technoid-elder-scrolls-general-banner.jp

Elk.

2 hardcore 4 me.

Jarl.

1/45

Immersion

updated July 31st, 2019

Immersion is one of those little things that makes the world feel like it's not just an empty husk. I mean, it's still pretty empty but this guide will alleviate the boredom... or pain. These mods can range from big content packs, to smaller tweaks. Please note that most mods with the word "Immersive" in the title are most likely created by a dumbass who's just trying to advertise his mod to other dumbasses.

NOTE: IF YOU RUN WRYE BASH AND IT COMPLAINS ABOUT "OLD/OUTDATED" FILES, AND SHOWS YOU A MOD ".ESP", THAT MEANS THAT MOD HASN'T BEEN PORTED PROPERLY, OR IS A LEGENDARY EDITION MOD, IF SO, YOU NEED TO UPDATE THAT SHIT YOURSELF, AND GIVE THE MOD AUTHOR A STERN TALKING-TO.

Just follow the tutorial mentioned on the "Essential(link)" page to update the mod yourself, skip everything, and just re-save the ".esp" on the Creation Kit.

In this section, we will discuss:

-Alternate Starts

-Audio and Music, these might link to Legendary Edition pages, but since they're just sound files, they work fine.

-Immersive Overhauls

-Backpacks and Gear

-Roleplaying Elements

-Nature and Weather

-Animations

-Miscellaneous Immersion mods

Alternate Starts

Dont you hate it when you want to make a new character but you have to go all the way through Helgen? Well with these two mods, you can totally forget about Helgen and even forget about becoming the Dragonborn too! USE ONLY ONE AT A TIME.

Alternate Start - Live Another Life

This starts you off in a room where you can make your character and then talk to the statue of mara. When you talk to the statue, she'll give you a few options on where you will start in the game. You can start off as new member of the Companions, owning a house in Riften, ship wrecked off the northern coast, and much more. You even come with pre-chosen items like if you're a member of the Thieves Guild, then you start off with knives, poisons, and light armor.

Skyrim Unbound

Skyrim Unbound is an alternate start mod with a wide range of options. It allows the player to skip the opening sequence, choose whether or not to play as the Dragonborn, and have total control over dragon spawns. The first few chapters of the main questline have been bypassed (and effectively removed), meaning you no longer have to obtain the Dragonstone for Farengar or defeat Mirmulnir for the Jarl of Whiterun. If you do wish to play as the Dragonborn and complete the main quest, all you have to do is absorb a dragon soul and you'll be summoned to High Hrothgar by the Greybeards.

Random Alternate Start: Reborn

This starts you off in a black empty void where you can make your character. A menu will appear and ask you what class would you like to be. This will determine your starting items. So if you say you want to be an archer type of character, then you will recieve a bow, some arrows, and light armor. The random part about this mod is that it can spawn you anywhere. You can end up in the fields outside of whiterun or even in a high level draugr infested dungeon! It's all up to chance with this one.

Opening Scene Overhaul

Don't want to use any of the alternative starts and wanna stick with the original start? Well, today's your lucky day, because this mod rejuvenates and overhauls the opening scene by restoring LOTS of cut, unused dialogue, including a more invigorating carriage scene, escaping the Keep with Ulfric and Elenwen confronting General Tullius. This actually works with a modded Skyrim.

Atmosphere and Magic

You might not think that audio plays a big role in immersion, but it actually does. Walking through a forest with the sounds of nature and light hearted fantasy music in the wind makes you feel right at home in a game like this. Also because listening to the song, Under an Ancient Sun, can get tiresome and repetitive for some people. A good change of music can make a big difference in how you want your game to feel like!

