The Elder Scrolls General

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
====== Gameplay ======


----

==== Combat Essentials ====

| [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/72347| Precision]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/74887| Precision for creatures]] | Skyrim's default hit detection is rudimentary and paints in broad strokes. In Vanilla skyrim you effective just check an area around you on swing based on a static 'reach' number based on your weapon type. Which means all weapons of the same type have the same reach and weapon models don't matter. People have attempted to fix this in the past but it was just a more granular approach to the reach or simply just better values[[https://github.com/Synthesis-Collective/speedandreachfixes| like this synth patcher]] based on this older [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29847/| zedit patcher]] based on probably some older just form edits.  Precision changes all that by directly calculating a hitbox based on the model itself. In addition its a proper hitbox which means your animation also now matters instead of everything essentially being a fan. I can't imagine a type of play-through that doesn't benefit from this |
| [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/89042| Comprehensive Attack Rate Patch]] | Attack speed in vanilla skyrim is fucked. It needs a fix and this is the most modern version of the fix. Previously [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10741|Attack Speed Framework]] would have been my goto but CARP has some significant improvements on it. If you want to know the exact details of the attack speed issue read either mod page as they both go into it in depth. One note about CARP is that it has the requirement Perk Entry Point Extender, or PEPE, to quote it's page\\ //"Not currently compatible with a fix in Scrambled Bugs that allows for multiple returns from the ApplyXSpell perk entry points. Coordinating how to implement may take a bit. To clarify, this is if one is using the entry point, not an incompatibility across the board."// \\  Some mods may require you to have that enabled, in which case you might have a bit of a conflict so keep that in mind. |
| [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/51614| TDM]] | I originally thought this was only important if you were using a controller but its ridiculously customizable and has the features of 10 other mods. To sum it up quickly: you can walk toward the camera.\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/49648| Better Power Attack Direction Control (1.5.97)]] Might not be needed with more modern mods as they use dtry's keyutils to build oar conditions for the same effect |
| [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41252| SmoothCam]] | 3rd person camera improvements, works well with TDM and almost required if you're using 3rd person combat mods below |
| [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/78063|Kaputt]] (adv)\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/668| Violens]](simple) | Controls everything you could want about killmoves including turning them off.\\ * Some of the above mods also turn off kill moves on the player so keep that mind when you configure that option. Not sure if having them all on makes a difference but I try not to overlap settings when possible.\\ * VATS can be disabled via a .ini tweak (bVATSDisable) if you're trying to clean up your MCM and that is all you want to use Violens/Kaputt for. |
| [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/15541| Simply Balanced]] | No matter what you do Skyrim balance will probably never fit exactly what you want. Simply Balanced is there to fill any gaps, it lets you set a lot numbers to scale the game to your liking. Personally, I recommend using it to first find where you'd like your balance to be and then figure out why your game isn't where you want it to be. Maybe your damage feels bad, and turn it up and now it feels good. Why is your bad? is it the enemies? is it the weapons? its good for figuring out gaps in your list and then patching them. Also great for adjusting things on the fly as you find the weird edge cases |


==== Brief interlude ====
|**On Behaviors vs Animations:** Many mods on this page deal with both. The question really is, what are behaviors? They're discrete game logic organized in hierarchical nodes to create a tree of decisions that tell us when where and why to use any given animation. This is what Nemesis is for (and pandora probably), a software that merges and manages changes to behaviors that mods make. OAR can change an existing animation, its just a list of rules of when to swap out one animation for another. However if you want to ADD an animation to the game that it doesn't already have you need a behavior mod. A new sword swing animation for example is just an animation, it just replaces an existing thing you can already do, a new sword swing while jumping is a new type of attack altogether and needs a behavior. ||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/92109| Open Animation Replacer]]| This mod could easily go under half the headers on this site but it gets special mention here as a lot of combat mod use OAR and it's predecessor [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33746| DAR]] for the purposes of combat animations|

