Hanging out by the pier.

Hanging out by the pier.

Cat

Cat

One of these is not like the other

One of these is not like the other

Hanging out by the pier.

Hanging out by the pier.

1/40

Creatures, NPCs and Players

updated August 23rd, 2021

Ahhhh NPCs, those innocent beings that we all love to slaughter. Unfortunately, there's not much variety to them due to the dreaded excuse of "engine limitations". Note that this section can be somewhat lackluster at times. Skyrim ̶h̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶d̶s̶ (when was this line written? 2012?), so we advise you to pick and choose whichever of these mods sound good to you!

In this section, we will discuss:

-Enemies and Monsters

-Followers

-Random NPCs

-NPC Appearance Makeover

Snakestone's Monster Guide

Skyrim lacks in the creature department, it can get very repetitive killing wolves and trolls for hours on end. This guide makes a list of all the, in my opinion, decent monster mods. From the big ones like SIC to a bunch of Mihail mods and even some monster mods that are not listed on the site! I hope you find this guide useful.

Enemies and Monsters

Okay, so it's been almost 7 years, and there is STILL no big enemy overhaul mods that are actually good. So to remedy this, here are a list of some smaller ones.

4thunkown High Quality monster mods. (Note: You MUST download soupdragon1234 V2 fix for Kwama Creatures.)	Mihail Mods While he STILL hasn't made a monster compilation mod, Mihail has up to 8 PAGES of mods on the Nexus. The level of quality also varies severely from mod to mod.	Skaven of Skyrim SE (Warhammer Fantasy) Is this even lore friendly? Probably not!
The Blood Horker (Bloodmoon Creature Restoration Project) This mod adds the Blood Horker from Bloodmoon to Solstheim. It replaces all horkers on Solstheim and Horker Island with a unique skin and look.	Gehenoth The mod adds the monster called Gehenoth from TES Travels: Dawnstar to the gameworld of Skyrim.	Grahl - The Ice Troll This mod restores the deadly Grahl to the island of Solstheim. Grahls were an important enemy in the Morrowind: Bloodmoon DLC, but for some reason they weren't included in Dragonborn. Until now.
Diverse Dragons Collection 2.0 This mod strives to create a dragon mod like no other seen before, drawing resources from 11 different mod authors and utilizing MCM scripts to create unmatched flexibility.	High Level Enemies Adds 874 new enemies starting at level 10 to Skyrim. This is a decent mod to get if your planning to play at a really high level and you don't feel like turning on Legendary difficulty on. These enemies are mostly just re-names, but some have varying stats and perks to make each a little bit different. There are several different optional ESPs for DLC, level scaling, and hardcore difficulty if you always want the game to be difficult even with the best weapons and armor in the game.	Immersive Patrols This mod adds some new NPC encounters to the game. They come in a wider variety such as roaming Imperial or Stormcloak soldiers, Thalmor agents, random travelers, and if you have the Dawnguard DLC you can get Dawnguard and Vampire patrols. Each group roams all across Skyrim and will attack enemies and anything that tries to harm them. It makes the roads a lot less empty now.
Dwemer Spectres Adds in the ghostly dwemer you remember from Morrowind, in several varieties, as well as several boss versions. Conflicts with Immersive Creatures since IC integrated this mod, however IC's spectre bosses are pussies and if you want an actual challenge you should use this version.	Cliff Racers - Solstheim Adds Cliff Racers to Solstheim.	Flying Crows SSE Adds flying crows to various locations around Tamriel to create a more nordic atmosphere in your Skyrim.
Seagulls of Skyrim The REAL SoS.	Beast Skeletons Revised (Bitter Edition) This is a rework of Beast Skeletons that includes some fixes and improvements

Followers

Followers are awesome, simple as that. They can range from adventurous sellswords you meet along your journey, or friends you make and travel together on amazing quests! /tesg/ followers are great because instead of having some random guy following you around, you have a little piece of /tesg/ sprinkled into your game. A person that you meet in the threads and want to adventure with and take great screenshots with. DON'T USE UFO. IT'S NOT OLD AS SHIT ANYMORE, BUT IT'S LOADED WITH BUGS.

