I have a ton of mods, many of which add new weapons, races, armor, etc... But I don't keep them all active all the time. Typically I will only turn on the mods I want to use for a particular character, and turn off the other clothing, weapon, etc... mods that they are not using. The reason is that there is a hard limit on how many mods you can have active - 252 or so. Also the more mods you have active will eventually start to slow you game down, especially script-intensive mods or massive 2k and 4k texture packs. It all depends on how powerful your computer is to begin with of course. 150 mods might not make a beefy comp blink, but could bring one that is slow to begin with to its knees.

But even that said, I have some mods that are always active, no matter what character. These are what I mean by Foundations. They are the rock on which everything else is built. Some of them are:


General Graphics

No Tint and Desaturation (wow, there are colors again!)

No Stretching (textures)

No Blood (No Blood Splatter On Your Hud option)

No Bloom


Landscape Detail

Shrine of Azura LOD Fix

A Clear World Map

A Quality World Map - With Roads

Enhanced Distant Terrain

Enhanced Night Sky

High Quality LODs

Pure Waters (makes the water semi-transparent from above, so you can actually see the shallow parts you can walk through without swimming)

Distant Detail Hearthfire Edition

Footprints

SkyFalls and SkyMills - Animated Distant Waterfalls and WindMills


Quests

Thieves Guild Requirements - No Auto Quest Start Brynjolf

Dawnguard Delayed Start


Armor & Weapons

Auto Unequip Ammo

UltraHD - Stormcloak and City Guards

Open Faced Helmets

Runed Draugr Greatswords

Well Placed Weapons and Quivers


Gameplay

Ash Pile Expiration

Open and Lock Spells

Lockpick Pro

Player Headtracking

Puppeteer Master (pose mod)

You Are Not The Dragonborn

Improved Skill Books


Creatures

Real Foxes


User Interface

SkyUI

Immersive Hud


Other Stuff

Female Mannequins

Neutral Hjerim

Guards Equipment Comment Tweak

Long Lost Smelters of Skyrim


Then of course I have my whole array of body and face mods Listed Here


So what do other people have that is always in the rotation? It is nice to share, because that is how we learn about mods we never knew existed.

Considering I almost play Aravi exclusively, I could list all my mods.

I'll look at my load order and make a list of the mods I have to have. I believe a good majority of them are already listed above however.

Already listed:

Enhanced Distant Terrain
Enhanced Night Sky
Footprints
Player Headtracking
Puppeteer Master (pose mod)
SkyUI

Not listed:

ENB
SKSE (no way to not use this)
Lush Trees and Grass
Predator Vision
Random Alternate Start
Real Clouds
Skyrim HD
Splash of Rain
Wet and Cold
Frostfall
WATER
Vivid Landscapes

I never even thought to list SKSE! Like you said, how can you not use it?

It was more of a joke than anything.

I use the Nexus Mod Manager and BOSS to keep all mods in order.

And a couple of mods I left out of the list!

Climates of Tamriel
Project ENB preset (for use with the ENB binaries)

EDIT: Links added

I tried BOSS back in Oblivion, and found it was not much use for me. Most of my mods are all homemade, and it does not know what to do with them.

I use TES Mod Manager for creating archives (.omod files) of all my mods that have loose files, and for the load order. I have heard several horror stories from people whose games have been fubared by NMM, and that is enough for me to steer clear of it.

Just for Shits and Giggles, here is a list of my home-made mods that I use on a regular basis:

Weightless Ingredients (makes alchemical ingredients weightless)

Better Magic (makes some tweaks to how magic works, mainly to make the magicka regen rate the same in combat as outside of combat - in vanilla it regens at 1/3rd the rate in combat).

Falkreath Camp (adds a campsite outside of Falkreath)

Magicka Gems (renames soul gems to magicka gems)

Better Jenassa (Improves Jenassa with helpful perks, like Light Step)

Dawnstar Smithy Improved (adds some missing things to the Dawnstar Smithy)

Dawnstar House (adds a player house to Dawnstar)

Better Talos Blessing (since I do not use shouts, it changes the Talos shrine blessing to a bonus to one and two handed)

Winterhold Inn Magic Crafting (puts an enchantment station in the Winterhold Inn, for non-college characters)

Craftable Circlets (makes circlets craftable)

Improved Erik the Slayer (see Better Jenassa above)

Alchemist Shack Home (makes the Alchemist's Shack a suitable player home, with all safe storage and a enchantment table as well as alchemical station out back)

More Alchemy Workstations (adds more alchemy workstations to the inns around the province)

Anise's Cabin (makes Anise's Cabin a better home)

Improved Familiars

All Dogs to Huskies (makes all dogs huskies)

Better Illia (again, improves Illia for use as a follower)

