Recommend me some Skyrim mods!

[Plasmadamage]

No really, that's it.

I've recently picked up a copy of the Skyrim Legendary edition, and having already played it (minus DLC) on console, I'm planning to mod it into oblivion (haha). Just looking for advice on what mods to consider? Or any problems with ones already on the list?

Already on the list:

Unique Uniques
Original Armours
Original Weapons
Climates of Tamriel

 

[CloudAtlas]

In order to help you it would be good what kind of experience you are looking for. Immersion? Combat improvements? Difficulty? Boobs? Shlongs? Or something else entirely?

 

[Barbas]

You could do worse than try out all of these (sorry, but they really are too numerous to describe individually):

Spoiler: Entire current mod list.

Best among them is probably Skyrim Redone (SkyRe), which revamps a lot of perks, races, standing stones, enemy AI, weapon and armor statistics. It's modular, so you can pick and choose.

I also subscribe to Steam Workshop mods that improve towns and inns. In order to deal with conflicts, I use BOSS and a program made by the creator of SkyRe, something called ReProccer. Just run it each time you update a mod or install a patch (e.g. for SKSE), it'll sort out your load order (you may have to open Nexus Mod Manager, check that the main ESMs are in the correct order - Skyrim>Dawnguard>Hearthfire>Dragonborn - and you can run the game as normal without any problems (CTDs, etc.)

aMidianBorn's mods add glorious detail to armor and weapons. The mod is being expanded constantly.

Xenius's mods add detail to character bodies and faces, fixing the blocky nose textures and adding high-resolution eyes, scars, warpaint and dirt.

 

[Plasmadamage]

In order to help you it would be good what kind of experience you are looking for. Immersion? Combat improvements? Difficulty? Boobs? Shlongs? Or something else entirely?

Immersion mainly, as well as improved graphical quality and new/revamped equipment

 

[Caiphus]

If you're looking for improved graphical quality, then you can just go to the Realvision nexus page and follow their steps. They have a guide on how to set up ENB for Skyrim, and they've compiled a decent list of graphics mods on that page:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30936

You should probably watch the setup video by Gopher if you are not experienced with modding:

Spoiler: setting up Realvision ENB

May be slightly out of date. Read the guide on the Realvision nexus page too.

Watch his videos on mod cleaning and BOSS if you aren't familiar with them:

Spoiler: BOSS and load order

Spoiler: Master Cleaning

Also get the unofficial patches for stability:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19/?

And I agree with Barbas on Skyre. Damn good perk/combat overhaul. However, you may have trouble getting the reproccer to work with the unique uniques and immersive armours. You'll need to read up on how reproccer works, or Skyre may not properly support the new weapons. However, Skyre does have some extra weapons and armour modded into it.

For realism, check out Frostfall (adds weather + hypothermia to the game), Realistic Needs & Diseases (self-explanatory), and some kind of realistic movement speed mod (I use http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32229/? ).

And check out Deadly Dragons to make dragons less wimpy.

Otherwise, visit Skyrim GEMS. It has a very, very long list of mods to choose from:

http://www.skyrimgems.com/

 

[Don Incognito]

Frostfall.

Requiem.

You're welcome.

 

[CloudAtlas]

In order to help you it would be good what kind of experience you are looking for. Immersion? Combat improvements? Difficulty? Boobs? Shlongs? Or something else entirely?

Immersion mainly, as well as improved graphical quality and new/revamped equipment

Best to start with Gopher's Skyrim Modding Tutorial if you're not an experienced modder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QinA4qD6hXM

Because mod install and load order can matter, and there are tools helping you with that, many mods require a tool called SKSE, or other mods, and so on... Gopher explains it all. And he's the kind of guy who likes immersion and graphics too, so he'll be talking about the type of mods you'd probably be interested in. It's a good start, and once you did that, and got some understanding for how modding in Skyrim works, and the "big basic mods" installed, you'll already have a better idea of the kind of mods that you're interested in. But there are just too many to explain them all, I'm afraid, you just have to go the the Skyrim Nexus and start looking for yourself. Stick to those that are still updated, have many downloads and high ratings, and aren't mentioned as incompatible to your existing mods, and you'll be mostly on the safe side.

