Mod Lists For Skyrim Special Edition
- Revisited -
by Rogdonlp
My previous article on Mod Lists for Skyrim SE Mod Lists for Skyrim SE was written six months ago in June 2018. Things don’t stand still for very long in Skyrim SE modding. As a consequence, the June Mod Guide article needs to be updated.
The biggest changes in the Mod Guides are that both SkyVerse and BOSS were hidden by their authors as of December 9, 2018. Also, Tech’s Skyrim Special Edition Guide v2, while still posted on STEP, is no longer being maintained.
The following Guides are still available and are being updated:
- Dark Lady Lexy's: Legacy of The Dragonborn Special Edition – updated December 6, 2018
- Mod List 2018 – updated August 18, 2018
- Nordic Skyrim – updated September 19, 2018
- TUCO’s Guide December 2, 2018
There is one major new Mod Guide that came out in July 2018. This is The Phoenix Flavour:
http://thephoenixflavour.com/
This Guide has been getting monthly updates and you can follow the Guide’s progress on Discord. The Guide is clearly marked as a “Work in Progress”. Despite inconsistencies and other problems, I was able to use this Guide to build a new load order and I played it for several hours. The build was stable - no crashes. There are a lot of options in the Guide. When I was done building my load order, with the options that I wanted, I had 380 mods in MO2’s left pane. By creating the merges specified in the Guide using Merge Plugins and by also creating a Bash Patch, the .esp files in MO2’s right pane were reduced to 182.
What intrigued me with this Guide was that there were a lot of mods that I had never tried before. During my play through I liked some of the new mods and did not care for others. This is to be expected. After playing with The Phoenix Flavour build I erased it and created a new build using TUCO’s Guide that also incorporated the mods that I liked from The Phoenix Flavor plus my other essential (for me) mods. I only have an hour of playing time with this new build. However, things are running smoothly so far and I do like the new mods that I learned about from building The Phoenix Flavor Guide.
While The Phoenix Flavour build is playable in its current form, you might want to wait a few months so that the Guide is no longer a Work In Progress. What I would suggest that you do before then is to read through the Guide and see if there are mods that you were not aware of. The best way that I have found to learn about worthwhile new mods is to read all of the mod guides that I can find. If a guide author recommends a mod it should be an above average mod.
If you want to read through other mod guides, you might want to look at the three new guides listed below. However, please note that none of these guides have received over 31 endorsements on Nexus so they are not as popular by orders of magnitude from the four mod guides listed at the top of this article. Nor have these three guides been tested by hundreds of modders who have downloaded and created builds with these guides. Still, they are interesting to read for new ideas even if you do not use them to create your own build.
- Audiodef's Player Modding Guide for Skyrim Special Edition – update October 2, 2018
This Guide uses Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) as its mod manager and Wrye Bash for placing mods in the appropriate load order. If you have some modding experience with Mod Organizer 2 you should be able to use MO2 in place of NMM and Wrye Bash. Wrye Bash is still used for creating a Bash Patch.
The Guide consists of a text document. While the web addresses of all of the mods are listed, there is no link to click to immediately take you to the Nexus mod page. The web address of each mod is shown, so you have to cut and paste each link into your browser.
The Guide contains 166 individual mods that result in 228 plugins (.esp files) including Skyrim, Update, and the DLCs. SSEEdit is used by the Guide to create a Merge Patch to remove some, but not all, conflicts between mods. Before you use SSEEdit to resolve conflicts I would suggest you read the STEP Guide for Merging Plugins where the usefulness of using SSEEdit for this purpose is discussed along with other alternatives.
https://wiki.step-pr...dit_Merge_Patch
- Schofts Skyrim Modding Guide – updated March 29, 2018
This Guide uses MO2 as its mod manager and Mator Smash for creating a Bash Patch. The Guide contains 386 mods each of which has a link to take you to the Nexus mod page. The Guide includes changes to game play, combat, and survival.
- Imm’s Immersive Graphics Guide – updated September 25, 2018
This Guide is for modding graphics. Other than Realistic Water 2 and Skyrim Flora Overhaul SE, it does not cover any other landscape or terrain mods. The Guide’s focus is on improving the meshes and textures of objects. You could use this Guide as a reference list of mods that you could use to either supplement or replace the corresponding mods that you have in your own mod list.
There is nothing to liven up a new run through Skyrim than creating a new and different build.
Rogdonlp
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