==== Combat overhauls ====
^ Behavior overhauls||
|[[https://www.distaranimation.com/mods/attack | MCO]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/117275| Required Fixes]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/85491|Required DLL]]| Once used to be more than one mod that does what MCO does. They're all dead now except MCO.\\ MCO is a **framework**, it does very little by itself and the thing that makes it work is the animations bundled with it. What does MCO actually do then? it replaces the default attack (light attack) and the default power attacks (heavy attack) with it's own special dummy attacks. You can then use OAR to replace them with //animation movesets//. Within those movesets are animations that contain data that tells MCO if they can combo into another move, what movement the move contains, and what other constraints and timings allowed by the move. This lets you have strings  attack like modern video games where each attack in a sequential string will have different animations, timing, and movement. The framework lets you define any combination of light/heavy attacks to point to a different animation.\\ Most movesets mimic some modern video game the animator is enamored with. Generally this means they're all using a from of attack commitment where you are locked into a direction for the duration of the attack and there are often a handful of unique combo strings\\ There are two variants of MCO, AMCO  and ADXP. The difference is that ADXP removes attack speed from combat, the idea behind this is that you allow the animations set your attack speed. The other one has attack speed but also some animations look really bad bad at  different speeds, which is presumably what the previous attempts to avoid.\\  **You must select one of the one click power attack mods further down**\\ Bonus: [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/110031|Dynamic Grip for MCO]]|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/117052|BFCO]]| The latest behavior mod that does everything MCO does and more. The only downside is that 90% of movesets on nexus aren't made for it so I would only recommend this for people that know how to convert movesets which I won't be covering here. Also supposedly some features are still a bit underbaked as the mod is still a work in progress.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/72014 | SCAR]]| This is a prerequisite mod, most of which haven't really been included here but this is to let you know that you'll need SCAR enabled movesets for npcs to use the above the MCO movesets, if the mco animation doesn't mention SCAR, it won't apply to the npcs|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33767 | CGO]]| this shit old and busted but a lot of it's changes dont't have replacements. Might be your cup of tea if you don't want all the fancy animations of mco or if you're really focused on first person as mco doesn't really touch first person. Keep in mind it really is buggy and jank and won't work with a lot of mods, including mco. I used to be a big fan of this one even with it's flaws but these days you can cobble together enough of it's features that it is not worth it the pain.|
|[[https://www.patreon.com/posts/inquisitor-shu-105931391|Warlock]]|A remake of Inquisitor. Think of it like MCO for spells. A bit experimental right now and the balance is all over the place but very cool to play around with.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/50559|Thu'um]]|Adds behaviors to Shouts so you can have individual animations per shout. How good or bad this mod is depends entirely on how much you like/use shouts. I slept on this mod until I started using Spells as Shouts but compatibility between those two requires good knowledge of OAR/DAR|

^ First Person||
|These are mostly just animation changes as this is a pretty neglected area of current modding. Keep in mind outside of dedicated 3rd person mods like MCO most everything obviously still applies to first person, as such the general advice such as Precision or the mods below still apply||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/45177|FPCAO]]\\ or\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/87169|CFPAO]]| Your literal two options, isn't that exciting? Make sure you check the 'Mods requiring this file' section of the Requirements for both for misc fixes and so on.|

^ Need one of these||
|On Skyrim AI: All npcs have a fairly robust combat AI that is surprisingly customizable. A complicated AI system is not needed for complex combat, and bethesda has included a very sufficient solution in the game. If you open up xedit you can see a section in the npc record called [[https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Combat_Style|Combat Style]]. If you follow that link you can see a lot of very useful things that determine when an npc attack, when it blocks, and how it moves. Every NPC has a combat style, many of which are defined by level and type of enemy giving a lot of granularity in how they function. The issue however is that a number of the dials and knobs on this system are tuned poorly. It is highly recommended that you replace the default combat styles, the overhauls below will replace them. While we are here, there is also another thing that determines how npcs function in combat and these are Game Settings and there are a [[https://ck.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Category:Settings|a lot of them]] a lot of mods touch these at random and frankly I'm pretty sure most of these changes are based on superstition.||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1368| Wildcat]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/53869 | Valravn]]| Valravn is Wildcat lite. These mods do a lot of things, read the descriptions. Very popular for good reason. If I had a gun to my head to pick one, I'd pick B&B. The ideal solution to me is to strip out the combat styles ([[https://mega.nz/file/bbhUhZjZ#PfKSGqLQhA_HGwP5KuH4_7jul2tCF_FWJGJk0BipIgI|look someone did that for B&B]]) and maybe gameplay settings from one of these mods and use something else for the other features. [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/114911|You could even use this to accomplish that]]\\ Here are some alternative mods for some of the specific features these mods have:\\ See Defenses section\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/89884|Adjustable Attacks of Opportunity]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/50502|Fenix Stamina Overhaul]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4881|Mortal enemies, but really use the synth patcher]]|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34549| Blade and Blunt]]|:::  |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64741 | Valhalla Combat]]|Attempts to do a lot of things and tries to do them with a SKSE plugin but in practice is incredibly buggy. A lot of the features this mod adds are covered by other mods so it isn't a big loss, its a shame that we don't have a SKSE plugin to manage a lot of very similar combat changes other mods have to do with papyrus.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17196 | Ultimate combat]]| Listed for historical effect. UC is the precursor to a lot of these mods but still has some unique features such as new enemy behaviors. Really not worth using in this year but if nothing else appeals to you.. The simplicity as well as draugr behaviors has lead to some people still using it|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/41428| Inpa Sekiro Combat]]| Another weird historical artifact. Came out right after Sekiro did. It conflicts with nearly everything and is overall just bad. placed here just because it has some mechanics that are very unique to it. Worth //looking// at, not using.| 

