I like a mix of style and substance, they reinforce each other. I mod to: add the various 'Unofficial' patches, improve textures, fix/improve meshes, add in armor/weapons/creatures/animations/sounds, overhaul some aspect of the game, improve the UI and add to the HUD. Moderators, please move this if in wrong place.) (BTW, not sure if this thread belongs here or to Skyrim-General area. So, what are your criteria for choosing mods? Do you change them often or aim for permanency? Fun or realism? Style or substance? I'd like to hear that especially from persons who use huge numbers of mods, and/or like things that alter the game drastically either visually or gameplay-wise. I also strive for permanent, stable mod selection that I have to alter very rarely, if ever. All in all, the main thing is that the feel and atmosphere of the game is preserved as intact as possible. Lastly, mods mustn't include things that are too overpowered or effortless to obtain, to preserve challenge. That is, if there is a choice between a scripted and a non-scripted but cruder mod that do the same thing, I'll usually go with the unscripted.

The mods must accomplish their goal with minimum complexity, too. So, no anime girls or modern-looking clothing mods for me. I at first even hesitated to install Roman Legion Armor retexture for Imperial armors, because I wasn't so sure a straight rip-off from real history would fit into Tamriel (but now, funnily enough, I actually couldn't play without that mod). If the answer is no, I only then search and install a mod that fixes that thing.Īlso, lore-friendliness or at the very least period appropriateness is a must. Once I identify something that doesn't please me in the vanilla game, I ponder if I can tolerate or work around it. My own 'philosophy' in modding is that the less and the simpler, the better. That intrigued me, because I only run a total of 73, and half a dozen of those are utilities like SkyUI that enable me use other mods, and another dozen are simple retextures, lighting fixes or weapon/armor additions, and some of the number, of course, are the unofficial patches. I started this topic, because I have wondered by what standards people choose the mods they use? That's because I've seen many people speaking about running Skyrim with 150+ or even 200+ mods.

Skyrim overpowered weapons mod