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Gameplay

updated November 5th, 2018

Let's face it, Skyrim's gameplay sucks. Time to hopefully fix this issue.
 
In this section, we will discuss:
-General Fixes
-Combat
-Skills and Perks
-Magic and Spells
-Stealth
-Dragons and Shouts
-Werewolves and Vampires
-Items and Loot
-Crafting and Enchanting
-Miscellaneous Gameplay mods
 

General Fixes

Some pretty basic mods that fix or change a lot of issues that vanilla Skyrim had. You don't have to use them all but it is recommended.
General Fixes

Combat

It has been arguably said that the Elder Scrolls combat has gotten more streamlined as each sequel is released. However, this doesn't mean the combat is any good, it's far from that.  Here are a few mods that can remedy this problem.
Combat

Ultimate Combat

One of the very few combat overhauls that actually does something.  Ultimate Combat is written by Google Translate, but to sum it up: This mod not only balances stats and cooldowns, but adds new features to NPCs such as making them quicker to react with active dodging and finding cover. NPC special attacks cause locational damage, and bosses like dragon priests and centurions have special abilities like teleportation, crazy new spells, and whatnot.
Now here lies the problem with these two mods. They're both dynamic in the way they change combat, but they also drastically change how you should play the game.  Ultimate Combat is about adding more features and interesting content, while Duel adds brutal difficulty and big risks.  It's up to you to choose which you prefer better.  We do not recommend using these mods together because they both change how AI works and how your stats function.  Having both on at the same time will really fuck up your game harder than the Deadly Dragons mod. If you do decide to install Duel,                                is required  since Duel still has its fair share of bugs. If you don't install this, any of the quests that use the brawling mechanic will not work and will bug out.
Combat Evolved

Combat Evolved

A complementary mod to Duel and Ultimate Combat. Stagger, knockdown, enemy skills, and enemy damage (and much more) are all enhanced to be more immersive and realistic. If you don't move around, dodge, and actively use your brain you will die a painful death. Combat sneaking has also been improved to be more difficult. No longer can you snipe enemies at range and wipe them all out.

VioLens - A Killmove Mod

VioLens - A Killmove Mod

Like the Dance of Death mod, Violens allows you to adjust or remove killmoves in the game. This mod also adds a few new kill moves for both melee and ranged combat as well as more options for kill moves in general like toggling decapitations for maces or camera view.

Revenge of the Enemies

Revenge of the Enemies

An AI overhaul that works well with any of the combat mods listed above. Enemy AI Overhaul - Revenge Of the Enemies makes enemies more smarter with blocking and power attackes, gives them new abilities and spells, and adds more high level enemies that act like boss characters. Remember, this is a mod to make enemies tougher. So if you're a total jobber, don't use it.

Archery Gameplay Overhaul

Archery Gameplay Overhaul

Archery Gameplay Overhaul is a mod that changes almost every aspect of being an archer. It adds new features such as arrows, that do bleed damage, enchanted arrows, the camera when you use a bow, and even bow animations! All of which can be tweaked in the mod's MCM.

ABT - Arrows and Bolts Tweaks

ABT - Arrows and Bolts Tweaks

ABT is a modular mod that adds new tweaks and features to the ranged system. Things like arrow and bolt speed, arrow merchants, and progressive damage can all be tweaked and customized with this mod.

Nock to Tip

Nock to Tip

This is an overhaul mod for all things archery and archery crafting, as well as other miscellaneous tweaks to bow and arrow models. You can now craft new arrow types to increase the capabilities of an archer, as well as upgrade your bow with different stat altering properties. This also works with crossbows too. If you play an archer character, than this is a must have!

Vigor

Vigor

A light weight combat mod that focus on stamina, injuries and more reactive combat. Highly compatible and customizable.

I Am Your Shield - Aggro Management

I Am Your Shield - Aggro Management

This is an attempt to bring aggro management into Skyrim through a totally immersive taunting system... and it does OK at it. The game doesn't really have a concept of aggro, and the AI has the attention span of something without an attention span. If you are wanting to play a mage this may actually make the game playable, and it also can help you keep weaker followers safe like wolves from Untamed.

Deadly Combat

Deadly Combat

This mod aims to make combat faster-paced, more responsive and more realistic.

Skills and Perks

Some pretty basic mods that fix or change a lot of issues that vanilla Skyrim had. You don't have to use them all but it is recommended.
Here is where the fun begins.  Since these overhaul mods are mostly modular, you can pick and choose what features to use. For example if you like SPERGs perk trees and you want to use it with Disparity's racial traits and are worried about incompatibility? No problem! You can pick and choose what to add without any problems? MCM is an amazing tool for customization and options. The overhauls can even fit around other mods that change stats and skills such as Balanced Magic and Arrows and Bolts Tweaks! 
Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim

Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim

A new perk mod that adds a ton of new variety without breaking your game with save bloats. With 422 new perks to choose from, building character builds and actually playing with them is a lot more fun now.

Disparity -- Player Character Class

Disparity -- Player Character Class

This mod allows the player to customize their character by choosing a class and specialization similar to previous Elder Scrolls games. It also adjusts starting skills and attributes based on both race and gender to create more diversity among the different races of Skyrim.

Skills and Perks

Magic and Spells

Magic has been fun in every game. Casting spells on either friend or foe is exhilarating, especially during combat. For some reason, however, magic is always broken in each of the Elder Scrolls games in a way that either you or your enemies will get the upper hand. Here are a few mods to fix that balance issue and add more spells to play around with! Be sure to check out the mod Undeath under the Quests guide for necromancy.
Bound Pickaxe and Bound Woodcutter Axe

Bound Pickaxe and Bound Woodcutter Axe

For mages who don't want to haul around an axe or a pickaxe.

Golden Shower Spell

Golden Shower Spell

Shoot gold coins from out of your palms at people!

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim

Apocalypse features 155 unique, balanced and lore friendly spells that increase the depth and skill cap of playing a magic user while blending in with the existing magic system.

Lost Grimoire of Skyrim

Lost Grimoire of Skyrim

Grimoire adds 120+ spells to the game via spell books sold by merchants and the wizards at the College of Winterhold. Essentially, Grimoire takes the vanilla pool of spells and makes it bigger. No weird gimmicks, no awkward NPCs or quests. Just a lot of cool new spells - spells that fit with vanilla while filling in the gaps in the magic system and making it way more awesome to play as a mage.

Swarm of Bees

Swarm of Bees

[Insert reference to Harry Partridge here]

Conjure Warm Bed

Conjure Warm Bed

Hail summoner! Conjure me up a warm bed, would you?

Food Atronachs

Food Atronachs

Want something a little silly? Summon up some atronachs made out of sweetrolls, watermelons, and cheese wheels to fight along side you!

Skyrim Spells And Powers

Skyrim Spells And Powers

The most overpowered magic mod ever. Become the ultimate Darth Vader, Dio Brando, Voldemort lovechild and literally control everything with your fingertips! This includes spells such as force push, slow time, stop time, blink teleport, force grab and much more! All of this can be bought from an old man in Dragonsreach.

Spell Research

Spell Research

A truly different spell crafting system. With this system, by the time you actually become a master of magic, you will feel like you earned your place among legends. You will have spent days, weeks, or possibly months, of game time frantically spent studying spells and relics just to add one more spell to your repertoire. Additionally, new avenues of game play are opened up. You can finally roleplay as the cowardly scholar, spending all his time studying alone in a dusty tower.

Imperious - Races of Skyrim

Imperious - Races of Skyrim

This mod overhauls racial traits and spells for all of the playable races. Imperious - Races of Skyrim is the successor of Resplendent Racials. T features five new racials and tweaked stats for each race, giving each race a unique and thematic play style, without shoehorning the race into specific builds or classes. The racials are designed to enable tactical play and counterplay, but beware, NPCs also get them! This is a great alternative if you didn't like ERSO's racials or the vanilla game's.

Floating Torch Spell

Floating Torch Spell

Its a spell with the same magicka, and duration cost as the candlelight spell, without having to deal with a glaring white sterile light.

Spell Chaining (Spell Combos V2)

Spell Chaining (Spell Combos V2)

Spell Chaining gives you the ability to trigger devastating effects based on the combination of charged destruction spells you throw at your target. You can also absorb your charged spells to give yourself beneficial buffs in combat (elemental resistance, faster movement, etc). Note that this requires my Spell Charging Framework mod.

