The Phoenix Flavor - Zediious Sprinkles

• 1: Mandatory Reading
• 1.1: Installing the Mod List
• 1.1.1: Profiles and System Specifications
• 1.1.2: Installing Skyrim and the Creation Kit
• 1.1.3: Wabbajack and Mod-List Installation
• 1.1.4: Post-Mod List Install
• 1.2: Mod List Tweaks
• 1.2.1: Power Attacking and Blocking
• 1.2.2: Switching Interface Theme
• 1.2.3: Enabling Extra Survival Mods
• 1.2.4: Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot
• 1.3: Gameplay Guide
• 1.3.1: Defining your Character
• 1.3.2: Major Questline Changes
• 1.3.3: New Mechanics to Know
• 1.3.4: Important Hotkeys
• 2: Notable Mods
• 2.1: Graphical Improvements
• 2.2: Total Combat Overhaul
• 2.3: Gameplay Overhaul / New Mechanics
• 2.4: New Quests and Content
• 2.5: New Creatures
• 2.6: Weapons and Armor
• 2.7: Improved Vanilla Quests
• 2.8: Complete Settlement Overhaul
• 2.9: Improved Non-Settlement Locations
• 2.10: NPC Improvements
• 2.11: NPC Appearance Overhauls
• 3: Other List Information
• 3.1: Changelog
• 3.2: Added Equipment
• 3.3: ESL Flagged Plugins
• 3.4: Ignored Updates
• 3.5: Full Mod List
• 3.6: Mods on the Radar

1 - Mandatory Reading

1.1 - Installing the Mod List

1.1.1 - Profiles and System Specifications

Profiles

With this modlist, you have the option to choose between the three different Mod Organizer Profiles. Each of these profiles provide a different level of performance.

By default. the list uses the “Refined” profile. The other two profiles are “Refined - Performance” and “Refined - Ultra”. If you are able to use the “Refined - Ultra” profile, you will have the best visual experience the list can offer.

Below is a list of the differences between these three profiles

You can use either profile, and you can switch between them at any time. To do so, click the “Profile” dropdown menu at the top of the left pane in Mod Organizer 2, and select your desired profile. Note that any changes made in one profile will not reflect in the others.

Note that if you decide to use the “Refined - Performance” profile/use Community Shaders, the game will take a small amount of time to generate and cache the shaders on the first launch of the game. This will only happen once. The “Refined - Performance” profile will perform much better than the default profile, at the cost of visuals.

Page File Configuration

This mod list is quite large, and consumes quite a bit of memory (RAM) while running. Due to the way Skyrim’s engine works, there are times where the engine itself is unable to allocate more of your actual dedicated memory (RAM), leading to crashes. We can resolve this by manually defining a larger “Page File” for Windows/Skyrim to use. A Page File is space/a file on one of your disk drives (preferably an SSD) that can be used in place of memory when there is not enough dedicated memory available. Follow the below steps to set up and configure your page file.

Note: These steps were taken almost directly from this page, with a few changes.

1. In the Taskbar Search, type “Advanced System“. You will see View Advanced System Settings. Click on it. Or you can navigate to it via the Control Panel (Search “Advanced Settings” in the search box and then click View advanced system settings under the System option)
2. In System Properties, click the Advanced tab
3. In the Performance section click the Settings button
4. Performance Options will open. Click Advanced tab
5. Here, under Virtual memory, select Change
6. Uncheck “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” at the top.
7. Highlight your Windows system drive. This should be an SSD!
8. Select Custom size
9. Change the Initial size value to 40960 and the Maximum size value to 40960
10. Click Set
11. Finally, Click Apply/OK all the way.

The values above are what I use on my computer. I do not recommend you use any more than that.

System Specifications

You should absolutely have Skyrim and this mod list installed onto an SSD, and they should be on the same SSD. Using a HDD will induce lower framerates, stutters, and possibly other issues related to stability. If you have no choice, the list will function to a degree, but your experience will be heavily degraded.

Skyrim is very heavy on processors, and also happens to not make use of all available processor cores. This means that processors that are designed with a lot of lower power cores may have trouble running the game/this list. Generally, anything above 3GHz should be fine but I can’t guarantee it. With my hardware, I have no CPU bottleneck whatsoever.

When this mod list was made, I had a GTX 980. In November 2023, I upgraded to a RTX 4070. The below section will start with my initial report on the performance with the 980. The “Ultra” preset did not exist while I had the 980. Afterwards, I will describe the performance with the 4070 across all profiles. Please use these as a guideline to see if you are able to run this mod list based on the information after the specification tables. I can make no guarantees, as certain hardware configurations may result in bottlenecks or other issues.

NOTE: The “Refined - Ultra” profile will NOT run well with a GPU equivelent to a GTX 980

When running this mod list with the default “Refined” profile, my FPS is 60 in 99% of interior spaces, and will dip into ~30-40 in heavy outdoor areas (such as The Rift). When VRAM caps are reached, which occurs often with my hardware, I can experience large stutters momentarily that can bring me down to ~20 FPS.

If you have worse specifications than the below or cannot deal with the performance described above, you can switch to the “Refined - Performance” profile within Mod Organizer 2, to use Community Shaders instead of ENB, and utilize a less intensive DynDOLOD preset.

If I play the list with the “Refined - Performance” profile, nearly all performance issues described in this page are gone. What remains is large stutters momentarily that can bring me down to ~30 FPS, due to VRAM limits being reached. These usually only occur after a long play session, and go away for about 30 minutes at a time.

I also recommend 6GB of VRAM, however as shown above it is possible to run this list with 4GB of VRAM. When doing so, you may be exposed to occasional VRAM related stuttering and FPS drops during extremely heavy moments, or rarely crashes. In my experience, I am able to play 3+ hour long sessions on this list with no crashes, only very rarely do these crashes occur. You will know it is a GPU related crash if your crash logs reference a nvwgf2umx.dll (with NVIDIA Graphics Cards).

Again, I HIGHLY recommend that you have 6GB of VRAM when running this list. It will make for a better time overall, but you absolutely can use less.

When running this mod list with the default “Refined” profile, my FPS is 60 in 99% of locations in the game world. There are very few instances that will drop the framerate for small moments, such as extremely intensive fights where many effects are going on or heavily scripted moments. General gameplay is extremely smooth, and stuttering or sudden FPS drops are near non existent.

Using the “Refined - Performance” profile is not necessary with a 4070, though you can of course use either profile.

The “Refined - Ultra” profile runs at 60 FPS in all interiors, and in most places in the game world. Looking out over locations such as the Whiterun Tundra can drop the FPS to 35-50 due to the large amount of grass LOD being loaded. Any other locations in the world do not have a noticeable FPS drop. FPS drops in general gameplay are very rare, and not something to note.

As mentioned, there may be certain hardware configurations that could deviate from the above two anecdotes.

NEXT » Installing Skyrim and the Creation Kit

1.1.2 - Installing Skyrim and the Creation Kit

As with any modlist, it is extremely important that you start with a clean, unmodified installation of Skyrim: Special Edition. This is an extremely vital part of the installation process, do NOT skip this!

This list also requires you to install the Skyrim Special Edition Creation Kit from Steam. The list will fail to install if the Creation Kit is not installed to the Skyrim game folder. To do these things, follow these steps:

Installing Skyrim

1. In Steam, uninstall Skyrim: Special Edition (Right-click > Manage > Uninstall).

2. If there are any files leftover in the Skyrim Special Edition game folder (Right-click > Properties… > Local Files > Browse Local Files…), delete them.

3. Install Skyrim: Special Edition.

4. In Steam, set Skyrim: Special Edition to update only when opened. (Right-click > Properties… > Updates > Automatic updates > Only update this game when I launch it)

5. Launch the Skyrim SE from Steam to create any INI or registry entries the game needs. DO NOT CLICK “PLAY” IN THE LAUNCHER! You should NOT be opening the game to the main menu. Immediately exit after the launcher has successfully selected a graphics preset for your hardware. If you launch the game to the main menu and/or initiate the Creation Club downloads that occur, Wabbajack will have errors when installing the list.

Your Skyrim should be updated to the latest version before installing the list, which the above process will ensure. This list runs on Skyrim 1.5.97, but expects your game installation to be updated to the latest version. Do NOT use any downgrade patchers.

This will also ensure that your Skyrim game folder has been completely cleaned of any non-vanilla files, and does not have the additional Anniversary Edition changes. This is very important!

Installing the Creation Kit

1. Go to the Store tab in the Steam app, search for “Skyrim Special Edition: Creation Kit”, and click the result.

2. Scroll down, and click the green “Free” button to install the Creation Kit. This will/should be installed to the Skyrim SE game folder.

You now have the Creation Kit installed, which is required to install the list.

NEXT » Wabbajack and Mod-List Installation

1.1.3 - Wabbajack and Mod-List Installation

Wabbajack Installation

1. Download the latest Wabbajack Installer .exe. Do not run anything until instructed to do so.

2. Create a new folder in the root of the drive where you want Wabbajack to be installed. (C:\ will be used as an example, but it can be placed in any drive.) Name this folder “Wabbajack”. Important!: Wabbajack must be placed in a separate folder from where the installation will occur.

3. Create a second folder called C:\tpfzs. This folder is where everything will be installed. You can also place it where you would like and name it what you would like, but ensure the location you place it in is not under the protection of your Antivirus. or inside the Wabbajack folder you created in step 2.

4. Ensure that the newly created directory is completely empty.

5. Ensure that Wabbajack.exe is placed in C:\Wabbajack.

Mod List Installation

1. Open the Wabbajack.exe you placed in C:\Wabbajack, and wait for it to open. Click the left-most button in the main center area labeled “Browse Mod Lists”

2. Check the “Show Unofficial Lists” checkbox at the top of the window. Then, search for “Zediious” in the search box. Hover over the filtered “The Phoenix Flavor - Zediious Sprinkles” mod list, and click the Download button. After that has completed, click the Play button that has replaced the Download button.

3. In the following window, set the Installation Location to C:\tpfzs (or wherever you created that directory). The download location does not need to be set manually unless you have drive space limitations. Downloading to a separate folder is fine (for example, on a HDD), but as before it is recommended that the actual install be placed on a SSD. Important!: Do not install the modlist to your Skyrim SE installation folder OR the folder that Wabbajack.exe is in. Seriously, this is VERY important. If you are at all confused by this, PLEASE reach out on our Discord!

4. Click Run.

With Nexus Premium

5. Wabbajack will walk you through logging into the Nexus and authorizing an API key so it can download mods if you have not done so previously.

6. Let Wabbajack do its thing. This will take usually 2-3 hours at most if you have good internet, but the time to download can take quite a bit of time if you have slower internet speeds.

Without Nexus Premium

5. Wabbajack will prompt you to click all the needed buttons to download the modlist. Be prepared for this to take a really long time, possibly more than one day. Put on some music or a TV show and make a day of it.

Once complete, Wabbajack will say “Installation complete! You may exit the program.” If it does not, visit our Discord server for assistance. Don’t forget to upload your log file!

If Wabbajack fails to download a particular mod, it means that the mod has likely been removed from the Nexus for a moderation reason. This also means that an update to the mod list is imminent. Feel free to report the problematic mod on Discord, but do not ask other people to share older files as this is a violation of the Nexus ToS.

NEXT » Post-Mod List Install

1.1.4 - Post-Mod List Install

Please read everything in this section! There are many important things here!

Ensure .NET 5.0 Runtime is installed

This version of .NET is required to launch the game via Mod Organizer. Make sure you have this version installed, even if you already have a newer version.

1. Visit https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/5.0/runtime, and use “Download x64” under the “Run desktop apps” section

2. Run the downloaded executable file, and use “Install”. Make sure this installs successfully.

Launching Mod Organizer 2

1. Navigate to C:\tpfzs (or wherever you installed the mod list) and open ModOrganizer.exe.

2. If you don’t have Microsoft VC_Redist installed, you may see an error. You can download the latest versions here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170. Note that this is separate from the .NET 5.0 runtime downloaded above.

3. A dialogue will appear and ask if you want to associate Mod Organizer with nxm links. Click Yes.

Check your Overwrite Directory

Occasionally, Wabbajack and/or Rootbuilder can place files that were installed by other mod lists and/or were already in your Skyrim installation folder inside the Overwrite directory for this mod list. This can cause a number of issues, including extremely long loading times or not loading at all. Perform the following steps to ensure this directory is not interfered with by other files.

1. If you did not perform the steps here, you MUST do so. If you are knowledgeable, you may be able to remove files from this directory that should not be there and then simply verify your game install. If you do not understand this, PLEASE follow the directions in the link above.

2. In the left pane of Mod Organizer, scroll all the way to the bottom, where you will find an “Overwrite” mod. Double click this.

3. If you have not run the game yet, this mod/directory should be completely empty. If it is not, double check that you have performed Step 1. If you have, simply select all of the files inside of the Overwrite mod, right click them, and delete.

If you are sure you have performed Step 1, then those file should not be in the Overwrite again. If you find this is not the case, reach out on our Discord.

The only files/directories that should be in the Overwrite mod after launching the game and playing are as follows;

• NetScriptFramework (if you experience a crash, logs go here)
• KiLoader
  • Various directories
• Root
  • enbcache/cache files
  • betacomments.txt
  • d3dx9_42.log
  • imgui.ini
• ShaderCache/
• SKSE
  • Plugins
    • IED directory
    • LamasTinyHUD Loadout .ini files
    • Various plugin log files
• textures
  • PhotoMode directory

Launching the Game

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION! IT WILL PREVENT ISSUES!

The hard part is nearly over. Carry on, the end is in sight!

1. In Mod Organizer 2, select SKSE from the drop-down menu next to the Run button and click Run. You should ALWAYS run the mod list with the SKSE executable, do NOT use the Skyrim SE executable. You can create a shortcut on your desktop if you wish using the Shortcut button under the Run button.

2. At this point Mod Organizer will become “Locked”, while the Skyrim executable is running. Under NO circumstances, should you ever click the “Unlock” button while you are playing the game! This includes immediately when it appears. Mod Organizer needs to be in this state for the mod list to launch and work properly. If you do click Unlock, you will more than likely be faced with Infinite Loading Screens, or other issues.

3. Once Skyrim starts, create a new game. Loading a save from outside this mod list will corrupt that save, do not do this! If you are updating from an existing version of the mod list, read the changelog to ensure that the new version is save-safe.

4. Create your character, and finalize their race/name.

5. As soon as you gain control of your character, do nothing. The mods are loading and MCM configurations are being applied. You’ll see a list of mods initializing in the top left of the screen, and you will see popup messages, which you can click OK on. Please, DO NOT do anything until notification messages at the top left have ceased. This may take a bit of time, but be patient. This only needs to happen on the first load into a new game.

6. Once you see that no more items are appearing in the list in the top left, you can proceed to the next steps.

7. Make sure you are not looking at the Dragon NPC in the room, and press the F10 key. Select a Body Preset from the menu that appears. If you don’t care about this as a Male character, select Zeroed. You must choose a preset as a Male, as the default proportions given are quite wonky. As a Female character, you can safely ignore this if you wish.

8. At this point, you should make a save, and reload that save before continuing.

The MCM Settings

First and foremost, you should NEVER change an MCM setting except for Hotkeys without asking in Discord first. There are a very large number of MCM settings that change the experience drastically, or introduce bugs that are alleviated by disabling or enabling that setting. As such, it can quite literally break your game if you change a setting you should not change. Please ask about any non-hotkey MCM settings you wish to change.

On a new game, MCM Recorder will run a custom preset that has been created for this mod list. Most MCM configuration menus will be automatically configured for you, using the needed and recommended settings. Below you will find any mods that may require additional configuration.

Valhalla Combat

ONLY if you decide to change the block key from Duel Wield Parrying SKSE, you will also need to change the block key in the Compatibility section of this mod. Dual Wield Parrying uses a different system to send the blocking action to the game, and Valhalla needs to know which key is initiating this separate action to properly start a timed block. If you are not rebinding your block key, you do not need to worry about this.

Take Note of any Current Bugs

Take a look at our full current issue tracker here; https://github.com/zediious/tpfz-sprinkles/issues.

Issues that are very frequent and/or effect the experience as a whole will be pinned at the top of the issue tracker. It will be valuable for you to check the others as well to confirm what you may need to look out for in the current version.

Make sure to report any bugs/issues or anything remotely odd on our issue tracker! If an issue already exists for what you’re finding, most certainly add a comment expressing that you are seeing the issue as well. Reporting issues you find helps to make this mod list better for everyone :)

Final Thoughts & Best Practices

• Endorse the mods that have been downloaded by this list! Without the mod authors, the list could not exist. You definitely don’t have to click endorse 1500+ times in one day, but check your Nexus download history every once in a while and spend some time endorsing these mods. Wabbajack has made it incredibly easy to get the mods downloaded, but the authors deserve some commendation for their work, in my opinion. Follow this link to get to your download history!

• The Notable Mods sections in the Wiki sidebar contains a full-detailed breakdown of all the important mods in this list. This section is still a WIP, and many sections only contain stubs with the mod name. Make sure to check it out after you have read the Mandatory Reading section! You can also use “Full Mod List” in the “Other List Information” tab to view the full mod list at Load Order Library.

• When launching the game through Mod Organizer, NEVER click the “Unlock” button on the small window that Mod Organizer creates. This WILL cause issues!

• Be mindful of loading saves while in game, after you have already loaded into a save. This is highly discouraged! Skyrim has an engine issue with not clearing game state fully on save loads, which can cause crashes, save corruption in certain instances, or benign issues. Check this comment for a more in-depth breakdown. We use a death alternative mod to get around this on death, but it is highly recommended that you do not do so manually without first fully closing the game.

• NEVER save right after a loading screen. Wait 15-30 seconds before saving to let scripts finish executing.

• Quicksaves made with F5 are automatically turned into Manual Saves. It is recommended to save early and often. Every 15 minutes and before interacting with quest NPCs, quest objects, and entering new zones should be sufficient. Old saves can be deleted, but forgetting to save loses progress forever!

• It is recommended that you do not load autosaves as a rule. In this mod list, they are off by default. If you want to read more about the subject, check out mator’s response to a discussion on the topic here

• Wabbajack supports updating/upgrading over an existing installation, but it will automatically delete any files that aren’t used for the modlist installation. This means if you have changed the modlist in any way, Wabbajack will delete those changes and may even delete your saves. Keep backups of any changes you do make.

• If you plan to launch the Creation Kit within this mod list, you will need to disable the “Skyrim 1.5.97 Executables” mod to do so!

NEXT » Mod List Tweaks - Power Attacking and Blocking

1.2 - Mod List Tweaks

1.2.1 - Power Attacking and Blocking

In this mod list, we use Dual Wield Parrying SKSE to modify our block hotkey to Mouse Button-4, and For Honor Power Attack to modify our power attack hotkey to Mouse Right-Click. Since not everyone may have a mouse with additional buttons, these may need to be changed. Below you will find instructions on changing your block key. If you want to change your block key back to the Mouse Right-Click, then you will need to remove For Honor Power Attack. This is currently unsupported.

Changing the Block Key

1. In the left pane of Mod Organizer, use the search bar at the bottom to search for “Dual Wield”. Double click the “Dual Wield Parrying SKSE” mod.

2. Click the “INI Files” tab at the top, and click the “DualWieldParryingSKSE.ini” file on the left tab.

3. You will need to set the “ParryKey” value to a number that corresponds to a key, mouse button, or controller button “Dec” value at this link. Do NOT set or use the “ParryKey2” value. Due to the below reason, you can only use one block key.

If you do change your block key, you will also need to change the block key in the Compatibility section of Valhalla Combat’s MCM. Dual Wield Parrying uses a different system to send the blocking action to the game, and Valhalla needs to know which key is initiating this separate action to properly start a timed block.

Changing the Power Attack Key

Please note that I cannot provide support if you decide to change your Power Attack key. Strange behavior can occur relating to power attacks not triggering as they should, where blocking happens instead. If you want to change your power attack key, you will need to follow the below steps;

1. Disable/uncheck the For Honor Power Attack mod in the left pane of Mod Organizer.

2. In game, open the Mod Configuration Menu, open the BFCO menu. Set the Power Attack Key (first option in the list) to your preferred key. This is set to SCRLK by default as it is an oft-used key.

To re-iterate, this will cause strangeness with blocking occuring when you try to power attack with this hotkey sometimes. I do not recommend you do so.

NEXT » Switching Interface Theme

1.2.2 - Switching Interface Theme

The mod list offers “Dear Diary - Dark Mode” as the default UI texture/sound overhaul.

If you prefer a lighter tone, we offer “Dear Diary - Paper UI” as an option that you can enable instead.

Follow the below steps to disable the default Dark Mode UI and enable the Paper version. All of these mods are grouped right next to each other in the mod list.

1. Disable the following mods in the INTERFACE AND CAMERA separator of the left pane of Mod Organizer;

   • Dear Diary - Dark Mode
   • Dear Diary - Dark Mode SkyUI Config
   • Dear Diary - Dark Mode Compass Navigation Overhaul
   • Inventory Interface Information Injector - Dark Mode
   • Dear Diary Dark Mode C.O.C.K.S. Mode
   • Custom Skills Framework Unified Menu - Dear Diary Dark
   • KIT SkyUI Config - Dark Mode

2. Enable the following mods in the INTERFACE AND CAMERA separator of the left pane of Mod Organizer;

   • Dear Diary - Paper Mode
   • Paper UI Sounds
   • Sovngarde - A Nordic Font
   • Inventory Interface Information Injector - Dear Diary Paper
   • Dear Diary Light Skin for C.O.C.K.S
   • Custom Skills Framework Unified Menu - Dear Diary Paper
   • Dear Diary Paper - Experience Patch
   • KIT SkyUI Config - Paper Mode

Keep in mind that the main menu will always use the Paper version of the UI via the “Dear Diary Main Menu” mod. Do NOT disable this mod. You do not need to worry about the plugin load order for any of these mods.

NEXT » Enabling Extra Survival Mods

1.2.3 - Enabling Extra Survival Mods

Always remember that the list was not created around these, and they do not create my desired gameplay. They exist as an option so users that want that gameplay can still receive official support These mods are entirely optional, and are not how I personally prefer to play the list.

If you make a support thread in Discord/post an issue on our tracker while using these Survival mods, please make note of that in the request :)

Enabling Survival Mods

Perform the following steps to enable the enhanced Survival mods that are offered as an option with this list.

1. Go to the “SURVIVAL MODS (OPTIONAL)” separator in the left pane of Mod Organizer, at priority 24

2. Enable ALL (no exceptions!) of the mods located under this separator. All of them will be disabled by default, and appear like the following;

Read the notes by hovering over the Notepad on each mod, to see any extra information.

3. In the right pane of Mod Organizer, click the Plugins tab. Scroll all the way to the bottom. Drag the Campfire.esm file up one slot, and it will jump to the top of the load order. You can leave it where it lands.

4. Make sure the remaining enabled plugins (all of them are below Occlusion.esp) follow the order in the following image

When you load a new game, the MCM for SunHelm will be automatically configured, and the mod enabled. However, the MCM for SunHelm will not update until you open the MCM menu at least once. After you have loaded into the game and your notification messages have ceased, open the Mod Configuration Menu, open the SunHelm MCM, and close it. Your enhanced Survival mods are now ready for use!

NEXT » Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot

1.2.4 - Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot

In this mod list, we use Immersive Interactions to add unique animations for a huge variety of interactions within the game. We also use Quick Loot EE, which allows you to loot containers, bodies, etc without opening the container menu. Due to this, Immersive Interaction’s animations will not play when looting via Quick Loot.

To remedy this, we use the mod “Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot”. This solves the above problem, while allowing you to back out of the animation quickly by moving forward or looting the container completely.

That being said, this behavior might be very annoying to certain players. I am well aware that many do not like Immersive Interactions at all. As such, you can safely disable “Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot” within the mod list. To do so, follow the below instructions;

1. Within the Left Pane of Mod Organizer, click the Filter text box at the bottom. Enter “Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot” without quotes.

2. Uncheck the mod that appears in the left pane, “Immersive Interactions for Quick Loot”

I recommend that you decide whether you want to use this mod before starting a playthrough, but you can safely disable it during a playthrough. You should NOT disable the full “Immersive Interactions - Animated Actions” in any event.

You can safely modify the Mod Configuration Menu for “Immersive Interactions - Animated Actions”, to disable a wide variety of the default animations that play in game.

NEXT » Gameplay Guide - Defining your Character

1.3 - Gameplay Guide

1.3.1 - Defining your Character

We use two mods that allow us to further differentiate our characters, building a backstory for them as well as defining their “class”. Follow the steps below to set up and understand these two mods.

Dealing with Backstories

I’ve done my best do describe the mod below, but you should really read the mod page at the link above if you are interested in using this mod. It does a lot!

This mod adds three main powers to your Spell menu. A few others may appear in different scenarios after you have used one of the main three, read the full mod page regarding these! These three main powers allow you to do a few different things in terms of how you your characters backstory will be formed. You should ONLY use the Powers added by this mod after you have left the Alternate Perspective starting room (where you begin on a New Game).

By using the “Forget your Past” or “Focus on the Present” powers, you will start the game like vanilla, with no additional buffs or debuffs, and with normal starting skills. This will also remove all three powers the mod adds from your powers menu.

By using the “Let Time Pass” power, you are able to basically wait for a significant period of time. This allows you to emulate “settling down” after accomplishing a major task such as completing a questline.

If you use the “Remember your Past” power, you will enter a special area where you will “write” your characters backstory. This will NOT clear your inventory. Walk up to the large tome in the center of the room and activate it. This will bring up a smithing style menu, where you can use your “resources”, which represent your “trait counts” (similar to how character creation in Fallout games works) to select what traits your character has.

These traits are not made immediately obvious from the selections. This is by design, you are meant to choose options that would suit your character, which will in turn give you a set of buffs/debuffs that suit your choices. You will also receive starting skill changes based on these choices. If you are interested in knowing exactly what each selection does, the mod author has provided images detailing what each choice does on the mod page.

After you have exhausted all options in the tome, walk into the dark end of the hallway and activate the end of the hallway. The mod takes some time to finalize everything and send you back to your original location. You can run around and look at the things that are in the hall to pass time.

This mod is mostly for role-playing, you can completely avoid the mod if it does not interest you.

Sets of Skills

This mod adds a very simple and non-intrusive class system to the game, that can work alongside Dealing with Backstories perfectly. You can access the perk trees for this mod in the Custom Skills menu in your Tween menu (press TAB in game).

Within the “Path of the Warrior”, “Path of the Mage”, “Path of the Thief” or “Path of the Priest” perk trees, you can add new benefits to your character that suit your build, and further differentiate them!

NEXT -> Major Questline Changes

1.3.2 - Major Questline Changes

We use At Your Own Pace to modify the pacing of the Main Quest, College of Winterhold, and The Companions questlines. This mod makes changes to a LOT of familiar aspects of these quests, so you may feel like something is not working correctly at times. We also use a few other mods that modify the other questlines.

Read the mod pages thoroughly to know what to expect! At Your Own Pace in particular adds a LOT of new possibilities for these questlines. You should not have any problem blind playing, but you can learn of all the new scenarios in advance by reading the mod page.

Main Quest

The Main Quest has various stopping points that will certainly throw you off if you are expecting vanilla behavior. For instance, you will always find the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller in Ustengrav, and can return it to the Greybeards. You will need to speak to Farengar on your own to further advance the quest, where he will have Delphine send you a letter in a few days. Various other stopping points are introduced, where the player would need to take action for further quests to begin.

The College of Winterhold

In combination with College of Winterhold - Quest Expansion, you will not be able to start Saarthal until you have completed the quests for the masters of each school of magic, which are added by the Quest Expansion. Unless you sign on to the Saarthal expedition as a worker (read the mod page!)

The Companions

The Companions questline now also requires a great deal more Radiant quests to advance, while also allowing you to take multiple quests at a time. There are also quite a few changes to how certain parts of the questline work, allowing more types of characters to reasonably be a companion than before. You can progress without being a Werewolf!

The Thieves Guild

For the Thieves Guild, we are using Thieves Guild Requirements in order to restrict when the Thieves Guild questline can begin. You will find that Brynjolf will not offer you any jobs unless you are someone who actually commits larceny.

The Dark Brotherhood

For the Dark Brotherhood, we are utilizing Innocence Lost - Quest Expansion, Destroy the Dark Brotherhood - Quest Expansion, Save the Dark Brotherhood and Your Choices Matter - A Dark Brotherhood Expansion to create more scenarios for the player to choose in how they begin the questline, and progress through it.

NEXT -> New Mechanics to Know

1.3.3 - New Mechanics to Know

Below you will find a list of important new game mechanics that you should certainly know about before playing the list. This does not cover every new mechanic! Read the Notable Mods sections after you have finished the Mandatory Reading sections for even more information.

Complete Combat Overhaul

The way you will perform combat in this mod list is drastically different from Vanilla, in such a way that it is hardly recognizable. These changes are subject to their own page, read about all of the mods affecting combat here!

The above linked page is rather long, and I would suggest you read it after finishing the Mandatory Reading section. You certainly do not have to read it word-for-word, I did my best to describe each mod in as much detail as possible. You will find some entries below related to combat regardless.

When you die, you will resurrect with de-buffs instead of reloading your last save

This mod list uses the mod “Soul Resurrection - Injury and Alternative Death System”. This adds a new mechanic on death, where you will be resurrected on the spot, with a set of de-buffs that represent how you were “injured”.

This mod chiefly exists to prevent re-loading saves while in game, however it presents more interesting gameplay than “Die, reload, die, reload”. The de-buffs can reduce your movement speeds, attribute maximums and regeneration, among a variety of other effects. Running away may be your only option in certain situations!

If you “die” many times, your stress levels will likely be through the roof. Leading into…

You can get stressed in combat, preventing certain types of attacks

If you reach the “Critical Stress” level during combat via “Stress and Fear”, you will be unable to sprint, perform power attacks, or power bashes. You will be left with normal attacks, and running/climbing away from your enemy.

It is possible to temporarily reduce this with Alcohol, but this will introduce further side effects that will reduce the situation even further. If you find yourself in a situation like this, it is best to get away and come back better prepared after you have de-stressed.

Stress is added to your player whenever you get hit. If you can avoid getting hit completely, you will not generate any stress. You can reduce stress by drinking alcohol, eating a warm meal, sleeping in a safe space, petting a dog, playing music, fishing, etc. Read the full mod page for Stress and Fear to see what other options exist to manage stress, and get to know the Fear mechanic. Make sure to keep on top of your stress levels!

Perform Jumping and Swimming attacks

With “BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework” in the list, you are able to perform jumping attacks, and swimming attacks!

• If you CLICK LEFT-CLICK while in the air shortly after jumping, you will perform a light jump attack.
• If you CLICK MOUSE-WHEEL while in the air shortly after jumping, you will perform a jumping power attack.

You can also perform these jumping attacks with a Bow and Crossbow. If you have the Ranger perk in the Archery tree, however, your jumping power attack with archery weapons will change to one with a large amount of acrobatics involved! If you do not have the Ranger perk, you will have a more basic slamming down animation for the air power attack. The light jump attack is always a lighter punch.

Swimming attacks are basic, and can be performed while in a swimming state with a left-click.

The jump attack alone opens up numerous scenarios in combat, and the swim attacks allow you to get at those pesky Slaughterfish, along with attacking other aquatic monsters.

Utilize new Bow Bashing and Combo behaviors

BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework also adds special bow and crossbow bashing and combo attack behaviors. The default animations/behaviors are locked behind the “Ranger” perk in the Archery skill tree with this mod list. However, alternate animations/behaviors are introduced when the player does not have the “Ranger” perk.

With or without the “Ranger” perk;

• If you power attack while sprinting with a ranged weapon, you will perform a kick attack.
• The bow and crossbow light bash remain as they were in vanilla, a simple quick push forward.

If you have the “Ranger” perk;

• With a bow, holding down power attack to power bash will unleash a flurry of lighter-power arrows after a power bash, which repeats as long as you hold power attack.
• When holding down power attack with a crossbow, an acrobatic maneuver if performed, where you continuously move forward and stab with a bolt, which continues as long as you hold power attack
• If you CLICK MOUSE-WHEEL, you will perform a very acrobatic jump backwards, and fire two arrows while in the air. This is the same as the jumping power attack with the Ranger perk.

If you don’t have the “Ranger” perk;

• With a Bow or Crossbow, holding down power attack to power bash will perform a vanilla power bash, however you will also “throw” an arrow towards your target, which repeats as long as you hold power attack.
• If you CLICK MOUSE-WHEEL, you will perform a quick run forward, and slam your weapon down on the enemy.

These attacks are powerful, which is why the more defaults are locked behind an Archery perk. Making good use of these attacks can make you more than formidable!

Equip your armor, weapons, and magic with LamasTinyHUD and Wheeler

LamasTinyHUD and Wheeler provide you with instant access to your entire arsenal of armor, weapons, and magic. With LamasTinyHUD, you can configure sequential loadouts for gear in your left and right hands, as well as your Shouts/Powers. The mod also allows you to cycle through restoration potions for health, stamina, and magicka. The mod will intelligently use the best restoration potion it can use. You can also place any potion of your choosing in the loadout.

You can name and select your active Preset within the MCM menu. Your loadout presets are saved to .ini files inside the Overwrite mod, at the bottom of the left pane of Mod Organizer within the SKSE/Plugins folder.

Wheeler allows you to access a Wheel Menu, one which is extremely responsive and easy to use. You can add multiple pages to your Wheel Menu, and add a large amount of items to each wheel.

To learn how to use both of these mods, be sure to check the Important Hotkeys Wiki page to see all available hotkeys, as well as what you need to do to utilize them. It would also be a great idea for you to read the mod pages for both of these mods, as they will provide you with even more information about how they work.

The dialogue camera will switch between you and the NPC

When you are speaking to an NPC, the camera will turn to face the speaking NPC. This provides a great boost of immersion for many, but it is quite subjective. If you dislike this, press F while in dialogue to switch to the 1st person dialogue camera.

Access new Custom Skill Menus in the Tween Menu

When you open your Tween menu, you will notice you now have an extra button labeled “Custom Skills”. Within here, you will find six new skill trees that you can progress through! There are four trees for Warriors, Mages, Thieves, and Priests respectively. These four trees are a part of the Sets of Skills mod that you can read about here, and allow you to further buff your character with benefits specific to your build! You will get a new perk point to use in either of these trees on a new game, as well as every 5 levels.

You will also find the following three unique perk trees;

• A “Dragonborn” tree, dedicated to increasing the power of your Shouts!
• A “Sanguine Contempt” tree, dedicated to increasing your vampiric powers!
• A “Vigilant of Stendarr” tree, dedicated to increasing your combat prowess against undead and daedra!

If you meet either of those bills, be sure to check the perk trees and read the descriptions of them in the UI!

Encounter creatures while you play and fill out your Bestiary!

As you slay, activate, or conjure creates, entries for those creatures will be added to your Bestiary, which you can open with the Semicolon ; key. Each entry will have an image of the creature, its resistances and weaknesses, along with the loot it drops. A description of the creature including lore and what ways it may attack is included here as well.

It’s a very fun time seeing the Bestiary fill up as you encounter more and more creatures! A constant effort is made with this mod list to ensure that all creatures have a bestiary entry.

Take notes in your Journal!

By using the Apostrophe ’ key, you can open your Journal! Here, you can create any arbitrary text entries you wish, categorizing them how you see fit. You can use this to make actual journal entries from your character’s perspective, or to simply keep a to-do list.

When you first open the journal, you may find that it is not positioned as you would like. Use SHIFT+ARROW KEYS to move the Journal to your desired position.

As you create new entries in selected sections, use the arrow buttons at the bottom right and bottom left of the UI to move between entries.

Play the Triple Triad card game with NPCs

As you loot NPCs, you will come across a variety of Card Packs that will give you different “Triple Triad” cards. With these, you will be able to play the Triple Triad game with most NPCs in the world! In order to do so, you will need to buy a Triple Triad Board from a General merchant such as Belethor in Whiterun. After you own this, all cards you get from loot will be placed in a virtual chest you can access with the board in your Misc inventory section, instead of being placed in your inventory. You will also be able to challenge NPCs to a duel with a dialogue option.

This game is derived from Final Fantasy, and is relatively simple however requires a bit of learning. The winner of a Triple Triad game usually gets to take one card from the loser, and you have the option to bet Septims on a game. Depending on where you are in the world, different “rules” will be enabled that change the way the game plays!

Read the mod page for Triple Triad in Skyrim at the following link for the rules of the game! Triple Triad Card Game Mod Page

Play instruments, and improve your skills as a Bard!

If you click on a Lute, Flute, or Drum in your inventory, you will begin to play a song! At first, your skills will be…bad, to say the least. You may suffer debuffs, and the songs you are playing will be noticeably bad. Those around you will lament at your musical attempts!

As you keep playing, however, your skills will increase, to the point that all the patrons in a tavern will cheer for you! A few people at the Bard’s College are also able to give you lessons, for a price.

Fish anywhere that there is water!

As long as you have bait, you can equip a Fishing Pole, and swing it in the direction of water. This will then start the Fishing minigame, giving you a “Fishing Supplies” underneath where you swung to continue fishing afterwards. This marker disappears after you leave that immediate area.

No longer are you required to find the “Fishing Supplies” placed in the world to fish. Just do so wherever you find water!

You can use this to fish in places that you certainly should not be able to. Fish responsibly!

Utilize your Horse Whistle, Horse Saddlebags, and quickly dismount your Horse

Immersive Horses is used in this modlist, and it adds great tools for using your horse. Use the “Horse Whistle Power” in your Powers menu to summon your horse wherever it may be. If you sneak and activate your horse, you can access a Saddlebag inventory, as well as many other advanced features related to managing all of your owned horses.

You can also perform a quick-dismount using the “V” key. This will cause you to quickly hop off the back of the horse into a combat-ready state.

Interact with the world while riding a Horse

You can now talk with NPCs and harvest ingredients/open containers while you are riding a horse.

Interact with NPCs from a distance

You can have conversations with any NPC from a distance! Press the B key to initiate Remote Interactions! This allows you to have full conversations with any NPC without being next to them, opening up a huge door for immersion in many situations. You can use this against enemies as well, potentially opening up new strategies in combat!

Use your Follower Menu

With the H Key, you can open the quick follower menu. Here, you can tell all or selected followers to wait, follow, teleport, or open their inventories. This is a very quick way to interact with your followers!

Recruit more than one follower with “Leadership” Speech perks

By default, you can only recruit one follower at a time. If you take the “Leadership” perks in the Speech tree, however, you will be able to recruit one more follower.

There are three separate Leadership perks, each unlocking an additional follower slot after you have unlocked all three perks in that tree. Start with the perk at the bottom!

Knock on doors

If you interact with a locked door in non-hostile areas, you are given the option to knock on the door instead of pick the lock. If there is an NPC inside, there is a chance they will let you in! This chance is improved dramatically if you have a relationship of some type with the NPC who owns the dwelling.

Light up the area with your Quick Lantern

By using the L key, you can turn on your Quick Light! This replaces a Torch, and can be configured to be a Candlelight spell instead within the MCM.

Fast traveling requires Gold

When you Fast Travel, you will be charged Gold! The amount is dictated by how far you are traveling. You can still fast travel if you don’t have enough Gold, but you will incur Fast Travel Debt. Incurred debt will be included in the cost of subsequent fast travels until you have enough money to clear it.

Climb any ledge that you could reasonably climb, or jump over any wall you could vault over

When you walk up to a ledge that your character could reasonably climb, you will see a glowing green orb appear at the ledge. Press your Jump key (ALT by default), to initiate a climbing animation! This is very Assassins Creed-style, allowing to to scale just about anything! The same thing will occur when you walk up to a low wall/fence that your character could vault over.

Throughout the world, you may also find glowing glowing white orbs. These are pre-placed traversal points, and can allow you to climb up a larger ledge, climb a ladder, or any number of things. Keep an eye out for them!

Lay down on the ground

By performing either one of the following actions, you can lay down on the ground! This prevents enemies from seeing you, but it does not make your hitbox smaller. We can hope for Dynamic Collision Adjustment compatibility in the future!

• Hold SHIFT while sneaking to slowly go prone.
• SHIFT + W while sneaking to jump into prone.
• Hold SHIFT while prone to get up again.
• SHIFT + A/D to roll left or right respectively.

Keep in mind that you can only perform this action with your weapons sheathed. You cannot lie down with your weapons, fists, or magic out.

Find and use a variety of new weapon types

As you play, you will find many new weapon types such as Rapiers, Katanas, Pikes, Halberds, Quarterstaves, Scythes, and more! These weapons have varying damage values for the tier they are in, to compensate for the usually faster animations involved. These weapons benefit from existing weapon type perks. Make sure to take note of the following;

• All Pikes, Halberds, Scythes and Quarterstaves in the game are classified as Battleaxes, and will benefit from perks for Battleaxes.
• All Rapiers and Katanas in the game are classified as Swords, and will benefit from perks for Swords.
• Claws in the game are classified as Daggers, and will benefit from perks for Daggers.
• Dai-Katana weapons in the game are classified as Greatswords, and will benefit from perks for Greatswords, despite their “Katana” keyword in the Inventory.

Utilize Crafter’s Link Stones to access your crafting items from anywhere

If you craft a “Crafter’s Link Stone” at the forge, and place it inside a container, the materials in that container will then be accessible from any appropriate crafting apparatus! You would want to place one of these in any containers you store your ingots, pelts, and other materials inside. Then, you can craft with those materials from any Forge, Tanning Rack, etc.

This is a bit of an immersion-breaker, however it is incredibly useful, and you can ignore the feature if you wish.

Throw a stone to distract enemies

With the Throw Stone power, you can throw a small stone you found on the ground. This allows you to get the attention of enemies, and send them where you would like quite easily, without wasting arrows or even needing a bow. You can also use these to trigger Runes, for you Warriors with no spells.

Conceal your identity with face masks

At a Tanning Rack in the Clothing category, you can craft a variety of colored Face Masks. When equipped, these face masks will prevent you from getting a bounty for crimes you commit while wearing the mask! If anyone sees you put on or take off the mask, any bounty will be automatically transferred over. Be sure to put on and take off the mask while you are out of sight!

Peek through keyholes in doors

By walking up to most doors, and holding SHIFT and pressing E, you can initiate a door peek! This will allow you to view what is behind a door before opening it. You cannot do this to all doors, and you will receive a notification message if you try to do this on a incompatible door.

Use SHIFT + Interact to initiate a few unique animations

With the same functionality is the above “Peeking”, feature, you can use SHIFT + E to initiate a few unique things! If a bard is playing music, this allows you to clap for them! You can also pet your horse rather than jumping onto it. Try it out on various things!

Open locks with Two-Handed weapons, Fists, or Power Bashing

Power attacking a locked chest, door, or even wire-trap with a Two-Handed, Fists, or using a Power Bash can potentially unlock it! Whether or not you unlock the lock or not, depends on either your Two-Handed skill, Hand-to-Hand skill or Stamina amount. Reference the below table to see what you can unlock at which levels. Your Security skill WILL NOT increase if you open a lock this way. If you do not have the requisite skill level or stamina, nothing will happen when you attempt.

Many locked chests within Dungeons now have a key

Many previously unlocked chests in Dungeons are now locked, and have a hand-placed key somewhere nearby. This provides more opportunity to pick or bash locks, but you can always find them if you look hard enough. Better Third Person Selection also makes it much easier to spot these keys!

Have blacksmiths and mages craft and enchant things for you

By speaking to a Blacksmith, you can ask them to improve your gear, or craft entirely new equipment from the Forge menu! This will cost you Gold, at a much higher rate than the materials would cost themselves. Blacksmith’s can also only craft gear up to their Smithing level.

You can also commission Court Mages and certain other mages to enchant or recharge your gear!

Casting spells takes a lot longer if you are not skilled

If you have a low skill level in a School of Magic, it can take you a very long time to cast spells. As you level up a skill, it will take you significantly less time to cast respective spells. You will reach Vanilla cast speed at Level 30 in a skill, and have near-instant cast times at Level 100!

You can no longer instantly learn spells

Instead of consuming a Spell Tome instantly, you will instead be offered a choice of how many hours you wish to study the spell tome. After you have studied the specified amount of hours, you will learn the spell. The amount of hours required is dictated by your skill in the respective School of Magic for the Spell Tome. You can study in sessions, to spread out your learning. If you are very unskilled, it can take you a very long time to learn a high-level spell!

Cast Spells as Lesser Powers

Using the Voice Spell powers in your Powers menu, you can assign Spells of your choice to a Power! This will, in short, allow you to cast spells of your choice like a shout! This is great for Alteration or Illusion spells, but can also be used for Destruction spells! This mod opens up a new door for Spellsword gameplay!

You can actually sleep in beds

When you activate a bed, your player will get onto the bed, tuck themselves in, and start snoozing! You can remain in this sleeping idle for as long as you want. To actually sleep, press the T (wait) button, which will open the sleeping menu. Pressing any other keys while in the idle will cause your character to get up.

You can decant your Potions at a Cooking Pot

This allows you to turn all of your small restoration potions into larger ones. For instance, 3 Minor Health Potions becomes 1 Plentiful Health Potion, and so on. You can convert directly from Minor to Ultimate potions! This only works with the base restoration potions, and not with player-made restoration potions.

NEXT -> Important Hotkeys

1.3.4 - Important Hotkeys

Only newly added or changed vanilla hotkeys are listed here. If you do not see a keybind here, then it is as it is in vanilla. Let me know if you find this is not the case!

Regarding changing your keybinds

If you want to change keybinds in game with your keyboard, you must unplug your controllers. Otherwise, you will be unable to do so.

Listed alongside each keybind you will see where you can change that keybind.

LamasTinyHUD

LamasTinyHUD is used to set up sequential equipment loadouts that allow you to instantly swap weapons and magic in your left and right hands, shouts and powers, as well as potions with hotkeys. It can take a moment to get used to seamlessly modifying your loadout, but it is very simple in functionality.

If you would like a video explanation, here is one provided by the mod author. It would be best to read the below before watching the video, to better understand what is going on.

You can change the LamasTinyHUD keybinds from the mod’s MCM.

Adding and Removing items from your queues

HOLD U + Press 1, 2, F, or C while hovering over item in inventory or magic menu to add Weapon/Shield, Potion, or Shout to respective queue.

• To bind things to new keys, hover over the item/shout in question, and HOLD U and then hit the key you want to assign it to.

HOLD K + Press 1, 2, F, or C while hovering over item/shout in inventory or magic menu to remove Weapon/Shield, Potion, or Shout from respective queue

• To remove things from a key, hover over the item/shout in question, and HOLD K and then hit the key you want to un-assign from

1

• Cycle your right hand loadout.

2

• Cycle your left hand loadout.

F

• Cycle your potions.
• You can also use this to switch to 1st person camera during dialogue.

G

• Use your selected potion.

C

• Cycle your Shouts/Powers

Wheeler - Wheel Menu

Wheeler is a fantastic mod you can use to manage often accessed items in an incredibly fluid and easy way. The mod has rich functionality, packed into a short set of keybinds.

You can change the keybinds for Wheeler from within the “dMenu”.

For information on configurating the Wheel Menu, read the mod page description here, or watch this video by ARJARIM on it’s use here!

Adding and Removing items from the Wheel Menu

Before you can add things to the wheel menu, you need to create a slot. While in the inventory, hold the Wheeler keybind Q, and press M. This will create an empty slot. You can add as many slots as you want, and you can add new pages with the N key. You can scroll through your pages while in the wheel menu by pressing E.

To insert an item or magic into a slot, hover over the item/spell you wish to add in the inventory/magic menu, open the wheel with the Q hotkey, and left-click on the entry you wish to insert the item into.

To delete an item from a slot, open the wheel with the Q hotkey while in the Inventory, and right-click on the item you wish to delete. Right-clicking on an empty slot deletes the slot. Right-clicking on an empty wheel deletes the wheel (you can’t delete the last wheel).

Equip items to your right or left hand from the Wheel Menu with Left Click and Right Click respectively.

Q

• Open the Wheeler “Wheel Menu”.

N

• Create an empty wheel page while in Edit mode.

M

• Create an empty slot on the current wheel while in Edit mode.

E

• Scroll Wheel Menu pages while in the Wheel Menu

UI, HUD and Camera

X

• Show/Hide your Compass and Clock.
• Can be changed in the “Immersive HUD” MCM.

N

• Switch from 1st person to 3rd person and vice-versa while outside of your inventory.
• You will also use this key to favorite an item in your inventory. This will not conflict with the above
• This can be changed in the Vanilla controls menu.

Hold SHIFT + Scroll Mouse Wheel

• Cycle through which item you want to interact with in the world while in 3rd person.
• This can be changed in the “Better Third Person Selection” MCM.

Y

• Open the vanilla Favorites Menu while outside your inventory.
• This can be changed in the Vanilla controls menu.

V

• Switch the shoulder the camera is viewing over. Only applies when a ranged weapon or magic is unsheathed.
• This can be changed in the SmoothCam MCM menu.
• This is also used for quickly dismounting a horse

;

• Open the Dragonborn’s Bestiary UI
• This can be changed in the .ini file in “The Dragonborn’s Bestiary”.

'

• Open the Dragonborn’s Journal, where you can take notes.
• This can be changed in the “Takes Notes!” MCM menu.

U

• While hovering over a book in the inventory, mark that book as Unread.
• This can be changed in the “Mark Books as Unread” mod’s .json file.

Movement

L-ALT

• Jump.
• This can be changed in the Vanilla controls menu.

L-SHIFT

• Sprint.
• This can be changed in the Vanilla controls menu.

SPACE

• Perform a step dodge.
• You can change the key for dodging in the “Dodge Framework” MCM. Within this menu, you can also allow dodging to occur with the sprint key. Sprinting will occur instead if you hold the sprint key.

Double-tap SPACE

• Perform a roll dodge.
• Refer to above to change this keybind.

[

• Enable Auto-Walk
• This can be changed in the Vanilla controls menu.

Combat

Mouse RIGHT-CLICK

• Power Attack (IMPORTANT: when using magic, power attacking is done like vanilla, by holding LEFT-CLICK).
• Perform a Counter immediately after blocking an enemy attack.
• For instructions on changing this keybind, refer to this guide.

Middle Mouse/Mouse Wheel CLICK

• Perform a “Combo” Power Attack. This is a standalone attack that can be chained to normal light or power attacks, and is different for each base weapon type.
• Scrolling can still be used to move in and out of 3rd and 1st person.

Mouse BUTTON-4

• Block (can be used when dual-wielding or when you otherwise couldn’t block).
• For instructions on changing this keybind, refer to this guide.

Mouse BUTTON-5

• Target Lock-On. This key will also force the camera to face where your character is facing, if you have no lock on target.
• This can be changed in the “True Directional Movement” MCM.

R

• Cancel an activate attack. This is also still used to sheath/ready your weapon.
• Due to an issue with the Cancel Attack mod, you cannot change this hotkey easily.

COMMA

• Perform an animated taunt, which will temporarily boost your stats.
• This can be changed in the “Taunt / Remote Int” MCM

General Gameplay

B

• Remotely Interact with NPCs
• This can be changed in the “Taunt / Remote Int” MCM

H

• Open the Follower Command Menu, where you can perform a number of functions with all or a selected amount of your followers.
• This can be changed in the “Swiftly Order Squad” MCM.

L

• Turn your Quick Light on/off (whether this light is a Candlelight spell or a lantern can be configured in the Quick Light MCM).
• This can be changed in the “Quick Light” MCM.

Horses

ACTIVATE while sneaking and looking at owned horse

• Access your Horse’s saddlebags for some additional storage, as well as Immersive Horses settings
• This can be changed in the Immersive Horses MCM (not recommended).

ACTIVATE while riding a horse

• You can now pick things up, talk to NPCs, and otherwise activate things in the world while riding a horse!
• This cannot be changed

Hold ACTIVATE while riding a horse

• Dismount the horse
• You can modify how this works in the “Better Third Person Selection” MCM in the “General” tab, on the right side.

V while riding a horse

• Quickly dismount your horse from behind into a combat-ready state.
• This can be changed in the Immersive Horses MCM

U while riding a horse

• Toggle trot/walk, changing the speed of the horse independently from CAPSLK
• This can be changed in the Immersive Horses MCM

Misc

PERIOD

• Pick the object you are looking at for manipulation with Object Manipulation Overhaul.
• All other key binds from the above mod are default.

SHIFT+;

• Open the Dialogue History menu, to view previous conversations with NPCs
• This can be changed in the Dialogue History MCM

]

• Open the Idle Menu, to perform a few different idle animations.
• You can change this in the “Idle WheelMenu” MCM.

SHIFT+ENTER

• Open the ENB configuration menu.
• This can be changed in the enblocal.ini file located in the “ENBSeries Core” mod in the left pane of Mod Organizer.

END

• Open the Community Shaders configuration menu.
• This can be changed within the Community Shaders menu itself.

HOME

• Open the dMenu configuration menu.
• This can be changed within the dMenu menu itself.

SHIFT + =

• Open the Open Animation Replacer (OAR) menu.
• This can be changed within the OAR menu itself.

Numpad ENTER

• Select an object in the world for editing with Jaxonz Positioner. Check the MCM menu for the mod for a full list of hotkeys for moving items!
• Keybinds can be modified in the “Jaxonz Positioner” MCM.

R-ALT + BACKSPACE

• Open the Immersive Equipment Displays configuration menu.
• This can be changed within the IED menu itself.

F10

• Open the OBody configuration menu. Here, you can manually change the body type your character is using, or the body type of an NPC you were looking at when you pressed the hotkey.
• This can be changed in the “OBody NG” MCM Menu.

\ (backslash)

• Perform a HDT collision reset, for when certain HDT physics get stuck and/or start stretching. Will perform an “adjusting” animation and then reset the physics.
• This can be changed in the “CollisionReset” MCM Menu.

That’s the end of the Mandatory Reading! If you want to read more about the mod list, feel free to read the other sections!

2 - Notable Mods

2.1 - Graphical Improvements

The graphics and visual improvements in this list are based on the improvements brought by The Phoenix Flavor. Below are some mods that have been added to further enhance the graphics and visual effects.

An edit of Serio’s ENB from Phoenix is in use in the “Refined” and “Refined - Ultra” profiles, with Ominous ENB as an option. Community Shaders is in use in the “Refined - Performance” profile. ENB and Community Shaders are well documented for the most part, and do not have sections below.

Enhanced Volumetric Lighting and Shadows

“Skyrim’s shadows and by extension volumetric lighting (VL) aren’t synchronized with the sun all the time, during sunrise/sunset they disconnect from the visible sun. EVLaS fixes this problem by synchronizing the shadows with the visible sun for the entire duration of the day.”

