Town Midpoints and Altitude (Part 1)

It's been a while since Magnus last checked in, but he's been a busy fella, measuring all those roads...so far he has covered pretty much all of the roads in Falkreath Hold before venturing over the pass into the Rift, past Ivarstead. One big problem with this job is that one often finds oneself sidetracked from the task at hand into time-consuming battles - in other words, it's easy to forget about measuring the game and start playing it instead. Helgen needed ridding of bandits, for one thing (incidentally, for the purposes of the survey, Magnus opted to measure the roads as if unobstructed by rubble - surely that good-for-nothing Jarl Siddgeir of Falkreath will eventually remember his duties and send troops to repair and repopulate the town). And Magnus now boasts a considerable collection of wolf, bear and sabre cat pelts, among other trinkets looted from various nasties. It takes a seasoned warrior just to travel the roads in Skyrim!

Falkreath

Anyways, as I'm measuring, I realize that in order to give the distance between, say, Riverwood and Falkreath (1.62km via Lake Ilinalta, or 1.71km via Helgen), I first have to determine the exact point within those two towns that I'm using as reference. For Riverwood, as mentioned previously, I settled on the T-junction in the middle of the town. Falkreath's midpoint is actually quite similar-looking, the T-junction where the side street branches off towards the Jarl's longhouse and the barracks.

Riverwood

So in the interest of completeness, Magnus has decided to postpone measuring the roads and will first make a quick tour around Skyrim, visiting each city, town or village and determining its midpoint. While he's at it, and to kill two mudcrabs with one stone, he will also measure their altitude. That's a pretty straightforward process in Skyrim (quicker than measuring distances, at any rate): you find the z value of each point, add 14,000 (because when you stand at sea level in Skyrim, your z value is -14,000) and multiply by 0.01428 to get the altitude in meters. So Riverwood, for instance, is 198m above sea level, and Falkreath is 155m. I'm surprised Falkreath is so low as well - it's probably the furthest of all Skyrim's towns from the sea - and the reason is probably that deep (and geographically kind of inaccurate, I mean, what's with the river that goes nowhere?) valley it nestles within.

Helgen is the next "town" for which Magnus determines midpoint and altitude. For the former I settled on the road junction just inside the east-facing gate - the latter is a pretty respectable 320m.

Ivarstead - Halfway in between the two pairs of buildings that constitute this sorry little village, right where the small path leads up to Shroud Hearth Barrow (and yeah, I know the shadows make it really hard to see Magnus in that picture...). Elevation: 354m.

Riften - I wish that little well hut thing wasn't in the way, otherwise I'd have taken the dead middle of the market - oh well. Southern edge it is. Elevation: 359m.

Shor's Stone - a pretty obvious one, the point where the little path branches off towards Redbelly Mine. Elevation: 301m.

Windhelm - finding a point in this claustrophobic maze of thick stone walls and cold, icy narrow alleys (seriously, Windhelm is depressing) that feels like the "middle" was tricky. The market is too tucked away, so I settled on this spot behind Candlehearth Hall. It's kind of empty, but at least it's central. Elevation: 23m.

Winterhold - the only place in Skyrim possibly even more depressing than Windhelm. Weather there was crappy as usual upon my arrival, but that's nothing a little fw console command can't fix! Elevation: 71m, not bad for a place on the coast.

Dawnstar - only reached after hours of battling with frostbite spiders, trolls, wolves, necromancers, cultists, spriggans, sabre cats, thieves, bandits and ice wraiths along the road. Things are far worse here than Magnus thought - this may take a while. Elevation: 10m.



Well, that's all I've had time for recently. I'll try and post the rest of the cities' midpoints and altitudes later this week.