building Frontier - Skyrim Settlements

[Binksy24]

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Frontier - Skyrim Settlements

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Frontier: Skyrim Settlements
Build your own settlements anywhere in Skyrim - from a lone camp by the road to a walled town full of people with homes, jobs, shops, moods and enemies at the gate. Then found a guild, and take it down into a 100-floor abyss.

 

Frontier is an SKSE plugin with its own build menu. You set down a workbench, build with anything in your game, put down whole ready-made Skyrim buildings with working interiors, lay level ground and roads, and settlers arrive to live, work, trade, eat, sleep and defend the place - while you're there and while you're away. Found an adventurers' guild in your settlement, send its members out on contracts, and lead your own party floor by floor down the Abyss.

It changes no vanilla record. All three plugins only add new things.

 

Requirements
- Skyrim Special Edition / Anniversary Edition 1.6.x or 1.7.x (see Known limits for 1.5.97 and VR)
- SKSE64 for your game version
- Address Library for SKSE Plugins
- Optional: powerofthree's Tweaks - lets the build menu show editor IDs for things Skyrim normally forgets
Dawnguard and Dragonborn are used in the Abyss (every current Special / Anniversary Edition has them).

 

Installing and updating
- Install with your mod manager and tick all three plugins: FrontierSettlements.esp (light plugin), FrontierRooms.esp and FrontierAbyss.esp (both master-flagged - sort with LOOT).
- Safe on an existing save - you can add Frontier to a game in progress.
- Safe to update from any earlier version (1.0.x included) on the same save: everything saved by an older version is read by the new one, and new features start up on their own. FrontierAbyss.esp is new since 1.1.0 - tick it when you update.
- Going back to an older version on a save made with a newer one isn't supported.
- If you used a guild before 1.2.0, your guild card starts from the reputation your guilds already had.

 

Getting started
- Craft a Settlement Workbench Kit at any forge (4 firewood, 2 iron ingots, 2 leather strips).
- Use the kit from your inventory and place the workbench where you want your settlement.
- Activate the workbench to open the build menu. Everything is done from there.
- Put down a Recruitment Banner (Settlers page) and some beds - settlers start arriving from the next day.

 

Features

 

Settlements
- Any number of settlements, each with its own workbench, name, area and storage chest.
- Area size adjustable per settlement, from a small camp up to about 300 m across.
- A map marker with the settlement's name, and fast travel to it. You can choose your own fast-travel arrival point.
- Each workbench only shows its own settlement's things.
- Settlement Storage - one chest per settlement for materials, food, taxes and everything your workers bring in.

Building
- Build with any object in your load order - Skyrim's and every mod you have installed show up on the Build page.
- Categories: walls, floors, roofs, doors and doorways, stairs, fences and gates, beams and pillars, foundations, whole buildings, interiors, decor, nature, defences. Search box and an "exterior only" filter.
- Free-camera placing: fly round the piece while you place it, turn it, tilt it, roll it, raise and lower it, push it further or closer, scale it (10% to 1000%).
- Lock in place - lock a piece where it is and nudge it a few units at a time.
- Line up with the last piece - same height, angle and size as the piece before.
- Snapping - pieces click flush against the ones next to them.
- Fine steps for precise work, and a key to square pieces up.
- Keep placing: after putting a piece down you get another one straight away - walls and fences go up without trips back to the workbench.
- Pick in the world - fly about with your own pointer and click anything you've built to pick it. Handles let you drag it along an axis, turn it round any axis or size it, with Ctrl for exact steps. Copy, delete or fly to it from there.
- Undo and redo - up to 200 steps of placing, moving and removing (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y while picking, or the buttons on the Build page). Materials go back and forth with them.
- Move, copy or remove anything you've built. Removing gives the materials back.
- Moving a piece flies the camera smoothly to it.
- Invisible markers (idle markers and so on) are drawn as a box while you place them, so you can see where they stand and which way they face.
- Full controller support.

Building costs
- Building uses Hearthfire materials: sawn logs, quarried stone, clay, nails and iron fittings. What a piece costs depends on what it looks like it's made of (wood, stone or metal) and how big it is.
- Materials come out of the settlement storage first, then your inventory.
- A "free building" switch is in Settings if you'd rather build without materials.

