Minor update 3.02 - couple of new mods added. For the changelog of the update 3.0 itself, read below ↓↓↓↓↓

Minor update 3.01 - added a few more mods, corrected some links, improved couple of descriptions/instructions. For the changelog of the update 3.0 itself, read below ↓↓↓↓↓

Version: 3.0 for Skyrim Special Edition, at September 2021.

- Over 700 new mods in total for you to pick

- Outdated mods or those not needed as better alternatives were added, were removed

- Furtherly improved navigation and sections look. Huge amount of mods that previously were grouped into a humongous chunks of lists, were sorted and divided into subsections, as well as new expandable subsections added for easier navigation and not that "scary" look of some of them. For instance, "The Rest" section in graphics part is now visually 70% shorter while having more mods in total, and you will see a noticeable difference when navigating in it. Same applies to other sections.

- Over 300 typos fixed with their presence in the guide now being zero to absolutely minimal. Huge thanks to Lossrec and Daralima (and everyone else from the community) for helping with the typos for SE guide <3

- Addition to low-end section (graphics part) for even more FPS gain

- New module, "Average Dovah", as well as adjustments/additions to existing modules (gameplay part)

- Modules updated with the mods added in the update where it made sense

- Lots of new merging marks, for both new and existing mods - around 380 in total now!

Future updates:

- Atm - fixes of typos and broken links, if present

- New modules

- More merging marks

- To report the issues with the guide (typos, broken links etc) - please drop a message in #suggestions_to_sinitar room in our Discord server.

- Before you'll start modding. Disable Steam overlay, Afterburner overlay, add Skyrim to your antivirus/firewall "white list". Disable all possible overlays, "boosters", "tuners" programs you may be using in general. All of them can and most likely will screw up your modded game and/or it's many settings.
- Also, make sure to disable autosaves in SkyrimPrefs.ini (set bSaveOnPause, bSaveOnTravel, bSaveOnWait and bSaveOnRest to 0).
- Do not use any CC (Creation Club) content. All CC mods have better (and free) alternatives available on the modding stage. I won't be able to provide troubleshooting suppor if CC mods are used.
- Follow the guide slowly without a rush. If it's written here to limit your fps using enblocal fps limiter - do it, and don't use and third-party software for it, and so on. You got the idea. Also, never have Skyrim installed in Program Files. If you have it there - reinstall it on another drive, or at the same drive, but out of Program Files folder. Lastly, it's heavily recommended to disable game autoupdates in Steam.

1) Download and install mod manager. Choose between Nexus Mod Manager (use the .exe file), Mod Organizer 2 or Kortex Mod Manager . All 3 of them are great mod managers, each with something own to benefit player. I personally use NMM. What's the difference? NMM is "simple yet effective". MO is a mod manager packed with tons of cool features, mod manager on steroids if we can say so. Kortex is something in between, more similar to MO, but has own pros and cons over it (look here for comparison). Almost all mods can (and should) be installed via mod manager. Do not install mods manually. The guide contains notices regarding some exceptional cases when you'll need to install some mod/part of mod manually, but for the 99.9% of cases - always use mod manager. You may also find these NMM tutorial, MO2 tutorial and Kortex info page useful. Extra note: If using MO2, make double, triple sure you have watched the tutorial linked and know how to use it properly before asking for troubleshooting support :)

IMPORTANT NOTE #1:
Kortex mod manager was tested by myself for working properly - I liked it, just don't personally prefer it over MO2 or NMM. Also, it's not quite the most popluar mod manager, so it lacks usage tutorials, and you'll need to learn how to use/troubleshoot it yourself. Due to the same reason, I won't be able to provide Kortex troubleshooting support in Discord - but once again, it's a great mod manager and you should be absolutely feel free to try it.
IMPORTANT NOTE #2: Nexus Mods team is currently developing new mod manager called Vortex. It's looking pretty fancy visually, but sadly, it's still very glitchy and pretty dysfunctional. I won't be able to provide any troubleshooting support if you're using it as it's not suitable for modding games like TES or FO. My advice atm is, if really want to, track it and test it by modding some other games with much simplier modding stages. Do not use Vortex to mod Skyrim. Once again, DO NOT USE VORTEX TO MOD SKYRIM. Yes, this note still applies for 2021. If it will be fine one day, I'll let you folks know.

2) Download and install SKSE. If you allready have it - great. If no - install it. It's obligatory. SKSE is [essential]. Stability mods are also working through it, as well as vast majority of amazing gameplay mods. Consider it a basic invisible evolution element of Skyrim.
If you're on SE (not updated to AE yet) - download the SE version as marked here. If you're on AE, download the AE version as marked here. For Skyrim VR, get the VR version. Download the archive somewhere, unpack it. From the folder, get the .dll, .exe files and \Data folder, and place them to your Skyrim SE/AE folder, as showed here. MO users should archive the \Data folder and install it as any other mod trough MO (you can do the same in NMM as well if you wanna). From now on, launch your game only via SKSE (skse64_loader.exe), not the game regular launcher.

A general note about SKSE-based mods and what to do with them.

Situation with the SE ==> AE update is different from those SE updates in past. Why so? Thing is, the problem with past SE updates was basically pretty simple and related only to the game version update itself, which was fixed by Address Library mod (further in this section). For AE, huge amount of SKSE functions themselves were changed or deleted, so for most of SKSE based mods to fully and properly work in AE, most of SKSE mods code will need to be rewritten by its author, on some scale - from just a few lines to possibly a complete rewriting from scratch, depends on the mod. That's why AE modding stage will need more time to recover then it was usually taking for SE updates in past.
But hopefully, we'll get there soon. Remember that alternatively, you can simply mod LE for your current run, as it doesn't have this issue to begin with - and for the another run, some time will pass, and AE modding stage will be most likely recovered by then.
What does this mean for those modding AE now and wanting to use SKSE-based mods? Simply look on every such mod page Files tab - if the mod is already updated for AE, there most likely will be a separate version of it, with an indication it's for AE - so, you'll need to install the AE version of the mod. Similarly, if you're on SE (not updated to AE yet) - when downloading an SKSE-based mod, make sure you're downloading the SE and not AE version of it. That's it!

3) Download and install SkyUI. As mod itself, SkyUI is basically a "PCfication" of ugly vanilla Skyrim interface. On practice, it's also required by most of well-known mods in addition to SKSE. Also install this fix for it and this.
Optionally (but very recommended as it's just looks so much more alive and beautiful) install animated icons mod for it. Also optionally, install this "wider" addon for MCM look. Also install iHUD.

4) Download and install LOOT. Get the .exe version and just run it.
LOOT is a must-have tool if you're planning to have many mods. It's very easy to install and use.
Its most basic and important function is mod sorting. Many mods should be loaded in strict load order to work properly together. "This mod should be loaded before that mod, but after that", and so on. LOOT makes miracles! You can automatically sort most of your mods properly by just clicking a button twice. Sometimes (it happens rarely, so you probably won't have to think about it) some mods have direct instructions about how they should be loaded, in this case it's also easy to sort them manually using it. Also, LOOT shows you all you need to know about your installed mods - errors, missing records etc. In many cases, if something is not right - it will let you know and it will advise you. Actually, you'll not need to read and learn more than this to use it, but if something is unclear or you want to look at very in-depth guide, check this awesome Gopher's video. Use LOOT sorting each time after you've installed a few mods.

5) Install Address Library for SKSE Plugins. Note: make sure to get a proper mod version, depending on whether your game version is SE or AE.
This mod is a partial solution to endless game update issues in SE (which breaks dll SKSE mods) - it allows for such mods to keep working properly not depending on the game version. Solution is partial because it doesn't work automatically - each dll SKSE mod must be updated by its author to depend on this one, and as not all authors are aware about this or just active, this solution won't be universal - but it clearly will help you with many mods which are usually broken after every update.

6) Install SSE Engine Fixes. Note: mods has TWO parts - first main file, the "Part 1" you can install with mod manager. Second, "Part 2", you should download manually, unpack and place all 3 .dll files to your Skyrim root folder (where Skyrim exe is).

7) Install Bug Fixes SSE. Fixes some SE engine bugs. In its configuration file (BugFixesSSE.config.txt), disable the ability condition bug fix (set both FixAbilityConditionBug.Enabled and FixAbilityConditionBug.ForceAccurateCheck to false instead of true). Make sure to also install .NET Script Framework which is required for Bug Fixes to work.

8) Install SSEEdit. It's an awesome tool for cleaning your mods, making changes to mod records (like balancing various values up to your taste, deleting conflicting and/or unneeded objects and so on) and more.
Mods may contain "dirty" records and some other issues, and when you have hundreds of mods, that could be a problem and cause crashes. Clean all mods that have dirty records (until it's directly written by mod author to not do that for some reason) and all Skyrim's DLCs (which have [hundreds] of dirty records. Yeah - Betheshda didn't even bother to do this for the game "remaster"). Don't be afraid of it, it's not as hard to use as it may look. Check these awesome video tutorials about it. Also there is a lot of info and videos on its Nexus page.
Note #1: Make double sure to clean all base game master files (Update.esm and all 3 DLC .esm plugins) - otherwise you'll experience random crashes.
Note #2: MO2 users can try to download and use zEdit as an alternative. zEdit is like a successor to xEdit - but please take into account though that it's still a WIP (work in progress) project. If you're a newbie modder - better just stick to xEdit (SSEEdit) now as it's absolutely fine. zEdit may provide better functionality than xEdit, but it's still not fully stable and there are not as many video tutorials for its usage as for xEdit. It doesn't mean it's bad - quite the opposite, but until it's officially and fully released, I won't be able to provide troubleshooting support for it - so use it at your own wish. There's a basic documentary and description of it here.

9) Install Wrye Bash. Scroll down and download the .exe version and install it. The link now is temporary, as it's the newest release that fixes some bugs - so track the WB page itself from time to time to see if the newer version is uploaded at the mod page.
Amazing and essential tool to achieve maximum possible compatibility between all your mods.
We will use it later in our journey, so just grab it for now. I'll explain it later in the guide :)
Note: if you'll be noticing you're clearly going above 255 active .esp plugins limit somewhere still in process of adding more and more mods - refer to step #1 in "actions to be made in the end" section at the deep bottom of the guide.

10) Download Merge Plugins (if you're on NMM) or zEdit (if you're on MO2). Yes, Merge Plugins is hosted in Skyrim LE sections and yes, it does work with SE absolutely fine :) You will need this if you'll make really heavy load order and reach the 255 plugins (.esp) limit. This amazing tool can technically allows you to have almost endless amounts of mods installed, so you will be limited only by your PC specs and mods themselves (meaning no using broken/dangerous mods and not overloading your game with script-heavy mods). It easily merges plugins into one .esp file, drastically decreasing the total amount of plugins and allowing you to install more and more mods. For A to Z simple tutorial about using it, watch this amazing video and follow the steps.
Note #1: But what about .esl'fying the mods? It's allegedly a cool feature, so maybe we don't need to merge mods at all anymore? There is a bit more about that - indeed, marking plugins as .esl is a new alternative way of not reaching the 255 plugins limit, but: 1) not all the same mods you can merge can be esl'fied, so sooner or later, you'll eventually need to merge mods anyway 2) esl/ified plugins have some specific bugs 3) Some other mods, especially mods with dynamic patchers (like ASIS, Bashed Patch etc) simply don't recognize .esl plugins [AT ALL], meanining that if you'll, let's say, have 200 esl plugins, and then build a Bashed Patch (which is essential for any medium-to-heavy modded game), all the changes/additions, whatever those plugins are doing, will be not present in your game with utmost chance, making them meaningless to begin with. The sooner you'll learn how to merge mods (guide provides assistance with this), the better it will be for you - moreover, as soon as you'll get the basics, you'll see there's nothing to fear at all :3 If for some of the mods/patches you're using there's no alternative asides of the esl version of its plugin - install it, the solution to this will is mentioned in the end of the guide. Note #2: MO2 users, once again, can (and should) use zMerge which is inbuilt into zEdit, instead of Merge Plugins. You can also watch this tutorial video.
Note #3: if you'll be noticing you're clearly going above 255 active .esp plugins limit ever after making Bashed Patch somewhere still in process of adding more and more mods - refer to step #2 in "actions to be made in the end" section at the deep bottom of the guide.

11) Install Alternate Start - Live Another Life (+ optional addons here and here ==NEW==), Skyrim Unbound Reborn, RASR - Random Alternate Start Reborn or Realm of Lorkhan - Freeform Alternate Start. Why you need this? These mods provide wide amount of alternative starts to the game for those who do not wish to go through the lengthy intro sequence at Helgen. The thing is that vanilla start (scene in Helgen) is VERY heavy-scripted. And when you will install let's say, 200+ mods and start a new game, your Skyrim will be very heavy overloaded. And there's very high chance that your game will crash (because the Papyrus, Skyrim's script engine, was [not] updated in SE and it's same clunky and limited), even if the game itself is absolutely stable. And now these mods save the day! You can just skip this heavy-scripted scene and start anywhere you like. Besides, they have a really wide amount of alternative start, great for roleplay.
Which one to use, what is the difference? Long story short, ASLAL provides more "roleplay-wise" starts - you will appear in a certain cell, depending on your start option choice, and also has plenty of additional start options addons. Unbound will spawn you randomly, so less "immersive" start, but it allows you highly adjustable character customization (gear, spells etc) which ASLAL doesn't, and the most important - it allows you to play as NON-Dragonborn (but you can "become" it in MCM anytime), which is really a great option. RASR is somewhat like a mix of these two, a pretty underrated gem and Realm of Lorkhan is a really fresh and unique alternate start mod, which may look note quite "lore-friendly" to some players, but it's really well-designed and give you very interesting starting choices for your character class and even curses - negative attributes to balance class bonuses (if you want so, all these features are entirely optional - my only 2 cents about it is that some class bonuses are still somewhat too strong even with curses, so you may want to adjust them in SSEEdit, which is very simple). I personally recommend to use Skyrim Unbound or Realm of Lorkhan, but it's totally up to you. Lastly, Realm of Lorkhan has on pretty immersion-breaking (for some players) thing - crystals you appear from after starting the game are not going anywhere and are just scattared across Skyrim. To remove them, use this patch. Also, make sure to install this fix ==NEW==.

12) Get the Cathedral Assets Optimizer This step is optional. Easy-to-use tool to convert meshes from LE to SE (and backwards as well). Skyrim SE/AE has less coverage in terms of remodels/retextures, and while you can mostly use textures from LE into SE (and vice versa) without issues, the meshes you need to convert. This tool will help you.

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations, you can take a look at some of these mods:

Female overhauls.

Now just a minute of your attention to our best bae, Serana (and her family):

Ok, let's continue.

Male overhauls.

Mods covering both guys and gals.

Children overhauls.

Lore-Based Loading Screens

Main menu visual/audio replacers:

Take into account that you shouldn't just install all the mods in this section. Moreover, statistics shows that one almost never finish all those dozens of quest mods installed in a single walkthrough. It's recommended to get up to 4-6 big quest/new land mods and a few smaller ones.
Now, first of all, a few mods which are not directly adding new quests but rather affect quest-related aspects of gameplay in general, QOL for questing to say so:

Quest NPCs Run

Now, to the quest and new land mods themselves. Massive to medium sized mods - where each one can give you from a few up to dosens hours of walkthrough/exploration.

Medium to small quest and new lands mods - where a mod will give you up from one to couple hours of walkthrough/exploration.

First a few simple mods that expands/improves some vanilla dungeons:

Now, plenty of great mods that adds new dungeons of different type. First let's see some dungeon "packs" that add several or more dungeons:

Now, single-dungeon mods, but with a great quality - challenging bossfights, breathtaking design or sometimes even everything together:

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations, you can take a look at some of the best mods released in 2018 and in general:

Zerofrost Mythical Armors and Dragon

Tribunal Robes and Masks

Guards Armor Replacer

Heavy Legion

Divine and Daedric Cloaks

addon for NPCs

Colovian Noble Clothes

Imperial Fine Clothes

Arcane Conjurer Robes

Stormcloak Battle Armor Replacer

Bosmer Armor Pack

Talos Housecarl Armor Pack

Kynreeve Armor

Zzjay's Wardrobe

Hedge Mage Armor

Wayfarer's Coat

DreamBurrows Regal Huntsman Armor

Sovereign's Slayer Armor

Perfect Legionnaire - Imperial Armor Reforged

Barbarian Steel Armor

Armor of Yngol

Nordic Ranger Outfit

DeserterX profile

Immersive Faction and Character Attire

Sithis Armour

Classic Morrowind Morag Tong armor replacer

Rough Leather Armor

Imperial Dragonscale Armor

Stendarr Paladin Armor Set

Archmage Khadgar's Robes

Ashlander Apparel - CBBE BodySlide (with Physics)

SKYBLIVION - master Necromancer Robes ==NEW==

Mavari Armor ==NEW==

Armor of Intrigue ==NEW==

Imperial Guard Centurion Armor ==NEW==

Battle Mage Armour ==NEW==

Knightranger Archer Armor ==NEW==

Scale Nord Armor ==NEW==

D-Armory ==NEW==

Boreal Hunter Armor ==NEW==

Nemesis Armor Set ==NEW==

Nibenean Armors and Outfit ==NEW==

Colovian Leather Armor and Outfit ==NEW==

Knight of Molag Bal - Remastered ==NEW==

SirRumple profile ==NEW==

Daedric Light Armor ==NEW==

Dremora Armor ==NEW==

Arcane Mage Armor ==NEW==

Regal Paladin Armor ==NEW==

Morag Tong Grandmaster Armor ==NEW==

Ash Pilgrim's Garments ==NEW==

Toughened Traveler Outfit ==NEW==

Grandmaster Wolven Armor and Swords ==NEW==

Eastern Dwemer Armour ==NEW==

King's Guard Armor ==NEW==

zzjay and Grace Darkling Hoods With Hairs ==NEW==

SC - Sun Prince ==NEW==

Letho's Pants ==NEW==

Skyblivion - 3E Cyrodiilic Steel Armor

Kozakowy clothes port

Ryder's Dragonfly Robes

Daedric Assassin Armor

Raven witch armor

Magnus Robe

Glowing ebony armor by Mari

Imperial Centurion Battle Dress

Blood Operative Armor - Male and Female Armor

Dark Brotherhood Mail - Standalone

Vampire Lord Dragon Priest Armour

Telvanni Spellsword Armor

Shields Of Glory ==NEW==

Legendary Alpha Shields ==NEW==

Nicos Raven Shield ==NEW==

Finally A Steel Plate Shield

Frostkeeper

Thalmor Armory

Dwemer Fairies ENB Particles ==NEW==

Craftable Horse Barding

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations, you can take a look at some of the best mods released in 2018 and in general:

First of all, let's look on weapon packs - mods that contain many or at least several weapons inside them:

InsanitySorrow Weapons Pack

BillyRo Ultimate Swords Anthology

Zikoru Swords Collection

Katana Crafting

Kthonia's Unique Weapon Pack - Dragonborn Weapons

Bowgasm ==NEW==

Rafael's Weapon Pack ==NEW==

Daedric Light Weapons ==NEW==

Nice! Now standalone weapon mods that add a single weapon, or a couple of them:

Eimar's Edge

The Huntsman

Lorkhan Moonlight Greatsword Reborn

Billyro profile

Crazylion profile

FunkyGandalfCat profile

Tartaross profile

tamu75 Witcher's Steel Sword

Occiglacies - Ancient Falmer Blade

The Munich

The Devil's Tooth

Lux and Noctis Katanas

Rory's Halberd

Blades of Chaos ==NEW==

Leviathan Axe - Dwemer Artifacts ==NEW==

Staff of Bloodstained Chalice ==NEW==

Fudou Myouou Katana and Tachi ==NEW==

Serpent Dagger ==NEW==

Magic Blade ==NEW==

Zireael - Ciri's High Quality Sword ==NEW==

Alduwuin profile ==NEW==

Nicoroshi profile ==NEW==

Kanjs profile ==NEW==

Vanguard's Claymore

Dragon Tamer's Blade - Hiccup's Fire Sword

Dawnbreaker Requiem

Dragonbone Crossbow

Mehrune's Razor Reborn

Dragon Slayer - Berserk

Ayleid Crystal Saber

Valiant Nord Bow

Sword of the First Ember

CROSS_Crucible

Mjollnir

Dwarven Aetherial Bow

Between Zim's overhaul, Reliquary of Myth and True Artifacts of Skyrim - make sure to choose only one of them. Other mods in this subsection you can add on top if you wanna, but this may require some manual work in xEdit to make them fully compatible.

True Artifacts of Skyrim

Nice, let's continue to smaller mods which are mostly adding brand new artifacts and item sets!

Noldor Content Pack

Resplendent Armor and Greatsword

Imperial Dragonknight Armory

Stormcloak Hero Armory

Soul Collector

Nordic Crusader Armour

Forsworn Envoy and Staff of Hag's Wrath Set

Arch-Knight Judicator Armor and Greatsword

Rogue Blade Armor

Daedric Kynval Armor And Sword ==NEW==

Aetherium Armor and Weapons Compilation

Daedric Armor and Weapon Improvement

Vikings Weaponry

Staff of Sheogorath (Fully Voiced)

RonnieMagnum profile

Nordic Wanderer Equipment

iD - DovahBling Bracelets ==NEW==

First of all, a few great mods to give you immensely better control over your followers in all aspects and make your life with followers much more comfortable"

Now let's get to the followers themselves - the most interesting, funny, beautiful, charismatic and badass companions you can have:

Creature follower mods - new creature followers or improved vanilla beast followers:

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations, you can take a look at some of the best mods released in 2018:

Vanilla player homes and estates overhauls.

New ones - large size - castles, mansions, estates.

New ones - medium to small size - homes, small cottages and hideouts.

To test if your game overloaded with scripts or not, is very easy.When you are like starting to feel you have plenty of gameplay mods already, and not sure if your game can handle one more script-heavy survival mod, or two more combat mods etc - don't worry. Install them.

Then, launch your game and make NEW SAVE. While you'll be testing the game, save ONLY on that slot.

Now, go and force game to script-heavy situations. Go and fight bandits in some polulated fort, visit few big cities, run here and there. Visit locations with stormy weathers, and ofc, make actions that are depending on the mod you have just installed (like, build the camp if it's Campfire, or change your clothings several times etc).

Game running fine? No stutters in combat or actions, no crashes? (Exactly stutters - short-time game freezes, not the regular fps drops). Great! You're good to go. Stutters/crashes appear in combat, populated cities, during certain scripted actions? Nope. This mod is overloading your game - skip it.

And don't forget to delete the "test" save after.

Creature mods:

Skyrim Immersive Creatures Huge. Amazing. Immersive. Mod adds dozens of creatures to Skyrim. New monsters, factions battles, bosses and hundreds of encounters. All these things can be easily configured in the MCM. A must-have mod. Also grab the "Fix for Ogre Club" file and either 2k (recommended) or 4k textures pack, as the default mod textures are 1k only. You can see a brief showcase of it here. Finally, use some extra better textures/models from here and here. SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators Best animal overhaul mod even existed. Immersive and lore-friendly. It gives animals amazingly improved AI - so giving you amazing new experience. Haven’t asked yourself why wolf packs never hunted the mammoth? Or why mammoth attack don’t at least knockback you or why animals are never scared by dragons? Think no more. Install and have fun :) You can see a brief showcase of it here.16 Also make sure to grab all needed patches from SkyTEST Integration Project page and install this HD textures addon. Animallica - Skyrim Wildlife Overhaul I have no idea how I missed adding this mod in the initial 2.0 release. Silly me. That's a great mod to add plenty of new animals, both predators and non-aggressive ones, to your game. Don't forget to grab a SkyTEST patch for it at integration project files page ;) Deadly Dragons Adds 14 new dragons and unique skills to them. Adds amazing dragon ‘assault’ system. Via MCM you can configure dragons stats - health, damage and much more. Must-have one. Also look here for Splendor patch. Diverse Dragons Collection Amazing mod that adds 28 new beautiful dragons to game, with 7 ranks for each dragon type, 16 new breath attacks and 19 new abilities. Greatly configurable MCM. Compatible with all dragon mods. My personal recommendation - it’s a great addition for other dragons mods. You can see a brief showcase of it here. Chaos Dragons Mod adds 45 new unique dragons to game. It’s similar to Deadly Dragons/DDC, but much less lore-friendly. It’s compatible with dragon AI mods, BUT not compatible with Deadly Dragons so you’ll need to choose. Splendor - Dragon Variants Simply a must-have mod, no matter which your "dragon" mod setup is. Drastically increases the visual diversity of enemy dragons, while using only vanilla resources, ending with 784 possible combinations. Fully compatible with other dragon mods Beasts of Tamriel Awesome mod that adds dozens of new creatures, both monsters and critters - some are not much lore-friendly, but every creature in the mod can be disabled through MCM. If you’re looking for even more expansion of your creatures variety, try it! Also install this patch to prevent several possible crashes from appearing, plus there's also INEED patch available. Diverse Werewolves Collection Adds variety to enemy werewolf encounters. There are now 25 werewolves and 13 werebears, each leveled at 11 possible ranks for a total of 418 new enemies. More Werewolves If you want to meet more furry enemies. Immersive Horses Amazing and very immersive mod that offers a big improvement to vanilla horses system. Many new horses types, improved and balanced horses abilities, dozens of management options and (finally!) mounted spell casting. It's also more lightweight and stable than its predecessor, "Convenient Horses". Also install script fixes ==NEW== for it. Simple Horse While being much more stable then Convenient Horses, Immersive Horses is still pretty script-heavy - so if that matters for your mod list and you still want better horses functionality, but even more lightweight one - pick this neat little mod from author of Ultimate Combat and TK Dodge. Call Your Horse ==NEW== A simple and lightweight way to call your horse to your location. One With Nature - Dynamic Animals and Creatures This awesome little mod gives you ability to configure how different types of animals will act related to character - allied, cowardly, friendly of defensive. MihailMods Creatures Mihail is currently one of the most active mod authors at Skyrim modding stage. His productivity simply amazes. He's focused on making standalone creature mods - both lore-friendly and creatures ported from other games (Souls series, Witcher etc). He currently has almost 150!! creature mods (while only around 70 are ported to SE, but still a lot), and ofc while not all creatures will fit your personal taste - the huge variety will always have something personally for you. Also grab this audio fix for his "Old Gods of the Hunt" mod if using it, and optionally this. GRAHL - The Ice Troll (Bloodmoon Creature Restoration Project) Daedric Beasts - Wendigos and Howlers Bogmort - Mud Monsters of Morthal Swamp The Falkreath Hauntings Cannibal Draugr on Solstheim (Bloodmoon Creature Restoration Project) The Blood Horker (Bloodmoon Creature Restoration Project) Several great standalone creature mods - either restoring cut creatures, or adding new creatures from TES lore. From the author of DDC and Splendor. Otters ==NEW== Adds otters and wolf-otters into Skyrim. You can also get a sound addon for them to be more quiet. Skaven of Skyrim SE (Warhammer Fantasy) ==NEW== Adds voiced Skaven to the world of Skyrim via leveled lists. 4thUnknown profile ==NEW== For dozens of standalone mods adding creatures from TES lore to Skyrim gameworld, and on top of that - with a stunning quality models and textures. Diverse Dogs ==NEW== Adds diversity to the dogs of Skyrim, and optionally adds more dogs to farms, cities, and jarl's courts. Wild Herds of Skyrim Adds four wild horse herds to Skyrim. Each herd contains six horses: A lead mare, a stallion, and two mares with foals. Butterflies Unchained Butterflies Unchained makes butterflies and moths behave more like actual animals, rather than basic resource points. They now roam freely to explore the world alongside you. You can a see a showcase of it here. Light Horses of Skyrim Light riding horses in Skyrim now! Correct light horse anatomy and 13 unique fur colors. Diversified Chickens Chick fillet. But diverse. Arvakr This mod makes Arvak look a bit more like a normal horse, gives him better stats and a few new abilities to make him more interesting. PermaFrost A similar mod, but for Frost, from the same author. Nightmere A similar mod, but for Shadowmere, from the same author. Zooming Horses - A Movement and Stamina Overhaul Tired of useless horses that are worse than the apocalypse longstride spell? Want to play a non magic character, but don't want to fast travel? Tired of asthmatic horses that have no stamina? Mod is for you then. Zim's Dremora Improvements This mod has been designed as a balanced, lore-friendly improvement of the Dremora in Skyrim designed to make Dremora difficult opponents that can rival other deadly foes without making them overpowered. Also grab the USSEP patch ==NEW==. Better Fire Wyrms Fire Wyrms are stronger and only attack enemies. Wild Penguins Places some penguins around the northern coast. Improved Fish Adds many new fish to the waters of Skyrim. Both smaller pond fish and bigger fish in the category with salmon. Varied Chickens Adds several breeds/colors of chicken (barred, black, white...) to some places around Skyrim.

Faction mods:

OBIS - Organized Bandits In Skyrim Definitely best bandits mod. It adds amazing variety of bandits (about 2500!! in total), dozens of bandit factions. Bandits are groupped, positioned, have unique skills and improved AI. There are also optional plugins, for example, plugin that will add bandit raids around the towns and villages. My personal recommendation. You can see a brief showcase of it here. Cloaks of Skyrim patch is available separately.
Note: Don't use OBIS and Immersive Patrols together - while being fully stable and great mods themselves, when used together, sooner or later they case a game-breaking bug when random factions start attacking you on sight with no reason. I'm personally using OBIS. OBIS Loot Visually overhauls many of the OBIS bandits and their loot. Also adds a boatload of other content. Improved College Entry - Questline Tweaks Choose your school and more improvements for the College of Winterhold. Fully compatible with Immersive College of Winterhold! College of Winterhold Entry Requirements Adds customizable skill level and Magicka requirements to join the College of Winterhold. Compatible with Immersive College of Winterhold. Better College Application What you answer when applying to the College of Winterhold now actually matters. Compatible with Immersive College of Winterhold. College Days - Winterhold Go to school! Pay exorbitant fees to be mocked. Actually be a master at something magic-related before becoming Arch-Mage. Compatible with Immersive College of Winterhold. Also install this patch. Immersive College NPCs Adds more students and guards to the College of Winterhold. Almost fully compatible with Immersive College of Winterhold - you can use them together, just small cosmetic conflicts will appear rarely. All Thieves Guild Jobs Concurrently Lets you take on all seven types of Thieves Guild jobs at once, instead of only one from Delvin and one from Vex at a time. Less Tedious Thieves Guild Remember that 125 job requirement for the full experience? Well, forget about that now. Thieves Guild Bounty Clearer This mod adds an NPC to the Ragged Flagon who can remove bounties on the player character for a fee. Also grab an improved audio addon for it. Ragged Flagon Shortcut ==NEW== Tired of running through two loading screens to get to the Ragged Flagon? This mod attempts to make it easier to get to Tonilia and the Thieves Guild quest NPCs by adding a manhole in Riften leading directly to the Flagon, and a ladder from there leading back out to Riften. Thieves Guild Requirements The Thieves Guild will now only recruit other thieves. Brynjolf will no longer approach you if you are not a thief, and the Thieves Guild questline will not be activated until the player meets the necessary requirements. You can also choose to set requirements that must be met before progressing along the Thieves Guild questline. A Change in Managment - Seamless Transition of Guild Master to Brynjolf Makes Brynjolf Guild Master of the Thieves Guild seamlessly. Mod includes remastered audio files, edited quest messages and objectives, and ensures all subittles are updated with the new dialog. Thieves' Night On the Town -- Tnott ==NEW== Overhaul for radiant quests from Vex & Delvin: hold selection, targets in ALL holds, job & hold independent crime tracking, concurrent jobs, fixed targets in stock locations. Thieves Guild Vault ==NEW== Adds items to The Thieves Guild Headquarters and the Ragged Flagon each guild level up. Note: Not compatible with Opulent Thieves Guild. Destroy the Thieves Guild ==NEW== Kill the Thieves Guild plaguing Riften and engage in alternative ways to gain the quest exclusive loot. Dark Brotherhood for Good Guys Another amazing mod from the same author. Don't worry, it doesn't transform DB to group of pacifists - but gives you various alternative choices. Dark Brotherhood Reborn - Dawnstar Sanctuary Not every super cool assassin organization wants to live in a filthy dark damp hole in the ground that has no real storage and not enough beds for everybody. It's time for the Sanctuary to become a proper base of operations. A few patches available here . Save The Dark Brotherhood Simple as that! No more scripted deaths of your comrades - their survival now depends on you. Protect your Brothers and Sisters during "Death Incarnate" to reap their use as followers and spouses later. Your Choices Matter - A Dark Brotherhood Expansion ==NEW== This mod extends the Dark Brotherhood questline in many ways and adds an optional alternate ending. The ending you get will depend on the choices you, player, make throughout the story. Completely voiced dialogues. Use this mod or the one above - I'm personally using this one. Destroy the Dark Brotherhood - Enhanced ==NEW== This mod allows the player to take a more politically neutral role in destroying the Dark Brotherhood, while also allowing players the chance to obtain all the unique loot they normally miss out on. Hidden DB Sanctuary Entrances ==NEW== Hides the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary entrances. Penitus Oculatus A quest where you can join the Penitus Oculatus after the vanilla "destroy the dark brotherhood" quest and get all the rewards. The Companions - Earn your stripes Simple mod delaying progress in The Companions questline in order to make the Dragonborn a regular, well-established member before actually becoming part of The Circle or even Harbinger. Improved Companions - Questline Tweaks Actually back out of becoming a werewolf without leaving Skjor and Aela stuck in the Underforge forever, and various other tweaks for the Companions. Note: Mod is still in development so may have some minor bugs. Dawnguard - Hall of Vigilant Requirement A small yet logical tweak that adds an additional requirement for the Dawnguard quest to start: having been inside the Hall of the Vigilant. Keeper Carcette Survives This mod helps provide an explanation as to what happened to Keeper Carcette after the attack on the Hall of the Vigilant. This also helps to make Stendarr's Beacon more aesthetic, functional, and immersive. Lastly, this also adds vigilants to all major cities. Stormcloaks For Good Guys-LESS RACIST A mod from "Good Guys" series author - does exactly how it's named. Open Civil War Expands the civil war by many new battles and sieges. Hunting in Skyrim - A Hunting Guild Mod adds a fully functional hunting guide to the game, and completely overhauls the entire hunting experience. It features realistic animal skinning (like Red Dead Redemption), animal trapping, kill & stat tracking, new skills and abilities, new NPCs and locations, new dungeons, new weapons and more. Become a Bard ==NEW== Mod lets you play all of the instrumental and voiced songs included with the game or choose from dozens of new songs. Adds new radiant quests to expand the options for a bard in Skyrim. An updated version of once already ported LE version of the mod, with restored MCM functionality. Use this mod or the one below. Skyrim's Got Talent - Improve As a Bard ==NEW== Play instruments, get better, NPCs react to your skill dynamically, many new songs, lots of easter eggs, simple implementation. A compact, yet powerful Bard Gameplay Overhaul. Use it or the mod above. Note: make sure to follow the required files instructions on the mod page. Diverse Skyrim Why you never saw even a single orc in imperial legion forces? Or a women? Why hunters were only elves and humans? If you want to change this aspect of the game - not just randomly, but absolutely logical and lore-friendly - get this mod for sure. Adds hundreds of new NPCs with unique appearences to the levled lists for added variety and diversity while staying lore friendly. Also install this fix ==NEW==. Dealing with Daedra ==NEW== New factions with quests, new spells and artifacts. Magic systems offer power for a price to non-mage characters. Witchhunters Guild, School of Julianos, Gatekeepers of Oblivion, Cult of Flesh, Ghost-Sea Smugglers and much more! You can a see a showcase of it here. Silver Hand Armored ==NEW== Mod gives Steel Plate Armor to all the hunters of the Silver Hand so as to turn this faction into a warrior faction rather than a gang of bandits. Reasonable Silver Hand ==NEW== The members of the Silver Hand no longer attack you on sight like common bandits. Instead, you can find out a bit of their story and might even become a honorary member. Outlaws Refuges Inspired by Elder Scrolls Online, adds Outlaws Refuges to major towns and cities. Vigilant Faction Ported from Skyrim LE, mod adds a joinable Vigilant of Stendarr faction to the game, with ranks and radiant quest system. Bandit Facemask Disguise This mod adds new, standalone Facemasks to the game that will be seen on Bandits throughout the land. The player can now join the Bandits and walk among them as an ally by simply equipping a facemask. Sokco's Guild Starter Start your own guild and choose its members, motives, and location.

You can also look on the creature/faction mods I'm personally using in my ultimate mod list, but take into account it was made for LE initially, but you can still reproduce the mod list mostly.

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations and more in-depth review, you can take a look at some of these spell mods in action:

First, let's see some magic-related mods that are improving spellcasting/learning experience in this or that way:

Visual Animated Enchants - VAE A replacer for the visual and animation of the enchantments on weapons to make them more magical and immersive. Also install the fix for it, also choosing needed patches in FOMOD installer, or use the version ==NEW== better tweaked for ENB straight away instead.

Between the next few mods below, choose one:

Spell Learning and Discovery My personal favourite between such mods - lightweight and configurable, it prevents player form learning spells instantly, making player to study them by spending some ingame time. Mod also has other cool features like increased chances to learn spells the more spells you casted, chances of learning about new spell when talking to mages and so on. Compatible with all spell mods out of the box. Spellforge - Engaging and Convenient Spell Acquisition ==NEW== Tired of crowded spell vendors? Want to filter your spell selection by level, school and sub-type (e.g. Fire)? Want to feel like a powerful mage making their own spells in a torrent of arcane flames and unleashed power? Stop eating tomes and instead try out a more immersive, configurable and fun way to expand your spell book. Spell Tutor ==NEW== A relatively freshly released mod for alternative spell learning with own vision - really well feature-packed and greatly configurable. My personal second favourite together with Spell Learning and Discovery. Challenging Spell Learning Pretty original, but simple alternative to previous mods. In addition, compatible with absolutely all spell mods on Nexus. Grimoire - Spell Mastery Another simple and interesting implementation of spell learning. Spell mastery takes time. With Grimoire one must always have a spell tome on hand to cast its spell until mastery is achieved.

Nice!

Scrollwriting in Skyrim Scrolls are no longer a non-renewable resource. You can now craft your own scrolls, like any self-respecting mage who dabbles in enchanting should be able to. Spell Tome Sorting Changes spell tomes names to "Spell Tome - [School] [Rank] [Spell Name]". Only changes spell tomes so you can buy them more easily, no spell names are changed. Atronach Friendly Fire ==NEW== Friendly conjured atronachs will now heal if you hit them with a spell of the same element. Vision ==NEW== Spiritual successor to Predator Vision, this mod is a new take on the way perception powers work in Skyrim.

Mods introducing dedicated spellsword mechanics. Remember that Ordinator has own, balanced and fun spellsword mechanics implemented in two skill trees - these mods may and most likely will make you OP on some extent - but at the same time, they have own unique features which you may like. Choose only one mod between these.

Spellsword Sword or magic, why to choose? Install this mod and be able to launch prepared spells with weapon swings. Note: Ordinator has several spellsword perks and one of the perks is making almost literally the same, so if you're running Ordinator - you don't need this one for playing as spellsword character. The Flamebringer AIO - Immersive Spellsword Use as much as many different Spells and functions without changing spells. Combine close-combat and the wonders of magic into one very fluid combat style with unique combinations of visuals. Spellfury - Hit Stuff to Cast Spells One more approach to spellsword gameplay with pretty nonregular design. Turns magicka into a rage/fury like mechanic (no regeneration instead you gain magicka on weapon hits). Also, tries to improve the character progression of spell-sword style characters. Complete with a MCM to tweak and/or disable many features.

Slice, smash, bang!

Awakened Magicka Simple but effective magic overhaul. Note: You don't need need if you're planning to use big perk overhauls like Ordinator or Path of Sorcery. No Force for Illusion Magic Stop Illusion spells from throwing things everywhere. Conjuration Hand FX ==NEW== Changes the in-hand spell effects from the default purple swirl to custom colors for each of the summonable creatures. This was made in order to remove confusion from not knowing what conjuration spell is in your hand at the moment. At a glance you can now see if you have a Flame Atronach or a Frost Atronach in your hand! Dragonhide Fixed ==NEW== Fixes several major bugs with this master tier vanilla spell.

Now, the spell mods themselves:

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim The biggest and greatest spells mod in history. While adding 155 new spells it’s still really well balanced and immersive. Absolutely any player will find something useful here - just for damage or for the immersive roleplay. It’s also very compatible with other magic/perk mods. You may use or not use another mods with it but you just must use this one :) One of my two most favourite spellpacks for Skyrim. Don't foget to grab Ordinator/Vokrii patch depending on which one you're using. Note: Enai released a sort of reworked version of it lately here ==NEW==. It will be a good use to you if you like Apocalypse but think it's tad too much in general. You can also grab a texture improvement patch, conjuration sounds improvement patch ==NEW== for it and some other patches ==NEW==. Patches/Addons (for Apocalypse, not Odin): Categorized Favorite Menu for Mages - Apocalypse Apocalypse - Ocato's Recital - Auto Dispel Balance Adjustments for Apocalypse Elemental Staffs for Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim Cha-poo! Arcanum - A New Age of Magic This pretty new spell pack is simply and literally breathtaking. It combines both new amazing visuals with new amazing mechanics of the spells, resulting in absolutely next-level spell mod. Currently mod has Destruction, Restoration, Illusion and Conjuration (read note about it further) spells available. You can also watch a showcase of it here. Note: Latest version of the mod is improperly packed and carries lots of bugs, so until mod author fixes that and while a partial bufixing patch exists (it doesn't fix all the issues), it's strongly advised to use latest mod version [before] Conjuration spells were added. Elemental Destruction Magic Awesome mod that adds 30 new spells related with different element. Another mod feature is that different types of enemies are weaker/stronger to different elements. This can bring additional immersion to your mage playthrough. Optional simplified addon is available, as well as Fulcimentum patch . Forgotten Magic Redone Mod adds 39 new spells. Key feature is it also adds 10 improvements for each of them, so 390 improvements in total. Also install a fix for it. Shadow Spell Package This mod adds "shadow" themed destruction/illusion spells and perks to Skyrim, looking and acting awesome. These spells are based around drains, damage-over-time and debuff effects. Great mod for ‘dark’ mage playthrough. Dawnguard Arsenal Amazing mod for everyone who like Dawnguard and paladin/vampire hunter playthrough style. Mod adds new armors and weapons, new sun spells and also improves existing dawnguard sun spells. Spectraverse - Magic of the Magna-Ge Mod adds interesting questline during which you can obtain 42 new destruction spells. Questline is based on TES lore, it has 5 voiced NPCs, 6 locations and 6 quests. Dwemertech - Magic of the Dwarves Similar to previous mod, but this one is related with dwemer lore. - 42 new Alteration, Destruction and Restoration spells. - 14 bionic upgrades - Interesting short quesline with voiced NPCs. Triumvirate - Mage Archetypes A latest work of the greatest Skyrim mod author, Enai Siaion. Triumvirate adds support for five mage archetypes (druid, shadow mage, warlock, cleric, shaman) in the form of 15 balanced spells each, which are available immersively through vendors. Some spells may be not quite balanced, but all are useful for roleplaying purposes. Tonal Architect ==NEW== A high quality Dwemer themed collection of spells from Enai Siaion, themed around devices, tinkering and automatons. It is similar in style to the Triumvirate classes. Skysunder Metamagics Awesome mod that adds unique spell mechanics and improvements. Spell charging, magic impacts, blinks, spell sharing, improved spell explosions and a few more features. Wild Magic Surge This mod aims to make magic more volatile and dangerous by re-creating the Wild Magic system from D&D in Skyrim. Aetherial Tomes ==NEW== Spell mod that adds plenty (around of 100) of new spells that fill missing roles and alters a few vanilla spells for balance. Warp Magic - Lore Of Ruin Spells (Warhammer Fantasy) ==NEW== Adds 14 Standalone Warp-Magic spells to the game. Astral Magic Ancient spells tapping into the flow of Aetherius, drawing starlight to strike opponents. Epic Restoration Adds 32 non-violent spells to the Restoration school. Aura A mod with simple yet interesting mechanic. Adds toggleable aura spells, which provide constant effects for yourself and/or nearby allies/enemies. All auras reduce your maximum magicka by a specific amount while active (upkeep cost). Secret of the Blood Armory Discover the Secret of the Blood Armory and obtain unimaginable power. A blood magic spell mod. Lertkrush profile For various small spell packs - mostly they are pretty disbalanced or plainly overpowered, so usually their usage is just for fun/screenies. The Miracle of Flight Adds three modes of flying transportation for skilled mages: a flying carpet, Hethoth's Floating Disk and a dwemer conveyance. Actual flying was not something game intended so it can kinda ruin the balance/exploration immersion, but mod itself is really well made and can be great for screenshots and roleplay. Shalidor's Migrant Portals Adds a new dungeon to the Labyrinth which becomes available to explore once you've completed Shalidor's Maze. Inside is a small chamber with a new boss battle and a reward of a collection of portal stones allowing for instantaneous travel across large distances. The Elder Scrolls - Tomebound Expand your magical arsenal with spells, staves, scrolls and more straight from the Elder Scrolls lore. Adept - Magic of Ash Reworks ash magic in Skyrim, adding 7 new spells, new weapons, a new armor set, and a small player home. Dragon Age Spells Redux Pretty unique mod that adds 21 new spells from Dragons Age games with powerful effects and beautiful visuals. But the main feature is that spells now have cooldown, similar to Dragon Age series. So keep that in mind when installing the mod :) Ace Blood Magic Unique mod that adds a real blood magic spells to your game - this spells cost your HEALTH to cast. Basically, an anti-vampire spell mod. Poison Spells Poison fan? Mod adds around 15 new poison spells and poison shout. Ordinator compatibility patch is available separately, look in comments thread. Kagrenac's Wisps This mod adds craftable dwemer light sources.Their origin is unknown, though some say that wisps were invented by legendary dwemer magecrafter Kagrenac.They will light your path in dark dungeons and caves. Wisps are equippable, so you can assign them to hotkey. Wards Functionalities Extended A magic ward overhaul. Customize magnitude, cost, charge rate and absorption rate. Block melee weapons with your ward. Break your enemy's ward with your weapons. Protect yourself from arrows. Make shouts pass through wards. Play with new expert and master level wards. Meteorokinesis Have you ever wanted to control the weather, or turn the sky something beautiful like an aurora? Then this is the mod for you. Meteorokinesis adds 11 new weather altering spells that allow to you to change the weather to whatever you desire the most. Note: Similar spell is available in Apocalypse mod, but this one is slightly more "wide". Voidgate - A Simple Town Portal ==NEW== Create a portal and simply walk into it to find yourself in town for your merchant/crafting/whatever business. Then use the same portal spell to return to the wilds or dungeon you came from. A Guiding Light - Clairvoyance Reimagined Replaces Clairvoyance with a more convenient and immersive spell to help you find your way. Mage Armor Rebalanced Pretty underrated and very useful mod for people who're playing with hardcore or semi-hardcore gameplay mod setups. Energy Shield Add a Mana Shield spell which can be toggled (ON/OFF) with visual effect. Ion Cannon Obviously not lore-friendly, but well...an orbital ion cannon blast for Skyrim, because...why not? It looks badass, that's no doubts.

