Winterhold needs a player home. The College of Winterhold does not cater to all play types, and offers limited furnishings. So, I decided to make this player home for myself, and will share it with all who are interested. It has also been a great opportunity to get into the lore of Winterhold and the Great Collapse.

What it is:

Basically, the player "restores" one of the destroyed homes in Winterhold, and uncovers an underground storage and smithing area underneath. This home is of respectable but reasonable size and is designed mainly for moderately to well established characters, though there is no level requirement.The central feature of the home is the sizable library, with room for, at minimum, 550 books. Check the readme for more specific details, but it also includes:

• Music by Vindsvept
• Alchemy area
• Enchanting table
• A kitchen with a cooking station
• A fair amount of storage
• Weapon racks and displays
• Lots of stuff for sandboxing NPCs.
• Smelter outside
• Some planters
• Smithing facilities in cellar
• Plentiful storage in cellar
  

In an effort to create a realistically furnished location, many resources are found in these spaces, and the home and cellar are both pretty rich finds for the player. To be clear, we are talking about dozens of resource items, not thousands. Also it is likely the player will find about 2-6 leveled weapons, and a couple armor pieces (all rarely above average quality - dont expect many ebony). An already rich character will hardly blink at these finds. I mention this mainly for those who do not wish for their low level characters to have a sudden windfall of resources or sellable items.

To get the house:

In order to begin, the player will travel to Winterhold's Frozen Hearth Inn, where they will be force-greeted by my avatar, Ramuel. Ramuel will give the player a journal. Reading the journal will begin the first of two quests, which is just to point you to the right place. If active, the quest will point the player to the bluff between the College of Winterhold and the Inn, where they will find some ruins jutting out of the face of the cliff.

The player will need to complete a small, radiant-generated quest in order to gain full access to the home. This quest, A Home Restored, can pick from about 25 vanilla dungeons, but locations added by mods with the appropriate keywords can also be selected. For example, several locations from the epic mod Falskaar can be chosen. If you have that mod installed, and the player has not yet discovered Falskaar, they would need to take that extra step in order to complete the quest. You can get around this if you need to. Check the readme for details.


I also highly recommend the following, though they are not strictly necessary:
    
- SKSE - I've never played Skyrim without it. Search for Skyrim Script Extender on Steam, it is free, small, painless, and necessary for many mods.

- The Unofficial patches. Also free, also painless. Fix so many things! There is one for all the DLC and the Legendary edition - get what you need.
       -Unofficial Skyrim Patch, also available on Steam workshop.
       -Unofficial Hearthfire Patch, also available on Steam workshop.

- Get the most out of the library in this mod:
- Unlimited Bookshelves - this beauty will let you put more books (as well as other items) into almost any bookshelf!
Note that four shelves in this player home will not become "unlimited", but the other several dozen will.
- Book Covers Skyrim - replaces almost all of the boring vanilla book textures with way more beautiful ones. Very noticeable when you
have shelves and shelves of books.

- Use Jaxonz Positioner to let your player make the home truly their own. Wish I had decorated differently? Do it yourself!

This mod alters the exterior of Winterhold, and may conflict with other mods that also do so. The cells "winterholdexterior06" and the wilderness cell directly north-east of it are most affected, as they have new structures, a little landscape edit, and navmesh edits. These are likely to conflict with other city-expansion type mods. If you try with other mods, let me know how it goes.
Mods that make significant changes to the interior of Frozen Hearth Inn may also affect/be affected by this mod.
This mod does not change any other vanilla resources or scripts.



If you are not using NMM, just do what it would have done, unpack the zipped file to your Skyrim/Data folder. Make sure you get both the WinterholdBrokenbluffHome.bsa and .esp in there. That should be all there is to it.

If you are switching between versions, use NMM to uninstall the old version, then install the new one.
If you are switching between versions manually, you only need to replace the old .esp.


 - In order to ensure that a few of the bookshelves are not affected by bookshelf mods, such as Unlimited Bookshelves, I have included a copy of the original bookshelf container vanilla script. It was kindly put out as a modder resource by da5id2701, the creator of Unlimited Bookshelves, which is managed by Nazenn.

- Music by Vindsvept, found at https://www.youtube.com/user/Vindsvept/ as well this website, and songs can be downloaded at bandcamp.
-Tracks from Vindsvept are just so great for creating an atmosphere. Of course, I had to jump on the bandwagon and include some for this mod.
-The music, of course, is copyright Vindsvept, and used under the Creative Commons international attribution license, which is available at

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Specific tracks I used: Clockwork, Into the Minds Eye, Never to Return, Satyr, Skymning, and In Winter's Grasp

- Bethesda for Skyrim and the Creation Kit
- All of the online resources and forum posts from which I figured out how to make this mod
- My partner and dog, who had to suffer my obsessive impulse to create and complete this mod

Notes:

   

• The function, scope, and overall content of this mod seem to be as I intended, and are unlikely to be changed or expanded. That being said, this is my first mod ever, and I expect there may be some unforeseen issues. Please contact me via my mod's page to report any and all issues, be it a typo or fatal bug.
• I put a lot of effort into making this mod, but I would love tips or insight from veteran modders about things I could have implemented better or more efficiently. If anyone wants to pick at my quest structures, scripts, etc. and comment on them, I'm all ears!
• I really like the lore surrounding Winterhold and made an effort to integrate this mod's story into it. I hope the whole thing feels natural to Skyrim.
  

• "What about SSE?", you may ask. It is here: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/46674