Astronomer's Attic - Whiterun's Small Attic Library Players Home

A small, warm and cozy loft house located in the attic of the Arcadian Cauldron in the heart of Whiterun.

EDIT: We hit the hot files!

Many thanks to Hodilton and Febrith Darkstar for the showcase video (see the videos tab)! ! !

describe

It's a small one-room library/player's home in an attic loft above the Cauldron of Arcadia. It is a separate cell accessible through a door near the rear of the building's exterior. Despite its large size, it still has enough space for safe storage, and the bookshelf and open box can also serve as containers, used with barrels, cabinets, safes, and more. The open book on the desk acts as an enchantment station, while the Lilac on the shelf above works like any other alchemy table. Likewise, you can cook at the saucepan and oven interface by interacting with the soup bowl and open oil lamp/small oven (respectively) on the round table in the corner. Everything inside is a static object, so there's no need to worry about overloading/knocking everything out when the game starts. The house is open and does not require a key - if you want to pay for the house, just drop 800 gold into a bucket in Arcadia's main shop area. There is also a decorative telescope in front of the large window that frames the entire room which is very cool.

This room was designed with the layout of the artwork used as the background for this youtube video in mind, and if you look at the pictures of the mod you'll definitely notice a similar laugh track.

Install

Use the Mod Manager of your choice or install manually by unzipping the 7z file and placing it into the data folder. Unfortunately, Bethsoft didn't include any windows that I could easily place on the wall, so the download included a modified version of the Riften wall model, which I used as the large window in the center of the room. It can be used with any window texture (which I highly recommend as I stretched the model to about 4x its usual size, so if you don't have a high resolution window texture it might look really ugly)

background

His is Farengar's old haunt, which he rented from Arcadia before becoming a court wizard. As profits fell due to the Civil War, Arcadia once again rented it out. You, a mild opportunist, take advantage of the situation and pay anywhere from zero to 20 billion gold coins (it's up to you, buddy) to live there. It's made with mages in mind, but isn't too harsh on mage stuff, so it's a blank slate for your character.

compatibility

I'm trying to make this place basically compatible with anything that changes Whiterun. As long as it doesn't move Arcadia's buildings, it should be compatible - just make sure to load this mod before any other mods that change Whiterun so they can override what my mod might change. 100% compatible with the Dawn of Skyrim series, the only issue I think JK might have is that Arcadia has a garden that you have to set foot in to get into the attic. It's also fully navigable, so your followers should be able to follow you.

performance

There are many books there. Like a lot. I'm not degrading any performance at all, but be warned this is possible.

Other information

Mods used in pictures:

Noble Skyline - Highly recommended, this is how the interior has a dark brown color instead of the usual yellowish brown of whitewash. Sadly, the room won't have nearly the same comfort without this mod.

SMIM - Static Mesh Improvement Module - Very good and feels so natural in the game that I forgot to add it here until now

Sober ENB

Enhanced lighting for ENB

simple soul

Cathedral - Armory

Skyrim Underground - Dwarf pipes used on telescopes

Skyrim Sounds - You can't see it in the picture, but this mod or something similar that adds rain sounds indoors is amazing

Open City - There is an Open City compatible version. If using Open Cities, install this file instead of the main file.

Update 1.1

Added support for Open Cities by Arthmoor and fixed an ugly visual issue where exterior doors would clip into buildings when entering …