Back to Skyrim: The Moddenning

It has come to my attention that some of my lovely internet friends have not yet played Skyrim and are planning to start soon.  To this I say - Hurray!  Welcome!  Prepare to have the next few weeks of your life dominated with thoughts of ingots and cheese.  And sweetrolls.  And "Will someone for the love of god kill that damn Talos evangelist in Whiterun?!"  Also possibly "If you don't shut the hell up about the Cloud District, Nazeem, I will cut off your head, stuff some basil down your neckhole and have my storm thrall barbecue your ass for dinner."  Oh right, I already did that.  It was incredibly cathartic.

You can't see my face, but there is a look of savage glee happening.  Anyways, I will take any excuse to talk about Skyrim especially since I picked up Dawnguard and Dragonborn on Steam this weekend.  Steam my love, your Black Friday sale touched me in all the right places but I also must pay bills.  You naughty delicious crumpet, you.  What's that, darling?  You need another title to spruce up your library?  Let me get my credit card and to hell with the cell phone bill!  

Composure regained, let's talk about Skyrim.  I will keep this free of story spoilers, by the way, but there may be some loot and reward spoilers.  Of all the PC games I have played, I believe the Elder Scrolls series is truly incomplete when played on a console.  This is, of course, because of fan-made mods, which have been around since Morrowind.  There are some amazing mods to be had in Skyrim, but some of them I stumbled across by accident or had to be told about so I thought I would share my favorites.  Before I do that though, a couple notes on how I play Skyrim and how I use mods.  For the most part I play in the 3rd person perspective; I like watching my character run around and sometimes the 1st person view feels claustrophobic.  There are exceptions of course, like when I'm trying to move things around in my house, but 3rd person is my preferred view.  I also (again, for the most part) don't install mods that aren't lore-friendly or will make my character over-powered.  The exception here is mods that are purely for silly entertainment purposes, which I don't use while I'm playing the game proper.  Except for Fall of the Space Core, because LOL.  This post is devoted to mods for gameplay enhancement and the next one will be for silly fun times.  Also there won't be any mods from Skyrim Nexus here that aren't available on the Steam Workshop.  I couldn't get the Nexus Mod Manager to work properly on my old computer and haven't bothered with it since I upgraded.  I'm sure there are many awesome mods on the Nexus, but this list will be long enough with just Workshop mods.

One more thing - I have not played one of the most astonishing mods I've heard of in any game, which is Skywind.  Here's the website for it, and it is just what it sounds like - bringing Morrowind to Skyrim.  The project is particularly epic in that the creators don't just want the world of Morrowind available to wander around in, they are trying to remake the whole game in Skyrim.  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  The mod is in an alpha state right now so you can walk around and interact with people but the quests and storylines aren't loaded in yet.  I had moved on from Skyrim when I first heard about this but now that I'm back I plan to install it very soon and I will let the Internet know how awesome it is.  Ok then.  Let me wipe the drool off my keyboard real quick.

Mods for Improved/Expanded Gameplay

Bandolier: Bags and Pouches - This mod is exactly what it sounds like, a way for you to make extra storage bags out of the leather you find to expand your carrying capacity.  There are a variety of bags, satchels, bandoliers, and vial holders to chose from but personally I only have a couple equipped because I don't want to clutter up my character's silhouette.  The added capacity is by no means ridiculous and there's a finite number you can equip depending on where they're placed, so I don't consider it to be cheating.  It makes sense to be able to make little pouches with all the leather you find, right?  Right.  The items are made on the tanning rack with the exception of the buckles and dark stained leather so you can't get a bunch of cheap leather and max your smithing out on it which I appreciate.

Stronger Daedric Artifacts - The mod creator thought, and I agree, that while the Daedra are supposedly these hugely powerful beings capable of mighty and terrible deeds, their representations in the physical world are kind of anti-climactic.  The quests are leveled so you can start finding artifacts right away at lower levels, but the items are too so you might find a Dagger of XYZ Jealous and Impotent God that is beat out by a plain orcish dagger.  That's silly.  The mod increases the value of the items (if you want to sell them because you are a incomprehensible creature) and their damage/armor ratings, tweaks the enchantments a bit, and gives them unlimited charges.  It might be a little cheater-ish but I felt it made sense with the world and gave the Daedric quests more oomph.  The increased damage/armor and enchantments won't make your character into some kind of unstoppable god; the picture above features Dawnbreaker which I have since stopped using because I made something better, despite the fact that the thing is gorgeous.  I'm a bit on the fence about the unlimited charges, but not for the reason you might think.  Between the perk that makes bound weapons trap souls and all the dungeons I loot I have SO MANY souls, you guys.  My inventory is spilling over with them and I only have 2 items to charge them with, a sword and a bow.  I'm about ready to stop using Mehrune's Razor because I can't charge it and when I find soul gems in dungeons its not like I'm not going to pick them up.  That would be crazy.