Wolves - Children of the night Replacer sound files which make wolves (and familiars) sound like actual wolves.	Fantasy Soundtrack Project Fantasy Soundtrack Project provides 800+ minutes (12+ hours) of new music for TESV: Skyirm. 235+ orchestral and instrumental fantasy/epic music tracks for exploring, towns, taverns and castles.	Glory Days - Music Of Skyrim Replaces all of the vanilla and DLC music tracks with some brand new ones, mostly from Vindsvept.
Realistic Conversations Makes NPCs talk to each other more often, makes them greet you less often, fixes the pause between lines, overall makes npcs more dynamic.	Skeletons of Daggerfall Brings back the crazy sounding screams skeletons made from Daggerfall and adds them back into Skyrim.	Morrowindic Sneak Attack Changes the sneak attack and critical hit sounds from Skyrim and replaces them with their Morrowind counterparts.
Immersive Sounds - Compendium Immersive Sounds - Compendium is an all-in-one package of all my previously released modules in the series. Together they drastically alter the sound and atmosphere of Skyrim. It is the culmination of almost a year of work since June 2013. It's more than a mere sound replacer. It is just as much of a sound expansion, altering and adding to the systems behind Skyrim's sound playback to create a richer and more varied experience. A mod that's not required but is eager to be tried!	Ultra Realistic Crossbow Shoot Sound Replaces the "THUNDER" like crossbow sounds and replaces them with some pretty realistic sounding crossbow noises. This ONLY replaces the crossbow shooting sounds and not the reloading and impact noises.	Real Arrow SFX A highly exaggerated but great sounding archery sound replacer. It comes with Pull, Fire, and Impact sounds. DO NOT add the impact sounds, they are really bad.
Quiet Zombies If you hated the zombie moaning, worry no more! This mod tells zombies to keep their mouths shut.	Personalized Music The most popular and most commonly used music overhaul. This mod allows you to add your own music to the game. It also comes with extra features so that you can truely customize where a song can be played. You want jazz to play in dungeons only? Sure! Heavy metal at early mornings? You can do that too!	Better Horse Pain Sounds I don't know about you, but the horse noises in Skyrim are ear shattering. Even the simplest of pain noise sounds like the horse is getting castrated. This mod just says "goodbye castration noises, hello normal horse sounds".
Better Animal Footsteps It basically replaces the old footstep sounds with new one's that sound more genuine to the specific animal. Horkers will sound like floppy wet masses of fat while Mammoths will sound more like earth shacking monsters.	Sounds of Skyrim Originally a horribly bloat-inducing mod, Sounds of Skyrim was fixed up a little while back. It adds ambient noises to dungeons, wilderness, and towns, making things feel more lively It is still marked possibly unstable, due to the scripts being possibly intensive for low-end computers. Possibly...	Bards Sing Rarely Makes bards sing less frequently.
True 3D Sound for Headphones Don't know why I hadn't added it before, I use this. A .dll that adds true 3D directional sound to the game. Makes a hell of a difference when using headphones.

Overhauls

To make a mod good, sometimes you have to rework a certain aspect of the game. Adding new features while still keeping the game stable and fit with the rest of the original work. Here are a few overhaul mods that add brand new features to the game that will change your experience of Skyrim as you know it now.

However, only use these mods on light loads as they are script heavy and impact your game.

Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival The ultimate survival overhaul mod. This mod adds new weather mechanics that make you feel like your actually in a frigid landscape. You can't go around wearing skimpy armors in the middle of a snowstorm anymore and expect to live. Now you have to wear weather appropriate gear and make a campsite to sleep or wait for time to pass by.	Campfire - Complete Camping System Campfire is the most feature-rich stand-alone camping mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It was created from Frostfall 2.6's unique, immersive camping system. Now, you can enjoy an unparalleled camping experience in conjunction with some of your other favorite survival and immersion mods.	iNeed - Food Water and Sleep A streamlined approach to needs. This mod adjusts to your timescale so by default you should only feel the need to eat and drink 2-3 times a day and sleep once per day provided that you are consuming full meals and getting at least 7 hours of sleep. There are no numbers to be concerned with. Just use a little common sense, follow a schedule and you should hopefully find that the features here are intuitive and have been well integrated into the world. Basically, it's a casual version of RND.
Vitality Mode Basic needs are a common target for mods, since food and drink in the vanilla game are utterly useless, and sleeping is only marginally beneficial for skill increase bonuses. This mod gives these game mechanics a bit more weight, but without introducing a survival mini-game where one needs to keep large stores of food and drink in one's inventory, or stay near an inn to sleep every handful of hours.	Run For Your Lives I'd run straight to my house if I saw dragons attacking my town. Hell, that would be anyone's reaction! This mod makes NPCs go inside buildings during random attack events, allowing them to not be killed by random assholes.

