Estates of Skyrim - Immersive Settlement and Survival Overhaul (Player Homes-Hire Workers-Economy)

Estates of Skyrim - BETA

Your homes were never meant to sit empty.

Featured on Gaming Bible: "Skyrim gets Fable's best feature in brand new overhaul add-on"

Every Skyrim player ends up rich, with a row of empty houses.

You buy Breezehome, build Lakeview, take Proudspire... and then they just sit there, holding your loot. Estates of Skyrim makes them matter. Every place you own becomes a working estate with its own people, its own treasury and its own needs. Hire a household, keep them fed and warm through the winter, pour your gold into upgrades, and run all of it from one screen.

It works with just the vanilla game: all 9 vanilla player homes are estates out of the box. Add my estate mods and Hjertesten Hall, White Hearth, Halls of Order and Mortum Castle join in too.

Why you'll want it

• Your gold finally has a use. Up to 65 upgrades per estate, from 1,500 to 40,000 gold each. Hjertesten Hall alone has 58. Even an average vanilla home has 26 to build: 14 for a small house, 21 for a manor, 43 for a homestead.
• Build it and see it. 42 upgrades are real objects you place yourself: storehouses, smoking racks, apiaries, vegetable plots, supply carts and more, wherever you want them.
• Real people, not furniture. Every hire has 13 skills from Novice to Master, up to 3 of 16 traits, morale and loyalty. They get better at their job every day, and a good hunter really does bring home more than a poor one.
• Survival that reaches your home. Everyone eats 2 meals a day, 130 foods are each worth their own number of meals, and the hearths burn more firewood in winter. Let the stores run dry and the treasury pays for it.
• Every home has a household. All 9 vanilla homes can hire their own staff (72 positions), and your staff keep real days: they sleep, eat and work.
• Your estates work together. Supply carts carry food and firewood between them by road, and you can send gold or a worker from one estate to another.
• One screen for all of it. Every estate's gold, income, upkeep, people, stores and upgrades in one place, a power away. Add it to a game you're already playing.

Instant mod help: Join our Discord and ask in #mod-help.

The Estates screen

• Open it with the new Estates of Skyrim power, or from Tween Menu Overhaul's menu if you use it.
• On the left, every estate you own with its treasury and how many people work there.
• For each estate, four tabs: Overview (the books: income, upkeep and wages), Workers, Stores and Upgrades.
• Put gold into an estate's treasury or take it out, send gold to another estate, send a worker, or dismiss one, right from the screen.

Rule many estates

• Every estate you own sits on one list: a small house in Whiterun, a manor in Solitude, a homestead in the Pale, a castle, a knightly order.
• The All your estates card adds it up: the gold in every treasury, what is left over a day, and how many people are in your service.
• Each estate runs its own day while you're away: its people eat, burn firewood, get paid and grow at their work.
• Move gold or people between them from the screen, and let supply carts keep the poorer ones stocked.
• Hire anyone, anywhere, for any of your estates: the hire line and the Hire Position power ask where they should work.

Hire your people

• Talk to someone: "I have a position for you at one of my estates." Pick the estate, then the job.
• Or use the new Hire Position power: look at someone, cast it, and choose where they work.
• 25 kinds of work across your estates: stewards, cooks, housekeepers, hunters, fishers, farm hands, woodcutters, miners, healers, bards and more.
• Every hire is paid a daily wage from the treasury of the estate they work for.

Every worker is a person

• Each person gets a skill sheet rolled from who they are in Skyrim: farming, hunting, fishing, cooking, beekeeping, woodcutting, mining, smithing, building, stewardship, healing, hospitality and research.
• They come as poor, average or good workers, with their own trade and their own limit. A skilled hunter brings home more than a beginner.
• Up to three traits each, from Hardy and Keen-Eyed to Glutton and Timid.
• Morale rises when they're fed in full and doing the work they like. Loyalty grows every day they're fed and paid.
• Friends who work together do better. Rivals don't.
• Jobs matter: a cook makes the meals go further, a steward buys cheaper, a housekeeper burns less firewood.

Feed and warm your estate

• Every resident eats 2 meals a day, your spouse and children included.
• Food counts by what it is: an apple feeds less than a stew. 130 foods are rated.
• The hearths burn firewood every day, more from Evening Star to Sun's Dawn.
• What the stores can't cover is bought from the estate's treasury. If the treasury runs dry, your people go short and their morale falls.
• A home that already has a woodpile uses it as its firewood store. With none, firewood is kept with the food.

Grow with upgrades

• Four branches: Storage, Production, Household and Transport.
• Four tiers, from 1,500 gold and 2 days of work up to 40,000 gold and 20 days, paid with gold and Hearthfire building materials: sawn logs, quarried stone, nails, iron fittings and hinges.
• Every upgrade changes how the estate runs: bigger stores, more food from the hunters and the fields, cheaper buying, a kitchen that stretches the meals, a Staff Shack, a Bath Yard, a Tavern Yard.
• Your estate mods bring their own branch too: Hjertesten Hall's stables, livestock, mill, mine, barracks and court wizard's tower are all in its tree.
• 42 upgrades are real objects you place yourself, move later, or take down.

