This mod adds a multi-level set of wood stairs, walkways and bridges connecting the northern and southern shores of the Lake Honrich with the docks of Riften alongside the western exterior of the city.  These walkways run from the shoreline just to the north of the player home of Honeyside crossing the main docks between the Black-Briar Meadery and Riften Fishery building areas, leading southward past the Riften Warehouse to a split of land near the southern gate to Riften and the main road near Snow-Shod Farm.  The balcony associated with Honeyside has been modified and incorporated into these additional walkways.  If you're on horseback and don't care to dismount if you're only passing on by the city, the pathways are mostly easily navigable although there are a few narrow spots to watch out for.  These pathways are also fully navmeshed to allow for your followers and any travelling NPCs either in the default game or mod-added to make use of.


Reasoning

Much like another mod of mine I recently released - Windhelm Docks Pathways - when it came to the city of Windhelm, the lack of connectivity and difficulty in getting to and from the Riften docks Bethesda created when designing this area of the game always annoyed me.  Sometimes you have business directly on or nearby the docks but don't feel like swimming or going into and out of the main city if you don't need to be in there.  Sometimes you have business near the docks on one side of the city but you've arrived on the opposite side.  The dockside area for Riften always seemed needlessly isolated and difficult to navigate to and around for both the player and NPCs, with these additional paths and bridges movement flow and travel options are much improved.  In addition, if you use a mod such as Frostfall you now no longer need to worry about getting wet when tavelling in and around the dockside area if you don't want to enter the city.


Notes

These new pathways are considered main roads by NPCs in both the default game and from mods that added traveling NPCs and they will treat them accordingly.  Meaning, on a random basis left up to the games pathfinding AI, they can and will be used by those NPCs if they have a travel destination that is on one side of the water from where their path takes them or the docks themselves.  So, rather than going around the city to the east or directly through the main city itself they may instead choose to cross these new dockside walkways as it can be a faster route.

Owning / not owning the default player home for Riften of Honeyside will have a minor effect on some of the added ambient clutter and furniture this mod adds to the modified balcony outside of Honeyside as they've been associated with the purchasing of a certain upgrade for the house.  Specifically, buying the "Porch" upgrade once you own the main home will enable several additional items on the new expanded porch as well as a crafting Workbench.  Similarly, some of the default game items this purchase would have normally enabled have been moved around from their original location to allow for this new pathway to function optimally.

Additional action and idle markers for NPCs to make use of have been added in numerous places along the added pathways.  If you use Open Cities Skyrim, the NPCs normally present in the closed interior version of the city are now present in the main game world and so may make use of these new pathways and the markers outside where they wouldn't from the closed version of the city on occasion so be aware of this as it may affect NPC locations and alter them from where you might expect them to be.


Compatibility and Load Order

Navmesh conflits with mods that add structures to the exterior portions of the surrounding city of Riften that require navmesh edits are possible with this mod.  This doesn't mean you can't use them at the same time, but NPCs may act confused at times when traversing edited areas if the navmesh changes create too many conflicts.  Patches for any such conflicts might happen if there is enough of a need for them, post in the comments in you notice such a conflict and I'll look into the issue.


Known Mod Conflicts and Patches

Listed below are what mods I know to conflict or be compatible, either on their own or with the help of a patch.  If you know of a mod that
should be listed below, post in the comments and I'll add the information here as needed.

Compatible

Better Docks - this mod adds numerous crates and other dockside clutter to the Riften docks that have conflicts with some of my changes to patrols, idles, and other NPC markers, a patch is available that resolves all such issues

JK's Skyrim - this mod is an interior city overhaul that shouldn't have any conflicts with my mod

Open Cities Skyrim - after testing it became apparent that a patch was needed to resolve some lingering issues with NPC navigation when using Open Cities with this mod so I created and added in the optional files section a patch that should fix any such problems


Skyrim Special Edition version can be found >> HERE <<