Bound Light Bow (adds a Bound Bow spell with the same stats as a hunting bow, for starting characters)

More Enchanting Stations (adds more enchanting stations to places like inns and shops, such as the Riverwood Trader)

Dwemer Smelting and Crafting Improved (Makes all the Dwemer scrap metal items smeltable, instead of just half of them like in vanilla)

Better Weather (Improves the weather)

White Leather Armor (makes an unenchanted version the grey/white thieves guild armor craftable)

Craftable Theives Guild Armor (makes an unenchanted version of the brown and black TG armor craftable)

Arena Ienith Improved (again, makes her a better follower)

Borghak Improved (you guessed it)

Dawnbreaker Improved (improved the base damage of Dawnbreaker, so its a more viable weapon at high levels even if you are not fighting undead)

Witches to Cultists (changes the name of all Witches to Hagraven Cultists)

Trainer Angrenor (makes him a One-Handed Trainer)

Trainers Hermir (makes her a Heavy Armor Trainer)

Trainers Brenuin (Makes him a Sneak Trainer)

Trainers Bolund (makes him a Two-Handed Trainer)

More Vendor Gold (increases the amount of money vendors have to buy with)

Smithing Levels Quicker (slightly increases the how fast Smithing levels up, so now my characters who use it hit 100 around level 36 - 40)

Better Archery Perks (rearranges some of the Archery perks, making Ranger available at a skill of only 30, etc...)

Better Marcurio

More playable Monk Hoods and Robes (makes monk outfits craftable not made by me, but modded again by me)

Holy Fire Spells (creates a bunch of fire-like spells that only damage Undead [I made this before Dawnguard])

Craftable Nightingale Armor (makes an unenchanted set of Nightingale Armor craftable)

No Fugitive Handing You A Stolen Weapon (removes this random encounter)

No Dragons (does what it says on the tin)

Better Ghost Blade (makes the Ghost Blade a worthwhile weapon)

Undead Summoning

No Spiders (see No Dragons)

Hearthfire - Iron Creates More Building Materials (Increased the amount of hinges, nails, etc... you get from an iron ingot)

Blackreach Easy Access (Lets you get into Blackreach without doing the Septimus Signus quest).

Light Black Helm (makes a craftable helmet with the stats of Elven, and the appearance of an ebony helmet)

Light Black Shield (the same, but making a black shield craftable with the stats of Elven.

No House Of Horrors (stops that Vigilant of Stendarr outside of it from harrassing you every time you walk by)

Improved Quest Items (makes many of the quest items more useful, without being overpowered)

Better Daedric Quest Rewards (the same with the Daedric Artifacts, most of which I never use otherwise because I can make better myself)

Better Enchantments 50, 75, 100, 125, 150 (a series of mods that changes the base enchantment value of robes [magicka regen + magicka skill] so they are equal to what you can buy in the game. I swap them out depending on what level I am)

Longer Duration Mage Armor Spell (makes the Mage Armor spells last longer)

Aetherial Crown to Ruby Circlet (because I think the Aetherial Crown looks ugly)

Whiterun Stormcloak Quartermaster (adds a quartermaster to the Whiterun Stormcloak Camp)

More Trainers (adds a slew of more trainers in addition to those in other mods above)

Deer Pelt Tanning (allows you to break down Deer Pelts into Leather)

Weakness to Element Spells (adds Weakness to Fire, Frost, Shock spells)

Falkreath Court Wizard (adds a court wizard to Falkreath)

Whiterun Mystic Emporium (Adds the Mystic Emporium and Calandil to Whiterun, so my characters do not have to go to Dragonsreach and dodge Irileth every time they want to buy or sell magic stuff)

Better Standing Stone Powers (improves the standing stone powers, so that I actually want to use more than just The Lord)

Gauldr Amulet Improved (makes the Gauldr Amulets grant a 50% bonus instead of 30%, as I can usually buy better amulets by the time I get the Gauldr ones)

Wards Cost Less Magicka (makes using Wards cheaper, so you can use them longer)

Absorb Health Spells Restoration (adds Absorb Health spells that work off of Restoration)

Transmute Iron to Steel (changes the Transmute spell from Iron to Gold to Iron to Steel. That way you do not get a 100 Smithing at 5th level)

Dragonborn - Waterwalking Boots (adds several boots with the waterwalking enchantment, for wearing or disenchanting to learn the enchantment)

Nordic Carved Armor Without Ebony (makes Nordic Carved Armor craftable without Ebony, so lower level characters can make it)

Dragonborn Better Solstheim Weather (improves the weather in Solstheim)

General Stores (adds a General Store to every city and small town that does not have one, also adds a smithy to every hold capital that does not have one)

Craftable Forsworn Gear (makes Forsworn gear craftable)