Spell Charging

Spell Charging

Spell Charging gives you the ability to make your spells stronger and last longer by holding down the spell key.

Conjure Sweetroll

Conjure Sweetroll

Create sweetrolls with the power of magic!!!

Ballistic Spells

Ballistic Spells

Existing spells like Firebolt or Icy Spear are now affected by gravity. It's a few little mod to play around with but not too serious. Don't expect this to revolutionize gameplay.

Balanced Magic

Balanced Magic

Magic sucks in the vanilla game, as it has in all TES games. This fixes that with some much needed boosts, without making things TOO overpowered.

Spell Sneak Attacks

Spell Sneak Attacks

For those of us who enjoy playing a thiefmage, burglarwizard, or stealthywarlock, this mod allows you to sneak attack with your spells, making a magic stealth user MUCH more viable.

Ancient Spells 2

Ancient Spells 2

This magic mod adds some old magic spells from Oblivion and Morrowind! You can buy spellbooks from traders all over Skyrim, each with their own magic ranking from novice to master. Some favorites are back such as the feather spells, conjure skeletons, and the control animals/humanoid spells.

Colorful Magic

Colorful Magic

As the title says, this mod adds a ton of colorful new spells to use. Most of them are over the top and brutal at times, but they all look excellent. The spiritual successor to the Midas Magic spells pack.

Undead FX

Undead FX

This is more of a visual mod but magic nonetheless. Undead FX changes how reanimated corpses look like. Instead of being just a guy surrounded by blue light, undead look more like zombies now with bones and rotting flesh all over them. The best part about this mod is that it works on beast races too!

Spellsword

Spellsword

Spellsword is a mod which enables the casting of spells via weapons. The basic premise is as follows: weapons can now be enchanted with spells. This enables the player to cast the spell with their weapon by pressing and holding a casting button and then either swinging their weapon or blocking.

Arcane Fist - Unarmed Spell Combat

Arcane Fist - Unarmed Spell Combat

Monk and brawler characters rejoice! This magic mod adds new spells and enchantments for fist fighting. Now you can truly create a flurry of firey fists just like in that Bruce Lee movie; Fists of Fury.

Unarmed Helper

Unarmed Helper

Extra enchantments and spells that buff up unarmed combat but don't add anything crazy like in Arcane Fist. It also adds unarmed scaling so that unarmed is actually viable late-game. Dragons? Punch'em. Trolls? Punch'em. Dwemer Centurions? Punch'em.

Deadly Spell Impacts

Deadly Spell Impacts

Fire, lightning, and frost spell impacts with their own unique textures. I didn't want to stray too far from the vanilla textures but at the same time wanted to add my own touch.

Magic and Spells

Stealth

Let's be honest here, stealth is broken.  Most of the balancing issues and AI have already been fixed in the several overhaul mods we featured in the Skills and Perks section. So if you're worried about stealth you'll be fine for now. There are not a lot of stealth mods currently, let alone good stealth mods. We'll try to dig up some interesting ones for you to use until then!
Stealth Skills Rebalanced

Stealth Skills Rebalanced

This mod rebalances all the stealth skills such as sneak, lockpicking, and pickpocketing. Lockpicking is adjusted to always be heard and NPCs will be harder to avoid now when you're trying to sneak away from them.

Sneak Tools

Sneak Tools

Instead of tweaking sneak, this mod adds new tools an options to stealth gameplay like enemy take down options, multiple arrow types, and much more. You feel more in control of what kind of stealth you're looking for, whether it be an thief or an assassin.

Realistic AI Detection

Realistic AI Detection

This is a total recalibration of Skyrim's detection formula (no scripts), providing much more realistic and challenging sneaking. Enemies will have enhanced sight and hearing abilities, and will search for you longer when alerted. This mod improves upon the community's earlier efforts to mod Skyrim's sneak detection mechanics. Instead of tweaking the vanilla detection parameters (like all other detection mods do), the Author has completely re-calibrated them from the ground up.

Deadly Poisons

Deadly Poisons

This mod increases the amount of damage poisons do, making them much more effective than their vanilla counterparts. A very simple mod that's excellent for people who felt that the vanilla poisons really didn't help too much.

Stealth

Dragons and SHOUTS

Shouts are fun and are the core of Skyrim gameplay. For some reason though, some shouts  are rarely even used by some players. Here are some mods that will fix shouting and add some new features to them too! As for dragons, they don't get much love. Even though there are a lot of dragon overhaul mods, most of them are really bad. We don't recommend a lot, but for the few that are brave or desperate, here are some dragon mods you might want to check out.
Ultimate Dragons

Ultimate Dragons

Created by the guy who made the tk series of combat mods and Ultimate Combat itself, Ultimate Dragons tries to make dragon combat as challenging and "fun" as a mod can make it. They come with new attacks and animations that can variy between each dragon. It also comes with MCM compatibility which allows you to customize health, stagger, and kill move rate. The author has said that he will NOT tamper with things like disarming and regenerating health.

More Draconic Dragon Aspect

More Draconic Dragon Aspect

Adds new dragon aspects shouts which give you more abilities as well as a pair of wings that allow you to actually fly!

Thunderchild - Epic Shouts

Thunderchild - Epic Shouts

Adds in shouting as an actual skill, letting you become a full-on greybeard dudeski man; with new unique shouts and similar ones that are buffed. This also implements the balancing tweaks that are SIMILAR TO IMPROVED DRAGON SHOUTS BUT TOTALLY NOT SINCE THEY HAVE A FEW MINOR TWEAKS AND CHANGES. So now your shouts will be far more useful and powerful, and in some ways, not suck.

Dragon Soul Relinquishment

Dragon Soul Relinquishment

As you inevitably get higher level, you'll find your dragon souls to be more and more useless, especially once you get every single shout. This mod lets you exchange dragon souls for other neato shit like perk points!

Dragons and SHOUTS

Werewolves and Vampires

Lycanthropy and vampirism were always a side thing in elder scrolls games. It was really inconvenient to be any of these really. Being a vampire sucked because no one would talk  to you and you could only go out at night. Being a werewolf felt underpowering for some reason in Skyrim. The mods listed here will make being a werewolf or vampire awesome and playable through the long term.
Sacrosanct - Vampires of Skyrim

Sacrosanct - Vampires of Skyrim

Sacrosanct overhauls vampires and vampire lords. New abilities, powers, perks, hemomancy, and many gameplay tweaks for the discerning undead monster. Made by Ordinator guy

Better Vampires 7.2

Better Vampires 7.2

The best vampire overhaul out there right now. With his mod, you feel much more powerful as a vampire and becoming a Vampire Lord doesn't totally suck now. The best feature is that you can also make followers and other NPCs into vampires!

Royal Bloodline

Royal Bloodline

The new monster form perks suck. With this mod, it's actually worth putting points into the vampire tree. It improves your normal form and your lord form which REALLY needed the fix. This also comes with a bunch of miscellaneous fixes like removing vampire capes, no vampire royal armor, and sprint flight.

DVA Dynamic Vampire Appearance

DVA Dynamic Vampire Appearance

This is mostly a visual mod for vampires and works with Better Vampires. This changes the way your character looks when he/she is in the different stages of vampirism. Your skin slowly changes and so do your eyes making it a pretty dynamic change when becoming a vampire. Extra things are also added like blood on your mouth when you feed on someone or when you're using nightvision

Moonlight Tales Essentials Overhaul

Moonlight Tales Essentials Overhaul

This overhaul changes how werewolves work entirely. You're stronger as a werewolf and you can randomly transform depending on the moon cycle. More werewolves were added to the game and monster hunters were added as well. These create new events such as werewolf allies and werewolf hunters tracking you down to kill you! Like Better Vampires, you can also make followers and other NPCs into werewolves! There's also a shit ton of MCM options for your customization needs.

Bloodmoon Rising

Bloodmoon Rising

This mod overhauls the perks for the Werewolf perk tree and like Royal Bloodline, makes it worth leveling up. The great part about this mod is that it's compatible with Moonlight Tales and a bunch of other mods that edit or add werewolves.

