Hi folks, hope your weekend has been going well so far. I don't quite have the energy yet to do a full-scale blog entry, but I did want to go through the footprint of the next few main quest segments and set up a rough to-do list for the coming installations. As you may recall, we just wrapped up MQ103 and we're about to start "Dragon Rising," where the Dragonborn is revealed and begins to grow into their powers. Now there are still some unresolved bits of work to be done, notably figuring out what went sideways with the navmesh between Helgen and Riverwood. Based on how Hadvar behaved, I have a suspicion that something is wrong with the edge linkages between some of the cells on the path, causing enough of an increase in distance to go around that the back path to Riverwood becomes the most efficient route. I'm going to have to investigate that during a future hobby session.

 

 

There are also some suspicious navmesh details in the area of Anise's cabin that look like they need some remedial work in the CK. I'll plan on doing these at the same time I investigate the navmesh near Helgen. After some thought I decided to defer customizing the two Thalmor soldiers at Helgen until we reach the Thalmor Embassy part of the main quest, since I can use that custom costume for the consular guards at the embassy as well. That just leaves one final unresolved punchlist item, which is fixing the texture lighting on the ZDD static objects. That will require further research so it's an ongoing project.

 

But what about MQ104? That quest begins with the report of the dragon attack, after which the player will follow Irileth down to the main gate to muster the guards. First things first I'll want to take a second look at quests that delay Bleak Falls Barrow. One thing I found during the shakedown run was that the dialogue kind of steers the player towards just warning Balgruuf and then going to join a civil war faction, but the forced segue to Bleak Falls spoils this gameplay path. If I can integrate a delay for that segment, I'd like to do so.

 

The walk with Irileth will take us back down through the square with the Gildergreen, past the Temple of Kynareth, House Gray-Mane, and the Drunken Huntsman. For these buildings, at a minimum I'd like to look at giving them colored roof tiles. If the player has not already done so, they are likely to witness Amren and Saffir's argument, as well as Braith being bullied. We should look at the options for customizing these NPCs. As much as I liked Wind District Breezehome on previous playthroughs, that mod isn't really suitable for the intended stage in the game when the player would purchase Breezehome. But we'll get back to the subject of Breezehome later.

 

After Irileth's speech, the player will follows the posse down to the Western Watchtower, where they confront the dragon. The Watchtower already has an overhaul in place, and this build already contains Diverse Dragon Collection. Unless we have problems with either of those mods I expect to keep them in place. I may also think about a certain light-hearted mod that adds a farm to the area the player will pass, but that's not a big priority if it needs any extra work. 

 

The road itself has a few individual segments that are showing noticeable grass intrusion, and I might 'mow' those areas in the CK a little. This kind of overgrowth doesn't make a lot of sense for an important trade hub and wagon stop. No Grass In Objects, of course, would fix this, but I really don't feel motivated to set up a separate 1.5.97 client just for running NGIO.

 

 

Since the West Watchtower will be destroyed in the coming fight, I don't see a big need to customize it. Much like the dungeon tower in Helgen, most players will never explore the inside of this location before it becomes inaccessible, and while I love easter eggs in principle, they are very much a "nice to have" feature rather than a must-have one.

 

 

After the dragon's defeat, the player is revealed to be Dragonborn and will have their third and final audience with Balgruuf. They will be elevated to Thane of Whiterun and Lydia will come into their service. Lydia already has a custom appearance from the 2023 build, but we'll customize her outfit at the same time. I'm somewhat inclined to use Knight of the Village for her basic outfit and then make a custom outfit for her upgraded appearance (unlocked by doing her romance quest in Amorous Adventures). At the same time, the player will gain the opportunity to purchase Breezehome. I'll want to look over the overhaul options - my main requirement is that they don't overhaul it too radically and that the mod preserves its vanilla upgrade process where it starts mostly empty and the player then has to furnish it. If the player has been following the main quest from the start, they'll be probably around 7th or 8th level at this point and it doesn't make sense to start them off with a palace.

 

 

Balgruuf will command the player to visit the Graybeards on High Hrothgar. Nowadays when I play Skyrim, I almost always take the mountain pass to Ivarstead rather than following the lowland route. However, I only learned about this path after I'd become pretty accustomed to the lay of the land, so we will proceed with the lowland route in mind. In general we will skip detours to dungeons unless it's likely the player would be called towards them, so for example we will not spend time overhauling the bandit cave just on the east side of the river.

