This mod adds a multi-level set of stone stairs and walkways alongside parts of the exterior southern and western walls of Windhelm, connecting the main bridge with the docks and the docks with the edge of the mainland to the north and east of the city that leads to a path that will take you eventually to Winterhold. The walkways are fully navmeshed for followers and are able to be used by those on horseback without having to dismount, although it can get a bit crowded in a few spots if you hit NPC rush hour at just the wrong time and place. There are a 2 additional guards added to the walkways for ambience and security from any wildlife, be it on land or of the flying variety. Also, the dock patrols that exist in the game already have been adjusted to account for the new pathways that need to be secured. Action and Idle markers have been added in a few spots to allow for some randomness in how NPCs move in and around the paths, also some of the original dockside clutter has been removed or repositioned to allow for smooth navigation along the main travel paths for both NPCs and the player.

Why This Mod Exists
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I almost never use Fast Travel in my games so it always bothered me how difficult it was to get to and from the Windhelm docks from anywhere but the interior of the city as well as the fact that there was no connection from the docks or city to the side route that heads North up towards Winterhold through the snowy fields on that side of the city. Instead you were expected to make a long, dangerous, and very out of the way loop far to the West just to get back on track for travel between those two cities. In a similar annoying fashion, rather than ariving by carriage and being able to easily head down to the docks to catch a ship you were expected to either enter the city or risk a broken leg by jumping off the main bridge to get to the docks or freezing your unmentionables off if you wanted to head north.

Want to go the other way, arriving at the docks from Solstheim or from points north such as Winterhold and want to head up to the stables or on past them to the main roads in order to travel elsewhere in Skyrim? Tough luck, you'll just have to enter the city instead of skipping it even if you have no current business inside. What about if you're on horseback? Guess you'll have to dismount and have your horse teleport to you, hmm? And if you happen to use a mod such as Frostfall that makes it so you really don't want to go swimming in frigid waters for even a moment, well those quick and simple toe dips in that icy water surrounding the docks aren't all that simple anymore are they?

No longer.


Notes
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Something to be aware of if you have the Dragonborn Official DLC installed is the fact that because there are additional markers and locations for NPC actions as well as a seperate path up to the main route in/out of the city added by this mod, some NPCs added to the docks by that DLC can take a path you wouldn't normally expect when they have wander or sandbox packages active. If you think an NPC is missing from where they are supposed to be, check along the new paths as they can choose to take these alternate paths at times so they might not be found where you'd normally expect them to be.

I have also seen NPCs from a few other mods that add wandering or moving NPCs (such as Travelers of Skyrim) and a few that are in the base game take this alternate route on occasion during my testing. If you use Open Cities Skyrim, this can happen much more often as the NPCs normally present in the closed interior version of the city are now present in the main game world and so can and will see and make use of the new pathways and markers outside where they wouldn't from the closed version of the city even with navmesh conflicts. See the Compatibility section below for additional notes on using Open Cites Skyrim with this mod.

Installation
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Standard install, use the mod manager of your choice to install or just drop the esp file into your Data directory manually and activate it.

Removal
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Deactivate the file and then delete the esp. Shouldn't have any affect on save games as there are no scripts present in this mod.

Compatibility and Load Order
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- Open Cities Skyrim (OCS) -> minor static conflict along part of the walkway that NPCs can have issues navigating around. Use the 'disable' command in the console on the offending static wall piece if this really bothers you, it won't affect OCS in any serious way to my knowledge beyond a minor visual gap you'd have to really search for to notice. A more serious issue exists with conflicting Navmeshs between these mods. Load OCS after this mod in order to keep the main city functioning - loading these mods in the opposite order will break NPC movement in Windhelm entirely so yeah, don't do that.
- If you do choose to use this mod along with OCS be aware you'll lose out on some of the connectedness this mod is meant to provide for NPC movement and some guards will also be misplaced with this load order config as the OCS navmesh changes will take precedence over mine causing some NPCs to act confused at best when trying to deal with the new pathways. A patch to fix this conflict isn't currently planned as I don't use OCS myself but I won't completely rule out creating one if there is enough demand for it.
- Should in theory have no impact on the final Civil War quest on the Imperial side involving the seige of Windhelm either in the default game or in a modded Civil War playthrough but do be aware that this is currently untested as I don't play the Civil War questline at all.
- Load order for this mod shouldn't matter aside from what has already been mentioned, this mod adds new content rather than edits baseline content for the most part so conflicts should be minimal.

Version History
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[04-25-2016] v1.0 - Initial Release

[03-04-2017] v1.1 - mod ported to the Skyrim Special Edition
- added/repositioned some idle markers in an attempt to randomize NPC movement more than it was previously
- modified the northern entrance to the pathway with some trees, shrubs, flora (snowberry), and general clutter
- altered some snow ground textures to make the main northern path more clearly defined
- slightly raised and then smoothed over the ground landscape height level near a staircase NPCs would sometimes get stuck on
- covered up some static mesh gaps and landscape holes with snow drifts
- ajusted the lighting on some braziers to hopefully eliminate or at least reduce flickering
- guard patrol paths, idles, and stop markers tweaked in a few spots to avoid conflicts with vanilla NPC markers


[02-24-2018] v1.2 - navmesh adjusted for better Dragonborn DLC compatibility and to add a missing door triangle
- because of the above, the Dragonborn DLC is now required to use this mod from this version going forward
- navmesh for the entire mod has been gone over, several odd placements and other problems have been fixed
- added new idle markers for NPCs to use, changed the positions of several markers and patrol stops to work with the new navmesh
- added some missing water flow settings for the water around the Windhelm docks

[04-12-2019] v1.3 - better navmesh cleaning with the latest verison of TES5Edit
- added landscaping (trees and shrubs) in some of the more bare areas of the walkway
- added some additional stone pillars to better visually support the walkway
- adjusted some lighting positioning to better conform to their sources
- moved several snowbanks that were clipping into parts of the walkway
- removed some of the braziers that appeared to have little to no structural support strong enough to support their weight
- extended navcut boxes to some snowdrift and rock locations that were giving NPCs trouble moving around
- changed many of the walkway railings and stones to have a more snowy look
- SSE adds several minor items (ex: snowberry plants) that conflict with statics from this mod, these are now moved or removed