^ Toolbox||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25673 | Engarde]]| Engarde does a lot of things most of which are modular, letting you turn them off or on as required. Engarde is a swiss army knife, it is a tool to stitch together the rest of the list. Please research it yourself, I will not be able to go into detail about most of it, there is too much to cover.\\ Some major features: Engarde changes how stamina works, it causes stamina to stop regenerating in combat. Instead, once you stop using stamina, after a short delay it will restore most of your stamina very quickly. In addition you can and should give stamina costs to attacks, as well as most other actions in the game. All of this also applies to all NPCs. Combat with all these options turned on really increases the weight of your positioning. Physically moving away from your enemies to avoid attacks and then going back in while they're out of stamina really creates an interesting ebb and flow to combat.\\ Engarde's patcher applies a similar effect as Mortal Enemies (attack commitment) to **all** enemies, not just humanoid npcs. It also modifies all the Enemy attacks to use a better defined attack cone that will let you dodge monsters and otherwise use the same methods of timing and spacing as you might against modded humanoid npcs.\\ There are many more features that I haven't gone over, such as Engarde's stagger system (weapon weight based), or it's dodge, or power attack button, etc, but at some point you'll have to let go of my hand and figure out which ones you need and want. Probably everyone who ever uses Engarde has a different set of features enabled.\\ Engarde is showing it's age as specific features in Engarde all have alternatives in other mods. However some features such as the enemy attack cones are still unique to Engarde even now and difficult to replace.\\ Some suggestions and advice:\\ Use the **Synthesis** patcher, **not** the zEdit patcher. Also it is recommended you don't enable the blade or blunt features under Weapon stats if using True Armor. Contains an attack speed fix, something to keep in mind re:CARP. Disable sweeping attacks in MCM if also using Sweeping attacks from other sources such as Precision. The Nemesis patch is only required if you are using creature changes and/or block changes. You shouldn't be using block changes, let Vanguard do that. The VBS script is also only needed if you're doing creature changes and/or power attack changes and/or block changes\\ Uncheck “Alternate swings for Dual Wield” if using MCO, Set Power Attack Cooldown to 0,  Set “Weapon Reach Multiplier” to 1, Set “Critical Damage Multiplier” to between .5 and 1 and unselect all check boxes in “Weapon Stats” to maintain weapon balance. Engarde’s weapon damage multiplier should be lowered from the default 2x but the specific number depends on your setup. Try 1.5 as a baseline\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/44414?tab=files|TDM patch]]|