Poison Spells and Weapons (adds poison-based spells and weapons)

Steel Iron Hide Shield Replacer (Replaces those vanilla shields with some from the Matherian Viking Shield Set)

Subtle Fire FX Shader (replaces the shader used for fire based melee weapons, so that the target is not wreathed in flames (and hard to see)

Snow Elf Bow (Turns Auriel's Bow and the Blessed Elven Arrows into a craftable Snow Elf bow and arrows with the same stats and Elven)

Night Eye Spell (Makes Night Eye a buyable spell, removes the blurring effect, and the color desaturation)

Spriggan Earth Mothers Are Animal Actors (so that Kyne's Peace will work on them)

Burnt Spriggans are Animal Actors (again, so they can be Peaced)

Elemental Summoning (adds a bunch of elemental critters that can be summoned in lieu of Daedra)

Better Faendal (makes him look better, and a more useful follower)

Dawnguard Items and Spells (makes the vampire and DG items craftable and lootable, so you can use them without doing the questline)

Dragonborn Othreloth Conjuration Trainer (makes Othreloth a conjuration trainer)

Dragonborn Thalmor Elven Armor (puts the Thalmor you meet on Solstheim in Elven Armor)

Dragonborn No Word Walls (disables all the world walls on Solstheim)

Fur Crafting (makes all the fur armor, gloves, etc... craftable)

Chronicles of Steel Lite (Takes the sword meshes and textures from Chronicles of Steel and make them craftable with the same stats as Steel Swords. Also replaces the vanilla Steel Sword with one of them)

Nature Summoning

Animal Friend

4 Elf Races Updated (an improved by me version of the 4 Elf Races mod)

Deadwalker Race (adds a playable undead race using the 4 Elf Races mod above as a base now made by me completely from scratch.)

Daedric Bow Recolor (makes it more black and red)

Daedric Arrow Recolor (does the same on the arrows)

Eisen Platte Armor Light (several changes to the Eisen Platte Armor, including making it Light Armor)

Runed Nord Hero Weapons (adds glowing runes to the Nord Hero Weapons, changes the base color to the same as Ancient Nord weapons)

Shouts Are Spells (turns many of the Dragon Shouts into ordinary spells)

Wow, look at that list, SR. I'll have to remember this thread, since it's only a matter of time before I'll start my first modding.

This thread is such a gigantic help to me. I'll have more to say once I've actually played a little more. Right now I'm occupied getting ALL THE MODS.

Looked through your list of custom mods and these are the ones that interest me most :

Better Magic
Falkreath Camp
Dawnstar Smithy Improved
More Alchemy Workstations
More Enchanting Stations
White Leather Armor
Craftable Theives Guild Armor
Craftable Nightingale Armor
Better Ghost Blade
Longer Duration Mage Armor Spell
Weakness to Element Spells
Absorb Health Spells Restoration
Spriggan Earth Mothers Are Animal Actors
Burnt Spriggans are Animal Actors

These interest me, but I'd like to know a little more about them.

Whiterun Mystic Emporium
Better Standing Stone Powers
Wards Cost Less Magicka
General Stores

Want me to email you all those on the top list? Just PM me your address.

Of the bottom ones,

Whiterun Mystic Emporium - adds a magic shop to the lowest third of Whiterun. Its behind the row of houses on the main road, between Olava the Feeble and Ysolda's houses, near the wall. It has an enchanting station, and is run by Calandil, who is an Illusion trainer. He's your basic magic vendor, selling spells and so on. Basically he's my replacement for Farengar, so my characters never have to go into Dragonsreach.


Better Standing Stone Powers - It changes the powers that most of the standing stones give. I have a list for this, since I would never remember otherwise.
Apprentice = +100% Magicka Recovery, +100 points Magicka, 100% Weakness to Magicka.
Atronach = 50% Absorb Magicka, 100% Damage Magicka Regeneration, +100 points of Magicka.
Lady = +20 to Health, +20% Magicka & Stamina Recovery.
Lord = 50 points Damage Resistance, 25% Magic Resistance.
Lover = All skills improve 15% faster.
Mage = +50 points of Magicka.
Steed = +100 to Carry Weight, Worn armor weighs nothing, and no movement penalty to armor.
Thief = 50 points of Muffle, and Fortify Marksman of 20 points.
Wildling (Tower) = Animals are friendly and will not flee from you.
Warrior = Fortify One-Handed & Two-Handed 20 points each.
Ritual = -20% cost of Restoration spells, and +20% potency of them.
Serpent = 100 point Resistance to Poison, 50 point Muffle.
Shadow = Spell that lets you turn invisible for 60 seconds, multiple uses per day.


