New player looking for advice on which mods to install

[slimt]

Hi there, forgive me if this is a little brief, I typed a whole essay before, but when I clicked the Hyperlink option, I was unable to close the popup window afterwards, and lost everything I had typed! Argh!

 

I have just installed the Legendary Edition from Steam and have also installed the free high res texture pack.

 

I respect the modding community for any PC game and after playing Silent Hunter 3 am aware of how they can take a game to a whole new level. There are so many mods available for this game it is very daunting for a brand new player like myself! I was wondering if kind people could give me lists of 'must have' mods for this game to help me get started. I did a google on this and there is a web page 'The Comprehensive List of Must Have Skyrim Mods - 2014'. Is this a good start or is it missing some mods and is there some to avoid on that page? Looking for anything that will improve gameplay, visuals, immersion etc. Not interested in comic or funny mods which will break immersion. Also keen to avoid mods which will cause frequent crashes of the game.

 

Any advice much appreciated! Thanks!

Edited April 24, 2014 by slimt

[camaro_69_327]

STEP....That's a link to the actual Guide. I am using Step and after the CORE and then Extended STEP i had around 100 mods. Leaving me 155 mods i could add on top. I am now currently done adding mods and am under 200 mods. the game is rock stable and Gorgeous. Step is also about staying true to the Vanilla game.

 

Skyrim GEMS A place to see what is available, and do some compassion shopping so to speak...lol

[LoneWolfEburg]

3dnpc, also known as Interesting NPCs is the best mod when it comes to adding three-dimensional NPC's, followers and quests, though some of the latter have rather arcane pre-requisites as a result of the mod's development cycle.

[kleinstaff]

my advice read and watch the youtube videos on how to install some essential mods

once done the mods that are in my opinion a must have are

 

SKSE

SKUI

Unofficual patch all 4 of them

player headtracking

better vampires

one one of the companion mods UFO EFF or AFT choose one

 

anything else is personal choice

but download them and test them out first and be sure to read the instructions and description first

 

your load order is very important so use BOSS aswell it is mandatory

you can have a top of the line game machine that can handle 100 + mods but if your load order isn't correct or installed incompatible mods your game will not work

[brandan93]

Hi mate welcome to the skyrim nexus modding community I've been here for just over a year now there all flawless members who will jump at the opportunity to help out

 

To start I'd recommend regardless of pc specs

 

Skse : required for many mods , speeds up skyrim , and removes ( over time ) built up orphan scripts ( scripts from mods that have been installed and then later removed leaving scripts trying to do there stuff but can't and clogs up the script engine) it also incorporates the shesons memory patch which makes skyrim worlds more stable.

 

Stable grids to load : basically adjusts how the game loads objects in the distance ( I think) adds a lot of stability

 

Enboost one of the best performance mods on the nexus even if you do t use enb this mod is amazing this along with the memory patch will stop skyrim crashing just download and install the enblocal then install the corresponding graphics card your computer uses . Then do a search on how to configure your enblocal file I have spent 2 weeks everyday after work toying with it and believe me it was worth it

 

All the unofficial patches : fixes a lot of bugs pretty much

 

Next mod is Sky UI I used to be against this mod for some reason or another but I made the jump one day and never looked back. Absolutely flawless even with a controller also adds the mcm menu

 

Next up is Immersive Armours :

great mod for adding content the file is HUGE 1 whole gigabyte if my memory serves correct

One of the most popular mods on the nexus so there's tons of compatibility and the author hothtrooper 44 and ecks has made this mod completely seamless. You could not tell it was even a mod and there's an armour for every play style adds over 50 sets and hundreds of extras.

 

Convenient Horses :

Convenient horses is a must have for people who use horses. For a start follower horses and your followers that ride with you, horse whistle ( omg I love being able to whistle for your horse) talking on horse back is also very cool, auto harvesting so no need to hop off your horse to pick a flower.

Lots for horse armours and the list goes . Some people think the mod is to big and try's to do to much me personally I love it.

