Decoration
Decorating refers to the process of customizing the ambiance of certain player controlled locations (such as Player Owned Towns, Lots, Basements, and Dungeons).
A Decoration refers to any item that can be placed on or in these player controlled locations (including non-visible items such as ambient sounds and invisible walls).
You can place, remove, and adjust decorations only if you have adequate permissions to do so.
Owners of a Lot, House, Basement, or Player Dungeon can decorate their own places (and decide who else can decorate in those places).
Governors and Stewards can also decorate in the non-lot areas of their Player Owned Town.
Not all items can be used for decoration. Also, a decoration cannot always be placed in a given location (the decoration will appear red when it cannot be placed in the current location, but will appear green when it can be placed in the current location).
You must be in Passive Stance (i.e. not in Combat Mode) in order to decorate.
You can place decorations even when you are not in Deco Mode. However, to remove and adjust decorations, you must be in Deco Mode.
The Decoration User Interface
The Decoration User Interface (also called the Deco UI) automatically appears when you place, move, adjust, or remove a decoration. It will automatically disappear when you stop manipulating decorations, but it can be pinned to keep it open (clicking on the pin icon will toggle between pin and unpin).
The Deco UI can also be dragged around the screen to position it where you want.
The Deco UI has the following items:
- Bar graph representations of how much of your Decoration Limits that you have used (hovering your mouse over the bar graph will show a numerical representation of your usage). The UI shows the decoration usage at your current location, which will either be a Lot, Basement, or Player Dungeon.
- Indoor Deco Usage - The left side of the Deco UI has a picture of a room inside a house (indicating that the left side of the UI represents your indoor decorations). The 2 vertical bar graphs on the left side of the Deco UI represent the usage for Light Sources and Objects that are indoors in your current location. Decorations are considered to be "indoors" if they have been placed in your home, basement, or dungeon.
- Outdoor Deco Usage - The right side of the Deco UI has a picture of the outside of a house (indicating that the right side of the UI represents your outdoors decorations). The 2 vertical bar graphs on the right side of the Deco UI represent the usage for Light Sources and Objects that are on your lot, but outside your home. If you are in a Basement or Dungeon, these graphs we be grayed-out because there are no outdoor decorations in these locations.
- NPC Usage - a horizontal bar graph at the bottom of the Deco UI that represents your usage of NPC decorations in your current location (includes both indoors and outdoors NPCs).
- Container Usage - a horizontal bar graph at the bottom of the Deco UI that represents your usage of containers in your current location (includes both indoors and outdoors containers).
- "Show Decoration Indicators" checkbox - located in the lower left of the deco UI. This checkbox allows you to enable or disable "Show Decoration Indicators". For decorations that involve an area of effect function or multiple small creatures (such as Ambient Sounds, small butterflies, fireflies, Landing Flies, etc.), there isn't a dominant visual element that would allow you to select and manipulate the item; therefore, a translucent box was created to help you manipulate this type of decoration. "Showing Decoration Indicators" will allow you to see these boxes (but it will make the boxes visible all the time). It will also show boxes that restrict certain decorations (these are included with some developer created assets, and they cannot be manipulated by players).
- "Decoration: Remove or Modify" permission setting - the orange text in the lower right side of the Deco UI shows the current permission setting for "Decoration: Remove or Modify".
- Decoration Permission settings - a blue cog icon in the lower right of the Deco UI that allows you to open the decoration permission settings.
- Pin window toggle - a pin icon to toggle the pinning of the window (clicking on the pin icon will toggle between pin and unpin).
Placing A Decoration
You can place decorations even when you are not in Deco Mode. However, to remove and adjust decorations, you must be in Deco Mode.
To place an item as decoration, click and hold down the left mouse button on the item, then drag the item to where you want to place it, and release the mouse button. If the item was green when you released the mouse button, the item will remain in the position in which it was placed. If the item was red when you released the mouse button, the item will return to wherever you dragged it from (the red color indicted that the decoration could not be placed in that location).
Changing A Decoration's Size & Orientation
While you left-click and drag a decoration, you can use the following commands to adjust its orientation and size (these are the default keybinds):
| Effect | Modifier Key (Press & hold) |
Key(s) | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Rotate Left or Right | Q or E | ||
| Slow Rotate Left or Right | LEFT SHIFT | Q or E | |
| Snap 45-Degree Rotate Left or Right | LEFT CTRL | Q or E | Snaps will align to compass points |
| Snap 90-Degree Rotate along Vertical Axis (Lie Flat or Stand Upright) |
R | This function is mis-assigned to "Start Glyph Combo" (see below)* Only works with a limited number of decorations, such as swords and books. | |
| Mirror Flip Decoration (Switches the item to be a mirror image of itself) |
N | Works on very few decorations (it was never fully implemented). | |
| Enlarge or Shrink | LEFT ALT | X or Z | Allows for limited scaling in size; does not work for some decorations. |
∗ There is no "Snap 90-Degree Rotate along Vertical Axis (Lie Flat or Stand Upright)" function listed in the keybinds. There is a long-standing bug in which the "Snap 90-Degree Rotate along Vertical Axis (Lie Flat or Stand Upright)" function is mis-assigned to the "Start Glyph Combo" keybind (which is set to "R" by default). So, if the keybind for this function does not seem to be working (or if you want to change it), go to Options, click on the Controls tab, scroll down to "Start Glyph Combo", and change its keybind.
