Bosmer Hearthfires?, Little Treehouse of Horrors Options

[ghastley]

So I'm currently playing a couple of Bosmer archers from the Gweden mod, who've made it to Skyrim. Darwen, who is very slender, with a dancer/gymnast's body, and Enilwen, who's a bit larger, rivalling Nords. Although they're taking different approaches, hunting bears and dragons respectively, they're both doing the usual sneak/archery/smithing thing for max damage, with little or no defence except RUN!!!

They'd each like somewhere to live, but haven't found anything they like. Darwen has taken over the Alchemist's shack, because it's in bear country, but she's not happy, because it's made of wood. Enilwen is sleeping in taverns, and has no fixed abode.

Dead wooden construction offends their Bosmer heritage, and neither has been to Solstheim to see Telvanni mushrooms. The options are pure stone, which isn't the best choice in cold climates, and living wood, which just doesn't seem to exist here. So I'm considering whether the latter can be fixed.

The CK has vines for wall and floor use, and I'd expect to use a lot of ivy for fill. There are bone and hide pieces that might be adapted as furniture, and mammoths have larger bones than most creatures, so their bones can be used for large items. Pelts everywhere, of course. Iron items from draugr ruins would be hauled in where they'd be useful. Even though they're not Bosmer-traditional, this is Skyrim, and they're available.

Can anyone think of any other stuff a Bosmer would use?

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 11 2016, 06:31 PM

[Grits]

Hmm, perhaps a permanent camp with a hollow log and a half-buried chest for storage? I’m thinking of the big tent that’s made of furs. Maybe a couple of them with a crafting table in one of them, like the Forsworn have outdoor facilities.

Or a cave fixed up with vines the way you describe sounds very Bosmer. I used Tiny Tree Home (the bare bones version) for Bannor my Hulkable Bosmer. It’s a nice little cave under a tree stump.

[ghastley]

Since posting I found a mod that's a Bosmer Camp using bone and hide tents, but then uses wood logs for seats! It still might give me ideas to use, if there are bone/hide furnishings included.

I don't want a temporary structure, and I already did the underground/water one for Argonians, but part-cave would allow a larger interior than any Skyrim tree permits, so I may have to do something like that.

Parts of the Bosmer City resource might be usable. It would need the ivy/moss treatment for walls/floors.

This is what they'd really like. Real-life tree in Hyde Park, London.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 12 2016, 12:03 AM

[ghastley]

There's an overhanging rock mesh that's used in several places to form a semi-cave, usually occupied by wild beasts, but outside Whiterun, there are bandits in there. Since it's usually associated with spawning creatures, I probably won't take an existing one over, but I should be able to find a site for a new one. It looks possible to wall off the opening with vines, and cover that with ivy (possibly with different leaves via texture swap). It's the one you're looking out of in this screenshot of Grits' Jensa.

That should result in a one-room space roughly the size of an Orc stronghold. The hard part will be creating furniture that uses no wood. Bone and hide, plus a few horns and antlers, are all a true Bosmer would use.

I need to site it where a Wood Elf would feel at home, so Falkreath or Rift? I.e Pine or Aspen?

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 14 2016, 04:11 PM

[Grits]

That cave overhang sounds great! I have not played Skyrim for a while due to my laptop acting up, so I don’t have any ideas off the top of my head. Except there’s a spot near Falkreath where the road loops around with some cliffs on the right that might be nice. Helgen Reborn puts a cave with a door entrance in that area. Also near Half-Moon Mill there is a nice stream but possibly not a high enough hill for the cave. It’s a pleasant and still fairly convenient area.

I will be away for a few days, so I’m sure I will think of something while I can’t get back to post!

Oh! And there are some nice rocks across the river from Riverwood, but that might be too close to town.

[ghastley]

I'm starting to lean against Falkreath hold for a couple of reasons.

First is that there's already Lakeview and Ilinalta Den in that area, so it's getting crowded.

Second is that Darwen just reminded me that she's hunting the bears in the Rift, and doesn't want a long commute. Honeyside is an in-town home, and the hold needs one out in the country.

On the other hand, the Rift farmhouse(s) hasn't been used as the basis of a home yet, so I could leave that for the next one, and still go with Falkreath. It's a pity there are snowy mountains in between the two.