Wards Cost Less Magicka = I just reduced the magicka cost of the wards. I forget by how much. I found that I was always running out magicka when trying to use them with the vanilla costs.


General Stores - This is the biggest one, in terms of how much it edits and adds. I don't think I could play this game without it though. I also have to warn you that it has some dirty edits, because there are these big area effect things you have to move around in order to get down in the cities and add buildings. There also seems to be some kind of navmesh issue inside the stores, as no followers ever go inside them. That might be simple to fix, but I never figured out exactly what was going on.

It adds general stores to every city and village that lacked one. Namely Dawnstar, Morthal, Ivarstead, Shor's Stone, Dragon Bridge, Darkwater Crossing, Rorikstead, and Karthwasten. They are open for business from 8am to 8pm, and will buy and sell all manner of goods. It also adds smithies to Winterhold and Morthal.

Known Issues: The Winterhold smithy building sometimes disappears when you fast travel to Winterhold. This is a bug in the game caused by meshes over a certain sizes. Some people have reported fixing it by checking the "Is Full LOD" box for the object, but I have not seen this help. If this happens to you, simply save your game and exit. Then restart and you will find the building is back.

Hmm, I want the Mystic Emporium, but I'll skip the others on the lower list for now. I'm still considering TK's (remember him?) standing stone mod.

Since I couldn't get Morrowind to install from the Anthology, I put Skyrim in for a try-out, and I'll try to turn off as much Steam interference as I can. If it gets too annoying, I may give up on Skyrim.

I'm adding some of the mods from this thread as I find I need them, starting with some of the UI fixes. Blood spatters on the screen? don't make sense, so they were one of the first to go.

For my Orc, Fleur, the Bear mounts from "like a Boss?" were an essential, well the white one, anyway. Now I have to find make her a bear-riding outfit, as Skyrim doesn't allow separates for upper and lower body.

She is currently residing at Cracked Tusk Keep, which has most of what she needs. I'm still trying to understand the perk/crafting interactions to decide how to equip her, but she's shown a preference for big axes, so her two-handed is racing ahead.

The blood splatters on the screen really make taking screenshots in combat a pain in the rear. Since they are almost always there ruining your shot.

Congrats on your orc Flower! My first Sky character was an orc as well. You might find a good outfit in Immersive Armors. Grits has pics of the Barbarian and Merc armors from it over in her Screenshots from Jerric's World topic.

It's still possible to make separate upper and lower body outfits, the slots are still there.

I finally figured out how to create navmeshes, so I have been going through my General Stores mod to create them inside all the new stores. I also decided to ditch Long Lost Smelters, and just add in all the missing smelters with my General Stores mod. Likewise with my old little mod that added a sharpening wheel and armorer table to the Dawnstar Smithy.

When I get time, I will have to go through my house mods and add navmeshes to them as well.

I’ve made a mod for things I’ve tweaked and one for little things I’ve added. Things like changing the Atronach Stone to match the Oblivion birthsign go in the Tweaks one. Lil’s bow and Jerric’s shield are in Additions. I have a separate one with NPC tweaks that I should probably combine with the other one. It’s been very interesting to run amok dig through the Creation Kit.

Here’s one that I’ve come to appreciate: Peasant Fashion.

It’s just different colors of the lower class clothing, so it blends in very well. It puts them on NPCs. This means that you won’t always see Camilla wearing the same dress.


ADDED:

I have three to add to the ones mentioned above.

A Matter of Time adds a clock to the HUD. I have mine set to toggle so that it displays in the upper left when I turn the compass on with the Immersive HUD key. This means that if I wonder what time it is I don’t have to freeze action and check the menu. I can just hit the Z key and check as we stroll along.

Deeper Dog Bark does what it says. Now Meeko and Vigilance no longer make my ears bleed.

360 Walk and Run Plus does two things that I like. It makes cloaks drift back while walking which prevents feet from clipping through them. It also allows the character to turn and walk straight back toward the screen when weapons are sheathed instead of backing up. Normal back stepping when weapons are out. There are a lot of options with this mod, these are just the ones I use.

I'm trying out Amazing Follower Tweaks, so that my steward and wife don't wear armour around the house. However, it appears to remove the steward dialogue options, so I can't buy another cow or horse for the place. It's also a bit flaky about remembering what the outfits are - you get a standard, city, and home set for each follower, which they change into when they move to a different cell. Most of the time it works, and they change clothes when they enter or leave Windstad Manor, but after a time away, returning home may find Jenassa in her armour indoors, or Brelyna naked, because her home outfit got merged into her standard one, and now she has "nothing to wear".

I'll let you know later how the follower horse options works out. Galen rides Shadowmere, and after I test Aranea with a regular horse, I may buy her a bear to replace it.

Edit: Followers on horses with AFT seems a bit of a bust.

