I run about 60 or so mods now but I definately feel Skyrim is the most playable straight out of the box between it , Oblivion and Morrowind. So, yes I enjoy the unmodded game.

I know the question is written basically for pc users and I play on the 360, but I can tell you which mod's I would like/use if I was a pc player.

The Sound's of Skyrim. I watched that vid and I know I would have downloaded that mod.
Probably a character creation mod... I love a beautiful pair of eye's in RL and would want non-squishy eye's for my char's and better noses!.
The one that let's you build your own house/ put a house were you want it.... for my hunter or ranger characters.
Clothing/armor... again a good outfit for a ranger type char. I've seen some clothes that would work, IF they had an armor rating.
and perhap's something for better textures...

Now that is seeing what other ppl's screenshot's look like and I pretty much know what I like and some of the thing's I've seen, while pretty aren't something I would do.

I have no problem's with my xbox. When I need to replace my laptop I will get a pc that will play the games I want to play with mod's. That BTW won't be til next year unless this one becomes un-useable. I can afford to do it now, just don't need to and I wouldn't still be playing Skyrim if It wasn't great vanilla.

Actually, I really did.
Most of my mods are just for fun (armor, loading screens, posing, minor cosmetics, etc.), I don't have a problem with the vanilla game other than some bugs: the interface is all right, and I'm not really interested in texture overhauls and ENB settings since my game can't even run medium graphics.
To put it, I love mods, they can make my gaming experience more fun, but I have them just because I can, not because I think I need to.

Why is the title of the thread a question?

The OP is clearly just geared towards people who didn't enjoy Vanilla Skyrim.

So basicly you'd want just extra and cosmetic features. Nothing wrong with that. I recommend the Sounds of Skyrim mod too to add extra immersion. It has Wilds and Dungeons versions available.

Nice set of mods there, definitely checking them out. Wars in Skyrim is 100% a required mod for me, found Skyrim to be way too bare and boring once out of the cities. Bumping in to only a couple of mobs when walking to a dungeon svcked, now I cant go 20 steps without seeing something and that something is normally always a challenge.

I'm sort of like you (OP) - I am in my first playthrough of skyrim and the only mods I've installed are mods that improve the UI. I have zero mods that add to, alter, or remove vanilla gameplay. Except for the UI, I want to first experience Skyrim the way the devs intended before I tweak it with gameplay affecting mods.

Lol its funny this is here. I just wrote about this on another topic. I'll post my answer here too.

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Not to sound like a bragger or advertising my own stuff, but I actually can't live without my own created mods.

I really like the realism feel of the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348038-relz-open-face-guard-helms/ mod I made. I made that one on a whim, and had no idea how it'd "come out" so to speak. I was pleasantly surprised at how much personality it added to the guards.
They always surprise me, and manage to look unique despite the overlaps here and there.

I will probably try to preserve the original artist's vision and make some of them with the closed mouth piece...actually I think I'll do that in a few minutes.

I also really like how http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12506came out. It really makes encounters vs bandits and draugrs pretty exciting, and its interesting to see the "Nord feel" enhanced in the game. But I still feel like I can do a bit better, hopefully I can improve this mod in time.

As for other mods, I really like Borgut's work with http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5485, that mod has definitely made the game enjoyable for me. I didn't like that I could swing at enemies and they'd never react in vanilla Skyrim, especially after coming to Skyrim off of Dark Souls. It was just too much. This mod has helped in that department tremendously.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5253 are another one I can't live without. The real world is not gray! I have no idea what Beth was thinking when they put a gray filter over everything @_@. Even previews of the game had more color than it currently does. I understand they were trying to make the world feel "colder", but honestly, in colder climate areas there's a lot of color too. The world isn't gray no matter where you go...unless its covered in ash >_>

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8601 is another great one. Awesome mod. I wish some sounds in it were less frequent...but somehow I feel it might be a bug in my game. Cliffworms always does great work though.

I want to love http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1269 so badly, but its so confusing for me (and I'm a modder @_@). I probably just svck though. I still pop it in my load order no matter what anyway.


Those are the main absolute necessities I can think of right now.

I agree that there isn't enough activity on the roads / outside cities, but at least I don't want just more battles. I'm waiting for a mod to add more different kinds of random encounters.

