Since the original mod author has generously given me permission to redistribute this mod, I'm going to get it up on the Nexus today. However, I first want to clean up the mod and remove any assets that aren't needed for the new version. This basically boils down to most of the prebuilt nif files; all of the new ARMA records use the black dyed outfit variants, so we can remove the mesh folders for the other types. We can also remove the female meshes (except and ground objects) since they will now use bodyslide output from BHUNP Vanilla Outfits AE. 

 

Before doing this cleanup, the mod was 202 MB unpacked. Removing the excess files brings this down to 148 MB. 

 

Now before I dive into taking screenshots for my Nexus post, I do need to loop back and address one small matter. Immersive Wenches uses an alternate wench outfit (just a different editor ID and back end properties) which prevents its actors from getting full access to the new color variants. The alternate outfit is there to block some specific prostitution mods from being able to use Immersive Wenches actors. However, since I don't use that particular mod this isn't an issue. So I'll be phasing that out from my game. 

 

Here's the offending record below:

 

 

This change should address the issue:

 

 

At some point I probably want to go back and add color variants for the Empowered Wench outfit, but that can wait for some other date. With those changes saved, now let's get some screen shots of the new outfits.

 

 

If you're interested in trying out this mod, you can download it at this link: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62817/

Nexus user Grroot2 recently published a city expansion mod for Solitude. Interestingly, it adds some buildings that do not have working doors. This might be helpful for me in the future if I run into conflicts with shops or quest locations, so let's check it out to see if it plays nice with the city's geometry.

 

 

Here's the plaza near the entrance. Looks like some conflicts with Diabloesque Decorations and Public Executions, as well as some minor Z-axis misalignment on the headman's block. This stuff is all pretty easily fixed in the CK, so no worries yet.

 

 

Need to rotate that stone cairn 90 degrees, but I like the little back alley there to put shady characters in. I do see however that it uses some textures that belong to the college of Winterhold; might need to swap textures there since the hexagonal aylied stone is kind of out of place in solitude. 

 

 

The transition from the market to the new street seems more or less smooth. The Ambient Slaves shop is far enough to the right that it isn't a blocker. Meat Farm furniture and actor need to be moved slightly. It does seem to move a wall that a mod I'm installing today uses, but since this gives me unassigned doors to work with I can just move that storefront.

 

 

Notwithstanding the Winterhold floor texture, this new row of buildings seems to work fine - no conflicts with Immersive Laundry.

 

 

Minor positional conflicts that would need touching up.

 

 

Severe conflict with the Solitude Museum. Will probably need to remove that whole garden area. There's also a fairly extensive edit to the immediate area outside the city gates, which have a number of terrain intrusions and will block key geometry for Clockwork. So I generally like what this mod is doing, but it'll require some focused effort to get it meeting expectations. We'll disable the mod for now until I have the time to really work on it.

As I mentioned while I was assessing Grroot's Solitude overhaul, I'm going to install Imperial Physician next. This is a nice little shop that also adds a bunch of new books to the game. The mod is uncompacted and has its assets in a BSA, so we'll need to unpack those first; otherwise, renumbering the facegen won't work right.

 

The mod itself only has 523 records, so compacting shouldn't be a problem. There's no voice or SEQ data. Once we've reindexed the facegen, we'll repack the assets into BSAs to keep with the mod's original design.

 

 

Cleaning didn't reveal any issues, and the conflicts were minimal. In fact, I'm a little concerned that there isn't a navmesh conflict. That suggests the door links for this shop aren't hooked up. However, in the scope of potential problems with a mod, this is actually pretty benign; it's unlikely any non-mod-added NPCs are going to try to enter the shop, and I assume the storeowner lives in the same building and doesn't come out. We'll see once we go into the game.

 

 

The store interior looks great, but we can see an immediate problem here - the market stall for Ambient Slaves blocks the entrance. It's possible get to it, just a bit of a tight fit. There are a few ways to address this, but since the conflict doesn't block gameplay we'll leave it be for now; after all, as we know from above, we're going to have to move this entrance anyway once we expand Solitude, since the wall its attached to is going to disappear.

This one has been on my list for quite a while but kind of got forgotten about. I'm not anticipating any problems with installation, but we'll need to visit the location in game to make sure everything is aligned right. It has no asset conflicts and it's already ESL-flagged. It also came up completely clean in xEdit, with only some minor landscape edits. I generally only worry about landscape conflict resolution if I find actual issues in game.

 

 

Looks good. That was a remarkably painless installation; clearly I should have installed this a while ago!

This one is actually two mods - one for the Gray Quarter and one for Brand-Shei in Riften. These are both LE mods, but I have a strong suspicion they'll be compatible with SSE right out of the box. The Gray Quarter one did have a BSA file which I had to unpack. For bonus points, there was only one file in that BSA -- a texture for muffins. So we won't worry about repacking anything.

 

Once I got into xEdit I found that these mods are actually somewhat complex - especially the Gray Quarter one - and there's at least one navmesh problem in the mix. We'll revisit these mods in the future.