 

[karma9308]

I just want to reiterate barbas' list. That is a really comprehensive list that includes just about all "good" mods. I honestly can't think of any others outside of flavor ones.

Spoiler: Unless you want cool things like this

 

[Olas]

Convenient Horses is a must if you have ANY intention of riding on horses in Skyrim, vanilla horses are almost pointless and more of a hassle than they're worth, with CH they actually seem worthwhile.

The Quality World Map is good to have, especially if, like me, you opt to turn off the compass that immediately shows you where everything is.

There are mods that add additional weapons and armor, I would probably check those out, at least the big ones that add a wide variety.

If you want to be a fighter I'd recommend Duel Combat Realism or Deadly Combat Realism which make the fighting in Skyrim more strategic and less sucky.

I think it's called SkyUI, basically it's an improved interface for the game, I'd definitely get it.

If you're into survival type games where you have to pay attention to stats like hunger and tiredness, there's Realistic Needs and Diseases which actually gives food in the game a purpose other than being a mild extra health potion.

Interesting NPCs is a pretty big mod that adds lots of characters to the game with actual depth. I often found myself turned off by how young and unprofessional the voices sounded, but at least they have some depth beyond "Let me guess, somebody stole your sweetroll"

As far as visual tweaks go: I couldn't even begin to go into all that, there's so much stuff out there and a lot of it is based on how good your computer is and how you want the game to look.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

One of my favorite immersion mods has to be SkyTEST-Realistic Animals and Predators. It makes Skyrim feel so much more natural and alive. Different species of predators don't band together to try and kill the dragonborn. It adds whole herds and packs of animal that do things like search for water, hunt, and even have young animals following them around.

It adds a whole bunch of other features and it hasn't left my load order since I installed it.

Some of my other favorites include the Heavy Armory mod adding spears, mauls, halberds and more. Wet and Cold works great as an immersion mod that doesn't impede gameplay in any way if you don't care for hardcore survival mods but still want have that feeling of a colder skyrim.

On a more practical side if you plan on diving headfirst into modding Skyrim than mods/tools like SKSE, StableUGridsToLoaD, and Sheson's memory patch(which is included in some versions of SKSE). If you plan on doing that then I would do as other have recommend and check out Gopher's channel for more info and you will probably find some other cool mods along the way: http://www.youtube.com/user/GophersVids/featured

 

[Tanis]

Mods you might want to check out:
A Quality World Map
Climates Of Tamriel - Weather - Lighting - Audio - Climates Of Tamriel
Dragon Combat Overhaul
Helgen Reborn
Skyrim HD - 2/4K Textures
SkyTEST - Vision
SkyTweak - Tool
SkyUI - Tool
BOSS GUI - Tool
SPERG - Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay
Stable uGridsToLoad - Cell Stabilizer
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
Trade and Barter
Unofficial High Resolution Patch - There's a series of these, and they're fantastic.
Wet and Cold

Other, not so 'canon':
Tropical Skyrim -- A Climate Overhaul ---->There's 3 of these.
Tundra Defense - Construct Your Own Outpost - Tundra Defense
Sneak Tools
RE - Real Estate
aMidianBorn Book of Silence --->There's 4 of these.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Some of these have already been mentioned but are obviously worth mentioning again. A lot of them are personal preference.

-A quality world map. Makes the map about 10x better.
-No perks prerequisite. Makes it so you don't have to waste skill points on skills you don't need to get ones you do, so when you hit level 90 you can automatically learn Daedric smithing without having to learn all the other smithing types (for example).
-Rich merchants. Drastically increases the amount of money merchants have to buy stuff from you. Saves you from having to run from city to city to sell everything because the merchants were always running out of cash.
-Muffle enchantment. Especially great if you're playing as a stealth character and want something besides Dark Brotherhood Armor, lets you learn the muffle enchantment so you can enchant other items with it. There's also one called backstab enchantment that lets you do the same things that increase backstab damage.
-The Dance of Death. Adds additional killmoves, and also lets you set the frequency in which killmoves happen.
-SkyUI. Makes tons of interface improvements, highly recommended.
-Better sorting. Greatly improves the way things are sorted in your inventory.
-Alternate start another life. Lets you start the game in a bunch of different ways and places, instead of having to do the same "prisoner in Helghen, Dragon attacks" etc.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It really depends on what you want out of the game. If all you want is upgraded visuals, there are hundreds of packs that upgrade everything from the flora and fauna to dungeon clutter and weapons. If you want to take that a step further there are also a number of sound and lighting mods that you can download. It honestly isn't worth listing them here simply because there are so very many and the best ones upgrade very small things - you can end up installing a hundred visual mods easily enough.

