Gameplay

WORK IN PROGRESS

Combat Essentials

Precision Precision for creatures	Skyrim's default hit detection is rudimentary and paints in broad strokes. In Vanilla skyrim you effective just check an area around you on swing based on a static 'reach' number based on your weapon type. Which means all weapons of the same type have the same reach and weapon models don't matter. People have attempted to fix this in the past but it was just a more granular appraoch to the reach or simply just better values like this synth patcher based on this older zedit patcher based on probably some older just form edits. Precision changes all that by directly calculating a hitbox based on the model itself. In addition its a proper hitbox which means your animation also now matters instead of everything essentially being a fan. I can't imagine a type of play-through that doesn't benefit from this ¹⁾
Comprehensive Attack Rate Patch	Attack speed in vanilla skyrim is fucked. It needs a fix and this is the most modern version of the fix. Previously Attack Speed Framework would have been my goto but CARP has some significant improvements on it. If you want to know the exact details of the attack speed issue read either mod page as they both go into it in depth. One note about CARP is that it has the requirement Perk Entry Point Extender, or PEPE, to quote it's page “Not currently compatible with a fix in Scrambled Bugs that allows for multiple returns from the ApplyXSpell perk entry points. Coordinating how to implement may take a bit. To clarify, this is if one is using the entry point, not an incompatibility across the board.” Some mods may require you to have that enabled, in which case you might have a bit of a conflict so keep that in mind.
TDM	I originally thought this was only important if you were using a controller but its ridiculously customizable and has the features of 10 other mods. To sum it up quickly: you can walk toward the camera. * Engarde patch Better Power Attack Direction Control (1.5.97)
SmoothCam	3rd person camera improvements, works well with TDM and almost required if you're using 3rd person combat mods below
Violens	I think most people have this in their load order by now. Controls everything you could want about killmoves including turning them off. * Some of the above mods also turn off kill moves on the player so keep that mind when you configure that option. Not sure if having them all on makes a difference but I try not to overlap settings when possible. * VATS can be disabled via a .ini tweak (bVATSDisable) if you're trying to clean up your MCM and that is all you want to use Violens for. * If you are cool and also a huge nerd, use Kaputt da true gamer's choice
Simply Balanced	No matter what you do Skyrim balance will probably never fit exactly what you want. Simply Balanced is there to fill any gaps, it lets you set a lot numbers to scale the game to your liking. Personally, I recommend using it to first find where you'd like your balance to be and then figure out why your game isn't where you want it to be. Maybe your damage feels bad, and turn it up and now it feels good. Why is your bad? is it the enemies? is it the weapons? its good for figuring out gaps in your list and then patching them. Also great for adjusting things on the fly as you find the weird edge cases

Brief interlude

Open Animation Replacer

This mod could easily go under half the headers on this site but it gets special mention here as a lot of combat mod use OAR and it's predecessor DAR for the purposes of combat animations

