▲ Skyrim's Paraglider mod

In Skyrim, with mods, imagination is your only limitation. Here are some important things to know about Skyrim mods.

Notations

You’ll come across a few widely used terms when modding. It can be overwhelming at first when you don’t know wtf they are.

  • SE = (Skyrim) Special Edition
  • AE = (Skyrim) Anniversary Edition
  • LE/oldrim = (Skyrim) Legendary Edition
  • MCM = Mod Configuration Menu, located in settings
  • ENB = Enhanced Natural Beauty, graphical filters basically
  • CTD = Crash to Desktop
  • MO2 = Mod Organizer 2
  • FOMOD = the kind of mod with various options during installation

Environment Setup

Mod Organizer 2 & Nexus

Use Mod Organizer 2 (MO2) & Nexus to download and manage all of your mods. Do not even try to do it manually, it’s insane. You’ll need to create an account for Nexus first.

Be aware that there are 3 versions of Skyrim: Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition (SE), and Skyrim Anniversary Edition (AE). On Nexus, there are only Skyrim and Skyrim Special Edition. Make sure that you download the correct version of the mod. If you bought Skyrim recently, you’re most likely playing Skyrim Anniversary Edition. Most of the mods for Skyrim SE is compatible for Skyrim AE as well, but some aren’t.

Mod Organizer is not entirely beginner friendly. The UI is very aged and cluttered, but you’ll get used to it after downloading a bunch of mods.

To download a mod, simply go to the desired Nexus mod page, click download, and select downloading with your mod manager. After doing this, you’ll see the mod is being downloaded in the right pane (Download tab) of Mod Organizer 2.

The left pane is for you to organize the mods, while the Plugin tab of the right pane is the load order. Don’t arrange the order yourself. You’ll see a LOOT button at the top of the right pane. Simply click it and let it order the mods and even tell you some problems about your mod dependencies.

Starting the game

To run the game, do not just launch it in Steam. You’ll have to add skse64_loader in the executables located in the right pane of MO2. Why? Because skse64 is the requirement of a lot of mods.

Nemesis

You’ll come across mods that add custom animations into the game, and most of them would require either FNIS or Nemesis. What are them? They are basically animations generators. After you download the animation mods, you’ll need to use the animation generators to generate the actual animations.

Nemesis is the successor to FNIS, and is compatible to most if not all the mods requiring FNIS, so just download Nemesis.

To use it, find its exe and add it as an executable in the right pane of MO2 like what you do with skse64. Afterward, run it in MO2, click “Update Engine”, let it run, and then tick the mods listed that you’re using, then press “Launch”. After 1 or 2 minutes, your animation would be generated, and now you can go back to skse64 and run the game as usual.

Mod Number Limit

After you download install a mod, it becomes a plugin, either a esp, esm, or esl plugin. The limit for esp + esm is 254. To check how many of them you have, go to the right pane of MO2 and hover over the Active number. You’ll then be shown the number breakdown for each type of plugins.

You can circumvent the limit by converting esp plugins to esl, but I haven’t tried it since I’m still far from the limit.

Console

The in-game console can be launched by pressing backtick. You can do a lot of things with the console, including cheats, bug fixes, configurations, etc.

Some commonly used commands:

  • character customization: showracemenu
  • free flowing camera: tfc
  • freeze frame and free flowing camera: tfc 1
  • hide ui: tm
    • it hides everything including the console so you’ll have to blind type to revert back
  • set scale of an object
    • click on an object -> setscale 0.9
  • unlock door
    • click on the door -> unlock
  • to select an object
    • open console and click on the object
    • prid <refId>
  • move to location of an object: player.moveto <object id>
  • move an object to you: select the object -> moveto player
  • enable player movements: enableplayercontrols
  • get item: player.Additem <refId> <count>
  • walk through anything: tlc
    • beware to not select anything before entering

See https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console for the complete list.