Enchantments, shouts & minor related mods:

Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim Amazing mod from the author of Apocalypse spell package. It adds 120 new enchantments to the game, accessible through thousands of new enchanted items that are integrated seamlessly into loot lists and inventories. It also fixes many bugs related to vanilla enchantments. An essential mod to increase your enchanting and overall game experience. Patches/Addons: Weapons Armor Clothing and Clutter Fixes (WACCF) patch> ==NEW== Night Eye enchantment fix ==NEW== Loot and Degradation patch VAE Effects for Summermyst Cooki-goo! Assassin Enchantments This mod replaces the enchantment on the dark brotherhood headgear with an entirely new enchantment: Snipe, which is now actually fully useful for any assassin type. Also, the dark brotherhood gear is now also disenchantable. Robes Enchantments Remade ==NEW== Changes the enchantments on the college robes to a more potent, interesting, but also balanced enchantment. Dragonborn Ascendant Awesome and criminally underrated mod. Its main feature is to boost to shouts cooldown per dragon killed (3% per 5 dragons, capped at 30%) Mod also balances and improves many shouts values and scales battle shouts damage each 10 levels. Don't use together with previous mod, choose one or another. Thunderchild - Epic Shouts and Immersion This mod adds 29 new shouts and new abilities to improve your shouts. It also adds 24 new variants of graybeards robes, some new weapons and items and good configurable MCM. If you were bored with vanilla shouts variety - this mod is definitely for you. Kyne's Peace Reinvigorated A tiny mod that's changing only one shout, but greatly. SkyVoice - Become the Dragonborn Bored of pressing Z to activate shouts? Well, this mod changes that! Shout into your mic and watch as you send your foes flying with Unrelenting Force! Ofc, due how unique it is, it's not always working properly, but it's definitely a cool one. Shout Pronunciations and Translations - With Thunderchild and Skyvoice support A mod that will will come in handy for usage with previous mod, and with Thunderchild as well. Elemental Arrows By Fuma A lot of them. This said, many of these arrows can make you pretty OP, especially when playing with perk overhauls, so use with caution. Moreover, fully-functional elemental arrows are implemented in Ordinator. Yet ofc, you may like exactly this mod as it adds vastly bigger variety of them :) Speed Casting Makes spellcasting (charging) faster. Can make you pretty overpowered, so use with caution.

You can also look on the spell mods I'm personally using in my ultimate mod list, but take into account it was made for LE initially, but you can still reproduce the mod list mostly.

Forgotten Magic Redone - Ordinator Compatibility Patch

Ordinator Enchantment Tweaks

Immersive Performance for Ordinator

Dwemer Certified - Ordinator Patch

Ordinator Perk Spellscribe Sound Addon

Ordinator VR Patch

patches insaller

CACO patch ==NEW==

Apocalypse and Immersive Sounds

patch

Vampire overhauls. Choose only one.

Better Vampires

cosmetic addon

here

here

Werewolf overhauls. Choose only one.

Now, let's look on some great enemy overhauls that are affecting enemies in general - their AI, skills, leveling and so on - everyting to make your enemies really worth a fight, a challenging opponents. Choose one.

patches page

Good.

Race overhauls. Choose one:

patch

patch

Standing stones overhauls. Choose one:

tweak

Nice, let's continue with plenty of other overhauls of most different type (click "show" to open the subsection):

Dragon Combat Overhaul Essential mod that offers amazing overhaul for dragons. Dragons are DRAGONS now - powerful, frightening monsters. AI improvements, unique skills and shouts and realistic physics. You’re fighting dragon, not a butterfly! If dragon lands close to you or makes a powerful tail/wing strike and you did not block this - you’ll be ragdolled. Dragons also can grab other NPCs and just throw them in air and many more other immersive features. If you want to have a real challenge fighting dragons - this mod is for you! I'd say even more simply - this mod is absolutely essential, because no matter how beefy your dragons will be empowered by other mods, this still makes not much sense if they still have stupid vanilla AI and no realistic physics. You can see a video showcase of the mod here. Dragon War - A Dragon Overhaul ==NEW== A lightweight overhaul for dragons. Not compatible with other similar mods like DCO or DD. Dwemer Certified Don't just let those broken Dwemer Constructs and spare Dwemer Ingots go to waste- use them to build an army of steam-powered robots, upgrade and enchant their equipment, then lead them into battle from the driver's seat of a Dwemer Centurion. Wintersun - Faiths of Skyrim The latest mod and a new gem from Enai Siaion. Hands down the best religion mod you can ever have. More than 45 deities to worship, roleplay-wise worshipping mechanics and balanced unique bonuses! Grab it, don't even think. You can see a brief showcase of it here. There are some patches for popular mods available, patches for Zim's Immersive Artifacts and Book Covers Skyrim, custom races patch and Great Town of Shor's Stone patch ==NEW==. Character Creation Overhaul Character Creation Overhaul brings back birthsigns, classes, specializations, favored attributes, and major/minor skills to Skyrim. No more boring cookie-cutter characters - choice matters again! Experience A complete overhaul to experience system in Skyrim transforming it to classic RPG style. Compatible with mods as well. Gain experience by completing quests, exploring wilderness, clearing dungeons and forts, killing enemies and so on. You can see a showcase of it here. Archery Gameplay Overhaul Popular and great archery mod. It adds great amount of features: - dozens of animations. - enchanted arrows - new bow camera mod - arm fatigue - really, really many overall archery improvements that make archer/hunter gameplay more interesting and realistic. Optional scoped bows patch ==NEW== available. MorrowLoot Ultimate In-depth and, in my opinion, simply essential mod. It makes complete rebalances of various game aspects, making it to play more similar to Morrowind leveled lists and leveling system - rare items like daedric or dwarven are REALLY rare now so you will not see each 2nd bandit in daedric gear when you'll reach lvl 80, enemies level scaling is much more balanced and challenging, and so on - many other mechanics such as leveling and alchemy were changed as well. Note: This is also the only "flaw" of this mod - it's too complex and will have compatibility issues with similar mods. That's why I'm personally using the "simplified" version of it, look below. A patch for Guards Armor Replacer is avaialable, as well as CCOR patch . MUS - Morrowloot Ultimate Simplified This version only rebalances rare items, loot and quest rewards - which is making it a perfect solution in terms of compatibility and still keeping the main feature of the mod. ISC patch available. Poverty - You Hunger Reborn Successor to You Hunger mod that affects the spawn rates of almost every item in the world along with an MCM that enables user customization of item distribution. An essential mod for hardcore realism/survival fans. CIVIL WAR OVERHAUL - Redux An improved version of well-known Civil War Overhaul mod - still script-heavy, but now much less buggy. Still, it's recommended to play a walkthrough directly through civil war to experience it and then start a new walkthrough without it. Crafting Skills Revamped A neat crafting overhaul that can be used on top of CCOR and other big mods. Read the mod page carefully though to see if you need it or not. Simple and Dynamic Skills - Improved Standing Stones Skill learning modifiers are determined by a combination of the level of the skill and investment in the primary Perks of the corresponding tree. Each skill is accordingly classified as Major (35% XP bonus), Minor (normal XP), or Auxiliary (20% XP penalty*). At low levels, only the first Perk is required for a Major Skill, but at higher levels, further investment is needed. Mod also introduces own changes to standing stones, focused on balanced changes and both pros and cons of certain stones. Arena - An Encounter Zone Overhaul An encounter zones overhaul. KS Dragon Overhaul 2 An overhaul of dragons AI and combat behaviour. Highly compatible with mods that add dragons on fly, and for some other pathes are available in mod Files tab. Ultimate Dragons Another great dragon combat overhaul, with better AI, new skills, animations etc. Choose this one or previous mod. Immersive Movement A well-made movement overhaul for player and creatures. Player, NPC, animal, and creature movements have all been redesigned to feel more believable, realistic, and unforgiving. Crime Overhaul Crime Overhaul makes changes to the way criminal activities are handled by Skyrim guards. They are less inept, getting arrested is less cumbersome, accidental attacks are more forgiving, and thaneship is more rewarding. Skyrim Revamped - Loot and Encounter Zones Deleveled gameplay fans, this mod is for you. It's designed to decentralize the player from the world. This is a fairly in-depth deleveling but basically loot and enemy difficulty will increase based on location and type. Yet, the introduced difficulty is somewhat artificial, as it changes mostly just the enemies stats and level. But once again, taste is taste :) Depths of Skyrim - An Underwater Overhaul Brilliant mod. Overhauls the underwater environment and adds content to the sea of Ghosts. Adds new grass types, coral and giant kelps, hundreds of new fish, treasures, encounters, fixes landscape seams etc. Opening Scene Overhaul Mod is adding the ability to escape with Ulfric, Elenwen & Tullius arguing, brand new carriage dialogue, a brand new voice for Hadvar (that has received much praise), fixing the infamous 'it's in the clouds' error Bethesda made and much more. Hearthfire Extended Love building things? Mod adds new content for the Hearthfire DLC, integrated seamlessly with Hearthfire's construction system. Build any furniture in any room. Build additional wings off your cellar. Also includes bugfixes and enhancements to vanilla apiaries, butter churns and mead barrels. Lock Overhaul Overhauls the lock system, adding new features: Lock requirement, smash locks, unlock spell and auto pick locks, with a fully customizable MCM. Compatible with Ordinator (install the alternative version).

Sound overhauls:

patch

few more patches

Improved Vanilla UI Sounds ==NEW==

Music packs:

Celtic Music in Skyrim This mod adds 79 new celtic, fantasy and viking music tracks to Skyrim. Glory Days - Music Of Skyrim Replaces all Skyrim music tracks with amazing tracks of talented Vindsvept (yeah, the songs you're often hearing in my and other Skyrim youtubers videos). Musical Lore (Soundtrack Mod By Nir Shor) This mod adds plenty of new original soundtracks, composed by talanted (and underrated) Nir Shor to your game. The Elder Songs - Fanmade Music Expansion Freshly released pack of amazing fantasy tracks, made personally by the author of the mod, who's a composer at the same time. Highly recommended to try it. Yggdrasil Music and SoundFX Overhaul Amazing dark folk/ambient music pack for Skyrim. Fits the most of game situations really great and gives completely new ambience touch at the same time. Immersive Music Vanilla game has around 3.5 hours of music. This mod adds 16 hours more, carefully picked up from fitting tracks. Cactus Witcher Music Overhaul Mod name speaks for its features itself. As from me - it's a great sound overhaul, hand-picked, fitting the game greatly. The Witcher 3 Music Overhaul Witcher 3 music in Skyrim? Why not! It fits greatly. Dreams and Nightmares Music Mod Somewhat dark and melancholic music pack, made by an independent composer. Fantasy Soundtrack Project patch available. Improved Combat Music Absolutely breathtaking combat music overhaul, which is unique as tracks themselves are sounding like a more agressive, orchestral variations of vanilla ones, giving new, but so familiar experience at the same time. Hun Lovaas - Skyrim Fan-Made combat music Another great alternative in form of combat-only music overhaul. Still - Skyrim Inspired Music Chill, calm exploration music replacer. Morrowind Music Integration Seek audio nostalgia no more! The Northerner Diaries in Skyrim Brings "Northern Diaries", the latest album of legendary TES composer, Jeremy Soule, to your game. Symphonic Soundtrack Adds (or replaces) over 3 hours of music across over 50 tracks composed specifically for Skyrim, blending seamlessly with the original game and original music. Chapter II - Jeremy Soule Inspired Music (by Dreyma Music) Music mod that adds over 1 hour of exploration music to Skyrim using Jeremy Soule's composing techniques. New tracks are added frequently. Melodies of Civilization - Skyrim Fan-Made Music Adds 25+ minutes of lore friendly/immersive music specifically written for Skyrim. The Southerner Diaries - A Soundtrack Expansion 44 professionally mixed, lore-friendly songs to enhance your Skyrim playthroughs. Inspired by Irish folk music and other celtic influences, as well as popular film scores. Over 2 hours of custom music, lovingly composed by Pat Mahoney. Around the Fire - Skyrim Fan-Made Music Doubles the amount of tavern tracks with lore-friendly/immersive music written specifically for Skyrim. Valkyrie - Intense Combat Music Replaces every music in skyrim into a intense lore friendly combat music and sound effects from the awesome Two Steps From Hell & Motionpulse. Nyghtfall - Epic Immersive Fantasy Music Adds 2 hours of original & immersive music to the game. This includes unique themes for each major city, epic & aggressive combat music (inspired by Bloodborne, God of War & Assassin's Creed) day/night exploration, dungeon music as well as medieval Tavern music. Comes with both replacer and standalone version. Dream of Me - a Vindsvept Music Mod ==NEW== Listen to 10+ hours of Vindsvept's discography while playing Skyrim, all his albums are represented in this mod with music hand-placed to fit the atmosphere appropriately. Ambient Tavern Music Replacer ==NEW== Replacer for 5 vanilla tavern tracks. Extra Music Pack For Skyrim A fantasy-celtic music pack. Magic College Music - Songs for Academy New tracks specifically for College. Fantasy Soundtrack Project Around 230 fantasy-sounding orchestral and instrumental fantasy/epic music tracks for exploring, towns, taverns and castles.

Smaller standalone sound mods:

Thundering Shouts Gives shouts echo and thunder in the background, kinda like draugr shouts. More Painful NPC Death Sounds Modifies the default death sounds of NPCs to make them sound more painful. TB's Improved Book Sounds Improves the default book opening, closing and page turn sounds. Improved River Sound Takes the short river sound loop, and replaces it with a much longer (and overall more realistic) sound clip. Improved Combat Sounds Combat sounds are now enhanced to improve the overall quality of fights. A New Chapter - UI Sound Replacer A subtle mod that will replace vanilla clumsy new-game sound and quest objective sounds with some "booky" ones. Authentic Wolf Howls and Aggro Replaces the Wolves Aggro, Howl and Distant Howl sounds with singular wolves. Unused Sounds Restored Restores a number of unused sound effects. Critical Hit SFX A simple audio-replacer for the sound played on critical hits. A short throbbing heart-beat. Realistic Husky Sounds Adds over 60 all-new, high-quality husky sounds to the Dawnguard huskies including new attacks, barks, idle panting, groans, "talking", etc. Optional patch to make it work for all dogs is available. Paper UI Sounds for Skyrim Absolutely charming project to replace Skyrim's UI sounds with paper sounds, to work with paper interface retextures and maps. Brutal Bears ==NEW== Complete sound overhaul for bears - more realistic and intimidating. Satafinix profile ==NEW== For many voice replacers - from falmer voices and shouts to daedric lords and Tsun. Mods edit vanilla sound files to make them sound more intimidating/grotesque. Footstep Sounds Restored - Cut Content Restoration ==NEW== This mod restores several of unused vanilla sounds for footsteps, rustling for heavy, light and skaal armor as well as sounds for different surfaces (gravel, dirt, snow etc). A Bow's Whisper - Bow sound overhaul ==NEW== A rich, detailed sound overhaul for bow handling. Customized for vanilla or AGO animations (download a proper version accordingly). Use this one or the mod below. You can also watch a showcase of it here. Bow Sounds Replacer ==NEW== Replaces vanilla sheathing, unsheathing, arrow nocking, and arrow release sounds for the bow. Use this one or the mod above. Heart of the Beast - Werewolf Sound Remastered ==NEW== Popular werewolf sounds overhaul ported to SE. Bass Dragons ==NEW== Tweaks original dragon sfx files to add more bass that sounds like a LOTR movie. Male Argonian Shouts - Revoiced ==NEW== Makes male Argonian shouts sound gruffer and closer to Argonians, rather than using the default human voice. You can also watch a showcase of it here. Quiet Muffle Footsteps For Player ==NEW== Completely silences player footsteps when the "muffle" magic effect is applied (through spell or item enchantment). Now you can feel like a true silent, sneaky ninja. Bard Instrumentals Mostly - Sing Rarely Tired of constantly listening to the same bard songs again and again? Want some more chill instrumental-only version of them (with still songs happening from time to time)? Seek no more! (SJG) Better Sounding Female Dragon Shouts Does your female Dragonborn sound a bit too butch when using a Dragon Shout? Would you prefer she sound a bit more feminine? This mod increases the pitch of all female shouts and is based upon the Skyrim elf voice. Silent Sneak Attack No more "tshhhhud". Softer Conjuration Sound Replaces the regular Conjuration spell sound with a softer, deeper version.

Choo-choooo.