I have to agree on that.
I had loads of random NPC encounters on some of my characters, but barely anything on others. I get really bored on the road without some crazy mages, bandits chasing a rabbit, thieves or just people passing through.
People, people, I want them! There's never enough people. I know Skyrim is a dangerous place to travel around, but it would be pleasant to see NPCs just exploring around, out of the walls.

I played the Vanilla for about 100 hrs before i started modding and enjoyed it a lot. Honestly, I don't really notice a lot of the bugs and inconveniences people are so upset about until I read about them here on the forum, so I should probably stay away.

The game has become more enjoyable after I added some mods, though, primarily visually.

Unmodded Skyrim is IMHO a huge step above unmodded Oblivion. Much more enjoyable. Modded Skyrim is much more enjoyable still .

I couldn't play the game at all as it was delivered to me. Not because I had built my expectations up too high because of hype or hopes but because it made me physically ill. The bobbing camera, narrow field of view and flashing shadows gave me a series of migraines. I had to have someone else play the beginning of the game for me to get me through the sickening cart ride and the part that came right after that.

Editing my ini for the FOV and shadows helped somewhat but it my game was still utterly unplayable until Plynxs came out with http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1450. He worked a miracle for me and I am forever grateful.

Between Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, I would say Skyrim is the game that needs mods the least. I couldn't play morrowind or Oblivion in vanilla state.

Hi all,

for me vanilla Skyrim was a disappointment because of all the hype preceding it. After calming down I rated it 7 out of 10 in a forum poll.
I started adding mods immediately, partly because of earlier experience with Bethesda games. I have played for more than 1000 hrs by now and the game still surprises me in a positive way now and then. I got used to the negatives and confidently expect that modders will make an epic game out of a fairly good one.

Rgds, Haldir

I had no idea this game caused nausea to some people. I've heard of other games with very narrow field of views and strong contrasts between colors / flickering causing nausea.

This is the only game that has ever had that effect on me. There were quite a few people posting here and on other forums in search of help. Some people were able to get relief by increasing the FOV or switching to third person but I tried everything from sitting way back from the screen to taking Dramamine before playing and nothing worked until I found the mod to remove the head bobbing.

Amen to that. I had to download a mod just to be able to play it at all, as I'm a keypad-mouse user, not a WASD type (can't use that at all, never could). Imagine my disappointment as I went to play this cool-looking new game, and couldn't even adjust the keyboard controls to make it playable. I gave up on it in disgust, but a couple of days later I was surfing the forums here and found a mod that allows you to remap any of the keys, without the !@#$#@$# lockout of the keypad that comes by default. If anybody else needs it, here it is: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=88

I don't agree with all of the OP's choices or preferences either, although some of them are cool- and I really like the tip on the FOV, didn't even realize how limited your view is, until I changed that. Thanks man! A lot of the mods I use are minor user-preference things that make my personal experience better, but are not necessarily what I'd consider a good choice for everybody on a PC

But some random mods I quite enjoy- Quieter Whiterun Kids. It's a sanity mod. After the 974th time I got insulted with an obnoxious "I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! EVEN IF YOU ARE MY ELDER!", it was either this mod, or the one that lets you slaughter the little out of control rugrats- but I went the non-violent route. Kept the guards more friendly, too.

Also really like Lockpick Pro- again, after the 9740th lock picked, be they hard or easy, after hundreds of hours doing it, it just gets O L D. That's 'old', as in extremely tiresome and boring and tedious and all that. This mod prevents the necessary lockpicking chore from wasting so much of your time that you could be using to do things that are actually fun. After all, once you are a grand master at it anyway, all locks should be quick and painless to pop. This is the dark ages, not an industrial civilization with advanced locksmithing science. But, if you enjoy eternally tedious little minigames like this, then this mod is not for you.

NoAutoAim - after I realized that many of my obvious arrow misses were still actually HITTING the target, I had to go download this mod. Archery is easy enough already, without the horrid auto-aiming crutch.

Realistic Ragdolls and Force - seeing an arrow or magic attack hit somebody and knock them 50 feet back as if it were a cannon ball strike, or making them slide across rocks and dirt for 50 feet as if it were greased slug slime, was completely idiotic and broke the immersion for me. This mod allows you to make ragdoll actions behave, and obey the laws of gravity and physics.

