The Aquarium
Written by: Pluff of Sonoma
Website: http://www.fennland.com

Vets tend to poo poo the aquarium, because it has been around so long, but players new to the game are always dazzled by it. It’s just SO! COOL! LOOKING! When I was selling deco kits, the aquarium was always the top seller, and when I was deccing houses, it was the most requested player-made add-on.

There are lots of variations—sandy bottom aquariums, giant aquariums with big fish, L shaped corner aquariums, tanks of bloody water with heads and skulls floating in them…Here we are going to start with instructions for making the basic aquarium, and then once you have the idea you can play around with it and make it your own.

NOTE: Every time I say “cloth” I mean two pieces of cloth joined into a single object. Using single pieces of cloth will result in an ugly “gappy” aquarium.

First as always, you need to gather your materials! (cloth counts are per aquarium tile - to make a 2 tile aquarium, double cloth below and so forth)

Cloth:
8 True Black Cloth
2 Dark Brown Cloth
2 Light Brown Cloth
2 Darkest Blue Cloth
4 One Shade Lighter Blue Cloth
2 One Shade Lighter Blue Cloth
4 One Shade Lighter Blue Cloth
4 Lightest Blue Cloth

Other:
Small Table
Small Fish
2 Onions
Assorted Shells/Skulls
1) Remember it’s important to always build beginning in the westernmost or northernmost tile, and then move east or south.
2) Take a pile of 2 black cloth set it down in the first tile of your aquarium.

3) Take another pile of 2 black cloth and target the little slice of the tile that is visible beside the stack of 2 black you already placed. In the first of the three pictures, the cursor is pointing to the exact spot you want to target once the cloth is in your hand. In the second of the two pictures, you can see how it should look when the cloth is in your hand.
4) The idea is to get a stack of cloth on TOP of another stack of cloth, as shown in the third image in the row., You do not want to end up with a single stack of 4 cloth. Getting them to stack is tricky -- it takes a few tries and a little practice! If you have a true black dye tub on you, you can always dye the seond stack of 2 black a different color to keep them from combining, and that will help you get them stacked. Once they are stacked, you simply dye the top pile true black again. Be sure and lock both down.
5) You are now going to stack your cloth targetting the same little slice every time to make the next pieces of cloth "jump" to the top of the stack. You want to pile them on in this order, LOCKING EACH DOWN as you go:

Pile of 2 darker sand cloth
Pile of 2 light sand
Pile of 2 darkest blue cloth --- from now on this will be called Blue A.

6) Now we are going to place 2 piles of 2 that are the same color. You should have four pieces of the next shade of Blue (Blue B). You want to take 2 pieces in a single stack, and target the same little slice on the floor to jump them to the top of the pile. Lock them. Then pick up the other 2 pieces, target the same place on the floor, and jump them to the top. Lock them. Any cloth you have 4 pieces of will be used in 2 stacks of 2 as I described above. Comtinue your pile in this order:

Pile of 2 Blue C
 Pile of 2 Blue D
Another pile of 2 Blue D
Pile of 2 Blue E
Another Pile of 2 Blue E

Remember to LOCK DOWN!

7) Now, you want to get 2 separate piles of 2 true black cloth up on top, but if you do not aim it exactly right, the piles that SHOULD be on top will combine with the base of the aquarium, which is also true black.

One fix is to use white cloth for the top, jump it up there as described in step 3, and THEN dye it true black and lock it. Another approach is to just aim right the first time!

8) Once it’s up there, you might want to top your aquarium with something to do with fishing, like a sextant, something pretty, something rare, or a light source. I am going to use a pretty, rare, light source. You want to aim your item at the base of the stack in the same place where you aimed your cloth. Once it hops to the top, lock it down.

IMPORTANT: If it is an item you can WALK THROUGH (like this candle) you need to raise it one time with the dec tool or it will “sink” under the cloth. I usually raise blocking items one as well, but generally they do not sink.
9) Now, building in the direction of the arrow shown in the image under step one, repeat all these steps to make your aquarium as long as you want it to be. Here at UOSS, I am going to build a 2 tile aquarium.
10) Once you have the aquarium as long as you want it to be, it’s time to put the fish in. The fish and shells and such are actually one tile in FRONT of the aquarium, not in the tank…it’s an optical illusion. You want to put the fish and shells and weeds and such in the numbered tiles diagonally in front of the aquarium base (pictured above).
11) I like to use my small table to place the fish and shells. Using your dec tool you can fit as many things as you like inside the aquarium, but 3 or 4 looks nicest. For the Aquarium at UOSS, I used shells, an onion for a water weed, and some fishes. I set the table down and stacked the items on top of it in that order. I then locked each item down.
12) Using the dec tool, I raised the fishes 4 times, the weeds 4 times, and the shell 3 times, and then I moved the table out of the way. You can try your own items and levels until it pleases you. Some items that look very nice in an aquarium are large rocks, skulls, and ships, but of course you can try whatever suits you.
Fuss around with your shells and such until you have your aquarium looking just how you want it!

With the changes to the dec tool that came in with Age of Shadows, you can fit all kinds of things into the water part of the aquarium---you used to be limited to 2 or 3 things, and raising items into the same level meant you would knock other items out of the aquarium. For example, if you raised your fish 5 times, and then a shell five times, the shell would knock the fish onto the floor.

Now the fish and the shell can both be raised 5 spaces, and both will float where you place them. HOWEVER, they will change order within the level. Therefore, you do not want a large thing to share a level with a small thing, as the large thing can flip and block the little guy. If you raise a great big rock five times, and then raise a little shell five times, sometimes you will see the shell sitting in front of the rock. Other times it will "flip" and the shell will disappear behind the rock.

You can fit more things into the aquarium, but you want to put things together that can change order and still look nice. For example, an onion can look like a water weed growing in front of a rock, and if it flips, it looks like the tips of a water weed peeking up from behind the rock.

Here is a 1 tile post-AoS aquarium with 4 things in it, made at Misha's Malas Mare Mall. Note how a lot more things fit into this aquarium, but you can't see all the fish. as the shell "blocks" the bottom ones. Sometimes, you can see all the fish, and the fishies block the white part of the shell!


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