This mod has a pretty drastic effect on the entire imagespace of the game in practice. The rays of light from the sun and moon are now very realistically cast based on the time of day, influenced perfectly by mountains or any other large objects in the way.

Shadow Diffusion

“This is a reasonably simple SKSE plugin which adjusts how shadows look so that they look more correct in cloudy and overcast lighting situations. Clear weather is unaffected.”

Simply put, this mod will soften/diffuse shadows when the weather outside would not cast such a sharp shadow. To understand best, check out the images on the mod page, or get in game and see for yourself!

Storm Lightning

“This mod is an SKSE plugin remake of Minty’s Lightning During Storms mod…It’s scalable to allow up to 50 sheet lightnings and 50 fork lightnings per second. It can summon these lightnings on up to 31 cells distance radius. This results in a more natural storm weather experience”

This mod causes lighting bolts and sheet lighting to strike during thunderstorms, as actual entities in the world. You can even take damage from the lightning if it so happens to strike near you! (this will not kill you). Overall, this mod enhances the atmosphere of stormy weather immensely, which is also expanded upon by the already-present Cathedral Weathers mod.

Wonders of Weather Replacements

Wonders of Weather is a mod which implemented some simple weather effects. We are NOT using this mod, instead we are using three different mods that implement it’s effects in safer and better-looking ways.

Splashes of Storms

This very simple mod/SKSE plugin adds splashes and ripples when raindrops hit surfaces. Splashes will only appear within the player’s view, reducing FPS impact. The mod also disables the fake ripple texture/shader on water, and adds real displacement based rippled to water when raindrops land on it.

Rainbows Remade

“This mod adds rainbows to the game…Rainbows appear if the weather changes from rainy to sunny within an hour between 7:00am and 10:30am or between 1:30pm and 5:00pm, with a default probability of 25%”

Shooting Stars

“Shooting stars aka fragments of Aetherius appear in various sizes and fall from various positions in the sky at night (8:30pm to 6:00am). The general direction they fall in will change on a monthly basis. Meteor showers (shooting star frequency increased) are guaranteed to occur during certain nights of the year. The dates they occur on coincide with the actual meteor shower dates of Earth.”

This mod, as described above, adds shooting stars and meteor shower events to the game.

Enhanced Blood Textures

“Bloodier combat with higher resolution, detailed decals. Additional features such as killmove animation spasms, low health blood trails, damage based blood spatters, blood pools, and green blood for spiders and oil for machines.”

This mod overhauls not only the textures of blood in the game, but also the way it spills onto the ground after you injure an enemy, or get injured yourself. Every time a hit occurs, blood will spill onto the ground. Overall, this mod is one piece of the cake that is enhancing the gore in this mod list.

Sanguine - Enhanced Blood Retexture

This mod is a retexture of the blood textures from Enhanced Blood Textures, giving them a much more realistic tone that blends with surfaces it is splatted onto much better. Overall a massive improvement over the original textures.

Dynamic Impacts - Slash Effects

“This mod modifies the Impact Data Set of the vanilla Skyrim game and adds new impact particle effects…Impacts now have unique particles for each skin type: Flesh, Metal Armor(Dwarven), and Bone.”

Dynamic Impacts overhauls the effects that occur when you strike an enemy or object with a weapon. In doing so, you are not only given a very nice visual effect that changes depending on what you hit, it also acts as a hitmarker for enemies.

Maximum Carnage

“Maximum Carnage is a gore mod made for those who want a more bloody and gory Skyrim”

This mod adds a wide array of gore effects that can take place upon killing an enemy with a power attack. These can range from smashing their head into multiple tiny pieces that go flying everywhere (eyeballs included!), chopping off a Troll’s arm, to spilling a bandit’s guts on the ground. This mod does NOT hold back in any regard. Humanoid NPCs are supported among a very wide variety of other creatures in the game. This mod only adds carnage upon killing with melee weapons. The next mod, covers what happens upon magical death.

Frozen Electrocuted Combustion

“Applies visual effects to NPCs and the player, when killed by magic status effects…air, dragons, drain, fire, frost, fear, lightning, poison, soul trap, steam and sun damage.”

Similar to Maximum Carnage, this mod adds a variety of effects to NPCs when they are killed, except this one adds effects for those killed by magical effects. These are extremely high quality and leave behind a corpse that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to how they met their demise.

Dirt and Blood - Dynamic Visual Effects

“Your character will accumulate dirt and blood dynamically, which you can clean by swimming, standing in the rain or taking a bath. The effects are mostly visual only and do not affect gameplay (to a large degree). NPCs will also get bloody as a result of battles.”

This lightweight mod adds visual effects for blood and dirt. Dirt will slowly accumulate on your body over time, and blood will accumulate as you battle enemies. You can use a Bathing power to bathe in any body of water (most Inns will have a tub you can use), or you can just swim around/run in the rain the get some of it off. You will incur a small speech debuff if you remain bloody/dirty.

Footprints

“Adds footprints to the player, NPCs, and creatures. With particle FX! Currently for snow and ash.”

This mod adds footprints that will be placed on snow or ash when you or an NPC walks over those surfaces. Horses and other animals will also leave behind tracks. Big immersion booster!

SPID for Footprints

This addon to Footprints utilizes Spell Perk Item Distributor to distribute the spell that Footprints uses to place footprints. This is markedly more efficient than the cloak spells used by Footprints.

ENB Lights for Effect Shaders

“SKSE plugin that adds enb lights to (most)all particle based effect shaders. Supports effect shaders from all mods, no patches or conflict resolving needed.”

This mod adds light-emitting ENB visual upgrades to any effect shaders in the game. This allows things such as spells is in your hand to illuminate your surroundings. This mod is also used alongside a very wide variety of mods that adds similar ENB light to other things that would not have gotten them under this mod. Overall, these mods add a very large immersion boost to the game, allowing most things that should emit to light to do so.

2.2 - Total Combat Overhaul

This mod list has a heavy focus on improving the third-person combat experience. Over the past few years, there has been an emergence of a large amount of game-changing mods in the combat/animations scene. Below you will find the notable mods that overhaul combat in this list. Some of these are regarding animations, but only for combat-based animations.

True Directional Movement

“Overhauls the third person gameplay similarly to modern action RPGs, entirely through SKSE. Move and attack in any direction. Includes a custom target lock component and an animated target reticle widget, target headtracking, projectile aim support during target lock, mount support and more!”

This mod brings an entirely new level of play to the Third-Person experience. You are able to move and attack in any direction at any time, whether you have your weapon out or not. This allows you to be very tactical with your positioning, executing attacks from angles that would not have been possible in vanilla Skyrim.

TDM introduces a Target-Lock feature that is built to work perfectly with the above movement systems. With a simple hotkey, you can lock on to the enemy nearest to the center of your screen. Your movement will then be generally centered around that enemy, similar to when locking onto an enemy in Souls games. This can allow you to perform very fun and effective maneuvers involving sprinting around your opponent, with your camera and character automatically flipping back around to face the enemy. It can take some time getting used to fighting this way, but the experience is MUCH more enjoyable.

TDM also overhauls the experience on Horseback, improving the directional movement and camera significantly. Mounted archery has also been made much easier to use, especially in combination with the above Target-Lock feature.

The mod also allows you to swim up and down with the L-ALT and L-CTRL keys respectively, without having to look up or down. These actions also come with unique animations for swimming up/down, and improve the swimming experience considerably.

Another feature of the mod is the Player Headtracking feature. Your character will automatically look in the direction you are facing with your camera (provided you’re not looking behind your character, unless you’re an owl?). If you are locked on to an NPC, your character will look at them instead. Nothing boosts the connection to your character more than seeing them look exactly where you are looking.

Overall, this mod is probably one of the best mods ever made, and is a stable in any list intent on making third-person gameplay a blast.

SmoothCam

“SmoothCam adds a frame-interpolated third-person camera to Skyrim Special Edition, with well over a hundred different user configurable options and a preset system to let you easily swap between completely different camera setups.”

SmoothCam completely overhauls the way the third-person camera in Skyrim works. Upon loading into the game, you will immediately notice that the camera now feels less attached to your character, and is “lazily” following the player and your camera movements. This improves the entire game experience most certainly, but these changes improve combat in third-person immensely.

The mod is completely configurable, with the ability to create and load other user’s presets. The mod list comes pre-loaded with my own custom preset, but you can choose between additional presets that were added to the list, or create your own!

This mod, in combination with True Directional Movement, bring the movement and camera in third-person up to modern standards and beyond.

BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework

This quote is from Distar’s “MCO” mod, however it highlights the same issue that BFCO resolves. “Skyrim shares the same mechanics for 1st and 3rd person. It doesn’t translate well and created something you never see in modern games: the ice skating combat. You move freely during the attacks, like in a top-down 2D game. Conventional mods could only limit it by reducing the movement speed…(this mod implements) Chainable power attacks, animated charged attacks, animated transitions and non linear move-sets are all available in one mod for 0 performance cost due to its behavioral nature”

BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework completely changes the third-person combat experience, and is an expansion and re-iteration of MCO with many more features. As described by Distar, vanilla Skyrim’s combat suffers from the “ice-skating issue”, where it almost appears as though the player is ice skating while swinging their weapon around. BFCO fixes this by implementing a system where animations have movement data associated with them. This means that animations can be made that will make the character takes steps when attacking, or any other number of locomotive actions. Through the use of a variety of animation packs covering every weapon type, including mod-added weapons, this mod completely transforms the feeling of third-person combat.

BFCO further expands on MCO with much improved chainability of attacks, as well as introducing a secondary “Combo Power Attack” that can be initiated by using Middle-Mouse Click. This can be chained with your normal light and power attacks.

BFCO specifically also allows for jumping attacks, and swimming attacks. If you tap your left-click while in the air shortly after jumping, you will perform a light jump attack. If you hold left-click, you will perform a jumping power attack. Swimming attacks are basic, and can be performed while in a swimming state with a left-click.

BFCO also adds special bow and crossbow bashing behaviors, which we have locked behind the “Ranger” perk in the Archery skill tree with this mod list. With a bow, holding down power attack to bash will unleash a flurry of lighter-power arrows after a power bash. With a crossbow, an acrobatic maneuver if performed, where you continuously move forward and stab with a bolt.

If you don’t have the “Ranger” perk, holding down power attack for one second will perform the first part of the power bash still.

Through the use of the other mods, which you will find further in this list, these animations are utilized by enemies!

BFCO Animation Packs

The below mods are animation packs that were originally created for the MCO framework, but are converted for use with BFCO in this mod list.

Elden Rim Moveset Collection

An animation pack designed for MCO. This animation pack covers Fists, Swords, Daggers, War Axes, Maces, Greatswords, Battleaxes, and Warhammers. It also contains unique dual-wielding animations for Swords, Daggers, War Axes, and Maces. This animation pack serves as the base for our combat animations. Their style is based on (if not copied) from Elden Ring.

Edgemaster Animations

Another MCO animation pack. This pack also covers similar weapons to Elden Rim Moveset Collection, but those are overridden. We are using this animation pack to fill in some of the missing weapons. These include Rapiers, Claws, Scimitars, Katanas, Spears, Pikes, Halberds and Quarterstaves. These weapon types are all added by our weapon mods, and they utilize the animations added by this mod.

ER Katana

This mod adds a unique moveset for Katana weapons when they are one-handed, overriding animations from Edgemaster.

ER Rapier

This mod adds a unique moveset for Rapier weapons when they are one-handed, overriding animations from Edgemaster.

Skypia Aramusha Dual Katana Moveset

This mod from Skypia’s “For Honor” series adds a Dual Katana moveset stylized after the “Aramusha” class in For Honor.

Nobushi I Spear Moveset

This mod adds spear combat animations for MCO. These will apply to Halberds, Spears, Pikes, and most other polearm weapons.

Mixed Scythe

This mod adds scythe combat animations for MCO. Some of our weapon mods add scythes, and they will utilize this animation.

SCAR - Skyrim Combos AI Revolution

“SKSE plugin that brings up the modern (action) game‘s combos attack AI into Skyrim…The vanilla Skyrim game engine does not have the concept of combos attack at all, except the right to left and left to right swing attack…SCAR introduces a dynamic and highly customizable AI attack system to the game…NPCs would check the range of distance and angle as well as other conditions before every strike, pick up the attack action that meet the criteria, then perform it.”

In short, this mod allows enemy NPCs to use the movesets from BFCO - Attack Behavior Framework, and to use them in smart and intelligent ways. You will find that enemies will now combo the fuck out of you! Enemies will intelligently use any BFCO moveset that they can use based on their equipped weapon. All of the BFCO animations that we are using in this list fully support SCAR, and you will see them used by the enemy.

Dodge - MCO

This mod is arguably the smoothest and most well-integrated dodge mod that exists. It adds a step and roll dodge, which can be used by pressing space or double tapping space respectively. These dodges give you invincibility frames the moment they are used, for a very short time. This way, you can dodge most any attack with good timing. The default animations are the best in my opinion. Most of the animation packs I found had far too much of a recovery delay after dodging, making them almost unusable.

The downside to this mod, is that it does NOT work in first person at all. Sorry first person players.

No Saving in Combat

This mod is very simple. It prevents you from saving manually or with F5 while you are in a combat state. I have added this mod to this list mostly to curb my save-scumming behaviors. I believe that if you suffer from save-scumming as well, this mod can help you to. You can safely disable this mod BEFORE starting a playthrough, but it is NOT advisable to remove it during a playthrough. Do so at your own risk!

Wildcat - Combat of Skyrim

“Wildcat is a streamlined, yet full featured combat overhaul. It makes combat more dangerous and visceral by increasing lethality, adding injuries and context sensitive stagger and making combat AI more responsive and aggressive.”

Wildcat has been a staple combat mod in load orders everywhere for some time now. Even with the tidal wave of new combat mods, it still has features that we can utilize in this list. Injuries can be applied to you or enemies when you take a hit, giving you a small debuff that pertains to the injured body part until you have reached full health. Wildcat also improves the enemy AI through combat styles and game settings.

We are also utilizing some extra features such as Attacks of Opportunity, boosting damage if you strike while an enemy is attacking. Features such as Timed Block and stamina consumption on normal attack are disabled, in favor of the features implemented by the next mod on our list.

Valhalla Combat

“Script-free timed blocking, projectile parrying, stun and execution, and non-intrusive stamina management to push Skyrim’s combat to modern standards.”

Valhalla Combat is a newer combat overhaul, that is focused on bringing some modern Action-RPG combat concepts to Skyrim. We are utilizing the Timed Blocking and Stamina modifications from this mod instead of Wildcat. You will completely change the way you manage your stamina with this mod. If you run out of stamina, you will enter an exhausted state, where you deal half as much damage. This state will end once you have fully regenerated your stamina.

Blocking has also been overhauled, using similar mechanics from the mod author’s original blocking mod, Shield of Stamina. Performing a Timed Block will now deal you no damage, as long as you have enough stamina to tank all the damage. This incentivizes you to use a shield much more than vanilla, where you cannot block all damage even at 100 block will all perks.

Successful light attacks that hit an enemy no longer deplete your stamina, they regenerate it, incentivizing you to perform long combo chains using our new combat framework, BFCO. Power attacks will still deplete your stamina, and missed light attacks will also do so. Your stamina will regenerate 5x faster by default, helping you maintain a healthy combat state.

Elden Counter

“Elden Ring has a lovely guard counter system. Pressing power attack key shortly after blocking an attack, you do a “guard counter” that deals additional damage. This mod brings its mechanic to Skyrim.”

As it was very simply put in the original description, this mod adds Elden Ring’s guard counter mechanic to the game. You can perform this action by power attacking immediately after a successful block. This adds another layer of complexity to combat. increasing the options you have when dealing with enemies.

Simple Weapon Swing Parry

“Between a weapon swing’s animation and hit frame, an attacker enters a blocking state, parrying any attacks against them.”

This simple mod allows you to “parry” attacks, by attacking into an attack. Basically, you and your enemies weapons will collide if you attack at the same time. This can serve to break up combat in tight situations, and can certainly be used offensively with a faster weapon.

Dual Wield Parrying SKSE

“Lets the player parry/block with a new key, even if they’re holding a second weapon (or a spell or a staff) in their left hand.”

Because of the combat setup we are using, we need a way to block without our right-mouse click. This mod allows you to block with any arbitrary keybind, even in times when you could not in vanilla.

Cancel Attack

This very simple mod allows us to cancel an attack by pressing the R key mid-swing. This can allow us to quickly block an attack if you timed your swing wrong, as well as quickly recover from previous attacks to continue attacking. This is a very powerful mechanic, but it requires quick thinking and reflexes to make use of this feature for good results, especially in the presence of a lot of enemies.

Spellsiphon

“Experience gameplay focused on combos and synergy. Lessen the need for menus or hotkeys through a system where swapping spells and weapons is streamlined and rewarding. Continue the fight at 0 magicka by using new spell types. Enjoy a plethora of new sounds and visual effects. Grow in power by playing skillfully, not just from levels and gear.”

Spellsiphon is, at it’s core, a Spell mod. The spells it adds, however, act under an entirely different set of rules than other spells. You are able to cast these spells with no Magicka, instead taking “essence” from the Land, Dead, or Living to choose your element and further cast your spells. The mod also comes with a load of extra mechanics that complement this basic “Draw” and cast from elements. This mod contains far too much content to cover in a description. As such, the mod includes a rather in depth in-game tutorial that you can initiate at any time by reading the “Spellsiphon” book added to your inventory on a new game.

Ghost Mechanics and Shaders Restored

“Ghosts just became your worst nightmare…I restored a cut mechanic to all ghosts and familiars which makes all normal weaponry and spells ineffective against them: When you hit a ghost with an unsuitable spell or weapon the ghost will fade out and turn invincible for 3 seconds. You can still damage them with normal spells and weaponry but only every 3 seconds.”

This mod adds some spice to combat against any type of ghost enemies. Unless you strike them with a weapon or spell that is suitable for fighting undead, you will only be able to hit them every 3 seconds. This mechanic forces you to be prepared for this type of enemy, or suffer from a rather large handicap. On top of this, the mod enhances the ghost shaders quite a bit.

Better Power Attack Direction Control

“In vanilla Skyrim, the direction that player character would pick when doing power attack is not decided by the real input of your device (gamepad or keyboard). Instead, it decided by the movement direction and movement speed of the player character at the moment the power attack action start…with this mod the power attack direction will decided by the real input of your gamepad or keyboard”

Simply put, this mod makes power attacks respect the input you are giving with your keyboard. Without this mod, all sorts of wonky things can occur during combat if you attempt to power attack right after a dodge or sprint, potentially throwing off the combat experience quite a bit. This mod remedies that problem.