 

Frostfall: possibly the biggest immersion mod you can download adds an In game dynamic body temperature that's dependant on the weather if your in a cold area it's only natural you will get cold? The mod adds tents different was to stay warm eg warm clothes like fur, campfires, bedrolls

Makes keeping firewood essential and adds a whole new layer of gameplay to skyrim after playing with this mod on feels silly when you can treck around in the ice wasteland with nothing but your undies

 

Realistic needs and diseases : another immersion mod this ones focuses on eating drinking and sleeping also makes diseases more dangerous and lets you get drunk with visuals. Being able to buy a flask from a vendor and fill it up at any body of water is great and having to boil it to avoid disease and sickness is great. Again great for immersion but if your into that stuff deffinatly give this one a go.

 

For followers the most popular mod on the nexus is UFO (ultimate follower overhaul) but being a fellow ex UFO user I would recommend amazing follower tweaks

My problem with UFO is the mod tries to do to much as the same way convenient horses tries but with UFO a lot of the features I never used and the incompatibilities are horrible a lot of custom followers will have one incompatibility or another where AFT has no incompatibilties and has a lot of features like being able to choose how your followers level and how they fight whether it be primarily magic, dual sworder or archer you can do it and you can make your followers vampires and werewolves.

 

Trade and Barter : this an economic mod that is very customizable I personally use it to make money much more valuable cause in vanilla skyrim by level 30 you have more money than you know what to do with to me that's boring with trade and barter you can adjust it to make the returns for selling things a lot less it also has options to increase the amount of gold vendors carry and other misc adjustments like if your the thane of a hold you get slightly better prices and your weapon is drawn the prices go up.

 

For monsters and leveling I would suggest

High level enemies and Skyrim Immersive creatures but the author of skyrim immersive creatures has created a merged mod that contains 2 in 1 ( I think ). Skyrim immersive creatures adds dozens and dozens of new very lore friendly creatures that do t seem out of place but are very cool and unique and subtle at the same time. Personally it does for some reason seem to cause some instability at times I think that's due to the added spawns but most people don't have problems.

High level enemies is great for high level gameplay pretty much adds new renamed and releved enemies eg at level 60 the highest level troll you encounter is level 30( give or take ) with high level enemies you'll encounter mature trolls ( level 40) and elder trolls (level 60) same with many different enemies there are many new drainer and bandits also.

 

Alternate Start : I hate the start of skyrim sitting in a carriage waiting for 3 long minutes before you even get to name your character then spending 15 minutes before you actually get to do what elder scrolls does best give you freedom. With alternate start you get to pick where you want to start eg a patron at a bar in solitude, a refugee from morrowind in the gray quarter, an assassin in the dark brother hood there's heaps helps if your frequently starting a new character

 

SOME OTHER SMALLER MODS

dead body collision fix : makes body movable after they die it's weird in vanilla you can walk through them.

Wearable lanterns : makes Dungeon crawling a lot easier with sword and sheild or anydual wielding attaches lantern to your belt.

Realistic ragdolls and forces: I hated shooting someone with a bow and arrow and seeing them fly 10 feet this mod fixes that stops unrealistic physics happening with bodies only.

Equipping overhaul: this is a great shows all weapons you have hotkeyed on your body eg bow on back and sword on belt at the same time. Make sure to get version 3.13. 4.25 is riddled with bugs.

Harvest overhaul : fixes that s#*! where you harvest a bunch of blue mountain flowers and you get one this will fix that getting more based on the size of the bush you are picking.

