Creativity in Housing | Wizard101

Daniel SunSword is a long-time community member who's been especially present in the housing scene. Outside of being an active streamer on Twitch, Daniel creates stunning homes that he shares on social media, and now here in a blog post! He'll show off his process and his creations.

Decorating in Wizard101 has been the best way to bring real-life creativity into the game. Over the years, wizards have used housing and decorating features to create amazing castles and dorms. I have personally visited many decorated castles by community members and I was blown away by the creations they've made.

Decorating in 2021 is different from what it was back in 2008. Things have changed, and lots of new items have been added. Ever since I started playing the game, I fell in love with the decorating feature. It provided me with ways to bring amazing ideas and turn a few furniture items into something totally different. Currently, there are a couple thousand housing items to work with, and creativity has no limit. Going all out is what I love to do!

The Process

Every decorator has a different starting process. Some may plan out their projects, others may not. Some may list the items they would like to use, others may not. Some like to pick out a theme for their project, and others do not. There are no wrong ways to decorate. I personally love to plan everything out before I get into decorating. While most people like to decorate the exterior and interior of the castles, I personally like to glitch out into the skybox and create a whole new world. Each skybox must match your theme. My Marleybone jail cell, for example, is floating in the Death house skybox to make the castle feel extra dark and scary.

I wanted this jail cell to be dark, spooky, and magical. The Death house skybox was the perfect one for this theme. It’s a night-time skybox, and has some very dark clouds circling the area. The spooky aspect comes with the lost souls roaming around. I like to think of it as if they were trapped in a jail cell for eternity and their soul cannot leave the premises after they passed. Dark, right? hehehe. For the magical part of the area, I was inspired by the candles in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, so I used them to introduce a more magical feel. It really brings the area to life.

My castles are known to be in "areas." When I glitch out into the skybox, I build my own floor with castle blocks and decorate within it. Each area is connected through one teleporter hub. I currently have two teleporter hubs branching out into all of my different castles. One of them is my Gold Cave hub. For each of my decorated castles, the Tiny Arched Door and a random-colour teleporter will take you from the hub to that castle. I like to imagine that I’m opening a door, and as I step into it, I am teleported into a whole different world.

This teleporter hub (The Gold Cave) is one of my favourites. It includes 15 teleporters branching out to different castles. I’ve had this cave for a few years now, and I continue to update it. My favourite question that I get with this castle, and most castles are "Daniel, what castle is this?!" My favourite answer is, "Guess." When I decorate, my main goal is to make sure that the castle is not visible and noticeable. If I told you this castle is the Polarian Shipwreck, would you believe me? It is. This castle was built when castle magic was first introduced. Castle magic was the best feature for decorating that has ever been added to Wizard101. With castle magic, there are endless possibilities for creativity. Here is a picture of the Gold Mine with the decorating tool, and a picture without. You’ll see the difference.

If castle magic didn't exist:

After castle magic:

One thing that was really difficult about creating this area is that it was really expensive! The "Nice Gold Pile" costs 356,250 gold, and the "Big Gold Pile" costs 470,000! That's a lot of gold. One thing to note when decorating is to make sure everything is lined up correctly. Decorating this hub required a lot of precision. I needed to make sure everything was set where it needed to be. If not, then the castle would look incomplete.

My Favourite Projects

I am truly proud of my castles! However, there are a few that I particularly enjoyed creating. Some of my favorites are my libraries: The Wizard City/Wysteria Library, Krokotopia/Mirage Library, and the Dragonspyre Crystal Library.

These are my favourite because they all have a theme and a unique aspect to them. One is a regular library with books, one is scrolls, and the other contains crystals… who knew there are so many ways to learn more Wizard101 history?! All these castles were decorated before the advanced movement feature was introduced, which means things were harder to do. For example, I had to use a Tatami Floor Mat to glitch everything into place like the olden days. Each project took about two weeks to complete. My most difficult of the three was the Wizard City/Wysteria library, only because I had to individually craft each Untidy Bookshelf. Crafters know that the recipe is difficult to complete. Fun fact: each bookshelf includes 31 books, and currently there are 150 bookshelves in that area. That's a total of 4650 books! So many books!!

Another favourite project of mine would be my dorm. My dorm is one of my favourites because it was a Wizard101 Halloween Dorm Contest winner! I receive the #1 award for the contest and was showcased during Kingsisle Live for that month. 

This one was a really interesting one to work on because of its limitations. For example, a dorm can only hold 50 items max. Using castle magic, I made the scarecrow float with a fire underneath, using its smoke to create a spooky effect. It also has the lost souls roaming in circles to make it look like they are summoning a spirit. Very spooky indeed.

If you would like to see my entry along with the other amazing dorms, Check out the November 2019 Wizard101 Community Newsletter.

Getting the Community Involved

The Wizard101 community is filled with amazing and kind individuals! I love being active on all socials to chat it up and interact with people! When it comes to creating and starting a new project, I really love to show the community sneak peeks, or a picture of the process, and maybe to just tease things. Recently, I have been working on recreating all the Wizard101 schools. I have had the Balance school recreated for years. However, at the beginning of the year in 2020, I decided to recreate them all and add a few twists. One of the most fun aspects of these projects was that the community decided which school to recreate in which order. After every school that I decorated, I posted a poll on Twitter so the community could decide on which to do next. On most of the polls, I was honoured that the official Wizard101 Twitter retweeted the post to reach a wider range of people. One of the polls had over 1000 votes:

It was crazy to see. Over the past few months, I managed to recreate all of the schools. I just recently finished working on the last one: Myth. Each school is completely unique. The death school, instead of classroom tables, uses tombstones. And instead of students, I used the lost soul castle magic card to have a jump scare every minute.

As always, I had to find the perfect skybox for each school. My favourite one is the recreated Fire school. For the Fire school, I used the Nomad’s Camp skybox with the sunset and the beautiful colours in the sky. I made a floor using 30 large castle block flooring pieces in a 5x6 grid which looked like this: 

Then I purchased each set of the Fire School Furniture Sets to experiment with what to use for the walls. I ended up deciding to use Dalia's Hearth for the walls and made it 25% bigger with castle magic, and Dalia's Warm & Cozy Bed for the fire symbols on top of the hearth. It ended up looking like this:

I personally like that the hearth is 100% interactable. If you step up to it and press "X," you will turn it on and a fire symbol will appear on top. After doing the same thing with all four sides, I decided to go all out in building the classroom interior. This was the finished product:

It was really fun to recreate all of the schools. It was a challenge, and I had an amazing time including the community in my process. And to be honest, I do not think I am 100% done. I plan on adding more to some of them and hopefully one day I will recreate the astral and shadow school. I promise they will be amazing. Here are all my other schools:

Getting Into Housing

Wizards that want to get into decorating are often scared because they don’t know how to work the feature. All I have to say to that is try. You are not required to make something big. You can create something small. Use your imagination and let it all out in-game. Make a shrine, make a zoo, make a school, make a mall, make a theatre… you can make anything if you just try. If you need help, there are different blogs, video tutorials, and people that can help you create something. Don’t give up on bringing your imagination into the game. Just be ready for a few trips to the Bazaar.  ;)

Thanks to Daniel for this post!

Thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral!