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Written by: Pluff of Sonoma
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
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1)
Remember it’s important to always build beginning in the westernmost or
northernmost tile, and then move east or south. |
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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. |
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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 second 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 targeting 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
clothPile of 2 light sand
Pile of 2 darkest blue cloth — from now on this will be called Blue A. |
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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. Continue your pile in this order:Pile of 2 Blue
CPile 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! |
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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 deco tool or it
will “sink” under the cloth. I usually raise blocking items one as
well, but generally they do not sink. |
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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. |
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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 deco 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. |
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12) Using the deco 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. |
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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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