Thanks to feedback from Lardrumph, we have some more progress.

1) The storehouse was empty, so I've added some more empties to it. There's now an empty chest, two empty barrels, an empty weapon rack, and an empty crate for minerals and ingots.

2) There was an empty corner in the basement where I'd originally decided to put mannequins, but thought I'd have wandering issues, and changed my mind. Well, I changed it back again after reading more about the problem, so the corner's no longer empty. You can see that the test character didn't have time to collect anything after leaving Helgen!

3) No garden outside. I thought it would be nice to have a goat or two, as well, and they don't mix. So I've moved the stockade back a little from here, to here, and that can be fenced off. I still haven't decided if the plantings or the goats go inside the fence.

I eliminated a couple of corner shelves in the basement that never appeared, and would have blocked access to a bed.

I'll have another install built soon. The basic testing went OK, but that's with a COC to the site and adding all materials via console. If you add the changes to an existing game, you can't create the mannequins, but the other changes should happen. The fence won't appear, as that will be tied to acquiring the goat, which is still TBD.

There's some minor stuff, such as a light in the Wise Woman's hut, that enables with the Enchanter. I already had a lamp appear, but it didn't light the place up before. She also gets some empty shelves with the Alchemy station.

Bump for 0.2. Get it here.

It has the extra stuff in the storeroom, and hut, and the adjusted stockade. All that should appear if you replace in an existing game. The mannequins have to be made, and that will only be possible if you start a new game.

Working on the NPCs as a separate esp for now, just in case...

My current idea is that the Wise Woman (tentatively named Yarob) will be found in a cave/ruin, where she's defeated a Dragon Priest. Unfortunately for her, the priest's mask was cursed, and when she put it on, he took control of her. The player must now defeat her before she'll be freed from the curse. At that point she'll destroy the mask, and thank the player.

This is what she'll look like wearing it - except that she'll be a bit more aggressive when the player finds her. I'm not intending to explain whether the tusks on the mask have anything to do with her, or the priest. They're just there.

The mask has tusks! I love the idea of saving her from a curse. She looks great! It’s exciting to see the new developments.

Mithilion got the new furniture and a surprise mannequin with 0.2, and I’ll report back when I get Greenspring built in a new game. I’ve added Hulk Out to his game (I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before!) so now I’ll have my eye out for the Old Orc when he’s wandering. Also he wants to build a shrine above Greenspring Hollow, which I’ll do in Lardrumph’s mod. This guy was supposed to just be a one-time tester!!

My (Lardrumph’s, really) 2 Septims on the garden, having the plants inside the fenced area would let the goats move around more and keep the weeds down inside the stronghold.

I think the tusks on the mask are a great touch too! What a brilliant idea for an NPC!

The mannequin (and a couple of other items) didn't get their "initially disabled" set correctly, or they got the wrong enable parent due to clicking on the wrong thing in the window. So there will be at least an 0.3 to fix those things, before I start to add the NPC's.

I'm leaning the same way on the goat(s) being outside the fence. Not sure if I can put "plant your own" on the sloping ground, but I might be able to enable a patch of veggies if they won't work.

The problem with Yarob will be that she needs unique dialog, so she'd have to have a unique voice, or silent dialog. So far the mod has avoided having any dialog at all. On the other hand, once I make that decision, I can do a lot more with her at the stronghold - e.g. she can build a shrine to Malacath and use it.

The BYOH plantable soil patches are circular, and have to be placed level, so that makes them impossible to use on the sloping patch of ground available. However, the cabbage and leek plants' dirt patches are rectangular, so I could fit them into crates sunk into the dirt as credible planters. I'll post some pictures of the WIP later.

The other thing I've done is re-texture a version of the Dibella statue (Edilhild's remake with bigger boobies) to make it look like orichalcum and gold instead of all-gold - i.e. an Orcish version. I'm trying to decide if Yarob worships both Malacath and Dibella because she's hedging her bets, or if she believes that combining strength and beauty is what female Orcs are all about. I'll enable a statuette of each either side of her bed once she's moved in a while. There's a barrel near the enchanter for Dibella, and shelves by the Alchemy lab where Malacath can go.

Sounds great! With all of the deities available I think most people would hedge their bets a little. I’ve been landscaping a Rorikstead cliff today, so I sympathize with the gardening pains!

Here's a shot of the veggie patch, indicating the slope situation. There's more space around each plant than I'd like, but moving them closer to the sides makes the dirt poke through the wood.

This is the Orc version of Dibella. A slightly more robust representation than the Breton one seen in Markarth.

