TRUE CITY – The Great Expansion of Solitude
A mod that expands greatly on Solitude, the biggest Skyrim city expansion you’ll ever get.
There’s been a number of overhauls for Solitude since, but I always thought more could be done.
Disappointed by that void, empty and liveless so-called city Bethesda dare call as the capital of Skyrim? I didn’t like it either, how much empty spaces were left everywhere in favour of oversized grasscovers and barren lands. It didn’t feel like a capital city to me. It is an utter shame for a “capital city”. For a trading hub. For the most important and busiest hold city in the entire continent of Skyrim. Looking at it, seemed like the vanilla city was just screaming for an overhaul already.
This mod aims to change that for the better, with my same tactic of expanding on the actual land instead of just chucking buildings in existing spaces like everyone else does.
This will be the last entry in my city expansion series, so here I’ve tried giving it the grandest feel of all. The mod is based on and includes the existing city overhaul mod, Complete Solitude by captainswoop, so technically, this would be, well, a further expansion of an expansion mod. The result is 2x the content, 2x more awesomeness, 2x bigger city.
NOTE: This isn’t a continuation nor successor to Complete Solitude but rather my own take on it. Contents have been changed based solely on my decisions and preferences.
DESCRIPTION
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An all-new district has been added to the city, which I simply call the West District. This took me the most time to plan and build. Countless design layouts had to be made, redone, scratched and wasted just to find the best way to integrate it as seamlessly as possible with the base city.
Not to mention the sloping city ground made it a pain in the ***** to manage. I nearly gave up halfway at one point due to how tedious it was.
But well, eventually I got it done.
The district is made mainly as a neighbourhood of sorts, for residential houses, something the vanilla city badly lacked in. Also consists of a brewery and a secondary entrance to an imperial operations base. Over 25 new NPCs have been added in, with fully working day-to-day AI schedules and behaviour where they’ll interact fully with the city. Furthermore many new houses and structures have been added. A couple of new shops added to the marketplace, including a grocery, and bakery and bookstore that’s um…closed for now (bad business, y’know). A small hotel is also added, located near the city centre, meant for the travelling nobles and rich visitors that are too snobbish for the Winking Skeever.
Many major and minor changes to the city and base mod (Complete Solitude) have also been done, for a better, more believable city layout, with the few remaining empty houses filled and switched. Castle Dour is also expanded upon with a new Legion offices.
Optimizations were made for better compatibility for the city exterior mod, Solitude Expansion. This means having to exclude some of the Lift buildings, unfortunately. The Lift Headhouse still works, but leads directly into the EEC’s Warehouse instead.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This mod is only compatible with V1.61 or earlier of Solitude Expansion. The latest versions are NOT supported. There will just be some clipping with the first house on the left, which can be easily disabled in console.
FEATURES (combined with Complete Solitude)
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– About 20 new residential houses
– Nearly 50 new NPCs added. Seriously.
– Full NPC daily schedules
– Many new shops and stuff including:
– Secondary tavern
– Luxury Hotel
– Jewelry store
– Brewery
– Outer guardhouse
– Apartments
– Traders
– Wood carpenter
– Bookshop
– Townhouse
– Grocery
– Secondary blacksmith
– Market stalls
– Lift house for EEC workers
– Over 30 new buildings in total.
– All-new district built from scratch, nearly twice in size as the Market place
– Fully navmeshed new areas completely by hand
– Increased Imperial and security presence
– Expanded Castle Dour, now with more misleading doors!
– Over 200 hours spent, 500 if you include the rebuilding process
– City has overall been expanded by just over 1.5x in size. You can probably fit 5 Riftens in there now.
INSTALLATION
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It’s advised to back up your save before running the mod.
For best stability, be sure to reset the city cells and worldspace before installation, or you’ll be getting some issues like market food scattered on the ground or weird behaviours. To do this, go to a safe interior away from the city and wait/sleep for at least 3 days. Or if you want to play it safe, use the SleepExtenderMenu and wait for 30 days. That’s only 12 minutes of waiting.
UNINSTALLATION
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Untick ESP.
CREDITS
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Huge thanks to captainswoop for permissions on usage of his content. This mod would not be possible, at least not this early, if not for him. Credits also due to Blary, Oaristys, Tamira and rajti15 for provision of modders’ resources.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED AND COMPATIBLE MODS
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Solitude Expansion or Solitude Docks District for an expanded docks and exterior
Also with My own Solitude Outskirts Improvements to add some more houses and shops outsides.
and others:
Improved Blue Palace Courtyard for a improved better Blue Palace courtyard
Proudspire Manor TNF for a improved Proudspire home
and Populus for many new varied Solitude NPCs exclusively in Solitude
Advised load order:
bluepalacecourtyard_-_copy.esp
proudspiremanortnf.esp
myownsolitudeimprovements.esp
TRUE CITY TGES.esp
solitude expansion.esp
COMPATIBILITY
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Any mod making significant exterior changes to the city of Solitude will obviously conflict. Mods that only make changes to interiors however, should be compatible but I’d recommend putting this mod at the bottom for overwrites.
Mods that simply NPCs are all compatible.
