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Before I start Skyrim, I wanted to ask, is there any "recommended" mod that I should use?

By "recommended" I mean those mods that more or less objectively improve the game in some ways (visuals or game mechanics).

For example, when I was playing Oblivion the only two mods I had were a "Quest Award Leveller" and a smilar mod called "Forged Stuff Leveller". The point of these two mods was to make sure you weren't missing out on the true power of certain items only because you obtained a lower level of them earlier in the game, proportionate to your character level. So with these mods, these items would level up with your character after being obtained.

These are the kind of mods I'd like to be aware of. Mods that enhance the gaming experience or that prevent the player from missing out on certain game features. Any recommendations?

I think there are a couple more threads that mention stuff to grab.

If you need a place to start, try nexusmods. They have a top 50 or so of all time that has basic enhancements (unofficial patches, Skyui, high res, etc).

Also keep in mind compatibility of each mod. There are plenty of decent mods around that just can't work together because of what they affect and how they do it. Like I would recommend SkyRE but it basically turns almost everything on it's head and throws away the basic perks almost entirely.

Will also recommend Leveler's Tower, not as a cheat center (which is really is....) but also as a badass house with displays for days (litterally.... a room with like 5+ mannequins and wall mounts for weapons and shields all up and down the place).

Alright, so Unofficial patches and SkyUI seem to be widely praised, I'll go for those for sure. I'll also have a look at the other popular mods on nexusmod. Thanks guys

It all depends on how you want to play the game. But do get the unofficial patches, my game was constantly full of bugged quests and other issues until I got them. SkyUI is ok but it is causing me issues because I keep selling stuff I do not mean to. Just me I guess. On a technical note you will need SKSE to use SkyUI. There is a link to it in the SkyUI page. There is also a link on the SKSE page that will take you to a tutorial video on how to set up and install SKSE I highly recommend you watch.

I tend to use mods that take the drudgery out of things. For example I have a mod that will smelt ore in batches of 10, 15, or 50 if you have the ore for it. Easier than doing it one at a time. I also have a mod that speeds up mining a little. There are a huge number of mods that do similar things.

Since the NPC's in the vanilla game looked pretty ugly to me I have a few body and hair mods to make the ladies better on the eyes. Most of them let you decide if you want nudity or not, that's your business and no one elses as far as I'm concerned. Just keep in mind, most of the armor mods will require one of these to get the best look on your character.

Then there are house mods. Some redo the houses in game and some add in totally new houses. Since Whiterun is right in the middle of the map most people tend to make their home base there. Thus Breezehome is the popular choice to mod. I use Breezehome Fully Upgradable mod. There is a version for each of the DLC's if you need it. I highly recommend this one.

If you prefer the small town life there are several house mods for the Riverwood area as well.

Beyond that there are weapons, armor, and clothing mods. I use several of each. Just depends on how far you want to get away from the vanilla game. Then you come to the mods that change the game in some way. Some consider these to be cheats. I use a few of these as well. I'm all for things that let me stay out adventuring long hence why I have over 60 mods running. And lastly you have the mods that add quests, new people, and playable races to the game. This is a huge list and some can not be run with others.

Send me a PM if you want my list of mods and I will let you know what I am using. Keep in mind some mods can only be found on the Steam Workshop or another site like Nexus. I do not think there is one website with every mod out there. So you will have to look around to find what your looking for.

Do the quest award items level up with your character in Skyrim? Or is it like in Oblivion?

If it is, is there any mod like this?:

Rope Dog wrote:when I was playing Oblivion the only two mods I had were a "Quest Award Leveller" and a smilar mod called "Forged Stuff Leveller". The point of these two mods was to make sure you weren't missing out on the true power of certain items only because you obtained a lower level of them earlier in the game, proportionate to your character level. So with these mods, these items would level up with your character after being obtained.

They do not. I'm not sure if there's a mod to fix it, though.

My advice: don't play any mods when you first start the game (save a few that fix glaring issues like the Unofficial Patch). Play at least 10, heck, even 20 or 50 hours without mods. Different mods do different things, and you won't know what you want if you haven't played vanilla.

As for me, a few mods I think adds to the game without changing too much (so good for newbies if you've got the grasp of the game and now are just experimenting to see what works):

- No Compass Location Markers - really, really helps with immersion. Now you actually have to explore to find things!
- Reduced NPC Greetings - NPCs stop telling you their life story if you're at least 50 feet away
- Populated Cities - adds randomly generated, nameless NPCs to cities. Helps with immersion.
- Drink Eat Sleep - Simple eat/drink/sleep mod that requires you to do those things. GOod if you're into roleplaying. Unlike some other similar mods like Imp's, this one is very simple yet fun, in my opinion.


