Essential mods for Skyrim?

[dima_]

I'm reinstalling Skyrim after god knows how long. I'll probably be like a new game to me. But one thing I remember from the last time I played is that vanilla Bethesda RPGs are unplayable so does anyone here have mods off the top of their head they consider essential? Gameplay-wise, but I'm also interesting in what the best ENBs are and other graphical-enhancement mods. I might try sorting the Nexus by most popular, but there might a few hidden gems, you know? Or I might be wrong and I'm just being lazy

 

Thanks in advance tho

[Tenshi017]

I have a bunch of money on my skyrim but I can't remember (at work right now)  but one I do remember and helps is Enhanced lighting: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27043/?

 

I'll post again when I get home

 

 

[dima_]

11 minutes ago, TempestZXT said:

I have a bunch of money on my skyrim but I can't remember (at work right now)  but one I do remember and helps is Enhanced lighting: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27043/?

 

I'll post again when I get home

 

 

Thanks! I'll get this.

[You_are_a_cunt]

Unofficial Elder Scrolls Patch is a must-have

[dima_]

22 minutes ago, revsilverspine said:

Unofficial Elder Scrolls Patch is a must-have

Just downloaded that too. Almost forgot it. 

[Tenshi017]

not sure how far you want to mod your skyrim, but i have 67 active plugins and 57 active mods

[typographie]

I personally consider SkyUI, RaceMenu (and by extension SKSE), and the Unofficial patches to be must-haves. I use a lot more mods than that, but those are ones I can easily recommend to basically anyone.

 

As for graphics mods, Static Mesh Improvement Mod is probably the most important and basic one I use before I resort to texture mods and ENB to improve things further.

[EscalatorBoy]

Absolute essentials for me:

SKSE

SkyUI

Better Dialogue Controls

Better Messagebox Controls

ENBoost

ImmersiveHUD

RaceMenu

Alternate Start - Live Another Life (Not because skipping the Vanilla intro is essential, but because I have so many mods that the scripting of the intro bugs out, causing the carriage physics to flip out)

 

There are others that I wouldn't want to play without, but these (and any mods that they require as a base to run) are the bare minimum for any load order. I can update with more later if I think of them.

[Omon_Ra]

I basically followed the RealVision ENB mod list of 'required' (to make them look like his screenshots) and most of the optional mods. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30936/?

 

It definitely took some time to get it working right, especially since the optional extras aren't in install order; and there are a few others I was using before I jumped into RealVision that I wanted to keep, but it's totally worth it. You'll have to crank your settings down to get it playable however. My 780 with the HD texture pack and vanilla Skyrim never dropped below 60fps on ultra everything. Now, with around 100 mods I have to run it at medium and most major cities I'm getting 30fps running around; but 60fps in dungeons and other less crowded environments. With the ENB, medium still looks better than ultra on vanilla, so I'm okay with it. I can't wait to get a 1070/80 and be able to turn up the settings.

[minibois]

Dual Hand Combo Hotkeys (makes it so you can equip weapon/spell combinations to numbers to quickly switch between them)

CBBE/UNP (vanilla models are shit)

You can get some ENB (tanks your fps though)

All the unofficial patches (the Skyrim one and the three DLC ones)

SKSE and SkyUI

The mod that makes dogs doges.

Roadsigns HD

[EscalatorBoy]

3 hours ago, Omon_Ra said:

I basically followed the RealVision ENB mod list of 'required' (to make them look like his screenshots) and most of the optional mods. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30936/?

 

It definitely took some time to get it working right, especially since the optional extras aren't in install order; and there are a few others I was using before I jumped into RealVision that I wanted to keep, but it's totally worth it. You'll have to crank your settings down to get it playable however. My 780 with the HD texture pack and vanilla Skyrim never dropped below 60fps on ultra everything. Now, with around 100 mods I have to run it at medium and most major cities I'm getting 30fps running around; but 60fps in dungeons and other less crowded environments. With the ENB, medium still looks better than ultra on vanilla, so I'm okay with it. I can't wait to get a 1070/80 and be able to turn up the settings.

It's worth noting that while Realvision does have the most endorsements as far as ENB's go, there's a wide variety of incredible ENB presets - many of which aren't don't even have much impact on performance. Personally, I find realvision to be far too bright and blurry. It's a bit overrated, and it isn't really for me, especially since most of the modern ENB's that really cook your graphics card were released long after the game itself decreased in popularity, driving down the number of endorsements on the Nexus.

