Dear mod community,

I recently decided to play Skyrim again, when I left 5 months ago there were barely any mods for this game. However I see that in the meanwhile some interesting mods have been released which I would like to use.

Now heres the thing, because of my absence its hard for me to keep up with all the tools and compatibility issues etc, I also lack time so I figured I would install 4 to 5 mods to enhance the experience a bit. The gripe is I need mods which are easy to use and manage together, I found myself spending too much time managing mods back in the days of Oblivion without actually playing the game, so Im looking for something a little easier to control without tools atm. If thats possible!

Can I use the following mods safely together without Issues and/or 3rd party tools?

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17802

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3863

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9694 with http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/18997

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3829

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/14152

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9494

That would be it, unless you guys have some must have mod suggestions that is. I simply lack the time to be comfortable with Wyre and the likes again after my long break from TES. I was pretty good with tools back in the days of Oblivion, but that time has faded So please help out a returning mod user, I would really appreciate it!!

PS: Would you guys recommend the workshop? Seems pretty easy to manage.

Steam workshop is convienient for any casual mod user, but doesn't do sorting or proper conflict resolution and automatically updates mods with or without consent.

NMM is a step up, if there are any conflicts you can install them in order so the last one installed takes precedence. You have to manually choose to update mods, but you avoid the cases where a mod update introduces sudden conflicts.

WryeBash is the ultimate for sorting mod orders and making sure the right mods are always last on your load list and the right textures are overwritten by the right mods. Practically required for STEP. Additionally its Bashed Patches helps resolve any conflicts with levelled lists. It is however not newbie friendly at all, so will take time and effort to learn how to use properly. It also doesn't automatically check for new versions of mods. Users often use NMM together with WryeBash for that.


Looking at your list of mods though, steam workshop should be fine. Not too much conflicting there, the mods all generally touch different things. Once you get to the stage of wanting Skyrim HD together with static mesh improvements with the dozens of texture and mesh mods all with a specific order of which should overwrite what, THEN you need WryeBash. In general though, after using WryeBash I pretty much avoid Steam Workshop.

Warzones, Monster Mod and Monster Wars - Make sure that your system can handle all those added spawns! Check the Nexus comments, particularly for Monster Wars....seems many people are having stability issues with it at the moment.

Thanks guys for the kind comments. If I had the time I would learn to use Wrye again and invest a great deal of time into it to make the game stable with lots of mods. For now I am looking for some setups that are far more easy to manage and less mods.

Maybe you guys could recommend a basic set of mods which fairly alter Skyrim without investing so much time into it? The ones above seem so cool to me but I don't want issues which I then have to sort out again...
Some sort of overhaul would be cool like OOO back in the days of Oblivion, topped with a few smaller mods it would be pretty game changing and really easy to manage.