Skyrim: Khajiit Hearthfires
The Hearthfires DLC for Skyrim adds the ability to build your own home in three different locations around the province, providing player homes in holds that didn't have one in the city. The Khajiit race, however, are nomadic, and would not be quite so tempted by the ties of a static home. What they need is mobility - i.e. a wagon!
The Quest
Along the road from Whiterun towards the west, just before you reach Fort Greymoor, there is an abandoned and partly demolished house. Below the floorboards in the base game is a chest with a small amount of random loot. This mod replaces that chest with one containing the journal of Wilf Wainwright. In it, he complains that bandits, sent by the monopolist Guild of Wainwrights in Cyrodiil, have stolen all his tools in an attempt to put him out of business.
It's not obvious how you know where the tools are, but each one is in a bandit lair somewhere around Skyrim. You'll be sent to find Wilf's saw, hammer, tongs, and spokeshave. The last of those is a tool only a wainwright would use. All the tools are placed at the start of the quest, so if you're adventuring in general at the same time as doing this quest, you may find them out of sequence. That won't cause any problems.
All the tools are quest items, and will remain in your inventory. As such, the weights shown do not count toward your encumbrance limit. I opted to retain them, as this means thay can't be stolen from your storage. If the Cyodiil Guild of Wainwrights wants to try and repeat what they did to Wilf, they'll have to deal directly with you!
When you have the complete set of tools, you can return to the abandoned house and restore the cold forge at the back.
The old table in the house will have been replaced by a carpenter's wainwright's workbench, and some of the fences
outside will have been removed to allow the finished wagon to pass. There is no drafting table, as you have no build choices
to make.
Construction
Restoring the forge allows you to make some additional crafting stations (smelter, grindstone and tanning rack) that will be helpful in making the wagon, and you'll also be able to make building materials. This forge alone can make cart springs from steel, an essential part of any wagon. You'll also need leather, nails, iron fittings etc, just as you would in building a house and its furniture.
Construction will use iron ingots, a corundum ingot, steel ingots, leather and logs. The log pile is placed on the rocks behind the house. There are iron ore veins not too far from the house in most directions, and corundum veins the other side of Fort Greymoor, and to the north-east, due north of the watchtower. The nearest lumber mills are Half-Moon, and Riverwood.
You start by making the chassis. It will initially be standing on a pair of trestles, but as you add wheels, each pair will replace a trestle until the result is free-standing. Then you can add the superstructure, starting with a cross of beams as a spine, then a drivers seat (a chest with a leather top, so it needs hinges and a lock), bed planking, harness trees, and sides. At the point you have a complete wagon, and can use it as a bed, or storage container.
If you own a horse, and it's close enough to the completed wagon, you can hitch it up, and then get on and drive.
In addition to the wagon, you can add a complete set of blacksmith's crafting stations by the forge (smelter, grindstone, armorer workbench and tanning rack) to help with the process. These have the same materials requirements as they would at any Hearthfire site. If you have not made them all when the house is rebuilt, they will be included in the rebuild.
| Step | Parts | Materials | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chassis | 2 Sawn Log, 5 Iron Fittings, 3 Springs (one of which was found in chest) | ||
| 2-5 | Wheels | 2 Sawn Log, 2 Iron Ingots (each) | ||
| 6 | Spine | 2 Sawn Log, 2 Nails | ||
| 7 | Drivers Seat | Iron Fittings, 2 Sawn Log, Lock, 2 Hinge, 2 Nails, Leather | ||
| 8 | Bed planking | 4 Sawn Log, 5 Nails | ||
| 9 | Harness trees | 2 Sawn Log, 4 Iron Fittings | ||
| 10 | Sides | 2 Sawn Log, 4 Nails, 2 Iron Fittings | ||
| 11 | Canopy | Sawn Log, 4 Iron Fittings, 5 Linen Wraps | ||
| Total Materials: | 2 Hinges,
16 Iron Fittings,
1 Lock,
13 Nails,
22 Sawn Logs,
3 Springs,
1 Leather,
5 Linen Wraps (1 Corundum Ingot, 29.3 Iron Ingots, 4 Steel Ingots) |
|||
Springs
Springs are a new type of building material that can only be made at the wainwright's forge. They require 2 steel ingots and one iron ingot each.
Using the Wagon
Activating the wagon will give you a menu of the available options. Only those that can currently be performed are shown. So initially, you'll be able to Sleep, which places a bedroll in the back of the wagon, which you'll be able to use to sleep; Cargo accessing the wagon as a container, Canopy which toggles the canopy, or Exit without doing anything.
When you bring your horse within range, you'll be able to Hitch it to the wagon. Doing so removes the Sleep option, and adds Get On, and Unhitch replaces Hitch. The Sleep option also goes away when the canopy is off.
After you get on the wagon, you have the option to Get Off normally or Panic! which also unhitches the horse, and moves it behind the wagon. This is the option to use when an enemy is present, but it's also a shortcut to dismount and unhitch in one move. Without using this, you must Get Off before you can Unhitch.
The Wainwright's Shop
After you have built the wagon, visited each of the stables (which means you have been close to each of the carriages), and then leveled up, a courier will bring you a note. This will inform you that the carriage drivers have pooled their funds to have the abandoned house rebuilt, in the hope that you'll re-establish the wagon building and repair business. The furnishings are modest, with the single bed that was there already, and just a few cupboards, lights and chest added. But there's a roof and four walls again.
Although it can be used as one, this is not intended to be the player's home, as the wagon itself fills that role. It has only the original single bed, and no provision for spouse or children. Since there are no Khajiit children, and you can't marry one, this is not unreasonable. It is beyond the scope of this mod to add the extra actors.
Note that the house is built when you read the letter from the carriage drivers. If you have not made the smelter, grindstone, or tanning rack at the workbench, you won't be able to make them yourself, so they will be built automatically with the house.
After the house is rebuilt, and back in operation as a repair shop, the Wainwright's Guild of Cyrodiil may take further action, this time against the player, by sending thugs to stop you. There is a one in three chance this will happen after you level up. Each time you kill a group of thugs, the chance that more will be sent decreases to 90% of the current value.