Mine would have to be:
SkyUI
Unofficial Patch
Simply Knock
SMIM
Blended Roads
I have many more than these, but here are a few.
Sons of Skyrim - Probably the most impressive armor mod I’ve seen. While there are many high quality armor mods, so many feel more appropriate for a fashion show rather than Skyrim. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s nice to have such a quality mod that feels at home in the game. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/68656
Skyrim Unbound Reborn - I have played the main quest once in my years playing Skyrim and haven’t personally been interested in playing it again. (Save the world hero stories don’t interest me too much) So it’s nice to play as a non Dragonborn. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27962
Missives - Since I don’t care much for the main quest mods like this give me more things to do in game. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17576
Jayserpa’s Quest Expansions - Having more choices during quests is always great, which I always felt was lacking in vanilla. His other mods are great as well. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/5201727
Expressive Facegen Morphs - I always struggle creating a character I like and this provides more options for RaceMenu. Great mod. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35785
- Unequip Quiver | This irritated me incessantly for years back in the day when I only played on PS3. I am grateful every equip/unequip for this.
- AddItemMenu & AddItemMenu NG | Cheaty mod, but I use it to get mod-added armors immediately. They’re my spiffy clothes, and I want them now.
- TNF Vanilla Homes | Vanilla homes, but upgraded. I have a lot of modded homes ofc, but sometimes I want the classics. It makes them much more luxurious, but not super over the top.
- Thane Weapons Reborn | Becoming Thane and being bestowed with a weapon is always, like, “uhh… thanks…” but this changes that. It is a simple joy every time my characters become Thane somewhere, it’s such a fun RP thing, and having a fancier weapon to use or at least hang on the wall makes me happy.
- Motion Sickness Begone | Not for everyone, but I suffer headaches and this helps so much. It removes the camera head bob.
- No More Radial Blur | For the same reason as the motion sickness mod.
- Encounter Zones Unlocked SE | This makes it so that locations do not get permanently set to the level you were when you first visited. So when going back to a dungeon at a higher level, you’ll get high level enemies/loot this time. It keeps familiar places interesting.
Simonmagus’ suite and Jayserpa’s quest expansions are my must haves for sure! I’m also totally in love with Pulcharmsolis‘ armor mods. They’re the ones behind the Velothi packs, and that new Maomer SeaScale set.
I have way too many to say and I’m unsure how many of them would count as must-haves for most people. However, for me, I’d say a lot of my must-have mods come down to magic mods because a ton of my characters end up using different sorts, so I like variety, such as:
Triumvirate - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/39170
Stormcaller Magic 2 - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/89643
Stellaris - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/86833
Singularity (haven’t gotten a chance to use it yet but it seems rad) - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/38611
Shadow Spell Package - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13299
Poison Magic of Skyrim - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/8944
Odin - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/46000
Mysticism - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27839
Apocalypse - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1090
More Apocalypse - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18578
Lunaris - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/80852
Forgotten Magic Redone - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12711
Blood Spells Pack - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/15652
Astral Magic 2 - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/69938
Arcanum - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23488
Ace Blood Magic - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16995
Honestly, I keep forgetting to disable some of these for a couple of my playthroughs so a ton of spells scattered all over just became the norm, even if I don’t use most of them or if I’m playing a character that hardly even uses magic.
Ooh, a lot of these look fun! I haven’t tried too many of these, but I can personally vouch for Apocalypse. That mod ALONE adds so much variety to the world of Skyrim’s magic. Some of those spells remind me of something you’d find in an ARPG like Diablo or Fate.
It’s hard to choose a favorite out of all of them, they’ve also been in my games for so long that sometimes I can’t remember what spell comes from which mod unless it’s super obvious.
Forgotten Magic adds rings as well that buff up some of the spells which I thought was a nice addition. One of these mods adds a table where you can make spells (buying/finding two or more spell books to create a new spell) but I don’t remember which one does that, also pretty sick though.
Oh wow! I have to ask, do you get unusally frequent crashes with those merged spells? I’ve been trying to find a stable mod that allows some form of spell creation like the old games for a while and haven’t had much luck.
I don’t think I’ve ever had problems with how many magic mods I have, I hardly get crashes as is and my last playthrough was sitting at around 450+ active mods.
The spell making isn’t like Morrowind’s or Oblivion’s spell making, but I enjoy it as a stand-in. The spell making tables aren’t everywhere but there’s one in Winterhold & the Abandoned Shack. It’s bugging me that I can’t remember which mod the spell making table is from, haha.
Actually thought of another mod that’s not magic-related, Informative Console - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19250
Helps when I don’t know what item or NPC comes from where.
Ooh my first Lemmy post.
I’ll mention my new fave mod that I can’t imagine living without from here on:
Player Equipment Manager on Wheels.
This lets you quickly swap base outfits and add-ons to those outfits, complete with hotkeys and nifty menus. Everything about this mod just works, and it’s pretty simple to get the hang of.
I just can’t help but have the Thomas the Tank Engine mod. Even though I expect it, the intro is always funny to me. I grew up watching Thomas so I may be biased as well. Other than that I like to use the child race mod so I can scamper around Skyrim as a young lad killing dragons.
Grimacing with pain… I’m going to say that for the purposes of this question, I’m going to skip all the bugfix mods and the staples-of-everything mods like SKSE and SkyUI. I’m also going to skip the enabling mods like OAR and Base Object Swapper, because so much is built on top of them now that they’re requirements.
