Dear Blizzard: I know you’re working hard on housing stuff, and I sincerely appreciate how responsive you’ve been and all you accomplished. I do have a couple of requests for improvements to the Hearthlight Armillary:
Hearthlight setting should be persistent until we change it. Having it revert everytime we leave and come back, or log off and back in, is like having our own home fighting us. How is the lighting changing beyond our control?
We should have the option to set different rooms to different light levels, you know, like we can in our real homes.
For bonus points, add a Hearthlight setting that increases CONTRAST, so the areas around light sources (torches, lamps, etc) are brighter compared to other areas being more shadowed. Currently, “Unnaturally Dark” just dims light all around.
When I first got my Hearthlight Armillary, I was excited, because I wanted the ‘batcave’ part of my home to be dark and mysterious like the batcaves in Batman movies. Instead, I have to make the whole house dark or light, it reverts every time I leave, and even when dark it’s not quite like the movies. Give me pockets of light around torches with dark and shadowy in all the cave recesses please!
I absolutely agree that we should be able to change lighting by room. Personally, I have two spaces that I want to be permanently darker than the rest of my house, and I would love to be able to use the midnight setting with its semi-foggy effects in my day/night rooms on occasion.
I haven’t had it long enough to see it turn off when I leave the house/logout, but I also think it would be nice if the setting remained until we changed it. But then again, my candles and braziers that I switch off always turn themselves back on when I leave, so it seems like they have some work to do in with that in general.
I still like the item, I think it’s a great idea, but it does need a little tweaking for it to be perfect.
A friend visiting my house said they couldn’t even see it when I changed the lighting. Hopefully it just isn’t fully implemented yet.
I was really hoping the object would work like the opposite of a torch, where it just made things darker around the object depending on the size. Doing it by room would be nice too.
I agree with everything. The only problem I foresee however is per room, would be the preset room shape. So if you make a giant room but break it off into smaller rooms by added walls and items, the entire big room would still be dark or light, and I’m not sure they would be able to remedy that. I haven’t used it in my own home yet, but kind of a bummer if it isn’t working quite right. I want a dark room except for one candle in the corner that would get darker the further away from the candle. I’ll consider it a work in progress and hope for the best.
Love that there is already feedback on this so that it’s hopefully fixed by the time I get it. At this rate I won’t be unlocking it for at least another month because I simply can’t stomach more than 100 house xp worth of endeavors per day. My hat is off to those of you who have been grinding this atrocious content, I just don’t have that masochistic streak in me, lol.
They’re supposed to give it to you I think, but I had to buy mine from the ethereal guy that gives the daily quests. It is available at level 6 for sure though.
This… What’s the point of being able to pick it if it doesn’t stay that way until I want to change it. It’s not like I can put a note on my house door for when people come to look that says, “Oh, yeah, btw.. switch it to midnight lighting for intended look.”
I’d be able to live with that just fine. I could absolutely see it being annoying but I don’t expect Blizzard to give us quite that level of control, I think it’d be insanely difficult if not impossible.
Exactly! What is housing if not an opportunity for artful composition and self-expression? If we can’t share it with our friends in the way we want it experienced, what’s the point?
^^^^^this. I’m not certain if it can be done room by room without some extra work, but the lack of permanency is disgraceful.
If people knew how lazy this thing was they would be more up in arms. Lighting is probably one of the simplest ways Blizzard could really make their new housing feature POP. The presets are nice but giving us greater control would be better.
You know what I’m talking about Blizzard. I played with the WCIII lighting enough to see they are one in the same.
The weirdest thing about the Armillary, is the first 2 points are literally how it was marketed.
Just for it to end up being a decor piece that follows the same behavior as other objects.
Personally, I dont even see the point of having multiples of them when it doesnt change by room and it doesnt stick. Why have one for each room when they dont work by room?
I don’t have it yet but in reading all the responses I can see that it doesn’t do what I’d hoped it would do.
I think I was hoping for something that was the opposite of a light. An object that makes the immediate surroundings really dark. Something that you could put in the corner of an otherwise normally lit room to imply something sinister and unnatural is lurking just out of sight.
A room setting could work but I have an empty stairwell room that has a well lit room inside along with a secret stairway around the side of the room that I’d like to be really, really dark. If I wanted a well lit space within the really dark room, I’d have to put a bunch of light sources to counter the darkness of the room. That isn’t ideal but it still sounds better than one control for the entire house that won’t even stay where you set it and visitors can’t experience it.
I think that it is pretty cool and a fun thing to play with.
Drop it right inside your door and make your settings for the moment. Somehow, I got two, dunno why I went and bought the second one from the Last Architect.
And, really, we all have Inky Black Potions in our bags.
My work around has been to install a hearthlight into the entry way of every area like a light switch. Shrink it down, tilt it to face inside the wall then slide it in. What’s left is a little inconspicuous copper circle that acts very much like a light switch.
I can control the lighting as I like when I enter an area
