I hadn't bought Hearthfire yet, but now I need to make my mod compatible with its planting mechanics, and it would probably help if I knew how planting works. I've never even seen screens, I have NO idea what the process is other than it involves fertile soil.

Is there a quick cheat or console command to get myself a plot of land so I can just plant a few herbs and see how it works, look at the menus and such?

I really don't want to go through the process of waiting for a courier, figuring out which quests I need to do so the Jarl will sell to me, etc. I'll need a clean save for testing so I'd have to start a new guy and do everything from scratch and that's time I could be spending actually working on the mod.

Why not just use a character who is already thane of all the holds, then all you have to do is go buy the land, no waiting for anything, no quests. Seems to me using console commands is more likely to stuff it up. You cannot plant a garden till you have built the small house, I am not a PC player but it seems to me using console commands to do everything is more likely to break something, then let you do a clean test.

First off, I don't have a character who is Thane of anywhere, let alone all the holds. Even if my current character was Thane of all Skyrim, that char is no good for testing purposes because by the time you progress that far in a heavily modded game like mine, your savegame is likely muddied beyond belief with various saved references and other bits and pieces that will cause Skyrim to crap itself if you then try to use that save without the mods it expects to be there.

By a "clean save" what is meant is that I need a savegame that hasn't ever been modded so I can experience the vanilla Hearthfire and not worry about any changes or edits that may have been made by my ridiculous collection of mods. That lets out all my existing savegames except for the unmodded test saves, which use a character fresh out of the chargen who would need to be played for hours and hours before getting to the point where it's possible to buy land. I'm trying to save myself that time.

The console doesn't dirty things up, in fact it's the other way round. Playing a modded game for 50+ hours dirties things up. Starting a new fresh game and using the console to give myself what I need and ONLY what I need is far faster and cleaner. It's certainly true that in some situations advancing by console can break stuff, you're right, so you need to know what you're doing before you mess with it, but all I want here is to see the planting mechanics in action. I'm not worried about being able to play the game normally with that save, it's just for a looksee and testing.

Why don't you just use console commands to complete the quests and give youreself 1,000,000,000 gold and 10,000 iron ingots.From there it will take roughly 5 minutes to construct a small house and garden.

I would have to look up the quests and what might happen if one tried to use console to complete them ,but certainly adding gold,iron ingots or any other materials you might need only takes as long as it takes to type the commands.

There is also a "garden anywhere" mod in the workshop.It enables you to plant and grow anything you want as long as you are on some type of earth(I beleive.Anyways This mod will show you the way the game enables you to plant things withhout having to build a home.

That's kinda what I'd like to do, the problem being that I have no idea which quests are required or how to find out which stage I need to advance to. I've found wildly varying information on it. Some articles say I'd need to be the Thane of one of the three holds, others say that being Thane means the courier won't show up at all and you then need to initiate the quest manually. I either have to talk to the Jarl, or the steward, or first the Jarl and then his steward and possibly do either one specific quest or a random number of radiant quests (eliminating bandits and such) to get the dialogue allowing me to purchase.

If anyone happens to know for certain exactly which quests I need to complete, I can go look up the stages in the CK. Even just knowing for sure whether or not I need to be a Thane would be useful.

Yes, you need to be Thane, of all 3 holds that have land options. The Pale house (Morthal) is level dependent, you have to be 22nd level or higher before you get the quest needed to become Thane and buy land. When you first start Hearthfire, you usually get a visit from a courier not too long after, inviting you to come speak to the Jarl at Falkreath, just go from there. You will only get one invitation, the other 2 places you have to go speak to the Jarls and/or stewards yourself to initiate. Hope that helps.

As for the quests, look up Hearthfire in the UESP, it will tell you.

Actually you do not need to be thane for any holds to buy land, although it is easier when playing to do the help the people quests while doing the ones for the Jarl and get your housecarl and land at the same time. Dawnstar you have to do the Waking Nightmare quest and the level dependent(level 22 or higher) Kill the Giant quest, Falkreath it is give the Jarl some mead and Kill the Bandit Leader, Morthal it is just the Laid to Rest quest investigating the ruined house. Morthal would be the easiest I think.

You get the land it comes with everything you need to build the small house, and the garden, if you do not have enough for the hatchery and want to look at that, there is a source of stone near the house, or just use the console commands to add sawn logs, nails and quarried stone. If you want to investigate the greenhouse wing as well you need more sawn logs and iron.

This.

You absolutely DO NOT need to be a thane of anything.Basically what you need to do is elevate you're standing with one of the 3 holds that sells land as Aussie500 has stated.To do this you need to do at least 1 quest from the Jarl(or steward---check them both if the Jarl doesnt give one)and any 2 other quests for the Town/city.If it is a totally new character you will want to go to Morthal because those quests aren't level dependent.You do not need to wait for a courier to deliver a message.If the land is accessable,when you speak to the Jarls steward the dialogue option will be available or it won't(if you havent completed the required quests to bolster youre standing.Sometimes there are multiple quests you can do.You don't need to do them all.)