Werewolves and Vampires

Items and Loot

These mods add new types of items or item features to Skyrim. Some of these mods even edit loot tables to change how loot drops work and even how item spawning works.
Morrowloot Ultimate

Morrowloot Ultimate

Removes all upper-tier armor and weapons from leveled lists, instead hand-placing it around the world, so that you actually need to explore shit. Also adds in hidden artifacts from past games. Can conflict with mods that add loot into the leveled list, as well as crafting tables. However, it does play nicely with mods that add custom weapons into the crafting tables.

Dynamic Potions

Dynamic Potions

This mod aims to add more variety and options towards using potions and poisons. It's MCM allows you to edit to scale strong or weak your potions are or how long they last for. You can also change how much they weight for not only for potions and posions, but for food and ingrediants as well. This is a great mod for people who just want to make simple adjustments to potions instead of an overhaul that they don't really need.

Arrow Recovery System Overhaul

Arrow Recovery System Overhaul

As the name says, this mod overhauls the way you loot arrows and bolts. Sometimes, arrows and bolts can break on impact depending on what type of arrow you are using. Once it breaks, you can recraft the arrow with the pieces you find. The overhaul also makes it easier for picking up ammo. So you can collect all arrows in a certain area at once or take one which also retrieves any arrows around it.

Skyrim Bandages

Skyrim Bandages

Looking for another healing option besides Potions and Spells? Want to put some of that useless clutter to use? Look no further! This mod adds several leveled bandages to the game that you can use along with or instead of potions and spells! These bandages heal you over time instead of instantly restoring health.

Items and Loot

Crafting and Enchanting

Skyrim had a very rushed and kind of crappy crafting system. Enchanting is fine but could use a little fine tuning. These mods will make these rushed features even better and maybe even change the way they work all together! Remember that some of these mods WILL change perk trees so don't forget to add or remove modules that conflict with eachother.
Spell Crafting for Skyrim

Spell Crafting for Skyrim

Yet another magic mod that attempts to bring back spell crafting, except this one is more up to date. Like in previous games, combine effects together to see what you can create!

Wintermyst

Wintermyst

Bored with the vanilla pool of just 34 enchantments? Wintermyst adds 104 brand new enchantments to the game, accessible through thousands of new enchanted items that are integrated seamlessly into loot lists and inventories. It also fixes many bugs related to vanilla enchantments.

Enchanting Awakened

Enchanting Awakened

A total revamp of the enchanting tree and enchantments themselves. This mod adds a complex perk tree system with three paths to choose and go through that unlock new enchantment types and crazy new abilities. It's worth a shot if you want to try out something new. This new system is very complex, so you might have to read the mod page itself for more details and changes the mod has made.

No Enchantment Restrictions - SKSE

No Enchantment Restrictions - SKSE

An alternative to Enchanting Freedom if you don't mind not having dumb armor/weapon mixing enchantments and also want an extra .esp slot, try this SKSE version!

Harvest Overhaul

Harvest Overhaul

Harvest Overhaul is probably the only mod of its kind. This mod allows you to harvest a realistic amount of ingredients, while keeping the balance of Skyrim, and not conflicting with other mods. Every plant and flower (but not ingredients) has been tweaked to yield a realistic amount of ingredients, but with the element of luck. This mod also allows you to gain a surplus of ingredients if you harvest everything in sight.

Melt Down Everything

Melt Down Everything

Like the name implies, this mod gives you the ability to melt down every piece of metallic ammo, armor and weapons, even if they are from mods. To achieve this, a new operational mode is added to the smelters across skyrim. When this mode is activated, the player's inventory is checked for suitable items and a list of dynamic crafting recipes for their meltdown is generated. Each meltdown requires some coal, its type depends on the material and the amount is determined by the item type.

Crafting and Enchanting

Miscellaneous

This section can be totally skipped since all of these mods are really optional. They don't fix anything, but they add new features to the game that you might like.  Try one out and see for yourself!
All Geared Up Derivative - AllGUD

All Geared Up Derivative - AllGUD

The only mod that displays Unequipped Bows AND Shield on your Back! Displays your favorite Weapons and Shields! NPCs as well! Gold Pouches, Potions, War Horn, Lute, Azura's Star, White Phial, and more can be positioned around the waist and back! Completely replaces Equipping Overhaul, Dual Sheath Redux, Visible Favorited Gear, AGU

Experience

Experience

Gain levels by completing quests and exploring. Skills don't contribute to character's level anymore!

