Elvenwood
Elvenwood
Current version is v3.032
Elvenwood is a large treehouse settlement located between Falkreath & Helgen. It was constructed some time ago by Bosmeri travellers coming to Skyrim, who at the time had shown great interest in the rich forest areas within Falkreath Hold.
A book can be found within the settlement that will provide a detailed insight.
***Note that the latest version of Elvenwood (v3.02) has been fully cleaned with TES5Edit.***
***With regard to game stability, I strongly recommend that you install Sheson’s memory patch, as that can help to make your game a lot more stable.
**The Elvenwood soundtrack, ‘Sunrise’, along with the preview soundtrack ‘Home’, have been composed by Aarchduke (Tom Colebrooke), the author of Symphonies of Skyrim. A big thank you to Aarchduke for his work on these.**
I HIGHLY recommend ‘Tamriel Reloaded – Textures and Parallax’ by 32cm to improve the appearance of the wooden building textures in this mod.
**11/5/13 – Just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has downloaded this mod. With over 36,000 downloads on Nexus alone, this has had far more downloads than I ever imagined it would have when I first started making it in March 2012. Again, thank you all.
***6/7/14 Now over 1000 endorsements! – a very big thank you to all of you who endorsed 🙂
*Resident wood elf NPCs, including merchants (blacksmith, inn, fletcher, general goods store)
*Both interior & exterior areas all fully navmeshed by hand. External area navmesh around the settlement has been connected to adjacent external cells, so it’s possible that enemy NPCs in the vicinity could attack the settlement.
*Smithing facilities, alchemy table, enchanting table.
*Purchasable player house with plenty of storage, bed, mannequin, weapon rack, weapon plaques, cooking pot, bookshelves, alchemy table & enchanter.
Q. Is this mod available in any other languages?
A. So far, the mod has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Czech, Italian & German. Links can be found to the translated versions at the bottom of this page.
Q. But…your mod isn’t accordance with Tamrielic Lore as Bosmers aren’t permitted to build things with wood?
A. It states in the UESP wiki article on Bosmers that ‘imported wood is used when necessary’, implying that foreign wood can be used. Wood originating from the Falkreath forests in Skyrim falls into this category. The Green Pact prohibits the use of any wood or vegetable matter of Valenwood as building materials, which does not mean wood of Skyrim, which is where the wood for the construction of this village originated, and the wood was necessary at the time to build a home for them. Therefore there is no reason why the Bosmer could not have actually constructed this themselves.
Q. The NPCs all attacked me when I arrived??
A. That’s probably because during the melee when bandits attacked the settlement, you attacked an Elvenwood member in error after confusing them for one of the bandits. The Elvenwood members are all in the Elvenwood faction, whereby they will help their fellow faction members in a fight. So if you attack one of them, then the other faction members will automatically come to their defence and attack you. So be careful who you pick a fight with. 😉
Q. Any tips from the author about getting better performance?
A. Note in particular that ‘shadow detail’ set on ‘ultra’ can affect performance in forest areas (most notably at dawn and at dusk.) Reducing this to ‘high’ or lower can help a lot where there are a lot of trees in the immediate vicinity. Smoother performance around Elvenwood can also be gained simply by reducing the object slider.
Q. When I try to trade with the merchants I don’t get any dialogue?
A. That’s because you’re trying them outside of their trading hours. The trading dialogue will only appear when you attempt to trade with them within these hours. The various merchants’ trading hours are as follows:
Innkeeper: 9am – midnight
Blacksmith: 8am – 6pm
General Store: 8am – 6pm
Fletcher 9am – 6pm
Note that the general goods store and the fletcher will lock their doors outside trading hours.
Q. Can I use the Dawnguard/Hearthfire/Dragonborn DLC(s) with this mod?
A. Yes, certainly. There shouldn’t be any conflicts with either of these, whichever combination of DLCs you have installed.
Note that the only master files elvenwood.esp is dependent on are skyrim.esm and update.esm, which everyone will have. Elvenwood.esp has no dependency on any of the DLC master files.
Q. What are ‘protected’ and ‘essential’ NPCs?
A. In the .esp file, NPCs can be set as ‘protected’ or ‘essential’, in order to safeguard them for whatever reason:
Protected NPCs = NPCs can be killed by the player, but not by enemy NPCs in the majority of cases.
Essential NPCs = NPCs cannot be killed by either the player or enemy NPCs.
Q. Can I do something about the NPCs randomly speaking to me when I go near them?
A. To stop the NPC greetings, I can recommend the mod ‘No NPC Greetings’ by Cipscis which is available here on Skyrim Nexus.
Q. Should there be an icon that shows the location of Elvenwood on the map?
A. The map icon will only show up when you’ve actually discovered Elvenwood.
Q. (v3.03 only) The door to the Sky Tower is locked. How do I find the key?
A. The Sky Tower must now be purchased for 5000 gold. You’ll see a ‘for sale’ sign next to the door, which you can activate in order to purchase the property. When you’ve paid the gold, the key will automatically be placed in your inventory.
