Guardians' Overlook

Load Door Free Cabin on top, Trophy Room down below

I hate load zones.  But I've also been slightly unsatisfied by all the load-zone-free homes (like the now legendary Riverside Shack, which was part of the inspiration for this mod).  They either don't have enough space to display the gobs of goodies I want to show off, or they have a crappy view (I mean, the view is the best part of being out in Skyrim), or both.  I also wanted a collector's museum, but just for all the stuff in Skyrim and DLCs without having to complete a bunch of buggy quests (I love Legacy of the Dragonborn, but wasn't always a fan of the various quests it incorporated)

So I built Guardians' Overlook.

It's a cabin set on a beautiful overlook of Lake Inalta and the Riverwood River.  Complete with every crafting station you really need in or around the cabin, plenty of storage, and some extremely handy features, the cabin has all you need for most of your gameplay. 

The cabin was constructed on a treasure chamber designed by prophetic monks under the orders of Emperor Pelagius IV (3E 314 - 3E 368) to hold a trove of powerful artifacts to be collected by adventurers later to help the Last Dragonborn fight Alduin, the World-Eater.  This treasure chamber has space for every aftifact in Skyrim, Drabonborn, and Dawnguard, including a carpenter's table for constructing replica items, a massive library, and even guard's chambers for your followers.

This is also the least convoluted, lore-friendly explanation for a cabin/treasure-hall combo that I could come up with.

The fantabulous Febritha Darkstar has reviewed Guardians' Overlook, so take a sneak peak:


------------ Requirements!!! -------------------
All the DLCs (Dragonborn, Dawnguard, Hearthfire)
SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender) - Darkfox127 has a great tutorial on installing it!
--------------------------------------------------

No Load Zone Cabin Features

• Simple Quest to fight off the bad guys and take over the house
• Crafting Stations for everything
  
  • Smithing Anvil (with Skaal, Dawnguard, and Skyforge access)
  • Wood Chopping Block (with Woodcutter's Axe holder)
  • Grinding Wheel, Armorer's Table, Tanning Rack
  • Cooking Pot (with ladle hanger)
  • Alchemist's Lab
  • Enchanter's Table (with Guardians' Overlook Enchanting Ring that adds up to +100 to your Enchanting Ability - see more below)
  • Staff Crafting stand (with the option to build your own staves and heartstones)
    
• Displays - Display points (see more below), Weapon Plaques, Shield Plaque, Banner posts, and 3 bookshelves
• Item Repair Kit - (see below for details)
• Storage - Armor, Weapons, Ammo, Ingredients, Potions, Food, Plates and Dishes, Enchanted Items, Jewelry, Staff Crafting Items, Book Stacks, a Safe, and more!
• Storage features - configure your storage to accept new items, quickly grab just a single Iron Ingot on your display shelf, auto storage (see below)
• Mountable Trophies and maps (Craft your own trophies at the Tanning Rack and mount them in your cabin - see more below)
• Nearby Merchant(Mad Jack the Fur Trader - just a few paces east of the crossroads sign)
• Working Window Shutters (to keep out dragons, or to take in the glorious view)
• Lanterns, forge, and nightstand candles are all extinguishable - for those nights when you don't want to be seen from the road
  

Basement Features

• Displays for every unique item in the game and the DLCs
• Library - with bookshelf space for every book in the game
• Thieves Guild display room
• Mage College display room
• Armories - to display weapons and armor
• Daedric Hall - to display all the daedric artifacts
• Guards' Barracks - for your followers
• Customizable Linen Colors for Weapon Plaques and Displays (8 colors to choose from)
• A loom and a carpenter's table - for crafting banners, maps, and replica items
• Item Repair Kit - (see below for details)
• Cooking Oven - for feeding your followers, and with a few custom meals I threw in because I like them
• Potion shelves  - to show off your neat potion collection
• Drink shelf - to show off your nifty beverages
• Unlockable decor (once certain quests have been completed)
• Multi-denominational Religious Shrine - Simply offer up the appropriate religious amulet, and >poof!< that god's shrine appears!
  

The Details

Where is it?
It's just west of the crossroads sign between Helgen and Falkreath. You can see it looking out over the Guardian Stones.

Quest Walk-Through


Auto Storage Explanation
Some Storage is equipped with "Auto-Store" activators. Usually found just below or right next to the storage container, Auto-Store activators will grab all of the appropriate items for that container that aren't equipped, favorited, or involved in a quest.