Edit: When I opened up the CK to look for the mesh, it turns out to be called RockAnimalDen (with a few variations for snow etc.), so it's clear what the developers had in mind. However, it makes a good Bosmer Den, too, and that's what I've named the location. I found a place in the Rift to put it, not far from Autumnshade Clearing, Boulderfall Cave, and Redwater Den and Darwen has moved in. There are only a couple of bedrolls and floor pelts inside at present, with a few Dwemer chests for storage (the only ones that aren't wooden), until I make some bone/hide meshes for other furniture. The crafting stations may need wood->bone conversions, too, but they're all placed to reserve space. The smithing stuff needs quite a bit of level ground.

Pictures real soon at last.

Inside with just a bedroll and chest (evening)
Inside with another bedroll, pelts, and a cooking fire.
Outside
Location on map

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 16 2016, 12:37 AM

[ghastley]

I've starting making Bosmer-specific furniture without using wood.

Beds using part of a mammoth ribcage.

Weapon Rack as seen at Largashbur.

The weapon rack needs a lot of minor tweaks to get the weapon positions right, and it currently has issues with the Unofficial patch (works without, but fails to activate with) which may be a bug in the version I'm using. I may have to upgrade to USLEEP. I'm still confused as to whether that requires all the DLC's be active, as I often run test characters with some of them turned off, just to minimize the number of active mods that might interact with mine.

Edit: Since the original scripts work, but I wanted to exclude daggers as potentially too short for the rack, I cloned those for mod-specific ones. Avoids the USKP/USLEEP issue altogether.

My next problem is making the skulls and mammoth ribcages collectables. The bones can be in the den when the player arrives, along with the bag of vine seeds.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 18 2016, 02:04 PM

[Grits]

Wow, this is really taking shape! The vine-covered cave looks even better than I imagined. Yay!

The weapon rack is genius. I could have stood right at Largashbur pondering what to use and never thought of that!

[ghastley]

I still have a number of gaps in the furniture line. There are no tables and chairs in the home yet.

Sitting cross-legged on a pelt is possible. There's an animation set (enter, sit, exit) for that in the game already. There's also a generic seat furniture, which is essentially the chair furniture marker for placing on a rock, or whatever.

Tables may be easier, as there are stone altars and similar in the Nord ruins. Stone for the flat part can already be quarried, and the rest of the mesh looks like iron to me. However, the workbench mesh is very wooden, and I'll need an alternative.

Darwen is living in the place as I make it, and it's not in Enilwen's game yet, as she'll be the build tester. Since Darwen is collecting bear pelts, she needs more storage. Can't have bookshelves, so where do her books go? The issue of dead tree books should not be one, as there are alternative papers based on other plant material that can be harvested without harming the plants. Hers could even be printed on vellum, and they're bound in leather, so that's fine. Her RP has her taking everything from dead animals, and eating the meat, but her supply of teeth, claws and antlers is growing, and she can only use so many pelts and hides.

Darwen believes that eating fruits is OK, as that's what the plants made them for. Vegetable soup is her guilty secret.

Edit: Some further details - the only bones you can collect in the vanilla game are dragon bones and a few skulls. Dawnguard adds bone hawk parts for jewellery, and also allows making arrows, but requires firewood for that. I'll be needing more bones, and have the forge be a unique one that can make bone-shafted arrows. Those arrows will not be unique, however. There's no benefit from doing that.

It should be possible to add bones to animal death items without too much work. I think they're already "leveled' lists, so that antlers or goat horns, for example, aren't included every time. So I just need to edit or dynamically add to those. Animal bones would use dragon bones mesh scaled down a bit, and lighter weight, too! I don't want to require dragon bones directly, as some don't do MQ.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 19 2016, 03:32 PM

[ghastley]

Some other random thoughts as I grind on the construction:

The "Kyne's Sacred Trials" quest would be a good pre-requisite for building the den. I can use my existing method of triggering from leaving Froki's Shack with the quest completed. Starting the quest enables the bag of seeds at the site, and adds its map marker.

Urns as in Nordic ruins would make reasonable storage containers, and could be made with clay. I may replace the Dwemer chests with those, although bringing dwarven metal in as a building material is hard to pass up.

The hard part is finding a substitute for the workbench. Ceramics at a potter's wheel maybe?

[Arcry]

I can't wait to add this to my mod list~! Still need to get my Orc into his little Stronghold.. And my Argonian Warm-Waters could really use a break from the cold of the College, the poor dear. Ah, I cannot wait until my laptop is all nice and fixed up.