Hey, that screenie of the veggies looks awesome! Reminds me of my landscaping efforts back at the old Homestead - '50's ranch set on top of a steep-sided rock pile. In order to get plants to grow, I had to terrace the slopes, remove the pebbles and rocks, and add in good soil (amended with peat moss). Speaking from personal experience, you do not want to plant anything too close to the edges of containers unless you want them to either a) grow out of the container or break the sides of the container. So the plant placement in this looks perfect for this former hobby landscaper!

Come and get 0.3.

It adds the veggie patch (sorry you can't plant your own) and domestic goat, and now the layout pegs for the longhouse will be placed before you build.

I've fixed a few enable parents (mannequins, shelves), and found out where the hut pegs went to. There still are no NPC's, but not since not everyone will want any, they'll be a separate esp/bsa when I do add them.

The building book was missing its pictures, so they're now included in the bsa. If anything else didn't get packaged, let me know. I haven't found an equivalent of TES4Files, so I'm relying on naming conventions too much.

Yay, thank you! New character in progress, it will probably be tomorrow before she gets far enough for a report.

The veggie patch looks great. Raised beds for the rocky soil and the slope make perfect sense. Love the robust, green Dibella!

Jytte the Grey's stronghold 0.3 went up without any trouble with both sets of pegs, mannequins, garden, and all. I love how you did the garden. It looks great in game and has a nice homestead feel. The goat is awesome because now we have goat noises.

One small thing to check, the outside weapon racks seem to eat weapons. I can place weapons on there and see them, but then I just get the Activate prompt again and can’t get them back off. The rest of the racks work great in all of my various rebuilds, but I’m afraid I never went back and checked removing things from the outside ones until now. Sorry about missing that.


Mammoth watching is my new favorite hobby. They are really neat, and there’s enough going on down on the plains to keep them busy. The next time the Greenspring Hollow bear respawns I’m going to sneak around him and see what happens when a patrol comes through. Someone left the back gate open once while everyone was away. I suspect Imperials. It would be pretty funny to see them stroll through into a bear ambush.

Ouch! Figuring out what was going on there has hurt my brain!

It appears that the trigger zone for the weapon rack can't have an enable parent, or the weapon rack can't disable it to give you access to the weapon you placed. The enabling and disabling is all done in the script, and somehow they've arranged it so the trigger zone is disabled when the cell loads if the rack itself is disabled.

So all I had to do is remove the enable parents from the triggers, and it's all working. At least, it will be working in 0.4. I'd better wait until you find out what else is broken.

Downloaded !!!!! Thank you, Ghastley!

I just updated the page at the Creation Kit Wiki with my finding about the enable parent. It might help someone else not to make the same mistake.

While I was there, I re-read the page about bookshelves, and noted the discussion about using the same mechanism for other items. The blocks of shelves in the basement may get scripts for placing loot in a future release. I'd have to determine what can be placed, and allocate slots of an appropriate size, so a helmet would take up the same amount of space as a suit of armor, or a pelt, or a dragon claw ... Or else shelves would have to be pre-designated for large or small objects. There's a lot to think about before I leap in.

Oh dear, I have been wondering if regular storage does or doesn't work like it did in Oblivion. Your talking about the size/amount of space of helmets being a suit of armor makes me nervous; are you talking about those auto shelves where you have to put a dummy item in and script it for armor instead of books?

Closed containers like cupboards, chests and wardrobes are no issue, as you can't see what you put in them.

The bookcases and weapon racks let you see what's there, but need a whole lot of scripting to make it work. The idea here is to use the bookshelf scripts on regular open shelves for things like armor, so I don't have to write new code. But the bookshelves use a standard-sized dummy book to make it work, and things like armor items would need equal-sized dummies to determine placement.

It's not something I'm in a hurry to try, as the game has mannequins for armor, and weapon racks, already. Other people have made claw displays, and adapted the Dragon Priest Mask pedestal, for the special cases. It's just that I put a lot of blank shelves in the basement, without an easy way to use them. There are mods that help you put things on shelves, so I may not bother.

Mithilion has found one treasure for the shelves downstairs, the Killer Tree jar from BadGremlin’s Great Jar Hunt! I’ve read that bottom part of the bookshelf page pretty regularly since I’ve been fixing my own bookshelves, and the idea of a stack of books appeals to me. I’ve also seen a small shelf that held journals in some Breezehome mod or another, and that was neat. As for what you’re contemplating with all of those different items on the shelves, Grits backs slooowly away in terror.