Configuration:
On the fireplace mantle, you'll see a Guardians' Overlook Storage Configurator that will allow you to modify the behavior of the Auto-Store activators a bit. You can configure the Auto-Store activator to take all of the items, or just one of each item (if you're collecting 1 of each armor or weapon, for example, or you only want to grab 1 of each type of enchanted weapon you haven't learned yet).

Some Auto-Store activators will work off of a list (aka: a formlist) of miscellaneous items (smithing supplies, ores). Formlisted activators won't automatically detect items added by mods (like a Crystal Ingot from the Immersive Armors mod), but you can add them to the list of items to take with the Storage Configurator.

Display Points (and Armor Stands, Special Item Displays, etc) Explanation
Display points are designed to show off potions, some food items (pies), weapons, shields, books, and miscellaneous items (Dragon Claws, mounted heads, soul gems, skulls, dwemer gyros, inkwell and quill, etc). 

A Word of Caution:  Some armors will display nicely on them (steel helmets, glass boots), and some armors will be cut in half (leather helmet, Dragonbone boots), and some armors will even disappear entirely (Dark Brotherhood hand wraps).  This is because of where the Node is on the mesh for that item (for some it's on the bottom, for some it's in the middle, and for some it's even on the top). It's literally impossible to account for all of the new meshes that can be created for items (except for weapons, because of the way they have to be designed), so if you place an item that's been repaired, and it still looks excessively clipped, this is why.

If you really want to display your armor on something, put it on an Armor Stand

Armor Stands support all clothing items, shields, and armors that are standard in the game and DLCs, as well as all the armors from Immersive Armors.  Because each armor has to be positioned based on it's mesh, I cannot make them support every armor ever made.  I built them because I wanted something to show off my armor collections, but without creep-factor (and memory usage) of  the mannequins.  There are a couple of mannequins around just in case you have some unsupported armor that you want to show off.

Each Armor Stand can hold a helm, a cuirass, boots, gloves and a shield.  The Display Wardrobe in the cabin (and in the Thieves Guild Room and Mage Room) can hold a helm, a cuirass, boots, gloves, and a banner.

Item Repair Kit Explanation
Sometimes, the weapons you find won't want to sit on their displays correctly (the Ghostblade, for example).  Sometimes, it won't be placed on the weapon rack or armor display, and sometimes it will be displayed at a bizarre angle (sideways).  As near as I can tell, this is because these items were placed "in the world" (as opposed to into a container or an actor), and so some of their data is unreadable by the Papyrus scripting language.  This renders those items undisplayable.

To work around this issue, I have built an "Item Repair Kit".  Simply drop an undisplayable item into it (one at a time), and a new, uncorrupted item will be returned to you.  Now your "repaired" item will be able to be displayed correctly.

Because the Item Repair Kit is replacing the item with a fresh item, this has the side effect of wiping out player-generated enchantments (regular enchanted items are unaffected), and stolen indicators.  It also could wipe out any script and alias data (for example if you tried to repair an active quest item... which you can't because you can't drop an active quest item into the container).  For that reason, I set a scary message to pop up every time you use the Item Repair Kit.

That said, I've been playing with an Item Repair Kit for about a year now, and I've never had any problems.

Carpenter's Table
Sometimes, depending on the choices you make in the game, you'll be unable to get certain items (Clavicus Vile's Masque, or the Rueful Axe, or any of the Dark Brotherhood gear if you choose to destroy them, or the Forgemaster's Fingers if you become an Orc-friend before you discover a stronghold).  For those cases, when certain quests are completed, you have the ability to build a Replica item for display purposes.

Mad Jack the Fur Trader
Mad Jack is an unkillable merchant that can trade anything, but he also comes equipped to sell you the various hold shields (for the Thane Weapons display). Mad Jack sets up camp just a few paces east of the crossroads sign (where the Riverwood/Helgen road meets the Lake Inalta frontage road).  He's nearby, without ruining the remoteness of your cabin.

Enchantment Bonus for the Guardians' Overlook Enchantment Ring


Unlocking Decorative Mounted Heads


But My Wife and Kids...
I wanted a cabin in the woods kind of feel for this player home. A place to go to get away from the wife and kids getting underfoot.

I feel like the wife and kids would be better off at your place in Solitude (or Riften, etc.) where they can get a good education and have easy access to shopping, or they can live at one of your palatial Hearthfire homes for that "manor in the wilderness" feel.