Mistel's Economy and Thievery Guide

Skyrim's economy is a joke. After clearing your first dungeon, most players have enough money to never really have to worry about it again. Buying a property make take a little saving, but it's still not a particularly difficult goal to meet. How ridiculous is it that most players have to hop from vendor to vendor selling off their loot because stores simply don't have enough gold to buy it all? Tired of swimming in overpowered gear from the moment you start the game? Me too.

Backpacks and Gear

Any immersion nut knows that to make an immersive character, you have to wear a bunch of random shit on yourself! Backpacks, capes, potions, books, hoods, torches, etc. are all viable options to make your character look like a person who actually lives in the frigid lands of Skyrim. However, this list is mostly just backpacks because I fucking love backpacks.

Equippable Tomes - Belt-Worn Books Equippable Tomes is a mod that adds books that can be worn on the belt to increase the damage of your spells. Unenchanted tomes for you to enchant yourself are included as well, in case you just want to wear some books on your belt and don't want to increase spell damage.	Cloaks of Skyrim A pretty old mod, but still a great one. This mod adds an array of cloaks and capes to NPCs, leveled lists, and to the crafting menu. Also get the compatibility fix for the Unofficial Skyrim Patch: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56922/?t	Bandolier - Bags and Pouches If you didn't read the image, it says that this mod adds bandoliers, bags, and pouches that you can craft and wear. You can also get optional files that adds these accessories to NPCs. Also, get the newest retextures for them too http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65896/?
Hip Bags They're like backpacks but for your HIPS.	Leather Backpack Leather backpacks that have a variety of different options like colors and straps, but also has carry capacity options as well.	Mead Keg Backpack For mead lovers and party goers! Share your sweet mead with your companions on the go or hog it all for yourself!
Knapsack Backpacks You see all those backpacks lying around Skyrim that you can't pick up? This mods add variants that you can actually equip and use.	Equip-able Maps Adds a physical map that your character can wield in Skyrim. It doesn't really do anything, it's just for show.	Winter is Coming Just like cloaks of Skyrim, this mod adds cloaks to NPCs, leveled lists, and to the crafting menu. However, these cloaks are fur and more oriented to the cold. It also comes with hoods that match the fur cloaks and is compatible with Frostfall to keep you warmer.
Telescope Adds a craftable telescope that you can equip. Unlike the equipable map, this one actually works! You can zoom in and out and look at in all directions! It just works!	Bandanas Adds Rambo style bandanas to the game. You can craft them at tanning racks and they come in dozens of colors!	Blindfolds Just like the Bandanas, you can craft these at tanning racks and they come in dozens of colors! They also come in three different styles; a full blindfold, and a half blindfold for each eye.
Face Masks This mod adds craftable face makes to the game. They come in two versions, with and without a neck scarf, and 8 different colors for each.	Divine Cloaks Want to represent your chosen Divine? Why not show the world who you worship! Perfect for those Paladin, Warrior Cleric types.	Daedric Cloaks Cloaks for each of the seventeen daedric princes. (And one for Sithis, because why not?)
Blanket Scarf Earth Tones Edition - Adds poncho like scarves to Skyrim. Something for every type of player.	BlanketScarfSE More blanket scarves.

Roleplaying Elements

Do you want to RP in a single player game? Well my friend that sounds kind of dumb, but we can at least help you out with some very unique mods.

