Basement Lighting

Is it just me, or did the lights get dimmer between R26 and R27?

This could be due to the introduction of the saturation color slider, and perhaps some adjustments to the default level of brightness, though I feel my video setting for brightness is already a bit too high (I get blinded in snow-zones, or with nightvision on).

Even with my video setting for brightness cranked up, I worry about guests to my house. What if they have a default level of brightness, and stumble about my otherwise welcoming basement due to such low lighting?

I have the 5 level split village basement. It holds 75 lights. I am at the maximum for lights right now, and I have 2 rooms with zero lights in them, and one room with so little light its basically dark. The best lit room is still quite dim!

In R26, the "Iron Lantern" lamp was key. It was so bright, I only needed 2-3 in each basement room. Now, as of R27, I need about 6 in each room, with some supplemental candles. I also have them up high, on the "Wall Shelf" decoration (theyre nearly useless on the floor now, and still too low light when on a table). Was there a lantern nerf?

I used to have braziers in my basement, but that felt weird. Its odd to have 4 blazing sources of fire when the roof is like one foot above it. I get it that in virtual reality my house isnt going to catch on fire, but it just feels too weird with them. Plus they arent even 2x as bright as the Iron Lantern anyway (and again, prior to R27, Iron Lantern was actually brighter).

The brightest thing in my basement is now the smelting station lol.

I diddnt place this in the R27 feedback forum since I wanted to address lighting in the basement in general. I prefer basement dwelling for a number of reasons, from roleplay to smoother game client experience. But now its uncomfortably dark down here, and even with maxed out lights, its oddly dark. Its basically mandatory to have the Light spell running. Selling all these lanterns (they were expensive!!!) and replacing them with braziers again will not only result in better-yet-still-inadequate lighting, but it will look really silly.

Above ground is the same issue - its way too dark at night even with the max number of lights active. I can deal with it though, since daylight makes everything fine up there. But my Iron Lanterns in my above ground house are all way up high on shelves, or on book cases, and supplemented with candelabras and candles, and still strangely dark. Cranking up the video setting for brightness further is going to make the game visuals look really poor (plus I have to constantly turn it back down when I go hunting and gathering).

Can you please crank the Iron Lantern back up, or offer some other extremely bright light sources that arent open flames? Is there anything else I can do to provide good ambient light in my basement, without resorting to casting a spell constantly? I think increasing number of available light sources is also kind of weird, I shouldnt need 45 lamps in each room. Again I feel the need to reiterate that I have 2 rooms in complete darkness, and one room thats borderline blackness, and I have maxed out lights in my basement.

 

I love the big wall torches for lighting up a basement. They are the best lighting in my opinion. I have been able to place a lot of lights this release. You can get them off decoration vendors, not sure if they are craft-able.

 

Ill give them a try. With my low ceilings, it will still look weird with open flames everywhere, but anything to help get a little more brightness in here!

 

Ok Ive redone my house and a few basement rooms with wall torches.

Inside my house (Elven Village Home), there is a marginal improvement in brightness at night beyond the Iron Lantern setup, at the cost of having blazing fire a few centimeters from my wooden ceiling, and lesser visual aesthetics overall.

My basement has a slightly better improvement with these wall torches, but it looks incredibly poor (strange? dangerous, even?). The flames creep up into the floor above, and I still need an awkward number of lights in each room to provide a decent amount of ambient brightness.

I dont think increasing the number of allowed lights in a basement/house is the best answer overall, as its going to look even more weird with time-square threshold of lights that are about as bright as a few candles. I think the brightness/lighting conditions before the latest release need to be restored (really, it was more than tolerable before). It looks really goofy, well, actually, stupid, with the number of torches and lanterns and candles I have in a single room to provide decent light. Even still, there are some rooms that are sacrificed, though at least they are not total darkness now.

 

R27 actually helped my stone basement in that I only needed 4 wall torches per room instead of 6 or more to get the same, if not better, illumination levels. I also noticed this in another arena basement I visited, which I had decorated in prior releases, that was much brighter with half the lighting of what I had to use.

I agree there seems to be a wide variance of what people see depending on video card and/or monitor setup so it is difficult to decorate.

