House Decorating Part 1 and An Incomplete Maze

So, house decorating. BIG topic, divided into several parts. Decorating begins with selecting a house, a seemingly easy first step, but one of the hardest things to do in all actuality. I'm just going to sum up each house's ups and downs.

1. Wooded Cottage - A small, cozy home with a medium amount of space inside and a small, but open area inside. Good for those who have trouble finding their way around houses like the Massive Fantasy Palace, or for anyone who just wants a nice home a bit bigger than their dorm room.

2. Royal Playhouse - A surprisingly fair amount of space, both outside and in, with plenty of areas for a variety of decorating. Great for those who want to utilize a stage and prop houses/mountains. Also includes what could become a nice beach area. The inside is great for someone who wants a few separate areas and rooms, including their own small tower getaway on the highest floor.

3. Oasis Camp - A small Krokotopian home... or camp, that has some interesting features. Perfect for anyone who wants to live in a tent, which is actually pretty roomy, and who wants to store treasure away inside their very own pyramid. Despite its limited number of items allowed, it also has some nice, free desert space to place objects in.

4. Desert Villa - A larger Krokotopian home with quite a bit of interior space and some outside space. Most of the outdoor space is devoted to the small pool of water and the "secret" cave leading to the Krokosphinx. Great for anyone who ever dreamed of creating a tourist attraction: "Indiana Bones and the Search for the Holy Pail."

5. Metropolitan Manor - A great option for city-goers, with a small underground area perfect for parties and recreational areas as well as another area with a pond that would make a nice park. The inside, although rather small, is a minor sacrifice for the great feel and outside areas of the house.

6. Royal Estate -  A great house for those that need a lot of space. Offers a courtyard behind the house that would be a great place for a garden or parking lot. Their are a ton of outdoor places to explore, including what looks to be a sort of greenhouse or other open, glass structure. The inside also has three floors with quite a bit of space for something like a diner.

7. Tranquil Cottage - Another small, cozy option, with a crypt and a water surrounded cottage. The interior space is limited, but has enough room for a sitting area as well as a bedroom. A great choice for anyone on a budget that wants a good looking home with room for guests.

8. Imperial Palace - A larger home with excess space outside. It has many layers for gardening, decorating, or whatever you'd be interested in. The inside doesn't have the most room, or any large area for a living room, but does have several separate rooms for various themes or purposes.

9. Great Citadel - While a small home, a nice one none the less. It has minimal interior and exterior space, but offers that Dragonspyre feel for those that can't afford or don't want a larger house.

10. Grand Fortress - Grand just about sums it up. Quite a bit of outdoor space for your ruins or statues to be displayed, with several underground rooms and a lava pool. The interior doesn't have as much space as some might want, and not a lot of secluded rooms are included, but it does have some interesting areas to decorate.

11. Life House - For double the cost of the Grand Fortress begins the school houses. The Life house offers plenty of interior and exterior space, but players who don't like happy and cheery settings won't find it appealing. The outside has a small gazebo, and multiple tiers for placing items, as well as a couple of waterfalls that create a pond below. The house inside is an impressive four stories, one below ground for something like a game room, on on the ground floor for basic decorations, one above that to let your pets run free or see how many trees you can fit within a tree, and ramps leading to several staggered rooms above that, whether you prefer natural rooms or a wizard-made structure. Has a porch area that you can walk out onto and makes a nice tree house if you're into glitches.

12. Death House - Great for those who can't stand things like happy music in Wizard City! A dark environment with several layers of outside space, but no real area for anything major, like a massive garden. The interior offers many separate rooms for anything you want.

13. Myth House - A huge house that can be used for a variety of purposes with plenty of exterior space and quite a bit of space inside, including various rooms of all sorts.

14. Balance House - A fun house to experiment with. Use portals to access some areas of the house that you normally wouldn't be able to. There is quite a bit of outside space, and plenty of rooms inside for a maze or different themes or just plain parts of a house.

15. Fire House - Although it has virtually no outside space, the interior has plenty of rooms to place different items in and even one under the lava that would make an impressive game room, along with a portal to an attic... or maybe a secret meeting room?

16. Ice House - Several different stories of rooms for various purposes, and a decent sized exterior with an icy cave.

17. Storm House - Several good spots for decorating outside, even enough space for a good sized garden. The inside has several rooms and spaces that offer interesting decorating opportunities. Overall, a good sized home.

18. Dragon's Fjord - A really nice house with good interior and exterior space. Great outdoor space for a large garden in addition to a possible forest. You've also got a large underground spot that is absolutely fantastic for turning into a massive forest or Dragonspyre training ground or something of the sort. The inside has different rooms for different things that are perfectly sized, along with a large entrance area that could include a dining area and a sitting area.

19. Watchtower Hall - Although a crafted house, is an awesome one for just about any purpose. Lots of exterior space for a fairgrounds area, a forest, or something else interesting, along with a three story watchtower that can serve a variety of different purposes. The interior is pretty amazing with several interesting areas that will really get your creative juiced flowing.

20. Celestial Observatory - A good house overall, but not the most interesting interior or exterior. It definitely has potential, however. The different levels offer lots of different areas for decoration, but lots of things look better up against walls, and the various levels don't have walls.

21. Island Getaway - The Island Getaway is actually a very nice home, I'd like to decorate one, despite the small interior, it could really be interesting, and the secret passageway adds to the space inside. The exterior has plenty of space for a big forest in addition to a small garden. I wonder if teleporters could be used to journey deeper into the parts of the jungle we can see but not access.