 

The first exterior POI the player will pass is the Ritual Stone. I'll probably overhaul that one as part of this pass, since I know it has at least one good option that I've already integrated without problems in the past.

 

 

A bit further down the road, we'll encounter the bandit camp at Valtheim Towers. This region has a few different options for customizing it, which we'll review to see if any of them are a good fit. Since this is an iconic location that most early game players encounter it's a good candidate, but I want to be wary of any options that make the fight here too difficult by adding lots of additional enemies.

 

 

As an aside, frame rate was pretty good an consistent through this area, never going below the upper 50s. Looks like the occlusion data is doing its job and preventing overloading (though I'm running with TDetect turned off, so I'm not carrying any combat AI related load). The scenery looks really nice as well.

 

 

Without knowing and using the shortcuts, the walk to Ivarstead is a rather lengthy one, but there aren't any "hard stop" moments where the player can't proceed safely... and fortunately there are signs pointing the way along the main road.

 

 

Darkwater Crossing is down this way, but that's out of scope for this round of tweaking. We'll visit there at some point in the future though, most likely as part of Lydia's romance quest.

 

 

Here's the encounter where the "wounded merchant" lures you into a Bandit ambush. Since this encounter has a sense of urgency and a character who asks the player to help him, we'll review and overhaul the location as well as possibly customizing some or all of its elements. 

 

 

At a minimum, it needs some landscape cleanup - note the fire in the middle of tall grass. I'll probably also install Diverse Campfires are this time since I've been dragging my feet on it for quite a while now. In addition to being a good candidate for an overhaul on general principles, Nilheim tower shares a lot of common geometry with Valtheim, which might be noticeably "samey" to the player and hold back immersion a bit. All the more reason to customize it.

 

 

An observant player will be able to see Ivarstead from the top of Nilheim's tower, and might take a shortcut along the riverbank to reach the objective. However, let's follow the rest of the road just in case it offers up something interesting.

 

 

I met a Skooma dealer here. This is probably just a random world encounter, but I should look into customizing his outfit. Prison rags don't make a ton of sense for the dealer. This might be a good opportunity to add some Khajiit outfits.

 

 

This camp I passed reminded me that I should pick up the shell-textured rabbits mod.

 

 

This Dibella shrine and its sacred band attendants need some customization. I'd like each Dibella shrine to have unique geometry, and the Sacred Band members need costumes. On my 1800 mod build I used Goddess of War as the basis for the Sacred Band's outfits and that'll probably be my starting point, maybe incorporating some TEWOBA Imperial Bikini Armor pieces. 

 

 

This route takes us through the site of Cocksmen Village. That locale comes with its own cute and raunchy quest and I'll have to decide if I have the time to integrate it without slowing down the main project too much. The mod certainly offers utility by adding a place to rest along the middle of several long routes, but it makes a number of changes to other areas such as Windhelm, so I'll need to carefully review its contents to ensure it's not too much of a scope expansion.

 

 

Now we've reached Ivarstead itself. Like our visits to Helgen and Riverwood, we'll need to do a full review of the denizens to decide which ones, if any, need further customization to their appearance and their outfits. I'm a big fan of the Great Town of Ivarstead and I'll likely outsource all the building overhaul work to that mod. I may also dust off Uncommon Races of Skyrim to overhaul Temba. That mod is tragically out of print, but I have a copy of it in my archives and with some tailoring I think it could make a good addition for select NPCs. The main issues with it as it shipped were all minor deficiencies 'around the edges,' with the core functions working properly. But like Cocksmen, UROS will require some time and effort so I'll need to triage whether its worth it to customize one NPC in this area. 

 

The next stop will take us up to High Hrothgar, which I'm not going to actually walk in this survey since we all know the Steps well I'm sure. I'll look for customization opportunities, though Hrothgar and the Graybeards are so iconic that they may need very little attention. After the Dragonborn benefits from their tutelage, the quest for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller (MQ106) will begin. The player will descend back down the mountain and head for the dungeon of Ustengrav. 

