I always feel I need to preface any post with I'M ON A 360, so that I don't get responses such as, "there's a mod for that." With that being said...

One of my favorite things about The Elder Scrolls series has always been how we can acquire our own homes and make them our own by placing items we find throughout our adventures all around our house. Skyrim gives us the same option, kind of.

Like many of you guys have probably already noticed, the grab and drag feature in Skyrim was changed from Oblivion. And I, again like many of you guys I'm sure, absolutely hate it. I understand what Bethesda was trying to do by simplifying the grab feature, but in doing so they've made it much, much more difficult to place items around our houses than it was in Oblivion. For those who are not aware, let me explain.

In Oblivion when we grabbed an item you could choose where you wanted to grab the item be directing your crosshairs. In other words if you wanted to hold a sword by the tip of the blade you could, and the handle would dangle down toward the ground. Or visa versa. Hold it by the handle and the tip would dangle down. Not only that, the item that you were grabbing would stay in the place where it was which allowed you to grab items on the side that were sitting on shelves (like bottles or potions) and turn them ever so slightly.

I know many people may not get as into decorating their humble abodes as I do, but for me this was a lot of fun in Oblivion. And I got very, very good at moving items around my house. I did the same thing in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, both of which had the same grabbing mechanics.

Now enter Skyrim. When you grab an object and begin to move it, the game automatically drags the item to a set distance, which makes moving an item that has already been placed somewhere just an inch or two almost impossible. And what's worse is that Bethesda has set where we will hold the items. For swords its not even on either end, nor is it at the center of the blade. Its slightly off center making placing swords different places very, very difficult.

And it seems that these automatic grabbing locations are almost always set in places that make the item very difficult to place. Potions, mead, etc. are probably the best examples. When you grab a potion and begin to try to set it on a shelf you will quickly notice that the bottle is being held at the bottom, eventually resulting in the lid or top of the bottle being pointed toward the ground. This makes placing these items on shelves nearly impossible. At least in any sort of order.

Lastly, it seems to me that Bethesda recently changed their grab mechanics. I may be wrong on this but I could swear that previously I could place bottles of mead that seemed to float stationary in the air on a shelf quite easily. Maybe my mind is deceiving me but it seems that I'm having a much more difficult time placing items around my house recently than ever before. It seems the locations in which we are forced to hold items is so far off that decorating my houses has become exceptionally frustrating.

I'm hoping that in a future update Bethesda might address this. I know that this is not an issue for the vast majority of fans, and some may not even know grabbing objects is an option. I don't know if it would be an easy fix or not but if it was changed back to the way it was in Oblivion I would be much less stressed when trying to place objects around my house. I know the old system of grabbing is possible because we can still do it on dead bodies in Skyrim. Grab a guy's wrist, his head or ankle and you can see how we can choose the location in which we want to hold our fallen enemies. However, with household items, its just not possible.

I'd love to decorate my Skyrim homes. Problem is, that means letting items fall off of where they were and then using the workaround just to put a bowl on a table. How about the whole, "things decide to not stay in place after you leave house" problem gets fixed first.

this.

and op i agree with you in oblivion it was so much more simple to place items. now in skyrim its just a pain in the a**e. so much so that i dont reali bother. i place the odd weapon or emerald here n there or a cheeky bottle of skooma. but nothing to the extent of what i did with oblivions houses.

The problem of objects not staying can be fixed fairly easily. Its a bit inconvenient but it fixes that issue.

All you have to do is go in your house and drop everything that you want to place. Then go outside (the cell) and then go back in. The items will be where you dropped them obviously. Now go and place them wherever (do not put them back in your inventory). Just drag them and they should stay. At least they have for me.

I never played Oblivion (and don't remember what is was like in Morrowind), but I agree the process of decorating your Skyrim home is somewhat... frustrating.

However, it gets better with practice. Move item slowly. Learn the right moment to let go of it. Learn how to get the items with the right side up. It takes patience and practice, but it gets easier.

I loved decorating houses in Morrowind, it was super easy. I never got the hang of it in Oblivion and just didn't bother with Skyrim because this drag system really isn't my thing.

I agree to some extent and I'm not kidding when I say that I've probably spent well over 100 hours decorating my houses in Oblivion, Fallout and Skyrim. With that being said, I'd say that I'm very good at moving objects around. But Skyrim's system just plain svcks. And again, as I said in my original post, I could SWEAR that when we picked up bottles (ales, meads, potions, etc.) the game used to have us grab them in the middle and they would just remain stationary, floating in front of the player. Now whenever you pick up a bottle or potion the base of the bottle is at the top and the lid (or top) is pointing down. I can get them on shelves right side up but its very difficult and nearly impossible to line them up.

I had rows of Black Briar Reserve in my Riften home on one of my earlier characters with all the labels facing outward. I'm going to say that there's no way I'd be able to do that with the way it works now. I may be crazy, but I think it changed a bit.

Here's proof enough that something, somewhere has changed.

Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo3AuOYR7k8 video and notice at about the 0:32 mark how the bottle is being held in the air.

When I hold the EXACT same bottle (aversion to fire), it is upside down. The base it up and the cork is down. Very, very frustrating. When did this change?

The way bottles were held changed with the 1.6 patch, previously they were grabbed by the neck, which made them pretty easy to place. It is easier now just to work out the distance and eject them where you want them if it is only a single bottle. I was wondering if perhaps there was some simple control we were missing for changing orientation, but have not found it yet. I like arranging a group of potions, which we cannot do now without knocking the lot flying.

I miss the Oblivion house decorating.

