Harad Kinhouse
Prelude
Update: It wasn't too long ago that the kinhouse was set with a Tropical Theme in place. This had to be redone shortly after the transfers to the 64-bit servers. With the Song of Waves and Wind Epic concluding, there was an enormous set of decorations made available through Corsairs of Umbar, Legacy of Morgoth, and Kingdoms of Harad expansions. There was a lot of experimentation on what would work inside and out of the island. Update 48 reduced some decorations that only fit huge yard slots to any yard slot. Though they still could not be placed in furniture slots, they can fit into any yard slots that might be available inside. They also added light slots to Belfalas neighborhoods and fences to Rohan neighborhoods. This changed my approach.
Outside
Crafting Center: None of the functional decorations themselves have changed from year to year. You can still access all the crafting stations, supplier, vault, and even the barber. There are now three training dummies including the standard from the Curator, snowman from Yule Festival hobbit gifts, and stuffed warg from the Anniversary boxes. Instead of a gazebo, there is now an enormous kapok, open reed hut, and baobabs from the Legacy of Morgoth expansion. The largest versions seem to be the best to show. The Zajana towers are from the Kingdoms of Harad expansion. The ambient music comes from Midsummer Festival - Furtherholm Landscape Themes. The Ambural ambient environment shows the new night sky (without the sandstorms of the Khûd Zagin ambient environment).
Stable-master: The dock-master and stable-master are still available by the main road. Ironically, the Kighan Housing Furnisher has a lot of easily-accessible decorations that doesn't require any reputation or tokens in Kingdoms of Harad. Although the marble-dome version completely overshadows the area immediately underneath, the Filigree-Domed lets sunlight cast a very interesting shadow on the ground and the branches of trees break through its exterior. The spooky Orthanc tower remains with a number of interesting things around its foundation. While many of the new floral decorations require premium currency at Lalia's Market new Rivendell barterer, there is but a handful of scraps you can get from the Rivendell Homestead Furnisher. One of those include a Shaggy Pine Copse that includes five pine trees and a broken one in the middle for any forest-lover. The decorations at the end are all from various Kingdoms of Harad reputation barterers. If my chances at obtaining decorations in instances was better, I would have gone for the better snake-version tower.
Entrance: For the music box inside, I chose Wells of Forgetting. The basket of fresh fruit still remains by the mailbox. I have found the bright colors to be a great way to point to the mailbox. The Unwelcome Mat remains absent at the front door since it was rather distracting how characters slid inside in a cowering position. The new lights were very interesting to play around with as they enhance the static house torches with the same set color. This created a sort of Alice in Wonderland effect as the colors constantly fought against each other for dominance in the rooms. I wanted to include the Bougainvillea floral from Adurhid quartermaster to match the purple and green colors that you can get from the Kinta quartermaster.
Center: The bath area came very late in development since they introduced the housing decorations in the latest Midsummer Festival. The fountains and wash basins were a must, but knowing what to do with the rest of space was very difficult. I used a blue ambient color to fill the space and two large gardens sunk under the ground to give them a bit of garden variety feeling. I also pulled an old trick from years ago by adding the little boats on the water surfaces. The decorative panels that came from the Reward Track proved to be much more appealing than the double panels you can buy from Lalia's Market.
Market: The upper levels proved to be the most daunting task of them all. Nearly all the big decorations bled together between the floors. Waterfalls, Kinta abodes, hanging Kinta awnings, large green gardens, and wall vines were showing themselves in the most unusual ways through multiple rooms. The overall idea of having a number of markets upstairs didn't change, but what and where things were being displayed sure did over the course of moving things around the room. Defeating the scorpion roving threat in the new region three times gave me a fun new idea with the included scorpions. There were a ton of random things like that coming together to sort of flesh out the stalls. I wanted to make use of the golden decorations you get from Zajana and the instance barterer on the tables as well.
