Ok, so I'm not a modder, but I'm a big fan of them and the work they do for the rest of us Skyrimnatics. I have several mods installed, most of them pre-CK. I understand the increased options the CK brought for the modding community has sparked a lot of the mod authors to redesign their pre-CK mods, and it's just a waiting game to get the most recent, and supposedly better, mod.

However, as a person with rather limited computer skills and understanding of mods, it's difficult for me to determine which mods are "the best". A lot of them appears to do the same, as they replace the same files, thus overwriting each other. A good example is the http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2146 and the http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=607 (both available on Skyrimnexus). In addition to those, which I understand replaces all textures with higher resolution textures, there are multiple others that do the same for trees, ice, plants, wood, etc., etc. It would be logic to assume that those smaller mods targeted on one or two specific textures, e.g. trees, would be more detailed than the trees you'd get from a large texture replacement pack such as the two mentioned above, but I just don't have the knowledge to determine if that's the case. They all make my game look a lot better, but I don't want to be playing the game with the feeling of "what if it could look even better?!" I know, I know, if I can't tell the difference, what does it matter!? For the sake of argument, let's just say it does =)

If anyone could bring some simple explanations or examples to the table, that would be super sweet. And it would be even sweeter yet if someone could link to some of the best mods currently available. Right now I'm only picking the mods with the most endorsemants, but I know that a lot of those endorsemants come from people like me who just like what it does, not necessarily because it's the best mod for that specific enhancement. I'm specifically interested in mods that enhance the look of everything in the game, such as those mentioned. I already have those, and also the official Beth one.

One last question is in regards to where to obtain the mods. I've used Skyrimnexus so far, but now mods are also available on Steam. Can anyone from the mod community give me an idea of where most new mods would be uploaded? What do you guys prefer? Unfortunately I don't have the time available to search through two databases, and I prefer what little precious time I have to play Skyrim on actually playing the game.

Thanks so much guys, you're great!

I use Insanity's Mountain Replacer on top of Vurt's Floral Overhaul on top of Serious HD on top of Skyrim HD. So I install Skyrim HD -> Serious HD -> Vurt's Floral -> Insanity's Mount. Rep.

You can get all but insanity's on Skyrim nexus. Get Insanity's Mount. Rep. from tes alliance.
Insanity's mountains >>> All others.
Get his cave textures as well. They are way better than vanilla. Install it last.

A word of advice - what is best is subjective. I've seen a number of mods that, in my opinion, make the game uglier, but some of those have many, many downloads.

So there's a bit of "judge for yourself" that'll have to happen for you to get your game to its prettiest.

Yeah, I played around with some of the texture mods yesterday, and while they arguably provide higher resolution, shinier ice, brighter sun, etc., etc., I'm not sure it's "better". It almost made the world look unrealistically bright and shiny and polished. It's Skyrim after all, and I did appreciate the more dark and colder feel the Vanilla version has. It has to be rugged and give you a feel of wilderness rather than a shiny theme park.

I think I'm back to deleting a few of the latest ones. That's what makes it so hard to pick the right ones I guess.

Any other awesome mods for adding non-game changing content?

you might take a look at this http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11

Its quite a long list, but a good way to get some ideas and some excellent tips.

I must confess that now that I have found out about mods I love them.

However at the moment I have mainly just been putting in player houses. I am quite happy with how the game looks so I have not been too bothered about changing that (however I will not dismiss it in case I see something that changes my mind)

Are you using NMM? I am, and it's great, but it only lets me change the load order of mods that it for some (unknown) reason treats as plugins. The remaining mods I think must be sorted in order manually, i.e. the way you describe it, as each mod will overwrite whatever is in that current file/folder. It would be extremely helpful if you could sort the load order of ALL mods, that way ensuring that your basic texture enhancement mods comes first and then add on all the individual ones for trees, plants, ice, water etc., etc. I'm assuming that the game refers to that load order list and applies the mods accordingly (I don't know jack about this, I'm just applying logic)?

Any clarifications would be welcome!


I do have my eye on that one, I just need to take the time to sit down and go through all of it, and it's taking away from gametime =/.

There's a few mod projects that just seem to have gotten too big for their breeches out there, the "Ultimate" mod being an excellent example. It started out as a good idea, and now you can basically fight 8 headed dragon-gods wielding 2 greatswords while spewing fireballs out your [censored]. What I want in a mod is to keep it Skyrim, the way it was intended, but make some minor enhancements.

I don't use NMM. Those mods I mentioned are replacers. That means they are copied into the proper file location and they automatically replace the textures there is no esp. I installed all those mods manually. All you have to do is copy the texture folder included in the download into your data folder and merge it with the texture folder already in the data folder. If you do it in the order that I listed some files will overwrite others. That's why it's important to install them in the order I said. For example, skyrim hd has mountain textures, but I don't like them as much as infinity's. So I copy infinities last so it overwrites the ones in skyrim hd while leaving all the other textures in skyrim hd intact.

All the vanilla textures are in the bsa files, so don't worry about overwriting those.
Hope that made sense, lol.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1840 will allow you to do this : )

Hah, yeah thanks, it makes sense, but I'm trying to avoid manual installation. I did that with Oblivion and had to reinstall the whole game cause some mod crashed it. I do want a mod manager, and Nexus' was the obvious choice at the time.


I tried that when I was still playing Oblivion, but found it too complicated and went with OBMM instead. NMM is real easy too, and they are expanding and updating it, so I'm hopeful that it'll be added eventually =).

Edit: Hm, looking at it again it doesn't look too complicated, and it does seem to have more structure.

You need to use Wyre Bash. NMM can' t merge leveled lists. Leveled lists control what items show up in the game. Say someone adds a sword to a merchant leveled list. (Most mods that add items to merchants do that.)
Then another mod adds another item to the same leveled list. Whichever mod loads last will be the one that shows up in game. Both items won't be available to you... unless you use wyre bash to merge leveled lists into the Bashed Patch.

It's not just merchants either. Enemy drops, enemy spell, heck which enemy shows up where- all controlled by leveled lists to some degree.

A note on nomenclature:

1. The order in which mods are installed decide which mods' resources are used. Therefore it is install order which matters when dealing with loose-file replacers (loose-file = resources are not in a BSA).

2. The order in which plugins are loaded decide which plugins' changes to the game's data get used. Therefore it is load order which matters when dealing with game data changes.

Load order and install order are not the same thing, and you shouldn't confuse them. Load order is for plugins (.esm, .esp) that are part of mods that aren't pure resource replacers and install order is for the mod packages you download and install. You also get (or were supposed to) get load order for BSAs, but that's a bit more complicated and broken ATM...

You install mods in the reverse of the order that you want their resources to be used (so the last installed texture pack will overwrite any other texture packs changing the same textures), and then you set plugin load order so that the last loaded plugin's changes overwrite any other plugins that change the same thing (so if you have two mods that change the weight of a sword, the last loaded will be applied).

It's more complicated than that, in practice, but that's the basics.

I've only been into all this Skyrim and mods business sinse Christmas, I found whry bash a bit confusing in the beginning but now I don't understand why everyone doesn't use it : )

The only thing it doesn't do, not that I can see anyway is keep track of updates on nexus but then I just have NMM set to download to Wrye bash 'Bash Installers' folder, that way I load up NMM, see what's been updated and then download them, change windows to Wrye Bash and install them and then for the odd package that isn't Wrye Bash friendly I make them so with BAIN Tools.

I've even over the last few days learnt about SVN and Python and Visual studio and built my own packages for Wrye Bash and BOSS... I'm quite chuffed with myself : )