With Gold Road approaching there will soon be no less than 7 different map markers and their associated boats and caravans competing for increasingly limited space outside the three Alliance Capitals. I believe this space can be used more efficiently if a few simple principles are followed:
- You don't need a Caravan or a Boat to go to the same place that you can travel to using a nearby Navigator.
- Adding extra dialogue options to existing Navigators takes up less space than adding new Carts and Boats.
- There should be at least one non-Navigator route into each Zone, e.g. a Boat, Caravan, Portal or Border Gate.
Up until Murkmire this was going quite well - there are no carts or boats to Vvardenfell or Summerset if Captain Jenassa and Ciryelda are in the same city, boats between the mainland and Hew's Bane / Gold Coast mostly don't go to the Capitals, and Clockwork City obviously doesn't have any at all. Murkmire added a Navigator NPC that takes you
out of the zone but not one that takes you
in, and also added boats that go both ways, while Elsweyr added a Navigator that takes you between Rimmen and the Alliance Capitals who stands in front of a Caravan that does exactly the same thing. After that, new Zones followed a similar pattern to Murkmire, where they added their own Navigators to go out of those zones, but only boats and carts to go in.
The main solution here is to reduce the space taken up by all those carts and boats, and instead give all the destinations to the Navigators that already exist at the Capitals.
- Captain Jenassa currently does Vvardenfell only. Necrom, Murkmire and Blackwood could be added to her options, along with any future content in Morrowind, Black Marsh and Nibenay.
- Ciryelda currently does Summerset only. High Isle and Galen could be added to her options, along with any future content in Summerset, High Rock and the Abecean Sea.
- Zemmarga currently does Northern Elsweyr only. Southern Elsweyr and Skingrad could be added to her options, along with any future content in Elsweyr, Valenwood and Colovia.
- Bastheladir could be added to the base game zones to cover Western Skyrim and the Reach, and any future content in Skyrim and Hammerfell (or those could go to the existing navigators).
The carts and boats which travel
out of the Chapter and DLC zones to the Alliance Territories should then travel to somewhere other than the Alliance Capitals. Since there need to be return routes from wherever they go, a decision should be made about whether they need to go to all three alliance territories or not. For the sake of consistency with (some) existing routes, and to ensure the various alternative destinations don't get clogged up themselves, the suggestion is that they mostly only go to one or two. It would also be better for immersion if boats always go to boats, and carts always go to carts. For example:
- Murkmire boats can continue going to Vulkhel Guard and/or Davon's Watch, but Navigator Lara-Deesei at Lilmoth should travel to the Capitals instead of the Starter Cities.
- Northern Elsweyr Baandari Caravans (Rimmen) could go to Rawl'kha, as well as places with existing Baandari caravan traders, such as Sentinel/Kozanset and/or Riften.
- Southern Elsweyr Baandari Caravans (Senchal) could go to Baandari Trading Post.
- Boats at Western Skyrim Docks (Solitude) could take you to Windhelm.
- Markarth carts could travel to Evermore.
- Boats in Blackwood (Leyawiin) could travel to Ebonheart and/or Woodhearth.
- The Fargrave Portal already goes directly to Marbruk, so that doesn't need to change.
- Boats at Gonfalon Bay (High Isle) could go to Daggerfall (replacing the Murkmire boat) and/or Skywatch.
- Boats at Vastyr (Galen) already only go to Daggerfall, but Navigator Antonin Maulinie needs to have the other Capitals added.
- Necrom boats could go to Ebonheart and/or Woodhearth.
- Caravans at Skingrad (West Weald) could travel to Evermore and/or Rawl'kha.
Edited by Enodoc on 5 May 2024 21:10 UESP: The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages - A collaborative source for all knowledge on the Elder Scrolls series since 1995
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