Precision

“Physically accurate, true Havok collisions for melee. Procedural, physics-based hit reactions. Weapon trails. Hitstop and camera shake. Recoils when hitting certain materials. Supports both first person and third person, as well as other NPCs and creatures.”

This mod does away with the cone-style hit-box that comes with vanilla Skyrim. Instead of simply hitting all enemies in a cone in front of you when you swing a weapon, this mod adds real hit-boxes to weapons, that actually encompass the size of the weapon. This means that weapons will only hit things that they are physically touching in the world! This enables you to perform a wide variety of new maneuvers in combat, including jumping over or ducking under a swing! Beyond that, it increases immersion immensely to have weapons with true hit-boxes, like a modern game.

The mod also includes a few other features that enhances the reactivity of the character when hitting things with their weapon and being hit by weapons.

Precision Creatures

This addon to Precision adds true hit-boxes to the attacks of Werewolves, Vampire Lords, and Draugr. This makes fighting these enemies (especially Werewolves…) much more realistic, and inline with humanoid NPCs.

For Honor Power Attack

This very simple mod changes the Power Attack functionality to be used with your Right Mouse-Click, instead of holding your Left Mouse-Click. This makes it much more smooth to combo from light attacks to power attacks. The mod completely removes blocking functionality from RIGHT-CLICK.

When you have a spell equipped in your non-weapon hand, you will still power attack by holding Left Mouse-Click, to allow you to still use both hands.

Vanguard - Bash Behaviors Updated

“Changes how most of the Bashing work, NPC bashing have been completely overhauled to be more telegraphed instead of being too fast to give room to dodge or parry without the use of scripts…Players also get different types of bashing depending on equipped item, not just a visual change but the movement and the speed of the bash now varies to give variety on the approach of certain weapons”

Completely overhauling the power bash, this mod introduces a set of unique behavioral animations that will replace the power bashing animations for all weapons and shields. These animations will have movement data, and behave much like a typical weapon attack. This not only increases variety in your own combat routine, it allows you to more easily avoid enemy bash attacks. In vanilla, these attacks are almost instant, and enemies do them all the time. Each bash animation is unique, with only a select few weapons sharing the same animation.

This is an updated version of the original mod, with many fixes and improvements.

POISE - Stagger Overhaul

“A near complete gutting of the vanilla stagger system for something more inspired by traditional fighting games…Vanilla stagger mechanics are quite literally RNG based. Which makes sense when you consider that Bethesda’s original idea for combat was a very fast paced, free-flowing, strafe based hack and slash. However, in 2022, everyone seems to have adopted more modern mechanics in the modding community, and fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and even those terrible fucking Souls titles, have always meant alot to me.”

As Loki eloquently put it, Skyrim’s stagger mechanics sort of made sense for it’s original combat, but that is not what we have anymore with this list. POISE overhauls the staggering system in the game completely, adding four tiers of “stagger” that you will reach progressively as you get hit, losing your poise.

Your and your enemies current poise is determined by a number of features including your equipped weight, and your weapon. With higher poise, you will be able to endure more hits before you are staggered.

Poisebreaker - Addon for POISE

“Poisebreaker is a rebalance and partial rework of Loki’s Poise mod to better integrate into the rest of Skyrim. This mod is intended for players using modern ARPG combat frameworks such as MCO: in conjunction with such mods, the Poise system serves as a punishment for missing attacks.”

This mod makes quite a bit of tweaks to the POISE mod’s settings and the way it works in general, to make it work a bit better with some of the other combat mods we are using.

Stagger Direction Fix

“A skse plugin that fix the character’s wrong stagger direction bug when the stagger triggered by spell, shout and range weapon…In the vanilla game, When a character trigger a stagger that caused through a ranged attack, including spell, shout, range weapon and less power. The playing stagger animation direction won’t be correct when the attack is come from the target’s backward…Character’s body will fall backward still instead of fall forward, which is obviously against the normal physical principle…This mod is aimed to fix this issue, now after installed this mod the character will stagger forwardly when it received stagger-causing attack come from its backward.”

Due to the way MCO and our other combat mods work, this vanilla issue is exacerbated quite a bit. Now, enemies and the player will *always stagger in the correct direction.

*POISE’s Tier-4 stagger animation moves you quite a bit, and this can potentially be sent in the wrong direction if it is triggered by a Wildcat injury.

zxlice’s Ultimate Potion Animation

This mod adds an animation that plays whenever you drink a potion, very simply. This animation allows you to continue walking while you are drinking the potion, but you cannot run. This forces you to think about when you will drink potions in combat, as it will leave you vulnerable or a short time, without completely locking you in place.

Enemy Magelock - NPC Magic Casting Commitment

“A really simple mod to switch up combat rhythm especially for those who love enemy spawn mods and spell distributor mods, Enemy Magelock, Commits the NPC in place when they cast magic animations to avoid them cheesing at you by closing you down or running away when Casting, they are now fully committed to there cast to encourage skill based gameplay.”

This (potentially controversial) mod prevents NPCs from moving while they are charging up a spell. NPCs have a habit of charging into your face casting a concentration spell, which can end up being just plain annoying. You may find that enemy mages can stand still out of your sight, never letting loose their spell so they can search for you. If you find that this mod is not for you, it is possible to remove it by disabling the mod, running nemesis, and updating the Nemesis Engine/generating new animations. In the future, a more succinct guide will be provided to remove potentially unwanted mods such as this one.

New Creature Animations

New Creature Animation Mods from stuxjr

This collection of Creature Animation mods adds a variety of new behavioral attacks to a variety of creatures. These animations truly do spice up combat with these creatures. This set of mods covers Frost Atronachs, Trolls, Werewolves, Falmer, Giants, Lurkers, and Rieklings/Goblins.

Dragon Combat Animations

“The goal of this animation replacer is to make fair attacks for dragons, because in vanilla some attacks are instant (like wing attacks) some attacks are too slow (bite attacks) some attacks are cheesy (get behind dragon and you’ll never see his face again because he will be in constant loop of tail ground slams)”

This mod greatly improves melee combat with dragons with telegraphed motion-data attacks. There are a variety of new attacks that dragons will use in the right situation. This makes these fights more exciting, and fair.

DNFA Wolves Combat Behavior

“…wolves (and, occasionally, death hounds)…now they behave more like wolves from DS games: chain their attacks, dodge from you.”

This mod adds fantastic motion-data animations to wolves. These attacks allow wolves to lunge, and quickly snap at you multiple times. Multiple other attacks are added, and the wolves will also dodge away quickly in a similar fashion to dogs in Souls games. All of these attacks are telegraphed, so you can dodge/respond to them unlike vanilla wolves. A huge improvement to combat with these often-encountered enemies.

Comprehensive First Person Animation Overhaul

“Adds thousands (yes, I checked and it is actually in the thousands) of first person animations that overwrite the janky and outdated vanilla ones. Includes unique animations depending on weapon type (so axes, maces, and daggers are no longer used like swords)”

This modlist is geared around 3rd person gameplay, but I’ve included this mod to help make the 1st person experience a bit better. This mod completely overhauls every single 1st person animation in the game, bringing them more inline with a modern 1st person combat game. These animations are the best that exist for 1st person.

2.3 - Gameplay Overhaul / New Mechanics

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly. Currently, the mods here are not in order of importance. They will be re-organized. This section will contain a lot of mods at first, and I will slowly separate them into more distinct sections that make sense.

Adjustable Attribute Consumption

This mod is used to prevent us from consuming Stamina while outside of combat! This allows you to sprint as long as you would like, until you enter a combat state. Horses will still consume stamina always!

Lawless - A Bandit Overhaul

“Lawless is intended to be a complete overhaul of bandit enemies in Skyrim and Solstheim. This mod introduces 13 new bandit archetypes inspired by previous TES titles, all with unique strengths and weaknesses, as well as additional tiers for bandit spawns, leading to more diverse and powerful enemies throughout the game. All bandits have received stat and perk adjustments that fit their respective roles as enemies.”

Succinctly put above, you will find a large variety in Bandit attack styles, spells, and more. They will also level with you to a larger degree than vanilla bandits.

Loki’s Wade in Water

This mod causes you to walk slower and slower, the deeper you get into water before swimming. This is a fantastic addition in my opinion, making you consider whether it’s a good idea to step into water during combat, as well as providing an immersion boost when simply exploring.

SimonMagus overhauls

Adamant

• Hand to Hand

Mysticism

Stormcrown

Apothecary

Gourmet

Candlehearth

Thaumaturgy

Aetherius

Mundus

Scion

Manbeast

Open World Loot

“The goal of OWL is to provide an OPEN WORLD and immersive experience, let the player have a sense of progression as well as obtaining believable and balanced loots throughout your adventure and exploration.”

To put it simply, OWL will stop Skyrim from distributing very high-level loot to most enemies, even if you are a very high level yourself. This creates a much more believable world, where you will only rarely find very high value weapons. As part of the tweaks this mod list contains, we have added an IMMENSE amount of new weapons and armor to all the leveled lists in the game, so the “weaker” equipment you will find on most enemies will be of a very large variety!

Take a Peek - New Stealth Mechanic

Custom Skills - VIGILANT (Put in new content w/ VIGILANT)

Different Casting Time (maybe belongs in combat)

Molag’s Will - Vampire Overhaul

Dragon War

The Dragonborn’s Bestiary

Dealing with Backstories

Set of Skills - A Skyrim Class Mod

Immersive Spell Learning - DESTified

Stress and Fear

EVG Traversal + SkyClimb

Realistic AI Detection

Book of Shadows

Sneak Behavior Extensions - True Prone system

Dynamic Collision Adjustment

Dynamic Weather and time Based Detection

Dog Commands

Take a Nap (Sleep on Chairs)

Animated Inebriation

Grab and Throw

Fast Travel Cost

Immersive Horses

Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul

Dynamic Things Alternative

Immersive Display Overhaul

Security Overhaul

Lockpicking for Barbarians

Locked Chests have Keys

Common Clothes and Armors / Armor Variants Expansion / Cloaks of Skyrim(artesian)

• (belongs in equipment once that section is written up more likely)

Trade and Barter

Hearthfire Extended

Your Market Stall

Linked Crafting Storage

Honed Metal

Potion Combination and Separation

Cast Spells as Lesser Powers (maybe belongs in combat)

…

2.4 - New Quests and Content

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly.

Alternate Perspective

Alternate Perspective is a new take on an Alternate Start in Skyrim. Instead of beginning the game on the carriage to execution every time, you will instead spawn inside the Helgen Inn, within a room that you’ve “rented”. Within here, you are able to select a number of different starting locations and scenarios by speaking to “The Messenger”. Many of these scenarios are packed with the mod by default, but we are using a number of addons to the mod that create additional scenarios for you to begin the game with. The room also contains a variety of basic starting equipment for you to choose from, or you can kit your character out with any items you wish using the AddItemMenu item in your inventory (sometimes, different scenarios will also grant you additional equipment).

Despite all this choice, you also have the option to simply walk out of the room without speaking to the “The Messenger”, to enter the Helgen Inn proper. The room behind you will no longer be the same, and you can continue your journey from there. Speak to the Innkeeper and request a long stay, if you want to experience the true masterpiece of this mod.

Interesting NPCs

One of my favorite content mods of all time, Interesting NPCs adds “Over 250+ fully voiced NPCs, 25+ followers, 15+ marriage NPCs, and 50+ quests” to the game. All of these NPCs are placed in the world in the most natural of ways, usually placed within existing locations as if they were always there. All of these NPCs will offer you an extensive dialogue tree, filled with emotion and great writing/voice acting. A great number of these NPCs will offer you quests, many of which branch into large quest lines, or enable you to begin other quests in the mod.

We are also using a number of mods to increase the efficiency of the mod, make some of the quests easier to begin, and bring the NPCs to the same visual level as the rest of Skyrim. These include Interesting Follower Requirements for Interesting NPCs, Interesting NPCs Visual Overhaul and Interesting NPCs - Quest Requirement Tweaks. Overall, this is an absolute staple in any load order I make, and I can tell you that there are a number of quests from this mod I have yet to touch. One of the greatest mods of all time.

Beyond Reach

Beyond Reach adds a new, expansive region to the game world for players to explore. The mod takes place in the realm of High Rock, a rugged and dangerous land of treacherous mountains, ancient ruins, and hidden dangers. You can expect a wide range of new quests, characters, and factions to encounter as they journey through this new land.

In addition to the new content, Beyond Reach features unique gameplay mechanics that add to the immersion and challenge of exploring this untamed wilderness. Players will need to be prepared to face new enemies and navigate treacherous terrain as they navigate the perilous landscape of High Rock.

Overall, Beyond Reach is a highly ambitious and impressive mod that expands the scope of Skyrim and offers players an entirely new world to explore. With its rich lore, unique gameplay mechanics, and challenging new content, it’s a must-play for any Skyrim fan looking for a fresh and exciting experience.

Beyond Skyrim - Bruma

Beyond Skyrim - Bruma is just one part of a huge Tamriel re-creation mod, that was released early. This mod allows us to visit the northernmost province of Cyrodill, Bruma. You can reach the area through the Pale Pass, south of Helgen.

This mod introduces a large new worldspace with numerous new quests, NPCS, and locations to visit. Despite this mod not being the entirety of Beyond Skyrim’s vision, it offers us an amazing piece of content to experience nonetheless.

VIGILANT + fixes

GLENMORIL + fixes

UNSLAAD + fixes

Darkend

“Travel to the new island of Pharos, explore detailed environments, fight new enemies and discover an Ancient set of weapons of incredible power. No quest, no holding hand, heavily inspired by The Demon’s/Dark Souls games.”

Darkend provides an entirely new land to explore, filled with mystery and plenty of spookiness! As detailed above, this mod’s design is detailed after Souls games in terms of the “quests”, areas, enemies/bosses, and loot.

The mod features a rich backstory that is revealed through gameplay, giving players a sense of purpose as they uncover the island’s dark past. The island itself is beautifully crafted, with stunning visuals and attention to detail that immerses players in the eerie world.

The Wheels of Lull

“Return to Sotha Sil and enter the stranger side of TES lore, as you join the ranks of the mysterious Chronographers in this fully voiced DLC-sized mod that adds over a dozen new quests, multiple new armors and weapons, sprawling dungeons, unique boss fights, and much much more!”

The Wheels of Lull offers a new quest that begins automatically, where you will be tasked with delving deep into the earth to help…someone. You will find yourself in the Clockwork City, a mechanical marvel hidden beneath the surface of Skyrim. The city is a labyrinthine network of gears, cogs, and intricate machinery, populated by some interesting beings!

As players progress, they will uncover a deep and intricate storyline, delving into the secrets of the Clockwork City and its enigmatic creator. The mod features unique quests, memorable characters, and thought-provoking dialogues, offering a captivating narrative experience that expands upon the more “funky” aspects of Tamriel lore.

Wyrmstooth

Khajiit Will Follow

Molag Bal’s Inferno

Depths of the Reach

G.R.I.M

Konahrik’s Accoutrements

Artifacts - Tournament of the Ten Bloods

The Tale of Tsatampra Xiros

Frozen in Time

Baba Yaga and the Labyrinth

Identity Crisis

Save the Dark Brotherhood

Your Choices Matter - A Dark Brotherhood Expansion

Penitus Oculatus

Following Mercer

The Grand Paladin

Fortune’s Tradehouse

Skybound Underhang Camp (will be listed here or in other section)

Beyond Skyrim - Wares of Tamriel + wyrmstooth addon

Immersive World Encounters

Missives

2.5 - New Creatures

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly.

Mihail Monsters and Animals

Mihail has created the most creature mod for Skyrim. We are not using all of his creatures, but a select “few” that I believe are of the highest quality and fit into the world (a bit of stretch with some) as well as possible.

Mihail also hides lots of his mods frequently, for one reason or another. We are using a few of these mods in our list. Due to Nexus’ mod archive policies, we will have no problem using these mods anyways.

Dwarven Automatons

Mihail has created a number of different new Dwarven Automatons, and we are using six of them;

• Colossus
• Magetta
• Driller
• Power Suits
• Threshers
• Defenders

Crows

This mod adds Crows the game, which are hand placed in locations that would benefit from a bit of crow-iness. These crows will make their well know cawing sound, and add to the atmosphere of any location they are placed.

Bone Hawk

With this mod, Mihail overhauls the Bone Hawk that flies around Castle Volkihar (you very well may have never seen this).

Dugongs and Manatees (Hidden)

This simple mod adds two new sea creatures to Skyrim’s waters. These are placed (for the most part) only along the northern coast. A bit of extra life to Skyrim!

Soul Trees (Hidden)

This mod adds static “Soul Trees” to the Soul Cairn worldspace. These eldritch beings fit into the landscape quite well, and have some interesting mechanics.

Gargoyles (Hidden)

This overhaul mod brings back a cut type of Gargoyle, and modifies the existing Gargoyles.

Ice Titans

A creature mod from Mihail, this mod adds huge giant-like creatures to some of the cold areas of Skyrim. These beasts are even taller than the Giants of Skyrim, and will force you to change your route if you are not prepared for them.

Iron Golems (Hidden)

This mod adds a few very large Iron Golems to the world. Most of these are placed in deep, forgotten dungeons, but you may find them in the employ of certain factions in Skyrim.

War Revenants (Hidden)

War Revenants adds a new location to the Whiterun tundra, which houses the site of a horrible amalgamation of death from the Civil War. Within, you will find creatures that have been formed from the corpses of the war, and embody the spirit of hate that runs amok. This is an interesting location, filled with some interesting creatures.

Bone Colossus

“Bone Colossi are large undead golems formed from thousands of bones gathered together in a vaguely humanoid form and animated using powerful necromancy. They are conjured from piles of osseous matter by Bonemasters and use small Bonelings as their minions.”

These powerful creatures can only be found deep within dungeons, usually accompanied by a powerful Necromancer (but not always). These beasts of Necromancy are huge, deal powerful blows, and can overrun you with their Boneling minions. When delving into a dungeon, always be on the lookout!

Leshens (Old Gods of the Hunt)

“The Old Gods of the Hunt are powerful and mysterious ancient creatures…Ferocious and stunning, these Wild Hunt beasts are connected to Hircine, and have been worshiped since the beginning by the Reachmen and the Bosmer as one of their Old Gods.”