Ready-made Skyrim buildings
- About 150 of Skyrim's own town and village buildings - houses, farmhouses, halls, inns, shops, manors, longhouses, mills, warehouses, stables, barracks, huts, blacksmiths, meaderies, lighthouses - in Nordic, Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, Windhelm and Orc styles.
- Each one comes with a working interior, either empty (to furnish yourself) or furnished (Skyrim's own furniture, beds, shelves, lights and fixtures, with empty containers and no owners).
- Buildings with more than one door have all of them working.
- Blacksmith buildings come with their forge, anvil, grindstone and sign.
- Interiors have navmesh so settlers can move about inside.
- Up to 20 copies of each building, shared by all your settlements.
- Rename buildings, move them (doors and outside pieces come along), or remove them.
- Furnish any interior with the same build menu: press Shift + B inside one of your buildings.
- Move or remove Skyrim's own furniture inside a building, and put it back later.

Land and roads
- Level ground - lay flat ground to build on, in plain dirt, rough dirt, stone paving, Nordic stone, wooden boards, Dwemer metal, or "match the ground" (takes the land texture under it so it blends in).
- Sides: sloped bank down to the land, sloped bank on a stone wall, straight down, stone wall, or nothing.
- Walk your roads: press Shift + R and walk - the road is laid behind you as you go, with smooth curves, soft edges that blend into the grass, following slopes and level ground. Dirt path, cobbled road, packed dirt, match-the-ground, rough dirt, stone paving, Nordic stone, wooden boards, Dwemer metal, or loose stones and boardwalks. Four widths. Plain, snow, autumn and Reach looks, or picked from the land for you.
- Clear an area - take away trees, plants, rocks and fallen logs round you, up to the size of the settlement. Everything can be put back.
- Distant view - your bigger buildings and walls stay visible from far away.

Settlers
- Hundreds of unique settlers with their own names and real Skyrim faces and voices - Nords, Imperials, Bretons, Redguards, elves, Orcs, Khajiit and Argonians.
- They arrive at your recruitment banner (with your hold's banner on it) - how many depends on room, beds, the settlement's size and how happy the people already there are.
- Homes: give each settler a house. They own it like any Skyrim home - their bed, their things, and they lock the door at night. If you want in after dark, pick the lock.
- Houses are named after who lives in them ("Ingrid's House").
- Jobs: farmer, hunter, miner, woodcutter, gatherer, guard, shopkeeper, tax collector, smelter, alchemist, tanner, adventurer, guild leader and quartermaster.
- Work clothes for their job, their own clothes at home.
- Job stars (1 to 5): settlers get better at their job with practice - more goods each morning, better guards, better shops.
- Everything settlers bring in goes into the settlement storage each morning.
- Settlers slowly put things out on the shelves and tables of their homes and shops.

Work stations
- Chopping blocks, ore veins (iron, silver, gold, corundum, orichalcum, quicksilver, moonstone, malachite, ebony), crops (cabbage, potato, leek, wheat, gourd), tanning racks, trees for gatherers, smelters, alchemy labs and animal pens.
- Workers use the station you give them - or one is set up for them near the workbench.
- A miner brings the ore of the vein they work.

Animal pens
- Cow, goat and chicken pens. Animals turn up on their own and are replaced over time if lost.
- A farmer working a pen brings in milk, eggs and hides.

Crafting workers
- Smelters turn ore into ingots, tanners turn hides into leather, alchemists brew restore health, stamina and magicka potions from cheap ingredients.
- Part of what they make goes to a matching shop in the settlement to sell, the rest into storage.

Shops and inns
- Turn any building into a shop: general goods, blacksmith, alchemist, fletcher, clothier, food and drink, jeweller, spells, books, hunter's goods or fence.
- Shopkeepers trade like Skyrim's own merchants - same goods lists, the usual "What have you got for sale?", restocked every two days.
- Shopkeepers stand behind the counter, open in the day, shut at night. Shops are open to customers during opening hours.
- Inns: the tavern keeper runs the bar, sells food and drink, rents rooms and sleeps at night like Skyrim's innkeepers. The inn never locks its doors.
- A bard performs Skyrim's songs, and visitors come by - travellers, adventurers, mercenaries, pilgrims, merchants and more.
- Settlers spend some evenings at the inn.

A day in the settlement
- Every settler has their own plan for the day: up at their own time, work, lunch break, back to work, then an evening walk, a drink at the inn or a quiet night in.
- They walk through doors like anyone else - no popping in and out of buildings.
- They chat, sit, eat, and use the furniture you've put down instead of standing about.
- Walking paths: press Shift + T and walk a route to record it. Settlers use your paths as guide rails to get round buildings. Walk an area back and forth and it becomes a place they wander about in.

Defences and guards
- Guards with day and night shifts, who patrol or stand at a guard post. Press Shift + G to set a post where you stand, facing the way you face.
- Give guards their own patrol routes, or let them choose.
- Walls, gates, towers and barricades you build count as defences ("Defences" category on the Build page).
- Skyrim's town gates can be placed as open archways.

