If God did not want this to exist, he would not have given me the power to create this
Dawn of JK's (Exterior) Ryften Overhaul



Meet the ultimate dream of vertical traversal.
Witness new ways of cramping more stuff into a city than you can stack people into and onto an Indian bus.

This is the ultimate combination of:

• JK's Skyrim (All in one + Interiors)
• Dawn of Skyrim (SE Directors Cut)
• Ryften - Make Your Riften - Inner
• Riften Overhaul
• SR Exterior Cities (Optional)
  

We all know this situation. After taking a bath in the beautiful Ultimate Riverwood we fast-travel to Riften. Suddenly our FPS skyrockets and our body enters stasis because our brain can not handle that many frames per second. Fear not, I get you covered. Finally you will be able to traverse Riften again.

Ultimate Riften has a very sensitive approach: Quality over quantity.
Every frame has so much stuff in it and is so beautiful that we can not let it pass by so quickly. We don't need many, every frame is a piece of art that deserves to be experienced to its fullest.
We do not want to cramp your poor screen and brain full of frames. We take it slow and give every frame the time it deserves.

If you don't understand what I am trying to tell you, then watch what I will do to your computer:

(See more in the 'performance' section later).


Similar to Ultimate Riverwood, Ultimate Riften combines all the mods mentioned above into one. Once again, the rule was simple: "Do not remove precious random stuff, unless absolutely necessary".

This time, I tweaked a few small things here and there. It was all done with the intent to make traversal across the rooftops as smooth as possible.
What you can expect is free flow traversal across 4 levels:

• Canal
• Ground level
• Balcony level
• Rooftops
  

You do not need any double jump mod or other cheating to traverse the roofs. It is all built to have a barrier free entrance for you non cheaters out there.
Some of the ladders and ropes are doors that will transport up and downwards.

Here are some impressions:

Can you spot all the hidden ladders and ropes:

Can you spot all the 4 levels of the city and see a way how to reach them:



You might have heard of the Ratway. But do you know the Pidgeonway? It's not much of a difference, ultimately they are just the rats of the sky anyways.

It starts in someone's back yard

Leads across a watchtower
And up into that sweet sweet freedom that pidgeons experience all day long, except for the flying part (teaser: I have a nice flying mod here, just waiting to be published)

From there it is up to you if you like to jump down onto some lower rooftops or continue the path onto the highest levels.
I carefully made sure that traversal across the ladders works smoothly and your character won't get stuck while doing its pidgeon business :)

To make sure that you can not resist throwing my supernova onto your computer, I will spoil the other side of that building.
Note, that vertical ladder is one of the 'door' ladders that will transport you upwards.


Fear not, the Pidgeonway reaches far beyone that. I will stop my self-glorifying narcissistic endeavours now and let you explore the rest of my the rooftops.

Much has been done in the lower levels. You have several options to go down and to traverse the canal.
It is quite hard to catch the narrow canal in a picture, so a single one must be enough

If you play with SREX, you can open the canallock and freely swim to the docks



Since I did not praise myself enough, I need to add a dedicated section telling you how greatly I improved your Riften experience.

Some minor things first, Ultimate Riften ...

• makes sure that leaned ladders have a colission that does not make your character get stuck while walking the slope
• adds a little overhang on some rooftops so that traversal is smoother
• adds a gate to the Pidgeonway on the balcony. It does not make sense that there is none. (Activate to open)
• preserves the balcony (Riften Overhaul) and the ship sticking out at the same spot (Ryften) by moving the ship upwards and making it a little smaller. Praise me for that accomplishment
• tweakes the canals so that you have as much options to traverse that as you have to traverse the rooftops
  

Regarding Ryften, I kept most things as they were. Ryften mainly added stuff to the city and did not alter it much.

Riften Overhaul however removed the big stairs down to the sewers and replaced them with ladders that act like doors. I did not like that and restored the traditional stairs

Even though I really like the architecture of Riften Overhaul with its balconies and tall houses, it was a little disturbing to see that building which has:
A roof on top of a roof on top of a roof on top of a roof !?!?
This is no bug and not even an exaggeration. The link to this image leads to the page of the original author.
To me this looks super buggy and wrong. I cleaned this up


(Do not worry, the big watchtower at the center has not been removed. Wo don't do that here, remember!? It has been moved on top of an other roof, that was completely free.

While looking at the pictures above, did you notice how the bird house has been moved to the center of the roof? That has not only been done because of aesthetic reasons.
This carefully crafted optimization has been done, so that you big butt (and whatever else you made big) 3BA lady (if you may still call he like that) won't get stuck when traversing the ropes leading to that roof.
(From a gameplay perspective, men were also blocked, it does not matter. However you can not advertise that properly. One needs to know how to sell a supernove, right? You definitely want the average Skyrim-perverts on your side!)

