14 Best Skyrim Mods You Can't Play Without

It’s 2015, and somehow we’re still interested in Skyrim, a game that came out in 2011. That’s in part to the vast, open-world that Bethesda created, and also because of the amazing mods that have supported, updated, and expanded the game immeasurably. Heading back to Tamriel can be a magical experience, but these mods take it to another level entirely.

Disclaimer: modding is not for everyone. It can lead to hours of frustrating troubleshooting, but it also has the potential to create experiences far beyond what the vanilla game can produce. If you’re unsure of where to start, I can’t recommend the YouTuber Gopher enough. Check out his introduction to modding here.

Skyrim HD – 2K Textures

Skyrim HD is a pretty basic one, but it’s an essential mod that can’t be overlooked. It adds the extra polygons that a 2015 audience has come to expect. It’s so fundamental, that nearly every mod out there can use the extra resolution that this mod provides.

There are also a number of graphical options, just in case your graphics card is also from 2011.

Skyrim HD

 

Enhanced Lights and FX

A staple of the Skyrim modding community, and one of the most impressive graphical updates you can add to Skyrim. Enhanced Lights and FX adds drama and realism to the lighting in Skyrim by adding lights and light sources. It also removes light without a source, which makes for more dramatic scenes and a more immersion experience.

Again, Gopher is the source for all things Skyrim and he has an excellent discussion on immersion, as well as specific mods here. It’s all about amping up the fantasy of the experience, and forgetting you’re playing a game.

Enhanced Lights and FX

 

Immersive Patrols

Immersive Patrols ups both the difficulty of Skyrim (which at a certain level gets laughably easy) by adding random patrols to every faction and also the immersion.

Aside from the random events that happen across Tamriel, sometimes it can feel a bit… empty. Immersive Patrols fixes that by adding loads of soldiers across the map. It makes sense that they’d be there, too, there’s a civil war going on! Recent updates have added battles that allow soldiers of a faction to capture the forts of an opposing faction, which is insanely cool.

Immersive Patrols

Winter is Coming

Need a little Game of Thrones in your Skyrim? Winter is Coming has you covered. It adds the iconic cloaks from the Game of Thrones series to the characters of Skyrim, and fits in so naturally that if you play without it, you’ll wonder why everyone is roaming around without any protection from the harsh cold of Old Kingdom.

Winter is Coming

Frostfall

Speaking of harsh cold, Frostfall is one of those mods that, even if you decide you don’t want it installed forever, you must try it out. There are three main gameplay components it adds: hypothermia, cold water survival, and camping equipment.

The basic premise is that if you jump into an icy lake in the real world, you’re going to freeze to death if you don’t warm up. Why not add that to Skyrim? Frostfall adds a whole new level of immersion and interactivity with the environment that has yet to be topped in another game. The Long Dark, currently in early access, is basically an entire game based on this mod, so there’s definitely a lot to it.

Frostfall

 

WARZONES

Ever feel like the civil war in Skyrim wasn’t really happening, rather it was just being talked about? WARZONES fixes that in a big way. It adds battles, skirmishes, ambushes, and a new armory to amplify the feeling that there’s actually a war going on. WARZONES does this intelligently, and creates randomized battles so that each one is different. Sometimes the Stormcloaks take out the Imperials in quick fashion, and other times there are 20 minute battles that span huge areas of land.

This mod isn’t for the faint of heart, though, and requires a significant degree of tweaking and optimizing to get everything working. If you have the patience, it will reward you with an experience unlike any other.

WARZONES

 

Falskaar

Falskaar is a legitimate expansion for Skyrim. It’s enough content to be a game in itself, adds 20-30 hours of quests, new spells, items, soundtrack, and even has voiceovers. It was apparently impressive to Bungie, the makers of Halo, because they offered the creator Alexander Velicky a job after seeing his work. Good thing, too. He spent over 2,000 hours working on Falskaar. It shows, too. Falskaar is clearly a labor of love, and melds seamlessly into the Skyrim universe. If you own Skyrim, Falskaar is simply too good to pass up.

Falskaar

High Level Enemies

Skyrim can be an easy game once you’ve mastered it. Get your skills down right and you’ll be slicing, firing, and shouting your way through anything and anyone. However, this mod allows for the game to get a bit more difficult. Over 800 enemies are added starting at level 10 to Skyrim, Dawnguard, Dragonborn, and Falskaar. Every single one of Skyrim’s enemy types are now far stronger and don’t have the lower level caps that they had in the vanilla version of the game. Even when you hit the level cap of the game, enemies will scale to your character, so you won’t face any easiness with this mod.

Go out there and have a challenge!

Automatic Variants

Get a lot of modding done for your Skyrim? This mod is designed for those of us that have a ton of character models and textures to choose from. No more will you have to struggle to choose just one. Automatic Variants will do it for you, automatically! Drag and drop all the variants you want for weapons, clothes, anything, and the next time you see one spawn, it’ll be randomly chosen from your files.

