Skyrim: The City of Crossed Daggers Is a Free Player Expansion, Enjoy Now

A new The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim mod has dramatically expanded the city of Riften, an excellent addition to any thief-oriented characters.

Riften is notable as being the home of the Thieves Guild in Skyrim, and has been a popular city for thief-oriented players to settle in as a result of this.

But as with all cities in The Elder Scrolls, there remains a problem with Riften in that it doesn’t actually feel that massive to begin with. I mean, it’s basically a small town with about several dozen NPCs living there.

Considering cities need to have at least several thousand people living in them before they’re considered a city, mods aren’t necessarily going to fix that with Skyrim’s limitations in mind. However, this mod does at least somewhat expand it to help the settlement feel bigger.

Skyrim: The City Of Crossed Daggers Expands Riften's Population

The City of Crossed Daggers expands Riften with new buildings, each one inhabited by NPCs with unique dialogue and quests. It also provides new visuals to the town, giving it a much-needed makeover.

The mod transforms the empty area behind Black-Briar Manor and Temple of Mara into a new district, with six new buildings added to deck it out.

These buildings include a bank for players to deposit money and accrue interest, as well as a bakery, a tailor with unique clothing items, a temple of Talos that only remains open if the Stormcloaks control the town, and two manors.

marijn191 via Nexus Mods

To liven up the district, 27 new NPCs are added, with unique ones coming with their own dialogue and outfits, as well as three small quests to fill out the expansion.

The mod goes beyond that though, by adding new clothing and armour up for grabs, as well as visual overhauls to wall fortifications, house decorations and expanded market stalls.

All-in-all, a great mod for anyone who enjoys playing thief-oriented characters in Skyrim and fancies expanding the city they’ll probably be spending a lot of their time in over the course of a playthrough.

With this installed, Riften should at least feel quite a bit bigger than how it does in the base game, making the entire location a bit more interesting.

Skyrim: The City of Crossed Daggers is made by modder marijn191, who has also created similar mods overhauling other areas of the game like Solitude and Morthal.

As well as that, they’ve also created The Noble Bones – A Breton Armour Mod and Dawnstar Thane Armour for more lore-friendly additions.