Which mods do I use?! There's too many!

[panthaman42]

OMG! How in the name of the 8 divines can I possibly narrow down my choices from the THOUSANDS of them out there?! I know a lot of it is a matter of personal choice but still how can I ever sort through them all?!

 

Sorry for the drama. I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment.

 

I saw the G.E.M.S. (http://www.skyrimgems.com/) list but even that one has dozens of mods on it. I barely know where to start. If anybody has any helpful suggestions I'd be grateful.

[srayesmanll]

If you are a first time player, my suggestion is to play WITHOUT any mods. Get a feel for the game and the mechanics. Then you can see what you like and what you dislike about the game, and then search for mods that fix those things. GEMS is a good resource for finding all those mods the tweak the game mechanics, rules, etc. Here are some basics:

 

1) First, get SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender - skse.silverlock.org ). Read and follow the instructions EXACTLY. Numerous mods use this, so it's a good idea to have it.

 

2) SKUI - This changes the interface to a more PC-based interface rather than the console style interface. The new version also contains MCM, a menu system for other mods to use for preference setup. The MCM is going to become more used in Skyrim, so I would get SKUI just for this alone (they should have separated it out, but oh well). IF you want the MCM without the SKUI interface, one of the developers of SKUI created a couple of mods to disable the UI part (leaving the menus as vanilla, console style) while leaving the MCM functionality.

 

3) Categorized Favorites Menu - this modifies the favorites menu to a more useful display. People have posted there own various setups, some with specific mods in mind, so take a look through those to see if someone has a modified setup you like.

 

4) Female body replacers - this is a tough one for recommendations because everyone has their preferences, and their are many variations of the 2 most popular ones. CBBE (and variations) seem to have the most accessories (armor, jewelry, etc). UNP (and it's numerous variations) is the "upstart" that is now in a dead heat with CBBE as far as accessories. My personal favorite is the ADEC body - not as supported as CBBE/UNP, but has a good set of armors (most by Acdale) with a few variations. There are others (LadyBody - look here on LL for that one), but these are the 3 main ones. Basically, look at the mods and choose the one you like the looks of, then go with that.

 

5) Male body replacers - a lot more limited than female. Look for "Better Male" as a starter (if you a using any sex mod, you'll need the erect version of course...) There are a couple of other male replacers, they are just a little harder to find.

 

6) If you planning on playing a vampire, use one of the Vamp mods: Vampiric Thirst, Better Vampires, Belua Sanguinare. There may be more, but these are the 3 most popular and each one is very different than the other. Read them thoroughly to decide which one is best for you. They cannot be mixed and match - chose only 1.

 

Again, my suggestion for modding is play the vanilla game for a while, discover the things you don't like and want to change, THEN find and install the mods to tweak the game to your liking.

[panthaman42]

Thanks for the tips! I have played vanilla and very quickly saw room for improvement. I 5 minute look at the Steam Workshop gave me a dozen ideas. A 10 minute look at the Nexus gave me a bushel more. I realized very quickly I am in way over my head. Someone could spend days just looking at all the mods before even trying them!

 

I suppose I'm looking for maybe a best of the best or a "standard" list of extremely common mods that EVERYONE uses. I suppose there really isn't a good way to get such a list.

 

Still I do appreciate your input.

[Jexsam]

I'd be willing to say there really isn't a set of mods that could be called "standard" across so many people.

 

I will give a short list of the mods I personally couldn't live without.

 

Ethereal Elven Overhaul, and elf beautification mod that makes major visual improvement to elves without violating Skyrim's elf aesthetic. The only way to go if you want good-looking but lore-correct elves.

 

Weapons of the Third Era, a weapon mod that adds weapons styled after TES3: Morrowind's weapons. Also adds them to leveled lists, so it increases variety of what you come across in the world.

 

JaySuS Swords. Like Weapons of the Third Era above, adds craftable and leveled list weapons to the game world.

 

Heavy Armory. Same as the two above, new weapons both craftable an level listed. Because you can never have enough implements of death at your disposal!

 

Climates of Tamriel. If you can't run an ENB but want a prettier game world, this is what you want. It works with some ENBs, too, so you can still use it if your rig is powerful enough. Pairs well with Claralux.

 

Morrowind Armor for Skyrim adds Morrowind-themed or styled armor and weapons to the game world, and also craftable. Keep in mind, the upcoming Dragonborn DLC will feature some of the armor types present in this mod (Bonemold, Stalhrim, Bear, possibly others, though obviously in new styles), so depending on how much you like variety, it may not be worth keeping this post-Dragonborn.

 

Lastly, Val's Crafting Meltdown. This is an old mod, though. I've used it for a long time because it works, but newer mods may do what this does better. It allows you to break down weapons and armor for a "refund" of their crafting costs. For example, Steel armor costs about 5 steel ingots, 4 leather strips, and 3 leather whereabouts. You can then take that armor to the smelter and melt it down for 3 steel ingots. Makes collecting resources for smith grinding much easier, but with enough loss breaking them down to parts to avoid being too broken.