Attacks
- Bandits, Forsworn (in the Reach), wolves, bears, trolls, sabre cats, frostbite spiders and spriggans attack now and then, depending on the hold, the weather and how strong you are.
- You get a warning about an hour before, and the Defences page shows when trouble is expected.
- If you're there, the fight happens for real - you're told which way they're coming from. If you're away, it's worked out from your guards, settlers and defences.
- Losing a fight means stolen food and gold - and, if you allow it, dead settlers.
- More guards and better defences keep attackers away for longer. A full storage draws them in sooner.

Food, mood and taxes
- Food: every settler eats one meal a morning from the storage. Farmers, hunters and tavern keepers bring food in; hungry settlers get unhappy and eventually leave.
- Mood: each settler's mood has reasons you can see - home, bed, job, food, guards, a tavern, recent attacks, taxes, defences, requests met or forgotten. Happy settlers work harder. Miserable ones refuse to pay taxes, and eventually pack up and leave.
- Taxes: give a settler the tax collector job and set a rate from none to very high. They do the rounds and the gold goes into the storage - minus their cut. The higher the rate, the unhappier everyone gets.

Growing settlements
- Settlements grow from camp to village to town as they gain people, buildings, shops and defences.
- Bigger settlements draw more settlers, have richer shops, and their people are prouder of them.
- Settler requests: now and then settlers ask for something - a well, a shrine, a tavern, a blacksmith, more guards, walls, lights, benches, a farm. Give it to them and they're pleased for days. Ignore it and they grumble.

The adventurers' guild
- Mark a building as your guild hall, put a notice board inside it and give a settler the Guild Leader job - talking to them opens the guild menu.
- Contracts on the board send your guild's adventurers to real places in Skyrim - bandit camps, draugr barrows, Falmer hives, vampire lairs, dragon lairs, giant camps, hagraven nests, Dwemer ruins and more - with danger, pay, travel time and a chance of success worked out from the party you send. They come back with gold and loot, or hurt, or not at all.
- Couriers bring requests from the holds, and each hold remembers how well your guild has served it.
- Guild card: nine ranks from F (Recruit) to SS+ (Abyss Walker), each with its own colour. Guild points come from contracts, abyss floors, bosses and milestones; every new rank needs a promotion trial set by your Guild Leader. Your card shows your record: floors, bosses, contracts, kills by kind, best find, gold earned, badges.
- A rank emblem - an amulet whose bonus grows with your rank.
- Higher ranks bring harder and better-paid contracts, a bigger party and a better guild shop.
- Recruit board: adventurers looking for a party - each with their own name, race, role (fighter, archer, mage or healer), rank, skills, two traits and their own gear. Hiring is free. They live in the guild hall, rank up with you and gear themselves from the loot they find. A balanced party fights better.
- A Quartermaster runs the guild shop; its stock gets better with your rank.
- A weekly guild challenge, and a rival guild - the Ashen Lanterns - racing you down the abyss.
- Mark a building as an infirmary and wounded members heal twice as fast.
- A trophy hall - place a trophy for every boss floor you've beaten - and a memorial wall for members who fell.
- Adventurers from all over drop in on your guild hall during the day.

The Abyss - a 100-floor dungeon
- Once your guild reaches rank D, build the Abyss Lift (Skyrim's own Dwemer lift) in your settlement and go down.
- 100 floors in ten bands, each harder than the last: The Upper Caves, The Barrows, The Wild Halls, The Dwemer Gates, The Hive, The Conjured Deeps, The Blood Halls, The Deep Machines, The Tombs of the Dragon Priests and The Bottom of the Abyss.
- Every floor is a whole dungeon - the next way down is somewhere inside it. Enemies get stronger the deeper you go.
- Every 10th floor is a boss room - a frost troll, a draugr deathlord, a Spriggan Earth Mother, a Dwarven centurion, a Falmer chief, three atronachs at once, a gargoyle, a dragon priest... and at the very bottom, Karstaag. The way down stays shut until the boss is down.
- After every boss there's a resting place: a quiet cave camp with a fire, a cooking spit, a tent and bedrolls, a way back up to the surface and a way down to the next floor. Once you've beaten a boss, the lift can take you straight to the camp after it - pick any camp you've reached.
- You don't have to kill everything: reaching the next floor counts the floor behind you as done.
- Bring your recruits: they follow you down, fight beside you and roll the loot of every floor for themselves.
- Loot by depth - common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary finds, from iron and hide on the first floors to daedric and dragonbone near the bottom, including Dawnguard and Dragonborn gear and reworked uniques. Every find is announced and glows in its tier's colour.
- Ten new weapons found only in the Abyss - Copperfang, Invicta, Wayfinder, the Frostmarch Greatblade, Anvilfall, Stormcleaver, the Barrow-Bitten Axe, Wolfsong (a bow), Duskfall and Nightwarden - and a very rare Abyssal version of each, with three enchantments, on the last ten floors only.
- You can't die down there: beaten, you wake up at the lift - but what you found on that run stays where you fell, in a satchel you can go back for.
- Not going yourself? Send a guild expedition and read how deep they got.

