Survival/immersion mods I use atm
Wet & Cold (character visual)
Last Seed or Sunhelm (basic needs)
Wintersun : if you wanna follow one of the many Aedra, Daedric Prince or entities of the TES universe, Sheogorath is as random as you'd expect
Skill of the Wild (note this will remove your character map indicator permanently, compass and sneak indicator are locked behind the campfire "wayfarer" skill tree)
Hunterborn+Hunterborn animation (adds new food recipes, include skinning animals, new alchemy reagents, but also rather tedious with skinning large animals taking an in game day causing thirst hunger and sleep to borderline drop to 0 after one bear)
If you want skinned animal models after skinning I can tell you how (tho gotta test myself first if it works)
Campfire + Frostfall : camping and hypothermia management
No fast travel + SWIFT : remove map based fast travel for a ESO Wayshrine system instead
Immersive encounters + creatures (so travel feels less empty)
Keep it clean + shorter animation patch: you get dirty overtime giving disease resist and speech craft penalties, inns get bathrooms
Season of skyrim : somewhat complicated mod to set up (Need to do LoD generation) but allow as it says to have all 4 seasons even if winter vs the rest is way more noticeable I personally have issue to see the difference between non winter seasons but could be me botching something during the process
GROWL+Moonlight tale mini + Sacrosant : vampire and Werewolf overhaul, Moonlight tale mini allow for 3 fancy WW models (one being a female model) and multiple fur colors that you can swap at any moment in MCM but I disable its other features to use GROWL for the game play part
Fluffwork : fluffy animals pelts, has patches for many things including werewolf
NPC focused mod
Project ja-Kha'jay : Appearence overhaul of khajits (a lot of variation compared to vanilla where they're nearly all look alike) + their race's unique quirk of physical appearance (some are very tall, some smaller, some nearly human looking but that's for unique NPC moslty)
Complete NPC overhaul Argonian or Children of the Hist + Bigger Argonian tail or Male-Female Bigger(er) Argonian Tails : tail mod is because they seriously don't fit body proportion in vanilla + its physics enabled
Children of the Pariah - An Orc NPC Overhaul : name says it
More NSFW based
Quest related (quite large mods)
Legacy of the Dragonborn (LotD) + LotD curator (latter is a QoL telling you what you have displayed or carry on you already) (Warning new game mandatory) : open up a museum with a high elf, be send to gather powerfull artifacts to display or use for youself.
With quests and more as you fill up the museum (without telling more yes you can save that character if you attack his killer first like you do in Markarth) fully voiced and S tier quality to be honest
Beyond the Reach (one of the most known early DLC sized mod) : this one is told be DARK as its author made it while undergoing depression, thin of it as the worst out of people with a few bright carrier of hope
Other Beyond type of mod : there are other such as Bruma and one based in blackmarsh being wip
Triology of Vicn's mods (Vigilant (moslty voiced) + Glemoril (still wip) + Unslaad (unvoiced sadly or cringy AI voice) played in this particular order) this is a dark lore based mod referring to the end of time when the Kalpa ends, while its VERY lore based it feels off sometime
Darkend : a souls like mod, no quest so to speak, explore and uncover the story told through book, journal and the environment : warning enemies are nearly all lvl 75 there
Clockwork city : a detective mod featuring intrigue, murder and a lot of time traveling, this mod won an award for its writing and even become its own game latter to tell about its quality
Unreleased mod to look foward too
Oddysey of the Dragonborn (by the creator of LotD, still a year or two before its released) will act as epilogue to the Dragonborn's story after Alduin : facing the Thalmor and send you all over Tamriel for epic adventures with your fellow museum and archaeologist members
Apostasy : lore friendly end of time (Kalpa's end) inspired mod from what I've understood