Wet and cold : another huge immersion mod add things like looking up while it rains makes your screen blurry blinds you in a blizzard makes citizens where appropriate clothing if it's raining or snowing adds cold breathes when it's cold steam radiates of your if your go in warm water , your body drips water when wet and collects snow when cd this is a great one

Foot prints : adds footprints on the ground ( why this wasn't in vanilla is beyond me ) this mod is flawless

Immersive HUD: clears up your HUD hides health magic stamina when not needed ( outside combat and when fully healed) hotkey to hide compass can remove enemy health bars and crosshair does a lot to increase immersion

A matter of time : adds a clock to the HUD works In tandem with I his to hide when the compass is hid very customizable

Achieve that: adds acheivments to the game ( hundreds ) with rewards for incentive eg after spending 100 days in skyrin you develop a 15% resistant to the cold.

Immersive weapons is a great mod that adds tons of weapons but to me is very immersion breaking the mod is very inconsistent meaning the quality of the weapons vary a lot and the sort of weapons can be very different from the lore

I would personally recommend JAYSUS SWORDS all lore friendly and all of the highest quality they all look better than vanilla game

Winter is coming cloaks : adds big wooly cloaks that would keep the citizens of skyrim warm

 

IF YOU HAVE A BEEFY RIG ?

 

Remember this doesn't matter how beefy your rig is high resolution texted everywhere will have it's hits especially once you have added spawns and lots of scripts running an enb it a adds up

 

I have a 3770k cpu at 4.2 ghz

a gtx Titan

16 gb of ram

 

And I can still bring my game to a crawl be sensible never download anything over 2k

All landscapes 1024

Any outdoor except rocks 1024

Rocks and mountains 2048

Weapons and armour can be 2048

Interiors 2048

 

 

Textures download and install in this order

 

Bethesda high res optimized

Realistic smoke and embers

Ultimate hd fire effects

Static mesh Improvment

Sky falls and sky mills

Skyrim hd 2k textures

Vivid all in one

Hd misc

A quality world map

Amidianborn caves and mines(great one love amidian)

Chimneys for skyrim

Hd enhanced terrain

Enhanced distant terrain

High quality lods

Hybrids plants and herbs retexture

Lanterns of skyrim

Real ice

Realistic mushrooms

Pure waters

Vivid landscapes dungeons and ruins

Vivid landscapes tundra moss

No snow under roofs

Belly ache animal and creature pack

Birds and flocks

More realistic hair

Superior lore friendly hair hd

Xce

Amidian book of silence ( best textures on the nexus in my opinion)

Weapon retexture project

Closer quiver and longer arrows

Animated clutter

Animated weapon enchants

Enhanced blood textures

Improved weapon impact effects

Rainbows

No spinning death animation

360 walk run plus

Realistic boat bobbing

Skyrim performance plus

 

AUDIO OVERHAUL SKYRIM

The best audio mod on the nexus redoes most the audio but is also very inconpatible with a lot of audio mods

Amidian imperial forts

Amidian farmhouse

Amidian landscapes

Vivid landscapes rocking stones and mountains

Skyrim flora overhaul regular edition

Advanced : tamriel reloaded this requires a bit more effort download the file

Extract rar using winrar

Find extracted files

Go into textures then landscapes and delete every folder except grass and roads

Then go into meshes then landscapes and again delete everything except grass and roads

Go back and select all the files eg textures meshes tamriel reloaded ESP right click and click add to archive name your archive then click ok

Right click your new archive and select cut

Paste where your mods are stored

If you use nexus mod manager it will be c: program files / black tree gaming/nexus mod manager /games/etc

If you use mod organiser it will be mod organiser /mods then select paste

The Activate it in the mod manager of choice

Then install

Immersive roads to override tamriel reloaded textures

Finally install grass on steroids natural edition : also add under grass in your skyrim ini file

IMinGrassSize = 90

 

ENB

My enb I use is a slightly tweaked

Natural Lighting and Atmospherics

With depth of field turned off

Reflections turned off

And post object enabled set to true

 

Also add Ewi65's ini and prefs :

great mod perfect balance of quality without much sacrifice in performance

 

Also add

 

These 3 mods add at times lots of spawns which can make skyrim run hard

 

Populated towns and cities :half version

makes skyrim a little more dense and lively adding hunters citizens labourers etc

 

