I’ve relapsed too, I’m back to modding Skyrim again. It’s been a while for me, but after talking about it on lemmy a few days ago I got the itch. I’m currently running an evil mage build. Used Alternate Start to start with Windstad Manor, which actually comes fully furnished aside from the add-ons. It’s in the swamp which I think adds to the vibe of my character. I’m also messing around with the Ordinator Perk Overhaul and Apocalypse Magic mods, along with a bunch of graphics mods and smaller gameplay mods. I’m going to explore Bruma again soon too, haven’t played with that mod in several years.
I really need to get into modding Skyrim at some point. After playing and modding Morrowind and Oblivion heavily back in the day I just never got into it with Skyrim. I never played Skyrim much at all frankly. I was too invested in playing and modding New Vegas at the time. And then later on I found other games, and recently over the past years it’s been STALKER Anomaly filling the craving of “heavily moddable sandbox game”.
You should really give it a shot. It’s the most modded game on Nexus by a very large margin. To give you an idea, there are 18.7b downloads and 766.5k mods on Nexus. Skyrim Special Edition is in first place with 9.2b/118.9k. Fallout 4 is number two with 1.9b/68.4k, and Oldrim (Skyrim non-special edition) is at third with 1.9b/72.5k. SSE alone is just under half of all downloads, and combine the two Skyrim versions and you’re at nearly 60% of all mod downloads being for Skyrim. Pretty crazy.
Do you have any large and complete modpacks to recommend? I don’t know that I have it in me to learn the lay of the land from scratch.
Also, have you used the Mantella mod any? It’s actually a similar mod that got me back into STALKER Anomaly. Really fun immersive use of AI for roleplaying and forming attachment to your companions.
I’ve never used a modpack before, I actually like doing the research and finding which mods to use. In general I actually quite like the look of vanilla Skyrim so my graphics mods tend to be pretty tame.
Here’s some mods I like to use, with links to their Nexus page. A lot of these have prerequisite mods so you’ll need them too obviously, but I didn’t bother writing them out here. The mod pages will link to their required mods.
Absolutely necessary mods for every playthrough, even vanilla:
Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE64) - not really necessary if you’re just running the mods in this section as all it does is allow certain mods to work, but I always keep it enabled anyway since it doesn’t hurt at all.
SkyUI - if you’re using mouse and keyboard. The original UI is great if you’re using a controller but it’s definitely not designed with M+K in mind. SkyUI makes playing Skyrim with M+K so much nicer. I’m sure it also works well with controller too.
Mods I always use:
A Quality World Map - makes the map much nicer to look at. There’s a few versions, pick your favourite. I like Vivid with Stone Roads personally.
Alternate Start - definitely necessary to me, lets you choose how to start the game. It’s the main reason I’m able to have so many playthroughs of the game.
Immersive Patrols - adds patrols for different factions, and they can interact with each other too.
Obscur’s College of Winterhold - vastly improves the college, which is by far the most underdeveloped major area of the game in my opinion.
Lightened Skyrim - removes some objects you can’t actually see (rocks under the ground and stuff) which makes the game run a fair bit smoother without a noticeable difference in the landscape.
Magic Sneak Attacks - using magic while sneaking counts as sneak attacks. Not sure why this isn’t in the base game but it’s getting used on all future magic runs for me now.
Remember Lockpick Angle - when lockpicking, if your lockpick breaks, the new one starts in the position where the previous one broke, making it much less annoying.
Instantly Skip Dialogue - lets you skip unskippable dialogue. Most dialogue is skippable but some of the annoying monologues aren’t. This fixes that.
Beyond Reach - content expansion. Haven’t used yet, so I’m not sure what’s involved with it. I’ve got it loaded on my current character but I haven’t explored there. It’s supposed to be really good though.
Beyond Skyrim - Bruma - adds Bruma from Cyrodiil to the map. It’s so cool to see what the city (and surrounding area) looks like post-Oblivion crisis. It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, I’m really looking forward to going back again. It’s probably my favourite content mod.
Thanks, I’ll definitely save this for some day in the future!
