So anyway, I love Elder Scrolls games. One of the most powerful moment of my gaming history was starting to play Morrowind, looking around and thinking "Holy shit, I can go absolutely everywhere!" - Then I have proceeded to play Morrowind for the entire following year, played it every single day when I was able to, at least for a while.

When it comes to Skyrim, on the other hand... I didn't like it very much at the beginning. I wanted to properly mod it and get more out of the game, but as expansions were getting released, more and more mods required them and I gave up until I get my hands on them. So, this wednesday (or so) I actually got Legendary edition and finally started the modding spree (not really, I'm using 14 mods currently which is not that much by my TES standards) - it's now pretty much the most impressive RPG I have played in a long, long time. Aside from Skyrim and what it got right (rich and detailed world and loads of content would be strongest parts here), there was a fair bit of stuff I flatout wasn't satisfied with and a fair bit of stuff I liked, but felt could have been done better. Below follows a list of my complaints and how to fix them, for those who might be interested. All of these mods actually feel like they're part of Skyrim, not just some tacked-on content:

I'm gonna be mentioning Skyrim Redone a lot. What can I say, it gets a lot of things right. It consists of modules, so I'll try to mention the relevant ones. Still, it's best to install all of them - they're very well thought-trough and interconnected.

- Feeling of empowerment - one of my biggest complaints about Skyrim was the fact that it went out of its way to make you feel like a powerful warrior capable of overcoming the greatest obstacles right from the beginning. Not a thing of level-scaling, not really as you could still hit crazy difficult spots at time - but the design decision to give you this 'power' is still around, and... Well let's just say I prefer to start my RPGs as a whimp. So, my fix for that?

Skyrim Redone - Combat Module + Enemy Scaling Module
Basically, what the two of these do is turning you into a whimp from the getgo. No loger will you be able to run into a bandit camp and murder everyone within and you'll get a much greater feeling of progression as you'll be able to take on more and more powerful enemies as you level up. It's not one of the 'hardcore you'll break your teeth on everything' mods - the progression is actually reasonably fast and incredibly rewarding. Now add the combat module to the mix - it overhauls the combat and a lot of equipment in a way that makes fighting a lot faster and more deadly. It forces you to actually use tactics and environment to your advantage, and when you get jumped on by a character of roughly the same level as you are, you will most likely die, so caution is a good idea - it works the other way around as well tho. It's also important to learn to properly manage groups of enemies and similar. Combat suddenly feels a lot more involved because of that.

- Boring perks - now, the addition of perks into Skyrim was a genious idea, allowing your character to profile more in what you want him/her to be. Thing is, the tree was a) unbalanced and b) rather boring, with a lot of passive increases that didn't really influence the gameplay. So, the fix?

Skyrim Redone
It was a plugin that was started to overhaul the skill tree, so that's what it does. It changes all the trees substantially, puts a lot more balance into them, and makes them a lot more fun. For instance, it merges pickpocket and lockpicking skills together (as lockpicking was rather boring) and adds a new Wayfarer skill, that allows you to learn lore of Skyrim's fauna and other inhabitants, survival skills if you have certain another mod installed (will mention it below) and, in the end, masquerade as a member of numerous Skyrim's factions, even usually hostile ones, to move freely amongst them (I imagine this should work wonders for asassins). That was the most drastic change, but there are heps more, equally as interesting and fun. You can build dwemer constructs!

- No real feeling of harsh conditions - Basically, what bothered me a lot about the game was that everybody kept claiming how harsh and inhospitable Skyrim is, but you could swim in freezing water and then go jog butt-naked over its mountains, in a blizzard. And absolutely nothing would happen. Well, the fix?

Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival
Yeah. Basically, the mod tracks your body temperature + wetness and you can freeze to death if you're not careful. It offers three variants - basically casual, normal and hardcore - and you can actually tweak individual options of the mod via an in-game menu, so if you don't like something, turn it off. The way I'm playing now is without fast-travel, with different types of clothing offering different amounts of protection from cold and rain (both can be turned on or off at will). What you're always going to get with the mod are ways to craft camping equipment (so you can make fire or shelter when you don't currently have access to some) and heat, wetness and weather tracking, all seamlessly included into the game's UI. Basically, it forces you to put a lot more consideration into conducting long journeys into mountains, ideally packing a tent, some firewood and good, protective equipment. This mod is also interjoined with Skyrim Redone, where SkyRe adds a new branch to its wayfarer tree, concerning survival and even adds spells that help raise your exposure protection. It just all feels like it was in Skyrim all along, and is brilliant.

Right, those were my biggest bugbears with Skyrim. Now, for any in-game mod menu to work, you need to have SkyUI installed - but you should have that anyway as it improves the UI in every possible way. So, anyway, to my general mod recommendations:
Realistic Needs and Diseases - you need to eat, drink and sleep. That's it.
Skyrim community uncapper - is needed by SkyRE.
Skyrim Script Extender - is needed by all the mods ever.
Run for your lives and When vampires attack - makes NPCs less suicidal. Peasants won't try to fisticuff the dragons and will rather hide away, those who should fight according to lore stay and fight tho.
WATER - eh, prettier water.
Improved NPC clothing - hi-res - Well, that.
[url=http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10886/?]of Skyrim - adds a lot of ambient sounds to the game, which in turn adds to immersion. Just... Wonderful and atmospheric.
Realistic Lightening Overhaul - That. Makes only sources of light in dungeons actually emit light, so there's no 'fog' allowing you to see in pitch black, so ... be wary of that. You can actually turn that feature off tho. Warning - you're gonna need compatibility patches provided with Sounds of Skyrim for it to run properly.
A Quality World Map - It makes the world map hi-res and adds roads to it, so you can actually plan properly.

I have also turned off compass markers of undiscovered locations as I feel it make me look around much more, and I find more cool stuff. Otherwise I just follow the black icons on my compass and it's terrible.

So anyway, there you go. My Skyrim is now fucking awesome. I wrote all that on the offchance that someone had similar problems with Skyrim as I did - because this just about makes it a perfect game.

I recommend installing as much as you want from that list via Nexus Mod Manager - does just about everything for you, and offers installation wizard for mods with more that a single flavour.

Thanks for this. I had a lot of the same gripes about Skyrim and was going to do the same thing when I got my hands on the complete edition.

Now if there was a mod to replace the waypoint system with the Morrowind style journal.

Here you go. It's not quite there, but it is as good as you can possibly get - and you need a fairly good knowledge of the map for it to work properly, as it uses a lot of local names and such. Printed Skyrim map would be what I suggest. Works wonders tho, especially if you use Compass tweaker to turn off all markers - I didn't list it because it tends to somewhat screw over SkyUI unless you delete the map.swf file in Data\Interface

This showcases the mod rather nicely

I think Bethesda has (quite reasonably, might I add) come to the conclusion that they can't make their games as good or balanced or whatever to please absolutely everyone, but rather made the game(s) as much sandboxed lore powerhouses as they can. I mean, the lore is already there, you just have to put some variety that connects to that and allow the community to make the tweaks it desires.

Sweet, thanks! That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Also, am I the only one who thinks SkyUI is just as bad as the default UI?

This sounds exciting! The "Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival" and "Realistic Needs and Diseases" are favorites of a fellow someone who plays Skyrim. It adds a lot hugely into feeling like you are interacting and are a real part of the wilderness.

Perhaps more could be added into the vampire side of things. Like recognition amongst NPCs and townsfolk. Does it seem odd how you could waltz into a village with your eyes the way it is, and no one notices anything strange? I haven't played Skyrim yet beyond it's beginnings, but was spoiled on these stuff by my ex-partner.

I've only played through less than a quarter of Morrowind. I plan to do a timesink marathon one of these days of the franchise, when I get round to it, that is!

Do note that I have updated the link to a similar, currently maintained mod. As for SkyUI... Come on, filters, item icons, proper categorization, smaller fonts, proper sorting, it has everything! I would like the UI from Morrowind more, or just a grid-based inventory in general, but you can't want everything you know. Well, I rather like the approach - it basically lets you play a game you want.

