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.