Skyrim - Mod Suggestions

[Calemyr]

I was tempted to put this into the official game thread, but ultimately decided it was a big enough topic on its own.

So here's the question: what mods do you find to be either so cool or so essential that they're worth posting about?

Here are a few of my personal favorites:

Gameplay:
* Mining Flames: That first level destruction spell everyone starts with gains a new feature: use it against a vein and you get ore out of it as effectively as you would with a pickaxe. Possibly a little cheating, but a cool way find a practical use magic.

* Spells Give Off Light: Walking around with a bundle of energy sitting in your hand? Why doesn't it give off light? Now equipping a spell can be a useful alternative to equipping a torch.

Gear:
* Cloaks of Skyrim: Two types of cloaks in several different colors that can be crafted or picked off of enemies. A cold place like Skyrim should have cloaks.

* Goggles of the Dwemer: A pair of goggles that give the effect of night vision and a monacle that gives the effect of detect life. Very useful, and they look good to boot.

Magic:
* Midas Magic: Naturally. A bevy of utility spells and variants that fill in the gaps. Beam spells in particular just feel really cool to use.

Other:
* Fall of the Space Core: Because there are few trophies as amusing as a babbling robot.

[pffh]

Of the 20 or so mods that I'm using the ones that I would recommend to others are:

Enhanced High-level gameplay - This adds a lot of new enemies for higher levels so that the game doesn't become trivially easy after level 45.

Dragon Overhaul - This gives dragons more health, damage and more shouts to use (disarm, unrelenting force, that frost form one). This also makes them use their air superiority and prefer to strafe or perch on high objects rather then land in front of you like and idiot waiting to be smacked by an axe.

More dragons - Basically dragons spawn a little more frequently without spawning so often that you get swarmed by them.

Great Wyrms (and various other new dragon type mods) - Just adds a new dragon type after ancient that's more powerful.

Actually a deadly verbal debate - Each perk in the speech tree now reduces the cooldown on shouts by 5% and shouts level speech. This lets you use shouts more often in combat and thanks to the dragon mods that I have the long dragon fights are now also shouting matches.

Wilderness war parties - Adds random groups of bandits, undead and what not to the land and roads for you to fight.

Spend dragon souls for perks - This is one of the more balanced dragon souls to perks addon that I've seen and is really nice for high level characters that have dozens of extra souls after having unlocked all the shouts. I think it's 1 soul for a first tier perk, 2 for a second tier, 3 for a third etc and perks that have more then one rank each rank counts as one tier up so it quickly adds up.

Fall of the space core - SPAAAAAAAAAACE

Real wildlife skyrim - Several hundred new animals makes for a really alive world.

Legendary Creatures - 8 Legendary creatures that are a blast to fight.

Oblivious horses - Horses ignore and are ignored by enemies.

I also have a couple of mods that add a new quest or a dungeon but I've only tried one of them The Abysmal Depths and that at least is a fairly fun dungeon.

Mods that I'm about to try:

Shenk Thievery overhaul
Lestrange Vault
Dynamic merchants

[Balain]

Still haven't figured which mod or combination is affecting the game when making new characters. In the keep after opening the chests the next gate has nothing on the other side, you can see there is nothing and if you go through you fall through the world. Anyways if I save before the gate is opened and load that game the rest of the keep is there.

Here are the mods I am using or tried (some I found on skyrim nexus some on steam workshop some on both, if it was on skyrim nexus I will include a link)

Armoured Horses (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13348) Each city has a different design of armour for horses.

Colossus - The Ancient Arena - It's still in Beta so not much there now. Sounds cool what the author plans to do with this mod.

People of the Past - Mysterious books have appeared, when you read them you get taken away in how vivid they are...or some such thing. Read these hidden books in the game and you get teleported to some new area and try to do or solve a bunch of things. Sounds like there will be a bunch of books added.

Dovahkiin Relaxes Too (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13931) - Adds some animations when you are idle like warming your hands by a fire, sweeping the floor, that sort of thing.

Dragon Bone Weapons (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=14701) - Craft weapons from dragon bones as well as armour now.

Spend Dragon Souls for Perks (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11623) - You can use unspent dragon souls to buy perks. It seems well balanced.

Elvenwood (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12025) - adds treetop village filled with wood elves of course.

The Grytewake Legend - Quest and moveable ship (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12295) Adds a quest and when finished a ship you can use to travel to a few cities.

