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Recently I got back on a Skyrim binge and started out with a slew of new mods I thought I'd share. Spoilers contain additional info. I wanted to focus on some more heavy duty mods, mostly player generated new content, that don't get mentioned too much here in our other threads but that I think every Skyrim player who can should give a shot.

Mod #1 Wyrmstooth, an expansion mod that adds another island to the game, about the size of Solstheim, though with slightly less content. Includes a long but entertaining enough main quest where you hunt down a dragon to defend the Empire's mining operations on the island. The mod has a few dungeons and several quests, but the island is very well put together and different from the current content to give you a newish experience in the game. Included are two new ore types and weapons and armor with them, three new followers, full voice acting (decent quality), and a fortress you can purchase as a house (complete with servants and armed guards). You can acquire Wyrmstooth via Steam or Nexus.

Mod #2 Falskaar, another expansion mod that adds another island to the game, a little larger than Wyrmstooth but things are more spread out on the map. Lots more content. Long main quest line and a whole slew of adventures (I haven't had the chance to fully delve into it just yet). It includes new armors and spells like Wyrmstooth, excellent voice acting, and its own music track. You can acquire Falskaar via Nexus (I haven't found it on Steam)



Mod #3 Shadows of Morrowind (also called Skywind), a very ambitious project to add Morrowind into Skyrim! This mod is in beta and still being developed but is solid enough for play. There will be glitches but I never found anything crippling and like I said. Still in beta. The landscape is gorgeous (pic below) even in unmodded Skyrim games and the devs for this one deserve a tip of the hat for their meticulous hard work on that front. I played this one awhile ago and unfortunately there wasn't much to do. The map is being built well but the devs hadn't put work into much else. I need to reload this bad boy up and check it again. If you like exploring and enjoying the view though, this one is good. Sooner or later they'll hopefully get it up to excellent shape.

A pic:



Shadows of Morrowind is available on Nexus.

Mod #4 Moonpath to Elsweyr another entry in the new lands category. Still in development, but much much further along than Shadows of Morrowind. Functioning questing area with a few bugs (again nothing I've found crippling). It includes a large number of new enemies for Elsweyr, a player hide out, and it just added new voices (so so quality imo, but still good). Excellent design work on par with Shadows of Morrowind but you'll find much more to do with this one, especially if you're a Khajit or Elsweyr fan (excellent change to brind out the Ohmes Raht custom race!). Centered on a great main quest line where you support the resistance against the Thalmor. Moonpath is available on Steam and Nexus.

Mod #5 Dark Brotherhood Resurrection, an expansion to the Dark Brotherhood storyline with full voice acting, new NPC followers, a host of new sidequests, and assassination missions for none other than the Jarls of Skyrim! This mod is complete, as bug free as anything else in Skyrim, and contains as much content as either of the paid for DLC's or the above mentioned new lands mods. The main quest is okay, but just having more Dark Brotherhood is a great thing.

Mod #6 Elysium Estate, an excellent home mod. Out of all the homes I've downloaded in the game, this one is by far my favorite. Well organized home with lots of neatly organized storage, a massive armory with numerous displays for all your spoils. The best part for me is the inclusion of specialized displays for Daedric Weapons, the Prist Masks, the dragon claws, and various misc items you find (Wuuthrad, Staff of Magnus etc). Its a house mod, so don't expect too much trouble from it. My favorite part is how the various decorations on tables and shelves, are actually part of the tables and shelves! No more walking by and knocking everything off and sending it flying! This mod is available via Nexus.

Mod #7 Werebear! One of my favorite things in Skyrim was the Werewolf transformation. I'm a werewolf fan (not to be confused with Team Jacob, screw that crap) so I had a lot of fun with it. Lots of mods exist that replace the werewolf transformation with something else, but Werebear is a stand alone, that adds an entirely new transformation. There are two ways to get this mod. The base is available on Nexus and Steam (this one is compatible with the Werewolf mastery), but also on Nexus is the Moonlight Tales mod (this one is not compatible with Werewolf mastery), which includes the Werebear as well as a host of improvements for Were play and effects the Werewolves as well. If you like shapeshifting, this is a fun way to play if you've already done werewolf to death.

Mod #8 Final mod I'm going to suggest and one that makes the game feel like a completely different game and great for role playing. I'll start with this;



Yup. Predators: The Lost Tribe, available on Nexus, adds the Yuatja/Hish as a player race complete with various weapons and armors. Males and females available, as standard Yuatja, Bad Bloods, and Sovereigns (super predators). This mod is in beta and there are limitations to what it can do in the engine as well (as with most custom races some things just don't work, like the two or three times the game tries to race check your character). So far though, I've had little trouble and the only time the race has caused a problem is in Wyrmstooth but can be gotten around via a console command. The mod comes with several map locations where you can salvage Predator tech, fight savage Predators, as well as an abandonded temple filled with Xenomorphs (not well done at the moment sadly) and a crashed Predator ship manned by a friendly tribe.