Also, here are some unique followers.

Brhuce Hammar Legacy - Special Edition Trains or something.	Lucien - Immersive Fully Voiced Male Fol Lucien is a fully voiced Imperial follower with over 5000 lines of immersive, lore-friendly dialogue. Though he arrives in Skyrim as a cowardly scholar, he'll gradually gain strength and confidence by your side until he grows into a hero in his own right.	Bears Mounts and Followers SE Expands the Dovahbear meme to make him a follower AND a mount, ride the meme into the horizon!
Dwarven Luggage A true pack mule mod. Dwarven Luggage adds dwarven spider chest that follows you around and helps hold a near limitless amount of weight within its interdimensional space. The Dwarven Luggage has a summon spell which allows you to call it to you along with all the gear you stashed on it, never loose your important gear again!	Inigo Inigo is a custom follower with his own voice, his own quest, and his own AI and stats. He's a very interesting follower who is well worth a try. Unlike other followers with voices, his DOESN'T sound awful.	Slave Pack Riekling Porter This mod adds a little funny Riekling Porter with an oversized Backpack ready to carry your weights after you do him a little favor...

Nethers Follower Framework Looking for a multi-follower framework that is easy on game resources and gives you the choice between animal or humanoid companions, with as little as one or as many as 10 at a time? How about a system that also provides a wealth of interesting features, both immersive and quality-of-life, to allow you to tailor the framework to your own style of gameplay? Look no further, Nether's Follower Framework is that and more!	Extensible Follower Framework This IS the best follower overhaul to date. UFO is broken as hell since it hasen't been updated for quite some time, and AFT has less options than EFF. This mod allows you to further customize your followers traits. You can change where they live, how they fight, what they wear, and how they follow you! The follow cap is also set to infinite so you can actually make a real army of followers!	Relationship Dialogue Overhaul An updated version of DFD. It's like FCO except a lot less buggy. Adds over 5,000 lines of completely voiced dialogue for NPCs to use, with the main focus on friends, followers, and spouses. These lines are completely voiced and consist of existing lines that have been re-added in a new instance as well as new and completely unique dialogue I've created from splicing/editing parts of multiple dialogue lines together to form new ones that you will only hear from using this mod.
Convenient Horses Adds a little quest where you learn how to ride and command your horse, adds leveling for your horse, talking and on horseback, follower horses.

Random NPCs

It truly is hard to create NPCs that actually sound good, look good, and are actually interesting and useful in the game. These are the most popular and biggest NPC mods out there. They're pretty good but be warned, you're not gonna get quality professional voice acting from these mods. Even if this is a Bethesda game...

Interesting NPCs

Adds tons of very detailed, well written, and well-rounded NPCs into the game, along with several quests to go with them. However, every single kid it adds is an absolute shithead. We added the warning emblem and lore-breaking emblem because this mod will test your mental stability and give you an extreme strong desire to murder children. That aside, a good fourth of the NPCs are really good. They have interesting personalities, unique scripts, and voices that fit and don't have mic static. The other three fourths of the mod is awful. Just listen to them, here we have 2 examples of some decent to good voices.

And here are some really bad ones. Note that THIS quality will be present in most of the other NPCs.

Cutting Room Floor

This mod restores a few NPCs with some removed dialogue, small quests, and some buildings that were unused in Skyrim. The reason why they weren't added was probably because Bethesda ran out of time... or were lazy as usual.

DIVERSITY

It adds over one hundred new NPC:s with unique appearences to the Vanilla levelled lists for added racial diversity while staying lore friendly. Stats, levels, items, abilities, spawning, etc is entirely handled by Vanilla mechanisms, which ensures great compatibility with mods that for example tweak combat stats, or add and change clothing and weapons.

inconsequential npcs.jpg

Inconsequential NPCs

NPCs who don't care who you are!

Citizens of Tamriel SE.jpeg

Citizens of Tamriel

Really well written NPCs around the world. Works well with 3DNPCs too!