==== Defenses ====
^ Armor and Resistances ||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/15921 | True Armor]]| This makes armor into Armor. As always, read the fucking mod description but I will sum it up a bit. Armor can now deflect blows, which is to say there is a %chance by armor type by armor location that damage is reduced by that armor's deflect %, in the case of heavier armors this can almost negate the damage. There is a similar chance that a hit bypasses the armor at the location. All the details of this are insanely customizable and defined by armor type by slot.\\ Also importantly True Armor has a dynamic health limiter, which allows you set a base health and health per level and then set a Limiter strength. In simpler terms it means that you set a target HP per level and it tries to applies to enemies. The limiter sets how much of it applies, at 100% it will set the enemy hp to exactly your target HP. All this means armor actually matters and enemies stop being sponges. You can use this to offset true armor's own inherent tankyness or use it just to wrangle other mods.\\ Some people might report that true armor is very script heavy and this really isn't the case. Script weight is more like a budget and this mod by itself will never take up the entire budget. If you have a budget of 10 and normal mods are 0 or 1, True armor is a 2 or 3, which will only matter depending on how many 2+ you run.\\ Don't try to set all the different armor values yourself. No one does that. use the recommended FISSES (remember FISSES not FISS) download and just use a preset. Most people use realistic and it works well with the game. I like a little over the top skyrim so I use fantasy.\\ *Contains an attack speed fix|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/93258| KYE2]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/94067|KYE2- Armor]]| Know your armor adds complex resistances to skyrim. Works well standalone and with TA or with it's sister Armor mod. KYE-A is a much more lightweight alternative to TA. Obviously only pick one of TA or KYE2-A. KYE requires you in some cases to prep work to deal with enemies or forces you to improvise solutions in combat that really breaks up the effectiveness of just picking on weapon/spell and just blasting through. Some people find this too tedious but KYE's MCM has an Intensity to set how much you want these resistances to matter. If you don't mind some **really** ugly UI [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/57121|this mod can pair well with it]]|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/127230|B&B- Armor Rating Scaling Standalone]]\\ or\\  [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/35296|Armor Rating Rescaled]]|If you don't want to use True Armor or KYE **and** you're not using something else that touches these values then you should at least use these.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20503|Resistances Rescaled]]|:::|

^ Blocking\Parrying\Timed Blocks |Note: a lot of perk mods tend to have perks obsoleted by block mods so keep that in mind|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/53050|Strike Obstruction Systems]]\\ or\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/34412|Deflection]]| SOS Covers all your blocking needs. If you can think of a feature related to blocking, this has it. Important note is to turn off NPC timed blocks as its very resource heavy.\\ Deflection is A lot like Strike Obstruction but with a different implementation, I think Obstruction generally does a better job but I've heard Deflection feels better for first person weirdos|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/52633| Vanguard]]| Bash behavior changes. Makes npc bashes a bit more telegraphed and makes your own bashes look a little different. |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62137| Shield Of Stamina]]| Makes blocking completely negate damage as long as you have the stamina for it, wow just like my dark of souls|
|[[https://github.com/max-su-2019/MaxuBlockOverhaul/releases|Maxu Block Overhaul]]|Reworked Skyrim BlockHit behavior & animations to make it perform similar to the way in modern action games.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/79206|Sekiro Combat S]]| Very simple and useful parry mod, perfect parries can damage enemy stamina and restore yours|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/87645| Hellblade timed block]]| Behavior based timed block. Removes the normal recoil and implements it only for timed block.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65579|Elden counter]]|Another timed block but this one has a strong counter attack mechanic included|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/74326|Simple Weapon Swing Parry NG]]\\ or\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/81356|Parrying RPG]]|Simple weapon parry just causes a parry effect when your weapons clash, uses precision for accurate hits. If you want something less simple Parrying RPG does the same thing but with some stats behind to determine who wins|

^ Dodge mods ||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/56956| TK Dodge RE - Script Free]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/115408|TK Dodge NG]] (Read the instructions **Carefully**)| Generally the easiest one to mod further if you want to tweak your dodge animations and so on. Normally only 4 directions but advanced OAR conditions let you do 8 directions by using key traces as conditions|
|[[https://www.distaranimation.com/mods/dodge| DMCO]]| Native 8 directional dodge and better integration with MCO, doesn't work in 1st person |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63000| TUDM Reborn]]| You don't like the other two|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/78231|Projectile Sense]]|Technically this is a dodge related mod. Time slows down when projectiles get near you. Pretty much OP but damn if it ain't cool.|