Mod Configuration Menu

Mod Configuration Menu (MCM) is where you configure your mod in game. It is located in the settings.

Sometimes when you just installed a mod with MCM supposedly but couldn’t see it, open console and run setstage SKI_ConfigManagerInstance 1.

Playing with a heavily modded Skyrim

If you have tons of mods and are planning to add more, you’ll be facing a lots of CTDs (crash to desktop) and weird bugs.

To prevent crashes from happening, you should be sorting your load order with LOOT in MO2. And to mitigate the damage of crashes, you should be doing new saves constantly. Now just quicksaves, but actual separate save files.

Nether’s Follower Framework

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/55653

Nether’s Follower Framework (NFF) is a must in Skyrim for managing your followers and beyond. It’s buggy at times, but never game-breaking, so you can safely use it.

I recommend downloading the optional PDF guide listed in the mod page.

Sandboxing

IMO the best feature in NFF is sandboxing. I have no idea why is it called sandboxing but it essentially means NPCs wandering around and doing things on their own. When you’re idle for a few seconds (configurable in MCM), your NFF-managed followers will then start casually walking around and even interact with objects like workbench, smelter, alchemy lab, chair, wall, etc. It adds an extreme amount of realism to the game. Also, they do not stop “sandboxing” until you’re a certain distance away from them (configurable) or in combat mode (weapon drawn). This means that, you won’t see your followers stalking you whenever you’re on the move.

Home bases

Another great feature is to manage the home of your followers and ex-followers. You can go into MCM, set a few home bases, and distribute your followers and ex-followers to different bases. When you dismiss a follower, the follower will simply head back to the base you assign for them, and stay there indefinitely.

Force follow/elope

You can force an NPC to be available for being a follower or a marriage candidate, regardless of if you’re married or not.

Having multiple spouses with NFF is a bit buggy tho. You can divorce your spouse via dialogue, and they’ll be in angry mode for 4 hours with no usual dialogue options afterward. However, after that, they’ll somehow still be your spouse.

PROTEUS

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62934

PROTEUS is an extremely buggy and high-maintenance mod. It’s very cool, but literally game-breaking. When it works, the game becomes a different game in a fantastic way; but when it bugs out or isn’t being used carefully, you’ll suffer.

Player switch

▲ during player switching

The main feature of PROTEUS is the ability to create multiple characters and freely switch between them. Each has its own skills, perks, inventory, spells, and of course, appearance. It’s like GTA5 basically. However, the switching experience is not remotely comparable to GTA5’s. First of all, the UI/UX is very bad. Secondly, it’s very buggy. Inventory items being duplicated after switching is a common bug. Finally, at some point, it just keeps crashing and I’ve never successfully done a switch ever since.

Nevertheless, when you first switch from a character you’ve long played in third person to another one you just created, it’s really an amazing feeling, watching your body walking and doing things on its own.

NPC appearance change

▲ applying custom racemenu preset on Valdimar

You can you the PROTEUS menu to set an NPC appearance to be a racemenu preset. The thing is, the PROTEUS system saves this info independent of your save file. So if you set an NPC to a preset, the only way to revert is to delete the racemenu preset file in MO2 -> Data -> `SKSE/Plugins/CharGen/.

Skill points

PROTEUS constantly reset your skill points in a weird way, so you’ll have to keep going to the PROTEUS menu and redistribute them yourself. This breaks the immersion, however. You’ll not be able to accumulate your skill points organically.

Mods for replacing fast travel

I dislike fast travel as a game mechanism. It breaks the immersion so much. So here are some mods that can essentially replace fast travel with a more immersive way.

Skyrim’s Paraglider

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/53256

A flying mod basically. With the paraglider mod, you’ll be able to use a paraglider when falling. You’re also given a shout to give you elevation when paragliding. Combining the two, you can fly.

With paraglider on, it is very easy to travel around the map while enjoying the stunning view of Skyrim.

Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/45794

This mod adds carriage waypoints in all the cities and hearthfire homes (those you built yourself). However, for minor cities and places, you can only be dropped off there but not get on the carriage i.e. some points are just destinations. It also adds more ferry waypoints. That’s it. This makes traversing from one city to another much easier.

Skyrim Wayshrines

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17905

There are already some wayshrines in the Dawnguard DLC, and this mod uses the same object model but makes them immersive teleport points. You’ll still use Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul most of the time, but the mod adds some wayshrines to some distant areas like Blackreach, Dayspring, Castle Volkihar, Forgotten Vale, High Hrothgar, etc. which come in handy at times.

Immersion Mods

Alternate Conversation Camera

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21220

▲ a conversation in "Serana Dialogue Add-On", with "Serana Re-Imagined"

If you’ve ever played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, it basically makes the in-conversation camera like it.

PC Head Tracking and Voice Type

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11993

With this mod, you and the NPCs will look at the closest creature. It adds immense immersion, you can hardly believe it.

Fuz Ro Bork Text to Speech

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/58468

This mod reads out your lines with digital voice. I personally hate unvoiced protagonist dialogues, so this mod is pretty important to me.

Sky Idles

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/55653

A small mod that adds configurable idle animations to the player. Better disable the idle camera spin with either .ini setting or mods as well. It adds a lot of immersion.

Simply Knock

A simple mod that adds an option to knock a locked door instead of straight up lock picking it. If there’s someone inside, they will answer you and let you in or not probabilistically (chance configurable in MCM).

Note that you’ll need to install some compatibility patches for it to work (run LOOT and it’ll tell you). There are some similar mods that are more plug and play.

Controls and Combat Mods

True Directional Movements

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/51614

Originally, you cannot move around your camera without changing the direction of your player, as opposed to most of the 3D games nowadays. This mod addresses this problem.

VioLens

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/668

A configurable killmove mod.

Inpa Sekiro Combat

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41428

This mod integrates Sekiro combat system to Skyrim. There’s a posture bar, attacking and blocking fill it, for both you and NPCs, and when the opponent’s posture bar is filled, you can give them a deathblow with VioLens killmove animation. If yours is filled, you’ll be knocked down for a few seconds, susceptible to enemy attacks.

It makes the melee combats in Skyrim so much more fun and consistent.

Visual Mods

Static Mesh Improvement Mod

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/659

This mod does make Skyrim better looking, but it’s not a day-and-night difference.

Racemenu

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19080

This mod gives you far more options when customizing your appearance.

Bijin Wives & Bijin Warmaidens

▲ Ysolda

▲ original Ysolda

This mod makes major female NPCs much prettier.

Quality of Life Mods

Simple Mod Item Spawner

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64653

A mod to retrieve items from mods. For example if you installed Common Clothes and Armors but don’t know where to find the clothes, just launch Simple Mod Item Spawner (exists as a spell) and search for it.

A Quality World Map

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/5804

Though the clouds in Skyrim map is pretty sick, they make the map borderline useless. With this mod, the clouds are gone, and you can see all the roads!

(Remember to install the “Clear Map Skies” patch)

Clothing Mods

The easies way to retrieve the items added by the clothing mods is via the Simple Mod Item Spawner introduced above.

Apachii Divine Elegance Store

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/9213

▲ DE Elven Dress Black with DE Cowboy Hair Brown

This is a huge mod with a large collections of beautiful clothes and armors. If you’re tired of downloading 100 individual clothing mods, just download this one.

▲ DE Triss set (with Dawnbreaker)

Common Clothes and Armors

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21305

▲ one of the variations of "Common Clothes"

If you find the above mod too fancy, then this mod is for you. Common Clothes and Armors adds a lot of normal clothes, and you can find NPCs wearing them instead of the default ugly clothes with little variety.

Blades Samurai Armour and Kimonos

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/9250

▲ Mibu Village

This mods adds a huge variety of kimonos and some cool katanas of different lengths.

Mods to Avoid