Inconsequential npcs

Does the same as Populated towns and villages but adds less npcs but have much more of a roll in skyrim and is also very lore friendly there are for example orphans of children of fallen soldiers beggars and prostitutes (no porn tho)

 

Immersive Patrols

 

This mod is a favourite of mine it adds a lot of battles and randomness to the at time boring landscape in skyrim from civil war battles to bandit gangs to werewolves this mod adds a lot when you don't fast travel

 

Anything else after that is entirely up to you. these mods are a handful of what I'm running right now the texture segment was loosely based off the step guide which is a good place also to get skyrim looking nice

 

If you are having trouble feel free to pm me I'm more than happy to help as you can probably tell

 

Again welcome and good luck

[brandan93]

Also yes I forgot make sure to use boss and wyre bash for your bashed patch ( makes having lots of armour ,weapon, item mods play nicely together)

[slimt]

Hi again

 

Thankyou so much for your considerate replies. My PC specs are:

 

i5-3570K Intel CPU (currently not overclocked but I am happy to try and overclock if that will help)

8GB RAM

Nvidia GTX770 4GB Graphics card

 

@Camaro & Brandon. Is it possible for you to print out a listing of all of your mods through your mod utility? If so I would be grateful if you could supply them to me somehow, that would give me a really good start.

 

@Brandon. Will defo PM you mate thanks for the offer. I love the sound of the Frostfall mod, anything that will add extra layers of immersion and challenge like that I am very interested in.

[kleinstaff]

Hi again

 

Thankyou so much for your considerate replies. My PC specs are:

 

i5-3570K Intel CPU (currently not overclocked but I am happy to try and overclock if that will help)

8GB RAM

Nvidia GTX770 4GB Graphics card

 

@Camaro & Brandon. Is it possible for you to print out a listing of all of your mods through your mod utility? If so I would be grateful if you could supply them to me somehow, that would give me a really good start.

 

@Brandon. Will defo PM you mate thanks for the offer. I love the sound of the Frostfall mod, anything that will add extra layers of immersion and challenge like that I am very interested in.

you do well with that machine

but like several people said use the enb boost and ctd memory baétch it is ibe if rgise lids aklist mandatory

skse ,skui and the unofficial patcjes are a must all the rest is personal choice

you can turn skyrim into a high fantasy adventure or turn it into a grim gothic horror story

or turn it into a asian manga adventure or into a story of complete debauchery that makes even sanguine blush

the choice is yours

 

but no matter what mods or how many if you do not get your load order right it will not work so use BOSS and do read the mods description make sure the mods you want to use are compatible with other mods you are using

[TaeRai]

I think it really depends on your personal tastes. I highly recommend the Unoffical patches for all the DLCs as a first step.

Then... Play the game. If you go through and see something, like, I don't know, Breezehome and think to yourself, "Gee, Breezehome sucks. I should make it better..." Then go find a mod for it! :) As you play and try mods, you'll find ones that you might really like and other's you bloody hate.

Everyone's tastes are different and thus, what one person might see as essential you could see as garbage. Regardless, I hope your modding experience goes well for you!

[slimt]

Hi

 

I am looking to keep the original 'High Fantasy' Skyrim theme, and am not looking to change the core theme of the game (for want of a better word) on my first playthrough. Rather, I am looking to enrich the vanilla Skyrim world. I am mainly interested in any mods which will:

 

- Improve sound and graphics.

- Fix bugs or glitches.

- Improve quests (which I read can be overly simplified in the vanilla game)

- Enrich the world e.g. by enhancing cities, enemies, spells, quests etc.

- Add extra immersion layers giving the player 'more to think about' (e.g. the Frostfall mod) sounds interesting, it seems only correct that I should have to worry about travelling in very cold places).

- Increasing difficulty (e.g. Is the game too easy out of the box?)

 

I hope this gives people a better understanding and makes it easier to recommend any mods after that explanation. :smile:

Edited April 25, 2014 by slimt