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About this mod
Turns Morthal into a cold, swampy, boggy, piratey mess of a town.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
21 November 2017: Added FAQ.
4 November 2017: Changed series name.
26 July 2017: Okay so I about had a heart attack when I saw this but Hodilton made a video feature of this mod. I mean, shoot, I thought I was excited when they endorsed. It's of v1 but wow you should watch it. Thanks, Hodilton!
Update 21 July 2017:More buildings and general junk added. Occlusion added, which helps performance pretty substantially, but it's still not great because I never met a bit of immersive clutter I didn't like. Boss of the mini-quest has been fixed-ish. It still does annoying things like fly despite every law in the game telling it that it can't, but it spends most of its time on the ground now and is definitely beatable, so go for it. Also, the mini-quest now gives you a shiny new house as a reward, so... go face the sum of all fears, Dovahkiin.
Also added a compatibility patch for Skyrim Bridges because I love that mod.
I plan to update this again at some point based on feedback, but I think it's now more or less in the state I wanted it to be in, so probably no huge changes.
Morthal's fairly boring in vanilla Skyrim, so I decided to do something about it. However, to my surprise, it turns out that Morthal doesn't seem to have much of anything in the way of lore, either. So as far as I can tell, that gives me the right to make up whatever I want.
I decided that, while Morthal had been originally founded at least in the Second Era, it had only been fortified as a base for official visits a couple of centuries ago, so I built up some Imperial-style walls and watchtowers around the place. Then, since this is a swamp we're talking about, I put them into a state of horrible, sinking, icy, mucky disrepair, and patched up some of the gaps with more recent wooden walls. Additionally, I figured that Hjaalmarch is probably a great place to hang out if you don't want to be found. It's also mostly navigable by boat. Following that logic, I ended up with swamp pirates.
Also features a mini-quest involving the exploits of an enterprising Argonian with nefarious plans.
Reasonably Comprehensive Feature List:
-13 new houses. One is destroyed, one is a player home, and the others are exterior only
-Not-quite-quest which rewards a set of fairly boring armor and the key to a medium-sized player home by the bridge
-Walls, towers, and gates around the town
-New tavern/shop with merchant
-A couple bridges across the main waterway
-More boats, and more stuff in the boats that're already there
-Two boats/rafts and a cranny under the bridge equipped with safe storage and a player-owned bed
-An old shipwreck which has had most of its parts repurposed elsewhere in the town
-Expanded cemetery
-A well
-A garden area
-More general decor, you know, fences and barrels and whatnot
-A goat, a cow, and some chickens
-Everybody gets more firewood
-Brief profanity
Reasonably Comprehensive Issue List:
-Performance hit: substantial in a couple of areas where I couldn't occlude anything (looking down main street and at first wooden bridge), but pretty minimal in most other areas, considering
-Conflicts: as a general rule, probably not compatible with anything else that places things in Morthal. I can attest that it works with Enhanced Landscapes, though
-Mini-quest boss will fly around a bit. It's not supposed to, but heck, immersion, I guess
-Nothing has been done in the way of navmeshing (though there's not much in the way of normal paths, so it shouldn't be a huge deal; will mostly mess with followers and combat)
-Don't jump into the drowned pit. There's nothing in it, honest, and you'll have a heck of a time getting out
-Goat may escape enclosure, which, while unintentional, strikes me as pretty immersive
-Brief profanity
FAQ:
Q: Is this mod compatible with [other city mod]?
A: No. Well, I haven't tested it, but chances are very, very low.
Q: SSE????!!!!!!
A: Not in the near future.
Q: But why? The 64-bit engine is far superior for rendering many objects at once, so it significantly decreases the performance impact of most city mods.
A: Yeah, but I'm lazy and I really don't want to do upkeep for double the mods. You're always welcome to port it yourself.
Q: Why won't you make interiors? This mod ruined my immersion.
A: I very rarely actually go inside buildings in Skyrim, and I don't really like making interiors and linking them up with exteriors and whatnot. It's a whole lot of extra work for something I know I'm never going to use, and something that I feel the mod works fine without (y'all didn't complain when Witcher did it; give Skyrim the same consideration).
Q: And NPCs?
A: Pain in the bum. Especially given that I don't want to make interiors. I'd recommend using a mod like Inconsequential NPCs or Populated Cities if the absence of inhabitants really bugs you.
Q: Okay, well, what about navmesh? That's like, basic.
