Skyrim SE Mods: Recommendations Requested

[Evanescalon]

Good Evening Community,

 

I have recently purchased a new Alienware 17 R5 laptop. Like so many other topics and threads of a similar likeness, I am looking for advice on the best mods to use, as well as their load order.

 

I have attempted to do some research myself when my first set of mods caused a constant white out, an issue that continued to grow worse as I progressed through the game. I have to admit however, I do not have the time to sink into learning how to fix this with how many hours my Career requires of my time.

 

Which brings me to this posting; I am looking for any help that our community would be willing to give so that I can enjoy the game with the time I have off.

 

With Optimistic Anticipation,

Evanescalon

Computer Loadout

Alienware 17 R5

Processor: 8th Generation Intel® Core i9-8950HK @ 2.90GHz (6-Core, 12MB Cache, Overclocking up to 5.0GHz)

Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 OC with 8GB GDDR5X

Installed RAM: 32GB 2x16GB DDR4-2666MHz

Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64bit English

[HadToRegister]

The best recommendation is to go to the Nexus SKyrim SE Page and Click on MODS-------> TOP FILES and go from there.

[zeknapain]

Meshes and Textures :
Noble Skyrim HD 2k (for everything)
Static Mesh Improvement mod (for a ton of stuff)
Amidianborn Book of silence from Old Skyrim page (use them on SE they work fine)
Ruins clutter improved
Rustic Clothing, Rustic armor and weapons,Rustic windows etc. All Gamwich's textures are fantastic
High poly project (just wow) load after smim of course
Real snow HD or Fluffy snow (turn of the Vanilla snow shader in the launch menu or the ini file)
Red rock HD or Majestic Mountains (majestic may cause issues with snow)
Ethereal clouds
Ballyache's creature and animal pack
Book covers Skyrim (must have)
LeanWolf's better shaped weapons (must have)
For skins either skysights males or tempered males, and for females unp mod with mature skin mod, or cbbe
(these cover almost everything and you can continue to search yourself I suggest the authors luxor8071,Gamwich,FrankFamily,HalkHogan,Mathy79,Pfusher,
Cabal'sCult,ClearenceClarence(CC),Katzuan

Weapons and armor :
Immersive Armors
Immersive weapons
Jaysus Swords (pm me)
Billyro's sword pack (or sth like that)
ClipsyMoon's weapons pack (or sth like that)
Cloaks of Skyrim

Cities and towns expansion :
Everything from Arthmoor (seriously he is the best)
Jk's Skyrim All in one (has compatibility with Arthmoor's)
Immersive College of Winterhold (must have)

Lighting and Weather :
Enhanced lights and fx (must have) (do not install exterior lights when it asks you just the main and the enhancer)
A weather mod of your choice they are all very unique. I suggest you look at Obsidian Weathers, Mythical Ages or Aequinoctium (my favorites) (don't even bother with vivid)
If your System can take it use an enb also but that's a whole other talk

Trees and Grass :
Enhanced vanilla trees (large lush custom trees with vurts foliage 3 and snow pines in the installer options)
or Skyrim flora overhaul Trees only (this is lighter and also covers a lot of plants)
Veydosebrom grasses (must have)
Mountain Flower by mari
Photorealistic Ivy

Water :
Realistic Water two (must have)
Water HD by luxor8071 and
White water HD by the same (these 2 should be loaded after RW2)

Patches and fixes :

Unofficial Skyrim SE patch by Arthmoor
SSE engine fixes
T's Skyrim True Skyrim

Combat :
Smilodon or Wildcat (both from the same author)
Enhanced blood textures (the lite version because the other one has sooo many issues and may ctd your game a lot)
Apocalypse magic
Shout

Perks :
Ordinator perks (needs a lot of patching with other mods)

Player Homes :
These are a matter of preference but I recommend checking out
Aemer's refuge
Rayek's end

Enjoy!

Edited December 11, 2018 by zeknapain

[Pallentibus]

Try this guide.

[Evanescalon]

@Zeknapain Thank you for the list; I appreciate your time with the post, and the mods given. Everything that I read seems to be on par with most of your mods on the list. I like that you gave specifics on the mods with options, most people who advised in other posts did not take the time to do that. It turns out one wrong options can destroy an entire mod build, who knew? (Everyone, with the exception of myself apparently)

 

@Pallentibus The guide is phenomenal. It seems to cover just about every topic, and will more than likely take me over a week of free time to trawl though. I especially like how he explains load order. With my previous mod builds, that was a serious pain point. It also seems to cover everything, while the other topics I found only covered bits and pieces, or incomplete explanations of the WHY they used certain things as opposed to others. Thank you for the post.

[zeknapain]

No problem mate happy to help :)
One final suggestion is to not use Nexus Mod Manager because of how it handles files. it places them directly in your game folder and a lot of times can't handle certain instalation paths causing long-term headaches.
I recommend Vortex wich is fantastic for new and old users or Mod organizer for the more serious modder :)