Not 100% flawless, several textures for example don't work right, and there are a few glitches (a rare one where the tribe manning the crashed ship disappears to... somewhere), but nothing that doesn't hit many of the race mods. But if your a fan of the character, the limitations can be worked around and you're free to begin hunting the poor saps of Skyrim with wrist blades, plasma casters, and advanced cloaking technology. Deadly Dragons/Creatures go excellently with this race if you want to Role play.

Ooh.. may have to try that predator mod, that sounds like all kinds of fun.

Yeah. Given our lack of good Predator games lately, Skyrim actually makes a great one. Yuatja mesh well into the stealth assassination system, and the developers work with the enchantments on predator masks to allow cloaking effects (including a static effect in rain and a debuff to your stealth) is great. I also applaud him for the novelty of his implementations of shoulder cannons (they give a shout power on equip, which allows you to fire the cannon). Of the listed mods, Lost Tribes and Moonpath to Elsweyr are my favorites and naturally go well together.

Wow, these are definitely awesome. I've been meaning to pick up Skyrim on PC (already have it on PS3), and these definitely give me a good reason. Now to wait for a Steam Sale...

Disregard.

I wanted to add one last quick expansion to this. SOmething that's been in Elder Scrolls for some time, but has never worked very well is followers. I haven't checked if these mods are on Steam, but they are on Nexus. A quick warning, before using these mods, make sure you've dismissed your followers in your save! Problems can arise if you have one with you when these mods are first installed. That said, if you've ever wanted to lead a party or even an army of NPC's into battle (there are several 'War' mods), well;

Follower Mod #1; Amazing Follower Tweaks. Ultimate Follower Overhaul (UFO) is the most popular follower mod on Nexus, but personally I think Tweaks renders it redundant. Tweaks allows you to slot 31 NPC followers into its modul and gives you a lot of control over them. It adds a new dialogue menu where you can assign their skill and attribute points, modify their combat style, control what they wear and fight with. It expands your followers at any given time to 5 (and there are numerous mods that expand that number as high as 100). Follower Tweaks is the only reason I even started using followers. This mod also includes the ability to make followers essential (they can't die) and it removes the level cap that cripples many followers once you hit about level 50. Especially fun, this mod is compatible with Werebear, and allows you to turn your followers in Werewolves, Vampires, or Werebears and assign them to fight as such.



Follower Mod #2, Ultimate Follower Overhaul. As I said above, this the most used follower mod in Skyrim. It does a lot of the same things as Amazing Follower Tweaks, but has a more intuitive interface that is easier to navigate (it does not have as many options as Tweaks, such as allocating skill and attribute points). This mod additionally, makes all followers marryable (does not fix the marriage glitch with Lydia).

As a Mod #2.5, I also suggest looking up Badass Women and Badass Men by Beans. These mods reskin many of the popular followers (most of the Companions, Lydia, Jordis, Mjoll, etc) and they look great. I found many NPC's in game to be ugly, and there are many mods that make them look better. Put these mods at the bottom of your load order. Beans also has a Badass Women of Dragon Age mod that adds Morrigan and Leiliana to the game as followers (warning, using that mod requires downloading several other mods that the characters use. Beans lists them on the mod page).

As a Mod #2.75 Ioffer you Convenient Horses. Now, UFO includes this function by default so you don't need it if you get that one, but if you go with another mod or don't want to use them, this one is helpful. Convenient Horses adds some horses outside major cities for your follower(s) to ride when you mount up. Now, if you have UFO this is still worth it because the mod gives you a herd of horses and many cool features! Horses get armor and saddle bags for storage, can be named, they can be made invulnerable, and it adds a script that lets you dismount with weapons drawn! It also adds a shout and item you can use to summor your horse if it wanders off. Last it lets you set them to follow you instead of standing where you left them.


Follower Mod #3, My Home is Your Home. This is a fun mod that lets you do some cool things. Namely it adds 'The Book of Homies' to your inventory and what it does is allow you to reassign an NPC's home! This can be useful for moving all your Housecarls or Favorite followers to a single house in one city, or moving them to a custom home added by a mod. Once you assign them this home, they will stay there, interact with objects, and otherwise behave normally. It also allows you to instantly teleport to their home, so you could also station your followers around different areas and use them as transport. I currently use this mod to station my hunting pose at my house in White Run. When dismissed they will go to their newly assigned home and wait there. It doesn't even need to he a home. Take some cronies and assign them to guard a dragon priests tomb if you want. As long as they're essential they won't die



Follower Mod #3.5, Spouse Can Live Anywhere Essentially, this does the same as the above mod, but just for the spouse of the player character. It's used to tell your spouse to live at a custom home by adding the location to the list of options that come up when your tell your spouse that you're moving.

