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About this mod
Vanilla friendly overhaul of Seyda Neen
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With this mod I try my best to overhaul Seyda Neen while preserving the original atmosphere.
DESIGN PHILOSPHY
There are 5 key elements that guided me while making this mod.
1.
Seyda Neen is the gateway to Vvardenfell. It’s the first place every one of us visited when playing Morrowind for the first time. This means that it’s even more important to preserve the original atmosphere.
For this reason, no vanilla building has been moved, with one exception, which brings me to the next and maybe most important point of this overhaul.
2.
Seyda Neen has the ONLY lighthouse in the entire game, which means it's also one of the main things that makes Seyda Neen unique.
The main issue with the lighthouse is that it’s placed too low. This is particularly noticeable – and immersion breaking – when using Vurt’s trees since the models are much bigger and taller.
So, I made the lighthouse bigger and taller, while also overhauling the path leading to the main entrance completely. The new design blends perfectly with the landscape and gets rid of the ugly wooden scaffolding at the same time. You can look at the screenshots to see what I’m talking about.
I actually started working on Seyda Neen because I wanted to “improve” the lighthouse and then it turned into something bigger.
There is also a cool little mod that has been merged into this (The Grand Pharos) so the interior of the lighthouse has also been made more interesting and detailed.
A COUPLE OF NOTES
Since some people prefer the original design, with the latest update there are 3 versions you can use:
- New lighthouse design (base version)
- Vanilla lighthouse design but taller
- Vanilla lighthouse design (this one is not merged with "The Grand Pharos" as the mod is 100% compatible with it and merging wasn't necessary)
3.
As it’s usually the case with Morrowind settlements, Seyda Neen doesn’t have enough buildings to be believable. I tried to add more shacks and buildings without going too far. Seyda Neen is not supposed to be a huge settlement so there’s no need to go overboard here.
In total, this adds 2 new shacks and one nord-style house. It might not sound like much, but keep in mind that Vanilla Seyda Neen has a total of 4 shacks and 5 nord-style houses.
The interiors have been assigned to vanilla npcs who lived in Seyda Neen but didn't have a place of their own so you can see this almost as a fix too.
The new buildings have been kept as far as possible from the lighthouse as lighthouses are supposed to be isolated.
4.
Seyda Neen is supposed to be a port of decent importance and I always felt it was a bit odd that even a small fishing village like Hla Oad has a bigger dock, not to mention the lack of any boat/ship transport.
I added a shipmaster with some transport routes and expanded the dock without getting too creative and I tried to stay as far as possible from the lighthouse (for the same reason of the previous point).
As of version 1.6, I decided to do the most logical thing and place the ship and shipmaster where the chargen boat is. Both are scripted so they only show up after chargen of course
I think this was something Bethesda would have done too with a bit more at their disposal.
5.
Seyda Neen, like basically every settlement, needs a bit more clutter. There’s a mod called Immersive Seyda Neen that did cluttering right in my opinion. I replicated some of the best bits from that mod here and I also used resources from Resdayn Revival to add more flavour since Resdayn Revival has a ton of resources made specifically to enhance the swampy atmosphere of the Bitter Coast
Conslusions
Seyda Neen has seen a huge number of overhauls during the years and is a tricky one to get right.
What sets this mod apart from many others is that it's not necessarily a creative effort but rather a logical analysis of what needed to be improved or fixed with Seyda Neen.
I tried my best and I hope you’ll like it.
COMPATIBILITY
Almost every Seyda Neen overhaul is uncompatible with this mod. That's also true for Immersive Seyda Neen but the best bits have been replicated in this mod.
A note about Vality's bitter coast for Vurt's bitter coast trees: the patch provided here is not just compatible with my mod but it's also heavility tweaked for compatibility with any other mod.
After I discovered this mod, I inspected it a bit further. It's simply supposed to increase grass density, yet there were a total of almost 50 cells where the landscape was edited, making it a compatibility nightmare.
I removed the ground edits since they are un-necessary.
A note about the grass mods patches uploaded here: the mod has actually minimal ground edits and these patches are only needed to clear the path to the lighthouse as I didn't want grass to swarm the new beautiful path.
CREDITS
Credits go to
Resdayn Revival Team and Zobator for some resources and design element which have been ported into this mod (some interiors, the new dock and the silt strider's port design)
darkfri01: optimization of the lighthouse mount model
Aitrus, who's mod Seyda Neen imperial port served as a major inspiration for the lighthouse design
DremoraLord98 since I tried to replicate some touches of cluttering from Immersive Seyda Neen into this mod
Brujoloco for testing and helping me out with some design choices (seriousely, thanks!)
mdsouthworth: for The Grand Pharos
Dominik Zdenković: header image (check his website to see more of his beautiful art)
DESIGN PHILOSPHY
There are 5 key elements that guided me while making this mod.