When he gets off of Shadowmere, his follower immediately dismounts also, even if she's well behind, and hasn't caught up. That leaves her a long way from the horse after the incident that made him dismount is over, and usually the second horse has started walking back to the stable. If he rides back to find it with her following on foot, she remounts, but this results in a lot of backward travel to reunite the follower and horse.

Fast travel results in Galen, Shadowmere and follower arriving without a second horse. The horse may or may not have returned to its stable of purchase, and if has, it can be retrieved without buying it again. This is consistent with buying the horse and then riding another, without a riding follower.

If I find out how to fix Brelyna's loss of steward dialog, I may be able to get a home-based horse for the follower, and presumably it will return to the stable at Windstad Manor. That would only fix fast travel back to base, but it's something.

I was hoping to find something in this mod that would help with the Bear Riders, but it looks like I'm in virgin territory there.

I’m using Simple Multiple Followers, Horse Commands, and My Home Is Your Home with mixed results. Horse Commands lets me tell the horses where they should return, so there’s a small herd at Lakeview Manor rather than spread out at the various stables. My Home Is Your Home does the same for followers. None of them has removed the steward hiring dialog, but I haven’t actually hired a steward yet so it might not work later.

At first I had no problem with two followers riding along. Then I think someone got on the wrong horse and screwed things up. Every time after that one of the followers would disappear instead of getting on the available horse. I suspect he was teleporting back home to get on a horse that was not following. Fast Traveling is a disaster. The followers’ horses tend to drop out of the sky, sometimes with a follower on board and sometimes not. Horses do not bounce.

I don’t have anything that changes the default outfit. If anyone ever marries a vanilla NPC I’ll probably make them a default outfit for the wedding and home life so that they aren’t in their armor all of the time. I gave my own NPCs clothing as their default outfits so that they wouldn’t look strange hanging around the house in battle gear. Though the Hearthfire houses can be pretty dangerous!

I remembered reading something in the Amazing Follower Tweaks ReadMe about different ways that you could access the followers’ inventory, something about backpacks vs another thing. Here it is:


Don’t know if that will help.

It may be harder than I'm assuming, but removing the standard dialog option would have been better than just documenting a conflict.

I'm still getting issues with confused outfits, using only the three (Std/City/Home) ones for the stay-at-home folks, who don't actually have anything for City, because they're only inside (Home) or outside (Std) around the house. It's probably related to the way the inventory is partitioned into outfits and backpack, and the default outfit being hidden in the inventory screen. However, the result is better than without the mod, so I don't care that much.

Mounts for NPC's don't have the direct linkage that Oblivion had, where a player had a "travel horse" assigned in the editor, which they also owned. Skyrim is happy to let any NPC whose package allows riding to grab the nearest horse they're not stealing, which usually has faction ownership to permit it. You've noticed that it causes problems when multiple riders have multiple mounts at the same place and time. It's making it very hard to get Bear Riders back onto bears.

Hey, thanks for this one, it'll be really good to know the exact time before pausing the game.

I use a lot of mods, I have no idea how many, but all of them are active for every character. I'm not at home currently, so I can't check the list, but some essential that first come to my mind are:

Character Creation Overhaul - I couldn't play Skyrim without this mod.

Live Another Life - I rarely use a custom start but this mod allows me to create my character before starting the carriage trip to Helgen. I want to know how my characters look like while being on a carriage.

Xenius Character Enhancement - it's a perfect mod for making NPCs look better (not necessarily prettier) while still keeping the feel of vanilla game, almost every other mod that alters appearances, makes character too modern and not fitting for Skyrim, IMO.

Face to Face Conversations - I couldn't play Skyrim without this mod either, now I finally know how NPCs look like and NPCs feel less like robots, because you can actually see their facial animations from up close.

Guard Dialogue Overhaul - makes guards correctly recognize our titles and random achievements.

I will add other mods tomorrow when I return home, there are many more which I consider essential. As much as I don't like to say this, Skyrim would be completely unplayable for me without mods.

EDIT: I remembered a few more:

Timing is everything - allows you to adjust random dragon & vampire attacks, start of the Dragonborn and many other things.

Mercy - makes yielding enemies in fact yield.

Thanks to SubRosa I’ve been using Thieves Guild Requirements – No Auto Quest Start to prevent Brynjolf from attempting to recruit every priestess, healer, and paladin that I send through Riften. It works great. Now there’s an update that has made me love the Thieves Guild the way I always thought I should be able to.

In the MCM you can customize more requirements, like how many radiant jobs you need to get the city’s special job. The best part I think is now I can add requirements for the Guild main quests, so my newbie thief won’t get tasked with major responsibility until his skills reach a point that I set. So even though he’s a reluctant pickpocket he’s going to have to get out there and work the streets in order to impress his boss. Also I can set the number of radiant quests required to advance to the next TG quest, so there’s no sense of rushing through it with the new guy. Even after Marius has restored the guild through radiant city quests he’s going to have to pull more Delvin and Vex jobs to move the TG main quest along.