Now praise me well and increase those sliders a little more. The roofs give you all the freedom you desire (not sure what else you desire if this paragraph speaks to you).



Requirements (FOMOD instructions)

JK's Skyrim:

• JKs Skyrim.esp
  

Dawn of Skyrim:

• Dawn of Skyrim.esp
  

JK's Skyrim - Dawn of Skyrim - Compatibility Patch:

• JKs Skyrim_Dawn of Skyrim_Patch.esp
  

JK's Interiors (Individual Mods):

• JK's The Pawned Prawn.esp
• JK's The Bee and Barb.esp
• JK's Haelga's Bunkerhouse.esp
  

Ryften - Make your Riften - Inner

• All ESPs, any order
  

Riften Overhaul:

• Riften Overhaul.esp
• ShadrFix.es
  

SR Exterior Cities Patch hud:

• SREX AIO - JK's Skyrim Patch.esp
• SREX AIO - Dawn Of Skyrim Patch.esp
• SREX AIO - JK's Skyrim + Dawn Of Skyrim Patch.esp
• SREX AIO - JK's The Pawned Prawn Patch.esp
• And whatever else you use. There is no patch you need to exclude manually. Easy, right :)
  

Load order

Let LOOT do the sorting. I am very smart and set the masters correctly, so that LOOT will handle the sorting for you, with and without SREX.
If you want to do it manually, here is what to do:

Use common sense and load the dependencies before the masters.

This is my order:

• JK
• Dawn
• JK Dawn Patch
• Ryften Stuff
• Riften Overhaul
• Ultimate Riften
• SR Exterior Cities 2
• SREX AIO patches
• Ultimate Riften SREX (None of the SREX AIO patches is a master of this. LOOT does mis this with SRTEX AIO and that is okay)
• Synthesis SREX
  

Ultimate Riften requires only the mentioned masters. It is compatible with EVERY version of Skyrim.

The plugin is ESPFE/ESL-flagged.

The mod does not delete anything, but moves deleted objects to -30000 and sets the "initially disabled" flags. So even if any mod will touch any of the 'deleted' objects, there won't be deleted masters.

I use Ultimate Riften with all of the below

• JK's riften Outskirst (and patch collection)
• Riften Extension - Southwood District
• Ryn's Farms
• Riften Laketown (Ryn's Farms version)
• Riften Fishmarket
  

Riften Docks Overhaul should be okay, too. I do not use it because I prefer Laketown. Bigger is better, right.

I have no idea about making proper navmesh. If that is broken, feel free to complain but be ready to get ignored. I gladly accept patches.

Performance

If Ultimate Riverwood hit your computer like a truck, then Ultimate Riften will hit it like that sweet sweet meteor that visited the Dinosaurs a few days back in history. However the meteor I created will be full of hydrogen bombs that detonate on impact.

I run this on a handheld with an iGPU (GPD Win Max 2, 7840u) and I target 30 fps. There are places, especially when entering the city where fps drop into the 20s. It's not like I would care.
Surely you and your high end machine with FSR and Frame Generation magic can run this better than I can.

They introduced a 1 Megawatt cooling solution for AI training. So when stupid AI farms may waste energy, so may we. Let's gooooo !!!

Fixing issues

Most likely there is some mess I have left. Feel free to report in the comment section.
For easy fixing, please leave a screenshot with your complaint.

It has all been said in the 'permissions' section. However people can not read so I repeat that here:

This is 100% a patch. Nothing as been added. No resources of any of the original mods were added. This mod only moves objects around.
All the authors of the included mods allow to make compatibility patches as long as the original mod is required as a master.
Ultimate Riften fulfills that requirement since it can not run on its own.

I grant permission to everyone to make compatibility patches for my mod as long as it requires the original file.

I grant explicit permission to the team of SR Exterior Cities and anyone involved in the official Patch Hub for that mod to use my SR Exterior Cities Patch.
The team has full permission to upload, modify and do whatever they want with the SR Exteriors City Patch of this mod.
I fully support any effort to keep the patches in a central location.
The reason why I upload this here is merely because I want to avoid any potential hurdles that come with an official contribution and this is the easiest and fastest way to make the patch available to everyone right now.

Closing Statement

If you don't want to feed my Ego, you may call this mod DOJERO (Dawn Of JK's External Riften Overhaul) instead of Ultimate Riften. However we don't want to talk about this any more and hopefully no one will read this far down in the description.