Q. There are issues with the mannequin in the Sky Tower player home (i.e. mannequin moves position etc.)
A. Please be aware that this is not a problem with the mod, but a problem with the mannequin script in the base game. I strongly advise everyone to use the Vanilla Mannequin Script Fix mod by SLuckyD to prevent any such issues.
Q. Why did you add interior cells? They’re unnecessary and confusing!
A. I added interior cells to help minimise the performance impact. Please feel free to use a previous version if you don’t want the interior cells.
Q. Will the mod be made available for console users to download upon the release of Skyrim Special Edition?
A. If it will be possible for me to make it available to console users, then yes, of course.
Q. Will this mod be made available for Skyrim Special Edition?
A. Yes. I intend to port the mod over to Skyrim Special Edition when the new Creation Kit is publicly released.
MOD CONFLICTS:
*IMPORTANT – When using any other NPC/hireling related mods, please make sure that those mods are given a higher priority than Elvenwood in your load order, otherwise this can cause issues with dialogue of NPC followers.
The mod ‘True Skyrim’ may cause conflicts with regard to trees positioned around Elvenwood, so I do not recommend having both mods active at the same time.
Any mods that alter the size or position of pine trees in Skyrim may cause issues, because I’ve altered the scale and positioning of some of the pine trees that are situated immediately around the Elvenwood settlement.
The mod ‘Pinewoods Cottage’ is situated in more or less the same location as Elvenwood, and I do not recommended running both mods together at the same time.
Automatic installation can be done through the Nexus Mod Manager – simply click on ‘download with manager’ and then, once downloaded, click on the item in the mods window in NMM and click on ‘activates the selected mod’ on the left. You can use BOSS to tell you whereabouts in the load order Elvenwood should be.
Manual installation – simply click on ‘download’ and once downloaded, extract the files from the zip file. Place both the Elvenwood.esp and Elvenwood.bsa files into your Skyrim/data folder.
*Note that a loose files version is also available for v3_02. Installation instructions are included in the download for the manual installation option.
v1.05 – Archery target range has been added near the waterfall to the southeast of the settlement. Thoronor is now primarily based in the lower watchtower as a means of front line defence (and also to allow the player to use the archery range without being disturbed :-)). Small alterations to Elvenwood book’s text also.
v1.1 – All Elvenwood NPCs have now been made essential. Navmesh has now been joined between the Elvenwood cell and adjacent wilderness cell to the north of the settlement, and also between the Elvenwood & ElvenwoodTreetopsInn cells. This means that NPCs can now enter the settlement from the north (namely when travelling along the path from the direction of Helgen & Riverwood).
v1.2 – *The bard will now play music and sing (but unfortunately will still not be able to take requests as yet). When she isn’t present, ambient inn music will play in the inn.
*Fixed issue with flickering wooden beams on top of the rooves on the Sky Tower bedroom, Sky Tower, southwestern tower, lower watchtower & entrance hut.
*Wooden platform next to entrance hut extended slightly to create a bit more room.
*The floating support beam underneath the southwestern tower has now been grounded.
*Objects no longer havoc settled when game initially loads. This means that objects will no longer fall off tables, shelves etc on their own accord.
*Many items are now owned by the Elvenwood faction.
*3 barrels at back of storage room can be used for safe storage as they aren’t owned & are marked as no AI acquire/no respawn.
*Additional chest added to smelter room
*2 beds now owned
*PlayerHouseChest bug fixed whereby I’d mistakenly added items to it when making the mod initially. My apologies for this :-/
*Added Bosmer Ranger NPC who is hireable as a follower.
*Navmesh fixes/improvements (issue fixed whereby SkyTower dining room & bedroom had broken navmesh link, so NPCs couldn’t previously enter the Sky Tower bedroom & balcony area. Navmesh cover beneath the settlement has been increased to allow NPCs more freedom to roam and more links now made with other surrounding external cells.
v1.25 – Night lighting overhaul. I *HIGHLY* recommend a darker nights mod to get the best from this update.
v1.275 – *Galbedir the bard will now take requests.
*Fixed issue whereby when Elvenwood.esp was active, other bards in Skyrim wouldn’t have a dialogue option for the player to make a request.
v1.3 – *The NPC hirelings can now actually be hired(!) and will now be fully functional as followers with all necessary follower dialogue options.
*Two more of the NPCs can now also be hired as followers (Anedhel & Dennilwen)
v2.0 – *The Sky Tower has now been converted into a small player house, with a storage loft above. Player house includes storage, weapon rack & 2 plaques, cooking pot, mannequin, alchemy table, arcane enchanter & bookshelves. Note there are 2 large bookshelves and also a small wall shelf that can be used as a bookshelf above the alchemy table.
*General goods store has now been relocated to the location of the storage room at the lower level. Smelter relocated to the smithy and smelter room now deleted. The deletion of the smelter room and conversion of 3 rooms to interior cells should now increase FPS slightly. This should be more noticeable at ground level when moving around beneath the settlement.