Immersive Armors

Do you feel like your wardrobe is lacking in the game? Have no fear; Immersive Armors is here. With this mod, you’ll be able to choose from 55 new sets of armor, 396 new shields, and “a large number of other items such as eye patches, capes, earrings, scarves and more!” There will be no shortage of what you should wear the next time you’re out adventuring. Don’t worry about looking out of place, by the way. Everything has been balanced to not only appear as though it should be a part of Skyrim’s world, but also have the stats that make sense, too.

Magic Duel – Reborn

Magic Duel – Reborn is an overhaul of the mod Magic Duel. What does it do? Makes awesome magic duels a possibility. That’s right. Have you ever wanted to be like Harry Potter versus Voldemort, or Goku versus Vegeta? Well, with this mod, you totally can. You don’t even need a mage character for it (though it does make you more capable of winning the duel). Every NPC is able to duel back with you, you just have to cast some magic on them to start it up. Once you do, you need to show that you have more agility and dexterity than them to win.

Thunderchild – Epic Shouts and Immersion

Tired of the vanilla shouts? Thunderchild – Epic Shouts and Immersion has you covered with 29 new shouts that each have differing effects. It’s a pretty robust mod and can really change your game up if you’ve had enough of the same old, same old. Here’s the full list of features:

• 29 brand new shouts with multiple effects.
• 3 abilities that make shouting more effective and fun.
• Learn new shouts by revering Kyne and completing her tests of faith.
• The High Hrothgar Library.
• 24 variants of the Greybeard Robes based on a high quality custom model.
• 23 Pillars of the Voice to power up your shouts.
• Several new weapons and items.
• Buffs and bugfixes to existing shouts.
• Configuration options available in the Thunderchild MCM if SkyUI is installed (SkyUI not required to use Thunderchild).

And here are the shouts, complete with Skyrim-esque names:

• Alessia’s Love: Enter a bond of life with another living being, sharing vitality.
• Annihilate: Use gravity to harm enemies or lift them into a black hole.
• Arcane Helix: Breach an enemy’s resistances or summon spirits of magic.
• Armageddon: Call down a rain of meteors or a devastating impact event.
• Curse: Condemns targets to suffer the same pains they inflict on you.
• Dance of the Dead: Juggle enemies on your weapon or dance to create shockwaves.
• Earthquake: Slam enemies to the ground or turn allies into invulnerable stone.
• Essence Rip: Swap your lifeforce with an allied or enemy target to heal or harm.
• Evocation: Shout a spell of your choice or raise a tower of magic to cast from.
• Iceborn: Turn into a glass cannon or freeze time and set up a shatter combo.
• Jone’s Shadow: Scout in a dreamstate, undress your enemies or strip magical boons.
• Kingsbane: Stun or scatter nearby enemies or stop time and blow up your enemies.
• Lifestream: A healing shout, affecting nearby allies or creating healing weather.
• Lightning Shield: Shock enemies, retaliate against damage or become invulnerable.
• Magnetic Pull: Trap enemies in a swirling magnetic field or drag them with you.
• Oblivion: Overwhelm enemies with knowledge or unleash the power of Hermaeus Mora.
• Riftwalk: Stop spells, teleport to enemies or drag them to you through the void.
• Shattersphere: A limited but very powerful single target offensive shout.
• Shor’s Wrath: Oust intruders, gain godly powers or sing Shor’s ghost into the world.
• Shroud of Snowfall: Summon a blinding storm that cloaks you and muffles your steps.
• Speak Unto The Stars: Assault your enemies from above or explode the stars for power.
• Splinter Twins: Summons the evil shadows of your enemies to fight them.
• Stormblast: A single powerful melee strike that calls down Talos’ lightning.
• The Conqueror: Drain strength from those around you or blow up the sun.
• Trueshot: Enchant arrows with the power of wind or call down Kyne’s wrath.
• Wail of the Banshee: Damage, slay or drain the lifeforce of weakened enemies.
• Wanderlust: Mark an area, illuminate the world or travel between cities.
• Warcry: The frenzy of battle restores your health, stamina or magicka.
• When you are crowned by the Greybeards, you receive:
• Phantom Decoy: Summon an illusion or shatter it to deal damage.

Immersive Animations

A surefire way to change Skyrim up is by completely overhauling the animations. Immersive Animations allows you to do this with new, optional animations as well as refinement to the original vanilla ones. Definitely grab this if you want a simple, yet revolutionary, change to your Skyrim adventure.

Amazing Follower Tweaks

Amazing Follower Tweaks is absolutely essential for adventurers that hate being alone. It allows you to have multiple followers at a time, manage their outfits,  spells, combat style, home assignment, and even how they level up. Your followers will feel a lot more alive and not like they’re just robots that carry your junk and run around after you. They can ride horses with this mod, make camps, avoid traps, and do a ton of different actions that will make them into followers you want to keep around. There’s even an option for followers to not die. It’s in-depth and will give you plenty of options to change your experience as much as you want.