Next up the big one, Follower Mod #4 Interesting NPCs. Warning. This. Mod. Is. Massive. It's nearly 2 gigs in size and for good reason. It adds over 200 voiced followers, amny of them fully voiced with excellent quality, to the game, and numerous quests attached to them. Don't like your current options in henchmen/cannon fodder? Well here's the solution. Innkeepers will help direct you to these NPC's locations. Some of them can be married and the mod is compatible with Amazing Follower Tweaks and UFO.

 LordofHats wrote:


Next up the big one, Follower Mod #4 Interesting NPCs. Warning. This. Mod. Is. Massive. It's nearly 2 gigs in size and for good reason. It adds over 200 voiced followers, many of them fully voiced with excellent quality, to the game, and numerous quests attached to them. Don't like your current options in henchmen/cannon fodder? Well here's the solution. Innkeepers will help direct you to these NPC's locations. Some of them can be married and the mod is compatible with Amazing Follower Tweaks and UFO.

This mod is the reason I'm still playing Skyrim as much as I am. It's pleasant to bump into npcs you can actually have a ten minute conversation with. The quests fit so nicely into the Skyrim world and actually feel like you're making a difference in said NPCs lives. Throw the fact this mod has its' own superbly voiced main quest on top of all that.

Yup. At the end of the day, Mods are what makes Bethesda games turn, and the games themselves are good but the real glory is in their usefulness as a platform for player made content. The mods listed in this thread are probably worth around 100 hours of play time if you use them all, and there's more out there. It's what makes Skyrim (and Fallout) one of the best value buys anyone can get.

Some of the modders behind these mods have even gotten jobs for their work. The main guy behind Falskaar now works for Bungie, and the guys who made Wyrmstooth are working for Bethesda.

EDIT:

I suck at Screenshots but I finally managed to get a good one. I was picking up stuff in White Run when an ancient dragon thought he'd come breath ice everywhere;



Bad idea.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yup. At the end of the day, Mods are what makes Bethesda games turn, and the games themselves are good but the real glory is in their usefulness as a platform for player made content. The mods listed in this thread are probably worth around 100 hours of play time if you use them all, and there's more out there. It's what makes Skyrim (and Fallout) one of the best value buys anyone can get.

Some of the modders behind these mods have even gotten jobs for their work. The main guy behind Falskaar now works for Bungie, and the guys who made Wyrmstooth are working for Bethesda.

EDIT:

I suck at Screenshots but I finally managed to get a good one. I was picking up stuff in White Run when an ancient dragon thought he'd come breath ice everywhere;



Bad idea.

Which ENB/texture/lod MODs are you using? If any, also how does your Skyrim Run and on what video card? I am worried that ENBs are so gpu intensive i might not be able to get 60fps even with a powerful card.

I do not use ENB's. I'm light on the graphics overhauls. Right now I am using Skyrim HD - 2k Textures, Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Enhanced Night Skyrim, Lush Trees, and the Climates of Tamriel mod which includes an overhaul of the lighting engine. I have used Sharpshooters ENB in the past, but it caused the Green Water glitch and I couldn't get rid of it via fixes so I removed the mod (I'm not that attached to the graphics).

ENB can be a little messy as you can't install them via the mod manager from Nexus or Steam (to my knowledge might be wrong). You have to manually install the ENB files yourself. There is a tutorial on the subject here.

Probably the most important mod if performance concerns you is Hialgoboost GPU Upgrade which streamlines the way Skyrim and your GPU operate and improves performance without overly straining your rig.

ENB's and graphic overhauls can cause your game to lag, and I'm afraid I'm none too knowledgeable on specifics :( But there are some tools to help. The Optimizer Textures is a tool that converts files the game uses to something more manageable to improve your performance (I don't use this mod, I'm not sure how it works!), and there's also CTD and Memory patch ENBoost which helps optimize how the game runs (it's no longer being worked on but still works as far as I know).

Another good mod is the SSME (Skyrim Start Up Memory Editor) which fixes upwards of half the things that can cause Skyrim to crash. Skyrim doesn't allocate enough memory to itself on your system when it starts up, so too many mods or errors in the game to cause it to slow or crash. SSME makes the game allocate more virtual memory (not RAM) and resolves this problem. Combine this with the Safety Load mod, which prevents the game from getting caught in a loop when its loading you into an area (these two problems account for about 95% of the reasons Skyrim crashes).