I’ve had a lot of fun with Jaxonz Positioner for decorating, so empty shelves are my favorite. Of course what I want is rarely what most people want, and those custom displays for claws and things are very popular. Still, if you’re counting votes put me down as Not Bother.

I’ll spend some time with Jytte’s stronghold tomorrow, since she is in 0.4. I want to torture test the rest of the activatable things and then be gone long enough for the area to respawn in case anything weird happens. Also she would benefit from Hulking Out, so she kind of has a mission to pass as many random encounter points as possible.

Also she’s traveling with the NPC of one of my favorite characters, Duralek gro-Bulsakh. Here Jytte and Big D view the wolf who interrupted their (well, mostly my) enjoyment of the longhouse peg layout.

Jytte had better be in 0.3, or you have an unlicensed time machine!

That dead wolf reminds me about one small adjustment I've been considering: you need a single leather strip as a bootstrap for the tanning process. The vanilla Hearthfires DLC does this by including a tanning rack (which normally needs a leather strip) in the build of the animal pen (which doesn't), so you can start making leather and strips from pelts, which you don't have to "make". At the Stronghold you need to make a strip before you can make a Tanning Rack, which you need to make a strip.

The other bootstrap item is the smelter. It takes ingots to make it, you need one to make ingots. DLC lets you make a smelter after the small house goes up, and I may change the recipe to let you build that before the longhouse. I also need to make sure the other dependencies make sense. Stockade should require forge, as there would be a gap without it. Garden already requires stockade. Should armorer bench, grindstone and storehouse require forge? Should guard tower require stockade?

I may just include one leather strip in the starter kit chest in 0.4 this weekend. I've changed the content of that a couple of times already, so you'd need to mine clay and stone for the longhouse. Standard DLC content was enough for small house, and enough clay for the hall, but not the wings. I reduced the clay, so you get only a couple of units left after the cut. That was supposed to allow you to make a smelter, and then need more for the longhouse, but I made them build in the wrong order.

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The only other thing I know of, that needs work, is the inability to cut your own lumber. I still haven't found a way around the DLC coding that ties it to the three standard sites. The BYOS dialog provides identical topic alternatives for the lumber vendors, so they'll sell to you, but the "Can I cut my own" part doesn't work. If you chop firewood and become their friend, they'll let you use the mill, but you won't get any lumber unless you're building DLC homes. I might be able to suppress that option if it won't work, but I'd prefer to get cut-it-yourself working, if I can.

I think not being able to build the tower until after the stockade makes sense. So too does not being able to build the armor bench and grindstone until after the forge, since presumably you would be using those on something you first made at the forge. The storehouse seems like something you ought to be make at any time however, unless like the forge, it leaves a hole in the stockade or somewhere else.

Unlicensed! You’re right of course, 0.4 is the hours of sleep I’ve been getting.

I think that allowing the smelter and tanning rack to be built before the longhouse is a great idea. That way you could come straight back to the site after raiding the nearby bandits for ore (and loot to melt down for those who are using a mod that allows it) rather than hauling it all back to Whiterun. Putting a leather strip in the chest for the tanning rack to be built is another good idea. I think I used the tanning rack at Greenspring Hollow at least once, and luckily I have a mod-added smelter in Riverwood where I went to buy lumber. With the crafting options available before the longhouse a person could live in the small hut for a time while gathering supplies and saving up for a filled grand soul gem.

The tanning rack would look a little isolated without the other smithing stations, so I’d say it would be best to allow the outside stuff to be built as soon as the hut goes up. The guard tower, stockade, and garden would be the exception since they need the longhouse and outbuildings for part of the wall. I’ve considered having some characters not build the guard tower and stockade at all (which would mean no garden) to keep the open view across the plains.

Another thing that I’ve been pondering is a horse marker, maybe with a hay bale and a trough nearby. The only place I could see to put it is up where the big rock is by the smithing area. And I don’t know if there’s something ugly under that rock. Argh, but then that stuff would just be sitting there if you didn’t have a horse.

One tiny thing I noticed, I’d rotate the fast travel spot so that you land facing the stronghold as if you’d come in the gate.

A dragon flew over while I was paying attention to the fast travel situation, but there was no fight. Good thing Jytte doesn’t need its bones for anything!

I never tried to cut lumber, since it has never worked for me in the regular Hearthfire sites. Or maybe I just gave up on cutting my own so long ago I didn’t realize it had been fixed.

The current setting faces the home-building benches, which seemed appropriate for that stage. Maybe the compromise is just inside the south-east gate, so you face both benches and longhouse.