 

 

This is another pretty lengthy hike that will take us through some interesting locations. First we'll backtrack to Whiterun via the mountain pass and this time take the north bridge. Leaving town we do see a Hydragorgon character who hasn't been updated yet, so we will need to go through and do a similar treatment here to what we did in Whiterun.

 

 

After we cross the ford, there's a ruined building where a Wispmother consistently spawns. I believe we already overhauled most of the vanilla monster races in the 2023 build, but we'll have to double-check to make sure the wispmother looks good when she spawns.

 

 

The mountain pass comes out right near the Whiterun Stormcloak camp. I probably won't do any customization on this today because this is kind of out of scope for what we're doing, but at some point I'll need to check on this area to make sure everything looks right. 

 

 

There are a couple of farms immediately north of the Whiterun bridge that the player will pass. I'll want to do at least some mild customization on them and their denizens.

 

 

Tundra Homestead seems to have some broken geometry that we'll need to investigate.

 

 

Whitewatch Tower, Loreius Farm, and Cicero's Cart are all in close proximity and all areas of interest for customizing. There are lots of options for all of them, so I'll probably spend a little time here picking and choosing.

 

Past Loreius Farm, we're entering The Pale's cultural area, and going forward we need to keep this in mind as we look at things like outfits. Loreius gets a pass since he's so close to Whiterun that he's more in their cultural sphere, but once we hit the snow line we want the Pale to look a bit different.

 

 

If I had Rigmor installed, this is where the large Imperialcamp would be located. We'll leave this area alone for now, but when/if I install Rigmor, we'll need to come back here to check for any landscape conflicts. The revelers here are a world encounter that isn't in scope for the current effort, though eventually I might want to add some subtle hint that these guys are in league with Sanguine.

 

 

Fort Dunstad - and the Stumbling Sabrecat tavern within - is a bandit fort that's worth at least taking a look at. The character won't necessarily need to conquer the fort but short of a lengthy detour they'll need to fight their way through. The Stumbling Sabrecat has a good overhaul mod, but I may wait until Rigmor is installed since it has a pretty comprehensive Rigmor patch.

 

 

If we were going east towards Dawnstar I'd be seriously considering installing Dunpar Wall, which is a small settlement I like a lot, but we'll leave that be for now.

 

 

Heading west, we'll pass the Hall of the Vigilants. It's a bit off the path, but in a cold zone like this the player may be more quick to detour to warm up, so we'll look at it. I'm not sure if it needs an overhaul per se, but in its vanilla setup Dawnguard can destroy the hall rather early in the game, even before the player visits. I should look into options to delay that development.

 

 

One thing I've noticed in this area is that the RASS snow shader is a little bright. I'll need to drill into this because the RASS rain shader also seems to be ignoring my ENB shinyness settings. It's possible I may just dump RASS if ENB is already providing a similar function.

 

The route to Ustengrav is pretty unforgiving and in the context of an early main quest start will be the player's first encounter with serious cold conditions. A Nord may be able to make it OK (barely) but other races might have a hard time. I don't think this really requires any special attention, but it's a good thing to keep in the back of my mind while doing testing. 

 

 

The player will detect Stonehills from the road and is likely to be pretty cold at this point. We'll need to review this location since sheltering there is quite likely.

 

 

This lamp post is out of alignment with the road signs. I'll need to fix that.

 

 

The overhead map had led me to expect that I'd get so close to Ustengrav that it would be logical for the player to go their directly, but in practice the road led me to Morthal. I'll want to overhaul this area with the usual level of detail I've done for other sites. I have a soft spot for ClefJ's Morthal, but I'll review all my options. I also need to do a little bit of research about Hjaalmarch. It seems like it would have a similar cultural feel to the Pale, if a bit less prosperous. 

 

 

There are a few mods that customize the marshes north of Morthal, and we'll need to decide if any of those make sense. In particular I believe there's one that adds some rickety plank bridges throughout the marshes which make traversal a little easier and more logical. 

 

 

We'll skip Movarth's Lair for now as it isn't really relevant to the main quest.

 

 

At long last, our trek through the marshes deposits us at Ustengrav. We will want to review the dungeon for overhaul opportunities, but once that's complete we should ready for a shakedown of the next three Main Quest segments. Stay tuned for the continuation of our adventure!