There’s another mod called Localized Thieves Guild Jobs. TG Requirements has a patch so they work together. You can ask Delvin and Vex for radiant jobs in specific cities through their dialog choices. Now they no longer seem like a pair of morons who send you all over the map for no reason. Also in their dialog you can tell them you need a certain number of days for the job, and if you make it back in time there’s a big cash bonus. Marius is using iNeed for eat/drink/sleep, so he has to decide if he’s going to rest up and be safe on the road (penalties for being tired from iNeed) or push himself past exhaustion to get the money. Plus a lot of shortcuts are dangerous. I don’t know how fast travel works with this, because that would defeat the purpose.

I’ve seen Thieves Guild follower mods but I don’t use one because I made Rune into a follower. Of course so far when dragons, trolls, vampires, and assassins have attacked Marius on the road, his ‘brother in crime’ Rune has been nowhere to be found. Anyway with some backup a thief might actually survive some of the TG quests. We’ll see how many.

Those sound like excellent mods. Now only if there was something for the Companions...

I looked around the Nexus and found Enhanced Skyrim Factions – The Companions Guild. It looks pretty awesome. I’ll probably use the requirements-only version the next time a new character gets off the wagon and picks up a weapon. I absolutely love that it will take many more hours and levels to move through the guild quests. It seems much more like living a life than progressing in a game.

Now, the College of Winterhold..?

Two more I like are Common Clothes and Unique Border Gates.

Common Clothes is kind of a pain with impossible descriptions and a messy crafting menu, but I love the clothes it adds, especially the number of pants outfits for women. I've eliminated several other clothing mods in favor of the ones from this mod.

OK, so I haven’t used this one long enough to say it for sure doesn’t cause problems and it will forever be in all of my games, but I love it so far. Remember in Oblivion NPCs would just talk? Some people hated that but in Skyrim I really miss it. I just can’t ever hear enough about mudcrabs.

So this mod Follower Commentary Overhaul makes followers run their mouths a lot. So far I’ve only heard them talk to themselves and the player. This morning while I was fooling around with Ninette’s game instead of doing what I’m supposed to be doing, I heard this:

Onmund: So, do you get that weird taste in your mouth before battle, too? What is that?

Jerric: *laughs*

They were in the common room of the Hall of Attainment. Ninette was by herself. They were talking to each other!!

You know those floating bits of white fluff? Here’s a mod that makes them recognizable as dandelion seeds. I’m using one of the small textures. Sometimes it’s the little things.

Neat! Persephone was walking by them just last night west of Falkreath. I was guessing that is what they were. But I was wondering why they were in the air in October!

So I think I discovered why the drifting seeds look like fluff in the vanilla game. In some snowy places like Dawnstar they use the fluff to look like snowflakes floating in the air. The dandelion seeds look very odd in those situations!

D'oh! Maybe I will take that one out of the rotation then...

That's so funny! I was between Morthal and Dawnstar and saw some of those floaties in the air and thought to myself, 'I'm glad they don't look like dandelion seed puffs up here.'

Now that I've been playing vanilla Skyrim with my jack-of-all-trades Oblivion character and discovered that this is her "home," I've restarted the game with the same character but with mods. I'm building a mod set that has now just hit the 62 number. It's close to what I had for Oblivion (something like around 80 mods), and I've played most of them long enough to know what I like the best.

Frostfall? I absolutely love this mod for the immersion. Skyrim is a cold country, and I always felt strange swimming across the inlet at Solitude without any penalty of any kind. This is exactly the kind of immersion experience that a game like Skyrim is crying out for. I love that the camping gear that is included in this can be set up anywhere. The first time I used this, it was on a tiny piece of flat ground right next to the river just north of Riverwood. Quite a bit off the beaten path, but quite safe once I removed those two wolves that like to hang out there.

A Quality World Map with Roads? One thing I hated about the default Skyrim map was that it had no roads, so I couldn't figure out the best way to get to some remote objective that would be 'marked' by some NPC. Maps are no good if they don't have roads, at least in a lore-friendly setting. So now both Alise and I are absolutely delighted with this mod.