The build menu
Fifteen pages: Build, Overview (the whole settlement at a glance), Buildings, Land, Roads, Settlers, Homes, Jobs, Work spots, Defences, Wellbeing, Economy, Guild, Abyss and Settings. Four colour schemes, adjustable text size and window opacity, full mouse, keyboard and controller support. The menu is drawn together with the game's own menus, so it shows with upscalers, frame generation and overlays. The game pauses while the menu is open (can be switched off).

 

How some of it works

 

Runtime navmesh
Skyrim's NPCs walk on navmesh baked into the game. It doesn't know about anything you build, so on raised level ground NPCs would walk on the old land underneath, sinking into your ground or standing still.

Frontier generates navmesh for your level ground while you play. It copies Skyrim's navmesh round your settlement, lifts it onto your ground, cuts holes where your buildings stand (using each building's real outline), joins it edge to edge with Skyrim's own navmesh round it, and swaps it in. Skyrim's navmesh under your ground is switched off while yours is in use. Nothing is saved and no navmesh record is ever overridden: it's made again when you come near and put back when you leave, so Skyrim's own navmesh is never changed for good. The Land page shows, for each level ground, whether settlers can walk on it.

 

Ready-made interiors
The interiors are copies of Skyrim's own interiors, with their navmesh. Each building has 20 copies, shared by all your settlements. Once all 20 copies of a building are in use, it can't be placed again until one is removed.

 

Roads
Walked roads are real ground meshes written while you play, curving with the way you walked and following the land and your level ground. On first start the mod creates a pool of 1,024 small path files in Data\Meshes\FrontierSettlements\Paths, because Skyrim only reads loose files that existed when it started.

 

How the Abyss was made
The Abyss is built entirely from Skyrim's own dungeons. Our tools read 90 of Skyrim's interior dungeons - caves, Nordic barrows, Forsworn and hagraven camps, Dwemer ruins, Falmer hives, warlock and vampire lairs and dragon priest tombs - and copied each one, room by room, into FrontierAbyss.esp as a brand-new cell: walls, rooms, lighting, water, traps and navmesh, everything kept where Skyrim had it. The real dungeons are never touched; you can still visit every one of them in Skyrim as normal.

Each copy was then checked by walking its own navmesh from the way in to the way down. Anything that only a quest can open - claw doors, secret walls, cave-ins, magic barriers - was taken out of the way, and side doors that lead to other parts of the original dungeon are locked shut so every floor is one self-contained level. The ten boss rooms and the nine resting camps were built from Skyrim's own room kits. Enemies come from Skyrim's leveled lists, placed where Skyrim had them and scaled to the floor's depth; the loot tables were built from every weapon and piece of armour in Skyrim, Dawnguard and Dragonborn, sorted by material into the five depth bands.

 

Attacks while you're away
If you aren't there, the attack is worked out: each guard counts for more as they gain stars, other settlers count a little, and your walls, gates, towers and barricades add to it.

 

Keys
- Shift + B - build inside one of your buildings
- Shift + R - start / stop walking a road (in a settlement)
- Shift + T - start / stop recording a walking path (in a settlement)
- Shift + G - set / remove a guard post where you stand (in a settlement)
These keys only do anything in a settlement or one of your buildings. Everywhere else they reach the game as normal. All of them can be changed in FrontierSettlements.ini.

While placing, a help panel in the bottom right lists every key and controller button. The main ones:
- Mouse wheel - turn; Shift / Alt + wheel - tilt / roll; Ctrl + wheel - further / closer
- Page Up / Page Down - raise / lower
- + / - - bigger / smaller
- L - lock in place (then the arrow keys nudge it); M - line up with the last piece; G - snapping on / off
- X - fine steps; R - reset / square up
- Click or Enter - place; right-click or Esc - cancel
- While picking in the world: Tab - move / turn / size handles; Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y - undo / redo; Ctrl+C - copy; Delete - remove; F - fly to it

 

Making add-ons and patches for Frontier
Frontier is built to be extended. Nothing below needs any of Frontier's files in your own download - just list Frontier as a requirement.