Time for an 0.4.

I reworked the recipes for the outside stuff, so you can build after the hut is complete, and not wait for the longhouse. The starter chest now has enough in it to make the hut, the tanning rack, and you have enough ingots for the smelter.

The weapon racks now work properly, and the outside containers are set to not respawn. The inside ones have been reviewed, too, but some of them are supposed to respawn to provide food, e.g. the fish barrel. All the sacks respawn, but the initially empty barrels don't. Chests are all empty and non-respawning ones.

The map marker has been moved to just inside the gate. You should be facing the longhouse and the building benches will be in view.

Yay, thank you! Good to know about the food sacks. Now, which character should build their stronghold next…

Do non-standard containers not work in Skyrim? If not, I may have to redo some things. I used them all the time in Oblivion so didn't even think about them not working in Skyrim.

I made these shelves for looks, but uploaded the items as st-conts :

Anything can still be a container, but it has to be the "can't see the contents" variety. So the items on your shelves can be part of the shelves, or separate from the shelves, but not contents of the shelves.

The bookshelf scripts are supposed to be able to track if you open the container to take a book, or just pick it up off the shelf. In practice, it doesn't really work, as the books fall over and get out of their individual triggers. The weapon racks work better, as each item is fixed in place.

I wanted to go completely without scripts, that is why I used the non-standards. They are separate from the shelf, so each stands as its own cont; and all were uploaded new as statics (so hopefully won't havoc).

Magshakh gra-Dushnikh has nearly completed her 0.4 stronghold. I used the Alternate Start orc start and set the Malacath quest level requirement to level 5 with Timing Is Everything to see what would happen. Mags didn’t get the quest to help orcs after she completed the Cursed Tribe quest, but the courier found her very quickly in Riften while she was smithing to level up some more and everything worked out fine. She had already helped 5 or 6 orcs before she did Cursed Tribe. I can’t think of any other weird things that people might try. Screwing with the Cursed Tribe quest was the messiest thing I could come up with.

I like the new way that the outbuildings can be built very much. That was a great idea! And it worked perfectly. Mags just needs a few odds and ends (pelts, antlers, quicksilver ingot) but her stronghold is mostly finished and looks great. I used My Home Is Your Home to move some NPCs in and give them schedules, and it is a lot of fun to see them going about their business at the stronghold and sleeping in the extra beds. There is plenty of room for them all to move around in the longhouse and in the cellar. This is a great mod, ghastley!!

It may be time to call it 1.0.

I made the missing icons for the documentation over the weekend, but the only tweak I'm considering for the mod itself is the goat. I'm unsure whether to make it essential, or create a mechanism for replacing it it gets killed. At the other locations, the cow and chickens can be replaced by paying the steward again, but the stronghold has no steward, and the goat comes free with the garden.

I may just punt, and make replacing the goat something the Wise Woman can do when I make the add-on. There are two add-ons planned for later. One to add Uzgash (as an orphan in Markarth selling flowers by the Temple), using Sofie's voice files. The other is for staff - Wise woman + hunters/guards. Making them separate options lets users just have the house if that's all they want. I reckon I'd get complaints about lack of choice in about the same numbers as about excess esp's, so it's a wash.

Grits, do you think the wiki pages should tell you what containers are safe? UESP doesn't appear to do that for the DLC homes.

More thoughts for the future:

Glass and Straw cannot be found/made by the player, but must be purchased from merchants in towns (or Khajiit traders apparently - never tried that) so would it be useful for an Orc to have another source?

Two choices I can think of immediately are to have smiths at the strongholds sell them, or to create a recipe for making them - glass at a smelter, straw somewhere else. Straw could also be sold at farms that grow wheat, or at stables.

It's not something I need to do anything about short-term, as the Khajiit caravans provide an out for the Orc who won't go into towns. But I like the idea of using some of the zero-value clutter, such as empty wine bottles, in a recipe.

I would definitely note the respawning food containers in the description and/or the wiki, since the regular Hearthfire home containers do not respawn even though the surfaces in the house do. That way players will know that they’re getting a food source and won’t put their stuff in the sacks.

The only relevant comment I found in the UESP was the last entry in the Hearthfire Notes section:

• All areas of the player-built homes will reset to their original furnishings; only the storage containers and any items you drop from your inventory will be left as is. This allows storage in containers to be safe while respawning resources (e.g., the greenhouse) can replenish their stocks.

So it may be that people will just assume all indoor containers are safe.