A: Have you seen navmesh? Most intimidating interface I ever saw in my life. Also, I do my best to build out of the way of NPC paths. You might still get a collision or two, and your followers will be very confused, but it shouldn't be a total disaster.
Q: All these answers are permutations of "I'm lazy." Why are you even making mods?
A: I make them for myself, and then, when they make me happy, I offer them to you all, typically as-is (though I'm always open to creative suggestions). The point at which they make me happy is not as advanced as it might be for a more skilled and dedicated mod author, but it's just a matter of what you're willing to live with. I'm perfectly happy to live without interiors, NPCs, and navmesh edits. If you're not, I'm sorry to hear it, but these aren't the mods for you. Another Skyrim is never going to be well looked after. If something's genuinely broken, I'll fix it, but at the end of the day, I made these mods for me, and while I am delighted beyond words that other people enjoy them (seriously, the reception to these has been more positive than I had ever dreamed), the amount of work I'm willing to do on them is very limited.
Q: Why does this mod tank my performace?
A: It adds a whole lot of buildings. I optimize as best I can, I really do, but there's only so much you can do. Sorry. I know your pain.
Q: Performance? Compatibility? Mods in screenshots?
A: See "Reasonably Comprehensive Issue List" for the first two, and "Mods in screenshots" towards the bottom of the description for the last one.
Mods in screenshots:
Elder Blood ENB
Enhanced Landscapes with Barren Marsh plugin
DynDoLOD
Skyrim Bridges (unfortunately no longer available on the Nexus, but I trust you all know how to use Google)
Future plans:
Fix the mini-quest boss, and maybe expand it a little. Put occlusion boxes in new walls to help performance a bit. Add more miscellaneous stuff, maybe a couple more houses. Add a couple carousing NPCs in the tavern. Add gardens/small farms, since I find it hard to believe that this whole damn town is living off of mudcrabs. Maaaaybe add some evidence of vampire infringement, given the extent of Morthal's vampire problem. There's a very distant possibility of me actually making an effort to learn something about navmesh at some point, but don't hold your breath.
I'm also working on a Solitude mod, which will not be done anytime soon. I'm open to suggestions for stuff you want to see in Solitude as well as in this mod.
Credit:
Thanks to Bethesda for Skyrim. Thanks to Hans Zimmer for the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, without which I would've had to listen to the Black Flag soundtrack on repeat instead.
Changelog:
21 July 2017: Added more buildings, fixed mini-quest (more or less), added occlusion, added garden area, added player home.
4 November 2017: Changed series name.
26 July 2017: Okay so I about had a heart attack when I saw this but Hodilton made a video feature of this mod. I mean, shoot, I thought I was excited when they endorsed. It's of v1 but wow you should watch it. Thanks, Hodilton!
Update 21 July 2017:More buildings and general junk added. Occlusion added, which helps performance pretty substantially, but it's still not great because I never met a bit of immersive clutter I didn't like. Boss of the mini-quest has been fixed-ish. It still does annoying things like fly despite every law in the game telling it that it can't, but it spends most of its time on the ground now and is definitely beatable, so go for it. Also, the mini-quest now gives you a shiny new house as a reward, so... go face the sum of all fears, Dovahkiin.
Also added a compatibility patch for Skyrim Bridges because I love that mod.
I plan to update this again at some point based on feedback, but I think it's now more or less in the state I wanted it to be in, so probably no huge changes.
Morthal's fairly boring in vanilla Skyrim, so I decided to do something about it. However, to my surprise, it turns out that Morthal doesn't seem to have much of anything in the way of lore, either. So as far as I can tell, that gives me the right to make up whatever I want.
I decided that, while Morthal had been originally founded at least in the Second Era, it had only been fortified as a base for official visits a couple of centuries ago, so I built up some Imperial-style walls and watchtowers around the place. Then, since this is a swamp we're talking about, I put them into a state of horrible, sinking, icy, mucky disrepair, and patched up some of the gaps with more recent wooden walls. Additionally, I figured that Hjaalmarch is probably a great place to hang out if you don't want to be found. It's also mostly navigable by boat. Following that logic, I ended up with swamp pirates.
Also features a mini-quest involving the exploits of an enterprising Argonian with nefarious plans.