Skyrim Horses Renewal? animation only files. When we first played through, the vanilla horses moved so badly that Alise absolutely refused to get on them. (As an aside, Julian took one look at them and turned right around and headed back to her beloved Gold Coast.) So I did some digging around because I figured if I found at least a packhorse mod, Alise would find the horse useful for carting around her survival gear and her loot. I initially skipped this mod because the new meshes still rubbed me the wrong way, especially the hindquarters. As a veterinarian who spent the past 20-plus years looking at lameness and breakdowns due to poor conformation, I just couldn't stomach these horses. But I loved the animations I saw in the videos and wished I could have at least just that for the vanilla horses. Quelle surprise! but the modder did exactly that when I looked at the files page. So now Alise has a nice, sturdy grey Riften horse that goes almost everywhere with her and lugs all the heavy stuff without complaint.

Live Another Life? Once was enough for me to tolerate the vanilla introductory ride to Helgen. I started looking for other ways to start this game that did not require storytelling gymnastics to explain why Alise ended up on that cart. I also wanted a way to hold off the MQ. I'm glad to say that Alise and I have been playing this game now for a couple of weeks and she is at Level 14 and we still haven't started the MQ! It's nice not to have to worry about the dragons, or to be called the Dragonborn by one guard and warned "Hands to yourself, sneak thief" by the next. Alise is still being told off, but at least the guards' comments are more consistent!

I've got other mods that have already been mentioned here on this thread, but I'll stop for now. I'm off to test drive yet another mod!

You can also ditch Live Another Life and create your own alternate start mod. I created a topic about it here. It is not really a mod at all. Just an .ini tweak and a few other things you can do through the command line or with a batch file.

I started doing this after being disappointed with Live Another Life. Now I start my characters with exactly the gear, spells, birthsign, etc.. I want them to have. I even have them start at exactly the spot I want. For example, Persephone's game started in the depths of Fellglow Keep, where she had to defeat the necromancers who had disturbed her 4,000 year old resting place. Le Chevalier D'eon started at the docks of Solitude, having just arrived by ship. Tuonetar started at the border of Riften and Morrowind, at the end of that canyon east of Dayspring Canyon. It really helps with the roleplaying

I'm not yet really comfortable with all the modding that you do, so for now, LAL is adequate for me.

Alise and I are actually planning to start the MQ at some point. She just wants to get some things squared away first. Like establishing a home base (thanks to the HF DLC!). Maybe getting a housecarl to tag along with (we liked Argis from Markarth the best, though Valdimar of Morthal and Gregor from Dawnstar were very useful too). We also want to be able to summon more powerful creatures (hello, spriggan? Where are you?) before we start taking on the big beasties.

So for our present purposes LAL is good enough. I'm sure at some point I'm going to want to start looking into creating my own mods/bat files for my own purposes, but for now I'm going to enjoy others' hard work!

This one doesn't yet exist, but I may have to make it. Vigilant Tyranus accosts the player every time you try and walk past the abandoned house in Markarth. Every time! Even if you told him you know nothing last you walked by, five minutes ago. I need to make that conversation once-only.

Since buying Vlindrel Hall, it's a question of talking to him, again, every time on the way from the main gate to the house, or else going the long way around the temple.

Thank you so much for this endorsement. I've been tracking that very mod for some time but had not installed it - until now, thanks to your recommendation. It works fine and is indeed a big help.

When it was just Buffy and Superian, she didn't worry about the map too much because Superian the mountain goat heavy horse could darn near climb up or down a sheer cliff. Going from A to B was basically a straight line, knowing the horse could negotiate almost any obstacle. However. . . Buffy has quite gotten into having a small posse of critters and mounted follower(s) - all of whom are quite stymied by anything from fallen logs to medium boulders. As a result, Buffy has adapted by becoming quite the pathfinder - a role that she initially found irritating and restrictive, but has grown to quite relish. Getting somewhere is now a bit more of a challenge. The missing piece of support for her more detailed and careful navigation has been a quality map. This mod certainly helps.

Thanks again!

A Quality Worldmap with Roads teams up very nicely with A Clear World Map. It removes the clouds over Skyrim so you can see where you are, but keeps them around the other provinces at the map edges.

Ditto on Clear World Map. I've been annoyed by the cloud cover on the vanilla map. How unimmersive!

OK, books.

Book Covers Skyrim and Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library. Now my bookshelves look like this.

Darnand is going to be so pleased.

I keep looking at those mods! However I'm super-careful about what mods I load up in my game, as I only have 512 MB VRAM and so avoid super-high res textures. I now have exactly 100 mods in my lineup, and so far *knockwood* I have yet to have a CTD. I'm really impressed with how stable Skyrim has been on my rig, compared to Oblivion.

I finally get to add to this thread, haha.

Some of these ones have already been listed. I linked to mods which haven't been, so far.

Utilities

SkSE
SkyUI
Wrye Bash

360 Hotkeys Expanded?--By default, if somebody (like me) wants to use a controller instead of mouse + keys, they are limited to only 2 hotkeys. This mod allows us the 8 hotkey configuration that we used in Oblivion.