3PCO - 3rd Person Camera Overhaul - Smoo

3PCO - 3rd Person Camera Overhaul - Smoo

Skyrim's 3rd person camera is stiff and not asthetic at all. 3PCO aims to correct this by adding a smooth camera follow feature that is present in many modern AAA 3rd person games, including Dark Souls and Nier Automata. With 3PCO, your player will be able to move dynamically to one side of the screen with respect to the camera.

Lock-On - adds a lock-on system

Lock-On - adds a lock-on system

This mod adds a lock-on system.

Mortal Enemies - De-aimbot Your Foes

Mortal Enemies - De-aimbot Your Foes

A mod much like Attack Commitment, but works on enemies and NPCs. Now enemies also have to commit to attacks, meaning they can't turn or move until their attack animation is done and spell casters wont always lock on to you and can sometimes miss.

Attack Commitment No turning during attacks

Attack Commitment No turning during attacks

This mod basically changes combat so that you can't turn or tilt around when you're attacking. You decide what direction and then attack, and you can't do anything else until the animation is finished.

Power Stones of Skyrim

Power Stones of Skyrim

This mod adds many Power Stones scattered around Skyrim with 34 different powers. Based on concept in The Witcher games. Patch for Solstheim available. Every Power Stone gives you a random power for 8 hours in-game.

Dual Wield Parrying

Dual Wield Parrying

Now you can parry attacks while duel wielding with two weapons or with magic in one hand!

ASIS

ASIS

Want to dive deep into dungeons and bandit camps filled with hundreds of draugr and bandits? This mod allows you to tweak the amount of NPCs that spawn in a certain area. Not good enough? You can also change how tough they are, what perks and spells they have, and even what potions they use. This can conflict with other spawn changing mods. Prepare your anus.

TK Dodge

TK Dodge

This mod adds a new dodging mechanic that actually makes you dodge. Not just move from side to side, but actually bob and weave between enemy attacks.

Swimming Enemies

Swimming Enemies

If you haven't noticed by now, Skyrim's enemies don't like to swim. This mod gives them a much needed swimming lesson and water wings, and lets them chase you into the water where they'll most likely be killed by fish.

Heart Breaker - A Killmove Mod

Heart Breaker - A Killmove Mod

Have you ever wanted to rip out people's hearts like Kano from Mortal Kombat? Well now you can, enjoy yourself.

Dynamic Difficulty

Dynamic Difficulty

This mod is for those die hard configuration nuts. Dynamic Difficulty is a very simple mod that allows you to adjust and fine tune difficulty, such as how much damage a certain race does or the min and max damage you can do to an enemy!

SkyTweak

SkyTweak

It's kind of like Dynamic Difficulty except you can tweak almost EVERY little aspect of the game's gameplay! If you're crazy about balance and tweaks, check this out!

Kace Auto Loot

Kace Auto Loot

Too lazy to pick up gold and your arrows? Well then this is for you my glutinous friend! Kace Auto Loot is a MCM mod that allows you to customize what you autoloot, whether it be gold, arrows or crafting ingredients.

Mercy

Mercy

A very straight forward tweak. When NPCs say "I YIELD!" they actually fucking yield.

Oblivihud (Oblivion style hud)

Oblivihud (Oblivion style hud)

A little hud mod that I (Mazetism) made to have the hud match oblivion. If you use Immersive Hud, there is a scripts folder included as a patch to have this work with it but if you don’t use iHud, delete that scripts folder. Really only for MO users because this is an interface mod. So far what it changes is the main hud you see here and the loading screen xp bar.

Miscellaneous

FAQ

Q: Why isn't this or that mod in the guide?
 
A: This guide was made specifically so that all or atleast most of the contents on this page will work together without any compatiblity issues unless notified on the mod page.
 
Q: Will you be adding more to these guides?
 
A: Of course!  We'll try to keep all the guides up to date and will notify everyone if something has changed or has been added on. We also accept submissions if the mod is good enough!
FAQ
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