Levelers Tower (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=14152) This is totally a cheat mod, I don't use it when really playing the game. It looks awesome and a lot of work went into it and the arena is soooo cool. Worth checking out just to get tons of monsters all fighting each other (and you can join in too if you want)

Master of Perks - Adds master perks to each skill tree

Midas Magic (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3413) Doesn't everyone use this? Makes the game feel a little more like the old ones when you could make your own spells with far mor variety of choices.

Moonpath to Elsweyr (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9782) - adds a Khajiit village

Pure Waters (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1111) Makes the water look nicer I think.

Staff of Sweet Rolls - I think this is now in a bundle of staves. It's totally over powered but it's fun to turn things into sweet rolls.

The Asteria (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13641) - The Asteria Is A Magnificent Dwemer Airship That Is A Very Unique Player Home And It Is Simply Waiting For You To Come And Claim It!

UFO (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=14037) - Ultimate follower overhaul

Unofficial Skyrim patch (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=19) - fixes a bunch of bugs that haven't been fixed yet

Skyrim monster mod (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9694) - adds about 100 new creatures to the game, and they are in areas that would make sense to find them in.

[Triaxx]

I'll go with a bit of Nepotism here and recommend my own Casting Circles.

Sky UI is good, so is Categorized Favorites Menu. Masters of Death is a great light armor, inspired by Assassin's Creed, and it comes in a variety of flavors. Black Sacrament Armor is also awesome, and comes in just as many flavors.

Jaysus Swords is a must for anyone that swings weapons.

Realistic Lighting, makes things darker, more fun for sneaking. RCRN does something similar, but it's not as dark.
>Torches for Realistic Lighting
>Torchlight
>Warmer Magic Lights

Those three all go with mods that darken the game. The first enlarges the field of light torches project. The second provides a concentration light effect. Like Flames, hold the button for continuous light. Warmer magic lights shifts the colors from that harsh blue to a warmer orange color, or more sterile white. It can also bump up the radius on the lights.

Deadly Dragons. Exactly what it says on the Tins. After discovering the weak point I never died to a vanilla dragon. Not so with Deadly Dragons.

Lore Friendly Armors. All realistic within the TES Lore, and they all look awesome.

Static Meshes Improvement Mod. The world looks infinitely better. Hard on the system though so if it's weaker, don't bother.

Sounds of Skyrim. Dungeons and wilds. The first time you enter a dungeon and hear the far off wimpering of wolves, or the scratching of spiders... You'll shiver with fear.

Binocular Vision For NPC's While Sneaking. Just what it says, makes them less likely to detect you.

Bucklers Complete. Smaller shields for swashbucklers, fencers, thieves.

Pickpocket fixed: Adjusts the maximum steal chance all the way up to 98%.

Lockpick reconfigured: This one alters the pathing of the Lockpick tree so it's not so perk heavy. So along one branch you have Novice through Master, while the other starts at Novice and works it's way up the more interesting perks. I recommend it even if you're not a thief, because you can spend two perks, to get that one good one early on that would have cost three perks.

Skill Interface Retextured: It makes the stars in the backglround look much, much nicer, and also will improve the perk lines so they don't look so wimpy.

Balanced Magic: Improves scaling of Destruction, adds some more useful perks to Alteration, and adds Armor Penalties if you missed them.

Dual Casting Effectiveness: Bumps it to 3.0 for the 2.8 magic usage. Balanced Magic also does this, but I like this change better, so just load it after.

Long Lost Smelters: Adds Smelters to those forges that should have them, like Riverwood. Works really well with:

Val's Crafting Meltdown: Haul all those tons of armor out of a dungeon, only to find that no one can possibly buy enough of it to make it worth your while? Just melt it down and make more stuff, then melt it down again.

Portable Campsite: Cool, but I use it mostly for the portable tanning rack and sleeping bag.

Warzones: Huge fights, all over Skyrim. Be prepared to die. Often. Usually from Mages you never saw. Or from the hordes of skeleton archers. Tons and tons of fun for high level characters. Hours of heart ache for low levels. Lots of loot for melting.

Waterbreathing Breathless Emerge: Argonian? Wearing a waterbreathing item? Tired of taking a pointless breath when you pop out of the water. This is for you.

I'm currently testing out Lilylu's Lockpick graduation, as a less cheaty alternative to KenMOD's Lockpick pro. I'm not sure how well I like it yet.