I also tend to enjoy the process of setting up your own custom modlist, but after being deep in that rabbit hole before with Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout: New Vegas, Baldur’s Gate 2 and STALKER (all 4 games + Anomaly) I don’t know if I have it in me to learn the ins and outs of another mod landscape 😅
Glad I could help! Hopefully in a future Weekly Recommendations Thread I’ll see you saying you’re modding Skyrim and I can ask how it’s going.
I get what you mean, Skyrim can especially be a bit daunting to mod with just how massive the modding community is. Like I mentioned earlier, nearly 60% of all mod downloads are for Skyrim, it’s crazy.
I’m sure it will happen at some point as I’ve mentally had it on my to-do list for quite some time. But… it might take a year or two. My backlog is extensive.
I get that. I’ve got a pretty large backlog too, and have been avoiding the larger games in it. I’ve actually never finished a Fallout game other than 4 and I’d love to do a deep dive into the series, especially New Vegas and 3, but with a newborn I don’t have a lot of free time these days, so when I do get some time to myself it’s mostly replaying Skyrim, Oblivion, Elden Ring, Sekiro, or Dark Souls 1 or 3. Those games have been a majority of my playtime for years, and will probably be all I get to now for a while. I always play the Batman Arkham games and now the Spider-Man games too around Christmas/New Years ish, not sure if I’ll get to playing them all this year but I’ll probably finish Arkham Asylum and maybe City, then mess around in Spider-Man 2 for a bit before moving on. I also play Forza with my dad around Christmas too. That’s probably all the games I’ll get around to playing over the next six months or so. It would be nice to get into some new games though, I have a lot to get through.
I’ve relapsed too, I’m back to modding Skyrim again. It’s been a while for me, but after talking about it on lemmy a few days ago I got the itch. I’m currently running an evil mage build. Used Alternate Start to start with Windstad Manor, which actually comes fully furnished aside from the add-ons. It’s in the swamp which I think adds to the vibe of my character. I’m also messing around with the Ordinator Perk Overhaul and Apocalypse Magic mods, along with a bunch of graphics mods and smaller gameplay mods. I’m going to explore Bruma again soon too, haven’t played with that mod in several years.
I really need to get into modding Skyrim at some point. After playing and modding Morrowind and Oblivion heavily back in the day I just never got into it with Skyrim. I never played Skyrim much at all frankly. I was too invested in playing and modding New Vegas at the time. And then later on I found other games, and recently over the past years it’s been STALKER Anomaly filling the craving of “heavily moddable sandbox game”.
You should really give it a shot. It’s the most modded game on Nexus by a very large margin. To give you an idea, there are 18.7b downloads and 766.5k mods on Nexus. Skyrim Special Edition is in first place with 9.2b/118.9k. Fallout 4 is number two with 1.9b/68.4k, and Oldrim (Skyrim non-special edition) is at third with 1.9b/72.5k. SSE alone is just under half of all downloads, and combine the two Skyrim versions and you’re at nearly 60% of all mod downloads being for Skyrim. Pretty crazy.
Do you have any large and complete modpacks to recommend? I don’t know that I have it in me to learn the lay of the land from scratch.
Also, have you used the Mantella mod any? It’s actually a similar mod that got me back into STALKER Anomaly. Really fun immersive use of AI for roleplaying and forming attachment to your companions.
I’ve never used a modpack before, I actually like doing the research and finding which mods to use. In general I actually quite like the look of vanilla Skyrim so my graphics mods tend to be pretty tame.
Here’s some mods I like to use, with links to their Nexus page. A lot of these have prerequisite mods so you’ll need them too obviously, but I didn’t bother writing them out here. The mod pages will link to their required mods.
Absolutely necessary mods for every playthrough, even vanilla:
Skyrim Special Edition Unofficial Patch - fixes many, many bugs and exploits in the game.
Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE64) - not really necessary if you’re just running the mods in this section as all it does is allow certain mods to work, but I always keep it enabled anyway since it doesn’t hurt at all.
SkyUI - if you’re using mouse and keyboard. The original UI is great if you’re using a controller but it’s definitely not designed with M+K in mind. SkyUI makes playing Skyrim with M+K so much nicer. I’m sure it also works well with controller too.