Installation
Manual - Drop the "GuardiansOverlook.bsa" and "GuardiansOverlook.esp" files in your data folder, and add them to your Data list when you start up skyrim
Mod Manager/Vortex - Click the "Vortex" button.


Conflicts
This mod affects the following cells and may conflict with any mods that affect them:

• 0,-15 (cabin and light landscaping)
• 0,-16 (cabin and light landscaping)
• HelgenRiverwoodCrossroads (Mad Jack, Antonius' corpse, and light landscaping)
  

These cell locations are only lightly impacted by landscaping changes (and they're all in the same area):

• POIPineForest01 (light landscaping)
• POIPineForest20 (light landscaping)
• 1,-15 (where the Guardian Stones are) - (light landscaping)
• -1,-16 (light landscaping)
• 2,-16 (light landscaping)
• 2, -15 (EmbershardMineExterior) - (light landscaping)
  

It also affects the following Leveled Item List (So that Mad Jack and innkeepers can sell a few extra drinks, like Colovian Brandy): LItemInnRuralDrink


Where to Place in Your Mod Order
As long as you place this below any other mods that hit these regions/the conflicts (though the list is fairly unimportant), you should be okay. 

Conflicts
This mod affects the following cells and may conflict with any mods that affect them:
Recommended Mods:
Immersive Armors ... and the Prisoner Cart Fix for it
Immersive Weapons - for more weapons to display
Unique Uniques - for cooler looking unique items to display
Book Covers Skyrim - for much better looking books
Unique Booze Bottles HD - for much better looking brewskies.


Credits
The following resource mods were used in the creation of this Player Home (they are all truly outstanding)
Lolicept's Resources - for loads of little knick-knacks, baskets of junk, and great meshes
Oaristys' Modders Resource Pack - for other meshes, and the original inspiration for the Direnni Orbs
Workable Churns
Jokerine's Misc Resources - for the loom mesh (which I've modified a bit)
Modular Crafting Table - for the meshes that I modified to make my own Staff Crafting Station
Berts Breezehome Remodel - for the inspiration of using Display Points. I built mine a bit differently than he did (custom script/using just a container/mesh with multiple display nodes, instead of activator/container combo), but his was definitely the source of the idea.
Legacy of the Dragonbon - for the inspiration for my Hall of the Dragonborn, but with a few more load zones, look no further than the legendary Icecreamassassin's masterpiece. If you haven't tried it, I thoroughly recommend it.

And much thanks to Darkfox127, whose tutorials (especially the one on Nifskope) were a valuable instruction set and whose mods were a tremendous inspiration. (You'll find his mods scattered around NexusMods, but I especially liked the Riverside Shack.) Here's his Homepage


Permissions
The script for the churn that I have used is a custom variation of Omeletter's Workable Churn's Mod, so get his permission first if you want to use the churn. Otherwise, feel free to use this mod as you like as long as you're not charging for it.

All of the other scripts and meshes are custom built by me, and while they work fine for my mod, I recommend you read through them to understand how they work, or at least understand what the variables do. Please don't modify the scripts, or if you do, create a brand new script so it doesn't conflict with my scripts.


Optional File - Guardians' Overlook - Real Shelter Patch
This optional patch will make your Guardians' Overlook cabin appear dry during a rainstorm, assuming you have the Real Shelter mod installed. 

Simply install the "GuardiansOverlook_RSPatch.esp" file into your data directory, install the Real Shelter Mod, and you're ready to go!  This patch file should go below Real Shelter and Guardians' Overlook in your load order. 

(Note that this optional file REQUIRES the Real Shelter mod to be installed for it to function correctly.)


My Other Mods
If you liked this, check out my other mods:

• Build Your Own Breezehome - a fully customizable Breezehome with many of the same features available in Guardian's Overlook, just more Constructiony, like Hearthfire.
• Plymster's Spell Pack - a handful of spells (summonable pick axe, summonable chest, etc), items (learnable Destruction Damage enchant), and features (smelter in Riverwood, secret door from Riften Marketplace to the Ragged Flagon) to help make the game a bit less onerous.
• Imperial Haven - (My first player home) A teleportation spell that transports you to your private Imperial themed bunker.
• Single Object Bookshelves... AND MORE! - A modder's mod to allow you to place a single mesh with script instead of dozens of objects to create a bookshelf (it's why I can easily make dozens of bookshelves in Guardian's Overlook and Build Your Own Breezehome). It's also got Single Object Potion Shelves, Drink Shelves, Staff Holders, and even a Witch Head Basket (if you like keeping witch heads in a basket...).