winged sun over the door. A piece you sell brings back half of what you paid for it.

Most furniture comes in four tiers: plain, painted, inlaid and gilded. Painting a piece costs its price once more, inlay three times its price and gilding eight times; inlaid pieces open from level 4 of the house and gilded ones from level 6. From the Scribe’s Villa you can also change the walls and the floor: ochre with a band, lotus painting, a marsh with birds or faience tiles on the walls, and limestone, a painted floor or a stone mosaic underfoot. A finish is bought once and switched for free.

You decide who can come in: nobody but the people you invite, your friends, or everyone. You can let others knock when it is closed and keep the door shut while you are away (“Only while I’m home”). To invite a player, click them and choose “Invite over” — the invitation works even if your chambers are for friends only.

To visit someone, open the Palace on the Nile: the “Friends” tab shows your friends’ chambers and who is home, and the “Open” tab lists the chambers open to everyone, with the busiest first. A guest can leave the host a lotus once a day, and the host sees how many lotuses came this week. If a guest misbehaves, the host can show them out and not let them back for a day or for good. AI residents don’t visit chambers: everyone you meet there is a real player.

By the door stands the niche of Bes, the dwarf god with a feather crown who guarded Egyptian homes. Once a day the host takes the gift of the house there: 2,000 debens in the cell and up to 60,000 in the chambers under the Aten.

The things in your chambers are alive. You sit on beds, stools, benches, divans and thrones, and your pet sleeps on its own bed. From the Scribe’s Villa a harp plays the music of the house: choose a tune, and your guests hear the same. In the Noble’s House a doorkeeper bows to everyone who comes in, a maid waves a fan by the divan, and a statue of the host can stand in the hall in your own likeness — change your look, and the statue changes too.

From level 8 the chambers become a palace. The Treasurer’s Chambers have a hall on four columns with a dais where a harpist plays the music of the house, a treasury with a heap of debens that grows with your balance (the sum itself is never shown, and you can hide the heap), a chapel with a shrine for a patron god — Hathor, Thoth, Anubis or Bastet — and a library with shelves of scrolls.

Put a poker table in the hall and it opens your own private table: you and your guests sit down to Texas Hold’em without leaving home. The Vizier’s Chambers add an audience hall with a throne on a dais — whoever sits there sits above everyone — a bedroom with an alcove, a study, and a garden on the roof with a T-shaped lotus pond and a kiosk.

The top of the house is the tower. Its throne hall opens onto the window of appearances — the balcony from which the pharaohs of Amarna threw gold collars to their favourites. Above it shines the disk of the Aten with rays that end in hands, and through it you see the sunset over the Nile. Stand at the window, press “Gold of honour” and choose a guest: your gift flies to them as golden collars, and you pay for it like any other gift. The tower also has a treasury, a chapel and a garden on the roof.

Why the disk over the tower is the Aten and not Ra is told on the Ra page, and the rest of the city is in the city guide.

1. Open the game and cross the square to the Feast of Hathor club. The Palace on the Nile stands behind it, by the canal, with a small bridge leading to the door. The map (key M) shows it too.
2. Click the building or walk up to the door and press E. The Palace on the Nile window opens with three tabs: “My chambers”, “Friends” and “Open”.
3. “Enter” takes you home. The “Furnish” button at the bottom of the screen opens the plan and the catalogue; the door of your chambers takes you back to the city.