If you're looking for changes to gameplay, then things start to get interesting. Most of the best mods in this category (The Dance of Death for example) rely on a third party extension to Skyrim (Skyrim Script Extender). These are best used with extreme caution - skyrim isn't a particularly stable game at the best of times and my own experience at least is that mods that require SKSE dramatically increase the number of CTD and other game breaking events.

All that said, I can recommend a few mods without reservation:

-A quality World Map: The map in Skyrim is just shy of useless. This map is much more useful and can include helpful information like roads so you don't spend 20 minutes trying to run up a cliff face to get to your objective.
-Immersive Armors and Weapons: There are gobs of weapons and armor mods for Skyrim out there but this pack includes lots of great new stuff that both looks appropriate for the setting and is broadly comparable (stats wise) to what you already find.
-The Dance of Death: There are only a few kill moves for each weapon in the game and during the course of a playthrough you'll see all of them many many times. This mod gives you lots more kill moves and even lets you tweak how the game handles them letting you alter the frequency that they occur with. It also (if memory serves) lets you throw melee weapons.
-SkyUI: The interface of Skyrim was built for a console. This one was built for using a mouse and keyboard. It's absolutely an improvement on what came in the box.
-Jaysus' Swords: This is just lots of new weapons for Skyrim that all fall well in line with what you find in the game. Mostly notable because it imports lots of real life weaponry including the Basard Sword and the Basket Hilt which are two of my favorites.
-Alternate Start Another Life: Lets you skip the opening segment. While it's perfectly fine, after playing through it a dozen times you might just want to hop right in and skip the tutorial.
-Wet and Cold/Frostfall: Probably the glitchiest mods here but one I honestly quite like. It basically adds a number of survival elements to the game that revolve around staying warm and dry. Hopping into a river and the running through a blizzard will quickly lead to your death for example.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

-double post-

 

[Plasmadamage]

In order to help you it would be good what kind of experience you are looking for. Immersion? Combat improvements? Difficulty? Boobs? Shlongs? Or something else entirely?

Immersion mainly, as well as improved graphical quality and new/revamped equipment

Best to start with Gopher's Skyrim Modding Tutorial if you're not an experienced modder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QinA4qD6hXM

Because mod install and load order can matter, and there are tools helping you with that, many mods require a tool called SKSE, or other mods, and so on... Gopher explains it all. And he's the kind of guy who likes immersion and graphics too, so he'll be talking about the type of mods you'd probably be interested in. It's a good start, and once you did that, and got some understanding for how modding in Skyrim works, and the "big basic mods" installed, you'll already have a better idea of the kind of mods that you're interested in. But there are just too many to explain them all, I'm afraid, you just have to go the the Skyrim Nexus and start looking for yourself. Stick to those that are still updated, have many downloads and high ratings, and aren't mentioned as incompatible to your existing mods, and you'll be mostly on the safe side.

Thanks for that link, those videos are a godsend!

 

[Godhead]

If you haven't downloaded it already get Sky UI.

 

[Isra]

Frostfall.

Requiem.

You're welcome.

If you're looking for immersion, I'll back this up. Requiem is a roleplaying mod which makes a lot of big changes to character progression, combat & other gameplay, and removes scaled NPC leveling completely. The changes make the game very challenging and don't expose the underlying mechanics of the game like SkyRe does. SkyRe is much more balanced and gives more interesting perks, but in my opinion it's just too... indiscreet; obvious - immersion breaking for some. It's also way too easy.

Other mods I'd highly recommend:
Interesting NPCs
Realistic needs and diseases
Audio Overhaul for Skyrim
Wet & Cold
Realistic Water Two
Static Mesh Improvement Mod (If your PC can handle it)
Bethesda High-Res DLC Optimized (use this *instead* of the official High Res DLC)
Enhanced Lights and FX (if you use ENB you might not need this, depending on the ENB)