[ghastley]

I've been doing a bit more fiddling with this one. I have a hollow tree stump added outside that contains a shrine to Kynareth, and also acts as the "workbench" for the construction. Kneeling at the shrine will make things appear, if you have the materials. The stump and shrine will always be there, but the construction part will be enabled by the quest.

I've added a chance of animal bones to the larger creatures that would have them (larger than wolf, and not spiders or chaurus) and I'm replacing logs with bones in some recipes. The main storage containers are now urns, that need clay to make them. The smithing items are still the original meshes that have obviously wooden parts, but I'm working on creating alternatives that use bone or iron in place of the wood. I still don't have decent shelves or chairs.

Edit: Sunday was the day to let Enilwen try out the building process. The smelter was the only piece that failed, and I've fixed that. Since I added the mod to her existing game, I gave her most of the materials via console, as the bones would take a long time to collect. In a regular game, you get a slow supply from normal play. The "pray to construct" crafting station works well, too.

However, she got attacked by a Blood Dragon when she got there, and it all took longer than I intended! And then by two Frostbite Spiders, who don't have bones.

She's now hunting, just to gauge the rate of bone collection, as I may adjust the recipes to use more or less of them. There's also a "bootstrap" issue to address, as you don't get an anvil on-site to make building material from iron. Shor's Stone isn't far, so she made her starter stuff there on the way, and I may want to prompt that in the quest (but without any dialog). You need to take enough iron fittings to make the forge, and enough ingots to make the smelter (and a leather strip for the tanning rack). Then the site can make all it needs, except for the usual "buy-only" items of straw and glass.

I need to add the Story Manager kick-off for the quest, and then I want to do it all with a freshly-rolled character. After that, maybe I'll release an 0.1 beta, even with a lack of furniture and "shelving".

Yet more edit: The wiki marks the Kyne's Sacred Trials quest at a recommended level of 20, but I suspect that is primarily because the guardians are hard for any character other than a sneaky archer. Enilwen had problems with the bear running away and hiding from her, but in all cases, she was able to find high ground where she couldn't be reached and rain arrows down on her target. The final troll was made easier by her clearing the location before going to Froki - the other trolls didn't respawn, so she only had the boss troll to take down.

Still, it looks like this will be a job for a mid-level character, and hard to use as a starter home. That is reinforced by the difficulty of gathering animal bones at low level. Most of the creature enemies don't drop them, and the deer survive the first shot and run away. It takes an improved hunting bow, steel arrows, and a couple of archery perks before you can successfully hunt the deer. Once the Sabre cats come in, it will get easier. They have bones themselves, and leave dead deer lying around.

I have a save of Enilwen before adding the mod that will probably become my start point for testing. Adding new furniture, or similar changes to the building quest, requires a fresh start, and I can't roll a new character for this one. This will become a consideration for beta-testers, too.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jul 19 2016, 03:19 PM

[ghastley]

I'm attempting to find the real minimum level for this quest. Funwen is only level 6 and she's started on the second round of guardians for the Kyne's Sacred Trials. She had to deal with a Sabre cat (her first) not far from Froki's hut. At least it had a bone for her. The round one guardians (wolf, mudcrab, skeever) don't.

She went for the Mammoth first. It's easy to get up above it, out of reach, and shoot down until dead. However, at her low level, it took about thirty-plus arrows, and the mammoth retreated all the way to Halted Stream, where it may have fallen down the pit. She did get the stage completion.

The bear was next, again because it's possible to get above it and snipe from safety. The bear runs off out of range, and she has to chase along the cliff to keep it in sight. It ends up hiding from her behind the burning wagon nearby, and taking damage from the flames.

She now has to travel to Winterhold and go hunt the Sabre-cat. When Enilwen did that, she ran into a wispmother on the way, so route planning is essential. We might go and clear the Troll den at Greywinter first, so there's only the one enemy at the end. May enchant her bow with fire damage to help that too. The Sabre cat is level 12, and the troll is level 14, so they're not as far above her level as the other two (38 and 32) but she won't have the high ground advantage.

Only half a dozen bones collected so far. The whole den will take around 30. Neither of the second-round guardians provided a bone. The mammoth fell somewhere she couldn't reach it, so no way to tell if she missed one.

Edit: She finished Kyne's Sacred Trials at Level 8. That makes this a bit easier than the Orc one, where you don't even get a chance to attempt it until level 9, when the giant spawns outside Largahsbur. The hardest part was the Ursine Guardian running away and hiding. That's smarter than the average bear!