Removing a Decoration
To remove and adjust decorations, you must be in Deco Mode.
To remove decorations, click and hold down the left mouse button on the item, and then drag it onto the Avatar’s inventory.
You can also remove a decoration by opening the Decoration Palette, then click and hold down the left mouse button on the item, and then drag it into the Avatar’s inventory.
If you are Evicted from your lot, Unclaim your lot, remove your Basement, or remove your Player Dungeon, then any residual decoration in the unclaimed/removed locations will be sent to your bank.
Viewing a List of All Decorations
For a list of the decorations that are currently placed in the environment at your current location, See Decoration Palette.
Using the Hidden Decoration Feature
Finding a Lost Decoration
Setting Permissions For Decorating
Double-click on the Property Marker of the lot. In the window that pops up, click the upper blue cog on the right side of the window and then click "Decoration Settings". The window that pops up allows you to assign permissions to all decorations as they are placed on the lot or in the house. Note that when you change these settings, it does not alter the permission settings of decorations that have been previously placed; it will only assign the new permissions to decorations that are subsequently placed. Also, you can override the lot-based permissions by right-clicking on individual decorations.
For details on setting decoration permissions and the various permission levels, see the SOTA PLayer Instructions:
Setting Permissions For A House & For Decorations
Viewing the Decoration Log
The decoration log is a list of each occurrence when a decoration is placed or removed from the current location.
- For a Lot and House - Double-click on the Property Marker. In the window that pops up, click the upper blue cog on the right side of the window, and then select "View Decoration Log". This log will show who placed or removed items, the number of items placed or removed, and the date the items were placed or removed.
- For a Container - right click on the container, then select "view log" at the bottom of the list. This log will show who deposited and removed items, the number of items transferred, and the date they were transferred.
These logs track changes for approximately one month (older entries are erased).
Storing Decorations in Property Manager
For details, see
Decoration Limits
Lots
The chart below shows the decoration limits for Lots. Note that these limits are based on the lot size, not the deed size. So, if a row size lot is claimed with a village size deed, the lot still has row size limits. Also, these limits apply to all the decorations on the lot (including inside and outside the house/home).
| Lot Size | Exterior Objects | Exterior Lights | Interior Objects | Interior Lights | Containers | NPC's | Basements | Player Dungeons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market | 100 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Row | 200 | 8 | 600 | 80 | 75 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Village | 475 | 16 | 675 | 120 | 88 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| Town | 800 | 24 | 1000 | 180 | 112 | 6 | 1 | 1 |
| City | 1125 | 32 | 1325 | 260 | 164 | 8 | 1 | 1 |
| Keep | 1750 | 40 | 2350 | 310 | 220 | 10 | 1 | 1 |
| Castle | 2200 | 64 | 3400 | 370 | 260 | 12 | 1 | 1 |
Basements
The chart below shows the decorations limits for basements. Note that these limits are based on the basement size, not the lot size. So, if a row size basement is placed on a village size lot, the basement still has row size limits.
| Basement Size | Exterior Objects | Exterior Lights | Interior Objects | Interior Lights | Containers | NPC's |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| Row | 0 | 0 | 2000 | 60 | 250 | 2 |
| Village | 0 | 0 | 2375 | 100 | 330 | 4 |
| Town | 0 | 0 | 4000 | 200 | 420 | 6 |
| City | 0 | 0 | 5625 | 250 | 615 | 8 |
| Keep | 0 | 0 | 10750 | 300 | 825 | 10 |
| Castle | 0 | 0 | 16000 | 350 | 950 | 12 |
Where to Get Decorations
Here are some of the ways to obtain decorations:
- From loot - many decorations drop from killed creatures, Supply Bundles, broken crates, chests, etc.
- Crafting - you can craft many types of decorations.
- Crown Shop
- Player Vendors
- NPC Merchants - they not only sell decorations, but also decoration related items (such as decoration recipes, Patterns, and non-expert Crafting Stations). Some items are only sold by specific vendors.
- Housing Decorations Merchant -items for sale include creating tables, recipes, torches/candles, beds, and cabinets.
- Housing Deeds Merchant - items for sale include homes, basement hatches, basements, player vendors, and vendor patterns.
- Decorations Merchant - items for sale include creating tables, torches/candles, patterns, beds, and cabinets.
- Bookseller - items for sale include books, book patterns, dungeon blueprints, dungeon recipes, maps, torches/candles, and Wax Cylinders.
- Music Merchant - sells Pipe Organ, recipes for musical instruments, and Wax Cylinders.
- Fish Merchant - sells decorative fish.
- Other Vendor Types may also have some items for sale that can be used for decoration