Winterhold – Expanded Ruins
Witness the rise and fall of Winterhold
A major expansion of Winterhold along with a whole new area to explore and an adventure.
(Currently SolarTails is responsible for maintaining this mod. Message him, not AvengerJikir, if you have inquiries. AvengerJikir cannot give you permissions ~AvengerJikir here :P)
Vanilla Skyrim never visually represented the outcome of the Great Collapse. Instead of a major city in ruins, all the player sees is a tiny village with a few damaged and abandoned houses with an interesting back story. “Winterhold Expanded Ruins” goes the length to fix this issue by adding ruined buildings, a small (but neglected) market place, ruined walls and gates, destroyed architectural clutter along the shoreline and cliff face below the bridge to the College, a Hall of the Dead and large buried city ruins. We’ve tried to be as lore friendly as possible.
Note: The caverns may be difficult to fight your way through unless you are higher level. I suggest you wait until you are at least level 30 before
you attempt to navigate the caverns and underground ruins.
This is a continuation of rhinala’s Expanded Winterhold Destruction Ruins mod. Credit goes to Rhinala70 and Phaota for the original mod and most of the work that went into this. We only claim credit for this stability release and any future versions of the mod. We are releasing this mod only with the permission of the original creators, Rhinala70 and Phaota.
Features
* Additional Ruins, showing the story of the Great Collapse, around and within Winterhold.
* The great walls of Winterhold in all their glory.
* Information about the Great Collapse, scattered in notes.
* An underground cavern, along with a challenging adventure.
* Challenging Maze.
* Compatible with almost everything(that doesn’t affect Winterhold)
* Completely clean. Not only have dirty edits been removed but all wild edits have been checked individually. (This is how a mod should be cleaned. ITM clean is not enough)
Skyrim Special Edition
Winterhold’s Ruins have made their way to Skyrim’s Special Edition!
Installation
I highly recommend using the Nexus Mod Manager, just as many other mod authors do. It’s very convenient and ensures that you can’t forget a file during installation. Additionally, it tells you which mods you may be overwriting when installing many mods.
However, if you are prefer manual installation:
1. Move/copy the esm and esp and BSA files to your Skyrim data folder (Usually C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\Data)
2. Start the game on a save in which your character is not currently in Winterhold. This is important!
3. Enjoy.
Requirements
Skyrim – Latest Version.
Future Updates (As in, actively working on)
Version 2.3
* ESM and ESP finally merged into one.
* Optimizes, tweaks, and complete work on various levels of the dungeon. Some areas that I started work on previously, still need to be completed or at least prettied up.
* Player Home version now a Modular Add-on. This means it will be optional, and fully compatible with whatever version of the mod you prefer. (Full, Compatibility, Dungeon, Dungeonless, ect..
** Player Home will be a reward. Either purchasable after becoming Thane, or some other way. Still brainstorming that detail
Version 3.x
* Dungeon will be made a Modular Add-on, further making overall mod more flexible and easier to maintain.
* Quest-line. Yes, I’ve not forgotten! The main goal of the jump to 3.0 will be a questline with further lore explaining the Great Collapse, and of course everyone’s favorite, Loot! This will be part of the Dungeon Add-on.
Potential Updates (As in, It’s on the table, but I’m not yet working on it)
* Fully voiced dialog for the quest(s) and related NPCs. I’m not far enough into the quest-line to give any definitive yes or no answers on this one.
(I will promise you, however, you won’t hear my horrible voice acting like in my Goodsprings House mod for New Vegas. At the time, me voicing both the male and female parts felt like quite the accomplishment, then I realized I sucked at both genders, lol. -Solar)
* An MCM for configuring certain areas of the mod. I currently no nothing about how MCM works, so this is just a potential idea on the burner for now.
Compatibility
This mod should be compatible with everything that doesn’t affect Winterhold directly.
Clean College mods should be fine(as long as they don’t touch anything outside the College)
I’ve also checked that it is compatible with Better Fast Travel – Carriages and Ships
For mods that do alter Winterhold directly, such as Qaxe’s Winterhold Rebuild, there is an alternate compatibility version in the downloads section.
The Winterhold Ruins Team
Rhinala70
Phaota
AvengerJikir
SolarTails
Credits
* rhinala70 for the original mod.
* phaota for all of his wonderful help.
* clickok80 for the necessary name change.
* Artifex0 for the werewolf torso
* dogtown1 for the wonderful werewolf (a joined work with Phaota)
* Darkrder for the paintings
* Rex1029 for the teleport spell and all the patient and help.
* Wauthan: for the description enhancement.
* Bethesda for creating this wonderful game.
* The moding community in this site, for all the wonderful content and assistance.