^ Poise/Stagger ||
|You really need one of these if you're using MCO or something similar. Less required when using vanilla combat but can certainly add to it.||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/82091|Chocolate Poise Plus]]|Still evaluating the pros and cons of these, Chocolate poise and Maxsu's the two most recommended ones |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/74032|Poisebreaker]]|::: |
|[[https://github.com/max-su-2019/MaxsuPoise/releases|Maxsu Poise]]|::: |
|[[https://github.com/max-su-2019/ModernStaggerLock/releases|Modern Staggerlock]]|::: |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62554|Stoppage of Staggerlock]]|::: |
==== Specializations ====
|Archery||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24296|AGO]]| I don't use most of it's features and mostly just use some of the minor fixes and the animation/mesh changes, If you're into Archery, check out the mod description in detail, most of this mod can be easily disabled. |
|Fixing Auto aim| I'll point you to the [[https://github.com/Synthesis-Collective/Another-Archery-Patcher/wiki|Another-Archery-Patcher Synthesis patcher]] Wiki article on the topic as it covers it in depth|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63863|Archery Locational Damage]]|Very customizable and in-depth mod for dealing locational damage with ranged weapons, pairs well with precision|
|Unarmed||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/111239 | Bruiser]]| King of unarmed skill/perk mods|
==== Stealth ====
|Ideally you pair these with some economy mods as well if you want to go the thief route||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2345|RAID]]|Made by the late, great Olivier Doorenbos, RAID is an essential mod for unfucking Skyrim's stealth gameplay. Reduces the effect to the stealth skill and increases the effect of everything else, mainly light levels. Read the description in full and marvel the charts and numers.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/107693|ENB Light Detection fix]]|Generally we're not documenting all the endless fixes this game has but this one is very important and relevant for stealth gameplay and doubly so if you use RAID|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1863|Sneak Tools]]|Another classic mod that pairs well with stealth gameplay. Some parts of it are showing their age now|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/76086|Book of shadows]]|A newer mod adding some stealth behaviors and other nice features| 
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/38762|Suspicious City Guards]]|Makes it a little more difficult to steal the entire contents of a city|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63057|Detection meter]]|Adds a modern stealth indicator to see what direction you're being detected from and generally give you a little more insight into what is going on|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/53558|Sneak Awareness]]|Perhaps a little unimmersive or even ugly, but if you're using raid and having trouble understanding what light levels the game is reporting back, this is a great way to visualize it and its on a toggle. Don't use the transparency version, its bugged.|
==== Combat Misc ====
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/97674|Ultimate Animated Potions NG]]|If you want animated potions and you want it to not be just cosmetic, this is the mod. Works on npcs too!|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/87228|For Honor Power attack]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/60878| OCPA]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/66711|Elden Power attack]]| MCO (requires) and some others benefit greatly from being able to power attack with one button press. These all have their quirks. OCPA lets you automatically chain non power attacks as a "feature" and can be buggy so I don't reccomend it. For Honor Power attack is the least buggy and straight forward implementation of the idea currently.\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/85505|Dual Wield Parrying SKSE]] Required if using these so you also have a block button.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/51851|Additional Attack]]| This mod lets you bind a key to .. do an additional attack. A really nice behavior mod that lets you mix in whatever you want. With OAR/DAR this really opens the door to infinite possibilities. A smart player will always find a way to use this.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/68043|Jumping Attack]]| Another behavior mod that adds a unique jump attack. Currently not compatible with MCO (but some people have found workakrounds)|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/39157|Crouch Sliding]]| A slightly older behavior mod that can have some annoying conflicts but hey man its a slide what more do you want|
==== Perks ====

|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26702| Vokriinator Black]]|Bloatmaxxing. If you've tried every park overhaul, you'll know none of them are ever going to be perfect. This attempts to counter that by quantity. So what if most of the perks suck. with this many you'll end up finding ones you do like and by taking the better ideas of all the mods involved you end up more of the quality from the others. Obviously however, this does mean you're in a bloated super hell of many mods you might not want or need.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/47024| Master of one]]| Interesting idea of creating drawbacks and forcing specialization. In practice most will not like this, but its certainly worth looking at. |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25046|Rainmaker]]|A mini perk mod about rain!|