However, since 30 bones means ~100 kills at present, I'm thinking of making it a 100% drop instead of only 30% and leaving the recpes alone.

Son of the return of Edit: Some of my problems with Funwen turn out to arise because the quest was marked to start enabled, so aliases I added weren't filled. I'll have to start a new test character to find out.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jul 21 2016, 03:38 PM

[ghastley]

Thinwen - the slender Bosmer - just followed through the same set of quests as her cousin. It took about five hours to get from Helgen exit to gaining Kyne's Token. She's still a few Animal Bones short of "completing" her home, even with 100% drop from large animals, which included the guardian bear, sabre-cat and mammoth. If she doesn't kill a deer with the first shot, it gets away. (Tried using fury, but she's not as accurate with that.)

And of course, it's not actually complete after that, as it still needs a few more items of furniture for seating and storage, when I come up with them.

The quest marker appeared at the appropriate time to let her know where to find the den. It didn't disappear when she went there, as I forgot to set the next stage when she first used the "workbench".

Thinwen will soon be feeling a bit "Groundhog Day-ed" as I reload her from before the Den quest starts a few times, so I can update it. Fortunately, she won't have to re-fight the guardians. That will be needed when I add more constructable items, as the building quest has to start game enabled, and the list of build items is a property. So she'll just get them manually enabled to make sure they work, and I'll run a completely new character through when it's all there.

In the DLC, the player can buy all the materials needed. In this mod, there's no way to get Animal Bones except by hunting (or defending yourself against large predators). I suspect that will be the first complaint when it finally gets published.

[Acadian]

Funwen and Thinwen! I think you've hit on a theme there.

How about a mage? You know, Wizwen?

[ghastley]

When I get off the sneaky archer train, I'll want to try a mage. I can't see anyone chasing deer across the landscape with a two-handed sword, but ranged spells work at Apprentice level.

In the longer term, a bound bow character may rise from the archives, and go build the place, too.

[mALX]

Will it be kind of a tree house? Like the living quarters up in a tree kind of? For Buffy, she would want her stable up there too, so Superian would be right on hand for her to brush!

Ithlia made one that appears to be inside a living tree; Limbwood Manor. The way it was made, it really feels like you are actually inside the tree; though with quite a Tardis effect.

Example: It has a skylight type ceiling that looks up into the upper branches of the tree; and the windows throughout show the outdoors; so very Bosmer-ish and really gives the feeling of being inside a living tree.

Here is a vid of it, if in your planning it can help in any way.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7M6ZLgFXXM










This post has been edited by mALX: Jul 22 2016, 10:35 PM

[ghastley]

mALX: The pictures in post #6 above are close to how it is now, with the vine wall to the "cave" part. The bedrolls are gone, and the bone beds took their place.

I found quite a few tree houses, but they all had wooden furniture, and/or cut wood walls. My self-imposed restriction was not to cut any wood. So everything must be made of bone, hide, iron, ceramic etc. The smithing equipment doesn't use any logs, and I'll be fiddling with the meshes to eliminate the wooden parts when I can, generally replacing wooden parts with bone ones via texture.

Here's a new screenshot of the outside before construction starts. You can just see the shrine to Kynareth inside the stump.

[mALX]

Pictures real soon at last.

Inside with just a bedroll and chest (evening)
Inside with another bedroll, pelts, and a cooking fire.
Outside
Location on map

OMG, this is Awesome! I didn't see the screenshot links; so missed these till you mentioned them! It is amazing how you made that whole wall - and Superian could probably fit into that doorway, too! Awesome!

[ghastley]

I loaded up Enilwen's game, as she has the smithing skill to make just about any kind of arrow, and she posed for the banner image.

Bosmer Hearthfires

Of course, Stray Dog wanted to get into it, too. I haven't taken pictures of the interior yet, as I still have more stuff to make, when I decide what it is. The two pots you can see through the doorway are re-textured urns from the nord ruins. I just used the texture from a regular pot, and they look great.

Making the arrows has meant that this mod will be dependent on Dawnguard, as well as Hearthfires. That DLC introduces the constructible arrows, and I didn't want to duplicate that definition. The recipe using bone is new, and you'll get two ways to make arrows now, with wooden or bone shafts. A Bosmer will naturally only use bone.