Alchemist Farmhouse - Want a house outside of the busy streets of Whiterun?  The solitude of a small island and some space to cultivate your reagents in peace?  Most importantly, are you tired of Lydia stuffing bread into her cranky useless gob while you're trying to sleep?  Enter the alchemist's farmhouse, a humble little place on the lake SE of Whiterun.  Its appropriate for a low-level character, its homey, there's plenty of storage and a nice little garden outside.  There's even your own smithing area with smelter.  And no Lydia.

The Asteria - After trying out a few house mods this was the one I ended up sticking with.  Its a Dwemer airship that floats above the lake SE of Whiterun.  The creator gives a defense of its lore-friendliness in a book that can be found in the house.  It has everything you would expect in a house mod but also it is so pretty.  I love this house.  It makes steampunk noises, there's a telescope and steering wheel on the terrace, and really just a mind-boggling attention to detail.  Also, its a damn airship!

Kagrenac's Instant Fortress - This house mod gives you a Dwemer cube that you place on the ground to summon your house wherever you are.  It also has a lore-friendly reason for existence written by the creator.  Very convenient, but it's not as pretty as the airship so I ended up not using it.  Its rated highly and people seemed to like it - the tower itself is pretty impressive.  I suppose its all about personal taste.

Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux - If you thought Skyrim couldn't possibly be any more gorgeous, install this mod.  It is a careful redrawing of all the water to be more realistic and dynamic.  It also adapts a few other terrain and water mods and includes them bug-free with the original creators' permission.  As if we all needed another excuse to ride Shadowmere around looking at stuff and not doing the world-altering quests we have open.  I mean, look at the screenshots in the mod description.  Real lakes barely look as good.

Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers - Let's be honest - we all looked on the internet to find all these damn things so you might as well install a mod for it.  The world is so huge that quest is seriously frustrating to finish without help, and I don't like my games to be frustrating.  It doesn't give you the quest early, you still have to stumble across one and talk to Vex about it, it just tells you where they are.  I installed this mod when I had about half of the stones and it made the quest much more fun.  There are similar mods for the Crimson Nirnroots and Dragon Priest masks as well, and I fully support that.  Finding tiny things in a HUGE world with no help is the anti-fun.

Auto Unequip Ammo & Helmet - These mods are useful if you are very much like me - fond of playing in the 3rd person and completely obsessed with your character's appearance.  Who wants to run around with a bunch of arrows equipped but no bow?  Or covering that face you spent an hour customizing with a helmet?  No one!  Until I found this mod I would manually equip and unequip my arrows/helmet to fit wherever I was and what kind of weapon I was using at the time.  That is not an exaggeration because I am a crazy person.  Huge timesavers for borderline obsessives is what I'm saying.

Deacon's Dark Brotherhood Armor Set - The Dark Brotherhood was hands-down my favorite questline but where the Thieves Guild gave you a baddass set of Batman-looking armor at the end, all you get from the Brotherhood is another set of regular old armor with slightly better stats.  And a pair of gloves that help with lockpicking.  NAY, says I and so did Deacon here.  This armor set looks amazing, fits within your role in the Brotherhood and isn't overly powered in my opinion.  The enchantments are robust but it is definitely stealth armor; if you play your character like I do, which is throwing all your levels into magic and stealth skills you will not survive a skirmish with more than one or two enemies at a time using the armor.  It comes with a ring and amulet which I don't use because I've found better ones in the game.  I also like that the creator listed story reasons in the description for each enchantment.

 Smeltdown - Items to Ingots 1.2 - Now you have something to do with all the crap you pick up in caves besides running around trying to find a merchant with enough money to buy it all.  It feels like a feature that should have been included in the game really, since it makes sense to be able to melt down a two-handed sword you won't use to make a dagger that you will.  The smelter doesn't level your smithing so its not a cheap way to boost that skill, and you can't melt down everything.  Enchanted items, for example, cannot be turned into ingots which also makes sense.

Horses Ignore Combat! - The horses in vanilla Skyrim have absolutely no sense of personal safety.  They will run up to a pack of wolves while you're inspecting some butterflies and they're really gung ho about joining your fights.  In my case, even when I'm in 1st person perspective, this often leads to Shadowmere running in front of my sword and getting killed or charging into an AoE that I just set off.  Its annoying.  With this mod your horse doesn't give a flying flip about you or your bandit problems and will stay wherever you leave it no matter what trouble you're in.  So don't get off the horse in the middle of an enemy fort because it will not run away or defend itself.  The conclusion I draw from all this is that horses are just plain dumb.

So ends my list of useful Skyrim mods!  Come back later for the silly ones, because some of them are really good.  You'll notice there aren't any mods for companions here, which again is due to my own play-style.  I don't use companions and if one is assigned to me for story purposes I dump them as soon as I am able.  Even then I make them wait at the cave entrance and clear out all the enemies myself.  I am a dedicated sneak and one of my favorite things to do is cast Frenzy spells on groups and watch them kill each other.  Then I can go in and finish the last couple dudes off with a dagger to the back.  Companions just mess with my murderous groove - I killed the only one who can sneak worth balls because he was annoying.  And then took his clothes.  My character is not a very nice person.