There are surely more resources out there, but I don't use ENB and don't care a huge deal about graphics so I'm not the most knowledgeable person on that front. The only way to know for sure is to take the leap and see how it goes.

I installed ENB and it turned Skyrim into a slide show. I'm running double TITANS, so I don't know what I did wrong. I deleted the whole lot, put in the HD textures and it looks fine.

I ended up turning off dynamic depth of field via the Dynavision mod as the depth of field is keyed to your character's head, so when you're playing in 3rd person and walk up to a wall the whole world goes blurry as the camera focuses on just what's in front of your face (which would make perfect sense in 1st person).

Yeah I had some depth of field problems as well. ENB is an amazing thing but its also kind of a pain in the ass.

Another method to improve FPS is to go into your SkyrimPrefs.ini (its in MyDocuments -> MyGames -> Skyrim) and find the line bShadowsOnGrass. It should be 1 by default. Switch that 1 to a 0 and Skyrim will stop drawing shadows for grass.

I am now running... 25 mods, although Ethereal Elven Overhaul doesn't appear to be working.

Currently my Skyrim looks something like this:


I tend to enjoy a balance of re-textures and content mods. In total according to my Nexus mod manager I'm running 114 content mods, and some 90 re-textures and minor visual tweaks. For lighting I've found ENB was tricky to get right and not worth the effort, so I use a combination of Dynavision and Imaginator visual control.
The main change is that I play with Unbound, SkyRe (Skyrim redone), working alongside mods like frostfall, immersive creatures, organised bandits of Skyrim and populated roads and towns. It's mostly about attempting to create a believable working world. Please note, despite the large number of mods I run I have no noticeable fps drop and don't ever crash. Larger content mods such as Falskaar were part of earlier 'mod builds' I used, but have subsequently been dropped as I completed them.

 Oshunai wrote:
Currently my Skyrim looks something like this:

Spoiler:

I tend to enjoy a balance of re-textures and content mods. In total according to my Nexus mod manager I'm running 114 content mods, and some 90 re-textures and minor visual tweaks. For lighting I've found ENB was tricky to get right and not worth the effort, so I use a combination of Dynavision and Imaginator visual control.
The main change is that I play with Unbound, SkyRe (Skyrim redone), working alongside mods like frostfall, immersive creatures, organised bandits of Skyrim and populated roads and towns. It's mostly about attempting to create a believable working world. Please note, despite the large number of mods I run I have no noticeable fps drop and don't ever crash. Larger content mods such as Falskaar were part of earlier 'mod builds' I used, but have subsequently been dropped as I completed them.

Looks good, and sounds awesome. Don't like that Whiterun Guard's cloak, though. Don't know why exactly, but well..

My PC is sadly unable to run Skyrim with decent FPS, so I'm just settling with Skyrim on Xbox, and Oblivion on PC with a lot of mods. Have to say, ENB is really, really tricky. And doesn't like my PC either, but well..

After a bit of fething around I managed to get Elven Overhaul to work, and I got the 2K HD texture pack to run correctly (a lot of manual copying/pasting to get it all in there). Made sure I took screenshots to compare, and things are much better.

Now loading between levels takes about 5-6 seconds, rather than 1-2. Oh well.

 Oshunai wrote:
Snip

That is pretty.

I'm thinking I'll pick up a collection of mods to make Skyrim prettier and see how far I can go.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I am now running... 25 mods, although Ethereal Elven Overhaul doesn't appear to be working.

Might try moving it in your load order.

I run about 150 mods.

Well my friend's modded Skyrim and got all sorts of mods. I like Vanilla but If I REALLY had to use a mod, it has to be this one:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=201861191

 Juvieus Kaine wrote:
Well my friend's modded Skyrim and got all sorts of mods. I like Vanilla but If I REALLY had to use a mod, it has to be this one:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=201861191

I suppose for small children, Thomas the Tank engine burning people to death might be a tad nightmare fuel.

Did anyone mention Frostfall? it adds hypothermia as a threat. I can't take a stroll through the mountains anymore, and actually have to hide in caves to survive a blizzard.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11163

Also for adding new textures to enchantments to make it feel like I'm holding the "FLAMING VAMPIRE DEATH SWORD OF FETH YOU" when i'm using it.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41875/?

Enhanced Character Edit. It allows you to greatly customize the PC's body composition. Requires Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE).

I'm not going to post a direct link to it since Nexus is potentially NSFW.

SFW pictures