NPC Appearance Makeovers

It truly is hard to look at the ugly npcs in the game, well these mods hopefully correct those ugly npcs by making them look good, interesting and unique looking. These are the most popular and biggest NPC appearance makeovers out there. They're pretty good.

Beards of Power - Sons of Skyrim - Male npc replacer A spice of life mod for male npcs	Simple Children A simple overhaul for children, giving them unique faces, new skin, a wider variety of hair, and unique eye colors.	Kalilies NPCs Changes the appearance of 72 female NPCs. Standalone. Meant to be used alongside Bijin and Pandorable overhauls.
Pride of Skyrim A complete overhaul of over 300 different male NPCs. Some good and some... questionable. But regardless it's probably the biggest and, for the most part, best male overhaul mod we've seen.	True Meeko SE A lot of options to change the best doggo in gaming.	RS Children Makes the children in Skyrim not look like potatoes!
The Kids Are Alright SE TKAA is different from RS Children in that it adds children of other races to the game, and even bandit kids, adding a lot more diversity to the game.	WICO - Windsong Immersive Chracter Overhaul Way better than WSCO. Covers more, better textures, etc. Makes many male characters look amazing like my main man Tullius. Disclaimer: needs a cleanup script	Total Character Makeover If you dislike the huge incompatibility of WICO, this mod changes the characters faces slightly, but still keeps that vanilla feel.
Bijin NPCs This mod will change the appearances of Vex, Sapphire, Irileth, Rikke, Hulda, Lisette, Carlotta, Karliah, Tonilia, Adrianne, Maven, Ingun, Gerdur and Idgrod the younger.	Bijin Wives This mod will change the appearances of marriable characters(Camilla, Ysolda, Sylgja, Temba, Taarie, Muiri, Senna, Grelka and Morwen).	Bijin Warmaidens This Mod changes the appearances of Lydia, Jordis, Iona, Aela, Mjoll, Uthgerd, Ria, Frea, Rayya, Njada, Annekke, Adelaisa, Jenassa, Illia, Delphine, Ingjard, Aranea, Eola, Borgakh, Brelyna, Beleval and Ugor.
Seranaholic This Mod changes the appearance of Serana and her mother Valerica. P̶S̶S̶T̶,̶ ̶1̶.̶7̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ Fuck no, 1.5 is the best.	Toccata as Elisif Really, it's a follower but he provides an optional esp that uses his follower's appearance for Elisif. Which makes Elisif my Queenfu.	Pandorable's NPCs Another good replacer for many named females in the game, also has a Dawnguard optional download.
The Ordinary Women This mod changes the appearances of 60 NPCs, mostly forgotten ones and ones already done by Bijin. Put this in and then Load Bijin after if you want the best results in my opinion.	All Housecarl Replacer This replaces the Housecarls appearances but it changes the men housecarls with female counterparts. So honestly, you'd only use it to replace the male housecarls with women.

FAQ

Q: Where the hell did the community followers go?

A: All Legendary Edition followers need to be converted to Special Edition manually, look for a tutorial on how to convert followers if you really want to do it.

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 aren't there any good monster overhauls already? It's been almost... 8 years!

A:W̶e̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶.̶ ̶S̶k̶y̶r̶i̶m̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶O̶b̶l̶i̶v̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶M̶o̶r̶r̶o̶w̶i̶n̶d̶.̶ ̶ ̶B̶o̶t̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶w̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶e̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶m̶o̶d̶d̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶M̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶h̶a̶u̶l̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶3̶-̶4̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶!̶ ̶Q̶u̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶t̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶p̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶i̶e̶n̶t̶.̶ ̶W̶e̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶h̶a̶u̶l̶ ̶m̶o̶d̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶"̶F̶r̶a̶n̶c̶e̶s̶c̶o̶’̶s̶ ̶L̶e̶v̶e̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶C̶r̶e̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶I̶t̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶m̶o̶d̶"̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶"̶M̶a̶r̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶M̶o̶d̶"̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶s̶o̶o̶n̶!̶̶
Uhhh well....shit. Guess people don't care anymore? Everyone pretty much moved on to modding Fallout 4. Mihail still releases monsters almost daily now, but still hasn't made a compilation of his monsters.

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!