1.
Seyda Neen is the gateway to Vvardenfell. It’s the first place every one of us visited when playing Morrowind for the first time. This means that it’s even more important to preserve the original atmosphere.
For this reason, no vanilla building has been moved, with one exception, which brings me to the next and maybe most important point of this overhaul.
2.
Seyda Neen has the ONLY lighthouse in the entire game, which means it's also one of the main things that makes Seyda Neen unique.
The main issue with the lighthouse is that it’s placed too low. This is particularly noticeable – and immersion breaking – when using Vurt’s trees since the models are much bigger and taller.
So, I made the lighthouse bigger and taller, while also overhauling the path leading to the main entrance completely. The new design blends perfectly with the landscape and gets rid of the ugly wooden scaffolding at the same time. You can look at the screenshots to see what I’m talking about.
I actually started working on Seyda Neen because I wanted to “improve” the lighthouse and then it turned into something bigger.
There is also a cool little mod that has been merged into this (The Grand Pharos) so the interior of the lighthouse has also been made more interesting and detailed.
A COUPLE OF NOTES
Since some people prefer the original design, with the latest update there are 3 versions you can use:
- New lighthouse design (base version)
- Vanilla lighthouse design but taller
- Vanilla lighthouse design (this one is not merged with "The Grand Pharos" as the mod is 100% compatible with it and merging wasn't necessary)
3.
As it’s usually the case with Morrowind settlements, Seyda Neen doesn’t have enough buildings to be believable. I tried to add more shacks and buildings without going too far. Seyda Neen is not supposed to be a huge settlement so there’s no need to go overboard here.
In total, this adds 2 new shacks and one nord-style house. It might not sound like much, but keep in mind that Vanilla Seyda Neen has a total of 4 shacks and 5 nord-style houses.
The interiors have been assigned to vanilla npcs who lived in Seyda Neen but didn't have a place of their own so you can see this almost as a fix too.
The new buildings have been kept as far as possible from the lighthouse as lighthouses are supposed to be isolated.
4.
Seyda Neen is supposed to be a port of decent importance and I always felt it was a bit odd that even a small fishing village like Hla Oad has a bigger dock, not to mention the lack of any boat/ship transport.
I added a shipmaster with some transport routes and expanded the dock without getting too creative and I tried to stay as far as possible from the lighthouse (for the same reason of the previous point).
As of version 1.6, I decided to do the most logical thing and place the ship and shipmaster where the chargen boat is. Both are scripted so they only show up after chargen of course
I think this was something Bethesda would have done too with a bit more at their disposal.
5.
Seyda Neen, like basically every settlement, needs a bit more clutter. There’s a mod called Immersive Seyda Neen that did cluttering right in my opinion. I replicated some of the best bits from that mod here and I also used resources from Resdayn Revival to add more flavour since Resdayn Revival has a ton of resources made specifically to enhance the swampy atmosphere of the Bitter Coast
Conslusions
Seyda Neen has seen a huge number of overhauls during the years and is a tricky one to get right.
What sets this mod apart from many others is that it's not necessarily a creative effort but rather a logical analysis of what needed to be improved or fixed with Seyda Neen.
I tried my best and I hope you’ll like it.
COMPATIBILITY
Almost every Seyda Neen overhaul is uncompatible with this mod. That's also true for Immersive Seyda Neen but the best bits have been replicated in this mod.
A note about Vality's bitter coast for Vurt's bitter coast trees: the patch provided here is not just compatible with my mod but it's also heavility tweaked for compatibility with any other mod.
After I discovered this mod, I inspected it a bit further. It's simply supposed to increase grass density, yet there were a total of almost 50 cells where the landscape was edited, making it a compatibility nightmare.
I removed the ground edits since they are un-necessary.
A note about the grass mods patches uploaded here: the mod has actually minimal ground edits and these patches are only needed to clear the path to the lighthouse as I didn't want grass to swarm the new beautiful path.
CREDITS
Credits go to
Resdayn Revival Team and Zobator for some resources and design element which have been ported into this mod (some interiors, the new dock and the silt strider's port design)
darkfri01: optimization of the lighthouse mount model
Aitrus, who's mod Seyda Neen imperial port served as a major inspiration for the lighthouse design
DremoraLord98 since I tried to replicate some touches of cluttering from Immersive Seyda Neen into this mod
Brujoloco for testing and helping me out with some design choices (seriousely, thanks!)
mdsouthworth: for The Grand Pharos
Dominik Zdenković: header image (check his website to see more of his beautiful art)