*Inn night lighting has been made slightly brighter.
*Removed duplicated dialogue from Elvenwood NPCs which affected other Skyrim NPCs’ dialogue. Hopefully this is now fixed, please let me know if any problems still. I have shelved the idea of having Elvenwood NPCs as followers, at least for the time being.
*Level of Elvenwood NPCs increased to make them stronger in fights.
*Sleep package changed for Dennilwen which means she will no longer sleep during daytime hours (My intention previously was to have her as a night watch guard, but I don’t think that went down too well).
v2.01 – Fixed issue whereby users were unable to trade items with certain vanilla NPCs due to accidental deletion of the correct trade dialogue entries within the DialogueFollower quest, and the ‘rogue’ duplicated entries were still being used. Incorrectly deleted INFO entries now marked as ‘ignored’ within the CK, and duplicated entries now deleted.
v2.02 – Dragon perches added. Now there is the possibility that dragons could attack Elvenwood.
v2.03 – Added custom sign for The Treetops Inn
v3.0 –
* Dirty edits within the .esp have been cleaned with TES5Edit
* Elvenwood now has its own in game soundtrack. The track is called ‘Sunrise’, and has been kindly composed by Aarchduke (see credits).
* More appropriate wooden floors added around the settlement.
* The Elvenwood Forest Fletcher store has now been added. This is situated near to the entrance of the settlement.
* The Treetops Inn has now been made into an interior cell & the small southwest watchtower has been removed (this is mainly to help a little with game performance)
* There is now a possibility that the blacksmith & general goods store may sell various elven items.
* Updated NPCs’ AI packages to make them more active. For example, on certain days, NPCs will make trips/errands on foot to places such as Falkreath and Riverwood, NPCs will visit the fletcher, the merchants will visit the inn to wind down in the evening, etc.
* Optimised Navmesh all around the settlement. Navmesh gap on bridge between NW watchtower and smithy fixed. Navmesh beneath settlement re-worked.
* Levelled items placed in general store & player house instead of items that previously may have been inappropriate for the player’s level
* Made Thoronor hireable
* Corrected grey face bug for NPCs
* Elvenwood book updated to reflect changes in more recent updates
* Minor improvements to player house interior, improved lighting & items on uppermost player house balcony now appropriately set to not owned. Also removed phials placed in player house (which previously I hadn’t realised should only appear in the game as part of a specific vanilla side quest).
The v3.0 update does not alter any storage containers whatsoever and will NOT affect any items you currently have held in them.
v3.01 – (stability fix) repaired 4 deleted Navmeshes & removed 6 outstanding ITM records with TES5Edit 3.0.30 EXPERIMENTAL version.
v3.02 – (stability fix) addresses a CK bug that affects repaired (undeleted) Navmeshes within the .esp.
This update is thanks to the work of Sharlikran.
v3.03 – This version makes the Sky Tower player house purchasable for 5000 gold. If you *don’t* want a purchasable house, then just use v3.02, as no other alterations to the mod have been made. Note that any items stored in containers in the Sky Tower won’t be affected in v3.03, just that obviously now you won’t be able to access your previously stored items again until you actually buy the property…
v3.031 – *This is an update to the NMM install version only. Users of the v3.03 loose files version do not need this*. V3.031 is a small update to the v3.03 NMM install version which corrects an incorrect file path for the ‘for sale’ sign mesh within the .bsa archive.
v3.032 – This corrects 3 storage chests that were facing the wrong way (2 in player house, 1 in storage loft). Items currently held in these chests will not be affected.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE v2.0 UPDATE
**This ONLY applies to anyone updating their mod to the latest version *from very old versions* (namely any versions up to and including v1.3).
IF YOU CURRENTLY HAVE ANY ITEMS STORED IN THE TWO LONG NOBLE CHESTS IN THE ELVENWOOD SKY TOWER BEDROOM *PLEASE REMOVE THEM AND TEMPORARILY PLACE THEM SOMEWHERE ELSE BEFORE YOU INSTALL THE V2.0 UPDATE*. *DO NOT* PLACE THEM IN THE LOWER LEVEL STORAGE ROOM, AS THE ITEMS IN THERE ARE REMOVED IN THE UPDATE.
IF YOU INSTALL THE v2.0 UPDATE WITHOUT DOING THIS THEN THE ITEMS WILL BE LOST. UNLIKE IN PREVIOUS VERSIONS, THE V2.0 UPDATE USES DUPLICATES OF THE NOBLE STORAGE CHEST. THIS WAS NECESSARY BECAUSE I HADN’T DONE SO IN PREVIOUS VERSIONS AND THEREFORE ITEMS STORED IN THESE CHESTS PREVIOUSLY WOULD’VE IMPACTED ALL OTHER LONG NOBLE CHESTS THROUGHOUT SKYRIM.
MY APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE THIS MAY CAUSE.
Kudos to MMOxReview and wolverinetree for kindly providing video reviews of my mod. Thanks guys 🙂
