Skyrim Free Mods
Maral Mende
Installing mods is quite simple for one of the best PC games and arguably the most popular RPG game there. This is due mainly to how Steam Workshop makes it easy to install and activate them, but also that you can add the more advanced ones to a special folder within your Skyrim files. You can also check out our guide to Skyrim console commands for more tips on changing up the open-world game or just making it utterly chaotic. The choice is yours.
This chonking great mod is the sum of 16 other mods that come together to make Skyrim a more hardcore and unforgiving experience. Ultimate Skyrim aims to do this by adding a greater focus on roleplaying, with additions of temperature, hunger mechanics, and an overhauled combat system.
The tool of choice for videogame photographer Dead End Thrills, FXAA Injector pumps a variety of anti-aliasing techniques into your Skyrim system to help create a much sharper and vibrant image. Post-processing effects like bloom, technicolor, sharpen, and tone map can be cranked up or down on a slider system to alter the visual quality to your own personal preference.
In certain areas of Skyrim, snow is dynamic and builds up over time. While technically impressive, these gradually growing snow piles are rendered in an ugly pure-white texture that makes it look like a bucket of paint was tipped over the landscape. Deeper Snow can turn these regions into blankets of crisp-looking fluffy snow.
Skyrim is a chilly place. There are so many opportunities to get wet-through or frosted by snow, yet the effect is never seen. Enter Wet and Cold, a mod that adds numerous weather effects to characters. Snow gets caught in hair and sticks to clothes, water drips from armor, breath steams on cold air, and NPCs run home during storms.
Real Vision ENB is a graphical mod that produces some absolutely tremendous photorealistic effects, especially when combined with a number of other mods available from the Steam Workshop. Take a look at the video above to see the mod in action. Just remember to draw breath every once in a while.
Warriors and rangers are ten-a-penny on the streets of Skyrim. Gain true respect by adopting an artful profession: being a bard. Sing your way from tavern to tavern and earn yourself a pretty penny from ale-guzzling patrons the world over. Use the Become a Bard mod to play any instrument in Skyrim, and a simple tap of the Z key will cause them to erupt into song. Your companions will even join in should harmonies be required. A skill tree will help you improve your vocals and bag you Christmas No. 1.
The MMO-favourite hobby of fishing finally makes it into Skyrim by way of this mod. Fishing adds rods, nets, and dwarven boomfishing to the game. Rods and nets can be set up by riversides, while bait must be attached to lure in your prey. Dwarven fishing methods prove a little more military-inspired, with explosives thrown into the water to kill fish en-masse and provide a haul to sell for profit.
Tired of fighting the same old Draugr and Mud Crabs? Monsters Reborn introduces a massive new range of enemies and creatures into Skyrim across a vast range of levels to offer a stiff challenge. From lowly Werewolf Behemoths to brutally powerful Blizzard Dragons, Monsters Reborn adds a welcome level of variety to the beasts on the end of your sword and scales enemies to pose the right level of difficulty to your character.
The classic days of RPGs allowed you to gallivant across the land with a party of loyal companions ready to bash in heads and drink taverns dry. Skyrim, unfortunately, limits you to just a single companion, destroying any hopes of putting together a Fellowship of the Dragonborn. Multiple Followers fixes this by allowing you to recruit up to seven companions for your journey.
That sword you found may be pretty useless in its current form, but the steelwork surely has value. If only you could melt it down and reforge it into some cool armor or a nice new helmet. Vanilla Skyrim refuses to allow such sacrilege, but Reverse Crafting adds the simple but exceptionally useful ability to break down items into their base components, allowing you to recycle waste rather than simply throwing it away. Keep Skyrim green, please!
This mod adds a suit of ornate armor to the game, but finding it requires you to embark on a little quest first. Follow the diaries of a Daedra Hunter through numerous dungeons in order to discover the prize, along with a great collection of new one and two-handed blades. Start the quest by finding the Buried Tower southwest of Riften.
Tundra Defense grants Skyrim a minigame in the vein of tower defense and horde mode. Build your own outpost in the wilderness of Skyrim and then defend it from waves of attackers. Guards can be hired to help defend your land, and citizens can live within your boundaries in exchange for taxes. Enemy raids can be triggered manually for instant action or set to random intervals so attackers can strike at any time. This adds an interesting element of responsibility to the game, as ignoring attacks can leave your camp in ruins.