 

Building packs (no programming)
Every object from every plugin already shows up on the Build page. A building pack just tidies it up - a name, a category, a starting size and a credit line for each piece. Add a text file named after your plugin to Data\SKSE\Plugins\FrontierSettlements\Packs\ (MyHouses.esp -> Packs\MyHouses.txt), one line per piece:
local form ID | category | starting size | indoors (0/1) | credit | name
000801|Walls|1.0|0|MyHouses by Someone|Timber wall, long
Categories: Walls, Floors, Roofs, Doors, Stairs, Fences, Beams, Foundations, Buildings, Interiors, Decor, Nature, Defences. The log says how many pieces of your pack were read.

 

SKSE add-ons (C++)
A separate download, Frontier Modder’s Kit, has FrontierAPI.h (MIT licence), a README and an example building pack - players don’t need it. Any SKSE plugin can ask FrontierSettlements.dll for its interface and then:
- list every settlement (workbench, area, storage chest, name) and find which settlement any reference stands in
- list settlers with their job, stars, mood and home
- mark a settler "away" for your own quest, trade run or dungeon - Frontier leaves them alone until you set them back, and brings them home by itself if your add-on is ever uninstalled
- count, add and take items in a settlement's storage
- show a message, and get a call at 6:00 every game morning for each settlement
Plain C types only, so it works with any compiler and any CommonLib. Job numbers never change - new ones are only ever added at the end - so an add-on built today keeps working.

 

Ordinary plugin patches
Frontier overrides no vanilla record, so most mods need no patch at all. Mods that change Skyrim's town building meshes simply change how the ready-made buildings look.

 

Known limits
- Skyrim 1.5.97 hasn't been tested, and the runtime navmesh needs 1.6 or later - on 1.5.97 settlers can't walk properly on raised level ground. VR is not supported.
- Navmesh can only be generated where Skyrim has navmesh underneath. Settlements over deep water may have spots settlers can't reach.
- Each navmesh rebuild leaves about 1.5 MB in memory until you quit. This mostly happens when you go through doors near a big settlement, and it's cleared when you restart the game.
- Doors and gates you place on level ground don't block the generated navmesh when they're shut.
- 20 copies per ready-made building, shared by all settlements.
- FrontierRooms.esp (about 84 MB) and FrontierAbyss.esp (about 10 MB) have the master flag, so they take regular load-order slots (sort with LOOT). FrontierSettlements.esp is a light plugin.
- Doors into ready-made buildings and between abyss floors are load doors, like Skyrim's.
- Clearing an area can't remove distant trees or object LOD (DynDOLOD and so on) - only what's loaded round you.
- Walked roads are limited to roughly 9 km per game session before a restart is needed to lay more.
- Settlers away from you move slowly, the way Skyrim moves any NPC you can't see.
- Uninstalling mid-game leaves everything you built in the world, plus doors into interiors that no longer exist. Pack up your settlements first.
- Settlers and guild members can die in fights by default - switch it off on the Defences page if you'd rather they couldn't.
- Hooks into the game's input and rendering are shared with other menu mods in the usual chained way - other overlay mods work alongside it, but a mod that blocks all input may stop the menu reacting.

 

FAQ
Does it edit any vanilla records?
No. None of the three plugins overrides a single Skyrim record. Everything it adds is its own.

Can I add it to an existing save?
Yes. Craft the workbench kit at a forge and start.

Is it safe to update on my save?
Yes, from any earlier version. Tick FrontierAbyss.esp if you're coming from 1.0.x. Don't go back to an older version afterwards.

Is that "runtime navmesh" safe?
It's generated in memory only, never saved and never written to any plugin. Skyrim's own navmesh is switched back on whenever Frontier's is taken away, so removing level ground - or the whole mod - leaves Skyrim's navmesh exactly as it was. It can be switched off on the Land page.

Can I use buildings and pieces from other mods?
Yes. Anything installed shows on the Build page and can be placed like anything else. The ready-made buildings with interiors are Skyrim's own.

Can I remove it?
Pack up every settlement first (Overview page). Removing the mod with settlements still standing leaves the pieces in the world and doors into rooms that no longer exist.

My settlers just stand there.
Check the Land page: each level ground shows whether settlers can walk on it. Recording a few walking paths (Shift + T) round your buildings helps a lot. Give workers a work station on the Work spots page.