Economy and loot related mods:

Trade and Barter Light-weight but great (and I'd say essential) trade mod that offers prices dependency from your faction status, NPC relationship with you, race, region and speech etiquette as well as some other cool features. Playing with it, you will really feel trading mechanics in game having sense. Not conflicting with almost everything. Also install the USSEP patch ==NEW==. Few other patches are available. Economy Overhaul and Speechcraft Improvements A pretty good balanced and wide economy mod for Skyrim that changes plenty of economy aspects of the game as well as Speechcraft perks tree. Compatible with Ordinator and Trade and Barter. True Medieval Economy Another interesting economy mod, aimed on somewhat medieval realism. DLC Integration This mod adds content from Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn to the world through leveled lists, merchants, and manual placement of objects. Trade Routes - Regional Economy ==NEW== Ever wanted to play as a traveling merchant, buying goods cheap where they're plentiful and selling them where they're rare for a modest profit? Than this mod is definitely for you :) Mod adds different trade aspect like regional prices, speech scaling, trade supplies, quests affeting on prices here and there and few more. Scarcity - Less Loot Mod Simple and amazing mod that does how it's called - compatible with everything. My personal choice is x6 less loot and x4 less merchant stocks. Note: make sure all 3 this mod's esp files are placed straight before Bashed Patch in load order when building it. Narrative Loot Mod adds 1629 new, lore-friendly items to loot lists, with an emphasis on deepening storytelling through loot. Thematic Loot Old but great and really underrated mod. It changes the loot that can be found in certain chests. Chests owned by the Dwemer, the Falmer, mages, draugrs, vampires and giants are affected. The purpose behind the changes is to make each chest more representative of the individuals who filled it with items. Dynamic Dungeon Loot (DDL) - Random Loot System ==NEW== A pretty old but great and really underrated mod which adds a loot drop system to boss chests found in dungeons. This system uses five tiers of loot to add variety and fun to the vanilla loot system, without breaking the balance of the game. This mod also includes 16 unique, ultra-rare artifacts to find. You can also install this hd retexture addon for it as well. You can also watch a showcase of it here. Bounty Hunter - Bounty Quest Tweaks ==NEW== A collection of edits to make bounties configurable, easy to take more of, and more rewarding. Miners and Farmers sell supplies ==NEW== Now farmers and miners across Skyrim are more than happy to sell you their stocks as you travel. Hunter Vendors ==NEW== Adds 6 hunters at the entrances of towns and cities to buy your goods. Sells leather strips, leather, arrows, bows and daggers. Bounty Gold ==NEW== Lets you configure how much gold you get for bounty quests. DON'T GIVE ME ALL THIS STUFF - Less Charitable NPCs ==NEW== A simple mod that restricts the amount of stuff friendly NPCs let the player take from their homes and stores for free. Sensible Bribes - Based on Speechcraft Not Level ==NEW== Bribes make no sense in vanilla, as the value mostly depends on your level, not your speechcraft. This mod fixes that. C.O.I.N. - Coins of Interesting Natures ==NEW== Adds new types of coinage of all different values to make Skyrim's economy more interesting.

AI and enemy related mods (note - complex/whole-game-covering enemy overhauls are resting in the "Overhauls" section below):

Realistic AI Detection SE (better sneaking) Simple but absolutely essential mod that recalibrates sneaking, making it much more realistic. Compatible with almost everything, including lighting mods - just read the mod description page carefully to install a proper version for your mod setup. Note: Place this mod to the very bottom of your load order, making sure it's loaded after any other sneak rebalancing mods and mods that affect lighting (weather mods, lighting mods like ELFX and all its modules, etc). You can see a video showcase of the mod here. Know Your Enemy - Trait-based resistances and weaknesses This original mod changes the both resistances and weaknesses of creatures and armor to magic and physical damage enhancing combat challenge and variety (similar to what AAE does, but with a more complex approach) - not just giving one bigger resistance and one weakness, but assigning a wide system of creature types, each with several different resistances/weaknesses, and a single creature may be a multiple type one. There is new features addon and Elemental Destruction Magic patch available. Better Vampire NPCs They will be leveled according to the PC and get stronger with advanced perks, spells, and all new abilities. Vampires can now be many different classes: one or two handed, light armor, heavy armor, mage, light bowman, heavy crossbowman. More variety, more challenge, more fun. Note: All "big" 4 enemy overhauls are also covering vampires, so load this mod after if you want its changes to have the upper hand. Draugr Upgrades and Improvements Real armor effect for draugrs and not just visuals, new perks, new types of draugrs etc. Note: All "big" 4 enemy overhauls are also covering draugrs, so load this mod after if you want its changes to have the upper hand. No BS AI Projectile Dodge (Magic and Arrows) No more bandits acting like medium ninjas. Durnehviir God of Death A challenging competitor in Soul Cairn and a powerful ally, the Durnehviir that this mod delivers is a better, stronger God of Death. He is re-textured and can breathe blue or purple undead flames. Believable Crime Report Radius If vanilla game one is too big for you. I'd personally still recommend to increase it to 2000 instead of 1000 in xEdit. Suspicious City Guards Guards will become suspicious when they see you sneaking around. Nighteye For NPCs Khajiit, Vampires and Werewolves...any NPC who are assumed to use nighteye ability get improved eyesight in dark. Smart NPC Potions - Enemies Use Potions and Poisons Why is the Dragonborn the only sensible person carrying at least a couple of health/stamina potions in Skyrim? This mod makes it so enemies sometimes carry and use a couple of potions and poisons just like you do. This will make combat more fair, more unpredictable and harder. Compatible with everything and customizable via MCM. Note: ASIS has the same function in it, allowing NPCs to use potions, but this mod functionality is just better in everything - more features and more control over them. If you want this feature - don't use ASIS "NPC Potions" feature and use this mod instead. You can see a video showcase of the mod here. Forsworn Skinchangers New Forsworn enemies that transform into werewolves and werebears in combat. Truly Undead - Reborn A port of same-named LE mod, and pretty much underrated gem. Skeletons, vampires, draugr and dragon priests will resurrect unless killed by certain specific damage sources. Congifurable in MCM. NARC Remade - No Animals Report Crimes for Skyrim Tired of that chicken going up to the guards and being a nark? Annoyed because that one bear ratted you out? Upset because horses are snitches? Then this is the mod for you! Vampire Attacks Restored Outside of Walled Cities Bethesda likes to screw up more things in newer versions of the games than in older ones. This helps a bit in this certain case. Enemy Friendly Fire ==NEW== SKSE plugin that enables friendly fire amongst NPCs. Sun Affects NPC Vampires ==NEW== Vampires that are out in the sun will suffer (a little bit) of constant damage. This affects NPC vampires and the player. Vampires will catch on fire when this damage accumulates. Deadlier Werewolf NPCs ==NEW== Non-player werewolves and werebears can now also perform killing blows randomly (from mauling, to decapitation bites), and also use sprint attacks when they pursue you. If using werewolf overhauls, make sure to get a patch for whatever one you're using from mod Files tab.

Armor and weapon mechanics rebalance or new features:

ABT - Arrows and Bolts Tweaks Faster arrows, ability to turn on progressive/increased damage for arrows, increase/decrease amount of arrows found in enemies and sold by merchants and some other useful, customizable settings. An essential mod if you ever planning to use a bow/crossbow. Weapon Speed Fix Simple mod to add a control system to weapon speed, preventing speed bugs that sometimes can happen with certain buff or perk effects. Armor Rating Redux Improves the unbalanced armor rating system as well as magic resistances in Skyrim by implementing a formula closer to what Morrowind had (ohther presets are also available). Fully configurable, a must-have mod! Signature Equipment Pretty original mod that may be very useful for some players, especially in roleplay purposes. The more you use the same equipment, the more potent and valuable that equipment becomes. It's a lot like tempering, but you do it by cleaving through your enemies gradually. This allows for a favorite early game weapon to become a signature weapon that scales with your character. Maybe your character might intentionally build up the reputation of a weapon to sell it for a profit. Or maybe you like the way a weapon looks, but its damage just can't keep up. That's no longer an issue now. It's also compatible will all possible weapon mods on fly. True Armor ==NEW== Are you sick of swords cutting through Steel Plate like through butter? Every hit being predictable? Every type of armor feeling the same, regardless of material? No more! Greatly increased combat depth and immersion; a sparkle of realism and balance for your fantasy game. Customize Weapon Speed ==NEW== Wanna implement your own vision of balance for weapons attack speed? This mod allows you to customize weapon speed by type. TDF Equipment Restriction ==NEW== Realistic items usage skill requirements mod Ultimate Spinning Arrows ==NEW== The see me spinnin'. They hatin'. Dynamic Equipment Manager Automatically equips/unequips various gear when applicable. A Better Gauldur Amulet Tweaks the well-known Gauldur Amulet to be more rewarding.

Plenty of other mods changing most different things:

Simply Balanced This mod can be take as a successor of well-known SkyTweak and is a port of same LE mod. Basically, it allows you to customize pretty much close to every gameplay value - weapons, magic, potions & poisons, skills, enemy stats and experience gains. To say more precisely, if you have your load order setup precisely and know every mod is working in a good synergy - you won't need this mod. But if you're not sure about some balance moments, or just wanna to be able to customize your gameplay difficulty through wide system of parameters - grab it for sure. VioLens - A Killmove Mod Amazing mod that gives you full control of killmoves. Chance, immunity, camera view, new advanced killmoves and so on. This works for melee, ranged and stealth killmoves. Great work and a must-have mod. Cutting Room Floor This mod restores a lot of content that was created but never implemented in the original game - quests, NPCs, building and other different little things. RS Children patch, lighting overhaul, complete NPC overhaul , higher quality tintmasks addon, Pandorable NPCs patch and a tiny fix are available. Multiple Floors Sandboxing Have you ever wonder why the NPCs mostly just stay at the same floor, even though the cell has multiple floors? This little mod will encourage NPCs to climb stairs around them and explore their surroundings more. Skyrim Skill Uncapper Mod allows you to get rid of silly vanilla "legendary" skills system by simply uncapping your skills - so now you can raise skills above 100, and all related multipliers and modifiers (even enchanting and alchemy) will grow as well. Besides that, Uncapper does tons of other useful things - you can determine leveling speed (strongly recommened to make it slower to not get lost on huge amount of new things in game if you have heavy-modded game), how many attributes you receive per at levelup (and at which level as well), how many perk points you receive at levelup (and at which level as well) and many other things. Honed Metal Updated ==NEW== Updated version of a well-known mod ported to SE. It partially covers what Loot and Degradation does, but it's focusing on this directly and adds much more features. Blacksmiths and mages all over Skyrim will be able to craft, temper and enchant your equipment, including any armor and weapons added by mods. The quality and price of their work will depend on their skill as blacksmiths and enchanters as well as your barter prowess. Fully customizable through an MCM. Civil War Aftermath Take the fight to enemy encampments all around Skyrim. 3PCO - 3rd Person Camera Overhaul - Smooth Camera Follow An absolutely must-have mod for players who spend the most amount of time in 3rd person. This mod is just revolutionary! It imitates modern AAA games camera movement, which is based on player world coordinates, giving immersive smooth camera follow effect, especially noticable in combat. You can see a showcase of it here. AIM FIX - combat camera with aiming control Makes aiming accurate out of the box. Provides total control over the crosshair position for archery and magic to match the hit point shift caused by the custom animations and mods. User determines how much easy or realistic the aiming will be. Equalizes the accuracy for 1st and 3rd person view. Tons of flexible MCM options and camera features. Note: If using lite version of the mod in pair with 3PCO, while this may look irrational logic-wise, make sure 3PCO overwrites Aim Fix, not vice versa. Cinematic Dragon Soul Absorption To please the cinematic god. GIST - Genuinely Intelligent Soul Trap Mod that shows petty souls who's boss. No more petty souls in your grand soulgems, wasting them. Similar to well-known Smart Souls mod, but newer and more customizable mod from author of Diverse Dragons Collection. Improved Adoptions Ever was bored with vanilla adoption system? Try this. It contains over a dozen dialogue scenes between the kids and others between your spouse and housecarl. Your kids will hang out with other kids when they're in town, and join them in running around town. They'll actually visit the places they say they do. If you've been missing for 3 or more days they'll send the Courier packing with a message for you. You can ask your kids and spouse to accompany you to your new home and have them follow you there! Candy Shops of Skyrim Adds sweet shops just outside all of the major cities. Compatible with JK's Skyrim, compatibility with other city mods is not confirmed. Horses On Patrol A port of same LE mod, all 3 mods available in files section. Adds more mounted patrols to Skyrim. Konahrik's Privilege Choose one of four new effects for Konahrik; Force, Fire, Fade or Time. MisterB's Crafting Matters An alternative to Complete Crafting Overhaul if it's too much for you for some reasons - mod that adds much more to your Skyrim crafting experience. Breakdown Recipes, Tailoring Recipes, the ability to get firewood from miscellaneous items. New crafting materials. Noisy Thief There's a chance you'll make noise and alert enemies when taking an item based on the items weight and optional detection when breaking a lockpick or extinguishing a wall torch. Your Soul Is Mine - Soul Gem Relinquishment Your Soul Is Mine is like Dragon Soul Relinquishment for regular souls. It adds two spells: One that allows the player to absorb soul gems to purchase various passive bonuses and one that allows the player to absorb part of the victim's soul directly. The absorbed souls may be spent on various passive buffs. Advanced Mining Advanced Mining is a full remake of the entire mining process. It has many options, allowing you to control the ore deposits in the game in many ways, each one can be toggled individually and adjusted. MCM Ores And Firewood Mine and chop faster, all configuration directly in game at any time. Smithing And Smelting Improved Rebalanced smelting and some new crafting recipes. Souls Do Things 2 Mod which adds various new functionality to dragon souls, making them useful in the game in different ways. Better Stealing Simple but immersive mod. If you steal something and nobody sees you do it then the item will not be "stolen". Pickpocket Changes A few changes to pickpocketing chance and how it's calculated - pickpocket chance is no longer affected by value, only weight, and maximum pickpocket chance increased from 90% to 100%. Rebalanced Encounter Zones and Leveled Actors Simple mod that's increasing base level and level scaling of encounter zones in game. For hardcore lovers. Encounter Zones Unlocked Useful mod for challenging gameplay with a little difference approach - dungeons don't stop leveling after the first visit. Mystic Condenser Tired of piles of low-level potions/poisons/soul gems cluttering up your high-level inventory? Use the Mystic Condenser to combine them into their higher level counterparts. Torch Brightness Radius Makes it bigger. True Hybrid - Tainted Blood of the Dragonborn - Werewolf and Vampire Hybrid Be both werewolf and vampire whilst using your favourite associated mods. Compatible with most vampire & werewolf mods. Vampire Sun Damage Clothes Covering Somewhat cheating mod as for me, but some people may find it useful. Civil War Neutrality You can stay neutral without having to miss important content. Useful Dogs Improves dogs functionality to be more realistic similar to how trained dogs irl can behave. Heavy Armored Soldiers Imperials and Stormcloaks now have a chance of spawning wearing their own heavy sets. Optional Starting Spells This mod removes all starting spells and adds all the novice spell tomes to your starting area. Compatible with Alternate Starts - Live another Life. Sleep to Gain Experience Similar to what it was in Oblivion. Sleep to Level Up An alternative to the mod above - with a few more options, choose one or another. Ordinary Thieves Makes thieves in the world wear regular clothing rather than guild clothing. Vampires Regen in Shade Allows all vampires to recover health, magicka, and stamina when standing in the shade, even during the daytime. Better Skill and Quest Books Names Not that much "immersive", but definitely may look useful for some players. Holdable Candles A small mod designed for stealth characters using extremely dark interiors from ENB or weather presets. The candle illuminates a small area in front of the player, thus allowing the player to see items in front of them to steal, and avoiding the use of a torch (lighting up the entire room and increasing the risk of being detected). Altar of the Revenant Allows to "corrupt" grand soul gems into black soul gems. Selective and-or More Expensive Transmute Mod to choose which ore you want to transmute by allowing you to dual cast the transmute spell. Disarming Traps Is Dangerous Pretty much as that. Soul Exchange Sadly, Dragon Soul Relinquishment mod is pretty bugged in SE. This is a simple alternative to it. Mod allows you to convert Dragon Souls to Perks or Attributes. Cardio SE - More Realistic Fatigue Mod introduces fatigue mechanics to Stamina, Health and Magicka and factors in encumbrance effects. Allows full customisation attributed to this through the MCM. Left Hand Rings Modified Simple as it is. Makes it possible to wear rings on left hand :) GuruSR's Werewolf Transformation Meter Very useful for werewolf players. The bar shows how much time left until transformation will fade off. Intoxication (Drunk and Drugged visual effects) Simple as that. Some big mods like CACO already adding such effect, but if you're not using them and just wanna the visual effect - grab this mod. Reading Is Good ==NEW== This mod reworks skill books so that instead of granting levels instantly, they give you a permanent boost to your leveling speed in the respective skill. This means that you benefit more by reading them as soon as you find them. SKSE plugin. Radiant Requirements MCM ==NEW== Modifies select radiant quests so that they don't send you to locations with dangerous enemies until your level is high enough. Configurable in MCM. Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed ==NEW== Faster walking, slower running and sprinting. Regen Adjuster SKSE ==NEW== SKSE Plugin to let you choose regen values outright or based on conditions. Vampire Feeding Tweaks ==NEW== Small mod that opens up the possibilities for feeding as a vampire, without needing a big overhaul. Curse of the Werewolf ==NEW== With this mod installed if you are a werewolf you will be cursed/blessed. Once a day in a situation that would normally result in your death right before the final blow you will automatically transform into a werewolf and regain full health during the transformation rendering you effectively invincible during the 10 second transformation. Compatible with werewolf overhauls like Growl or Lupine.