Mods I always use:
A Quality World Map - makes the map much nicer to look at. There’s a few versions, pick your favourite. I like Vivid with Stone Roads personally.
Realistic Water Two - self explanatory. Makes water look way better.
Alternate Start - definitely necessary to me, lets you choose how to start the game. It’s the main reason I’m able to have so many playthroughs of the game.
Immersive Patrols - adds patrols for different factions, and they can interact with each other too.
Cutting Room Floor - adds cut content to the game.
Blended Roads - fixes weird visual problems with some roads.
Footprints - adds footprints when walking in the snow and ash.
Open Cities - makes cities part of the overworld so there’s no load screens when entering/exiting, similar to Morrowind.
JK’s Skyrim - improves cities.
Some mods I’m using right now:
Obscur’s College of Winterhold - vastly improves the college, which is by far the most underdeveloped major area of the game in my opinion.
Lightened Skyrim - removes some objects you can’t actually see (rocks under the ground and stuff) which makes the game run a fair bit smoother without a noticeable difference in the landscape.
Magic Sneak Attacks - using magic while sneaking counts as sneak attacks. Not sure why this isn’t in the base game but it’s getting used on all future magic runs for me now.
Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim - adds a ton of new spells to the game, great for a mage playthrough.
Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim - overhauls the perk trees. Works really well with Apocalypse.
Remember Lockpick Angle - when lockpicking, if your lockpick breaks, the new one starts in the position where the previous one broke, making it much less annoying.
Instantly Skip Dialogue - lets you skip unskippable dialogue. Most dialogue is skippable but some of the annoying monologues aren’t. This fixes that.
Beyond Reach - content expansion. Haven’t used yet, so I’m not sure what’s involved with it. I’ve got it loaded on my current character but I haven’t explored there. It’s supposed to be really good though.
Beyond Skyrim - Bruma - adds Bruma from Cyrodiil to the map. It’s so cool to see what the city (and surrounding area) looks like post-Oblivion crisis. It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, I’m really looking forward to going back again. It’s probably my favourite content mod.
Medieval Markets - vastly improves the markets in the cities.
Glorious Doors of Skyrim - new door designs. They look way better than vanilla to me.
I’d recommend getting an ENB, as well as Lux. I don’t usually, since I like the vanilla look, but ENB+Lux definitely looks objectively better.
Thanks, I’ll definitely save this for some day in the future!
I also tend to enjoy the process of setting up your own custom modlist, but after being deep in that rabbit hole before with Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout: New Vegas, Baldur’s Gate 2 and STALKER (all 4 games + Anomaly) I don’t know if I have it in me to learn the ins and outs of another mod landscape 😅
Glad I could help! Hopefully in a future Weekly Recommendations Thread I’ll see you saying you’re modding Skyrim and I can ask how it’s going.
I get what you mean, Skyrim can especially be a bit daunting to mod with just how massive the modding community is. Like I mentioned earlier, nearly 60% of all mod downloads are for Skyrim, it’s crazy.
I’m sure it will happen at some point as I’ve mentally had it on my to-do list for quite some time. But… it might take a year or two. My backlog is extensive.
I get that. I’ve got a pretty large backlog too, and have been avoiding the larger games in it. I’ve actually never finished a Fallout game other than 4 and I’d love to do a deep dive into the series, especially New Vegas and 3, but with a newborn I don’t have a lot of free time these days, so when I do get some time to myself it’s mostly replaying Skyrim, Oblivion, Elden Ring, Sekiro, or Dark Souls 1 or 3. Those games have been a majority of my playtime for years, and will probably be all I get to now for a while. I always play the Batman Arkham games and now the Spider-Man games too around Christmas/New Years ish, not sure if I’ll get to playing them all this year but I’ll probably finish Arkham Asylum and maybe City, then mess around in Spider-Man 2 for a bit before moving on. I also play Forza with my dad around Christmas too. That’s probably all the games I’ll get around to playing over the next six months or so. It would be nice to get into some new games though, I have a lot to get through.