Inspired by Leshens from The Witcher, these druidic creatures can be found in lost places of nature, and can also rarely found in the company of the Forsworn. They unleash powerful nature magic, and can summon wild animals to assist them. This is not to mention their brute size and strength. The ultimate Spriggan!

Crystal Golems

“Crystal Golems are large masses of faceless and vaguely humanoid crystal, animated by unknown means, that patrol Blackreach.” These large crystalline creatures will charge at any enemies and crush them with their huge arms. They also happen to be composed of an Enchanter’s favorite tool.

Gravelords

“Gravelords are enigmatic entities formed by hundreds of darkened bones covered in a cloak of dense shadows. They’re the spawn of Sithis, the representation of the primordial state of emptiness and the Void. They roam the darkest places of Nirn and Oblivion, surrounded by their dread armies of scary Gravelord Servants.”

Inspired by Nito of Dark Souls, this creature is a powerful necromantic creature. This creature can only be found in deep forgotten dungeons or in the company of powerful necromancers, similar to the Bone Colossus.

Mourning Souls

Ettins

Minotaurs

Water Hags

Harpies

Hungers

Foglings

Grey Children

Flesh Atronachs

Shambles

Undead Snow Elves

Cannibal Draugr on Solstheim

Forsworn Gravesingers / Skinchangers

GRAHL - The Ice Troll

The Blood Horker

Bogmort - Mud Monsters of Morthal Swamp

Daedric Beasts - Wendigos and Howlers

Morrowind Creatures

Flesh Colossus

Wraiths

Scamps

Cernunnos

Ogres

2.6 - Weapons and Armor

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon.

This mod list adds a very large amount of new equipment to the game, most of which has been added to leveled lists.

Read the full added equipment list here

Artifact Mods

We are using a variety of different artifact mods, all of which have been patched together to ensure that every unique equipment in the game is truly unique.

Zim’s Immersive Artifacts

ArteFakes - Unique Artifacts Replacer

Unique Unique’s Re-Ported

JS Unique Utopia - Daggers

Dawnbreaker Animation

Volendrung Animation

Nightingale Bow Animation

Spellbreaker Remesh

Chillrend Visual Overhaul

Deathbrand Redux

Gauldurbrand

Grimsever - Frigid Fang of the Lioness

Armor of Yngol

Ancient Falmer Armor Replacer

Ahzidal’s Armor Replcer

Forsworn Armor Redux

Mephala’s Prelate - Morag Tong Armor

Modernize - HDT Clothing

Leanwolf’s Better shaped weapons

Sleeved Stormcloaks/Guards

New Legion

Sleek Wolf Armor Replacer

2.7 - Improved Vanilla Quests

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly.

Timing is Everything

The Choice is Yours

Radiant Requirements

At Your Own Pace modules

College of Winterhold - Quest Expansion

Skyrim Extended Cut - Saints and Seducers

A Lovely Letter - Alternate Routes

Save the Icerunner - Lights Out Alternate Routes

Finding Deerkethus

Finding Helgi and Laelette

Finding Susanna Alive

Innocence Lost - Quest Expansion

Destroy the Dark Brotherhood - Quest Expansion

Caught Red Handed - Quest Expansion

Nilheim - Misc Quest Expansion

Somebody Else’s Problem - Ignore the Forsworn Conspiracy

Infiltration - Quest Expansion

House of Horrors - Quest Expansion

Boethiah for Good Guys

The Only Cure - Quest Expansion

The Whispering Door - Quest Expansion

The Heart of Dibella - Quest Expansion

Search and Seizure - Quest Expansion

Mistwatch Ending - More Options

Harvest Your Blood for Septimus

Improved College Entry - Questline Tweaks

Misc College of Winterhold Tweaks

Choose your own Arch-Mage

Finding Velehk Sain

Thieves Guild Requirements

Parthurnaax - Quest Expansion

Serana Relationship Revamped

Headhunter - Bounties Redone

Buyable Golden Claw / Silence is Golden

More Thalmor Dossiers

Destination Weddings / Better Weddings Guests

Reasonable Quest Rewards

2.8 - Complete Settlement Overhaul

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly.

Capital Whiterun Expansion

Capital Windhelm Expansion

JK’s Skyrim

Only used for Riften, Markarth, Solitude, and Riverwood

Solitude Skyway

Riften Docks Overhaul

Markarth Outskirts

Cities of the North - Falkreath

Cities of the North - Winterhold

The Great Cities - Minor Cities and Towns

The Great Town of Ivarstead

The Great Town of Shor’s Stone

The Great Town of Karthwasten

The Great Village of Kynesgrove

The Great Village of Old Hroldan

The Great Village of Mixwater Mill

Settlements Expanded

Thanedom of Darkwater Crossing

Thanedom of Nightgate

Thanedom of Dunpar

Thanedom of Torvfjord

Thanedom of Harold Hold

Oakwood

Stonehills Reborn

Anga’s Mill Reborn

Raven Rock Reborn

Better Tel Mithryn

Skaal Village Overhaul

ClefJ’s Half-Moon Mill

2.9 - Improved Non-Settlement Locations

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly.

Obscure’s College of Winterhold / Bibliophile’s Arcaneum

Opulent Thieves Guild

ClefJ’s Fort Dawnguard

JK’s Overhauls

Ryn’s Overhauls

Lawbringer

Halted Stream Mine addon

Tactical Valtheim Addon

Serenity - Silent Moons Camp Addon

Robber’s Gorge Addon

Skybound Underhang camp

Wyrmstooth Addon

Stendarr Rising - Hall of the Vigilant Rebuild

Whiterun Watchtower Doesn’t Start Broken

Simple Player Home Improvements

Store Entrance Doorbells

Environs - The Greenwood Shack

Environs - Riften Warehouse

Environs - Abandonded Abodes

Dungeons - Revisited

Dark Anchors ruins and Dolmens

Oblivion Gates

Northern Marsh Bridges

Man those Borders Reborn

2.10 - NPC Improvements

Outlining thoughts for later. Each mod will be expanded upon greatly.

Nether’s Follower Framework

Follower Commentary Overhaul

Run for Your Lives

AI Overhaul

NPCs Wear Amulets of Mara / Immersive Rejections

Simple Offence Suppression +addons

Simply Knock

Tavern AI Fix

More to Say

Guard Dialogue Overhaul

Suspicious City Guards

Jayserpa Dialogue Overhauls

Misc Dialogue Edits

Misc Dialogue Options

Hunters Dialogue Edit / Hunters not Bandits / Thugs not Assassins

NPCs React to Necromancy, Invisibility, and Frenzy

Immersive Khajiit Caravan Mules

M’aiq The Liar Modders Edition

Inconsequential NPCs (maybe belongs in new content?)

Immersive College NPCs

Appropriately Attired Housecarls (shameless plug)

Immersive Patrols Lite / Simplified

2.11 - NPC Appearance Overhauls

being written

This is an extremely subjective set of mods. Everyone has very different opinions on which of these mods are the best, and this mod list contains what I believe to the best of them.

Modifying the NPC Overhauls in this mod list IS possible, but requires an extensive knowledge of xEdit to undo the patchwork that has been done for this mod list. Therefore, I do NOT recommend you do so.

Pandorable’s Overhauls

Base

Males 1/2

Dawnguard / Dragonborn

Fresh Faces

Kalilies NPCs

The Men of Winter

EulogySC Males

BeastHHBB - Replacer for Argonians

Project ja-Kha-Jay - Replacer for Khajiit

High Poly Head can be mentioned here

3 - Other List Information

3.1 - Changelog

Changelogs of this fashion were not written before compiling to Wabbajack. The modlist has undergone a very large number of changes over the years before v0.9.

Most times, if I had or have changed a mod in any way, I created Notes for that mod in Mod Organizer, which you can view by hovering over the notepad icon on the mod in the left pane of MO.

When armors/weapons are added to the list, they are commonly added to leveled lists. Check the Added Equipment page for a full list of equipment and their leveled list placement.

Basic conflict resolution when adding a mod is generally not included here, every addition to the list is vetted thoroughly. Only if existing conflict resolution was flawed and fixed, will it be included here.

To view the full patch notes for a version, click the Detailed Changelog option below the version notes.

v1.0 - 11/29/2024

This version is SAVE UN-SAFE! You should not use existing saves with this version, or you risk causing issues with them. It is highly likely older saves will not load at all.

This release is being made slightly earlier than expected due to Creation Kit updates. There is more planned for the “final” 1.0 release which will come in future updates.

A large change with this version is the change from Attack/MCO to BFCO, which are combat animation frameworks used to add motion data to our attack animations. BFCO offers jumping attacks, swimming attacks, and much improved chain-ability of attacks over MCO. All of our currently used animations were converted for BFCO, and are working. You are now able to use a “Combo Power Attack” with the Middle-Mouse click, which can be chained with normal and power attacks. These animations will improve over time as the combo power attack, jumping attack, and other chained animations are given unique animations with either separate animations, or animation packs designed around BFCO with all features used. As it stands, this is a massive improvement over MCO.

A large addition with this version, is the introduction of enchanted variants of modded equipment. You will now find enchanted variants of modded equipment in the enchanted gear leveled lists, such as in end-of-dungeon loot chests, rarely in merchant inventories, or rewards from a Jarl. Not all equipment has the capability of being enchanted, with some being intentionally left out to make sure there aren’t too many enchanted items around. However, any new equipment added to the list going forward will have enchanted variants provided it suits the equipment. No longer will you only find Vanilla enchanted equipment!

When using the Semicolon key, you can now open The Dragonborn’s Bestiary, a wonderful new addition. Non-human creatures you kill will add a new entry to this Bestiary, showing a description, as well as their weaknesses and resistances. Through the use of community addons and custom made entries, it is planned to have every creature in the list available in the Bestiary! A large amount of custom work has already been done!

We’ve also added “Takes Notes!” which can be opened with the Apostrophe key. This allows you to take arbitrary notes in game. You can write your character’s journal, or keep a simple to-do list.

The new “Dragon Combat Animations” and “DNFA Wolves Combat Behavior” mods add telegraphed attacks with motion data to both of these creatures, making combat with them much more exciting!

Immersive Horses has also made it’s way in, with our previous lite horse mods no longer in use. This mod provides a much better experience when it comes to summoning your horse, and other related actions.

Dear Diary - Dark Mode has replaced the Paper UI as the default for the mod list. Now, the Paper UI is disabled by default, but can be used as an option.

Lorkhan - Soundtrack Replacer has also been added as the modlist’s new main music mod. Yggdrasil still exists as an optional replacer, with the patches to Yggdrasil having been moved to their own plugin.

We have also introduced a new default ENB, Silent Horizons 2 - Universal Core! Serio’s and Ominous ENB presets are still available as optional presets!

A wide variety of new mods have been added, such as EVG Clamber, First Person Interactions, Animated Eating Redux, Grab and Throw, Clockwork, Candlehearth, Gourmet, some new equipment mods, and Arcanum, more spells! A very large number of bugs have been fixed, and tweaks made as well. Make sure to read the Detailed Changelog as even the above does not cover nearly everything!

v0.9.6.3 - 5/27/2024

This version fixes a crash when re-loading saves for many users, as well as resolve an issue with Valhalla executions. A good many mods have been updated, along with some new introductions!

This version is save-safe. If you have progressed through Vominheim however, you will have issues there! Also, anyone wearing a removed armor set will now be exposed!

Thank you everyone who has reported bugs and made suggestions!

v0.9.6.2 - 3/26/2024

This version is save safe! It removes Skyrim Motion Control, as it has been found to be still causing freezing either alone or in conjunction with other mods in the list.

v0.9.6.1 - 3/20/2024

This version is save safe! It simply corrects changed links for Attack - MCO and Dodge - MCO as the site they were hosted on was changed.

v0.9.6 - 3/18/2024

This version is SAVE UN-SAFE! You should not use existing saves with this version, or you risk causing issues with them.

A large change coming with this update is the introduction of the “Experience” mod. Leveling your skills will no longer increase your level alone. For your player level to increase, you must explore/find locations, defeat enemies, finish quests, as well as a variety of other game actions. Your skill levels will be capped depending on how high your character level is.

This version also introduces an “Ultra” DynDOLOD preset, that uses Grass LOD and 3D Tree LOD! This is an extremely intensive preset, and should only be used with very powerful systems. With this, there are now three different presets with this list. The optional Medium DynDOLOD preset has also been removed.

We’re also introducing new player homes! For now, we’ve only added five homes. Any homes added to the list will always be modified to either add cost to them, or increase it if it’s too low. More of these will be added with time.

A notable addition is Skyrim Motion Control. It now takes time for the character to speed up and slow down, which creates a very realistic feeling of motion. You can also move slightly faster when moving downhill, and will be slowed uphill.

Another important change with this update is the re-introduction of Weapon Speed effects. These effects will now affect your attack speed, whereas previously they did not. This is going to be fine-tuned over time for balance to prevent too much attack speed.

Mod Organizer has also been updated to the latest version, along with RootBuilder. If you installed any additional plugins, they will need to be updated to this new version!

v0.9.5.10 - 1/17/2024

This version has no user-facing changes. The list was re-compiled with the latest version of Skyrim to make it installable again. You can safely ignore this version if you already have the list installed!

v0.9.5.9 - 1/16/2024

This version has no user-facing changes. The list was re-compiled with the latest version of Wabbajack to make it installable again. You can safely ignore this version if you already have the list installed!

v0.9.5.8 - 1/7/2024

Bux fix! This version simply removes 3D Tree LOD in the DynDOLOD - High preset, as it is causing freezing issues that will take some time do diagnose.

v0.9.5.7 - 1/5/2024

This update chiefly fixes a common freeze when using the DynDOLOD High preset. It also fixes a few bugs, updates some mods, and includes the new Description Framework! A few new and updated mods will be making use of this. This version is save-safe!

v0.9.5.6 - 12/31/2023

This tiny update simply disables Ominous ENB in the Refined profile, as it was enabled alongside Serio’s ENB by mistake. If you have already updated to 0.9.5.5, you can ignore this update and change the ENB that is enabled as you choose.

v0.9.5.5 - 12/31/2023

New Years Eve update! This version fixes a rather consistent crash involving certain spells, as well as a few other bugs! This version should be save-safe.

Quite a few spells have been added, modified or removed in multiple spell mods that have been updated. You may lose a few of your spells on existing saves!

v0.9.5.4 - 12/10/2023

This update resolves issues with the _ResourcePack.esl plugin.

v0.9.5.3 - 12/10/2023

This version makes the list installable again, after the recent Skyrim update(s). The changes made to do so will also allow the list to be more resistant to updates in the future.

There are no other changes made with this version!

v0.9.5.2 - 11/9/2023

This version was released early due to changes to Skyrim-Guild mods. Two have had their links changed, and one (Creatures Preview) was removed. This will unfortunately remove the Dragon, Bear, and Sabre-cat animations in the list. If it is re-added, the next version will contain it again.

This version is save safe, though you may observe some changes not apply on an existing save.

v0.9.5.1 - 10/16/2023

This version very simply includes Campfire, Campfire - Survival Mode Patch, and Custom Skills Framework Unified Menu - Dear Diary Dark, which were left out of the list compilation on accident, as these are disabled-by-default mods. Confirmed that these were the only ones missing. Absolutely a save-safe update!

v0.9.5 - 10/14/2023

This version is ABSOLUTELY NOT save-safe! You cannot use any existing saves with this version.

This version introduces a Performance Profile! This is in a simple state as of now, introducing reduced DynDOLOD Output and the use of Community Shaders instead of ENB! Along with this change, 3D Tree LOD has been enabled in the default profile, which will retain it’s ENB usage along with a new optional preset! Further performance enhancements will be added to the Performance Profile as time goes on, some of which will be introduced to the entire list. You can switch between the Default “Refined” and the new “Refined - Performance” profiles with the drop down menu above the left pane of Mod Organizer. Keep in mind that any changes you make to mods in the list will not be reflected across profiles, this includes the optional “Enhanced Survival Mode” mods.

Along with the above change, “Safe-Specific Saves” have been disabled for each profile. Your saves will now be read from “My Games/Skyrim Special Edition” in your Documents directory. You should not be expecting to retain old saves with this version, but make CERTAIN you have backed up any saves you care about before updating nonetheless.

We’ve replaced iEquip with the modern and extremely responsive LamasTinyHUD. Never again will you die as you wait for iEquip to catch up. The mod offers a rather intuitive system for setting up your load outs, and doesn’t miss a single beat when switching your weapons. The mod also offers a nearly identical system for quick potions, so you will not be missing easy access to healing while in combat. We have also added the new Wheeler Wheel Menu! This is set to Q by default, with the vanilla Favorites menu rebound to Y. These two mods together give you very quick and instant access to your entire arsenal!

An interesting addition to the list with this version is Fast Travel Cost. It will now require Gold/Septims for you to Fast Travel. The cost is calculated based on distance. This was added to incentivize exploring the world, but still allow you to Fast Travel if you wish, at the expense of your ever-growing coffers!

We’ve also removed our existing Companions questline tweak mods, and added the Companions module from At Your Own Pace! This introduces a myriad of changes to the Companions questline, allowing many more types of characters to play the questline, among many other great changes!

I would also be re-missed to not mention Remote Interactions. This mod opens up a seriously cool dynamic to interacting with NPCs in the world, allowing you to, well, interact remotely! The hotkey to initiate this is B. Jayserpa never disappoints!

This update is quite large, and the above description does not cover everything. Be sure to read the full changelog below!

v0.9.4.1 - 5/22/2023

This version introduces SunHelm and Campfire as optional mods, for those that want enhanced Survival gameplay.

It also chiefly fixes a navmesh CTD near Shor’s Stone. That’s the main reason this release is coming without much more content additions or removals.

Also a good number of other fixes here! Thank you everyone in Discord for reporting bugs :)

If playing on an existing save, in order for MCM changes/fixes to apply, you need to go to the MCM Recorder MCM menu, and re-run the TPF - Zediious Sprinkles preset.

v0.9.4 - 5/6/2023

Uh oh, scary version number change! With this version, I have fixed a number of incorrect quest records and other things, and a good number of those things that will not apply on a new save. As such, I have labeled the version as not save-safe. For the most part, this will just cause broken things to stay broken. As such, I highly recommend you play with a new save on this version, but you may find luck with an existing save. Always make a backup of your saves before playing on new versions! Seriously! If you do play on an existing save, make sure that you dismiss all your followers before loading into it after updating!