 

I've been running a homemade concoction of the Natural Lighting and Vivid Atmospherics ENB (omg the sunsets) coupled with a few extra settings I pulled out of the Straylight ENB (Which has the best ambient occlusion settings I've seen so far, the characters just look incredible). Depth of field hit my performance too hard, so on top of that, I added the recently released Skyrim Reloaded mod to handle that, as well as adding in motion blur, without the performance hit.

 

If you like, I'll post some screenshots later. The main point is, experiment with ENB's if you're going that route, and don't be afraid to try stuff that isn't in the "top files of all time" list, since that list is heavily biased towards stuff that was released pretty early in the game's modding cycle.

 

 

[dima_]

10 hours ago, EscalatorBoy said:

Absolute essentials for me:

SKSE

SkyUI

Better Dialogue Controls

Better Messagebox Controls

ENBoost

ImmersiveHUD

RaceMenu

Alternate Start - Live Another Life (Not because skipping the Vanilla intro is essential, but because I have so many mods that the scripting of the intro bugs out, causing the carriage physics to flip out)

 

There are others that I wouldn't want to play without, but these (and any mods that they require as a base to run) are the bare minimum for any load order. I can update with more later if I think of them.

 

9 hours ago, Minibois said:

Dual Hand Combo Hotkeys (makes it so you can equip weapon/spell combinations to numbers to quickly switch between them)

CBBE/UNP (vanilla models are shit)

You can get some ENB (tanks your fps though)

All the unofficial patches (the Skyrim one and the three DLC ones)

SKSE and SkyUI

The mod that makes dogs doges.

Roadsigns HD

 

Thanks for these and everyone else. Alternate start is the best thing ever. I've done the vanilla intro so many times it's like a chore to me now. My plugin list is slowly growing

[Suika]

2 minutes ago, dima_ said:

Alternate start is the best thing ever.

As simple as alternate start is, it ended up forcing me to put an extra 20 hours in the game lmao.

[EscalatorBoy]

A couple more:

 

Auto Unequip Ammo - unequips arrows and bolts when you don't have a bow/crossbow equipped.

Fix Lip Sync - Fixes desynced audio from the character animations

[dima_]

1 hour ago, EscalatorBoy said:

A couple more:

 

Auto Unequip Ammo - unequips arrows and bolts when you don't have a bow/crossbow equipped.

Fix Lip Sync - Fixes desynced audio from the character animations

Ya I got fix lip sync. I might get auto unequip ammo but it's become a habit of mine to unequip it along with the bow/xbow when I'm done with it

 

And ENBs kill my fps! not that it can go as high as my 144hz can go because of the creation engine and its antics but I don't think Skyrim takes advantage of newer hardware and SLI...

[EscalatorBoy]

1 hour ago, dima_ said:

And ENBs kill my fps! not that it can go as high as my 144hz can go because of the creation engine and its antics but I don't think Skyrim takes advantage of newer hardware and SLI...

Looking at your specs you should have absolutely no problem running an ENB and maintaining 60FPS. Some of the more popular ENB's (Realvision, NLA) on their default highest settings can sometimes be a bit intense, but there's plenty of good ENB's with excellent performance. Personal recommendations:

 

Straylight ENB

Seasons of Skyrim (Performance versions available)

Natural Lighting and Vivid Atmospherics

 

If you find one you like but doesn't quite run well enough, you can go into the enbseries.ini and disable things like Depth of Field and Ambient Occlusion (the former being nice for screenshots, but can be annoying to play with, so I disable it by default).

 

You're right that it doesn't play nice with SLI though, and you're definitely best off capping the framerate at 60 since the physics are tied to framerate.

[dima_]

45 minutes ago, EscalatorBoy said:

Looking at your specs you should have absolutely no problem running an ENB and maintaining 60FPS. Some of the more popular ENB's (Realvision, NLA) on their default highest settings can sometimes be a bit intense, but there's plenty of good ENB's with excellent performance. Personal recommendations:

 

Straylight ENB

Seasons of Skyrim (Performance versions available)

Natural Lighting and Vivid Atmospherics

 

If you find one you like but doesn't quite run well enough, you can go into the enbseries.ini and disable things like Depth of Field and Ambient Occlusion (the former being nice for screenshots, but can be annoying to play with, so I disable it by default).

 

You're right that it doesn't play nice with SLI though, and you're definitely best off capping the framerate at 60 since the physics are tied to framerate.

 

Thanks for this!! I didn't know anything about tweaking ends, I just used them as they came, but now I'll look to see what options I can mess with.