This one is actually a question from @paraparadigm to me but it's just so good that I think it'd be a fun ask chain. Already sent it to a few unwary adventurers, but especially with your archaeology take, I think this'd be a fun one to hear from you about!
You are in charge of designing a new TES V location. What will it be? Imagine that resources, models, and modding capabilities/skills are no impediment. What do you feel is missing world-wise in the game, and what sort of place would you make? Feel free to adapt as a writing prompt as well =)
I have a bone to pick with parts of Solstheim and Eastern Skyrim because of one simple reason. (not a new area I know but just a general issue about it that bothers me).
Volcanic ash appears in snow, ash in general does, but it's meant to alter the colour of the snow.
The last one is from the 2019-20 Bushfires (I lived in the middle of that, it was a time and it wasn't my first time in the fire line) showing the effects of the smoke and ash had on the mountains in New Zealand 4157.41 km away. Ash and smoke travel far. I want that reflected in the landscape. Red Mountain has been erupting magically for the last 200 years, there has to be evidence of that in Skyrim and Solstheim. So I would change the colour of the snow and ice from Dawnstar-Windhelm-Winterhold and the Velothi Mountain range. Make it have a brown/grey/pink tinge depending on how close to the border you get.
Solstheim I want mixed, the island is still pretty far north and should be cold. I don't mind the lower section of the island being ashlands but the north needs to have ASHY SNOW. Solstheim should be completely covered in it. The snow should be orange-brown.
I think that the icefields near the Skaal Village should reflect how much the environment has changed between Bloodmoon and Dragonborn.
There should be surface ash every time that volcano erupts right across the island. I love the ash storms and mod them to make them more oppressive (having experienced my share of both ash and sand storms, that shit is blinding).
My issue is not enough ash, I want more ash physics, let it get in your hair, more ash build up in some of the buildings, even some remnants along the border. Refugees' Rest should look more devastated, and expand the graveyard. I want evidence that it's actually a Dunmer gravesite and that people still travel there to remember their loved ones. I want evidence that they tried to inter their dead traditionally, but ultimately had to bury them in above-ground cairns (originally used as burial mounds). I want the Nordic tradition to slowly encroach on the refugees, they need to use that graveyard. I also want the Gray Quater to be expanded, it's a slum that's confined to like two alleyways, make it larger. More dunmer flair, add their own marketplace. I want them to look like they tried to make it their own over the last 200 years.
So more little fixes, I also think Raven Rock should be expanded, with more evidence that the Redoran just built over the old Imperial settlement. My, my maybe I want a bit of a Tel style of settlement (as in man-made hill settlements with a lot of layers, as opposed to shroom towers in the Morrowind sense). The ash compacts quite a bit and preserves the underlying structures. A Redoran building with a reused Imperial floor. More ruined buildings and settlements, make it look like the Redoran tried to expand but each event from the Argonain Invasion (it happened, Lleril Morvayn did many a thing, respect that man!) to the crumbling of the Bulwark, to just every time Red Mountain erupts should cause a similar effect to what we see in-game (everyone just lives within the safety of the Bulwark). Just, more evidence that they tried, because Morvayn really did). I want more NPCs to have fled Windhelm and ended up there as well. I want interconnectedness. I also would live to see a gradual improvement of the settlement if you do all the quests to help them out. Particularly if you open the mines. More money is coming in, let the EEC take a renewed interest in the Ebony flowing out of it.
I also want more trade to take place between Tel Mithryn and Raven Rock. They should have fixed that pier, the sea should be used to transport goods moreso than braving the ash. Neloth can't get his fancy teas without trade.