Unread Books Glow - not being one to keep a spreadsheet of skillbooks handy to refer to every time one of my multiple characters enounters a random book or bookcase, nor being desirous of having to pick through stacks of books one at a time, picking up and 'reading' each one in order to see if it's useful or not... this mod lets you instantly see when there is a book in the room that you can use to raise a skill. You can set it to either of two modes- all unread books glow, or just unread skillbooks glow. And you can set the glow to be soft and unobtrusive, or eye-grabbing. With my eyes, I chose the latter. After a glowing, unread book is read once, it never glows again, even other copies in other locations. I paid my dues, I picked up and checked out (and actually read) every last book in the game just about (and there are an AWFUL LOT of the things), my first run through. Now, like lockpicking, that activity fits into the O L D category. In all repetetive and not-particularly-exciting ingame endeavors like this, there comes a point where immersion is overtaken by tedium. This is one of those.

Hmm...The kids alone have never bothered me. It has been all the NPCs thanks to the too long greeting distance. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=746 mod fixed it for me. Do you have it installed?

I had forgotten about that one. I've to try it even though I don't use crosshair. I don't like auto-aiming when playing with a mouse.

This bothers me too, but not as much as it did in Oblivion. In Oblivion the too low moon gravity made me install the mod.

I played and beat it un-modded, an excellent game on it's own. Though I DO hate the fact that the nerf-squad will be dictating how the rest of us should be playing our games!

I occasionally get annoyed by an NPC butting into a conversation, but it's a rare thing. My home is in Whiterun, and every freakin time I come home or leave the house, I gotta hear the bratty kids saying stuff that by all rights should guarantee they'll never reach puberty alive. Over and over. I don't want to only hear it when they get close... I don't want to hear it at all, ever again. Hence the mod I use. Annoying little ****'s.

I got tons of mods, mostly for better looking or customization purposes.

1) better and younger looks on everyone - That's the first most annoying issue on the first 5 mins of game play. Extremely unsatisfied during the first character creation! Why the hack is all the faces look so damn old? Took me ages to finally start playing.

2) tons of armor mod - That's the 2nd most annoying issue, most armor looks bad, well, already better designs compare to Oblivion, but still quite unsatisfied. Especially why most better looking light armor got no pants?

3) tons of weapon mod - especially 2 handed sword and katana, without these mod, really can't find a suitable blade to use... Hate the little horns on the skyforge steel great sword...

4) faster greatsword swing speed - really can't tell the differences between greatsword and battleaxe in vanilla, until i found a mod to fix....

Played about 150ish hours before starting modding. Great game without mods, even better with mods when I change stuff like sneaking actually being tricky and not possible to abuse the trick that NPC's goes back to idle after 15 seconds. Better AI for creatures and NPC's. Have 68 mods running atm a lot of them graphic ones, but also mods that removes hud, increases difficulty, changes combat slightly and in general add new lore friendly armor and weapons to the game. Also some immersion mods like Sounds of Skyrim etc.

Skyrim ain't a bad game in vanilla shape a lot better then Oblivion. But there is some really nice mods out there that will make the experience even better.

This is quite true, Oblivion specially had a horrible level system where creatures and bandits always scaled with you. Always felt a bit wrong when a bandit fully decked in Ebony or Daedric stopped me wanting 100g because he was poor...

About 15 minutes of playing I had to change the fov. I couldn't see anything with the default except my characters arms. Luckily the console command was the same as previous games. I also like the moons to be huge and ominous in Elder Scrolls games so I made them bigger using a blank .esp and a FalloutNV snip editor converted for Skyrim to do that. At the same time I also changed the jump height since I didn't like being stuck on little rocks. I didn't care for how the map was set up either. First I found some tweaks to get rid of the clouds and increase the zoom so I could find passes in the more rugged areas. The user interface was also bad. I had to wait for SKYUI to come along to fix that.

Other than what I consider fixes I really don't have too many mods. A more detailed sky mod. Some body mods for "realism". Nords were afraid of witches but they weren't naked. I have a multiple follower mod, some armor mods, a female werewolf mesh (sfw style), and a vampire overhaul so I can infect the world.