Ultimate Combat

Mortal Enemies

patch

Realistic Melee Range

ArrowBlock(REAL Deflect Arrow)

Disarmless

You can also look on the combat mods I'm personally using in my ultimate mod list, but take into account it was made for LE initially, but you can still reproduce the mod list mostly.

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations and more in-depth review, you can take a look at some of best alchemy mods in action:

Let's start from a most (deservedly) known, complex and simply epic alchemy overhaul, which is close to be an essential mod for almost any walkthrough.

(SJG) Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul Patches

Bo-yo-yo-yo-yo.

Toxic - A Venom Mod ==NEW==

Skytoxin - Realistic Dangerous Poison

Now, a few mods which are wrapped about making potions usage more thoughtful, double-edged, similar to how it was done in Witcher games. These are absolutely optional as they, ofc, will make game harder. Choose one:

Potion Tolerance

Good.

Alchemist Compendium

Respectable Inventory -- Well-Stocked Alchemists

Apothecary Inventory Rebuild

The Alchemist's Cookbook ==NEW==

Blacksmith and Enchanter's Potions Enhancements

White Phial Better Alignments

Lotus Poison

Realistic Skooma

Craftable Skooma and Moonsugar

Collect Ivy

Before you start, if you prefer the visual presentations and more in-depth review, you can take a look at some of best immersion mods in action:

First of all, the camping/resting section - mods allowing you to rest and relax in an immersive way, setup your camps and do stuff there. Can vary in complexity.

Warm Drinks - Simple Tea And Coffee Recipes - for Campfire

Gather Wilderness Resources - A plugin for Campfire

Campfire Spooning

Cuyi's Campfire Backpacks ==NEW==

Cheery Crafting - Campfire Edition

Simple Bedroll ==NEW==

Simple Inn Bath ==NEW==

Great! now directly the "needs" mods - your character need to eat, drink and sleep, and respective ingame bonuses/penalties. Choose one.

iNeed - Food Water and Sleep - Continued

Another CACO/Be A Milk Drinker patches

Falskaar patch

Beasts of Tamriel patch

Fruits addon

Realistic Needs and Diseases All-In-One for USSEP

patch

Frost survival:

Various other survival immersion mods - from hardcore effects to purely cosmetic ones:

Nordic Cooking

Mealtime - a Food and Recipe Mod

Skyrim Food Expanded ==NEW==

Simple Encumbrance Effect ==NEW==

Immersive Swimming ==NEW==

Gourmet Gourds

General Stores sells Salt and Flour

Wood Frame Backpacks

Dialogue/objectives/notifications mods:

Relationship Dialogue Overhaul Mod adds more than 5000 voiced lines of dialogues. All lines are voiced using the original voices from the game and consists of existing lines that have been added in new and suitable situations, as well as completely new dialogues created by editing multiple lines together to form brand new ones. Friends talk to you more like friends. Followers have more much to say when speaking to them. If your spouse is a follower, he/she will talk to like a spouse instead of a generic follower. NPCs who dislike you (not bandits and forsworn, but citizens of towns and cities) will have more insults to say and may even completely stop talking to you if you continue to pester them.
Note: Install the update with MCM and make sure to peek at Files tab and install respective patches needed. Guard Dialogue Overhaul Redux Fixed and improved version of popular mod. Guard Dialogue Overhaul alters the guards dialogues, changing it from something that breaks your immersion in the world of Skyrim to something that actually increases it. Realistic Conversations Every social logic in Skyrim for NPC is changed, they talk more often to each others. And will less likely greet to you from a distance, they will also greet less often too, making them to not act as much as robots. NPCs are also more clever and will know for example if they talked to a NPC and will therefore talk to another or not talk at all. Compatible with both mods above. Misc Dialogue Edits This mod improves dialogue that other mods don't, contributing to make conversations in Skyrim as plausible and immersive as possible, while taking compatibility into account. Everything here is intended to feel like it could have been part of the vanilla game all along, but it also supports alternate start mods. More Dialogue Options A mod from the same author which adds dialogue options in a simple and immersive way to improve various conversations in the vanilla game. The responses are all voiced by using the original voice files of the game. The new options are meant to feel like they should have been in the game all along. More to Say You have more to say. NPCs have more to say. This mod adds miscellaneous inconsequential dialogue to existing NPCs. Can be used with two mods above, RDO and most of dialogue mods in general. As it's completely standalone. Serana Dialogue Edit If you like to play through Dawnguard DLC, this mod is just essential. Serana is a character with one of the most interesting backgrounds, but dialogues with her were always a bit dull and limited. This mod goal is to fix this problem, drastically expanding her dialogues amount and giving a lot of reactions on the events around you when travelling together (especially noticable if played through Dragonborn DLC). Serana Dialogue Add-On An expansion to Serana's dialogue in order to make her feel more organic as an interactive character with the player and the world. This includes more conversations with the player, quest awareness, radiant dialogue, and much more. With this mod, Serana should be a more engaging character not only in Dawnguard, but for the whole game. Compatible with Serana Dialogue Edit. To Your Face Redux ==NEW== SKSE plugin that stops NPC comments unless they're directly facing the player. Immersive Speech Dialogues ==NEW== Vanilla speech dialogue options are overhauled to have more personality, suited for more immersive roleplaying. Random Guard Dialogues ==NEW== New funny and random voiced dialogues for guards. Thalmor Dialogue and Quests ==NEW== For those enjoying a Thalmor-themed playthrough, this mod adds many conversations for a Thalmor player character to have with the people of Skyrim, as well as some Thalmor-related short adventures. YOT - Your Own Thoughts This mod basically changes most(if not all) of the second person messages and texts in game and makes them 1st person. Reflection - Level Up Messages Reflection brings back the level up messages found in previous Elder Scrolls titles. Even Better Quest Objectives - EBQO This mod enhances the quest descriptions in the vanilla game so that you have a clear sense of where you are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do besides looking at the quest markers. Let's face it - the quest descriptions were quite bad, not specifying where you are supposed to go by themselves, and forcing you to play with the quest markers on all the time. This affects nearly 250 quest objectives/descriptions, spanning over 160 quests, editing descriptions that were either really vague or didn't exist at all. Quests Are In Skyrim patch available, as well as few other patches ==NEW==. Better Intimidation Replaces Skyrim's whimpy intimidation dialogues with something more fearsome. Showcase here.

Travel related mods:

Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul A lightweight but immersive overhaul of both the vanilla Skyrim carriage system and Dawnguard's ferry system, making the whole travelling system of Skyrim much more comfortable and realistic. No dirty records or script, no navmesh edits - clean and bug-free. Helgen Reborn patch and this tiny addon are available. Wayshrines of Tamriel A more simple and lightweight wayshrine fast travel system. Liminal Bridges - A portal mod Inspired by the eluvians in the Dragon Age universe, Liminal Bridges is a different take on the traditional teleportation and portal mods. Point The Way Simple, but greatly immersive one. Road signs have been placed at several major intersections that were either lacking signs, or didn't have enough signs to indicate the full extent of where you could travel on a road. Ask The Way Another little yet immersive one - allows you to ask the way to certain places in city. Fast Travel Cost Fast traveling from the map now costs gold based on the distance traveled. Fast Travel by Horse Fast travel by horse. Delphine's Map Reveals Dragon Mounds This mod adds map markers to all dragon burial mounds around Skyrim. When you have Delphine's map in your inventory, you'll have to click it (like you were equipping it.) Then the markers will be enabled and automatically revealed to you as undiscovered map markers. Atlas Map Markers patch available. Dragonborn - Solstheim Boat Travel Adds row boats to the island of Solstheim that can be used as a travel system to four different locations. Also includes a knapsack to store items on your boat. Dynamic Cart Horses ==NEW== Dynamic texture replacer for carriage horses. HD Reworked Horses patch available. Helps To Have A Map This mod restricts using the map menu. You'll need to have a physical map in your inventory, in order to open the map menu. A few patches available. No Crime Teleport Disables the teleportation when paying off bounty. Immersive Stables Tired of your horses returning to the place you bought them from? Stable your horses anywhere, and they will return there when dismissed. Bromjunaar Journal Adds a journal in Labyrinthian giving direction on where to locate all eight Dragon Priest masks. WordWalls of Skyrim Adds a collection of journals that tells locations of all of the word walls. Road Signs Fast Travel Allows to fast travel to town and cities from road signs.

Everything else you wished to have and everything you didn't even know about:

Lanterns of Skyrim Simple and immersive mod that add lanterns to main roads, villages, towns and settlements. The light sources of the lanterns are lit from 7pm to 7am. Once installed I just can’t play without it anymore. It’s especially good for people who play with weather/lighting mods/ENBs that have dark nights. Mod also has MCM through which you can control lanterns' working time and enable/disable lanterns in settlements for better compatibility. You also may like this addon for it. Please also make sure to endorse the original mod. Lastly, there's also a standalone different version of it available here (also grab a collision fix and Weathered Road Signs (only if using it ofc) fix ==NEW== for it). Not So Fast - Main Quest Not So Fast - Mage Guild Two simple yet so much needed mods to make pauses between stages of main quest and mages guild questline, to let yourself do some other things meanwhile and not being rushed to save the world. Wearable Lanterns Another great immersion mod from Chesko. May the light be always with you! Also grab the MCM fix. Improved Traps Enemy NPCs will now pay attention when trap is triggered near them. Also, as you can remember, vanilla traps damage was barely noticable. this mod fixes this and makes traps much more dangerous. Destructible Skyrim - Breakable Objects (Beta) The definitive realism mod that Skyrim should had have loooong ago. Works as it's named - makes you able to crush and destroy many game objects. Note: The mod is still in beta, meaning it's being developed atm, so test if properly with your mod setup before keeping it for a real walkthrough. Immersive Laundry Adds decorative clothes lines and other washing-related items throughout Skyrim, for a touch of realism. Also make sure to install this improvement addon for it by Pfuscher. Simpler Knock A simplier analogue to popular "Simple Knock" mod which is sadly just broken in SE. Simplest Knock EVEN more simple. Yeah, for real. Skyrim Is Windy Skyrim is a windy place but there is no signs of any strong winds in Skyrim. This mod will fix that. Bells of Skyrim Mod adds bells to major skyrim towns and cities that will alarm citizens in case of danger, like dragon/vampire/bandit attacks. Bring Out Your Dead Adds proper burial sites for various unique NPCs found throughout Skyrim. Note: May cause clipping issues with settlement mods, so test before actually playing. Skyrim Souls RE - Updated Realism lover? Don't want to "magically" pause the game when you're opening inventory or other game menus? Grab this! The People Of Skyrim 2 Explore Skyrim all over again - immersive world overhaul mod adding many new features throughout the world of Skyrim. Mod features: Hundreds of new NPCs. More ruins, camps, mills, markets, graveyards and so on. Enemy encounters, hanged people from Thalmor persecution, new factions, cities visual improvements and much more. Version 2 is long-needed highly-compatible version of the mod as it doesn't or almost doesn't modify settlements, and so, doesn't conflict with mods like JK Skyrim and so on, which was original mod biggest issue. Holidays Mod from the same author that brings holidays to Skyrim settlements and will change their appearance based on TES lore. SFO patch available. Skyrim Battle Aftermath The civil war has begun, and it's not a pretty sight! Adds civil war battlefields throughout Skyrim. Pumping Iron - Dynamic Muscle Growth This mod was not updated for a very long time, but it’s still working great. It adds dynamic muscle growth system. Every time your character gets a skill increase in a combat skill (or smithing) his muscles will be considered to have been trained a little. The more skill increases, the more training. When a 'trained' character sleeps, his muscles will grow ever so slightly. Also grab this improvement addon ==NEW== for it. Sit Anywhere For real. Ask Innkeepers To Show Room Instead of always showing you to your rented room, you can ask innkeepers to show you or tell them you know where it is. Alternate Conversation Camera Makes conversation with NPCs more immersive by zooming in to their faces. Fully supports both 1st and 3rd person camera, also supports on sitting and lock-on states. Includes "Witcher 3" camera style. Go to bed This mod allows your character to actually sleep in bed. A DAR patch ==NEW== is available. Hold Border Banners Adds banners along roads showing which hold you are about to enter. Man Those Borders Adds Immersive manned/unmanned border fortifications and guard posts around Skyrim's inner hold borders. Unique Border Gates Unique Border Gates redesigns the border crossings of Cyrodill, Hammerfell and Morrowind by adding new, unique and immersive gates. Also grab the fixes . Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul Awesome mod that offers great improvement to friendly NPCs of Skyrim giving them much smarter behavior and survival instincts. Its biggest flaw is a terrible compatibility when it comes to mods that affects cities/towns/villages. AI Overhaul Similar mod, which is somewhat more simple, but much better in terms of compatibility. Many various patches are available here, here, here ==NEW==, and here, and also JK's Skyrim and ICOW ==NEW== patches are available . Destructible Display Cases Hate lockpicking? Ever wonder why you can't just smash that display case and take all the loot easily? Well now you can. Immersive War and Violence Rotmulaag - Immersive Meditations on the Words of Power Allows the player to meditate with Paarthurnax on every shout, providing new unique powers and adding immersive feeling. Loot and Degradation Great immersion mod that basically offers 2 main features: - Enemies now can use enchanted weapons. - Weapons and armors will now eventually degrade because of combat. You can repair and temper your weapon/armor Mod also provides useful widgets to display your current armor/weapon status. You can see a video showcase of the mod here. Equipment Durability System This may be a more lightweight alternative to previous mod. It's also an SKSE-only plugin so it doesn't occupy an .esp slot. Immersive War and Violence Adds past Civil War battlefields to make the world of Skyrim feel like it exists without your intervention and is actually at war. Immersive Speechcraft Adds several dialogue options to most of Skyrim's NPCs (even ones initially without any dialogue options) allowing for increased immersive interactions and role-play. Compatible with all mods that affects dialogues. Farmhouse Chimneys Adds chimneys to farmhouses that have fireplaces. JK's Skyrim patch available. Time Passes Actions like crafting, bartering, eating, reading, and training will cause the game time to pass. Gallows of Skyrim Mod adds gallows to every major settlement in Skyrim. Makes your characters pay their taxes from owning everything from property to a horse. Compatible with previous mod. Improved Shadowmarks Improves the placement and appearance of the Thieves Guild shadowmarks and adds dynamic shadowmarks to player homes and other quest-related locations. Sepolcri - A complete Burial Sites overhaul Does exactly how it's named. Death Expressions Applies random death faces to actors/NPCs that's killed in game. People won't look like they're sleeping after getting stabbed in the stomach or shot in the face. Sesiously, I can't believe we didn't have such mod all the years before. You can see a showcase of it here. Imperial Knowledge Lorebook Collection Vol. 1 A mod which adds several new lore books to the world of Skyrim on a variety of interesting and obscure lore topics. Simple Cow and Goat Milking Adds an animated interaction that lets you milk cows and domestic goats once a day. Usable Lantern Turns those useless lanterns you can pick up all over Skyrim into an alternative for a torch. Lanterns are usable now. Immersion and Lore Continuity - Additions and Tweaks A collection of tweaks to add in flavorful elements from lore and the game world and its stories for more immersion. Vampire Nightmares Adds the Vampire Nightmares messages from Oblivion. Yay! BA Khajiit Speak Redux Greetings, traveler! Khajiit wishes for you to browse this clever modification. You will download and utilize it in your playthrough, yes? Trust in Khajiit, he would not lie! This is known... Contraband Confiscation Guards will now take illegal things from you when they arrest you. Civil War Refugees This mod seeks to increase the immersion of the civil war by adding refugees. Notes with something to read Added something to read to the notes used in the animation performed by your character or a NPC. Water Douses Fire Jump into the water to douse yourself when set on fire by spells or dragons. Simply Rest (or Sleep) Anywhere One hotkey allows sitting (cross legged/on a ledge) or laying down on the ground (or anywhere else) with a possibility of waiting/sleeping. Thieves Random nighttime thieves upsetting the city. Configurable by MCM. Skyrim Particle Overhaul ==NEW== Lots of various particles added here in the in Skyrim for ambience purposes - groundfogs, dripping blood, smokes etc. Note: Mod also edits interiors, so if you don't want to deal with compatibility patching in xEdit, you can use the exterior-only version available. Hit That Corpse ==NEW== Weapon impact physics effects to Corpses for either immersion or maybe for when a corpse is blocking you from hitting an enemy. Slip off Slopes ==NEW== When you take fall damage, you twist your ankles and ragdoll. This makes parkouring off mountains dangerous. Orc Strongholds Use Orchish ==NEW== This mod gives all the warrior orcs of the strongholds orchish armor and weapons from the beginning of the game, making them not just a push over to any enemy even a dragon or a band of bandits while also adding to immersion. Locks Are Just Locked ==NEW== A lightweight and immersive way to hide the level of locked objects. Seagulls of Skyrim ==NEW== Adds seagulls along the coasts of Skyrim and Solstheim, with animated models and sounds. Herds ==NEW== Adds dynamic herders with their animals and camps to Skyrim, purchasable and milkable cows & goats, and more. Picta Series - A Critters Life - Additional Insect Spawns ==NEW== Adds more spawn points (such as Mountain Flowers or through spawn markers near ponds and lakes) for critters to spawn. Mummified Animals- Elements of Skyrim ==NEW== Add a touch of creepiness to the marshes around Morthal, adding to it the mummified corpses of animals that perished victims of traps, accidents, or even curses, and that now exist as macabre statues adorning the gloomy scenery of the misty swamp. Merchants of Skyrim ==NEW== Aadds new merchants into the game, filling the gaps where merchants would be useful and making use of areas that otherwise are left wasted once certain questlines have been completed. Immersive Khajiit Caravan Mules ==NEW== Small and lightweight immersion mod. Adds two pack mules to every Khajiit Caravan so they now actually have a believable means of transporting all their tents and wares. Elderly and Adults ==NEW== Offers differentiation of adult bodies (whatever you have installed) and elderly bodies. Sleeping On Solstheim ==NEW== Adds an MCM for controlling the chance of being teleported to an All-Maker Stone when sleeping on Solstheim (0-100%). Conflict-free, no vanilla records edited. Slayable Offspring SKSE ==NEW== SKSE plugin that makes children killable. No patches required. Dog Backpacks and More ==NEW== Backpacks...for dogs. Courier Delivers to NPCs ==NEW== The courier will now occasionally deliver letters to NPCs in Skyrim. Whiterun Watchtower Doesn't Start Broken ==NEW== Do you delay the coming of the dragons? Annoyed that the tower is broken right from the beginning before dragons even appear? This mod is for you then! True Thane ==NEW== When you first became thane, did you FEEL like a thane? Well, this mod makes sure that you do. Once you become the thane of a hold you gain the ability to collect taxes, have the hold's guards follow you, have the hold's guards arrest people, exchange your thane weapon for a better version and more. You can a see a brief showcase of it here. Mourning Restored ==NEW== A simple plugin that restores the mourning interaction that is present in the Vanilla game files but was left unused. Unique NPCs can now express anger/grief after a relative or friend dies, run away to be left alone for a moment, or greet you differently as they mourn. Hearthfire Fixed ==NEW== This mod fixes some basic features of Hearthfire like mead brewing and butter churning . Splashes Of Skyrim ==NEW== SKSE plugin that adds projectile based water splashes and ripples, and underwater explosions. Flying Crows ==NEW== Adds flying crows to various locations around Tamriel to create a more nordic atmosphere in your Skyrim. Vampires Cast No Shadow 2 ==NEW== Simple as that. SKSE plugin. Open Your Mouth When Grunting ==NEW== Arrrghh!! Fertility Mode If you're playing a female character and wanna have that much realism - yes, there's a mod even for this :) Also grab the tweaks/fixes patch ==NEW==. CG4 Horse Muck Because...uhh..well yes. Individual Shout Cooldown Remake You can change cooldown of any shout now for your ingame purposes. Can be pretty OP though, if used too wide. Unlucky Loot Adds a chance for Draugr to ambush when looting ruins, Daedra to ambush when handling soul gems, and Skeevers to ambush when looting dungeon food. Enemies Follow Me Make enemies chase you through loading doors. Classic Werewolf Transformation The player should be naked after transforming back from a werewolf. Here it is. Hidden Hideouts of Skyrim Adds 21 new areas spread across Skyrim. Sleep Tight Sleep-related enhancements to NPCs. Also grab the fix. Lanterns for Guards etc A simple mod to add carriable lanterns to guards, vigilants, wardens and all NPC's that normally carry torches. Basically it's a torch replacer but without removing torches from the world. Dirt and Blood - Dynamic Visual Effects Your character will accumulate dirt and blood dynamically, which you can clean by swimming, standing in the rain or taking a bath. The effects are mostly visual only and do not affect gameplay. NPCs will also get bloody as a result of battles. Mod is designed to be simple and lightweight. Grab the HD textures patch ==NEW==. You can also install a lite alternative ==NEW== instead. Khajiit Merchants Buy Stolen Items Because stereotypes work. Talkative Dragons Ever found it weird that dragons, fully sapient beings, have never spoken a word while you’re doing your best trying to defeat them? This mod changes that. SIC patch available. Crafting Requires Tools Redone Crafting now requires appropriate tools. Best used in conjunction with survival mods. End Times Tired of the Dragonborn prophecy's success being a given? This mod gives your savegame a timer that you have to defeat Alduin by, otherwise he'll swallow the world! Fully customizable with an MCM. No Level Up Healing Prevents you from fully healing health/magicka/stamina when you level up. Take Notes - Journal of the Dragonborn Dear diary... After the Civil War - Siege Damage Repairs An immersive way of repairing the damage left by the Civil War without using the console. Twenty days after the final battle the cities will be back to normal, but a generous donation will speed-up the reconstruction. Repair crews will be at work fixing the damage. Reading Improves Speech Gain Speech XP upon reading a book for the first time. Note: I'd recommend to decrease the XP reward value in xEdit. HighHrothgar Shelters and Hotspring Expanded version of the original adding a total of 3 places to sleep in shelters on High Hrothgar and added a hot spring on the mountain near the first cabin. Imperial Post Introduces an Imperial-based news system which updates throughout the quest lines. Fires Hurt Seriously. Drinking fountains of Skyrim This mod adds several drinking fountains around Skyrim. When you "activate" a fountain, it will give you three bottles of water and if you play in 3rd person you can see an animation. Skyrim Artwork Imports Adds dozens of paintings and tapestries to homes across Skyrim. Hold Riders Inspired by Oblivion. Realistic Capacity Your inventory space is no longer capable of holding several suits of armor at a time. You can carry the clothes on your back and the weapons on your belt without issue, and your armor will likely have some pouches to store some meager supplies, but unless you get a backpack, you likely won't be able to carry much more than that. Public Executions Adds public executions to Solitude and the option to capture bandits for executions. Bottles Of Skyrim Adds unique bottles to each beverage. Rude Imperial Soldiers Escort Prisoner fix Sick of rude Imperial soldiers that are escorting prisoners on the road telling you to bug off in a threatening tone, even when your rank is Legate? They will no longer be rude to Imperial legionnaires. Bonus - you can fool them if you wear Imperial chest armour, even if you're not an Imperial legionnaire. I'm a Customer Dammit Allows eating of food and bartering with merchants directly from world. Just Do It - An inventory-free way to use items ==NEW== A more feature-packed alternative to the mod above. Creature Size Variants Adds some diversity to Skyrim creatures, and generic NPC's, by dynamically resizing them. Customizable with the MCM. Ultimate Spinning Arrows Because FWOOOSH. Harvest Those Mammoth Skulls Makes the tusks on all mammoth skulls harvestable. Immersive City Gates Now the guards won't let you enter the city when you want. Cities are closed during the night and you need to pay the tax to enter during the day. Note: Mod may conflict with city mods. Frozen in Time Add frozen bodies to Skyrim. Tamrielic Culture Mod adds various different elements of Tamriel cultures to Skyrim here and there. Note: Coverage is pretty massive, so it may conflict with landscape overhauls/dungeon/quest mods. CACO patch and RnD patch are available. Goldenglow Is Yours On reading the Goldenglow deed that you get from Gulum-Ei, you actually become the estate's owner. Then you can keep it and get a monthly income, or sell it to Maven for a hefty sum. Banners of victory Simple fix of Bethesda overlook - after winning the war the imperials and solitude banners are replaced for Stormcloak banners at Dragon's Bridge, Solitude, and Castle Dour. Septimus Signus Outpost Overhaul Always wondered how he survives in this cold ice cave? Now it's fixed.

Here, you first will need to choose between 2 mods (rather, frameworks) - FNIS or Nemesis. Both are mods for custom animations and absolutely must-have, as they are required for most of animation mods to work. What to pick?
FNIS is the older one, which was basically the only for many years. It's now abandoned, but that doesn't mean it became bad due to this - it's working perfectly fine, but it has less capabilities (and namely, supports less animation mods, especially new ones).
Nemesis is a successor to FNIS which is more capable and supports much more mods FNIS didn't. It's also being supported and updated actively. Why not just to remove FNIS then if Nemesis is better in everything? Indeed it is, but technically Nemesis is still in beta atm - it works flawlessly though and it's absolutely safe to use it, but for now both will still be linked. Choice is up to you, but once again, for best results it's strongly recommended to get Nemesis. Usage is very plain and simple for both of them.

Good! let's continue to animation mods themselves, shall we?

Now, let's grab some essential animations mods which will either serve as a solid improvement base that or as an element of controlling the new animations:

Good! Now let's see some other qualitative animation mods. These type of mods in general are always and absolutely a matter of taste, so I won't be recommending much personally here - just list some qualitative/original looking mods, from which you can choose yourself :)

Various mods, patches and fixes - these can tehcnically belong to any of categories above, but are usually really tiny or matter of taste ones, so grouped here.

QUASIPC - Qwinn's Unified Automated Self Installing Patch Compendium A very simple yet very useful mod - a super-patcher. Just run the installer and let it automatically detect whether you need or not one, few or many patches from 103 patches it has. Using this patcher is not something you will have crashes without, but it will polish various minor compatibility issues here and there. WiZkiD Patches Compendium One more similar patcher mod. Miscellaneous Patches And a few more patches for some mods. PACE Allows you to set the PACE of the game, via MCM, to your personal preferences. Alter movement speed for every circumstance **NPC's included**, decide exactly how quick, or slow, every weapon should swing, and control time itself at the push of a button. All features toggleable via the menu. BorderSense Ported from Skyrim LE, a small mod that lets you know when you are near the borders of a hold. Optionally notifies you of your bounty in that hold. Classic Sprinting Redone Makes sprinting behave the same way as it did in old Skyrim. Hold instead of toggle. Disease Fixes Fixes a few issues with disease effects so that they can enjoy a minimal consistency. Diseases can only be transmitted to the player, and can be identified by keyword. Finding Derkeethus Fixes some issues with the quest to find Derkeethus, such as moving his cell key to a more logical location (i.e. not inside his cell with him), exposing the quest information in your journal, optionally adding a quest marker, and expanding the dialogue options for all those involved. Reading Is Good This mod reworks skill books so that instead of granting levels instantly, they give you a permanent boost to your leveling speed in the respective skill. This means that you benefit more by reading them as soon as you find them. Raven Rock - Fix Exit on Horseback When using horse mods in Solstheim, you might have issues exiting Raven Rock through the small shaft. This small tweak aims to fix that. Taarie's Dialogue Fix Just a small fix for Taarie's dialogue, so that she stops criticizing your attire after having completed the 'Fit for a Jarl' quest. Get On With It - No more waiting for doors No more door animations if you wanna save some time.
Note: This is a pure mesh mod, meaning it will overwrite any mod that is changing doors in game, like high-poly door mods by Hype1, etc. It's one or another. Better descriptions Not much realistic ofc, but may look useful for some players - it adds on-screen information and more precise names to various objects, containers, clutter and misc items and activators. Fast Travel by Horse Simple as that. No More Standing Too Close Simple mod that make NPCs never say "Huh?" and step back from you again. Realistic Regeneration - RealRegen Control regeneration rates for Health, Magicka and Stamina at any time in the game. Immersive Stolen Goods Adds over 30 new unique treasures to the game, that you can steal from various places in Skyrim. Pirates Wield Cutlasses No way huh. Concerning Chillrend Adds a note that adds a backstory to how Mercer Frey came to possess Chillrend. The Real Lusty Argonian Maid A Skyrim's version of the "The Lusty Argonian Maid - The Untold Story" mod for Oblivion by BlackPuma. Trespass The fort soldiers are sometimes displaying erratic behavior about trespassing, attacking followers even though player is an ally - this mod helps. Windhelm Disappearing Objects Glitch Fix When you walk around the corners of Windhelm, there are several spots that some objects suddenly disappear from your view and thus break your immersion. This mod fixes them. Modern Clap Bug Fix Prevents NPCs from going into the cheer idle animation when casting certain spells nearby them. Homecooked Meal Bug Fix Addresses the vanilla bug where your spouse would stop providing daily meal. Lights Out. Solitude Lighthouse Fix Automatically relights the solitude lighthouse during the quest Lights Out. Mount Anthor Dragon Fix This fixes the 'misplaced dragon' bug at Mount Anthor. Source of Stalhrim Quest Fix Allows to seamlessly start the quest "A New Source of Stalhrim" if it gets stuck. For those who don't like using the console and find it unimmersive. Halldir's Cairn Crash Fix Skyrim "Special" Edition is so amazing that devs not only didn't fix most of notorious bugs and engine crash culprits, but vice versa, added new ones. This mod fixes one of them - namely the ghost spawn locations inside of Halldir's Cairn in Falkreath that would cause instant crashing to desktop. The Skyrim Bestiary (WIP) Do you wish Skyrim had a bestiary, but don't want to write your own? Here's my solution: Craft bestiary books using creature components gathered from your kills. Shrub's Little Riddle Hunt A little scavenger hunt with riddles as clues to take you across Skyrim, for a bit of treasure. Saw Logs How many saw logs you have left to build your next house? With this little plugin no more you will be able to view the amount left in your inventory. Gems in All Mines Find gems in all mines and throughout the depths of Blackreach. This mod also adds the missing Diamond and Garnet Geodes to your game. Unquantum Forgemaster's Fingers The existence of the Forgemaster's Fingers is no longer based on whether or not you're observing them. Welcome Back to the Bee and Barb A small dialogue tweak. If you give them the three amethysts, Keerava and Talen-Jei will forgive you for extorting the 'owed money'. Respect for the Legate You've been promoted to Legate, the Imperials should know who you are by now. The imperial patrols will no longer harass you. tarlazo profile For various tiny mods/fixes of different purpose. Thieves Guild Dialogue Fix Causes Thieves Guild members to wait until the beginning of Trinity Restored to spill their life stories to you. No more weirdly intimate conversations with people you just met. Aela Doesn't Approach If You Don't Help You just happened to pass by, and she comes up to you and reproaches you for not helping her or just waits and doesn't go until you talk to her? No more. Skyhaven Additions Adds more Blades to Skyhaven, along with a forge, alchemy bench, 3 merchants, and a barracks. More Salt Adds more salt to food vendors. Useful for survival-oriented mod setups. Amulet Evangelism - Priests Sell Amulets Priests sell amulets for their Divine. Mapseller Adds the cartographer Nataly Dravarol to the game. She sells maps of the territories. If you have the DLCs, there will be mapsellers for those new areas too. These maps show you every map marker in that territory (except the military camps), but they're not for fast travel. Neutral Hjerim After Blood on the Ice, Hjerim is purchasable, regardless of Civil War involvement or lack thereof. Battle Cry Fix Fixes Battle Cry so that it only affects *enemy* NPCs. Also, it should now work against undead and daedra as well (but NOT dwarven machines). Simple Leather Backpack ==NEW== A craftable backpack to the game, with three variants in two different colours. Simple Offence Suppression ==NEW== SKSE plugin that prevents neutral NPCs from turning hostile when you accidentally hit them. Angi's Camp Tweaks ==NEW== Reworks XP gain from Angi's archery challenges to be independent of your current skill level, and allows you to gain extra XP from practicing on your own. Your character won't be a beginner anymore if you can complete all the challenges. Only Dead Lovers Cause Inheritance Letters ==NEW== This mod increases the required relationship rank, for inheritance letters to occur, from 1 (friend) to 4 (lover). Labyrinthian Shalidor's Maze Fixes ==NEW== Tiny fix for some of Shalidor's Maze's issues. Scare my Enemy Bug Fix ==NEW== Addresses a longstanding issue with the Scare my Enemy radiant quest. Czasior profile ==NEW== For some useful patches (mostly for settlement overhauls). Skyrim Armor Perk Fix ==NEW== No Undetected Thieves Guild Dark Brotherhood Dialogue ==NEW== "Psst. Hey, I know who you are. Hail Sithis." Tired of guards saying this to you when they should have no idea you're an assassin? Then this mod is for you. Mannequin movement fix ==NEW== Mannequins will finally stay put. Alduin's Wall - Sven Fix ==NEW== Fixes the issue where sven(bard of Riverwood) will not sing during the entire quest process of "Alduin's Wall". Andrealphus' Exploit Fixes ==NEW== A compilation of various fixes to common minor exploits. Lizzy's Patch Library ==NEW== Some patches that may get in handy. elwaps' Patches and Fixes For various patches/fixes/addon between/for various mods - ofc not all, but possibly couple of them may come in handy for your setup. kj's Patch Collection Similar things. lilebonymace's patches And a few more. Janquel profile And few-few more. Vanilla And Morning Fogs SSE - Easy Seam Fixer Easy .nif fix/adjustment to eliminate water-fogs seams in vanilla Skyrim & in the wonderful Morning Fogs mod. Required Key Tweaks When you try to open a door, that requires a key, you can get a message with the name of the key. Pretty simple. Potema Spawn Crash Fix In most of cases you won't have this issue at all because this bug is fixed by XPMSE, which I strongly recommend to use. But if for some reasons you don't have XPMSE - this will help. Elemental Fury Fix Elemental Fury will work on enchanted weapons, bows, unarmed, and will now properly apply to your offhand when dual wielding. Don't Talk With Your Mouth Full A simple mod that prevents NPC eating and drinking animations while talking to the player. Silenced Prisoners Guards shouldn't let walking weapons of mass destruction run around freely. All prisoners are now fitted with anti-magic cuffs that prevent them from casting spells or Shouts. Ragged Flagon secret entrance Makes a secret entrance from next to Riften maingate to Ragged Flagon in Thieves guild. Not that much secret actually, but definitely saves some time.