He says somethhing like "we don't have any homes for sale but we do have some land maybe you'de like to purchase."...something like that.It's not really complicated at all.As Aussie500 stated though,some quests have a basic level requirement.I think probably by level 3 you could grab a coach to Morthhal and do the required quests to access thhe dialogue to purchase land.Then,thats it.It will show up on youre map as an unexplored area and named --------Manor.

Ah, I just did it all, like you said, so thought it was required. Hmm, learn something new every day.

I think starting fresh it will take like 20-30 minutes of play time after leaving Helgen to get the right to buy the Falkreath land . No thane needed. I just had to run to a mine and kill some bandits and boom... Land owner. The harder part when starting new is getting the cash for everything. The only reason it took that long is that he sent me to a mine on the western edge of the hold and I hadn't discovered any fast travel points near it so I had to run across the forest.

the pale land takes some time because you have to do the nightmare quest and then go kill a giant for the Uarl. That nightmare quest can take a while plus some of those orcs can be a tough fight for a low level character. Plus I believe the Giant quest will not be offered until you are level 22..

I didn't try it yet but I would think the master vampire you need to kill in Morthal would be a pretty tough fight for someone starting fresh and trying to get a home at low level.

My first character did no quests for Hearthfire, he was already thane of every hold in Skyrim, second character was thane of all but The Pale, was stalling on the Erandur problem but finally went and did the Waking Nightmare Quest with several different endings trying to decide. the staff was a lousy display item and not very interesting, Erandur ended up surviving.


Pretty sure ChaosPearl intends to just complete the quest using console commands, he is not interested in seriously playing, just wants a look at gardens and fertile soil. So I doubt chasing money or iron will be a problem.

(And you wonder why I was having trouble trying to find information that didn't conflict. LOL.)

Thanks, everyone. Yeah I'm just going to do the fast travel \ console thing and not worry about whether it breaks stuff further down the road. This isn't my main save where I actually play the game, it's a fresh test save for modding which will likely be deleted once I'm done. I'd been hoping there was some console command to just give myself the land plot, bypassing the requirements, but evidently not.

All I need is to see where the fertile soil patches are situated, what they look like, and plant myself a whatever-it-is-you-plant so I can get a look at how the mechanics work. I have an apple tree mod and people have been asking if it's possible to make it compatible with Hearthfire so that you can plant one of my trees in the soil. I've got some work done thanks to another very talented scripter, now I need to integrate it into Hearthfire's existing system.

I'll be back to report how my bandit-killing mead-giving people-helping console adventures went, lol.

Edit: Excellent. That was absurdly simple. I went to Morthal (coc morthalmoorsideinn) with a brand new guy, talked to the Jarl to pick up the Laid to Rest quest, console'd to the last stage (setstage ms14 200) then talked to the Jarl's husband and he sold me the land immediately. I didn't have to do any other quests at all, only that single one. It took 5 minutes, then another 15 to build the house.

This is exactly what I needed to know. Unfortunately the planting menu system is awkward as hell and the enclosed garden is probably too small to plant trees in, but now that I KNOW that, I can work around it. I think I'm going to have to bypass the fertile soil altogether and build a custom system specifically for these trees. I know there's already the Garden Anywhere mod, but planting anywhere is exactly what I need to restrict. The trees have over a dozen apples apiece and if I let people plant 50 trees in a single cell, which you know somebody will inevitably do, their game will explode and somehow this will be my fault. Heh.

Greenhouse would look nice with some mini apple trees growing in the pots. If you check out the juniper berry tree we can plant with Hearthfire, it is actually a lot smaller than the normal tree.

Why not just whip up a house mod and add the Greenhouse to it with a couple of planters. They have the Fertile Soil so you can see how it all works. I think the planters are even separate that you could add them to just about any house.

Well, yes... but my apple trees aren't mini. I'm not trying to make a mod with apple trees for planting -- the mod is an existing thing that places full-sized, full-grown apple trees into the game, each with over a dozen actual vanilla apples hanging from the branches. I just needed to integrate those trees with the planting system as lots of people have asked so I decided to look into it.

It's unfortunately not as simple as making the trees smaller, as each apple is a separate object and placed in a precise spot on the tree. A cute little mini tree in a pot wouldn't bear fruit, or at least it would look rather silly with full-sized vanilla apples hanging from a tree whose trunk is the same diameter as the apple, heh.

That sounds like a really cool mod.Whhen I decided to build the greenouse I was hoping it would be lush bushes and small trees rater than a few flowers to pick for alchemy.

Apple tree's sound awesome! Make some apple pies with the kids(I use 2 food mods..1 that lets me actually eat like NPC's do.....cool screen shots).

But is there something in the programming for Hearthfire that is making mini trees and bushes instead of full size ones?