Falskaar is a particularly famous mod. It is more of an expansion pack than a simple questline; the mod adds 25 hours of campaign content and a whole new continent. 2,000 hours in the making, creator Alexander J. Velicky created it to gain the attention of Bethesda.
Just north of Falkreath is the Rabbit Hole Dungeon. As the name suggests, it burrows down 50 levels deep. Each floor contains enemies, and defeating them unlocks the door to the next cavern. An arena-style combat challenge, this dungeon also randomly changes on every visit to encourage multiple replays.
More a campaign than a questline, Fight against the Thalmor is comprised of four Workshop files, each containing a chapter of the prolonged struggle against a bunch of racist elves. Rather than offering up standard quests to the log, the mod provides the locations within the game and allows the story to play out naturally through the use of letters and journals, NPCs, and a few side quests. While not as narrative-heavy as most quest mods, Fight against the Thalmor offers some stunning locations to spill blood in.
It can be overwhelming to sort through all those mods, and installing a pre-canned list usually means adding a bunch of things you don't actually want then not being able to get rid of them without messing up various dependencies. That's why our guide assumes a manual pick-and-choose style of modding, and is sorted into categories so you can find a selection of individual mods that will be compatible and suit your playstyle.
The first thing you'll need to know if you're playing Skyrim on a modern PC is that it's going to have problems running at a framerate higher than 60fps. The physics engine wasn't designed for it, and you'll see horses float into the air and bodies bounce around, as well as hearing loud, repeated sound effects as things like water splashes loop continually. Go into your GPU software's control panel and make sure Skyrim is capped at 60fps to fix all that.
Now we'll cover how to get started with Skyrim mods, as well as recommending some essential improvements. Check the subsequent pages for all the best Skyrim quest mods, new spells, equipment, followers, combat changes, and more.
Once you've found some mods you'd like to try, here are the tools you can use to get them working. Make sure you read the description page for each of your mods: many of them require specific steps and instructions.
Replacing the old Nexus Mod Manager is Vortex, a newer program for organizing your mod loadout. Available from the Nexus Mods website, like most of the mods on our list, it will handle everything for you. It's easy to use and makes downloading, activating, and deactivating mods a breeze. It's also useful in that it supports tons of other games, including Fallout 4.
Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) is a utility that's required for many of the more complex mods to work. Not every mod on this list requires it, but plenty do, including the essential SkyUI. You're best off just installing it up front. SKSE is now available directly through Steam, but you can still find it on the SKSE website if you prefer manual installation.
You can also browse and use Skyrim mods via the Steam Workshop. It's easy to navigate and adding them to your roster is accomplish by simply clicking the subscribe button. Keep in mind that more complex mods may require a few more steps to install. Always read the description.
Download from: Nexus Mods
Created by the same modders as the Unofficial Oblivion patches, the Unofficial Skyrim patches catch a huge amount of bugs the official patches don't. A lot of them are things you might never notice, like objects that were placed slightly wrong so they clip through each other or quests that break if you do something unusual, but it's still better to have them than not. There's one for the Legendary Edition, but you might need the one for the official High Resolution textures patch if you're using the High Resolution DLC.
Download from: Nexus Mods
If you've ever seen a delay between an NPC's spoken dialogue and when their lips start moving, it's a long-running bug apparently caused by an optimization patch in Skyrim version 1.9. This mod fixes it.
Download from: Nexus Mods
Skyrim's original UI is rough. SkyUI makes it easier to use, letting you sort your loot by value or weight, and your weapons by damage rating. Most importantly, SkyUI adds a mod configuration menu, letting you tweak and adjust compatible mods (including many on this list). A lot of mods don't require SkyUI and will run just fine without it, but you'll get much more out of your mods if you have it.
Download from: Nexus Mods
An improved character creation menu, with numeric displays for all sliders, and the ability to choose any color for your hair, skin, or other tints rather than being limited based on race. There's a sculpt mode if you want to get right into messing with the geometry of your head, and you can turn the light illuminating your face on and off to see how your features will look in different situations, which is a blessing.