Place what you build

• 42 upgrades are real objects: storehouses, smoking racks, spice shelves, apiaries, vegetable plots, a chopping block, a hunter's camp, a fishing dock, a Tavern Yard, supply carts and more.
• When one is built, go to that estate, open its upgrade card and choose Place it here. It goes down where you stand, facing you.
• Changed your mind? Move it here or Take it down from the same card.
• Made from Skyrim's own models, so they look like they belong. They stay where you put them through saves and loads.
• Buildings stay in one piece on a slope, on a stone footing. Ground that's too steep tells you to try flatter ground. Roofed buildings go outdoors.

Supply carts

• Build a supply cart and send it between your estates by road, carrying 100 meals or 60 firewood.
• Have it deliver or fetch, keep at least so much at home, or top another estate up.
• A bigger cart carries half again as much; better roads get it there faster.

Your vanilla homes

All 9 vanilla player homes become estates once you own them, each in its own size:

• Small houses (Breezehome, Honeyside, Vlindrel Hall): a housekeeper, a woodcutter, a guard and a builder, and 14 upgrades to build.
• Manors (Proudspire Manor, Hjerim, Severin Manor): a housekeeper, a cook, a steward, a woodcutter, a guard and a builder, and 21 upgrades.
• Homesteads (Lakeview Manor, Windstad Manor, Heljarchen Hall): 14 positions, from housekeeper and steward to hunter, farm hand, fisher and baker, and 43 upgrades.

Place a food barrel in your home from the screen and your household eats from it. The homes' own cells are not changed.



More estates to run

These run on Estates of Skyrim, each with its own branch of upgrades:

• Hjertesten Hall - Extra Jobs and Features: 58 upgrades.
• Halls of Order - Knights of the Order: 65 upgrades.
• White Hearth - Extra Jobs and Features: 58 upgrades.
• Mortum Castle - Extra Jobs and Features: 58 upgrades.
• Goldenhills Plantation - Extra Jobs and Features: the Creation Club farm, with its own buildings, quests and raids.

Followers and your band

Warband is my follower framework and party manager, and it works directly with Estates of Skyrim. Its camp counts as one of your estates.

NEW: SKYRIM KINGS

I'm building a new mod that turns Skyrim into a war and diplomacy game. Every Jarl and lord lives on one realm map, marrying, making allies and going to war, and every day in Skyrim is a day on the map. It's still an early alpha and not out yet, so here's a first look.Want to help test it? Join us on Discord



Installation

Built and played in a Nolvus Awakening load order. Nolvus users: install it like any other mod.

Install with your mod manager. The plugin is ESL-flagged, so it doesn't use a load order slot. Safe to install mid-game: load your save and open the screen with the Estates of Skyrim power. The homes you already own are picked up.

Needs powerofthree's Papyrus Extender 5.9.0 or newer. On game version 1.6.640, use 6.4.3.

Already using my estate mods?

Nothing to delete and nothing to move. Your people, gold and stores stay where they are.

1. Install Estates of Skyrim.
2. Update Hjertesten Hall - Extra Jobs and Features, White Hearth, Halls of Order and Mortum Castle to their latest versions in your mod manager.
3. Load your save. Each estate shows up on the Estates screen with its own treasury and workers. The old Your Estates screen and the old Hire Position power are replaced by the new ones.

Compatibility

• Skyrim SE 1.5.97 and AE. Not for VR.
• An older version of one of my estate mods still shows its treasury and income here, but not its people. Update it to see them.
• Hearthfire's own attacks, building and stewards stay as they are.
• Only vanilla firewood counts toward the stores for now.
• A home mod that moves a vanilla house into a new cell: that home won't count as yours yet.

Performance

Built to stay light. Nothing in it runs every game hour: the daily estate work runs once a game day, started by the mod's own SKSE plugin, and the supply carts use one-off timers. Everything else only runs when something happens: when you open the Estates screen, end a conversation, or load a save. The Estates screen is Prisma UI and only runs while you have it open.

Uninstalling

This is a scripted mod. Don't remove it mid-playthrough.

Known limits

• This is a beta. It's a big mod, so tell me in the posts if anything's off and I'll fix it fast.
• The new lines are unvoiced (use Fuz Ro D'oh for subtitles).

Also by me

• Hjertesten Hall - Extra Jobs and Features - 20+ jobs, a farm economy, raids and wars.
• White Hearth - Extra Jobs and Features - household, court, sieges and treasury.
• Halls of Order - Knights of the Order - a knighthood and raids.
• Mortum Castle - Extra Jobs and Features - a court, a garrison and raids.
• Goldenhills Plantation - Extra Jobs and Features - a working farm, quests and raids.
• Word Travels - friends talk about your deeds.
• Octavia - a fully voiced shield-sister follower.

If you enjoy my mods and want to support them, you can donate here.



Credits

The estates this mod runs on exist because of their authors: Thay S (Hjertesten Hall), IdomeneusOfCrete (White Hearth), HerrSchtevie (Halls of Order) and Jbuckhalt (Mortum Castle). Please endorse their mods. Thanks also to StarkMP for Prisma UI, the SKSE team, and CommonLibSSE-NG (CharmedBaryon) and spdlog, used in the mod's SKSE plugin. Built with houseCARL and DevBench.

About AI use

This mod was built with the help of an AI coding assistant (scripts and records), and the banner art is AI-made. I play it in my own game and fix reports fast, so tell me in the posts if anything's off.