22. Sunken Palace - A nice underwater area, with some good exterior space, but no good space for a big garden. The inside looks amazing, but the water completely takes away from the structure as it fills several rooms and items cannot be places in it.

23. Wizard's Watchtower - Although this watchtower is quite impressive, it lacks space both inside and out. Good if you're on a budget, and can turn out to be a nice house, just requires a bit more creativity than normal.

24. Massive Fantasy Palace - One of the greatest houses to decorate, more than enough space both inside and out for just about anything you'd be interested in creating. That's all I've got to say.

25. Sultan's Palace - Another great house, more than enough space both inside and out. How you decorate it is up to you, there are certainly plenty of options.

Ok, so now you've got a decision. You've got to choose one of 25 houses (let me know if I missed any) to decorate! I can't make the decision for you, all I can do is give you the summaries. For my demonstration today, I'm simply going to use the Wooded Cottage, it's small and easy to use.

Before I started, I wanted to looks at well-decorated houses and not-so-well decorated houses and see what they has in common and what one had that the other didn't. I came to these conclusions:

Good houses...
...have a theme.
...go above and beyond the idea of the basic house.
...oftentimes use glitches.
...take advantage of wallpaper and tile.
...are creative.
...are unique.
...have a perfect balance of items.

Bad houses...
...are random.
...use glitches ineffectively.
...look similar to everyone else's homes.

...use little or no wallpaper and tile.
...are not creative.
...are not unique.
...can be overcrowded.
...can have too few items.

Let's talk first about developing a theme for your house. I'm going to give some good and bad examples of themes.

Bad Examples
Wizard City
General
Krokotopia
Marleybone
Moo Shu
Dragonspyre
Grizzleheim
Wintertusk
Celestia
Wysteria
Castle
House

Good Examples
Watchtower with advanced portal and Wyvern security system
Castle overgrown with trees and shrubs
Secret organization
Training Grounds
Prison
Haunted/Fun House
Memories
Grizzleheim Fortress surrounded with a forest filled with Wildclaws
Krokotopia camp with many tents and an excavation site.

Ok, so now for some decorating. As you've read the lists, I've been showing you some pictures. If you haven't already, take a look at each of them. The first shows the plain interior of the Wooded Cottage. Not much there, is there? In the second picture, look how much the wallpaper and tile immediately add to the feel of the room. I also placed two plants in the corners - plants are always nice to have. In the third picture, I've begun to place wall hangings and a fireplace, then surrounded it with chairs. This small addition to any bland corner of a house is always nice. In the next photo, I've done a little part of the house that was previously empty and boring. I've added a half-rug to unify the elements of the area which include a chair, a painting, and a plant. Here are some basic tips for decorating a nice, simple house like this:

1. Add a rug. A rug underneath the various chairs and things you have around can really add to the area.

2. Don't forget the walls! Don't forget to add wall hangings, the walls are part of the decorating, too.

3. Try a table. Small tables between chairs or in the center of them always look nice.

4. Center your attention on the centerpiece. Add a focal point to the center of the area on a table such as potted flowers or a trophy. Give others a reason to explore that area.

Glitches can make for a magnificent house, or a terrible one. I never have been fond of floating rugs and how odd they look, but glitches can really add to your house. To use the most effective glitch, you'll need only two small Tatami mats from the Moo Shu store.

First, place one Tatami mat (we'll call this one A). Then place the second (B) right on top of it, so the ends are touching. Second, move A around so that B is under the object you want to move. Third, move B until the item you want moved is in the correct place, then rotate A until both are out from under the object.


Using this method, you can create any them you like. To the right, you can see a couple that I did of a Celestian jungle and a Dragonspyre path. In these, the items aren't just placed, they're up in the walls, against each other, etc.

Based on that, here are some tips for creating a house using these glitches:

1. Bigger is usually better. Big items that are tall help with the effect that you are trying to create.

2. Say NO to walls. Use the textures of trees or stones as your walls instead so that the inside of your house looks like a cave instead of just... walls. I've made a small, enclosed area in the third picture to the right, instead of just walls. (Click to enlarge) Much more interesting.

3. Caves and forests can still be luxurious. Don't think that because you've created a more interesting area that you can't use your usual furniture. Which would you prefer - a secret getaway in the passageways of Dragonspyre, or an obvious "secret" hideout right inside your house?

Is your bank too easily seen for your liking? You can use these same glitches to make your bank the way you like it. Instead of a chest, maybe you like to keep your valuables hidden away in the rocks in your home, or perhaps in that hollow root of the tree growing out of your staircase?

Below I've given an example or two of how you might change your bank.

Have you ever felt like your wallet is just too tight to buy a bigger house? Who says you need more than 400 gold to add an entirely new tower to your house (or at least appear to)?

Quite an inexpensive house upgrade if you ask me. You can do this to your house with just about any theme, too. 

In other news... I am slightly irritated with item limits at the moment! I set out to use a cheap house to make a complex maze and invested a bit of money in something that might be fun. To my great disappointment, I quickly realized that I had filled the area up with 150 items and could not place any more, but I had been doing quite well at making use of the small space for quite the maze.

If you're interested in trying the incomplete maze, let me know via comment, Twitter, or Facebook. The maze involves a couple of tight passages and a few Large Tree Stumps, but is mainly composed of Krok Balance Tablets.