When I mod Skyrim, once I have the base layer in place, what do I always include even though I don’t need it?
True Directional Movement. This is so good that for me it’s now a base mod. I love that third person mode both feels good and looks good.
High-Poly Head and NPC makeovers using it. Hard to un-see the clonk in the old heads once you see the nicer ones.
QuickLoot. Massive QOL improver.
Any mod that adds cloaks.
ENB Lights. They make the game so pretty.
Ooooh, I have plenty! Years of modding have resulted in soooo many excellent choices, my personal favorites are: JK’s Skyrim - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6289 Gives so much more life and detail to all the cities.
Northern Roads - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/77530 A somewhat newer mod that really caught my eye. An overhaul of ALL of the main roads in Skyrim, changing the road material and adding props and details all around.
Sekiro Combat S - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/79206 This mod adds a Sekiro-styled parry effect to melee blocking. A lightweight mod that can be added on it’s own to add some flavor to Skyrim’s somewhat bland melee combat.
Signature Equipment - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16190 Weapons and armor slowly get better the more they’re used in combat. A simple one, but I end up getting attached to my gear, so something like this just gives more tales to tell!
High Level Enemies Redux - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32801 Adds tons of new enemy variants and scaling enemies. I love seeking out strong enemies and skyrim’s difficulty kind of tanks after a certain point. This mod fixes that! Plus, this mod in tandem with the Sekiro Combat mod gives a real reason to learn to parry!
Northern Roads looks incredible! Is it compatible with blended roads? Also I love mixing Dawn of Skyrim with JKs Skyrim and extended towns and cities, it makes all the towns feel so much more lively!
It is thanks to the Patch Collection! https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/77386 This page has patches for all kinds of world-editing mods, and if you use Mod Organizer to install the patches (can’t speak for Vortex since I’ve never used it) any mods that have a patch that are already IN your mod list will automatically be checked in the installer window!
Yay a skyrim community! Almost time for my yearly play through! I forget the names of a bunch of them but:
The khajit follower one that comes with quests, forget his name
The summermyst skill tree expansions
The lantern and street light one is cool
The open civil war is kinda fun in a chaotic way
There’s one that does more realistic weather I enjoy.
Sorry I haven’t played in a while, but I’m glad I have another community to join now!
Oh man, that’s hard to say
Wabbajack is pretty incredible, the ability to get a full working list with like zero effort is wild
As for mods themselves, I love Clockwork, the creepy emptiness of it is amazing
Im running 3.7k mods so there’s a lot lol but origins of forest is a biggie for me, Dragonborn voice over with all the ciri packs is now essential too
3.7k mods at the same time? How does it not crash?
I dunno about UniversalHatred, but for me half my modlist is texture mods, some of them tiny mods that just retexture one thing. And a huge percentage of the plugin list is tiny patches that I’ll merge before I start my real playthrough with it. So that mod total might not be as heavyweight as you think.
These are all fine mods but y’all need some culture
In terms of stuff that goes in the backend of the game, increasing the overall functionality I’d say SPID (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/36869)
And also Base Object Swapper (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/60805)
A lot of the mods that take advantage of these I find to be much better in terms of ease of use and compatibility for distributing new armors, abilities, weapons, etc. And a few older, script heavy mods like Immersive Armours and Wet and Cold have been given SPID versions if you’re still interested in using them but wanted less script bloat to your save
Now that I’ve played with it, I also really like Seasons of Skyrim (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62861) with the Turn of the Seasons or Seasonal Landscape add-on. It’s not too hard to install but for me it definitely helped me get better at modding, and in game in is really cool to see Skyrim in a totally new way. I would recommend you get some of those time passer mods like Time Flies (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/39426) so that you can see the seasons a little more as this mod will allow time to pass while you do things slike read, smith, or sell stuff.
My only complaint about the SPID version of Wet & Cold is that the author also chose to rip out all the AI features, where NPCs come in out of the rain. I recently tried to recreate the full W&C experience with a collection of smaller mods, and I couldn’t find anything to recreate that behavior. It’s the kind of thing that will make me figure out how to write AI packages some day.
I think the popular AI overhauls might allow the NPC characters to do that, at least AI Overhaul (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21654) says that it gives AI weather behavior, so maybe that could help you!
Oooooh, interesting point. I need to take a closer look at what AI Overhaul does!
Armor’s Mages Robes and JS’s Armored Circlets are great for a vigilant of stendar style without having to rely on alteration. And Left Hand Rings is how I pair with all of the new enchantments given by Summermyst.
A few of my best immersion mods are Undiscover Skyrim, Toggle Compass, and Better Heartbeats. Also worth mentioning Courier Delivers to NPCs.
Customizable Camera, naturally. And it’s worth including the links for potential future mod hunters: the Improved Camera beta (which back on old reddit was here and here), pointed to the plugin file ImprovedCameraSE-1.0.0.PR5.7z (for skyrimse version 1.6.353).
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Yes, i’m sure - Among other things, makes it so that poisoning a weapon doesnt have an awkward “are you sure” popup for every single time you want to poison
TrueHud or any other hud that allows you to see enemy stamina and magicka, making picking elements to starve enemies of their energy a viable strategy without changing a thing
Elden parry (+ stuff to make it work on the latest version) - Might not mesh too well with skyrim’s combat, but damn if it isn’t just fun to stagger enemies