Utility & QOL (quality of life) mods - often not directly affecting gameplay, can have their functionality similar to cheating etc, but making your life simplier and useful for various purposes:

AddItemMenu - Ultimate Mod Explorer Super-useful mod that can add any item from vanilla game or from the mod. Useful for testing or when you screwed up some quest or its item bugged out, etc. SkyTrek - Skyrim on Autopilot This mod allows automated horse/dragon riding and walking to set and radiant destinations with varying speeds. Also includes idle mode, automated NPC following, ability to set a custom destination for travel and an automated combat system. For roleplay, videos or screenarchery etc. BlockSteal lite - Prevents accidentally pick up This mod will prevent you from stealing items. When you try to steal, nothing happens. To steal an item, you have to go in sneak mode, and then you can steal all you like. Quick Light Turn on/off a light when long press the activation key. An improvement patch is available. Smart Training - Tweaked Mod makes your training sessions carry over to the next level if you don't train the max times allowed on your current level. Notification Log Caches notification messages, so you can look at them later. Disable Character Lighting Skyrim "Special" Edition also got a few absolutely useless additions transferred from FO4 (on which engine version it's made). Use this to disable one. Player walks Indoors The mod switches to walk mode when you enter an interior area and to run mode when you leave the interior. Disable Follower Collision This mod disables collisions between the player and allied NPCs. Allied NPCs include followers, actors commanded by the player, and actors commanded by followers. Sleep In Lingerie ==NEW== Followers, going to bed or invited to go to bed, will remove their outfits and pick a sleep outfit from one of the lists of sleep outfits with matching conditions (name, location, worn equipment, season). They will reequip their original outfit after waking up or linger in lingerie for some time. MaskedRPGFan profile ==NEW== A nice collection of QOL scripts for various popular mods that have MCM - with support of these scripts, MCM settings of these mods won't be reset when you start a new game. Hide Your Quests ==NEW== Allows you to hide any quest in your journal. MCM-configurable. Regional Save Names ==NEW== SKSE plugin that fixes saves not being named after the region they were saved in. No Attack Messages ==NEW== SKSE plugin that removes critical and sneak hit notifications. Menu and Load Smoke Removed for ENB ==NEW== Menu/loading smoke remover with latest ENB "no menu and loading screen" feature support. Essential Favorites ==NEW== SKSE plugin that prevents favorited items from being sold, crafted, disarmed, disenchanted, or dropped. Completionist - Quest Tracker ==NEW== Complete automatic MCM quest tracking of the base game, DLC and a whole load of popular quest mods. NPC Lookup ==NEW== An in-game menu to find any NPC. You can teleport them, spawn them, mark them on the map, select them in the console, and more. Comes with powerfully fast filters to find any NPC among the thousands that exist in the game. Marked Treasure ==NEW== Adds quest markers to the treasure map targets for the vanilla maps, maps added by Legacy of the Dragonborn, New Treasure Hunt, and Treasure Hunter. Skyrim auras ==NEW== Adds roughly 80 equippable cosmetic effects from the game for your roleplay or screenarchery purposes. Start On Save ==NEW== SKSE plugin that automatically loads saves on game launch. Enhanced Death Cam ==NEW== SKSE plugin that improves death/ragdoll camera, with free rotation/fly camera and other features. Powers Keyring ==NEW== Adds an MCM that allows you to add unwanted powers to a sub-menu accessed with a power. Hide Quest Items in Container Menu ==NEW== Hides quest items from the player's inventory when in container menu since you can't put quest items in a container anyways. Outfit Switcher This mod allows you to save your current outfit in its entirety, while switching to a previously saved one. No Silly Physics Damage - Carts Pots Bones etc You will no longer lose HP when walking on dynamic objects such as bones or when walking towards a cart. You Can Sleep Disables the regular restrictions on sleeping (like owned beds, being asked to leave, etc). Configurable. Jaxonz Lights Please Simple but great mod that allows you to cast light spell instantly using a hotkey. RaceMenu Poser Toggleable animations to stop character from moving or test clipping in Racemenu. Take All Loose Gold and Arrows After picking up a coin or arrow from the world, automatically picks up coins and arrows near you. Consume Loose Items Allows you to consume potions, food and ingredients from the world, rather than storing them in your inventory. Open Inventory May be useful for I have no idea what cheating/testing purposes. But still, it may be. Numerical Smithing Upgrades Changes the naming system of upgraded equipment to a number-based system. So instead of items being amended with (fine), (superior), (exquisite), etc., you have (+1), (+2), (+3) and so on. Face Light This mod adds lighting spell "Facelight" for brighter face when it's needed, useful for screenarchery. AreYouThere - Actor NPC Follower Find all NPCs in the mod using the simple tool. No Bethesda intro Begone.

#1 - BUILD A BASHED PATCH

#2 - MERGE YOUR MODS (optional, if you're still above 254 plugins)

#3 - REBUILD & TWEAK YOUR BASHED PATCH (ONLY IF YOU DID STEP #2)

#4 - MAKE A MERGED PATCH

Q: why not to use Smashed Patch instead? It's said this tool is doing everything both Bashed and Merged patch are doing in terms of conflicts, but just better. So?
A: Mator Smash is indeed an amazing work! And indeed, if often covers more conflicting records merging then Bashed nor Merged patch do, so if you're using Smashed Patch, you don't need neither Bashed or Merged. But the thing is, whatever its algorithm is, it's doing those records merging pretty "wild" - often inaccurate, which can lead to various issues, from just weird ones, like double merchant stock, to more serious ones, like visible ingame bugs and crashes. No automated tool is perfect (Bashed and Merged too), but atm, Smashed Patch is just working too much inaccurate which can sometimes bring you more headache than good results. If you wanna use it instead of Bashed/Merged combination, you're free too, but keep in mind to always check the Smashed Patch yourself manually after building it, and make a deep ingame test. Once again, this is a great tool with a lot of efforts put into it, but I simply can't directly recommend or disrecommend it. Use at your own preference.

#5 - RUN FNIS, ASIS & DSR PATCHES (if using them)

#6 - CHECK EVERYTHING YOURSELF

#7 - MAKE YOUR DISTANT OBJECTS BEAUTIFUL AS NEVER BEFORE

#8 - THAT'S IT! YOU CAN START PLAYING!

Have too weak rig but still wanna have some of those tasty graphics mods? Have a strong rig, but need to gain a few FPS? Look here!

1) Open SkyrimPrefs.ini and find iShadowMapResolution= value

2) Use performance optimized textures for SSE

3) Use Ordenador

4) My PC can't afford DynDOLOD and ENB DOF, but I don't want to see these ugly LODs! What can I do?

5) Use Paramount - FPS and Fixes Galore

6) Still need more FPS in wilderness? ==NEW==

7) Still bad FPS in cities?

8) Lower you ingame resolution

9) Mod Skyrim LE.

ENB preset recommendations: Rudy ENB, X ENB, NVT ENB

Additional recommendations for graphics mods: From big texture packs, Osmodius or Skyrim Realistic Overhaul are recommended. As for the main tree mod, I'd recommend to go with Lush Vanilla Trees or EVT [without] bigger trees option in installer. As for the grass mod, go for Northern Grass or Verdant. Don't use weather mods. As for landscape overhauls, I'd recommend to not use any, maybe only Skyrim Better Roads, same goes for settlement mods - keep the vanilla settlements for now.

Mod list:

Good! Now sort your load order using LOOT and you're good to go. Also, if you're owner of a windescreen monitor, install this fix and take a look ad low-end section of the guide if you have weak rig or just need to gain a few FPS.

Note: The "Mods to be installed or actions to be made in the end of modding process" section isn't required for this mod list. You can make step #1 in it, but that's up to you.

ENB preset recommendations: Rudy ENB, X ENB, NVT ENB, Silent Horizons ENB, Intrigued ENB, Visceral ENB.

Additional recommendations for graphics mods: From big texture packs, Skyland or Noble are recommended. As for the main tree mod, I'd recommend to go with SFO or EVT. As for the grass mod, go for Northern Grass, Verdant or Veydosebrom. For a "lite" base of landscapes "overhauling" I'd recommend to get Skyrim Better Roads, Nordic Ruins of Skyrim and Skyrim Bridges. From the weather mods, I'd recommend to pick either Obsidian (also grab the ==NEW==MCM patch) or COT, or just stick to vanilla weathers.

Mod list:

Good! Now proceed to the "Mods to be installed or actions to be made in the end of modding process" section. Required steps are #1, #3 and #4. Step #6 (DynDOLOD) is optional - it will make your game distant objects absolutely beautiful, but it requires some time to read about the installation, so decide yourself. Also, if you're owner of a windescreen monitor, install this fix and take a look ad low-end section of the guide if you have weak rig or just need to gain a few FPS. After you've finished these steps, just sort your load order with LOOT and you're ready to go.

Lastly, if you're planning to actually play as vampire/werewolf not only during Dawnguard and Companions questlines, install these (one or both):

ENB preset recommendations: Rudy ENB, X ENB, NVT ENB, Silent Horizons ENB, Intrigued ENB, Natural and Atmospheric Tamriel ENB, Visceral ENB, Ominous ENB.

Additional recommendations for graphics mods: From big texture packs, Skyland or Noble are recommended. As for the main tree mod, I'd recommend to go with SFO or EVT. As for the grass mod, go for Northern Grass, Verdant or Veydosebrom. From the weather mods, I'd recommend to pick either Obsidian (also grab the MCM patch) or COT, or just stick to vanilla weathers. Lastly, you may be interested in beautiful Winter Overhaul to add to harsh winter Skyrim abmience in terms of scenery appearance. The Nordic Ruins of Skyrim and Skyrim Bridges can be a great addition too.

Mod list:

Now, choose between the next 2 mods. Both are great, and both have own advantages and disadvantages over each other. Read the mod pages and choose one your prefer yourself. I'd personally advise to go with iNEED, but once again, that's totally up to you.

Nice, let's continue

These mods are absolutely optional. You can install all of them or none, depending on your own vision of immersion depth you need:

Pheeewww!

Good! Now proceed to the "Mods to be installed or actions to be made in the end of modding process" section. Required steps are #1, #3 and #4. Step #6 (DynDOLOD) is optional - it will make your game distant objects absolutely beautiful, but it requires some time to read about the installation, so decide yourself. Also, if you're owner of a windescreen monitor, install this fix and take a look ad low-end section of the guide if you have weak rig or just need to gain a few FPS. After you've finished these steps, just sort your load order with LOOT and you're ready to go.

ENB preset recommendations: Rudy ENB, Silent Horizons ENB, X ENB, NVT ENB, Mythical ENB, Natural and Atmospheric Tamriel ENB, Aequinoctium ENB, eisVogel 2 ENB, Ominous ENB.

Additional recommendations for graphics mods: From big texture packs, Noble or Pfuscher pack are recommended (you can also install Pfuscher pack on top of Noble). As for the grass mod, go for Northern Grass, Viscous or Verdant, or look at Short Grass if you wanna more "green" summer look of groundcovers. For base of landscapes "overhauling" I'd recommend to get Skyrim Better Roads, Dark Forests of Skyrim, Nordic Ruins of Skyrim and Skyrim Bridges. From the weather mods, I'd recommend to pick Obsidian (also grab the MCM patch), Dolomite, Aequinoctium or Rustic, or just stick to vanilla weathers.

Mod list:

Lore-Based Loading Screens

InsanitySorrow Weapons Pack

Stormcloak Battle Armor Replacer

Guards Armor Replacer

Heavy Legion

Talos Housecarl Armor Pack

Barbarian Steel Armor

All Thieves Guild Jobs Concurrently

No Force for Illusion Magic

this

this

Good!

The next 3 mods are absolutely optional - install them if you wanna to have "lite" survival experience in your game. All 3 mods are very lightweight and won't give any script issues to your setup.

Booinnn-nnnnk.

NARC Remade - No Animals Report Crimes

Realistic AI Detection (better sneaking)

Vampire Attacks Restored Outside of Walled Cities

Realistic Melee Range

Mortal Enemies

Realistic Conversations

Disease Fixes

Good! Now proceed to the "Mods to be installed or actions to be made in the end of modding process" section and follow the steps in it. Also, if you're owner of a windescreen monitor, install this fix and take a look ad low-end section of the guide if you have weak rig or just need to gain a few FPS. After you've finished these steps, just sort your load order with LOOT and you're ready to go.

Mod list:

Now some armors which I personally see greatly fitting rogue types of characters. Their installation is absolutely up to you ofc:

Same for weapons:

Meanwhile, you can also watch a few unique modded character builds available at my YT channel:

Mod list:

Now some armors which I personally see greatly fitting mage types of characters. Their installation is absolutely up to you ofc:

Same for weapons:

Meanwhile, you can also watch a few unique modded character builds available at my YT channel:

Mod list:

Now some armors which I personally see greatly fitting warrior types of characters. Their installation is absolutely up to you ofc:

Same for weapons:

Mods adding both armors and weapons:

Note: For animation mods that require FNIS, it's recommended to use Nemesis instead (all mods relying on FNIS work with Nemesis too) - why and how - look in animations section.

Meanwhile, you can also watch a few unique modded character builds available at my YT channel: