SWTOR Galactic Strongholds Hooks and Decorations Breakdown

Dulfy 80 Comments Jul 2, 2014

A breakdown of the Galactic Stronghold hooks and decorations system with information and image provided by the recent Galactic Living livestream.

Contents

1 General
2 Hooks
3 Decorations

General

Accessing your stronghold

Click the new icon at the top to access your stronghold menu. While Bioware has not released the number of players that can be inside a stronghold at once, it looks like the Nar Shaddaa stronghold can hold 70 players at once with 9 rooms.

You can use this menu to travel to your stronghold from anywhere.

Hooks

How Hook system work

When you are inside your stronghold, you will be presented with a panel that list a bunch of things. There is a button called Edit mode that will show all the hooks available in your house. There is a finite amount of hooks so there is a finite number of decoration you can place but the number is fairly large especially on large strongholds such as Tatooine or Nar Shaddaa.

Clicking on a hook will show two tabs: Decorations and Layouts.

Hooks are color coded and varies in the size of decorations that can be placed on them. Hooks have a variety of layout as well to fit different decoration placements. Here are some of the examples shown for the floor hook.

On the left is the Large Standard Arrangement layout and on the right is the Medium & Narrow Columns layout.

Clicking on a hook will show you a menu with a list of items that can fit into that specific hook sorted by category and by subcategory

Hovering over a decoration will also tell you what type of hooks it will fit.

Once you selected an item, you can click the place button to place the item on that specific hook. Once placed, a decoration can be adjust in three different ways.

X Offset
Y Offset
Rotation

Rug Hooks

Rug hooks is the only type of hook that exist under another hook and fit only rugs. They are indicated by a glowing column.

Wall Hooks

Walls have hooks too with some different layouts.

You can place a group of different decorations on the walls. The difference here is that some wall decorations cannot be rotated.

Ceiling Hooks

Hooks exist on the ceiling as well and allow you to change the lighting.

Staircase Hooks

Just an example of the hooks you can see for a staircase. They are a good place to put your companions.

Balcony and Centerpiece Hooks

The Nar Shadda Balcony is huge and can accommodate Centerpiece hooks which can hold some very large and impressive decorations.The centerpiece hooks can of course be broken down into smaller hooks by using the layout menu.

Centerpiece decorations are Reconstructed Hypergates like the one shown below.

Spaceport Hooks

These are extra large hooks designed to fit player ships. You cannot use these ships, they are for decorations only. GSF ships cannot fit into this slot currently.

Decorations

Source

In the preview window you will see a source slot which tell you which the decoration comes from. This helps for those who visit other player’s strongholds and wonder what came from where.

Multiple Identical Decorations

If you want to place multiple identical decorations, you must own multiple copies of that decoration. The max number of copies seems to be 50.

Interactivity

Some decors are interactable and you can use commands such as /sit on them.

Artifacts

If you collect datacrons, you can get Master Exhibit for Light and Dark Datacrons. Other items are Holocrons of Dread, Holocron of Fear, Seed of Rage, Cannister of Isotope –9

Arrangements

Arrangements are subgroup of furnitures that are already pre-arranged. They will be a bit more difficult to get and highly sought after as well since they only take 1 hook.

Pets and Mounts

Pets and Mounts are unlocked as decorations as soon as you own them. They do not become “inactive” when you place them as decorations and can be used outside the stronghold.

NPCs

You can place NPCs as decorations. Here are some Twi’lek dancers and bartenders for example. Jawa Scrap Peddlers are also placeable. You can also place guard NPCs.

Companions

Companions from your other characters will be displayed as holograms. Only your character’s companions will be displayed as a whole. Companions can be used to model your armor and weapons.

Terminals

You can place GTN terminals. There is also a smaller version that fit onto walls.

Lights

Lights can change the lighting and mood of the stronghold even though you cannot change the color of the walls.

Jukeboxes

There are jukeboxes that are decorations you can place to play different kind of music.

Interesting Decorations

Here are some random decorations that are fairly interesting or not.

taylor

I still do not understand one thing. What will I do in the house? Watch TV?
- Werit
  
  As far as functionality, seems like GTN, Mailbox, and an Item Table thingy are it.
- Kraven
  
  RP anything? Parties and such? I’m making a IC nightclub myself.
- JamesDrox
  
  They will be like social zones from the look of it. It will also grant a legacy cargo hold (Which can either be good or bad depending on how they do it).
- K
  
  I plan to use it as a rally point for the character that aren’t in use but serve as crafters/sellers, since (I hope) the loading will be less that the fleet, have a pleasant minimalistic style in my case, legacy storage, GTN and a modification table. Pretty much a better ship/fleet
- Arby
  
  Store mods in Bind-on-Legacy armor. Share BOL armor for companions (one set of maxed out Cunning gear vs 7 sets = win). Store crafting materials. Read people complaining about fortresses on chat. That’s about it, but it’s probably enough for a free “expansion”.
Areneth

So… they found alternative of fleet? Finally! Less lags – more fun!
But stronghold isnt instanced… thats really wierd
- Knightmare_Nightwatch
  
  actually, strongholds will be instanced, although the chat will not be.
Heist 101

Other character’s companions are holograms? Why come so far to have them even show up in stronghold while im on another toon just to have them hologram blue?? That’s the one thing I’ve been waiting to hear is if I can put my qyzen stalking bowdaar or Risha and Vette reuniting at my lounge – now they’re just worthless as holograms..
- Arby
  
  Agree, rather not have them at all than have them as holograms. How total crap as a feature.
  - Seth
    
    In the first video, they said only the different faction companions are shown as holograms, which is kind of logical, since there are some pairs that wouldn’t be too happy to share the same room.. like Khem and Scourge, Doc and Quinn, Xalek and Kira, Pierce and Iresso etc
Deewe Kauri

No free placement, , no Z axis positioning no scaling, no roll/tilt.
Must unlock (buy) the same item as many times as we want to display it.

Can’t drop “real” companions

== Fail.

/Sad_face
- Rex
  
  I’ve never played a housing system where you could get a chair and turn it into a bunch of chairs for “free”, well, other than Visio.
- Heist 101
  
  “No free placement” I just got chewed apart by people for restating this further up the page ..I’m now a rumor starter apparently and still don’t know for sure if it’s pay per placement or not
  - Y-Yorle?
    
    He’s not refering to the ‘cost’ of placement, but ‘position’. He doesn’t like he’s not free to place his items away from any hooks. 🙂
    - Heist 101
      
      Thanks for clearing this up ..the reason I thaught there was a cost was similar to how they do augments and mods having to pay to pull things out but I am glad this is not the case
Deewe Kauri

(edit) once again thx a lot Dulfy for your highlights,
Jeremy Reaban

Not as good as I hope, but better than I expected. While it has hooks, they aren’t as bad as LOTROs.

With that said, I imagine this is something that will be fun for the first month, then get completely ignored, especially since the relatively long loading times to go from planet to planet will discourage casual visits.
- Scorch
  
  They said houses will have their own instances with shorter load times than a normal planet.
Daekar

With the X and Y offsets, it looks like the clip-through SWG construction method might still be useful in some cases to generate compound items. I think a hands-on is required to really assess this unless they’re willing to demonstrate clip-through construction on the Twitch broadcast.
- Nick Foster
  
  One of the reasons they gave for using a hook system was so that you can’t clip objects into walls, etc. They seem really hung up on you not being able to “spoil their aesthetic” even if you want to.
  - Sean
    
    Some things, though, wouldn’t be ‘spoiling their aesthetic’. For example, toward the end of the video, they placed a planter with, IIRC, a ‘glowing cavern plant’ in the stronghold, and the planter looked to be almost as tall as the character. Looking at that , what would make something like that more awesome is to be able to sink the planter into the floor so that all you saw of the planter was a rim and the dirt, as if the planter was inset into the floor rather than sitting on it.
    
    The ability to do this would, of course, be restricted to a limited class of objects, and might have the vertical position quantized — a planter might, for example, be placeable _on_ the floor, halfway into the floor, or flush with the floor. Some tables might be placeable at normal height or half height. Of course, this could also be handled by having separate planter objects — a full-height planter, a half-height planter, and a flush planter — which would give the same effect without having to add the functionality to shift objects vertically. And making the resolution something that could be handed off to the Art department, rather than requiring additional coding, would be easier to produce.
    - Heist 101
      
      I feel as though developing this hook system and keeping “their” aesthetic solid would require a lot of effort to create as opposed to a open system like SWG. In other words creating a system to prevent people from making obscene structures with objects would be harder than just letting people do it
  - Arby
    
    Once again, they want you to play their way, not your own. Why should they care if you half-bury something in a wall? If they’re afraid people will lose something in a wall they can do what SWG did and give you a menu option retrieve the lost item by name. I hate being told to play by their rules, which never seem to make any sense at all.
mhonde

Awesowe, great effort Bioware and great Dulfy for the coverage!! Moreover, we still haven’t seen anything on the Guild Ships, even better!!

But I really hope 19th August deadline is kept.
- Kwich
  
  There are not enough players for gilds so they skipped that =)
Argaria

I don’t like idea of pets tied to “hooks”. I’d like to have them wandering around….
- zenight
  
  I have quite a few plagued/infected pets, that may not be the best idea, then there’s the rancor mount that I don’t trust around small animals… Or Khem Val for that matter.
  - Daekar
    
    Lol @ Khem
  - Arby
    
    I don’t know if I want to let a gizka loose in there either. Drop one, log off, come back and have 50/50.
- R-6
  
  Do you really want a womp weasel jumping on to your new couch??
  well…ya, i do too! =P
Scuderia

Too restrictive BW! You have 1 and a half month to fix this so hurry!!! Or its gonna be another fail expansion like Galactic Starfighter!!! I want to decorate my house as ‘I want’ not with some shitty hooks or something……… So 1 month BW go and work on it!
- exopenelup
  
  It’s already delayed! Another delay will brake everything and Star Wars will be doomed!
  
  🙂
coolio

They are not connected to fleet chat. This is not good.
- Kleiton
  
  The fleets will be blown up, don’t worry.
- Mark E. DeSade
  
  You say “not good”, I say “great”. Fleet chat is hive of scum and villainy.
  - Arby
    
    As one who ignores fleet chat completely when I am unfortunate enough to have to go there, I agree. Hopefully there will be no Tat Homestead channel like the ships have where the inane babble never stops as well. (Still pushing/hoping for a local area channel to replace all the global ones, tbh)
  - Sciclex
    
    Credit Spammers would have to level up enough to get to one of the higher planets or own a stronghold to spam there, so I approve of no Fleet Chat in Strongholds, hopefully it will turn into another Oricon, aka an alternative to LF Groups.
- darkfather
  
  I assume they are going to add a Fleet Stronghold later.
Kevin

I didn’t read every single comment on housing, but I hope you can have a GTN in it. Otherwise it will be fairly useless to me.
Mark

It all looks ok, will be nice to get my hands on it and see it live. My only question is: Dulfy what is is about this that you feel is “still ugly” and “interesting or not”? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a SWTOR post where you’ve seem this down on them.
- Dulfy
  
  My comment on “interesting or not” is that others may not find the items I picked interesting
  - Mark
    
    Seems I misquoted, in your Tat video review you state “Adding furnitures to make it look nice.. Sorry still looks bad.”
    That added with this statement made me wonder if something was up. Ty for all the great work as always Dulfy.
    - Dulfy
      
      Oh I don’t like the tatooine ones as they seems dirty and bland to fit into the planet’s environment, it has nothing to do with the content.
Heist 101

Wow I didn’t know it was gona be pay per placement.. I could understand for guild ships but I’m pretty sure if I own a palace or estate I wouldn’t be paying to park my car in my driveway ..what happens when I wana redecorate – are they gona charge me to pull my couch and put it one square over??
- Dulfy
  
  Where you getting the idea or the info that is pay per placement?
  - y2z
    
    They’re just spreading misinformation so somebody sees that and doesn’t read any further, thinking that poster is correct. Can we flag for inaccurate information?
    - The Watchmen
      
      Down vote his comment
      - y2z
        
        Already done but thank you.
    - Heist 101
      
      Sorry I must have misread something someone posted down the page and spoke too soon.. It does seem now that I sounded trollish and I apologize..
- darkfather
  
  Your info is WAY wrong sir. You buy the item and its yours across your account/legacy, decorating or re-decorating cost nothing. Placing your items and such cost nothing.
- Snakesoul
  
  Only thing that costs so far is certain items maybe purchased either CC or credits but still haven’t been put in stone yet but has been mentioned. Activating/de-activating your home (more info will come about this later but so far if you bought a house with normal credits it will cost you to re-active it after you de-active it again more info later streams but if you bought with Cartel Coins then it’s always free to re-active any of your houses that you have previously de-activated again more info in later stream). Placing items do not cost, the only “cost” is how many items you have in your stack. example
  If I want to place 3 statues of a rancor, I need to have 3 rancor statues. When I place the item the stack will show how many are remaining from the amount I had at start, so I can’t play 3 statues if I don’t have 3. That’s it, when you place stuff it doesn’t get destroy or go bye bye, when you pick it up it’s back on your stack amount. Everything is account bound by the sounds of it. Again tune in for future streams every Thursday (I believe they quoted) to have any questions answered and to see their development. It’s pretty interesting.
Josh Jessup

So my understanding is that, for example, if you own the rancor on one of your characters, you can display this item in your stronghold. However, only the player that unlocked this mount can use it? but it will be seen in stronghold legacy wide?
- Dulfy
  
  Correct
thatguy

am not happy with the hook system they should give us the option to turn it off or full freedom with in the hook system what i mean i want to be able to put a lamp on my desk stuff like that
- Edward T. Riker
  
  Dude, that requires some kind of real effort from the developers and you are talking about EA and the corpse of Bioware.
  Thanks them you can pay for have some stuff nobody will see or care ever!
  - R315r4z0r
    
    The hook system requires more effort than free placement. They need to apply many different specific hook layouts to every single location hooks are in and make sure that each of those layouts don’t cause clipping issues. It’s a lot more tedious work than they would need to take on if they just made it all free-placement.
    
    But free-placement opens up issues for clipping and geometry glitching.
Arby

As long as it has GTN terminal, personal storage container, legacy storage container, and a junk droid I’m happy enough. I won’t be spending any money on deco for sure, but at least it will have some kind of purpose.
6

So how do u actually get to your stonghold. Do u fly in, walk in, click in? Will there be a instant travel there, like fleet pass.
- 6
  
  Nevm, so new icon will travel u there, then u teleport back. Cool
- Bro Boat
  
  I hear there is a cool little cinematic though so there is that.
Kylmc715

I was first disappointed with the hook system, but after seeing all the different layouts of the hooks and all the different ways you can move and rotate items, I think this will be great.
- Vinak
  
  You should check out free placement systems….blows this out of the water.
Josh

If you own 4 kdy mounts, would you be able to place four of them in stronghold?
- TJWoo
  
  I can only imagine how many times you had to run KDY to get 4 mounts. ::shudder::
  - Josh
    
    ahahah yep, kuat battle marshal here… but I do other things, I swear:O XD.
- Bro Boat
  
  If I recall, they said in the Stream that as long as you have the mount you can place the same mount more then once.
- SLT
  
  Yes but you would have to log into each character n place the mount.
mitthslindio

A little side note for your interactive objects..
Its not /sit that allows you to sit on chairs and such its /chair. At least its what they said in the stream.
Optimist

Better than lotro housing, don’t think we will get them to remove the hooks.

Several “small” things are already on my wishlist:
Change NPC Armor/Wapons/…
Change floor/wall textures/colour/…

My smuggler needs a treasure room, there are some unique items he “found” on an imperial ship.^^
- Bro Boat
  
  Sadly they said you cannot change the color or texture =(
  “They said why would you change it? It looks so pretty”.
  It would make Tatooine more appealing for me.
  - Hache-Moncour
    
    Then again, they’ve held the same view for armor colors, so I don’t think “dyes” for houses are out of the question if the houses prove popular (e.g. sell cartel coins).
    - Bro Boat
      
      I can only hope you are right. They do love their recolors. On the bright side they give you the option to put carpets and flags on the wall to add some color.
R315r4z0r

It would be cool if you could adjust the layout of your stronghold by choosing a floor plan for each room from a pre-designed list.

It would also be cool if you could adjust textures and colors of the walls and floor. Maybe like even a wallpaper similar to rugs.

And one other thing… it would be awesome if there were secret locations within your own stronghold that required the collection and placement of very specific decorations that would allow you to climb on top of them to get to said secrets.
- Sean Malloy
  
  Having the ability to either a) recolor the layout, so you’re not stuck with (for Nar Shaddaa) the gold-and-brown shading, or b) pick from a set of variant styles — for example, instead of the cylinder with crescent lights you see in the picks under the ‘Wall Hooks’ section, the middle part of the cylinder is replaced by a glowing panel like the ones on the force-field generators in the old Panteer castle throne room on Alderaan. With the basic appearance of a stronghold being predefined, and all you can do is drop decorations into it, it creates the feeling that you’re just _renting_ the space with lease terms that prohibit you from even painting the walls.
Matthew Ottoson

For the RPers out there I thought a “family tree” display of some kind would be cool. Maybe with an area to write a small bio of each character.
Darth Cocoabeans

Better than looking at that dark ship all the time.
Khalith .

I hope Dulfy will do a full list of all the decorations and npc’s when it’s available. =)
Cal

Subscribers get the 1.5 mil Nar Shadda stronghold. I don’t like Nar Shadda personally, I’ll move to Tattooine. Can I sell the Nar Shada strong hold they give me….to. Vendor or something? Cause I really don’t want it just sitting there.
Evony Nova

can someone advise where is the hook to decorate the guild flagship? i have a ton of deco available but no way to place it

SWTOR Galactic Strongholds Hooks and Decorations Breakdown

General

Hooks

Decorations

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