For the goat, can it just respawn by itself if it dies? I’d be happy with any goat replacing scheme, but I’ll admit that all domestic animals that die in Grits guardianship get resurrected with the console. An immortal goat would also work, and anyone who doesn’t want it can use disable instead of putting it to the sword. :0

Very exciting to hear that NPCs and especially Uzgash are in the works!

I love the idea of smelting empty bottles into glass! I guess straw could be a byproduct at the mill where you make flour, but then you’d end up with a bunch of straw every time you made flour. I’ve always gotten enough straw from the merchants or even random loot, though, since you don’t need much. It’s the goat horns and glass that I end up hunting. Buying straw from stable guys or farmers makes sense, and they’re already people who do business with the player. I had the idea to make some hay bales into containers that you could gather straw from, but that sounds like a huge pain and subject to conflict by any mod that moves the hay bales.

Well I went and committed a 1.0 to the Nexus. It needs me to add a few more interior shots, which will need editing for brightness, and one of its map location, but there's enough there now to give an overall impression.

If I can persuade any of my Orcs to put some clothes on, that is.

The reference to "respawning resources" includes the food sacks, fish barrel, and is supposed to include the butter churn, but I think you need the Unofficial Patch for that one. That's one reason I left it out.

Yay, congratulations! This is a mod that I will continue to use not just for orc characters. I love having a stronghold at this location, and I can see a lot of characters building it so they can visit the NPCs who live there. Thank you for this awesome addition to Skyrim!

You can't win, can you? I put hints about future expansion to indicate this won't just be posted and forgotten, and already people are not downloading "because it's not complete", and assuming that Uzi will make it incompatible with RSChildren.

Not complete?! Ugh.

I have a dining table picture that didn't upload before, and I might have gotten a decent one with adopted kids. Spring break hit here so it's been noisy. I'm not really sure what I've just thought about or have actually done.

Well if you want to adopt an Orc, you can try that now.

I built this to be independent of Orc Hearthfires, but it's obviously meant to go with it. Uzgash will happily live in any home that's set up for adoption. I believe I made it so that RS Children, TK children, or Skyrim Children Overhaul won't affect it, or vice versa.

I'm not sure whether to upload this to the Nexus as a separate mod, or an optional file for OH. Any opinions? My thoughts are that as a separate mod, I'd just get people whining that they wanted a Dunmer, Altmer, Bosmer, Argonian or Khajiit. As an optional file, it will only get used with OH, even though folks might want to use it alone.

Yay, thank you! I’m delighted to get to meet little Uzi.

I think definitely put her up as an optional file on the Orc Hearthfire page so that those who are tracking will see her.

There will be a huge amount of demanding and complaining as a new mod, but also I think you will reach more people who will genuinely enjoy having an orc child, so it would be great as a separate file too. Of course I am not the one who will have to deal with the endless aggravation. Yikes!

Thank you so much for sharing this, ghastley! I am going to get up early tomorrow so I can get a little time to myself and bring Uzi home to Greenspring Stronghold.

Last night, the latest of the De Fault sisters, who habitually runs around wearing only boots and gloves, was given a present by her newly adopted daughter - a green robe!

This is the same girl I keep finding sweeping her room. Is she really an Orc?

Well at least she got the color of the robe right.

Uzi has a copy of 16 Accords of Madness, v. XII in her chest in Mags’s game. I thought that was very appropriate!

I'm getting quite tempted to put a copy of that in the kids' room now I've read it again. Mindless slaughter is just what an Orc child needs as bedtime reading.

I have a new issue with Uzi. If I give her a new dress, she can't wear it (wrong race) but she takes off what she's wearing, including the shoes!

I need to find out how to add a script to her to control what she wears. There are multiple possible uses for a script that confines a character to outfits/items from a form list, so I'll try to make a generic one.

I tried adding Skyrim Children Overhaul to a game that had Uzi, and it messed up her body skin, so I need to copy a few more vanilla texture files over to her own folder, so they can't be replaced. Her face still has lighting issues, too.

Yikes, I never considered giving her a dress! I haven’t given her any gifts or played any games with her yet. Or returned to Skyrim since Mags got her moved in. I’ve seen the dialog prompts, though. Just haven’t tried them yet.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65003

It's a good sign when someone wants to do that extra work for your mod.

Very cool, Ghastley!

I saw that too, ghastley! Congrats! Seems you have arrived now!

Yay, that's great!

Like Rider, I noticed that translation of your work on Nexus. Congrats, and well-deserved!

Very cool news! It shows what the community thinks of your work.