This is my first pass at Dawnstar, definitely the earliest-stage mod I've ever released. However, I think I must be getting better at modding or something because it's... basically what I want it to be? The point is, things have the potential to change, so even if it's currently compatible with mods x, y, and z, it may not always be. Just be aware.



Made a quick video:









Reasonably Comprehensive Feature List:



Reasonably Comprehensive Issue List:







FAQ:



Future plans:



Changelog:

Added FAQ.Changed series name. Also just noticed that I never uploaded the updated Enhanced Landscapes patch because apparently I just cannot remember to share things with you guys, sorry about that.Hodilton did a video feature of this mod, which is pretty amazing. Thanks, Hodilton!This mod is in an early stage.Dawnstar's supposed to be a bustling port city, but in vanilla Skyrim, it's honestly around the size I'd consider to be "village." This mod aims to correct that by putting more houses and other junk just all over the place. Dawnstar's also one of the northernmost cities in Skyrim, so I took this opportunity to put a ton of snow and ice everywhere while I was at it, because it's really, really hot where I live. It also adds a nice straightforward player home for anyone who wanted to live in Dawnstar.Full disclosure, this is also probably the least lore-friendly mod I'll ever make, since it uses Windhelm architecture in a city that's... you know, not Windhelm. Normally I avoid that kind of thing like the plague, but I thought Dawnstar deserved better than the Farmhouse building set. Sorry about that, but it looks pretty rad, don't it?There is no mini-quest in this mod.-Adds 20 new houses to the city (exteriors only)-Adds a player home with storage, bookshelves, and a player bed-Adds a new ship, a sort of sauna-type-place for Dawnstar's workers to get out of the cold, and a cemetery-Lots and lots of snow and ice-You can get up onto a lot of rooftops now, which was accidental, but I hope you have fun-Everybody gets more firewoodI get substantially better performance with this than with JK's Dawnstar, actually, to my fairly considerable surprise. I've noticed that the performance of my mods compared to other city mods varies widely based on the user, though, so you may not have the same result.There is clipping with Enhanced Landscapes. A patch has been made to fix this. The ferry guy from Dawnguard gets stuck inside one of the houses. A patch has been made to fix this, too. If you load a save that's in Dawnstar, you may find him still sitting in his old spot. You can push him over to the other side of the bay, or he should in theory move by himself.-The navmesh has not been touched, so NPCs may run into things. However, I do my very best to keep stuff out of their way, and I haven't seen any collisions yet, so it's probably only your followers that'll have trouble.Q: Is this mod compatible with [other city mod]?A: No. Well, I haven't tested it, but chances are very, very low.Q: SSE????!!!!!!A: Not in the near future.Q: But why? The 64-bit engine is far superior for rendering many objects at once, so it significantly decreases the performance impact of most city mods.A: Yeah, but I'm lazy and I really don't want to do upkeep for double the mods. You're always welcome to port it yourself.Q: Why won't you make interiors? This mod ruined my immersion.A: I very rarely actually go inside buildings in Skyrim, and I don't really like making interiors and linking them up with exteriors and whatnot. It's a whole lot of extra work for something I know I'm never going to use, and something that I feel the mod works fine without (y'all didn't complain when Witcher did it; give Skyrim the same consideration).Q: And NPCs?A: Pain in the bum. Especially given that I don't want to make interiors. I'd recommend using a mod like Inconsequential NPCs or Populated Cities if the absence of inhabitants really bugs you.Q: Okay, well, what about navmesh? That's like, basic.A: Have you seen navmesh? Most intimidating interface I ever saw in my life. Also, I do my best to build out of the way of NPC paths. You might still get a collision or two, and your followers will be very confused, but it shouldn't be a total disaster.Q: All these answers are permutations of "I'm lazy." Why are you even making mods?A: I make them for myself, and then, when they make me happy, I offer them to you all, typically as-is (though I'm always open to creative suggestions). The point at which they make me happy is not as advanced as it might be for a more skilled and dedicated mod author, but it's just a matter of what you're willing to live with. I'm perfectly happy to live without interiors, NPCs, and navmesh edits. If you're not, I'm sorry to hear it, but these aren't the mods for you. Another Skyrim is never going to be well looked after. If something's genuinely broken, I'll fix it, but at the end of the day, I made these mods for me, and while I am delighted beyond words that other people enjoy them (seriously, the reception to these has been more positive than I had ever dreamed), the amount of work I'm willing to do on them is very limited.Q: Why does this mod tank my performace?A: It adds a whole lot of buildings. I optimize as best I can, I really do, but there's only so much you can do. Sorry. I know your pain.Q: Performance? Compatibility? Mods in screenshots?A: See "Reasonably Comprehensive Issue List" for the first two, and "Mods in screenshots" towards the bottom of the description for the last one.I'm playing this one by ear, honestly. Based on feedback, I might change stuff in this mod, and at some point I'd like to give Riften and Falkreath a shot, but I offer no timeline on any of that. Otherwise, this time I really do seriously need a break. God, this was just going to be a player home.Thanks to Bethesda for Skyrim, which remains an astonishingly replayable game with a thriving community. Thanks to Rei Kondo, Masami Ueda, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, and Akari Groves for the Okami soundtrack, which for some reason went really well with working on this mod.4 November 2017: Updated Enhanced Landscapes Patch to v1.1, which in an ideal world I would have remembered to do months ago. Moves some rocks and walls and whatnot, and I think I added a rock somewhere too. It's nothing major, if you haven't noticed anything wrong then you probably don't need to bother with updating.1 August 2017: v1.0