YOT - Your Own Thoughts This mod basically changes most(if not all) of the second person messages and texts in game and makes them 1st person.	Hunting in Skyrim - A Hunting Guild The Hunters of Skyrim is a new guild offering services to the people of the land such as contracts and hunting assignments. The story is currently work in progress and serves as a starting point, but many of the important features are already in place.	Critters Ain't Snitches SNITCHES GET STITCHES.
Your Market Stall Now you too can become a merchant and sell random items to random people in random towns and cities!	Alternate Conversation Camera Automatically switch to first person and third person view when talking. You can customize this with MCM to change FOV and zoom speed. It's basically like the Oblivion talk screen except the world is still moving.	Take Notes - Journal of the Dragonborn Take Notes! adds a new player journal (a SkyUI widget) to the game which lets you create, view and export your own journal entries.
Simply Knock Simply Knock is the first feature-complete mod that allows you to knock on locked doors of houses in Skyrim. If anyone is home, they will answer the door! You can then flex your speechcraft skills in order to get them to allow you inside. If someone inside is a friend, they will always permit you to enter.	Become a Bard Become a Bard lets you play all of the instrumental and voiced songs included with the game or choose from dozens of new songs. It also adds new radiant quests to expand the options for a bard in Skyrim.	Hunterborn A total hunting overhaul! This a very customizable mod that changes how hunting works and actually makes it worth your time. You can skin animals like in Far Cry 3 and you can even track your hunting stats like how much of a certain animal you killed or how many you've skinned. Honest work for honest gold.
The Paarthurnax Dilemma Give the blades the big ol' "FUCK YOU". You're their leader, they have to do what you say! This allows you to still do the Blades quest without killing grampa dragon mario. KROSIS.	Touring Carriages Adds carriages that ride around Skyrim. You can ride on them as well as watch NPCs ride them.	One With Nature - Dynamic Animals and Creatures One With Nature is a mod designed to give the player control over how certain animals and creatures react to their character without altering their original AI or faction relationships. When you open the MCM, you will find a list of dropdown menus for a variety of NPC groups. Each menu offers five reaction settings: Vanilla, Allied, Friendly, Cowardly, and Defensive. Depending on your play style, you can apply different reaction settings to different NPC groups.
Improved Camera (BETA) REJOICE, our time is upon us! For a while now there was a unofficial backport of Enhanced Camera for SE floating the pages on Reddit, but it was very buggy and updates were scarce, however a kind soul has taken upon him to update the mod and make it work as good as, if not better, than Enhanced Camera for LE. While the mod is still in BETA it works very well and the author says it'll be ready for mass release in about a month (written July 31st 2019)	Immersive First Person View comes bundled with .NET Script Framework, which is a really nice crash log report A SECOND option on the "look down to see tits" category, IFPV works kind of wonky at the moment, but its being maintained by the same person that is updating Improved Camera, so updates might be quite frequent apparently. Between this and Improved Camera is just personal taste at the moment, try both and decide. Not at the same time obviously. You're not dumb are you? Are you?	Joy of Perspective (don't use this, there're better alternatives available now, see Improved Camera and IFPV) So... uh... the author of Enhanced Camera said he won't release it for SE... He'll work on making JoP work... cuz it may work with Xbox too... BRUH, JUST RELEASE ENHANCED CAMERA.
Player Size Adjuster This mod allows you to change your height and camera height in MCM. So now you can switch from first to third person without any weird screen height differences anymore! You can also edit how much you grow when you transform into a vampire or werewolf AND how fast you move at your current size.	No more Radial Blur No Blur. Removes that awful blur and eye adaption effect that every Triple-A dev somehow thinks is good.	Khajiit Speak - Complete Dialogue Overhaul Recommended for any Khajiit players. This mod changes all the player dialogue options into khajiit speak. So instead of saying "I hate Nazeem", your character will say "This one dislikes the one called Nazeem".
Multiple Adoptions Want to have a family? Want to have a BIG Family? Well, here you go, you can now adopt more than 2 kids. What is this China? The Dovahkiin isn't bound by law, let them have many kids.	My Home is Your Home Hate having to find your friends back where they originally were? How about you tell them that they now live where you tell them to.	Improved Adoptions This mod brings life into your family as they actually do shit instead of sticking around the house like bums. Why remind ourselves of our Dad's feelings about us? Adds a spell that allows you to tell your kids to shut the hell up.

Nature and Weather

It's the small things that you admire in a vast game like this. Usually when you want to get immersed into something, you take it slowly and observe all the hidden elements it has to offer. Mods are no different.