With this version, we’ve introduced Dear Diary - Dark Mode as an optional interface replacer. You can disable the Dear Diary - Paper UI mod and it’s related mods, and enable the Dark Mode version and it’s related mods. Check the wiki/read the Notes for these mods for a guide!

Character Creation has also been fixed up in a few ways. The High Poly Head head parts will now be the default in character creation, and clipping beards have been disabled, so that you can only see the suitable High Poly Head versions. The High Poly Head hair meshes have also been added, they were left out by mistake. I’ve also added required dependencies for many of the RaceMenu presets in the list that were missed, fixing purple body meshes on these presets.

There are new mods, some from suggestions! The Idle Animations WheelMenu keybind has been set to " ] } “. More mods from suggestions will be added in the next version.

Also included are a very large number of fixes for combat/equipment balance, including changes to damage/crit, armor value, weight, value, keywords, crafting recipes and other miscellaneous things.

A lot of the fixes in this version were from those in the discord server, playing the list/checking my patches and giving feedback. You know who you are, thank you SO much!

v0.9.3.5 - 4/24/2023

This version simply removes a weapon mod from the list that has been placed under moderation review. This weapon was previously in the Glass Battleaxe leveled lists. This is save safe, the weapon will simply disappear from your saves if it existed.

v0.9.3.4 - 4/20/2023

This version brings a re-balance of the combat and each difficulty. Using Simply Balanced, I’ve tweaked base damage values for the player and NPCs to be a bit more tanky on Adept. Further, difficulty modifiers have been changed. As you reduce your difficulty, enemies will become very easy to kill, and you will take a little less damage. As you raise your difficulty, enemies will exponentially become more “spongy” and you will take a little more damage. The focus with this is allowing the player to make enemies more spongy, if that is the desired gameplay. The Adept difficulty is what can be considered my “signature difficulty” with this list, and is what I would recommend playing with.

I’ve also fixed an embarrassingly large amount of borked weapon keywords and DAR conditions for said keywords. A variety of weapons that were not using the correct animations will now do so.

MCM settings for Wildcat have been modified, as well as the newly added Simply Balanced

v0.9.3.3 - 4/16/2023

This version fixes a resurgence of the False Save Corruption bug introduced in 0.9.3.1. All previously “corrupted” saves will be retroactively fixed.

v0.9.3.2 - 4/15/2023

This version has reduced the .wabbajack file size significantly! You will need to download the new version of Base Coat if updating, which is quite large.

v0.9.3.1 - 4/15/2023

This version should be save-safe. None of the added or removed mods should have a major effect on the game. A few changes simply won’t apply on existing saves at all, or will require a cell reset. Removed armors will disappear from your save. Make a backup of your saves before playing!

A few new armors and weapons have been added to leveled lists, view Added Equipment to see exact additions!

v0.9.3 - 4/8/2023

NOTE: This version will have some initial issues in existing saves. Some of the modified locations that have changed persistent references in the world will not apply their changes on existing saves. Lawless will only apply some of its changes on cell reset. Play on this with an existing save at your own risk and do so WITH A BACKUP!

v0.9.2 - 4/6/2023

NOTE: This version is technically save-unsafe, due to some mod updates, but you may find your save is lightly affected. Play on this with an existing save at your own risk and do so WITH A BACKUP!

v0.9.1.1 - 4/2/2023

Actually fixed installation issues.

v0.9.1 - 4/2/2023

Fixed installation issues regarding Skyrim version. You must now install the list with the latest version of Skyrim installed on Steam.

v0.9 - 4/2/2023

With the new version of Animated Armory, first-person animations for Animated Armory weapons are now available.

I’ve also ditched the very odd version schema I chose. Can’t explain that one. As the list is prepared for an official “unofficial” wabbajack launch, the version will reach 1.0. From then on, versioning will be done on a save-safe basis, and the documentation will be updated to reflect this.

On that note, this update is NOT SAVE SAFE! Due to the updating of certain mods, existing saves will have issues. Refrain from updating for now if you do not want to restart your character.

A few versions were released before v0.9 as Wabbajack releases, however the changelogs for those have been removed as the versioning was all over the place.

3.2 - Added Equipment

This mod list adds a very large amount of new armor and weapons to the game, with curated leveled lists containing this new equipment along with specific NPC placements.

All leveled lists are using Open World Loot as a base for additions, and any native patches are used and/or merged with custom additions in OWL.

Many lists and outfits added by content mods and the Vanilla game have been altered to take OWL leveled list entries rather than vanilla armor/weapon entries.

Shields from certain armor mods have been placed in separate tiers from the set they are from, and are not listed here. You will find a variety of different shields.

Many weapons and armors have been renamed. Most of the time, I also mark the original name in the list below, but not all the time.

Nearly all of the equipment mods in the list have had enchanted variants generated for every enchantment in the game, and have been distributed to the proper enchanted equipment leveled list. You will find enchanted variants of these weapons and armor as end-of-dungeon loot, rarely in merchant inventories, rewards for quests, etc.

Weapons

Reforging - To the Masses

• All weapons patched with OWL, distributed through all relevant tiered leveled lists
• Some that OWL did not add, were added manually. These are listed below.

Proper Crossbow Integration

• Distributed through all relevant tiered leveled lists

Draugr Weapons Standalone

• All weapons and shields distributed to Draugr via OWL rather than default lists

Many of the weapons shown below are from the following larger weapon packs

• Skyrim Weapons Expansion
• Weapons of the Third Era
• Katana Crafting

Iron Tier

Dagger

• Third Era Iron Tanto
• Dual Iron Claws

Sword

• Torus
• Iron Rapier
• Imperial Rapier
• Steel Rapier
• Ancient Nord Rapier
• Kvetchi Mercenary Sword
• Third Era Iron Katana
• Third Era Iron Scimitar
• Third Era Iron Saber
• Third Era Iron Wakizashi
• Third Era Iron Sword
• Steel Katana (some spice)
• Steel Wakizashi (some spice)
• Grossmesser

Waraxe

• Colovian Axe

Mace

• Third Era Iron Club
• Third Era Wooden Club

Greatsword

• Torus
• Iron Pike
• Ancient Nord Pike
• Imperial Pike
• Iron Halberd
• Third Era Iron Nodachi
• Bluthund

Battleaxe

• Iron Pike
• Iron Halberd
• Third Era Tapered Wooden Battle Staff
• Third Era Wooden Battle Staff
• Eikbiter

Steel Tier

Dagger

• Kindjal Dagger
• Fetcher’s Knife
• Leaf Dagger
• Imperial Broad Dagger
• Third Era Steel Tanto
• Steel Tanto
• Knight’s Dagger
• Norse Dagger
• Dual Steel Claws
• Steel Dirk
• Voronan Blade
• Rugger

Sword

• Regent
• Imperial Captain Sword
• Argent Brand
• Alacrity
• Erlosung
• Falchion
• Fiore
• Galanterie
• Galebrand
• Kinzon Sik Zahkrii
• Knight Sword (and variations)
• Mordant
• Silver Legera
• Sol
• Sugaruya Katana
• Serenity
• Yggrasil
• Sarta
• Crecy
• Scorpion Scimitar
• Bastard Sword
• Steel Rapier
• Third Era Steel Sword
• Third Era Steel Katana
• Third Era Steel Saber
• Third Era Steel Wakizashi
• Third Era Steel Scimitar
• Steel Katana
• Steel Wakizashi
• Flammard
• Norse Sword
• Kinzon
• Steel Ornate Rapier

Waraxe

• Dane Waraxe
• Norse Axe

Mace

• Third Era Steel Club

Greatsword

• Third Era Steel Nodachi
• Third Era Steel Longsword
• Knight’s Greatsword
• Templar Bastard Sword
• Broadsword
• Crecy
• Flamberge

Battleaxe

• Steel Pike
• Steel Halberd
• Third Era Steel Battlestaff
• Warrior’s Axe

Bow

• Norse Bow

Dwarven Tier

Dagger

• Dwarven Tanto
• Dual Dwarven Claws

Sword

• Cataract
• Crag
• Leviathan
• Luna
• Revenant
• Venus
• Usdian
• Dwarven Rapier
• Third Era Eastern Dwemer Sword
• Dwarven Katana
• Dwarven Wakizashi
• Wolfnir
• Commoner’s Saber
• Loner’s Sword

Waraxe

• Viking Axe
• Third Era Eastern Dwemer Axe
• Dwarven Commander War Axe (with variants)

Mace

• Eastern Brassplate Hammer

Greatsword

• Dwarven Caster Polesword
• Cataract
• Crag
• Leviathan
• Luna
• Revenant
• Great Venus
• Usdian
• Dwarven Pike
• Third Era Eastern Dwemer Longsword
• Loner’s Greatsword

Battleaxe

• Dwarven Pike
• Dwarven Halberd
• Dwarven Commander Battleaxe (with variants)

Elven Tier

Dagger

• Fenrir Dagger
• Elven Tanto
• Royal Elven Dagger
• Bosmer Short Blade
• Dual Elven Claws

Sword

• Duelist Blade
• Dunmeri Steel Leaf Sword
• Fenrir Shortsword
• Fenrir Longsword
• Rhoda
• Viceroy
• Terra
• Elven(Dovah) Nord Sword
• Elven Rapier
• Third Era Elven Steel Sword
• Elven Katana
• Elven Wakizashi
• The Crissaegrim
• Leaf Sidesword
• Blademaster’s Katana
• Royal Elven Sword
• Welkynar Hussar Saber
• Nameless Saber
• Rihad Sword

Waraxe

• Elven(Dovah) Nord Axe

Mace

• Elven(Dovah) Nord Warhammer
• Welkynar Hussar Hammer

Greatsword

• Duellist
• Viceroy
• Great Terra
• Fenrir Greatsword
• Elven Pike
• Royal Elven Longsword

Battleaxe

• Elven Halberd
• Winged Spear
• Masakari Axe

Bow

• Royal Elven Bow

Orcish Tier

Dagger

• Baltimore Dagger (with variants)
• Orcish Tanto
• RTR Orcish Dagger
• Dual Orcish Claws
• Traveler Hunting Knife

Sword

• Steel Broad Spear
• Baltimore Falchion
• Visc
• Alik’r Dragontail
• Sarta Gold
• Wraith
• Orcish Rapier
• Orcish Katana
• Orcish Wakizashi
• RTR Orcish Sword
• Traveler Sword
• Hisuteri Katana

Waraxe

• Krigers Eftermaele

Greatsword

• Baltimore Falchion
• Claymore
• Zweihander
• Wraith
• Sarta Gold
• Visc
• Billyro Greatsword
• Orcish Pike
• Third Era Orcish Longsword
• RTR Orcish Greatsword
• Nordic Wanderer Greatsword
• Traveler Greatsword
• War Scythe
• Elmlock Greatsword

Battleaxe

• Orcish Pike
• Orcish Halberd
• Baltimore Battleaxe
• Evening Star

Nordic Tier

Dagger

• Dual Nordic Claws

Sword

• Nordic Steel Katana
• Nordic Steel Wakizashi
• Crown Sword (Renamed Crowned Sword)

Waraxe

• Atmoran Waraxe

Greatsword

• Anduril
• Nordic Wanderer Greatsword
• Horse-Slaying Saber

Battleaxe

• Nordic Pike
• Nordic Halberd
• Atmoran Battleaxe
• Sting (Spear)

Glass Tier

Dagger

• Glass Tanto
• Dual Glass Claws

Sword

• Clarion
• Swordbreaker
• Voam
• Mage Glass Sword
• Atricor
• Glass Rapier
• Third Era Glass Sword
• Third Era Glass Scimitar
• Glass Katana
• Glass Wakizashi
• Hadhafang
• Ceymallari
• Nagamaki Gaijin

Waraxe

• Dwarven Commander Enhanced Waraxe (with variants)
• Stalwart Axe

Mace

• Marauder
• River Watch Mace

Greatsword

• Voam
• Mage Glass Sword
• Atricor
• Glass Pike
• Ebony Dai-Katana (some spice)
• Ayleid Greatsword
• Wolf Cleaver
• Crude Glass Greatsword

Battleaxe

• Glass Halberd
• Third Era Glass Battlestaff
• Poleaxe
• Reforged Dwarven Commander Battleaxe (with variants)
• Crude Glass Battleaxe

Warhammer

• Crude Glass Warhammer

Ebony Tier

Dagger

• Assassin’s Dagger
• Ebony Tanto
• Ebony Damascus Dagger
• Bosmer Elder Short Blade
• Dual Ebony Claws

Sword

• Royal Falchion
• Mars
• Niofroeia
• Sand Scorpion
• Black Terra
• Ritevice
• Ebony Rapier
• Third Era Imperial Ebony Sword
• Third Era Ebony Scimitar
• Ebony Katana
• Ebony Wakizashi
• Kar’s Yatagan
• Ebony Damascus Sword
• Ebony Damascus Wakizashi
• Ebony Rapier

Waraxe

• Havsskurk
• Ebony Damascus Cleaver

Greatsword

• Ritevice
• Royal Falchion
• Niofroeia
• Sand Scorpion
• Great Black Terra
• Great Mars
• Ebony Pike
• Third Era Ebony Longsword
• Stalhrim Dai-Katana (spice)
• Daedric Dai-Katana (further spice)
• Ebony Damascus Longsword
• Ilieh
• Ebony Nodachi
• Blackened Steel Spadone
• Sacred Relic Sword (unenchanted)

Battleaxe

• Stormcloud
• Ebony Pike
• Ebony Halberd
• Third Era Ebony Battlestaff
• Blackened Steel Scythe

Warhammer

• Amsvartner Warhammer

Stalhrim Tier

Dagger

• Dual Stalhrim Claws

Sword

• Stalhrim Katana
• Stalhrim Wakizashi

Battleaxe

• Stalhrim Pike
• Stalhrim Halberd

Daedric Tier

Dagger

• Third Era Daedric Tanto
• Daedric Tanto
• Serpent Dagger
• Dual Daedric Claws
• Valermon Dagger

Sword

• Shadowstring
• Third Era Daedric Sword
• Third Era Daedric Katana
• Third Era Daedric Wakizashi
• Daedric Rapier
• Daedric Katana
• Daedric Longsword
• Daedric Wakizashi
• Daedric Crescent
• Valermos
• Blade of Chaos
• Yorukaze Katana

Greatsword

• Third Era Daedric Nodachi
• Third Era Daedric Longsword
• Daedric Dai-Katana
• Daedric Claymore
• War Scythe V2 (Imbued Scythe)
• Great Valermos
• Yorukaze Dai-Katana

Battleaxe

• Daedric Pike
• Daedric Halberd
• Third Era Daedric Battlestaff
• Fire Breathe

Dragonbone Tier

Dagger

• Dragonbone Tanto
• Dragon Bone Dagger
• Dragon Bone Knife Knuckles
• Dual Dragonbone Claws

Sword

• Dragonbone Katana
• Dragonbone Wakizashi
• Dragon Bone Scimitar
• Dragon Bone Sword

Waraxe

• Dragon Bone Waraxe

Mace

• Dragon Bone Mace

Greatsword

• Great Dragonborn Terra
• Dragonbone Pike
• Dragon Bone Greatsword

Battleaxe

• Dragonbone Halberd
• Dragon Bone Battleaxe

Warhammer

• Dragon Bone Warhammer

Bow

• Dragon Bone Bow

Armors

Common Clothes and Armors

• Default distributions retained and patched

Armor Variants Expansion

• Default distributions retained and patched

Minor Faction Armor

• Default distributions retained and patched

Armors of the Velothi Pt I and II

• Default Solstheim distribution retained with some additional named NPC placements.

Khajiiti Apex Armory

• Khajiit caravan members wear and sell

Hide Tier

• Kyne’s Hide Set
• Nordwar Hide Set
• Nordwar Aketon Set

Fur Tier

• Nordwar Fur Sets
• Boethia’s Fur Kilt
• Nordic Tribal Set

Studded Tier

• Kyne’s Hide Set
• Nordwar Studded Set
• Nordwar Nordic Chainmail Sets
• Nordwar Padded Set

Leather Tier

• Rough Leather Set
• Rogue Nord Set
• Nordic Ranger Set
• Kyne’s Leather Set
• Assassin’s Set (Gray Leather)
• Seasoned Traveller Set (Traveler)
• Nordwar Nord Leather Set
• Treasure Hunter Set
• Adventurer Set

Elven Tier

• Cyrodiilic Thief Set
• Bosmer Set
• Royal Elven Set
• Elven Steel Set
• Gray Warden Set
• Nemesis Set
• Ebony Elven Set
• Welkynar Hussar Set
• Elven Enforcer Set

Scaled Tier

• Judea Set
• Scout Set
• Field Guard Set
• Nord Raven Set
• Mercenary Light Iron Set
• Skydancer Set
• Kyne’s Legacy Set
• Kellan Set
• Colovian Prince Set
• Crimson Archer Set
• Platescale Set
• Countess Set
• Inquisitor Set
• Illusive Infiltrator Set
• Elmlock Set
• Gorm Set

Glass Tier

• Bosmer Elder Set
• Kingsguard Set
• Silver Elven Set
• Ebony Scale Set
• Seascale Set
• River Watch Set
• Wayrest Sellsword Set

Dragonscale Tier

• Veteran Dragonscale Set
• Light Dragonbone Set

Iron Tier

• Nordwar Chainmail Set
• Mercenary Iron Set
• “Iron Armor” mod
• Iron Legion
• Nordwar Mercenary Set
• Nordwar Iron Lamellar Set
• Nordwar Lamellar Chainmail Set

Steel Tier

• Nordwar Steel Scaled Set
• Nordwar Steel Lamellar Set
• Infantry Heavy Steel Set
• Royal Guard Set
• Ignoble Steel Set
• Duskplate Steel Set
• Infantry Set
• Steel Nord Helmet

Dwarven Tier

• Summerguard Set
• Eastern Dwemer Set
• 4thUnknown Dwemer Set
• Eastern Brassplate Set

Steel Plate Tier

• Cyrodiilic Plate Set
• King Prawn Set
• Knight Armor Set
• Battlemage Set
• Kvetchi Mercenary Set
• Landlord Set
• Fluted Set
• Crown Plate Set

Orcish Tier

• Orcish Chief Set
• Nordic Wanderer Set (Orcish Wanderer)

Nordic Tier

• Heavy Nord Set
• Elite Wolf Set
• Breton Noble Armor (Renamed Nordic Knight)
• Ysmir Armor

Ebony Tier

• Dark Knight Set
• Charred Knight Set
• Blackened Steel Set
• Corrupted Thorn Set
• Silver Ebony Set
• Yaldabaoth Set

Daedric Tier

• Mihail Daedric Light Set
• Mythic Dawn Set
• Mihail Dremora Set
• Mihail Harbinger Set
• Markynaz Set
• 4thUnknown Daedric Set

Other Lists

Vampire Boss

• Eldritch Knight
• Volkihar Knight
• Vampire Royal Knight
• Traveling Mage Set

Vigilant of Stendarr

• Stendarr Templar Set

Alik’r

• Redguard Assassin Set
• Rihad Set

NPC Outfits

Harbinger Cuirass

• Kodlak Whitemane outfit

Redoran Exile Armor

• Lleril Morvayn outfit

Morrowind Netch Leather Armor

• Teldryn Sero outfit

Northern God Armor and Battleaxe

• Hajvarr Iron-Hand of White River Watch outfit

Falconer Heavy Armor and Sword

• Fjola of Mistwatch outfit
• Light variant can be crafted after clearing Mistwatch

Wind Ruler Armor and Sword

• Bandit Boss (renamed Adelvar Wind-Ruler) of Robber’s Gorge outfit

Lord of Coldharbour Set

• Lord Harkon outfit

Ebony Samurai Set

• Interesting NPCs S’vashni outfit

Barsaebic Ayleid Set

• Ancano

Rormasu Armor

• Interesting NPCs Anum La outfit
• Teeba-Ei
• Argonian Bandit Marauders

Player Only Sets

• Armor of Intrigue
• Wayfarer’s Coat
• Mythic Dawn Set
• Wild Witch Outfit
• Alchemist’s Vestaments
• Shadow Scale Set
• Ritual Armor of Boethia
• Daedric Kynval Set
• Regal Paladin Set
• Grandmaster Wolven Set
• Resplendent Set
• Moon Monk’s Robes
• Lunar Guard Armor
• Hermit Armor
• Viridian Knight Armor
• Longcoats
• Raven Set

3.3 - ESL Flagged Plugins

Within the list, there are many plugins that have been flagged ESL, and possibly had their FormIDs compacted. Below is a non-exhaustive list of these plugins. If a plugin has had its FormIDs compacted before flagging ESL, that will be noted after the mod.

