8 Must-Have Skyrim Mods

[Ihateregistering1]

I'd also recommend "richer merchants" (I believe that's what it's called). It gets rid of the annoying early game part where Merchants only have like 900 gold, and saves you the endless hassle of running from city to city to sell all your loot. Not game shattering, but gets rid of a ton of annoying busy work in the game.

 

[Fappy]

Immersive Armors has always been one of my favorite mods. So fucking legit.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

I always wanted to get back to playing Skyrim with a UI mod. The original was so horrible that I didn't really feel like playing for more than 20 hours. That's how much time I've logged since November 2011.

Since this list is (rightly) full of serious mods, allow me to recommend at least watching some videos of the joke ones: Macho Man Randy Savage replacing the head of Alduin, the MLP dragon mod, any obligatory Star Wars mod, the simple DBZ kamehameha sound clip for the master level lightning spell, and, best of all, the farting dragon shout [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4rBkV-vRpY] mod.

 

[ffronw]

There are soooooo many good Skyrim mods. It was super hard to pick out just 8.

Skytweak, if you like tweaking every single setting ever, even the ones you usually can't. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/33395/?

The unofficial patches are awesome. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19/?

Last but not least, Alternate Start, so you don't have ever go through that cart ride again. Plus, you can start as a vampire. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9557/?

 

[TakerFoxx]

Immersive Armors has always been one of my favorite mods. So fucking legit.

Immersive Armors is pretty awesome. Immersive Weapons is cool too.

As for myself, my favorite is Tropical Skyrim. Does exactly what it says on the tin: turning the frozen wasteland into a tropical rainforest, with just as much, if not more, variety in the landscape as the vanilla. You get your standard jungle (Falkreath area), a bamboo forest (the Rift), a barren desert (Whiterun), a volcanic wasteland (that hot spring area), sandy beaches to the north, and more deciduous forests around Solitude and the Reach. The towns a bit revamped too, with bamboo platforms in Riften and sandstone walls in Whiterun. And as for the enemies, you get tropical crabs instead of mudcrabs, apes instead of trolls, pandas instead of bears, tigers instead of sabercats, and velociraptors instead of wolves. Add in a couple additional mods and you've also got ambient jungle chatter in the background (which admittedly it kinda loud and gets a little annoying sometimes) and parrots flying everywhere! My only complaint is that in some of the more heavily forested areas like Falkreath it gets really hard to see where you're going, and occasionally the plant replacer gets a little weird in caves, leading to things like underground palm trees and roots that completely block your path. But oh well, nothing's perfect.

 

[Barbas]

Immersive Armors has always been one of my favorite mods. So fucking legit.

OmegaRed99 did a great one too:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49827/?tab=3&selected_game=110&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmodimages%2F%3Fid%3D49827%26user%3D1%26gid%3D110&pUp=1

...It's surprising how certain GoT and LOTR armour sets don't stick out as much as you'd think in Skyrim. Then there's aMidianBorn's Book of Silence mod that retextures almost every single item of armour in the game:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24909/?tab=3&selected_game=110&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmodimages%2F%3Fid%3D24909%26user%3D1%26gid%3D110&pUp=1

On top of those, I use the Static Mesh Replacement Mod and whichever mod has now merged with or replaced the W.A.T.E.R. one. Oh, and Skyrim Redone.

OT: I swear you are on the ball with these, man. The timing couldn't have been better; I've only just reinstalled and unf***ed Nexus Mod Manager and Skyrim seems to be in stable enough condition to mod again.

 

[Asita]

Eh, I prefer Skyrim Redone to High Level Enemies, largely because in addition to tweaking the enemies (so as to better scale up to level 100) and improving their AI, it also makes some great changes to the player (LOTS of changes to perks, and racial abilities were changed to give them more lore-friendly 'oomph', among other things) and a lot of other behind the scenes changes that affect the way the game plays.

 

[J Tyran]

If you're going with the higher level enemies getting the "run for your lives mod" is a must, you will start losing townspeople and traders to Vampire attacks or roaming creatures. Might as well get "Deadly Dragons" as well, makes the Dragons a lot tougher so they don't seem really pathetic compared to other NPCs.

 

[ffronw]

If you're going with the higher level enemies getting the "run for your lives mod" is a must, you will start losing townspeople and traders to Vampire attacks or roaming creatures. Might as well get "Deadly Dragons" as well, makes the Dragons a lot tougher so they don't seem really pathetic compared to other NPCs.

I wondered why all the towns seemed so empty.

A dragon buff is a good idea as well.

Heck, you guys are going to make me start playing Skyrim right now.

 

[RaikuFA]

No love for the Train Shout? My favorite mod.

 

[Denamic]

If you're using mods with lots of textures, I can't recommend this texture optimiser enough: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801/
It resizes and repacks improperly formatted textures so as to greatly increase performance and reduce disk space required without sacrificing quality. It's a godsend if you've got 200+ mods like me. Just don't let it touch the .bsa files, as it'll most likely make you crash on load.

 

[J Tyran]

If you're going with the higher level enemies getting the "run for your lives mod" is a must, you will start losing townspeople and traders to Vampire attacks or roaming creatures. Might as well get "Deadly Dragons" as well, makes the Dragons a lot tougher so they don't seem really pathetic compared to other NPCs.

I wondered why all the towns seemed so empty.

A dragon buff is a good idea as well.

Heck, you guys are going to make me start playing Skyrim right now.

If you start cranking up the difficulty and adding AI mods you really need it, a single Master Vampire can wipe out almost everyone in a town after level 40 or so. Its not to much of a problem until traders and non essential quest givers start dying.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Last but not least, Alternate Start, so you don't have ever go through that cart ride again. Plus, you can start as a vampire. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9557/?

Oh yeah, forgot about that one, and it's absolutely crucial for replays. It really lets you use your imagination as to how your character ended up in Skyrim, and allow you to establish a new story for yourself.

 

[Dimitriov]

Really? I still can't believe people use that UI mod it. Is so ugly I want to throw up whenever I see it.

 

[RJ 17]

But...but...but what about all the noodie mods! And the big bewbies mods! And the Tera Armor Mods! I am disappoint.

Seriously though, my personal favorite mod was...well unfortunately I forget what it's called, but it improved being a vampire by leaps and bounds. For starters it hooked you up with some new abilities (such as the ability to turn people into your underling vampires ), but it also gave you stat boosts depending on what "level" you were at in terms of your feeding. In addition to that, you actually earn vampire ranks based on how many times you've fed (it keeps track cumulatively)...the more you feed, the more powerful you grow. As you unlock new ranks, you gain new powers. My favorite thing about it, though, was that it gives you the vampire ability of little to no fall damage (unless you're jumping from a ridiculous height). That proved very useful in escaping pesky mortals that would chase me every now and then.

Oh, I also enjoy the mods that enhance the Character Creation abilities...I was able to make myself a Night Elf!

 

[bat32391]

What? Wheres the mod that lets you have sex with dogs? That should definitely be on everyone's modlist.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I am running 150 mods and some fo these and well...Skyrim still sucks.... its just a horrible nightmare of mishmash balance concepts and over simplification. ><

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

As others have said the alternate start is a must and I'll add Perkus Maximus. it's a perk overhaul. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59849/?

Also belt fastened quivers and the dance of death.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35717/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10906/?

 

[Xan Krieger]

I can't remember the name but there was a Warhammer 40K mod where you could play as a space marine and shoot down a dragon with a pair of plasma pistols. Made the game a bit easy but come on, there's few pleasures in life greater than smacking a dragon to death with a demonhammer.