Those are just the bare basic essentials, in my opinion, and they won't really change the actual game a lot. There's a gazillion other mods out there, of course, including the ever-lovely graphics mods, but again, the best hting to do is play the unmodded game first, then determine what you like and what you don't like, and that's where mods come in.

IF those aren't changing much I'd like to see what is changing a lot.

But yeah I don't think there's any mod that makes it so leveled items can be upgraded, though there may be one that makes them always appear as their maximum form. Due to how crafting was handled in the base game I tend to ignore most items in place of custom enchanted goods (though I did grab an artifact disenchanting mod to let me destroy stuff like aetherium crown for it's effect).


edit:

if you do wind up using the nexus, look into S.T.E.P. (skyrim total enhancement project) I believe they have a list of mods that don't go out and alter quests/skills/world too drastically and general ui improvements.

cybrxkhan wrote:My advice: don't play any mods when you first start the game (save a few that fix glaring issues like the Unofficial Patch). Play at least 10, heck, even 20 or 50 hours without mods. Different mods do different things, and you won't know what you want if you haven't played vanilla.

That is EXACTLY what I was planning to do! I thought a week would do. I'm that kind of person that has to see the before and after of things to see what differences there are and make all sort of comparisons.

Yaije wrote:I don't think there's any mod that makes it so leveled items can be upgraded

That's very surprising. The Quest Award Leveller was a popular mod for Oblivion (as far as I can tell with my limited knowledge), and I had discovered it because it was on the page of recommended mods for Oblivion on UESP itself. What a loss if there isn't such a mod for Skyrim.

As Yaije mentioned, it looks like what's there are mods that make leveled items unleveled, like Unleveled Skyrim Items. The main module of Skyrim Redone unlevels, and makes changes to, many artifacts, but since it's an overhaul, those changes are just one piece.

Thanks for pointing that out. Too bad it's not really nearly as good as the automatic leveler from Oblivion, since this mod allows you to get extremely powerful items very early in the game, making all other normal items you come across not worthy of interest.

I wonder why anyone hasn't made a mod like the Quest Award Leveler in Oblivion. Shouldn't be too complicate for modders.

Just off the top of my head, it'd be easy, though time-consuming, to make a bunch of smithing recipes that require a certain level and just upgrade the item to the appropriate form for that range.

For the player it would unfortunately be manual rather than automatic.

MY guess? The leveled artifact stuff isn't as important in Skyrim like it was in oblivion. A bet a large number of people just wound up maxing smithing ( and even alchemy and enchanting) and taking random items into silly levels of damage. The main reason people tried to get higher leveled weapons and equipment was because that was the onyl way to get stuff better than the standard tiers. Umbra being popular mostly because it had the highest damage amount. Though still, I do find the enchant removing and temper modifying mods (hopefully letting you remove less favorable enchantments from almost anything and allowing something to be tempered if you have the right set up)

All mods I have installed are graphics enhancements,game fixes and dragon souls to perks mod. Last one helps when u have all shouts unlocked and many unused dragon souls. But that will take long time. If u install mods that cheat the game somehow you will most likely be annoyed and game will be too easy to beat. I recommend to install unofficial game patches and other quest/item fixes. All other mods aren't as important imo

I found another mod related to leveled items, closer to what you were looking for. I've used several of this author's mods, and they've all been very solid.

I would play the game vanilla to begin with (as suggested by cybrxkhan) just to get the learning curve down. Dovahkiin and Followers Relax are easy ones that don't alter the game much. Oh, and texture mods. Afterwards, I highly recommend Frostfall for deeper immersion in surviving Skyrim's harsh climate. Plus, who doesn't like camping? Also complex needs, of which there are many varieties. I used Imp's for a while but took it down because it got annoying. There's all kinds of immersion type mods that you can simmer through either on Nexus or Steam, depends on what you like.

Well, you can always look at the mods that STEP recommends. Might not want to go with ALL of them, especially if you're new, but what they list is generally great quality.

It all depends on what you're looking for. STEP is all about enhancing vanilla Skyrim, so you won't find any major overhauls that seriously change the gameplay there.

True. In that case, there's always GEMS

Ultimate Follower Overhaul is a good mod, improves upon the vanilla game massively.

One mod I recommend is FastTravelFromIndoors.esp It will save You a lot of time travelling back out of a deep dungeon or cave. It works in most places indoors, however, in some places you´ll have to get out the normal way.

SkyUI (requires SKSE)
Immersive Weapons
Immersive Armors
Unofficial Patches (there is one of each version of the game [Skyrim, Dawnguard, Hearthfire, Dragonborn])

I think those mods can be added without changing the gameplay at all. I don't disagree with playing a bit without mods at first, but I'd say these mods don't change gameplay at all, so you wouldn't know the difference.

If I could only pick one, it would be SkyUI. I'd never realized how clunky and annoyingly unfunctional the vanilla interface is before I got it, but now I can't imagine playing without it.