SKYRIMLE Long Lost Smelters of Skyrim - Skyforge by Hyralux

[steveley]

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/8298

 

This mod adds 'missing' smelters near the blacksmith forges in towns/cities which don't have them, such as Riverwood, etc.  It also adds some 'missing' crafting stations around the Skyforge, Morthal and Dawnstar areas. There are standalone and/or variant versions should you not want to change Skyforge, or if you only want to add the missing workstations to Skyforge and leave the rest of the world vanilla, etc.  There is also an optional file for "Long Lost Chopping Blocks of Skyrim", which does the same thing for chopping blocks.  Ever need a piece of firewood to upgrade an item and have to leave the crafting area to go find one?  Solved.

 

This will likely conflict (visually, not CTD that I know of) with any other mod which adds/moves/removes crafting stations.  I have personally experienced this when two non-vanilla smelters overlapped each other and slightly offset in Riverwood while using this along with the Better Villiages and/or Beautiful Cities series of mods, as these can also add missing workstations.

 

Also there can be the potential for minor immersion breakage if the smelter is placed where vegetation would normally be in vanilla.  Not so much clipping per say, though that could be possible, however it can look odd to have vegetation so close to an obviously hot item without catching fire, etc.

 

Requires an .esp to use.  Does not noticeably add to system resource usage.  My guess is that the objects are rare enough, or in some cases are already loaded into memory in the same or nearby cell such as in Whiterun, etc.

[WilliamImm]

I've looked at it. Lots and lots of what appear to be wild edits... this would be a real pain to clean. Still good idea. I've been using the smelter around Warmaiden (even though I am playing as a companion).

[statmonster]

I've heard that similar mods tend to break nav meshes and quests around Skyforge where the Companions gather during certain quests. I"m not sure if any other forges are so sensitive. This should be thoroughly tested to make sure the nav meshes, etc. work.

[jakeslim]

Would just like to add here that I've been using this mod on current playthrough (I think about 70h+) and it doesn't seem to be causing any problems while being a great improvement for me. I haven't looked into it with TES5Edit yet though to check out the wild edits mentioned by WilliamImm (besides, I'm only a basic TES5Edit user). I also haven't advanced far enough in any companions quests to discover any of the problems mentioned by statsmonster.

 

Basically, I really think it would be worth some experienced members of the STEP team checking this mod out properly and considering for inclusion in STEP Core as it really does seem that Beth "forgot" to add Smelters to key areas (e.g.: Solitude has no smelter in Vanilla I believe - with an Imperial army to outfit that seems highly unlikely).

[DanielCoffey]

If the content added by the mod is useful, we could always approach the author with a list of cleaning required for the next release. Make the tidy-up conditional on any inclusion in STEP, perhaps?

[statmonster]

Is it desirable to add smelters? Or is it a deliberate game choice that there is a limited number of them and you often have to go somewhere else to use one? I can never decide if I like the game where there are little annoyances like this.

[jakeslim]

Well it's a good point, and I'd say the STEP approach to modding requires you to think about the original intentions of the game designers, but I really think there were some oversights in this case, as per my post above. Although, I wouldn't argue against the fact that this mod might add a few to many smelters, I'd say on balance it makes the overall game better without much deviation from vanilla. I wouldn't play without it now in any case. I wonder how easy it is to delete individual smelters for a custom mod?

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[WilliamImm]

It simply doesn't make sense for the Skyforge to have some place to smelt metal. Would the old man really run across town to use Warmaiden's smelter? Not really. I could potentially make a simple mod that just adds a smelter nearby the Skyforge (wherever it makes sense - I don't want to make the Skyforge look really cluttered or have it block a pathway).

 

Anyway, just noticed the mod was updated with supposed Tes5edit cleaning. I'll look at it when I have Skyrim set up again to see if it's really as clean as he says. (Also, comments are disabled for some reason on the mod)

[osmosys]

I've been using this mod and I love it. The Skyforge smelter doesn't look bad to me, but it is a bit subjective.

 

I'll report if I see a smelter in a place that breaks something.

[kryptopyr]

Actually, I think the lack of smelters in the game does make some sense. Ore is bulky and heavy to transport. I would think that people would want to smelt the ore as close as possible to the source of the ore. Ingots are much more efficient to transport, and I think most blacksmiths would probably just as soon buy the ingots than have to pay to transport and then personally smelt the ore.

 

That being said, I have always found the lack of a smelter in Riften and Solitude to be somewhat annoying. I created my own mod to add just those two because I didn't want all the other smelters this mod adds. However, I admit that I feel even this is a bit of an indulgence, and that from a realism standpoint the number of smelters in the original game seems credible.

[Kelmych]

I can certainly see why not having a smelter in every city (especially those not close to mines) seems plausible and not having one in Riften seems reasonable, but it's still hard to see why there wouldn't be one in the city that should be the main source of the Imperial weapons and armor.

[torminater]

Perhaps the number is ok, but not necessarily the locations. Why in Whiterun and not in Solitude? Why not in Winterhold or at least near the mine near winterhold?

[statmonster]

Isn't there a smelter at the mine just outside of the mine near Winterhold?  Or was that added by a mod I didn't know abut.

[torminater]

Can't recall that anymore. I just remember carrying dozens of ores around with me all the time since there was nowhere a smelter near the respective mine...