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 (e.g. your 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 outdoor 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 - this horizontal bar graph at the bottom of the Deco UI represents your usage of NPC decorations in your current location (includes both indoor and outdoor NPCs).
  • Container Usage - this horizontal bar graph at the bottom of the Deco UI represents your usage of containers in your current location (includes both indoor and outdoor 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". In the example above, this setting is set to "Private".
• Decoration Permission settings - the blue cog icon in the lower right of the Deco UI allows you to open the decoration permission settings (see "Setting Permissions For Decorating" below).
• Pin window toggle - the pin icon toggles 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 (Makes the item 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 into 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 in place at your location, See Decoration Palette.

Using the Hidden Decoration Feature

See Decoration_Palette

Finding a Lost Decoration

See Decoration Palette

Setting Permissions For Decorations

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 was 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 or 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

• Property Manager
• Lot Deed

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).

Decoration Limits for LOTS

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.

Decoration Limits for BASEMENTS

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

Player Dungeons

Dungeon decoration limits are as follows:

• 10 decorations/objects per dungeon point.
• 1 light source per dungeon point.
• 1 container per dungeon point.
• 1 NPC per dungeon point (NPCs include pets and conversationalists)

Note: all decorations are considered "internal" decorations in a Player Dungeon (i.e. there are no external decorations).

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 - The merchants listed below 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 crafting 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 crafting 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.

See Also

• Deco Mode
• Decoration Palette
• Lot Deed
• Lot
• Housing
• Basement
• Player Dungeon