Reasonably Comprehensive Feature List:
-13 new houses. One is destroyed, one is a player home, and the others are exterior only
-Not-quite-quest which rewards a set of fairly boring armor and the key to a medium-sized player home by the bridge
-Walls, towers, and gates around the town
-New tavern/shop with merchant
-A couple bridges across the main waterway
-More boats, and more stuff in the boats that're already there
-Two boats/rafts and a cranny under the bridge equipped with safe storage and a player-owned bed
-An old shipwreck which has had most of its parts repurposed elsewhere in the town
-Expanded cemetery
-A well
-A garden area
-More general decor, you know, fences and barrels and whatnot
-A goat, a cow, and some chickens
-Everybody gets more firewood
-Brief profanity
Reasonably Comprehensive Issue List:
-Performance hit: substantial in a couple of areas where I couldn't occlude anything (looking down main street and at first wooden bridge), but pretty minimal in most other areas, considering
-Conflicts: as a general rule, probably not compatible with anything else that places things in Morthal. I can attest that it works with Enhanced Landscapes, though
-Mini-quest boss will fly around a bit. It's not supposed to, but heck, immersion, I guess
-Nothing has been done in the way of navmeshing (though there's not much in the way of normal paths, so it shouldn't be a huge deal; will mostly mess with followers and combat)
-Don't jump into the drowned pit. There's nothing in it, honest, and you'll have a heck of a time getting out
-Goat may escape enclosure, which, while unintentional, strikes me as pretty immersive
-Brief profanity
FAQ:
Q: Is this mod compatible with [other city mod]?
A: No. Well, I haven't tested it, but chances are very, very low.
Q: SSE????!!!!!!
A: Not in the near future.
Q: But why? The 64-bit engine is far superior for rendering many objects at once, so it significantly decreases the performance impact of most city mods.
A: Yeah, but I'm lazy and I really don't want to do upkeep for double the mods. You're always welcome to port it yourself.
Q: Why won't you make interiors? This mod ruined my immersion.
A: I very rarely actually go inside buildings in Skyrim, and I don't really like making interiors and linking them up with exteriors and whatnot. It's a whole lot of extra work for something I know I'm never going to use, and something that I feel the mod works fine without (y'all didn't complain when Witcher did it; give Skyrim the same consideration).
Q: And NPCs?
A: Pain in the bum. Especially given that I don't want to make interiors. I'd recommend using a mod like Inconsequential NPCs or Populated Cities if the absence of inhabitants really bugs you.
Q: Okay, well, what about navmesh? That's like, basic.
A: Have you seen navmesh? Most intimidating interface I ever saw in my life. Also, I do my best to build out of the way of NPC paths. You might still get a collision or two, and your followers will be very confused, but it shouldn't be a total disaster.
Q: All these answers are permutations of "I'm lazy." Why are you even making mods?
A: I make them for myself, and then, when they make me happy, I offer them to you all, typically as-is (though I'm always open to creative suggestions). The point at which they make me happy is not as advanced as it might be for a more skilled and dedicated mod author, but it's just a matter of what you're willing to live with. I'm perfectly happy to live without interiors, NPCs, and navmesh edits. If you're not, I'm sorry to hear it, but these aren't the mods for you. Another Skyrim is never going to be well looked after. If something's genuinely broken, I'll fix it, but at the end of the day, I made these mods for me, and while I am delighted beyond words that other people enjoy them (seriously, the reception to these has been more positive than I had ever dreamed), the amount of work I'm willing to do on them is very limited.
Q: Why does this mod tank my performace?
A: It adds a whole lot of buildings. I optimize as best I can, I really do, but there's only so much you can do. Sorry. I know your pain.
Q: Performance? Compatibility? Mods in screenshots?
A: See "Reasonably Comprehensive Issue List" for the first two, and "Mods in screenshots" towards the bottom of the description for the last one.
Mods in screenshots:
Elder Blood ENB
Enhanced Landscapes with Barren Marsh plugin
DynDoLOD
Skyrim Bridges (unfortunately no longer available on the Nexus, but I trust you all know how to use Google)
Future plans:
I'm also working on a Solitude mod, which will not be done anytime soon. I'm open to suggestions for stuff you want to see in Solitude as well as in this mod.
Credit:
Thanks to Bethesda for Skyrim. Thanks to Hans Zimmer for the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, without which I would've had to listen to the Black Flag soundtrack on repeat instead.
Changelog:
21 July 2017: Added more buildings, fixed mini-quest (more or less), added occlusion, added garden area, added player home.