Vivid Weathers Vivid Weathers is the biggest Weather and Visual Overhaul for Skyrim It overhauls all the Skyrim Weathers and imagespaces as well as add a whole bunch of new Weathers (500+) and effects (Snowstorms, blizzards, thick fog, distant fogs, distant rain, particle snowflakes...)	Dolomite Weathers NLVA II. Lightweight, simulates plant subsurface scattering.	Obsidian Weathers and Seasons Colab work from the dudes that made Rustic Weathers and NLVA. Lightweight as fuck, simulates Seasons with screen overlays, customizable using a power added to the game.
Wearable Lanterns Hate to use torches? Now you can equip a lantern on yourself like in the game Dragon's Dogma! The light actually emanates from the lantern, so you can use 2 handed weapons and ranged weapons and actually see what you're doing in the dark.	Point The Way Signs now show you where each hold is and what nearing towns are around the area.	Ducks and Swans for Skyrim Adds ducks and swans to lakes and ponds. They swim around and act like waterfowl, what do you expect?
More Village Animals You're on a farm, right? And you see 2 cows and 1 chicken. How the hell is that farm still running? This mod throws that question away and adds a decent amount of farm animals around Skyrim.	Wonders of Weather A new modpack which combines Splash of Rain, Rainbows, and Shooting Stars mods! Splash of rain adds more ambient rain noises and rain splashses, Rainbows adds rainbow,s and Shooting Stars add to the sky at night time. All of these mods are purely aesthetic and are here for your viewing and hearing pleasure!	True Storms Makes storms MUCH MUCH MUCH better. Instead of a light shower, you get heavy rainfall with tons of new thunder sound effects.
Smoking Torches and Candles Smoke comes out of torches now. You'd think this would be in the vanilla game and not a mod...

Animations

These are mods that make you and the inhabitants of Skyrim not move like robots all the time. Note: All of these mods require FNIS to work which you should have already installed into your game already. Many of these mods conflict with eachother since they are animation packs so please don't try to mix match animations of the same weapon with another. IE: Trying to mix

YY Anim Replacer - Zweihander with Enhanced Animation's two hander animations.

Dragon Animation Replace Now this is a bit different. This mod replaces several of the dragon animations so that they look less hunched over all the time.	Animations Adds animations for looting containers and corpses, harvesting plants, lockpicking doors and chests, opening doors, activating levers, drinking and eating potions and food and equipping armor. It's as simple as that!	No Spinning Death Animation Simply removes the spinning around dance animation that they do before death, they will now just ragdoll when killed. Works for normal deaths and dying from a high fall. It will not affect killmoves.
Dovahkiin Relaxes Too Now your character can interact with the environment around him and warm up by a fire, lean on fence, or sit off a ledge!	YY Anim Replacer - Mystic Knight This mod replaces one-handed sword and magic animations. Designed to fit a character with a sword in one hand, a magic in the other, such as Spellsword, Battle Mage or Mystic Knight, or pure Mage.	Pretty Combat Animations A collection of several different idle animations for weapons and magic. Some of them will look weird with other animations.
Pretty Female Idles SSE Adds a bunch of idle options for females.	Pretty Sit Idles Just like Pretty Combat Idles, this mod is a collection of animations that you can switch between. This mod just changes the default character sit idle. There's a bunch of strange ones you can choose from like crouched on a chair, leaning, and even this weird prayer float.	Immersive Animations Replaces old animations with new one's that look less robotic and better looking than the original animations. This also includes multiple options and fixes.
Blocking Animation Pack SSE Blocking animation replacer for two-handed, one-handed. Works both in first person and third person view.	Phalanx Stance As the title says, replaces the shield block animation to a Phalanx Stance.

Miscellaneous

Mods that don't fit into any of these previous sections. I honestly don't know where to put them, but here they are!