How do I get more settlers?
Put down a recruitment banner and more beds. Keep everyone happy - nobody new comes to a settlement whose people are unhappy. Bigger settlements draw more people.

How do I get into the Abyss?
Found a guild (guild hall, notice board, Guild Leader), take it to rank D, then build the Abyss Lift from the Abyss page and pull its lever.

No attack ever comes.
Attacks come every few in-game days. Lots of guards and strong defences keep attackers away for longer. The Defences page shows when trouble is expected.

Can I stop attacks, hunger or settlers leaving?
Yes - each has its own switch in the menu.

Where do my settlers' goods go?
Into the settlement storage (Economy page > Open storage), every morning at 6.

Why are there new files in my overwrite folder (Mod Organizer)?
Those are the road path files the mod makes on first start (Data\Meshes\FrontierSettlements\Paths). They're needed for walked roads. You can move them into the mod's folder.

Is it compatible with...?
It changes no vanilla records, so conflicts are rare. Mods that change Skyrim's town building meshes change how the ready-made buildings look. Mods that rebuild Skyrim's navmesh in the same spots work alongside it, because Frontier copies whatever navmesh is loaded.

Performance?
Settlers are run once a second, navmesh is generated on a background thread, and a settlement costs nothing while you're away beyond a few numbers each in-game day.

 

Planned for the future
- A warning bell to call settlers to safety and guards to arms
- Supply lines - settlers carrying goods between your settlements
- Follow-ups after attacks: tracking the attackers down, bounties
- Plain stone foundations under buildings on slopes
- More building styles and pieces, including free new models
- More gate types
- More jobs and things for settlers to do
- Translations

 

Credits

Weapon models
The ten Abyss weapons are converted from free models under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC-BY-4.0). They were re-scaled, re-oriented and given new collision and textures made from the originals for Skyrim.
- Invicta - based on "Chevalier Sword" by rubenve, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Duskfall - based on "Gradient Fantasy Sword" by Mikołaj Michalak (Nillusion), licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Copperfang - based on "Fantasy Sword" by Mikołaj Michalak, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Nightwarden - based on "Fantasy Sword" by Mikołaj Michalak (Nillusion), licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Frostmarch Greatblade - based on "Zweihander Sword Game Model" by Michael Makivic, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Stormcleaver - based on "Fantasy Nordic Axe" by Sir Erdees, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Wayfinder - based on "Nordic Axe Vegvisir" by Sir Erdees, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Barrow-Bitten Axe - based on "Ancient Axe [Low-Poly]" by SchrisArt, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Anvilfall - based on "Steel Warhammer" by Asylum Nox, licensed under CC-BY-4.0
- Wolfsong - based on "Bow of the Pack Hunter" by Asylum Nox, licensed under CC-BY-4.0

Libraries and fonts
- CommonLibSSE NG (the MIT-licensed fork, QTR-Modding/CommonLibVR-MIT) - Ryan-rsm-McKenzie and contributors, MIT
- Dear ImGui - Omar Cornut, MIT (with the ProggyClean font by Tristan Grimmer, MIT)
- spdlog - Gabi Melman and contributors, MIT
- {fmt} - Victor Zverovich and contributors, MIT
- DirectXTK / DirectXMath - Microsoft, MIT
- rapidcsv - Kristofer Berggren, BSD 3-Clause
- Cormorant Garamond - the Cormorant Project Authors, SIL Open Font License 1.1
- Vault Sans - a renamed subset of Source Sans 3 by Adobe, SIL Open Font License 1.1 (not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe)
Full licence texts are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt in the download. No GPL code is used anywhere.

Skyrim
Every building, interior, dungeon, enemy and piece of furniture is Skyrim's own (Skyrim, Hearthfire, Dawnguard and Dragonborn, by Bethesda Game Studios), used by reference - the plugins contain no assets from other mods.

Thanks
The SKSE team and the Address Library authors, without whom no mod like this could exist, and everyone who tested and sent logs.

 

Permissions
- Please don't re-upload this mod.
- Building packs and SKSE add-ons that use the files and interface described above are welcome - they don't contain any of Frontier's files.
- Translations and other patches - just ask first.

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• Submitter
  Binksy24
• Submitted
  10/14/26
• Category
  Regular Mods
• Requirements
• Regular Edition Compatible
  No
• Install Instructions

 

[Nessa]

I'm going to test the hell out of this one! One of the only reasons I even go back to FO4 at all is the base building. If I can do that in Skyrim..... 

[Binksy24]

1 minute ago, Nessa said:

I'm going to test the hell out of this one! One of the only reasons I even go back to FO4 at all is the base building. If I can do that in Skyrim..... 

