This is it? Seriously?

Octopuss

I bought the Gardner house ages ago (and I was stupid enough to buy it plain) and never really found the time to look into housing since.
I remembered few days ago, also being motivated by the new storage, and so I started gathering some interesting furnishing plans and stuff with the intention to make me nice house I can actually use.
Today I decided to at least place a dye station and some lights in, because I got sick as hell about the day/night cycle and useless lighting conditions you have to wait for at the outside stations.
And then all hell broke loose.
This is more than anything one big rant I guess.
Lighting sources are completely useless, having radius of maybe two metres equivalent, so no matter how many you place, the damn house is still dark as a black hole. With the dye station specifically, even after placing five or so lanterns and whatever in the near proximity, my character is still in a dark shade, so I just completely wasted time and money on this. Oh, and there's no way to tell the light colour either.
There is no frigging snapping feature, which is pure WTF. After good 30 minutes I simply gave up trying to place a table, dye station, or even a damn lamp (specially that) directly to a wall. The way the angle of an item being dependant on your own position is completely stupid too.

After about an hour total, I junked all the furnishings back into the bank out of pure disgust, left the damn place, and will probably never waste anymore of my time on this nonsense again.

Good job ZOS, yet another underdeveloped and underdesigned, half-arsed game feature, which could be absolutely awesome if you simply used half a brain, looked how this worked in other games, and implemented a few extremely basic extra features.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Not sure how much it helps, but if you can find a few of the Varla or Culanda stones that were on the Luxury vendor a few weeks ago, those have an enormous radius - like Magnus coming to Nirn levels of bright.

I'm assuming you already tried turning on the surface toggle and that wasn't sufficient to your needs, but if you're on PC, there is at least one add-on that may help.

Octopuss

The surface toggle is completely useless, because it only seems to work with floors. I mean it's good there is a way to at least not have furniture half buried underground, but it's pretty damn far from being useful in any way.

Ostacia

Having your character in walk mode rather than run mode can help, too.

VaranisArano

The Clockwork City lights are very bright, with the large ones able to light an entire room with only one lamp. I too prefer bright houses, and the Clockwork City illuminators made that possible.

Wreuntzylla

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Not sure how much it helps, but if you can find a few of the Varla or Culanda stones that were on the Luxury vendor a few weeks ago, those have an enormous radius - like Magnus coming to Nirn levels of bright.

I'm assuming you already tried turning on the surface toggle and that wasn't sufficient to your needs, but if you're on PC, there is at least one add-on that may help.

Yes. "Varla Stone, Glowing" is the best light in the game. "Culanda Stone, Glowing" is in the top 10. Culanda is the same as Varla except a soft yellow 'warm' light. If you use one of each in the same location you get clean white photography quality lighting.

You can bury them in an object, like a wall, and still get top tier lighting. I am about to make a thread on the furniture limit with pictures, if you look at the pictures, you'll see areas that look flooded with light, that's generally a single Varla.

The reikling braziers are also very good lighting and bury-able, but you don't want them exposed in most situations and their size can make it challenging to bury them.

Shop now, they were on the luxury vendor not too long ago, within a few months they will be outrageously expensive.

DoctorESO

Don't give up! Look on some websites for great lighting ideas.

Octopuss

VaranisArano wrote: »

The Clockwork City lights are very bright, with the large ones able to light an entire room with only one lamp. I too prefer bright houses, and the Clockwork City illuminators made that possible.

What are the names?

VaranisArano

Clockwork Illuminator, Solitary Capsule: https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/clockwork-illuminator-solitary-capsule
Clockwork Illuminator, Powered Capsule: https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/clockwork-illuminator-powered-capsule/
Clockwork Illuminator, Capsule Tower: https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/clockwork-illuminator-capsule-tower/

Light/Size Comparison:

Octopuss

Haha those are huge

Castiel_Silvermist

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Not sure how much it helps, but if you can find a few of the Varla or Culanda stones that were on the Luxury vendor a few weeks ago, those have an enormous radius - like Magnus coming to Nirn levels of bright.

I'm assuming you already tried turning on the surface toggle and that wasn't sufficient to your needs, but if you're on PC, there is at least one add-on that may help.

Besides the Varla or Culanda stones, you can use the Daedric torches and lanterns. They give off a ton of natural light and warm everything up. Looks great.

Octopuss

Ok I got those special crystals, and I think I triggered a bug: the light goes through ceiling to the floor above. That can't be intended.

Mureel

I too was gonna suggest Culanda (warm light) and Varla (cool light) stones.

Mureel

Octopuss wrote: »

Ok I got those special crystals, and I think I triggered a bug: the light goes through ceiling to the floor above. That can't be intended.

Sink them a bit into a floor or item, that should sort the pervading glow. I have some in my house and outdoor bath area and they are amazing!

Octopuss

Mureel wrote: »

Octopuss wrote: »

Ok I got those special crystals, and I think I triggered a bug: the light goes through ceiling to the floor above. That can't be intended.