====Magic====
^ General||
|Highly suggest using a mod a mod to swap effects of fortify skills from potions and enchantments. A lot of mods include this option in the MCM or as an extra file.||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26627|Spellsiphon]]|A sort of alternate casting system, meant to supplement the existing one but in practice you use it over the vanilla one. Some folks really swear by this mod but personally I'm not a fan because I like the normal casting system and spells and this tends to completely overshadow it|
|[[http://afternun.mydns.jp/blog/skyrimspecialedition/?p=819|Magicka++]]\\ or\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/8374|Awakened Magicka]]|Mysterious JP mod or old mod to add Magcika scaling to your spells. You won't need this depending on what perk mod you're using, don't double dip! I believe both of these use the same Actor Values as what Enchantments use so they can sometimes some fucky effects.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/55465|Spell Specialist]]|Give you a bonus to spells if you have "50 or higher skill in the spell school for the spell you're casting AND you have 5 or fewer known spells in the school for the spell you're casting" A nice bonus for RP focused build or just builds where you don't wanna fuck around too much with magic.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/109814?tab=description|Spells as shouts]]|Great for those that want 2h+spell. Works well with Thu'um|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/87912|Controlled casting]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/128128|Skill Based Charge Time]]\\ [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/128129|Dual Casting Effects Charge Time]]|All these mods change casting time using a new framework. Controlled casting has a very through MCM for all it's settings and the other are incredibly simple in how they work.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/130178|Blood Magic Costs Health]]|Another mod using the same framework that replaces Magicka costs with Health for the appropriate spell mods|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/114983|Maintained Magic]]|Best implementation of the idea so far|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/110190|Scroll Scribe]]|Scrolls are ass normally, this helps to fix it. Possible conflict with Controlled casting so you'll have to disable scroll casting speed on at least one of the mods|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/45275|Spell Tutor]]|Modular spell mod that covers some common features you might want.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23543|Steady Spell Learning]]|When you've installed a million spell mods its nice to have an organic way to learn them.|

^ Spells||
|Just download all of them, the popular ones by enai and simon are easy to find and they're all generally fine, nothing to expand upon there.||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/5493833?tab=user+files | Kittytail]] | Tend to lean toward too strong but they're flashy and they're cool and they feel like fucking spells|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/users/5073294?tab=user+files | Darenii]] | The other one |
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13261 | Colorful magic]] | old as fuck but goddamn this is real wizard shit. Not for the weak of heart|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65221|Arcanum]]|Cool Spells|

====Enemies====
^AI Improvements||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/111890|NPCs Take Cover]]|Does what it says|

^Stats||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24254|NPC Stat Rescaler]]|Synthesis patcher that lets you rebalance your game. The default settings are an improvement over vanilla for example it removes the vanilla insane Magicka and stamina regeneration rates so NPCs can run out of Magicka.|
|[[https://github.com/ReaperAnon/True-Unleveled-Skyrim|True Unleveled Skyrim]]|Synthesis patcher that works well with npc stat rescaler. Read the features in detail! Can work as an effective replacement to MLU, more so when combined with [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27094|Morrowloot Miscellania
]]|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/49378|Enemy Magelock]]|Like Mortal enemies but for wizards, unfortunately a bit dated and can have some issues where enemies will simply stay stuck|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/105487|Siga]]|Slows movement when castin' or archin', very configurable. Can apply to only npcs or to everyone.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/117908|NPCs Learn to Aim]]|NPCs aim well or poorly based on their individual skill. Nice modern replacement to old mods like less sniperlike enemies|

^Collisions||
|Skyrim has something called a 'bumper' which is a weird floating capsule in front of your character and enemies that bounces each other, it works fine when you're in vanilla land but starts to fall apart with stuff like precision, the follower mods all fix that or just change the collision directly to better suit modded skyrim.||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/76783|Dynamic Collision Adjustment]]|Changes your collision based on crouching/swimming etc. Also improves creature collision when they're scaled higher or lower than their base record. [[https://github.com/BingusEx/DynamicCollisionAdjustment/releases|Secret addon]] made by giantess perverts that scales more dynamically, uses a bit more resources but might be worth it if you really care about your collision model. Requires Original.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/68402|Creature Collision Fix]]|See above|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/123113|DCA]]|Optional file- Dragon skeleton with smaller bumper. The main mod is good too!|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/37768|Savage Skyrim]]|Rogueshots skeletons are visually alright but he also adjusts some collisions and bumpers. Unfortunately the rest of the mod isn't great so I suggest just deleting the .esp and keeping the meshes. In addition I would delete the mesh for dragons. Let creature  collision fix above overwrite this mod also.|

^Creature Animation||
|Gotta move this to the other page||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/83572|NCA- Falmer]]|The best two from NCA series|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/84568|NCA- Frost Astronach]]|:::|

^Spawns||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/59249|Hand Placed Enemies]]|If you want more spawns this is one of the best for it|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23871|Genesis Dungeon spawns]]|If hand placed enemies isn't enough for you, or you just hate it for some reason. Takes a more dynamic approach, which can be jarring from an immersion perspective but certainly functional for combat.|

