Skyrim Free Solitude Expansion Adds Tons of New Locations and Characters

Skyrim has just received a free expansion to Solitude, adding a load of new locations and characters.

If there’s one thing to leverage criticism against The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for, it’s that the cities feel rather dead.

I mean, these are supposed to be major cities in a massive country, and yet during gameplay you only really come across a dozen named characters and only a handful of buildings.

Obviously you’ll never be able to get a true immersive experience that adds in thousands of characters populating these urban centres, but mods can help to flesh it out a little.

'Grand Solitude - The Walls of High King Erling' is a new mod for Skyrim Special Edition by creator Drengin that adds new locations and characters to Solitude, to help it live up to its status as the province’s capital city.

“The capital of all Skyrim — Solitude — in the original game is a shadow of its true glory,” writes Drengin. “Nothing gives the impression that this is a great city. There's no real bustling life here: no huge number of traders coming to the province's capital to sell their goods, no citizens rushing about in the morning going on business, and no shops with a wide selection of products."

They continue, “That's why our Ukrainian-Australian team decided to fix this issue. We believe Solitude should look completely different.”

The mod adds over 50 new characters to Solitude, each with their own daily routines and activities. It should hopefully help them to feel alive and integrated into the world that Bethesda created.

There are also 20 new buildings, a new small district to accommodate them, and a complete revamp of Castle Dour with new NPCs and rooms.

Drengin has also teased that more content updates will be coming to the mod in the future, and will allow the team to expand it further with new districts, NPCs, and buildings.

You can download 'Grand Solitude - The Walls of High King Erling' from Nexus Mods now.

It's only available on PC, so you won't be able to install it if you're playing on PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo Switch.