Sink them a bit into a floor or item, that should sort the pervading glow. I have some in my house and outdoor bath area and they are amazing!

Yes, but I want them on the ceiling to light a dye station, and they shine through to the upper floor. That's really weird and doesn't seem correct

Octopuss

And this is why I was (and still am) raging so much about the editor. The damn surface drag and align features don't work for sh**!!
https://youtu.be/mKGMXJX34PM

Octopuss

After some more hours, I have just given up. The whole system is as user-unfriendly as inhumanely possible.

After googiling around a little, it seems like ZOS simply developed the housing system, and after it was released, they never looked back once, and ignored any and all complains and feature/improvement requests.

CompM4s

Make sure and brighten settings. Helped for some darker houses

Octopuss

Make sure what?

VonNelson

Daedric lights are amazing for pure illumination

Jayne_Doe

I just watched your video and remembered that the align feature doesn't work well. It tries to align to the floor/ceiling. I found that out trying to put some paintings on the wall early on. They kept wanting to align to the floor.

So, I don't use that feature at all. In order to put that sconce in your video on the wall, simply have the toggle "surface drag on/off" set to on and then move forward with the object until it's flush with the wall. You can toggle it off if you want to sink it into the wall so the mounting isn't showing or you just want it closer to the wall. This helps with some wall surfaces, as some of them have some sort of collision that prevents them from actually touching the wall with the surface drag on.

I know it's frustrating, but not as frustrating if you don't use the align feature, which unfortunately means it's a rather useless feature.

This works for me with anything I want to put on the wall. First, I keep surface drag on, move the object up to the wall until it won't move further, place it, then check to see if it's actually on the wall. If it's a bit out from the wall, which depends on the wall surface, I turn surface drag off and move it until it's flush with the wall.

I've gotten used to the system now, and have little trouble placing anything the way I want it, and I'm on console without any add-ons. I understand on PC there are add-ons that can make placement easier/more precise. Just ignore the align option and things will be much better for you, if you still have any desire to try again.

Octopuss

Could anyone give me some examples how to set up a dye station and light sources in a house in such way that my character was more or less in direct light that's at least partially comparable to daylight please?
I experimented with the two bright crystals and never got any acceptable results

molecule

Octopuss wrote: »

Could anyone give me some examples how to set up a dye station and light sources in a house in such way that my character was more or less in direct light that's at least partially comparable to daylight please?
I experimented with the two bright crystals and never got any acceptable results

The small clockwork lamps give off a decent amount of light, a few of those around a table would do the trick.

Here's 1 above a workbench ;



I've got every clockwork lighting available in game, if you want to take a look

PC/EU @absinthe502

Shadowfell

Daedric braziers are all really bright - either the hanging one or the table ones. One of the hanging ones lights my whole house!

Woefulmonkey

@Octopuss

How dark you house looks may have to do with your monitor setting as opposed to the 'lights' you used... if you play with high contrast and brightness setting that the game recommends, then 'light' and 'dark' areas are more highly defined... making dark areas darker light areas lighter.

I don't like playing with very dark areas in the game so I adjust my brightness and contrast so that even the 'darkest' areas still have some visibility.

However you are right that most light sources have a 'small' range that does not illuminate a room sufficiently.

I have found that Chandeliers that can be hung at the right distance above a room are much more efficient and will light up most of the room. I have one place just above where I have my 'dye' station and do not have an issue... but maybe that is a combination of the light and my contrast and brightness settings.

Also from what I hear the new 'Clockwork City' lights are even better at lighting up an entire room.

xaraan

Here's a trick I've used...

The Daedric braziers are good light sources, but fire colored obviously.

The Ayelid lights from the vendor a few weeks ago are really strong - sink them into the wall/floor and put one yellow and one blue together to keep the light more 'white'.

But, trick I've used since housing came out was skyshards. I put it a few meters in front of the dye station, sunk into floor, turn beam sideways so it's not shooting up obviously, I aim toward dye station. Light and beam are completely buried, but if you get it spaced just right, it creates a nice white/even light on the station. I can use my dye station at night just as well as the day.

I tried to tell a trade guild lead about the trick, but they never did place the skyshard quite right and gave up. But if you understand what I mean in the description and get the placement right it works really well.

The new Ayelid light trick might work too, I just didn't have need of it, so haven't tried it.

SirGabenOfSteamia

I agree with the lighting point. More than a sixth of my slots are full of lighting and some places are still decently dark

Octopuss

Where do I get the skyshards?

Octopuss

I had _some_ luck wih this setup:




The light sources in the game seriously need an extra polishing pass. The regular ones are useless, and the enchanted crystal produce so much light they are useless for anything smaller than huge halls.

Colecovision

Octopuss wrote: »

Where do I get the skyshards?

Global achievement furniture vendor

As a heads up, you need to get all the skyshards in the vanilla game before you can buy it.

Octopuss

That's borderline impossible because of a few ones in Cyrodiil though