[RELZ] Rorikstead

[Arthmoor]

"A Small Farmstead in the Western Plains. Grain, Leather, Horses." - Holdings of Jarl Gjalund.

Rorikstead is a farming village on the northwest end of Whiterun Hold. It has a rich history with a mention in an ancient book accounting for the property once owned by Jarl Gjaland, and a ballad is sung about the death of Ragnar the Red taking place there. Yet when you see the place in person it's a sad shadow of all of that history.

This mod aims to bring at least some of that back by expanding the village with more NPCs, houses to put them in, and additional farming for them to do. The town also now has a blacksmith to fulfill the complete picture.

* Extra guard patrols and guard dogs added to help fend off wildlife and other threats.
* Two of the new NPCs can be married if you help them with their crops and you can live in their houses with them if you so choose.
* Lokir's abandoned house is included and can be claimed as a new home if you wish.
* All added houses are radiant quest enabled, so you may get Companions missions and anything else that's properly configured to use NPC homes for quests.
* Blacksmith allows investing in his shop with the appropriate Speech perk.
* LOD has been generated for the area.

Download Locations

AFK Mods
Bethesda.net - PC + XB1

Installation Requirements

Skyrim Special Edition 1.6.1130 or greater.
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch 4.3.2 or greater.

DO NOT extract the contents of the BSA file into your Data folder as loose files, or let your mod manager perform an equivalent function on the contents of the file. Doing so will cause things to load in the wrong order and break the game. Skyrim is intended to load a BSA alongside it's ESM/ESP file. Circumventing this causes issues which I will not provide support for. If you insist on going against this advice, you will receive no support for the problems you generate as a result of this.

Installation - Wrye Bash BAIN
 
Drop the archive into your Skyrim Special Edition Mods\Bash Installers folder, then install as usual.
Make sure the mod is active in the Wrye Bash mods tab.

Installation - Manual

Drop the Rorikstead.esp, Rorikstead.bsa, and Rorikstead - Textures.bsa files into your Data folder.
Activate the mod using whatever management tool suits you.

Uninstalling

Due to the nature of Skyrim mods, especially those adding scripts, it is strongly discouraged to attempt uninstalling a mod from your active game. Any mod that is more than pure mesh or texture replacements has the possibility to leave behind permanent changes to your save that you may not want. This is not something modders can correct for. It is how the game was designed by Bethesda. No support will be provided for anyone who uninstalls this mod from an active game and continues on with that save.

To remove the mod: Delete the Rorikstead.esp, Rorikstead.bsa, and Rorikstead - Textures.bsa files from your Data folder. Then reload your game as usual.

Load Order

LOOT should be used for optimal placement.

MUST be loaded after Immersive Citizens to preserve navmesh integrity within the village.

Compatibility

Tested and is compatible with Bring Out Your Dead.

Will not be compatible with other mods that also modify Rorikstead without a patch.

Disclaimer

This mod is not made, guaranteed, or supported by Microsoft, Zenimax, Bethesda Game Studios, or any of their affiliates.

[Leonardo]

Thanks for sharing another town/village mod.

7 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

Uninstalling

Due to the nature of Skyrim mods, especially those adding scripts, it is strongly discouraged to attempt uninstalling a mod from your active game. Any mod that is more than pure mesh or texture replacements has the possibility to leave behind permanent changes to your save that you may not want. This is not something modders can correct for. It is how the game was designed by Bethesda. No support will be provided for anyone who uninstalls this mod from an active game and continues on with that save.

To remove the mod: Delete the Keld-Nar.esp and Keld-Nar.bsa from your Data folder. Then reload your game as usual.

I wonder what in earth has your Keld-Nar mod anything to do with the Rorikstead mod.

7 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

Compatibility

Will not be compatible with other mods that also modify Rorikstead without a patch.

I will test this with my Skyrim Map Markers mod since I added a map marker for the Dragon Burial nearby.

[Arthmoor]

It's called copypasta documentation. Missed changing the filenames I guess

The dragon mound is far enough away to not be bothered. It's not part of the town.

[Leonardo]

Copypasta?  Is that the latest pasta dish?

