Game Guides Archive

Decorating (the basics):

This is can be the most interesting part of the whole exercise. I have a lot of fun with it.

Decorating in the game can be very entertaining, but it can also be a bit frustrating. It definitely takes some practice.

Let's look at the basic procedures first.

Obviously, you start by selecting an object in your inventory and selecting "drop" from the options. I think everyone has done this at least once, even if they aren't into decorating. If something is going to be hung on the wall, I will drive my character foward until he is against the wall. This will typically put the item you drop about 50 spaces from the wall.

The game has its own way of aligning dropped stuff. It is best not to try to understand their system. Instead, just adapt to what it does. It seems to like to align objects on a grid. A painting that you drop on one wall will end up parallel to the wall. If you go to a wall that is perpendicular to that wall and drop it, the painting will end up perpendicular to the wall. Also, forward and backward movement are relative to the direction that your character is facing. I never seem to get the direction of /rotate right, either. It is almost always the opposite of what I think it should be. So, if I rotate something right 45 degrees and discover that I went the wrong way, I just rotate it left 90 and it is where I wanted it.

Paintings and posters are pretty basic. Once you drop it and it appears in the house, you target the painting and then you can start moving it around. There is a radial dial on the object. Your choices are "examine", "pick up", "move", and "rotate". "Move" will offer you four options: "move forward", "move back", "move up", and "move down". I never use these options from the radial menu because they just move it a default number of spaces. "Rotate" offers you two options -- "rotate left" and "rotate right". These will rotate the object 90-degrees in the direction requested. They are quite useful, expecially for hanging paintings, so I use them a lot. Oh, a final word of caution on paintings and posters -- the "back side" of a painting will be the same color/pattern as the wall. So, if you turn it the wrong way it will "disappear". If you lose your target, just move to where you can see and target the edge of it.

The real power, though, does not come from the radial options. You will want to learn a set of basic commands. The ## is where you put in the number of spaces to move it (100 is the max in one move). In the case of rotation, it is the angle so /rotate left 45 will move it to a 45-degree angle relative to its current position.

/move forward ##

/move back ##

/rotate right ##

/rotate left ##

/move up ##

/move down ##

Many decorators will macro some of these with commonly-used values (like /rotate left 45) just to save time. Also, be very grateful for the /move up and /move down commands. Before they added those, you had to drop items on staircases and float them across the room!

When you are placing things on walls, you will occassionally get a "this is not a valid location" message. In a house with square walls this is pretty basic -- you are flat on the wall. But with curved walls, walls with alcoves, etc. it sometimes means that you can't really place the item the way you want it. Also, on curved walls such as in a Naboo-style home, you will sometimes loose part of the object into the wall. This is especially true of large paintings on curved walls. I typically only hang the big stuff on large, flat walls, and stick to smaller pieces on the curved ones. If you are hanging something on a curved wall, be sure to look at it from different angles. Sometimes this makes a difference. You can't control the point of view of the visitor, so it is important that it looks good from all directions.

You may want to look at some other posts on the board about decorating. Some will tell you general things, while others may indicate how to create a particular look. One I found that seemed pretty useful is the Guide to Decorating.