Flagged Plugins

• Stonehills Reborn.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• man_dibella.esp
• Fluffworks.esp
• SJG Quick Light Patch.esp
• Cloaks - USSEP Patch.esp
• Darkend Balance Patch.esp
• HearthfireMultiKid_LastName.esp
• WadeInWater.esp
• ww_AlternateDBEnding_SaveTheDBPatch.esp
• BeastHHBB - Immersive College NPCS Replacer.esp
• BeastHHBB - Obscures College of Winterhold Replacer.esp
• Luminosity Lighting Overhaul.esp
• SkyUI_SE.esp
• Landscape For Grass Mods - Military Camps.esp
• RaceMenu.esp
• dD-Reduced Wound Size.esp
• SaveTheIcerunner.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• HPP - FirewoodSnow.esp
• Stats Editor MCM Menu.esp
• RealBossesLight.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• 1Scamp.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• Fuse00_ArmorKellan.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• Alchemist’s Vestaments.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• Blowgun_by_Ruddy88.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• GIST-RusticSoulGems-patch.esp
• JK Bannered Mare Capital whiterun expansion Patch 0.1.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• JK Drunken Huntsman Capital whiterun expansion Patch.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• Better Dynamic Snow SE.esp
• Enhanced Vanilla Trees SSE.esp
• HandToHandLocksmith.esp
• RaceMenuMorphsCBBE.esp
• Settlements Expanded SE - The Great Village of Old Hroldan Patch.esp
• FNIS.esp
• XPMSE.esp
• ReturnAegisbane.esp
• Leadership.esp (FormIDs Compacted)
• Leadership - Adamant.esp
• AnimatedEatingRedux.esp (FormIDs Compacted)

Plugins Yet to Flag

This is not exhaustive.

• JaxonzEnhGrav.esp (recompile jaxonzengrab.psc to change object reference formid)
• ZIA_Complete Pack.esp (scripts do not point to formIDs. Check artifacts in game)
• mihailharpy.esp (check in game)
• mihailmourninssouls.esp (scripts do not point to formids, check in game)
• mihailfleshatronach.esp (scripts do not point to formids, check in game)
• mihailgreychildren.esp (check in game)
• KS-Hairdo’s.esp (check in game)
• TheEyesOfBeuty.esp (check in game)
• IHSS.esp (check in game)
• KarstaagReborn.esp (scripts do not point to formids, check in game)
• Cloaks.esp, Cloaks - Dawkguard.esp (patches need to be watched out for)
• Unique Dragon Aspect.esp (scripts do not point to formids, check in game)
• NoRoadPredatorsRedone.esp (watch for patches)
• suspiciouscityguards.esp (scripts do not point to formids, check in game)
• AI Overhaul (maybe not, has a LOT of patches and will be a disaster when updating them)

3.4 - Ignored Updates

Many mods in the list have had had their updates ignored within Mod Organizer 2. This is done to prevent mods we never want to update from appearing as out of date, as well as prevent mods whose authors have not versioned them correctly from showing as outdated. However, this can make it difficult if you are modifying the list to know what needs updated.

If you are wanting to un-ignore these mods, take a look at this script for doing that en-masse.

List of mods whose updates are ignored

List of mods that will no longer ignore updates;
.NET Script Framework
A Good Death - Old Orc Overhaul
A Quality World Map
Actor Limit Fix
Address Library for SKSE Plugins
Adventurer HDT-SMP Armor - HIMBO Refit
ADXP - MCO ER Mixed Scythe
ADXP I MCO ER Spear Basic Animation (SCAR)
Ahzidal's Armor Replacer
Airgetlam - Modern Magic Sounds Rework
Alternate Perspective Addon - I Used to Be a Dungeon Boss like You
aMidianBorn Book of Silence - Creatures
Ancient Dwemer Metal
Ancient Nord Stalhrim
Andrealphus' Tweaks - Harder Quests - Harder Mara Quests
Andrealphus' Tweaks - Harder Quests - No Easy Bloodkin
Arcanum - A New Age of Magic (Fixed)
Argonians Enhanced - HD Argonian Hairstyles
Armor of Intrigue
Armor Variants Expansion - Patch Collection
At Your Own Pace - College of Winterhold
At Your Own Pace - Companions
Auto Input Switch
Beards of Power
BeastHHBB - Argonian Replacer and Hair
Better Jumping
Better Than Nando's
Beyond Skyrim - Bruma DLC Patch
Blades of Chaos
Bosmer Armor Pack
Bug Fixes SSE
Calling the Watchmaker - Lovecraftian Inspired Quest
Capital Whiterun Expansion
Capital Windhelm Expansion
Cathedral - 3D Pine Grass
Cathedral Weathers and Seasons
Chainmail Armor - HIMBO Refit
Collision Reset Hotkey
Colovian Prince Set
Combat Animation Overhaul - Dwarven Sphere
Combat Pathing Revolution
Common Clothes and Armors
Community Overlay 3
Community Overlays 1
Conditional Expressions Extended
ConsolePlusPlus
ConsoleUtils
Countess Armor - HIMBO Refit
Crown Plate Set
Crown Plate Set - Xtudo Fixes
Cultured Orc Furniture
Custom Skills Framework Unified Menu
Custom Skills Framework Unified Menu - Icon Pack
Daedric Armor
Daedric Armor - Xtudo Standalone and Fixes
Daedric Kynval Equipment
Daedric Shrines - Xtudo Patches
Dark Knight Armor
Dark Knight Armor - HIMBO Refit
Dear Diary - Dark Mode Compass Navigation Overhaul
Dear Diary Paper - Experience Patch
Deer Skull and Antlers Retexture 2K
Disable USSEP Book
Diverse Downed Logs
Diverse Tanning Racks
Dlizzio's Mesh Fixes - Noble Skyrim Material Fix
DNFA Wolves Combat Behavior
Draugr Weaponry
Draugrs - New Models and Textures - Dragon Priest
Draugrs - New Models and Textures - Xtudo Fixes
Dwemer Pipework Reworked
East Empire Company Armor
Edgemaster Animations For MCO
Elementi - Flame Atronach VSFX Rework
Elite Wolf Armor by NordwarUA
Elven Enforcer Armor
ENB Helper
ENB Lava Particle Light Patch
Encounter Zones Unlocked
Ennead Banners - RUGNAROK Patch
EVG Conditional Idles Extended
EVG Conditional Idles Extended - Valhalla Fix
Face Discoloration Fix
FaceFXWrapper
Falconer Armor - Female Weight Slider
Falconer Armor - Fixes
Falconer Armor - Male Weight Slider
Feminine Khajiit Textures - Grey Cat 2K UNP
Ferrymen - New Clothing
FileAccess Interface for Skyrim
Fix Note Icon for SkyUI (SKSE64)
Fluffworks Animals
Fluted Armor - Xtudo Fixes
Follower Dialogue Expansion - Uthgerd the Unbroken
Follower Trap Safety
Footprints
Footprints - SPID
Forsworn Armor Redux
Frankly HD Stormcloak and City Guards 2K
Fuz Ro D-oh
Gauldurbrand - Gauldur Weapons Replacer
Gorm Armor - Xtudo Fixes
Gray Warden HDT-SMP Armor - HIMBO Refit
Hall of the Followers
Heart of the Beast - Werewolf Overhaul
Hearthfire Extended
Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions
Heavy Nordic Armor - HIMBO Refit
High Poly Head - Vanilla Hair Remake Patch
High Poly Smelter - Embers HD Patch
High Quality Ivy Textures
Highland Cow HD by Pfuscher
Horse Mane Fix
Horse Stamina HUD
I'm Walkin' Here
Identity Crisis
Illusive Infiltrator Armor - Xtudo Fixes
Immersive Horses
Immersive Khajiit Caravan Mules
Immersive Patrols Simplified
Improved Sparks
Improved Traps
Improved Traps - Follower Trap Safety Patch
Improvement Names Customized
Infantry Armor - Xtudo Fixes
Interesting NPCs
Iron Legion
Iron Legion - HIMBO Refit
JContainers
JK's Haelga's Bunkhouse
JK's The Bannered Mare
JK's Understone Keep
Jump Behavior Overhaul
Kalilies NPCs - Keep Your Skin
Katana Crafting
Kellan HDT-SMP Armor - HIMBO Refit
Knight Armor by NordwarUA
Kvetchi Mercenary Set
Land of Vominheim - Unique Rewards by Xtudo
LC Land Lord Armor
Leadership
Lightweight Smithing Tweaks for SSO
Lollygaggin' - Vanilla Guard Armor Replacer
Lord of Coldharbour Armor
Maleficus' Blackjack
Mannequin Management
Masculine Khajiit Textures - Grey Cat 2K
Maximum Carnage
Maximum Carnage - MCO
Maximum Carnage Skeletons
Mercenary Light Iron Armor - HIMBO Refit
MFG Fix
Mihail Monsters and Animals - Falmeri Frost Mare Mount - Xtudo Fixes
Mihail Monsters and Animals - Ogrim
Miscellaneous Tweaks Collection - Night Eye Redux
Miscellaneous Tweaks Collection - No Starting Spells
Mistwatch Ending - More Options
Modular Armory
Modular Armory - Armor Mesh Fixes Patch
Modular Armory - Unique Zephyr
Molag's Will - Vampire Perk Tree
More Thalmor Dossiers
moreHUD
moreHUD Inventory Edition
Morrowind Creatures
Mythic Dawn Armor
Mythic Dawn Armor - Xtudo Fixes
Nemesis Armor
New Creature Animation - Giant
New Legion - HIMBO Refit
Nord Raven Battle Armor - HIMBO Refit
Nord Tribal Armor - HIMBO Refit
Nordic Battleaxe Animations
Nordic Fur Armor - HIMBO Refit
Nordic Wanderer Equipment
Nordic Wanderer Equipment - CBBE Refit
Nordic Wanderer Equipment - HIMBO Refit
NordwarUA Realistic Armor - CBBE Refit
Norse Pack
Object Manipulation Overhaul
Open World Loot - AVE Patch
Open World Loot - AVL Iron and Steel Addon
Open World Loot - AVL Morrowind Glass Addon
Open World Loot - AVL Nordic Addon
Open World Loot - AVL Thalmor Addon
Open World Loot - Common Clothes and Armors Patch
Open World Loot - Encounter Zone and Loot Overhaul
Open World Loot - Randomized Special Loot
Pandorable's NPCs - Dawnguard
Pandorable's NPCs - Dawnguard - AI Overhaul Patch
Pandorable's NPCs - Dragonborn - AI Overhaul Patch
Pandorable's NPCs - Males - AI Overhaul Patch
Papyrus Profiler
PapyrusUtil - Modders Scripting Utility Functions
Particle Lights For ENB - Bugs In A Jar
Paulicus Poison Block Updated
Payload Interpreter
Pilgrim and Daedric Shrines Consistency and Tweaks
Point The Way
Potion Combination and Separation
Praedy's Staves Patches
Pride of Skyrim - Male Presets
Pride of Valhalla - Super HD Female Skin
Project ja-Kha'jay - Interesting NPCs Addon
Quality CubeMaps - HD Cube Maps
QW's Grass Patch
RaceMenu
Real 3D Walls
Real 3D Walls - Majestic Mountains Texture
Realistic HD Blacksmith Remastered
Realistic HD Woodcutter's Axe Remastered
Regal Paladin Armor
Reguard Assassin Armor - HIMBO Refit
Resplendent Armor and Greatsword
Revamped Assets Skyrim
Riften in High Definition 2K
River Watch Set - Xtudo Fixes
Rogue Nord Armor - HIMBO Refit
Royal Elven Armor Set
RTR Ebony Nodachi and Rapier
RUGNAROK 2K
Ruins Clutter Improved
Run For Your Lives
Ryn's Anise's Cabin
Ryn's Snazzy Last Vigil - Ebony Warrior Overhaul
Sanguine - Enhanced Blood Retexture
Save The Dark Brotherhood
Scale Nord Armor - HIMBO Refit
Scaleform Translation Plus Plus
Scrambled Bugs
Seasoned Traveller Armor
Seasoned Traveller Armor - CBBE Refit
Silver Armor SE
Silver Armor SE - CBBE Refit
Simple Player Home Improvements
Simply Balanced
Simply Knock - Updated DLL
Skaal Village Overhaul
Skygazer Moons - Masser and Secunda 2K HD Textures
Skyrim 3D Misc - Giant Mortar and Pestle
Skyrim 3D Misc - Mammoth Cheese
Skyrim 3D Misc - Markarth Cage
Skyrim 3D Misc - Traps
Skyrim 3D Misc - Winterhold Gate
Skyrim Flora Overhaul - Plant Textures
SkyTEST - Realistic Animals and Predators
Sleek Wolf Armor - Replacer
Sleeping Expanded - Animations and NPC Reactions
Sorcerer - Patch Collection
Spooknik's Tundra Trees
SSE Display Tweaks
SSE Engine Fixes
Stable Masters - New Clothing
Stagger Direction Fix
Statue of Kynareth - Xtudo Patches
Statue of Mara - VIGILANT Patch
Statue of Mara - Xtudo Patches
Steel Light Elven Armor - HIMBO Refit
Storm Lightning
Stormcrown - A Shout Overhaul
Stuff of Shadows - Nightingale and Twilight Sepulcher Improvements and Bug Fixes
Superior Lore-Friendly Hair - HD Textures
Survival Control Panel
Talkative Dragons - Less Talkative
Thanedom Of Darkwater Crossing
Thanedom Of Harold Hold
Thanedom Of Nightgate
Thanedom Of Torvfjord
Thaumaturgy - AVE Patch
The Choice Is Yours
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - 4thUnknown Creatures
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - Bogmort
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - Dareni
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - Darkend
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - Draugrs Art
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - Mihail Creatures
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - Natura
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - SkyTEST
The Dragonborn's Bestiary - VIGILANT
The Eyes Of Beauty
The Last Vigil - Ebony Warrior Voice Rework-
The Whispering Door - Quest Expansion
Timing Is Everything - Custom Preset
Titus Mede I's Armor
TPF Asset Fixes
Trade and Barter - Adamant Patch
Traveling Mage HDT-SMP Armor - HIMBO Refit
True Wolves of Skyrim 2K
Tweaks for WACCF and ACE
UNDERDOG Animations
Unfamiliar Faces - Character Preset Collection
Unique Markarth Doors - Base Object Swapper
Unofficial High Definition Audio Project - Voices EN (Part 1)
Unofficial Material Fix - High Poly Project Patch
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
Unplayable Faction Armors
Unslaad Weapons and Armors Retexture
Valermos - Dagger
Valthume - Dragon Priest Voiced Sound Rework
Vampire Royal Knight Armor - HIMBO Refit
Vanilla HDR
Vanilla Makeup HD - HD Racial Colors and Makeup
Veteran's Dragonscale Armor
Veydosebrom Regions
VickusDickus' Khajiiti Apex Armory
Vigilants of Stendarr Templar Armor - HIMBO Refit
Viridian Knight Armor
Vorono's Bauernwehr
Weapons Armor Clothing and Clutter Fixes
Whose Quest Is It Anyway
Wild Witch Outfit
Wind Ruler Armor - CBBE Sliders
Wind Ruler Armor - HIMBO Refit
Wind Ruler Armor - No Helmet Hair
Winged Hussar Armor and Weapons
Yes Im Sure
Yggdrasil Music
Ysmir Armor - Xtudo Fixes

3.5 - Full Mod List

The full list of mods and plugins contained in the list can be viewed at Load Order Library.

Follow this link to view the list on Load Order Library

3.6 - Mods on the Radar

These are mods that I want to add to this list, but cannot yet due to an unresolved incompatibility, etc.

S.M.C - Skyrim Motion Control

This mod makes an IMMENSE impact on moving around in 3rd person, it’s one of my favorite mods to date. Unfortunately, it has inconsistent freezing issues in conjunction with other mods in the list, and this has not been figured out. There is also an issue with the sprint-jump animation stuttering with this mod installed.

I am keeping a close eye on this mod.

Lilson’s NPC Overhauls

Most of these look REALLY great and unique. I will likely be using this and possibly removing some of the existing NPC Overhauls to make way for this.

Dialogue Movement Enabler

Incompatible with Simply Knock.