 

Ok so heres more to the story: for my basement, the light got way brighter after I exited the game and came back hours later. I have changed nothing in regards to system brightness (or anything regards to video/monitor settings), and nothing in regards to game video settings, and hadnt changed any lights. The torches are so bright now, it provides adequate lighting, and I can even remove some of my "support" lamps and candles.

So weird, but apparently closing client and reloading client has an effect on lighting and brightness when the client reloads. I can now craft without casting the Light spell constantly .

I also just noticed another visual lighting glitch. I have one room with just a smelting station and a smithing station, no other light sources. The smelting station lights up the room. Now, when I walk towards it, this glitch occurs such that the rays casted from the smelting light source turn all black, and the room is covered in black. I see this as an unintentional glitch, but just mentioning it in case its related to all the other lighting weirdness I am experiencing.

Im on Ubuntu Linux with proprietary nVidia drivers.

 

Well the basement is ok now at least if I carry some light emitting cloak or similar.
But the Dukes Keep with the built in luster only feels far too dark.

 

Does anyone know how to Craft some torches for the basement lighting?

The correct question is, have anyone seen a craft recipe for basement lighting of any kind?

 

There aren't any recipes yet for those items. You have to buy them from a decorations vendor.

 

This might have to do with time of day. I am not sure if it has been fixed yet, but previously basements would get darker at night (despite the lack of windows). I always thought it was a little silly, but might be hard to change.

 

Perhaps, but I actually have tested this many times. Thanks to the deed dupe that happens when there is no wipe between releases, I have a few houses (and basements) I can experiment with. It seems that for me (Linux, last-gen vid card), when I add new lighting, the full scope of the ambient lighting doesnt get added unless I exit the basement and re-enter. In fact, for very bright lights, they cast shadows where light rays should be beaming. I totally get it that its hard to get this perfect for the variety of systems, drivers, and vid cards, so its ok. I usually just set up all the lights and imagine how it will appear, exit the basement, re-enter, and the lighting is way better.

Though, it still seems wall torches are required, or the standing braziers, and everything else is inadequate. For some basement designs, wall torches look ok. For others, its very odd to have flames sticking up into the ceiling and creeping into the room above. Choosing other lighting sources always ends up with maxing out allowed light sources and inadequate lighting. 2 wall torches produce more ambient light in a room than like 6 iron lanterns + a few candles. Really wish iron lanterns were as powerful as they were pre r26!

 

Hang wall torches lower on the wall. They seem to have a cone shaped light and the lower they are, the wider the cone at the top. It does get slightly less bright further away from the flame, but still covers more area.

I find that just below the halfway mark (vertically) is the optimum height.

 

that brings up an interesting subject... you know when we place objects we can rotate them.

Can we rotate torches, so they are upside down, and have the cone facing down instead of up ?

 

Interesting idea. I haven't tried it, but it might be possible.

Try hitting the "R" key to flip the axis point. I can't get in game right now to test it myself, but I'll give it a shot tonight when I get home.

 

okay I did a short video with the candles vs torches

http://plays.tv/s/KjgbAuhVHJC1

The Torches only works well in places with high ceiling,

or in places with a metal beam, that reflects back the light.

but that bluish light is kind of creepy for a dark basement

Candles are indeed very dim, I'll try at some point using those tall candles and wall candles, and those fire pits

 

@AllGamer : Try the wall torches instead.
.

 

again, all, wall torches do look silly in some basements. in the "stone and timber split level" basements, the ceilings are very low, and big blazing fires look silly on walls.

however, with R28, the pre-r26 lighting conditions seem restored. ambient lighting from each light source is much stronger. so while the wall torches to make everything brighter, i prefer the asthetic of iron lanterns in my short, wooden basement. ill keep using wall torches in my tall, stone basement, where they make sense visually.

 

Can you tell me which NPC vendor has those wall torches?

I've yet to find those on NPCs I've visited.

Thanks

 

@AllGamer : I bought mine from one of the vendors that is above the bank in Resolute. I've seen them above other banks, too. Check the following as well as Resolute: Kings Port, Owls Head, Ardoris and Solania.

 

Track lighting would be nice to have for basements.