The Phoenix Flavor - Zediious Sprinkles

A heavily curated Skyrim mod list, focused on elevating the game to a modern standard.

Current version: v1.0 - 11/29/2024

Preamble

Before anything else, I will say that you MUST read everything in this Wiki that is within the Mandatory Reading section, which you will find by following the links at the bottom of this page, and further pages. It is VERY important that you read the wiki pages in this category to understand what steps need to be taken to enjoy this list to the fullest, and have it actually work. Thank you so much!

Welcome to the Wiki for The Phoenix Flavor - Zediious Sprinkles! This mod list started life in 2021 as an installation of The Phoenix Flavor. The mods that The Phoenix Flavor comes with brought the game up to a perfect Vanilla+ setup. I realized that I wanted to make some changes, in the name of breaking that “Vanilla+” moniker, using TPF as a base for my adventure. I love Skyrim, but after you’ve played 3000+ hours, you begin to yearn for something more.

As time has passed, and more revolutionary combat/animation mods have been released, this mod list now encompasses what I consider to be the perfect, modern Skyrim. Nearly everything in the game has been touched, in an effort to bring the game to a modern standard, and to make it a game I could play endlessly. Many tweaks and additions have been made to many mods, as well as standalone changes. You will find various unique changes in this modlist geared towards improving the vanilla game and the mods in the list.

I have enjoyed playing and creating this mod list immensely, I hope it brings you the same joy it has brought to me :)

Completely Overhauled Combat / General Animation Overhaul

Every aspect of vanilla combat has been nearly completely removed, in favor of mechanics that enforce a tactical playstyle, as well as look and behave like a modern Action RPG. It would be fair to say we now have “Dark Souls” combat, but many of the mechanics are inspired by other modern Action RPGs.

Beyond just combat animations, nearly every single animation in the game has been replaced with high quality, modern replacements, along with many new additions to bring an immense amount of life to Skyrim. These include conditional movement and idles when you are low on a stat, animations when interacting with the world, improved animations from NPCs during dialogue, and much more!

The game will be hardly recognizable in term of movement, animation, combat, and camera, with all of these things revolving around the 3rd person experience. This list is geared around playing in 3rd person, but does not require you to do so. Check the sidebar for a full list of the relevant mods and how they will affect your gameplay!

New and Improved Mechanics

This mod list does not stop at only influencing combat and animations. Just about every mechanic in the game has either been improved and/or replaced with new modern mechanics. We are also introducing entirely new mechanics, such as SkyClimb, Take a Peek, Sneak Behavior Extensions- True Prone System, Stress and Fear, Soul Resurrection - Injury and Alternative Death System, Maximum Carnage and much more! Take a look at the “New Mechanics to Know” page for an in-depth look at what to expect!

Complete Settlement Overhaul / Vanilla Locations and Quests Overhaul

Every single settlement in the game has been extensively modified and patched, to beautify, enhance the utility, and in some cases, lore and quests including new quests. Nearly every single vanilla location and interior has also been modified for the same purposes. Neither of these locations will look the same, and will all provide more content. Nearly every vanilla quest has also been modified in some way, either to fix bugs or completely overhaul the quest. Everything in the game has been refreshed, to bring more life, realism, and fun to all the familiar places and quests in Skyrim. Check the sidebar for a full list of the relevant mods!

New Quests and Content

On top of enhancing the existing quests and locations in the game, the mod list adds a plethora of new Quest, New Lands, and Location mods such as Vicn’s Trilogy of amazing Souls-style questline mods, UNSLAAD, VIGILANT, and GLENMORIL (GLENMORIL is still a WIP, but lots of content available!). These three mods alone are some of the best content you can play, expanding on the Elder Scrolls lore in ways that most mods do not, while offering that real lore in a Souls-style fashion. This is not it, however. We’re also including amazing content mods such as Beyond Reach, Beyond Skyrim - Bruma, Darkend, The Wheels of Lull, Wyrmstooth, Khajiit Will Follow, Depths of the Reach, G.R.I.M, and much more! You will be hard pressed to find yourself out of things to do in this mod list.

New Creatures in the World

We are also adding a wide variety of New Creature mods to the game, from renowned authors such as Mihail, 4thUnknown and more! New creatures such as the Bone Colossus, Hungers, Minotaurs, Ogres, Flesh Colossus, Bogmort - Mud Monsters, Undead Snow Elves, A Plethora of new Dwarven automatons, and much more! You will always be finding new and interesting creatures to fight and get killed by!

Custom Leveled Lists with mod-added Equipment

To seal it all off, this list is accompanied by a completely customized set of leveled lists for both armors and weapons, containing a massive number of mod-added equipment. You can view the full list of equipment here! Every leveled list has been curated by hand, carefully choosing what should go where and balancing the stats of the new equipment to match the tier they are placed in. It will not be uncommon for you to never see a particular piece of vanilla equipment again, instead finding new equipment you may have never seen before! This not only increases your general loot variety, it increases the diversity of armors and weapons across every NPC in the game, and provides you with a large number of choices in equipping yourself. Most of the equipment added to the last has also had Enchanted Variants created, which will be given as end-of-dungeon rewards, as rewards at the end of a quest, etc. Some equipment that has been added can only be crafted, and you can easily request a blacksmith to do so with the Honed Metal mod.

Warnings/Disclaimers

As of the latest version, the modlist requires ~406GB (~144GB of Downloads/~262GB of Mods) of drive space on top of the ~14GB Skyrim: Special Edition base files. Installing onto an SSD is not required, but strongly recommended. You are welcome and recommended to use a separate drive for the downloaded archives, saving some space on the SSD storing the actual installed mod list. Download and installation times vary based on your computer and internet speeds but expect the entire process to take a couple of hours.

Wabbajack does not require that you have Nexus Premium to install the modlist, however, having Nexus Premium will cut your install time to a fraction of what it would be instead of downloading each mod individually.

When launching the game through Mod Organizer, NEVER click the “Unlock” button on the small window that Mod Organizer creates. This WILL cause issues! You will be reminded of this in the Post-Mod List Install section of the wiki.

This list requires that you have the latest version of Skyrim installed on Steam. Do NOT use any downgrade patchers, Wabbajack will do this work for you.

This list does NOT support any additional Creation Club content beyond the four defaults provided with the base game (Fishing, Saints and Seducers, Survival Mode, Rare Curios). Any additional content will be disabled with no action required on your part. To be clear, you CAN still install this mod list if you have the Anniversary content, but it will not be usable/will be disabled in the list’s default state.

Full support is not provided for adding to, changing, or removing mods from the modlist. If you’re uncertain of how to use xEdit at a minimum, making any changes at all is a great way to have a Bad Time™.

Do NOT update any mods in the list without updating the whole list. Also a great way to have a Bad Time™.

Often, antivirus software can flag certain mod files as malicious. These will always be a false positive with this mod list. It is recommended that you set an exclusion within your antivirus for the directories you will be installing Wabbajack and this mod list. For instructions on doing so with Windows Defender, you can click here

Credits & Thanks

All the mod authors that have made the mods in this list. Without them, the list could not be. Thank you for creating content to extend this game!
Halgari and other contributors for creating Wabbajack, a magical black box that allows me to distribute my list.
Foreverphoenix for creating the original “The Phoenix Flavor” mod list, which this list is based on.
VikingWynn for helping out so much with support in Discord and the bug testing process.
Everyone that has reported bugs and made suggestions, making the list better.