Pipe smoking SE LotR style longpipes with smoking animations	Farmhouse Chimneys This mod adds chimneys to farmhouses that have fireplaces inside. It includes smoke effects for the chimneys, and snow shaders where applicable.	Ashlander Camp New Zainab New Zainab is a reconstruction of the remote Ashlander camps found in the wastelands of Morrowind. New Zainab is located in Eastmarch, south of Windhelm, in the marshy areas found there. Much care has been taken to recreate the feeling and atmosphere of the Ashlander camps from Morrowind.
Camp Argentum Well detailed Imperial Camp set in Whiterun Hold.	Camp Varglya Well detailed Stormcloak camp set in Whiterun Hold.	Immersive Movement Movement speed has been configured to a much more fluid and realistic rate. No more walking like a turtle! No more jogging like a gazelle! No more sprinting like an olympic sprinter! No more skating when sneak running!
Ophelia Accessories This mod contains several wreaths for vanilla/default races (for females and males) and for all replacers. In all, there are 22 decorations for different hair types.	Amulets of Skyrim This mod adds over 230 new amulets (and a few rings) to Skyrim and gives these amulets to some named NPCs. Most of amulets are placed at several locations and some amulets are sold by Amulet merchant who is in the Ragged Flagon. Ulfric Stormcloak and General Tullius have their own unique amulet.	Skaal Kid Aeta Coat Amongst the Skaal is a single token child, a girl named Aeta. You may have noticed her by the fact that she is conspicuously gabred in generic kid clothes while everyone else has skaal parkas. Not only is this kinda jarring, it is also a bit immersion-breaking because it's FREAKIN' COLD in the Skaal Village and the generic girl outfit is not very warm-looking. This mod rectifies this by introducing a kid-sized Skaal parka for her to wear.
PC Head Tracking and Voice Type note, has been a while since I've personally used this mod, might be better now, check mod page and see if there are any bug reports before downloading WARNING, BUGGY AS FUCK, MAY CRASH AND BURN YOUR GAME. Only "detection type: Crosshair" or it WILL crash your game.	Book Covers Skyrim Tired of every book looking the same? Book Covers Skyrim replaces almost every book and gives them custom textures so you want have to read the same imperial symbol book ever again!	Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library Also check out Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library which adds even more books from previous games with their own custom textures!
Unlimited Bookshelves With the updated bookshelf script written by da5id2701, now up to 128 books or other objects can be stored on any bookshelves using the vanilla bookshelf activator, allowing for much more storage of books in library rooms or various other displays.	Dead Body Collision Fix Makes dead bodies collide with objects and each other, allowing you to finally stand on top of that dragon corpse. It isn't actually unstable, but if you stand on a body, you are at risk for the thing flipping out and killing you from collision damage.	No Essential Npcs Allows you to kill all npcs that aren't quest protected.
Unique Region Names Ever wonder why everytime you leave a dungeon or cave it says "To Skyrim"? I mean where else would you be? This mod changes these messages to the appropriate names of the region you are in to sooth your autism.	Even Better Quest Objectives This mod reworks dialogue for quest objectives, making them far more descriptive. Mainly for those who don't want to use quest markers.	Animated Dwemer Lift Load Doors Instead of just being sent to a loading screen when pulling on a dwemer lift lever, a small animation starts and now the lift actually moves and goes down. It doesn't actually work like a real lift, but it gives the player the impression that the lift is actually doing something.
Animated clutter This mod adds opening/closing and idle animations to several objects that should have had them in the first place like bags and secret hatches.	Royal Armory Isn’t it strange that all the important characters in Skyrim like Ulfric Stormcloak and general Tullius walk around with common steel weapons? Meanwhile in Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings every noble and their daughters seem to be carrying a sword with a name. Wouldn’t the Imperial General of Skyrim carry his own personal sword? Wouldn’t the most influential Jarls of the land have a weapon that fits to their station?	Animated Armoury ANIMATED SPEARS AND RAPIERS YO! And without replacing any vanilla animations too! Pure fucking wizardry.

FAQ

Q: Why isn't this or that mod in the guide?

A: Some mods haven't been officially ported to Special Edition yet, if a mod you like isn't listed, try converting it yourself.

Q: Why isn't Cliamtes of Tamriel in this guide?

A: Beccause there are mods way better than Climates.

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!