Forgot:

Better Container Names. Now you don't have to waste time on all those barrels of apples, and can go for the barrels of reagents instead.

Male Mage hoods for Females. Looks much better.

Owning Goldenglow Estate: This is possibly the second coolest house mod I've tried yet. I like it better because it's more lore friendly within the context of the character. I earned that deed through hard work. Seriously, that quest makes the house worth having. Plus it's got an automatic gate. I love that.

Asteria: A flying ship. Coolest House Mod in the game. Period. So far anyway. I intend to make a castle of my own, but so far this is the coolest one of all.

[Fargazer]

I've played a couple mods, but I can honestly say that only one of them really revolutionized my Skyrim experience enough to convince me to play many upon many more hours of the game.

That would be project P.E.W. Seriously, if you haven't experienced the magic for yourself yet, you need to get it.

[Hazzardevil]

This is a list of most of the mods I'm using:
Black Sacrament armour: Good Armour and adds a nice player home.
UFO: Ultimate Followers Overhaul, lets you use multiple followers at the same time and makes all vanilla followers scale.
Skyrim 40,000: Add's Space Marine Armours and races
Skyrim 40,000 weapons pack: Adds chainswords, storm hammers and guns.
Power Tome: Scaler: Lets you create tomes that teach you powers to make you shrink to 20% of normal size or grow to 120% of normal size.
Jump Higher: Does what it says on the tin
Uncle Sheogorath's Really Helpful Hints and Tips: Adds useful tips to the loading screens.
Dance of Death: A killmoves mod that takes a few days to start working.
Difficulty for everyone: Increases damage based on difficulty setting
Enhanced Blood Textures: For everyone that doesn't like how all blood looks like it has dried for hours immediatly and makes blood brighter when someone starts bleeding.
Helgen Rebuilt-Stage 2: A mod by a friend of mine who is expanding villages to make them bigger. He also made this, a version of Helgen where animals and plants are covering Helgen.
Riverwood Expanded: Makes Riverwood bigger
Rorikstead expanded: Ditto only Rorikstead, these 3 mods are by Jim Freeman
Toggle Tails: Lets you take tails off Khajit and Argonians
Greybeard Follower: Adds a Follower for a Greybeard
Greybeards robes: Does what it says on the tin
Auto Unequip Helmet: Removes Helmets when you sheathe your sword, can be switched off without uninstalling.
Deeper Snow: Makes snow look better
Dynamic Weather system: Makes weather change for often
More Rain: More Rain falls when it rains
Chopping block/Wood Fire fixs: Adds textures that Bethesda has removed from skyrim, don't believe me? Go to the fruit stand in riften and look at the wood blocl.
Follower Map markers: Makes all followers have a quest they can give you so you can find them when they get lost.
Throwing Knives: Adds knives you can throw at people to kill them and has an infinite ammo option, cannot retreieve ammo currently.
Sounds of Skyrim: Makes place noiseier so it doesn't sound like your in an empty room.
Open Citires: Makes cities no longer need to be loaded when you enter them, not added for every city yet, but doesn't clash with NPC's that enter cities ad leave them, they just walk through the gates or occasionally get stuck.
Weapon Variant Expansion: Stops all weapons looking the same and adds new shields
Faster Vanilla Horses: Makes Horses faster
Midas Magic
Dynamic Guards: Stops all guards being clones from Star Wars
Realistic Ragdolls and Roce: Stops you falling 5 feet down a mountain and dying.
Crowded Cities: Makes more NPC's walk around Solitude, hopefully getting more updates soon.
Fall of the space core: Space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVn1oQL9sWg)
Jaysus Swords: Spoken of already
Civil Unrest: Adds a lot of areas where NPCs will fight eachother
Wars in Skyrim: Adds random groups of enemies who will wander around, the only problem is it has been taken of the Nexus.
Tytanis: Too big to explain what it does here.
Cloaks of Skyrim: You need this
Winter is coming: Cloaks: Adds more cloaks and hoods, first part of many.
Sky UI: Adds a better Inventory
Asteria: Adds a new player house.
Dragonslayer Sword: For when you need a big ****off sword to hit stuff with.
Black SWordsman Armour: Dark armour from the anime/manga berserk.

Installed but not used:
Colossus - The Ancient Arena: Arena mod
Alternate start - Live Another Life: Not tested yet
And the realms of the daedra
Blood is Everything: Makes being a vampire more interesting (Allegedly)

I have other mods, but these are just the ones I remember.