Grand Solitude – The Walls of High King Erling is a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that completely overhauls Solitude, bringing more life, activity, and grandeur to this city. It was developed by Drengin, ManuOstar44, and Varangian94 and initially released on August 23, 2025.
According to the creators, Solitude feels somewhat empty for a capital city. With this mod, the city now conveys the expected grandeur, with busier streets, new locations and characters, enhanced architecture, and the feeling of being in one of Skyrim‘s most important political centers.
According to the creators, Grand Solitude is currently just the first chapter of a larger overhaul. Future versions are expected to bring improvements to the city center, new districts, new dialogue, and even additional quests.
Videos
In the video above, the Master Cheesey channel plays and comments on a ton of Skyrim mods, including Grand Solitude. There’s also Tomato’s Riften and Ratway, Alternate Perspective Reborn, Adventurers Armor, Dreadbinder, Fires Hurt – OIF and Nordic Farmfields.
About the mod
The capital of all Skyrim — Solitude — in the original game is a shadow of its true glory. 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.
That’s why our Ukrainian-Australian team decided to fix this issue. We believe Solitude should look completely different.
And so, we are pleased to present to you the first part of our total overhaul of the city — Grand Solitude: The Walls of High King Erling.
Here’s what awaits you:
- Over 50 new characters with their own daily routines, activities, and tasks;
- Around 20 new buildings, home to new citizens;
- A completely revamped and rebuilt Castle Dour with new NPCs and rooms;
- An updated Temple of the Nine Divines — both outside and inside. It’s now even larger, with new NPCs, decorations, and even its own courtyard with a view of Haafingar;
- A new small district before entering the main part of the city with a tavern and a blacksmith.
- We found it strange that the entire capital of Skyrim only had a single tavern — and at that a luxurious one. What should travelers who couldn’t afford it do? Well, this problem is now solved.
This is just the first part of our work towards a complete rethinking of the city. Due to the difficult situation in our country, and to avoid making you wait too long for the final version, we decided to split the release into several parts.
In future versions, we will focus on the central part of the city, add a new small district near the Temple, write dialogues for the new NPCs, and even plan to create a few quests.
Screenshots
Compatibility and requirements
- Requires Skyrim Special Edition with all DLCs, plus USSEP.
- Fully compatible with retextures, and DynDOLOD 3 with DynDOLOD DLL NG is recommended for LOD generation.
- Includes and replaces the Solitude Watchtower and Fortified Ramp to Castle Dour mods (not to be used together).
- Compatible with Blue Palace Terrace and other Blue Palace reworks.
- The mod can be installed via the manager or manually. The authors recommend starting a new game to take advantage of all the changes.
More info and Skyrim
Overview
- Get Grand Solitude - Download link(s) or store's listing.
- Size: 327.3 MB
- Channel(s): Drengin, ManuOstar44, Varangian94
- License: Free
- Categories: Skyrim