This project took a lot longer to finish then I planned as I kept getting distracted building 😅 I hope you get the same itch using the mod!

[Nessa]

36 minutes ago, Binksy24 said:

This project took a lot longer to finish then I planned as I kept getting distracted building 😅 I hope you get the same itch using the mod!

 

Yeah that's the only reason I get stuck in FO4 still. I actually hate the whole setting but BASE BUILDING! 😂

[Binksy24]

8 minutes ago, Nessa said:

 

Yeah that's the only reason I get stuck in FO4 still. I actually hate the whole setting but BASE BUILDING! 😂

I am on the same page hence why I made this mod I eventually want to add a lot more features to really surpass fallout 4 system.

[Edzio]

GOAT Skyrim mod of the century!

Looking forward to the future updates!

Does the settlers have any specific faction that relate them to the settlements?

Edited Thursday at 09:37 AM by Edzio

[d4079925]

So... I look at your mods, and wonder "Who -is- this guy?"  

 

Swooping down like some Deus Ex Machina, dropping not just one, but several awesome and crazy complex mods. lol. You fused with Claude or summin'? xD 

 

Whatever you're doing, keep it up O_o 

Edited Thursday at 08:12 PM by d4079925

[EinePerson]

This looks very interesting going to try it now.Also really curios how exactly you are handling navmesh at runtime

Edit: 

Aww  closed source.

Edited Thursday at 09:06 PM by EinePerson

[EinePerson]

Ahh I see carefully reading the description would have answered my question too . 

So we are still stuck with the same limitations as before regarding navmesh. Thought for a second that you manged to generate new navmesh at runtime.

The mod itself is awesome though. Definitely going to have a lot of fun with this.

[EinePerson]

Hmm.. it is possible to bury your own workbench, might want to add a check for that.

I guess as a temporary solution one can use tcl in console. 

Edited Thursday at 09:54 PM by EinePerson

[Binksy24]

5 minutes ago, EinePerson said:

Ahh I see carefully reading the description would have answered my question too . 

So we are still stuck with the same limitations as before regarding navmesh. Thought for a second that you manged to generate new navmesh at runtime.

The mod itself is awesome though. Definitely going to have a lot of fun with this.

Frontier does generate navmesh at runtime, but only for level ground. It builds a walking map on top of the ground you lay, cuts it around your buildings, joins it to Skyrim’s own navmesh, and rebuilds it when you change things. Pieces placed on normal terrain (walls, fences and so on) don’t change Skyrim’s navmesh there. Settlers get around those using Frontier’s own route planning and walking paths. Spots with no vanilla navmesh at all, like some deep water, can’t get one. For now the runtime navmesh only works on Skyrim 1.6 and newer. That isn’t a game limitation: support for 1.5.97 just hasn’t been added yet.

[EinePerson]

19 minutes ago, Binksy24 said:

Frontier does generate navmesh at runtime, but only for level ground. It builds a walking map on top of the ground you lay, cuts it around your buildings, joins it to Skyrim’s own navmesh, and rebuilds it when you change things. Pieces placed on normal terrain (walls, fences and so on) don’t change Skyrim’s navmesh there. Settlers get around those using Frontier’s own route planning and walking paths. Spots with no vanilla navmesh at all, like some deep water, can’t get one. For now the runtime navmesh only works on Skyrim 1.6 and newer. That isn’t a game limitation: support for 1.5.97 just hasn’t been added yet.

Ohh nice. 

When I place two buildings somewhat close to each other on level ground will the navmesh be detailed enough for the npcs to walk in between them?

As I understand the vanilla navmesh is still a factor so when the detail level of Skyrim’s own navmesh is low that might be problematic?

Edited Thursday at 10:17 PM by EinePerson

[Binksy24]

2 minutes ago, EinePerson said:

Ohh nice. 

When I place two buildings somewhat close to each other on level ground will the navmesh be detailed enough for the npcs to walk in between them?
As I understand the vanilla navmesh is still a factor so when the detail level of Skyrim’s own navmesh is low (with low detail i mean the navmesh having few big triangles in that area) that might be problematic?

When i set up a guard route my guard followed it to a T so I imaging that the same will apply here.

[EinePerson]

6 minutes ago, Binksy24 said:

When i set up a guard route my guard followed it to a T so I imaging that the same will apply here.

Alright thank you for satisfying my curiosity.

I got a settlement to build now .