I thought so, but wasn't sure hence my question.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.1

The blacksmith services faction was not properly added to the blacksmith, causing him to fail to offer services.
Blacksmith AI packages were not running correctly due to flags allowing him to eat and sleep which should not have been enabled.
Occlusion boxes under the new buildings were not present, resulting in stutter problems for some users in the area.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.2

Fixed 3 navmesh errors for bad triangles.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.3

Navmesh cleaning with new versions of xEdit.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.5

Moved a horse placement out of the way of a barn that gets added by ICAO to avoid issues with Havok bogging the game down when the horse gets stuck inside.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.6

The 4 vanilla homes in the village did not have occlusion boxes under them which contributes to FPS issues on lower end systems when combined with the 4 new homes placed by the mod.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.7

Fixed some broken navmesh border connections.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.8

Argisbjorn Hammer-Hand's investment dialogue is not checking the proper gold amount. This is a fix being applied which is detailed in USSEP Bug #29335.
USSEP 4.2.3 or greater is now a requirement for this mod.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.9

Adjusted land texturing and navmesh pathing around an obstacle placed by the Skyrim Pets DLC.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.10

Added the investor perk for the shop to the formlist used by USSEP to clean up perk resets when reading Black Book: Waking Dreams.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.11

Updated USSEP synchronization.

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.12

The .esp and .bsa files have been changed to lowercase filenames. This is to help facilitate universal filename compatibility for Steam Deck and regular linux users whose file systems are case sensitive. Many of them make use of the in-game menu to download mods and Bethesda.net ALWAYS downloads in lowercase. For the benefit of people using linux or the Steam Deck, it would be greatly appreciated if any mods which currently use PCS as a file dependency change the case of that dependency in their master lists. (Bug #34096)

[Carbon14C]

Arthmoor, there appears to be a new landscape incompatibility with either the Anniversary Edition or Update.esm. I'm getting the dreaded muddy ground texture anomaly. It's mostly around the farmland region to the right of the inn, but also extends outward beyond the fenced enclosure. I'll include pics of the area and of my testing load order.

The only other CC plugin affecting the local area is ccvsvsse002-pets.esl, but NOT the landscape. In which case it's Update.esm that affects the landscape records, according to xEdit. Is it possible Update.esm has made recent changes to the landscape? I also updated to the latest Rorikstead version here, just to be thorough, but made no difference. Comments on the mod's Download page, although years old now, suggest it's compatible with SSE-AE. Yet once I remove Rorikstead.esp these landscape conflicts/smudges disappear.

I've tried fixing muddy ground anomalies with other mod conflicts, but I can never figure out what causes them, and they aren't apparent in the CK until you actually load the game up.

EDIT: I did some internet searching and found this, where this person is also experiencing the black mud phenomenon. Unfortunately he didn't get any answers as to what causes it.

Edited September 28, 2024 by Carbon14C

[Arthmoor]

There's a house and tower in your first screenshot that are not part of the mod. Maybe whatever that's from is impacting the landscape here?

Also I can't see an issue with the second screenshot facing east. The farmland is supposed to be that dark brown color and I don't see anything else out of place either.

[Carbon14C]

2 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

There's a house and tower in your first screenshot that are not part of the mod. Maybe whatever that's from is impacting the landscape here?

Also I can't see an issue with the second screenshot facing east. The farmland is supposed to be that dark brown color and I don't see anything else out of place either.

The house and mill tower in the distance is the Farming CC from the Anniversary Edition.

The ground is definitely not supposed to look like that. Before and after comparisons below. The ground doesn't look like that until I introduce Rorikstead.esp. In xEdit, the only landscape conflicts with Update.esm is Rorikstead.esp. The Pets CC adds an NPC, a goat, and the lean-to, but it doesn't appear to actually alter the landscape records, which Update.esm does. I did some poking around in the CK (god I cannot stand the camera controls of that thing lol) and I think it's RoriksteadExterior04's quadrant 3.

Yeah, apparently I learned something today in the CK. There are cells, and then each cell is broken down into quads. But I digress.

Edited September 28, 2024 by Carbon14C

[Carbon14C]

If Nexus links are not permitted here, I apologize in advance. Posting it here for others who encounter the same conflict.

Good news is, I found a mod that resolves it. It includes patches in the file section specifically for Arthmoor's Settlements series. Landscape Fixes for Grass Mods. Note: this is an entirely different mod from Landscape and Water Fixes, just a similar name. Unfortunately one will have to use the main file, thus the entirety of the mod, to benefit from the patch. The other good news is the mod carries over most USSEP fixes, though it has some Max Height Data conflicts with USSEP in various cells, and it includes patches for most of Arthmoor's other settlement mods.

But it works, for now, so... 

Edited September 28, 2024 by Carbon14C

[Arthmoor]

Version 1.0.13

Fixed corrupted landscape normals for the southeast section of the village.
Cleared grass from various pathways throughout the village.
Fixed broken navmeshes in the southeast section.