That fix is also a problem because you shouldn't have to put millions of items on shelves and put them back in the same place just because of a glitch. I have been asking for fix for this that didn't involve having to turn house decorating into a turn based strategy game since this game was new, and it is always ignored over the scripted parts of house decor. I don't want my pickaxe to float off the weapon holder, but the house decor stuff that isn't scripted like putting bowls on tables being a mess just irks me.

I'll admit, this is just me being my overly obsessive self, but it's off putting when you find out you have to spend 2 minutes putting that bowl you put on a table back on the table just to get it to stay put. I don't know if this problem is impossible to fix because of a broken script line or some programming error that is more messed up than any overly hateful Youtube video comment, but how does a dev team go from house decor that works to turning it into Civilization The Home Decor Edition?

This is just me ranting, so yeah. I've known of the fix you're talking about since months ago. I was putting gems in a wooden ingot holding thing in the Markarth house, and found that the gems were all over the place once I got out of the house and went back in. I tried the fix, and it works, but I found myself thinking, "If I have to do this just to do home decor, I give up. Let the house be an ugly thing."

When you're dreams of a bowl in a game being filled with emeralds gets crushed, in my case, there's no way the grudge towards Skyrim home decor will leave.

on a positive note: centurion dynamo cores look marvelous. All my homes have at least one on display.

Drag and drop in Skyrim? Damn, I'm stupid when it comes to this game. And now, it seems like Oblivion as well. I didn't know we could hold objects like this.

So, here's a stupid question return: how does this drag and drop system work?

It's interesting there's mention of things falling off in houses. I just usually pick them up and throw them into a bag/cabinet and think nothing more of it. But this was only because I didn't know I could put the item back.

I just tried getting as close to the shelf/table as possible and dropped the item, hoping it would bounce in the right direction (rarely did this happen).

Ugh. I'm now wondering what else I'm missing out on. >:[

I miss Morrowinds static item placement.

To hell with realism, I want to be able to decorate my house with the trinkets of my fallen enemies and adventures without fear of everything exploding one day.

i remember turning my skingrad house into a real home (i loaded the display cases with magical trinkets [speaking of which i want the old display cases back, i could put things other than weapons in them and i could have a few different items in them at once], i put skooma on the tables, i set up shepards pie on silver plates [also on tables] and all sorts of stuff)

they didnt make our homes decorating friendly this time...things dont stay put and theres no rotate object feature as in oblivion. It svcks as i miss making my homes personal but its too much of a headache to do it right in skyrim. It took me way too much effort to just put a witches head on my shelf and have it face forward

Klawed Flaw, you're making it too complicated. Walk into your house and simply drop the items you are going to want to place (you would do this anyway). Just drop them and leave them right there on the floor, do not place them. THEN walk out of the cell. Then come back and place them and they'll stay.

And WHY on earth would they change the way that bottles are held in the 1.6 update? Can anyone possibly explain this? "Hey, I know, let's also make it nearly impossible to place bottles on a shelf with this update!"

Does it have something to do with the physics engine? Was that altered in some way? I just find it very hard to believe they changed the way bottles are held just for the sake of doing it, and making it much more difficult in the process. This had to have been a side-effect of another change, at least I hope.

Well I play on the PS3 and have tried this fix well over 50 times, yet majority of items still do not stay. Hell some items on the second floor I placed (Whiterun), when I came back to my home I found them on the 1st floor. So No this advice is not a fix for ****.

Hell what is the purpose of having a home or multipule homes now if you cant make it the way you want.

Well, then that svcks. It is only certain items?

It is too hard. Just moving simple things is hard because they rotate all over the place.

A lot more items will stay now since the last patch, you do not need to leave to do it, just drop it, pick it up and place it. And for the throw it and hope crowd most items have less bounce and are more stable, so there is a good chance the item will just settle where it landed rather than ending up on the other side of the room. Anything you discard will stay where it landed, so small things like gems, fruit or alchemy ingredients it is best to work out where it will land, then keep at it till it lands in whatever you want it in. Saves coming home to your gem collection scattered all over the floor.

I'm having a problem with ingots. They seem to always go back to where I dropped them. Not where I placed them. And again, I can't believe how bad moving the bottles is. One of my favorite things to do in my houses was decorate with Black-Briar Mead and numerous potions on shelves. I guess that's almost out of the question now. Its brutal.

How difficult would it be to delete the 1.6 patch, place my potions and then re-load the patch. I don't even know how to undo a patch.

I miss it too....

I just want Oblivion's system back. Whoever thought that this new grab system was a good idea has probably never tried to decorate a house in an Elder Scrolls game.

I remember my first time experiencing this problem. There is a bowl in Vlindrel Hall in Markarth with a couple bottles of Alto Wine in it. I had amassed a collection of Skooma and decided I would remove the wine and put all my skooma there instead. I dropped around 15 bottles individually and moved them into the bowl. It looked nice when I was finished. I left the house and came back later, only to discover the bottles had somehow been scattered all over my house. I was very disappointed.

Yeah, it's a pain... I'm on the Xbox 360 as well. I've just relegated my decorations to big vats, cauldrons, and baskets filled with gems, skulls, etc. It's much easier than attempting to be as meticulous as I was in the other TES titles. I do miss that ability, though. I remember that I had killed some Dunmer guy in Balmora in Morrowind and just took his house. It became my "meth lab" and storage facility. I had alchemy ingredients, weapons, armor, etc all nicely placed everywhere. By the time I had completed building my new home outside of town, the place looked like it was owned by a 80 year old packrat.