"Remember, your mind is the best weapon you have."-Farengar Secret-Fire
If you still love to play Skyrim by now, you might wanna try these mods made by people who keep making changes and additions in order to make Skyrim a little bit different, add some more fun, challenge and immersion, but it's still Skyrim that we love. Here are some awesome Skyrim mods that could make you feel like to spend hours exploring Skyrim again (or modding).
Combat Gameplay
If you think fighting 2 Revered Dragons or 3 Draugr Deathlords is not hard enough for you, try add Combat Evolved and go find those Draugrs again. This mod aimed to make combat in Skyrim more difficult, deadly and unforgiving, satisfying the need of brutal killing gameplay. NPCs will be a lot aggressive and smarter making the enemies are threat at any level the player is at. Not only realistic and immersive, this is also a light script-free mod, so you don't have to worry if the game would broke.
Realistic Ragdolls and Force also a good mod to fix the extreme level of unrealistic ragdoll force when you kill or killed. I'm pretty sure you've experienced that before, mess with a giant and being sent to the moon. This mod give you options to adjust how hard the force would be, but in realistic way of course.
NPC & Graphics
Sure Skyrim NPCs are cool, almost every of them have their own stories and backgrounds. But still, they are lack of realism. There is a mod called Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul SE for you to increase the immersion by greatly improve the NPC's AI so they will act and behave like real human beings to their surroundings. They will walk around and interact more, sitting together eating breads and dance together. No more old man trying to be a hero by standing in your way with bare hands fighting vampires attack only to be knocked down by your Daedric sword.
Walking around in Skyrim and meet some bandits, Thalmor Justiciar, or a couple of Stormcloak and Imperial soldiers on your way is fun. But, if you use Populated Skyrim Civil War SE Edition it will make Skyrim more alive by adding more patrols and huge war zone of Stormcloak and Imperial soldiers in several locations in Skyrim and not just 3 or 4 soldiers. Or for a larger war scale WARZONES - Civil Unrest for SSE will make your adventure more dangerous as it adds deeper random ambush, and randomly spawned epic war of large number of Stormcloak and Imperial soldiers, on the road, forest, and fort sieges.
Skyrim has a great great atmosphere throughout its world, and Skyrim Special Edition enhance the overall graphics of the game even better, but what if I told you that you can make it even better with mods. Mods like SSE Texture Pack - Osmodius, Skyland - A Landscape Texture Overhaul and Enhanced textures detail (UV-tweaks) improve the environment graphics and textures detail to look even more pleasing in the eyes.
And this one is also the ultimate graphic enhancer for Skyrim Special Edition, Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM You can see the difference this mod provide below. It changes the appearance of low-polygon static meshes to be a more 'proper' looks to the objects.
Or when you walking in the city and feels the city is a bit plain(?), you might wanna use Beautiful Cities SSE to make Whiterun, Solitude, Riften, and other holds in Skyrim more beautiful (thanks, captain obvious) in a lore-friendly way, by adding more plants throughout the city holds.
Lighting
Texture mods are only improve the graphic texture of the game and not making Skyrim lighting in different type of places a little bit more beautifully atmospheric. Realistic Lightning Overhaul SSE can help you with that. This is a hardcore realism mod that should be used by anyone who want their game to have an increased immersion level.
You can also use this massive Climates Of Tamriel Special Edition mod to replace all vanilla weather and lighting to a more beautiful style. It's also provides optional modules for darker nights, more atmospheric interiors, and darker dungeons.
But that one also adds SFX to the game to adjust to its new weather changes, so if you don't want any new sound effects you might wanna try Enhanced Lights and FX, it makes every light sources and windows emit lights, city inn now has its own set of lights based in it's local weather, and many more. We don't want to be in a cave and feel the lighting effect not so different with being in Breezehome, do we?
Sound Effects
There is a massive mod split to 3 packages adding more than 460 new sound effects in Skyrim to create a more realistic sounds throughout the region and adds the immersiveness. With this mod, you'll be able to feel and hear a more alive atmosphere through the sounds that depends on what time, weather, or where you are at the time. If you walking in the city streets during the day, you'll hear door opening/closing sounds, children playing and workers sawing things. While at night there will be cricket sounds, owl, wolves howling, and other nightlife sounds. Walk through the doorways to hear the sounds from the inside louder, and the echos from within caves when you approach the entrance. The mods are Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds, Sounds of Skyrim - The Dungeons, and Sounds of Skyrim - Civilization. These mods were made for previous Skyrim but also works is Skyrim Special Edition.
Or if you want you can use Climates Of Tamriel Special Edition, not only it improves the game's lighting, but also provides new SFX as well to adjust to the weather changes that it has.
Additional Items
If you have acquired every single weapons and armours available in Skyrim, Skyrim SE Expanded Skyrim Weaponry and Isilmeriel LOTR Weapons Collection might be interesting for you. The 2 mods adds 105 standalone weapons that can only used by the player (but have the option to allow NPC to have them), and 10 weapons from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. They are taking the hobbits to Sovngarde!!
As for the armours there are tons of choices of them, but my personal choice is ESO Armor Collection, which add the armour that the characters wear in the cinematic trailer of the Elder Scrolls Online. But if you wanted something else, maybe you should try Rise of the legend - Ysgramor, Armor of Intrigue for SE - Modular Male Armor from The Witcher 2, or Nordic Adventurers Armor SSE that looks pretty cool.
There are many more mods that you can find, and these are a few best mods made by hard working modder to improve Skyrim to be more fun and immersive. If you are one of these modders reading this, thanks for making the mods for people to enjoy it, and thanks to all of you for reading this. Stay awesome!
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