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Console Commands

Set Timescale to 10

bAllowCompass = 0

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statz n spreadsheet modz

Character Creation Overhaul

Third Era Attributes -- I love seeing my characters boiled down to raw numbers on a stat-sheet.

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"Fix" Mods


Gold Adjustment -- Makes gold and other loot less common.

No Empty Tags on Containers

Open Cities

Realistic Room Rental? -- No more 10 Septim inns all across Skyrim.

People are Strangers -- Talk to someone, if you want to know his / her name.

Scarcity -- overpowered loot is not as common. Combined with Gold Adjustment, it's a guarantee my new character won't become rich in less than a week.

Timing is Everything (Finally I can have dragons in my game, but they're incredibly rare to see. I've seen one already though.

Weapon Degradation (with MCM)

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Clothing

Common Clothes

Peasant Fashions

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4 teh immurshunz

Birds & Flocks

Campfire Cooking

Cooking Takes Time (automatically makes time pass after cooking is done.. ie., a slab of meat = half an hour

Cold & Wet

Darker Interiors There are several mods which make stuff darker. Some of them make nights dark as well, which is cool, but they wind up being waaay too dark. Climates of Tamriel is supposed to have a 'dark dungeons' feature, but it confused me when I read about it. All I wanted was to darken dungeons and some interiors, so that's what this mod does.


Follower Commentary Overhaul * I agree with Grits, sometimes I like hearing NPCs who are usually silent start to turn into Motormouth Mjoll. I still have the setting for FCO turned all the way down to 10% though.

Footprints (Omg wow wow)

Immersive Sounds--Footsteps heavy armor boots go clink clink clink, light armor boots sound different from regular shoes. On top of this, footstep sounds also change according to the type of terrain or road you are on.

Frostfall -- this mod's really harsh. I go for the Lite setting, and my character still almost died from frostbite.

Knock Knock -- if the NPC behind the door likes you, locked doors will get unlocked. Especially good mod to confront merchants who forget to unlock their doors.

Lock Overhaul -- allows lock-bashing, Open / Lock spells, auto-picking, and a few other features.

Mercy

RP Chopping and Mining -- Veins are inexhaustible, but it takes awhile to gain ores. Chopping wood won't allow the player to get ridiculous amounts of money for just a few hours' work.

Realistic Needs and Disease

Splash of Rain

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MISC

A Matter of Time -- Not very immersive of me to have this one, but I don't care. I dislike GPS compasses, but I'm obsessed with in-game time. I put this one right on my HUD, imagine that?

Bank of Skyrim?

Sustained Spells -- Several spells will now auto-cast, including light, shield, and muffle spells.

Immersive Hud will also allow you to get rid of your compass as well, without using the console. It also allows you to get rid of other hud elements, like the crosshair, and even choose when they will appear or vanish. I have my crosshair set to only appear when I use a ranged weapon.

I am going to try out Lock Overhaul when I go back to Skyrim. I already have an Open/Lock spell mod, but the one I was using for lock bashing had a bug where you would be walking along minding your own business and you would suddenly get a bounty, then all the hold guards would attack. Needless to say I had to stop using that one.

Renee, I love 'A Matter of Time'. Buffy has a tiny digital time display centered at the very top of the screen and it really helps her keep track of what I'm comfortable that she would 'feel'.

A Matter of Time is pretty neat. I like the Astrolabe function, though I found this one too distracting. I'm still working with this mod.

And yes, I fully endorse Lock Overhaul. I love bashing locks and then they go 'CRUNCH' when they break.

I found a new one today: Sustained Spells?. Very simple. Spells with a timed, personal effect will now auto-cast if you want them to. So this means spells like Candlelight, Muffle, and shield spells will stay constantly 'on', which is very convenient. It gets tedious casting these spells over and over again, plus using this mod can also potentially free up a couple of hotkeys.

Magicka is automatically removed as the spells are working. To toggle the spell off, just go into the Magic Powers menu, toggle the "cancel" button, and then cast the spell(s) you want to have canceled one last time.

There are times when I've got my character deep in some dungeon and it's just a relief to have constant light or shield effects which won't go out in the middle of some battle. The only thing I'm iffy about with this mod is leveling up. I'm not sure if Alteration & Illusion will automatically level up. If not, it's no biggie. I'll still occasionally cast these spells the regular way too.

Bank of Skyrim? is my next Foundation Mod. Not only can we put our money into the bank, but if we do so, this means the local economy will benefit. We can also take out loans with interest rates, which is going to be interesting, and exchange our gold for lightweight paper, although I might not worry about this.

I like the loan thing though. Claire really wants the Whiterun house, but she's terrible at saving money. She's got like 2000 gold. She might get a loan, so she can get her own house TO-DAY.