====World====
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17751|Experience]]|Unhooks leveling up from skill levels. Its very customizable how you get your 'exp', you can get it from quests, monsters, exploration or any combination at any ratio. Highly recommended.|

|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18330|Immersive world encounters]]|Adds a lot more encounters and life to the world. There are other mods that do this as well but this has a high quality and quantity.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25471|Organic Factions Extension]]|Adds some evolving factions and groups that grow as game time progresses. A really quality mod that adds some unique life to the game. Difficulty can be out there depending on which regions you approach first, and they individual NPCs often inherit from common skyrim templates that mods love to edit so it gets further skewed. The esteemed N'wahman has provided a [[https://mega.nz/file/yaBDDRCY#i3FhA-32NymI7TgCMhdd8FUSIm4bMb-BDeHF-imbj_w|patch]] for an specific egregiously overtuned encounter added by this mod. There also a patch collection [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/54082|here]] as well.|

====Encounter zones====
|EZs are a level ranged assigned to an area in skyrim. When you first enter the area, the EZ will then take either your level, or min/max of the EZ and set it as the area's level for leveled lists. Effectively EZs determine what level enemies spawn in any given area. They also set the combat boundary for ai and few other misc things. The difference between most mods that revamp EZs levels is pretty minor so you can pick whatever you want and it doesn't matter.||
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33487|Arena]]| better than vanilla.|
|Open World Loot|You should use this for it's other features but it also contains EZ edits based on Arena|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27103?tab=files&file_id=321934|INEZ]]|A bit harder and narrower than vanilla, the recommended choice but keep in mind the author has quit modding and this is an archive so any issues will never be resolved, not that I'm aware of any.|
|True Unleveled Skyrim|Mostly here as a note to let you know that this patcher also modifies encounter zones, namely it delevels them so instead of matching your level or the min/max it just picks a level between the min and max and that is the level no matter what. You can use a EZ mod in addition to this patcher if you want to make sure the value it picks is between the min and max of the modded one rather than the vanilla one.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/30034|Enemies Follow Me]]|As mentioned encounter zones also set the combat boundaries which enemies won't chase past, this mod lets you bypass that so they chase you further. This takes a scripted approach so it will flag zones that might be missed by other mods, bu at the same time it might flag zones where you don't' want them to chase you.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23609|Missing EZ Fixed]]|This mod adds EZ information to zones that might not have them or were poorly defined, This adds or fixes the scaling of some spawns. Do not use the All Exteriors Zoned version as it has a number of issues that'll result in really messed up behaviors especially when combined with other mods|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/85212|Locational Encounter Zones]]|"If an enemy does not have an encounter zone, they will scale to the level of the player.\\ Exterior cells cannot be assigned encounter zones without breaking game mechanics, because enemies cannot move to cells which are not the same encounter zone. It's also unrealistic to add new encounter zones this way, due to the work required with adding the new encounter zones and fixing this issue correctly."|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19608|EZs Unlocked]]|remember how I said EZ level is set when you enter the area? this lets you set it every time you enter it instead of the first, obviously not needed if you are deleveling the game. Only use this if you want dungeons to scale to you as you revisit them (limited by the EZ ofc, or the ini settings). Its good for dungeon crawling but absolutely break immersion and screws up your sense of growth.|



====Death Alternatives====
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65136|Shadows of Skyrim]]|Death alternative that requires you to kill your killer to resolve. Very fun, can work with the other mods on this list with configuration|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19234|Ashes]]|Simple death alternative to respawn at your last slept on bed.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/108159|Acheron]]|A death framework that lets you create events that occur instead of a given death. The default events simply teleport you somewhere nearby but with additional support such as [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/111212|Your money or your Life]] and shadow of skyrim you get a very interesting death alternative. Acheron also hooks into some lover's lab mods but I haven't used them so you'll have to figure it out on your own.|

====Movement====
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/18967|Better Jumping]]|probably should on the essentials page|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/53256|Paraglider]]|Just like botw/genshin/etc|