Edited Thursday at 10:24 PM by EinePerson

[PlausibleWraith]

Casually drops a goated mod on a Thursday afternoon

[EinePerson]

A nice feature would be prefabs (collection of  placed objects one can save and later build again with one click). If they are saved as json file or something it would even be possible to share them with others.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 10:59 PM by EinePerson

[Binksy24]

11 minutes ago, EinePerson said:

A nice feature would be prefabs (collection of  placed objects one can save and later build again with one click). If they are saved as json file or something it would even be possible to share them with others.

 

 

100% but that is more of a QOL update when the mod is closer to being complete, the next update will have a fully functioning guild system and a 100 floor dungeon to conquer with loot rarity 

[EinePerson]

3 minutes ago, Binksy24 said:

100% but that is more of a QOL update when the mod is closer to being complete, the next update will have a fully functioning guild system and a 100 floor dungeon to conquer with loot rarity 

No worries take your time, I am already happy that you are considering implementing it at some point

[Edzio]

Where is my brothel system!! 😭

Really thought Adventurer system is awesome!

[Nessa]

15 hours ago, Binksy24 said:

100% but that is more of a QOL update when the mod is closer to being complete, the next update will have a fully functioning guild system and a 100 floor dungeon to conquer with loot rarity 

😵 Now you're conspiring to keep me out of FO4 forever. 🤣

Did a quick test and it's working great. I already like it better than the FO4 (modded) version. I'm going to try making some in mod added worldspaces next. 

[Fraying9981]

looks awesome!
is there a way to use this to create settlements quickly, in a couple of minutes?
or do you have to go through all the minecraft like collection etc.

[Binksy24]

2 minutes ago, Fraying9981 said:

looks awesome!
is there a way to use this to create settlements quickly, in a couple of minutes?
or do you have to go through all the minecraft like collection etc.

Kinda goes against the point of the whole mod to not do any of that. You can toggle building materials in the settings on the workbench menu, I suggest giving the description a read it will cover most if not all your questions.

Edited 16 hours ago by Binksy24

[Binksy24]

4 hours ago, Nessa said:

😵 Now you're conspiring to keep me out of FO4 forever. 🤣

Did a quick test and it's working great. I already like it better than the FO4 (modded) version. I'm going to try making some in mod added worldspaces next. 

Newest update is live let me know what you think its safe to update on existing saves.

[Fraying9981]

 

37 minutes ago, Binksy24 said:

Kinda goes against the point of the whole mod to not do any of that. You can toggle building materials in the settings on the workbench menu, I suggest giving the description a read it will cover most if not all your questions.

 

thanks, i did read it.

my question to be precise, is can i spawn real buildings with interiors relatively quickly (even if its templates)? for a user who simply doesn't like placing n objects - maybe just the buildings?

• for resources i can use console
• for settlers noted they take time to arrive, i can live with that.

in other words: i'm interested in everything in your mod, except the "level editor" part. does the work provide easy workflows (e.g. spawn "Tavern" here or spawn "commonhouse01 with interior" here) to skip level editing and focus on everything else? settlers management, storage, attacks etc.

Edited 16 hours ago by Fraying9981

[Binksy24]

1 minute ago, Fraying9981 said:

 

 

thanks, i did read it.

my question to be precise, is can i spawn real buildings with interiors relatively quickly (even if its templates)? for a user who simply doesn't like placing n objects - maybe just the buildings?

• for resources i can use console
• for settlers noted they take time to arrive, i can live with that.

in other words: i'm interested in everything in your mod, except the "level editor" part. does the work provide easy workflows (e.g. spawn "Tavern" here or spawn "commonhouse01 with interior" here) to skip level editing and focus on everything else? settlers management, storage, attacks etc.

It is mentioned in the description you can spawn ready made buildings with built interiors (clutter) or blank interiors to build yourself.

Quote

Ready-made Skyrim buildings

• About 150 of Skyrim's own town and village buildings - houses, farmhouses, halls, inns, shops, manors, longhouses, mills, warehouses, stables, barracks, huts, blacksmiths, meaderies, lighthouses - in Nordic, Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, Windhelm and Orc styles.
• Each one comes with a working interior, either empty (to furnish yourself) or furnished (Skyrim's own furniture, beds, shelves, lights and fixtures, with empty containers and no owners).
• Buildings with more than one door have all of them working.
• Blacksmith buildings come with their forge, anvil, grindstone and sign.
• Interiors have navmesh so settlers can move about inside.
• Up to 20 copies of each building, shared by all your settlements.
• Rename buildings, move them (doors and outside pieces come along), or remove them.
• Furnish any interior with the same build menu: press Shift + B inside one of your buildings.
• Move or remove Skyrim's own furniture inside a building, and put it back later.