Room Decorating Game
There is a lot I want to say about maxing, trading, and whiteboard art, but first I want to talk about the new room decoration game.
Update Feb 4th: They seem to have caught on and fixed the gift loophole. Darn! (But I’m leaving this article as is, even though it doesn’t work anymore.)
Specifically, what I think most people are interested in: it’s possible to get all rooms completed without spending money
Here’s the basic idea of how the game works:
You get up to 550 points for arbitrary, pretty much BS reasons
I say BS reasons because in a brand new room you can, for example, get the “plantastic” bonus for placing three herbs in the room, but in another room that has already reached 550 points, those very same three herbs will not get you any bonus at all. Is it a coincidence that all rooms stop getting easy points at 550? Trying to chase the specific bonuses like “plantastic” or “ruggy” is a waste of time and energy.
So how do you get past 550 points?
You get points whenever you place a “new” item in a room
You may have noticed some items in your inventory are marked as “new”. Beyond 550 points, it seems that only items marked as “new” contribute to room score when they are placed, and the number of points they contribute is directly related to the value of the item. More expensive items add more points.
Placing an item in a room removes its new status, which means you can’t simply move the items to another to a second room to add points to the second room also. Only the first room gets the points, and after that it’s not new anymore.
Does that mean that you have to spend money to get decorating points? Not quite, because:
Items are “new” when you buy them from the store, or when you receive them as gifts
Buying new items from the stores is certainly one way to get room points, albeit a costly one. But they also made it so that items received as gifts are always considered new. This is true even if they were not new before they were given. In other words, giving an item as a gift restores its status as new!
Incidentally, transferring an item via trade does not restore its new status.
This means that by giving items back and forth between two players, you can get the room decorating points over and over again from a single item. It works best with more expensive items, since it requires fewer placements to complete a room.
Here are some random items I tested, and their point value:
2400 points: Shark Attack
4415 points: Interactive Sandbox
1732 points: Whiteboard
1222 points: Floating Mine
3800 points: Spotlight Mic
600 points: Yellow Pool Shark
It requires a total of 15,000 points for a room to be 100% complete.
More on the decorating game later…
Tips | Lightning Jamie | 
February 2, 2010 3:32 pm