Combat overhauls

MCO	Once used to be more than one mod that does what MCO does. They're all dead now except MCO. MCO is a framework, it does very little by itself and the thing that makes it work is the animations bundled with it. What does MCO actually do then? it replaces the default attack (light attack) and the default power attacks (heavy attack) with it's own special dummy attack. You can then use OAR to replace that with animation movesets. Within those movesets are animations that contain data that tells MCO if they can combo into another move, what movement the move contains, and what other constraints and timings allowed by the move. This lets you have strings attack like modern video games where each attack in a sequential string will have different animations, timing, and movement. The framework lets you define any combination of light/heavy attacks to point to a different animation. Most movesets mimic some modern video game the animator is enamored with. Generally this means they're all using a from of attack commitment where you are locked into a direction for the duration of the attack and there are often a handful of unique combo strings There are two variants of MCO, AMCO and ADXP. The difference is that ADXP removes attack speed from combat, the idea behind this is that the animations set your attacking speed and by removing attack speed altogether you uh..??. The other one has attack speed but also some animations look really bad bad at different speeds.
SCAR	This is a prerequisite mod, most of which haven't really been included here but this is to let you know that you'll need SCAR enabled movesets for npcs to use the above the MCO movesets, if the mco animation doesn't mention SCAR, it won't apply to the npcs
Wildcat	<Description>
Valravn	<Description>
Blade and Blunt	<Description>
Engarde	Engarde does a lot of things most of which are modular, letting you turn them off or on as required. Engarde is a swiss army knife, it is a tool to stitch together the rest of the list. Please research it yourself, I will not be able to go into detail about most of it, there is too much to cover. Some major features: Engarde changes how stamina works, it causes stamina to stop regenerating in combat. Instead, once you stop using stamina, after a short delay it will restore most of your stamina very quickly. In addition you can and should give stamina costs to attacks, as well as most other actions in the game. All of this also applies to all NPCs. Combat with all these options turned on really increases the weight of your positioning. Physically moving away from your enemies to avoid attacks and then going back in while they're out of stamina really creates an interesting ebb and flow to combat. Engarde's patcher applies a similar effect as Mortal Enemies (attack commitment) to all enemies, not just humanoid npcs. It also modifies all the Enemy attacks to use a better defined attack cone that will let you dodge monsters and otherwise use the same methods of timing and spacing as you might against modded humanoid npcs. There are many more features that I haven't gone over, such as Engarde's stagger system (weapon weight based), or it's dodge, or power attack button, etc, but at some point you'll have to let go of my hand and figure out which ones you need and want. Probably everyone who ever uses Engarde has a different set of features enabled. Engarde is showing it's age as specific features in Engarde all have alternatives in other mods. However some features such as the enemy attack cones are still unique to Engarde even now and difficult to replace. -Use the Synthesis patcher, not the zEdit patcher. -Also it is recommended you don't enable the blade or blunt features under Weapon stats as they conflict with True Armor. -If you use smash/bash run Synth after, not before Contains an attack speed fix Disable sweeping attacks in MCM if also using Sweeping attacks from other sources such as CGO. The power attack MCM changes such as invincibility during power attack and slowed time should also probably be disabled. *The Nemesis patch is only required if you are using creature changes and/or block changes. You shouldn't be using block changes, let Vanguard do that. The VBS script is also only needed if you're doing creature changes and/or power attack changes and/or block changes
True Armor	I'd suggest this mod even outside of this guide to anyone and everyone. This makes armor into Armor. As always, read the fucking mod description but I will sum it up a bit. Armor can now deflect blows, which is to say there is a %chance by armor type by armor location that damage is reduced by that armor's deflect %, in the case of heavier armors this can almost negate the damage. There is a similar chance that a hit bypasses the armor at the location. All the details of this are insanely customizable and defined by armor type by slot. Also importantly True Armor has a dynamic health limiter, which allows you set a base health and health per level and then set a Limiter strength. In simpler terms it means that you set a target HP per level and it tries to applies to enemies. The limiter sets how much of it applies, at 100% it will set the enemy hp to exactly your target HP. All this means armor actually matters and enemies stop being sponges. Some people might report that true armor is very script heavy and this really isn't the case. Script weight is more like a budget and this mod by itself will never take up the entire budget. If you have a budget of 10 and normal mods are 0 or 1, True armor is a 2 or 3, which will only matter depending on how many 2+ you run. Don't try to set all the different armor values yourself. No one does that. use the recommended FISSES (remember FISSES not FISS) download and just use a preset. Most people use realistic and it works well with the game. I like a little over the top skyrim so I use fantasy. *Contains an attack speed fix

CGO	this shit old and busted but a lot of it doesn't have replacements
Ultimate combat	Even older shit
Valhalla Combat	buggy hhhhh

Bruiser

King of unarmed skill/perk mods

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Spells

Just download all of them, the popular ones by enai and simon are easy to find and they're all general fine and nothing to expand upon here.

Kittytail	Tend to lean toward too strong but they're flashy and they're cool and they feel like fucking spells
Darenii	The other one
Colorful magic	old as fuck but goddamn this is real wizard shit. Not for the weak of heart

Skyrim Guide Index

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todo: some notes about animations for first person/vanilla/config options maybe idk