Zatasha

I don't think I've played a purely unmodded Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind. I have always found all the community's favorite bugfixes first, at the very least. Unofficial Patches and Immersion mods are the first on my priority list, like Take Notes listed above. I don't add frill like altered house mods until later, and don't add things like Brehanin's Better Vampires unless I already know the vanilla system will bore me. Generally, play the game and get a feel for what you don't like. Do you like HAVING to explore in order to find what you need, or do you have moods where not having a compass would piss you off? Of course that directs the flavor more toward Morrowind, but it's still ncie sometimes. With so many mods having easy to use mcm menus or other configuration, it is super easy to have a different flavor, but not completely alter the theme or taste of Skyrim. That said, I recently did a STEP install using all their recommended bug fixes and most of their other recommended visual mods. It was a really quick, easy path to getting the more usable, pretty Skyrim that I generally expect when I boot it up these days. My list of necessities changes each time I do a new install, but this time, it is this: SkyUISkseMod OrganizerRaceMenu (my icon is a pink khajiit, I don't think this needs much explanation.)Skyrim Flora Overhaul (with a couple texture overwrites, but still. I've been using Vurt's stuff since Morrowind, don't miss out on this.)FootprintsPoint The WayA water mod. I used to use only WATER, but this play through I'm using Realistic Water 2.This playthrough I am using several community-beloved mods, like The Paarthurnax Dilemma and Run For Your Lives. I also picked up this grouping of [x] for good guys, because really my current character wouldn't go along with several of the Daedric quests.I always use Khajiit Speak but if you're not playing an Elsweyr native raised on Ta'agra it probably won't interest you terribly much.I like Achieve That. It's kinda cute and fun and you can just opt not to use their reward/glory system if you feel it is unbalancing or Too Cheap.I highly recommend Frostfall and a needs mod (I use Realistic Needs And Diseases) if you find running around in a blizzard and eating 50 potatoes in the middle of a fight but never at any other time a little too silly.I use Sperg. I love Sperg. Sperg is great fun. I did a playthrough without Sperg, but I like Sperg so much that I hardly remember what vanilla perks were like.I also have a bunch of mods for marriage and hearthfire, like the multi-adoption, my home is your home, dudestia's marriage mod, and although it isn't about marriage necessarily, I use AFT as well to manage all my followers (and have up to five of them with me at a time. Because I'm a tiny baby and fightin's Too Hard (jk)) House mods are somewhat included in this section. A lot of house mods can be too free or cheaty for some people, so I don't recommend house mods until you're on the "I'm Just Having Fun With My Load Order" stage of modding Skyrim.This list would be very, very long if I actually listed my favorite mods for you, but that should be a suitable summary. I also use mods for whenever I have a character that has a monstrous aspect, like vampirism or werewolf blood. The more customizable, the better. But as people above said--play through vanilla until you find what makes you bored and unhappy. The point of the game is to make you happy, so use mods to supplement that as you find things that make you unhappy. If pretty skyrim with Automatic Variants and 30 visual plugins makes you happy, go for it. If literally being a dragon makes you happy, go for it. There are zillions of mods out there, surely some of them will fit your tastes. Just make sure you mod SAFELY! Uninstall and install according to directions, and if you are going to uninstall a scripted mod, use the Savetool to clean orphaned scripts from your save. ALWAYS make back ups. Have fun!

I also sorta just did the ones that I really wanted to use, first. That just causes more error if you are planning on distributing it, rather than just keeping it to yourself. So pick out the ones you like best (looks, history of the weapon, nationality, etc) and go ahead and double just those. It could really save loads of time for you.

I hadn't seen any compatibility patches anywhere, and I've been waiting quite a while. Something you can do, if you really want the mods, but don't care to wait for somebody else to do it, is to go through the GECK and find the weapons, then double the damage of each 20th/19th century weapon. It is tedious, as I did it once, then suffered a system crash and lost all my work. If you did that, and then published it.... Pretty sure you'd be flooded with Kudos and marriage proposals. A better way of doing that than doubling the less-than-adequate 20th century damages is looking at similar weapon stats already placed by FWE. Doubling it is just a general rule-- but finding the average for weapons of that type could make them seem less like a sore thumb if doubling isn't the most accurate way of making them up to snuff with FWE damage values. I had attempted this, exactly, and the weapons that I did get around to doing ended up being just as useful, if not moreso than the standard FWE modified weapons. (I also researched the weapons themselves, a bit. Who jams quickly, who has bigger rounds, etc etc.)

If you really want all of the weapons and armor added by FOOK, but also want the amazing gameplay additions made by FWE, you can try hunting down the mods included in FWE. I know that the drug mod used in FWE is available standalone on the nexus, at the least, but you would still miss out on quite a lot of the additions made by FWE. FWE makes the game harder, plays well with other mods (with a patch. I've heard that FOOK has some crash issues and my girlfriend, a FOOK user, agrees with that statement.) I run it with several house mods, Dynamic Weather+Enhanced Weather with all the modules, EVE, MMM, DarnedUI, RR companions mods, and some other bits and bobs. Perk Packs become AMAZINGLY useful when using FWE, as the game gets very difficult on FWE default settings. FWE alternative settings make it a bit easier, but you should always customize the set-up to provide the challenges that you want to see. The wasteland really feels like a wasteland with FWE, but in my short time playing FOOK, myself, it felt mostly like you just got an armory dumped on it with a few other changes. It is all up to you. FOIP and other patch conglomerations should help you patch FWE with a few other big mods, out there. I can pass my modlist to you, should you want, in the topic to give a better idea of what challenges and bonuses each mod gives in light of FWE.