I used many of the same mods you mentioned when I started playing Skyrim (maybe a year ago, or so). Skyrim Redone really does a great job overhauling many aspects of the game and turning it into something that's pretty damn good. Another mod I found really useful that I didn't see you mention is , which changes the interface, because the existing in-game menus were just painful to use. I also coupled this with [url=http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/4862/?]Categorized Favorites Menu, which made the favorites menu much easier to use. I also used Skyrim HD for greatly improved textures, although a decently powerful machine is needed for that.

I'll probably take another crack at Skyrim once the cost of picking up Dawnguard and Dragonborn drops below $10, so I'll need to re-evaluate the mods available at that point.

EDIT: Just saw you did mention SkyUI... just blame it on my usual blindness to the obvious.

I've favorited this thread for when I pick up Skyrim again next summer, but just wanted to drop in and say thanks for making this list, Fenixp!

By the way, quick question for you, Fenixp, or anyone who has played both Skyrim and Skyrim Legendary Edition - how exactly does Hardcore Mode work? The brief description I read something along the lines of "makes the game harder", but it didn't really say anything about how.

I have mentioned SkyUI, it's impossibru without it :-P Also, it now has categorized favourites menu directly incorporated.

Yeah, just noticed myself that you mentioned it. At least it's an important enough mod that it deserves to be called out multiple times. Nice that they incorporated the categorized favorites into it- one less separate mod to manage.

TBH the only thing I've heard about was the Legendary mode added by Dragonborn, and that basically means that after you level a skill up to 100, you can make it 'legendary', knock it back down to 20 or so and level it up all over again to gain more levels and perks.

Since SkyRE needs the community uncapper that removes the 100 cap and some perks need skills leveled over 100, this ... Is not really a thing anymore.

I did a playthrough of Skyrim Redone sometime ago. Actually beat Skyrim using it.

Starting out it was frustrating, but in a fun way. Used Alternative Start to end up in Solitude, where the caves around me were way higher level then I was. Had to use everything I had to clear smaller missions.

But the downside was, as the game progressed, the "re balancing" went friggin crazy. Your random Draugr tomb would have Deathlords, while the final mission, outside of the building was filled with only Draugr Deathlords and Overlords. It was completely absolutely insane. And I know it was the mod doing it, cause I was only level 15 or so, and the inside of the final dungeon only had up to Wights. The only way I could get past them all was to kill command. Anything more then one at a time was certain death. The final battle with Alduin was a complete joke in comparison to that.

I dunno how it's been rebalanced now (I don't have the expansions so I can't try it), but that was my experience. Great early game, absolutely positively insane late game.

I'm most interested in mods that raise the difficulty for the whole duration of the game. That's always been my biggest problem with the Elder Scrolls games, that they become ridiculously easy all of a sudden.

I've tried a couple of scaling mods, but none managed to remain challenging for long. Guess I'll have to finally give Skyrim Redone a shot, something that I haven't been too keen on until now. Don't like it when mods try to change too much.

Realistic Needs and Diseases - Wonderful mod. Lighweight, yet very effective.
Frostfall - Haven't tried it yet. Strikes me as too anal.
Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Yep, a Lighting mod is a must. There are a couple of impressive ones out there.
WATER - Cool stuff.

Deadly Dragons should probably be mentioned, too. Makes the dragons stronger and more interesing.

Haven't played Skyrim in a few months, so I'm not quite up to date, but here are a few small but intersting mods I've installed:

Wet and Cold - Nice rain, snow and ash storm effects. Civilians dynamically don protective clothing when the weather turns bad and even hurry home when they don't have work to do. Very atmospheric, but conflicts with Frostfall.

SkyTest - Realistic and more diverse animals. Puppies!

SkyUI - Must have. Probably required by many mods by now.

skyBirds - Birdies!

Guard Dialogue Overhaul - Makes a ton of guard dialogue available that you never get to hear in the vanilla game.

Categorized Favorites Menu