====Economy====
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26325?tab=files&file_id=469849|Evolving Value Economy]]|Archived DrPharmDawg mod for dynamic costs, [[https://creations.bethesda.net/en/skyrim/details/aa6f0804-d63c-45d7-b55b-12cffbec722d/Evolving_Value_Economy__SkyRem___Eve_|this]] beth.net port has a description of all it's features.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12358|Trade routes]]|This is more heavy Economy mod focused on supply and demand facilitating the need for buying high and selling low. Should work just fine with EVE. The biggest downside of this mod is that it has a lot of moving parts and its not rare to see some bugs resulting in odd prices or weird vendors. Could require additional patching as well. Consider this if you really want to focus on economy but otherwise you can skip it.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/23081|Trade and barter]]|Gives you a lot of knobs for adjusting trade and barter rates to adjust the difficulty of your economy changes. Has some overlapping features you should disable depending on what other mods you use.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1668|Tavern Games]]|Waste money on gambling.|
|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/109801|Tribute]]|What if gold=exp? A clever approach to both leveling and economy, a very different experience to your normal run, use with care.|


==== Equipment ====
See [[Armor|Armor]] and [[Weapons|Weapons]] for the respective pieces of equipment
^[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/49681 | Open World Loot]]|
|this is going to end up a mini guide in a guide because this mod does a lot of interesting things.\\ This is what I'm currently using, has a lot of patches for nearly everything.  Open world loot's major feature is that it acts a layer between mods and skyrim.\\ **The issue**: If know anything about records and leveled lists you know what a nightmare it is it edit those and why something like MLU needs so many patches and so on. The short version is that all loot mods edit loot lists and also npcs, these causes real issues as those are often targetted by other mods and causes many conflicts. This is fine, thats how mods work, but loot in particular is a headache because just add one sword can touch 30 of those records and no one wants to make patches for every single thing. This is what bashed patches and like are for but even those aren't perfect and often end up requiring manual intervention. On top of all this loot mods tend to skew the probabilities the more mods you add for example if a bandit had a 50%/ 50% shot of spawning with a iron sword or an Ebony axe and you add a mod that adds a Iron katana, you can clearly see how you've changed the intent of the list.\\ **The Solution**: OWL edits everything then other mods edit OWL. Now the bandit above has instead two items he can spawn with OWLIronSword and OWLEbonyAxe, and you can simply say add your katana to the OWLIronSword list and he'll still have his weird 50%/50% chance to be OP. Its a pretty elegant solution, but it does mean you still need patches, thankfully due to the nature of how it works, making patches is every easy and because of that nearly every equipment related mod already has a patch for OWL.\\Keep in mind that even with the solution, you would still want to run a bashed patch or something similar because you still want to consolidate the OWL lists from your various mods, because as you know skyrim doesn't let you add to lists, just overwrite them. No one would want to or should make patches for patches, which is what that would require so instead you just use mator smash or run the Synthesis `leveledlistresolver` patcher. The synth patcher `SynOpenWorldLoot` doesn't take the place of a smashed/bashed/`leveledlistresolver` patch, instead it does something different altogether. `SynOpenWorldLoot` attempts to find more records that base OWL didn't replace, likely due to being modded, and replaces them in the same way that base OWL would.\\*A note on requirements:* You might have noticed OWL has WACCF as a soft requirement as well as a different mod by the OWL author. Both of those are not required. The reason they're listed is that OWL unfortunately does a little bit of balancing on the vanilla weapons based on the same ideology as WACCF, which is why its listed as a requirement. Similarly the other mod is just trying to add just those changes from WACCF with the rest of the mod. You can a.) Ignore both but have some weird vanilla weapon tiering b.) use one of them c.) [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/51496| use this mod]]\\ And finally use [[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63390| this mod]] at the bottom of your load order. Why? like I explained earlier OWL acts a layer between mods and vanilla, and all this does is ensure those edits don't get overwritten as nothing should be touching those records, they should all be touching the OWL versions instead.|

|[[https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4668|Throwing Weapons Lite]]|Adds throwing weapons, they're secretly scrolls so there might some odd conflict here or there. Adds some variety to enemies but can sometimes be a little overwhelming.  |
====== Skyrim Guide Index ======

  * [[Essentials|Essentials]]
  * [[Gameplay|Gameplay]]
  * [[Creatures, NPCs and Players|Creatures, NPCs and Players]]
  * [[Immersion|Immersion]]
  * [[Quests and Lands|Quests and Lands]]
  * [[Graphics|Graphics]]
  * [[Armor|Armor]]
  * [[Armor Graphics|Armor Graphics]]
  * [[Weapons|Weapons]]
  * [[Weapon Graphics|Weapon Graphics]]
  * [[Animations|Animations]]
  * [[Fun Mods|Fun Mods]]
  * [[Unrecommended Mods|Unrecommended Mods]]
  * [[Paid Mods|Paid Mods]]