10 Best Skyrim Mods To Completely Change The Game (2023) (2024)

It's been over a decade since The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim was released, but a continual influx of mods ensures that the experience remains fresh year after year. From its atmospheric setting to roleplaying possibilities, Skyrim is a uniquely compelling game, and mods help smooth over the rougher aspects or add new features to make it better than ever. Although many great Skyrim mods have been around for a long time, recent excellent options show that the well never seems to run dry.

Some of the best Skyrim mods are small tweaks that tailor the game to highly specific needs, but these also tend to be inessential in the larger scheme of things. Overhauling the experience in a truly memorable way requires an extensive amount of work on behalf of the mod creator, a challenging task that is nonetheless widely attempted to frequent success. Focusing on recent additions, there's something for every taste among the best Skyrim mods to transform the game in 2023.

10 SkyClimb (Sokco816)

Gameplay Mod

Skyrim is full of verticality, but it's often difficult to traverse, with short jumps and the miraculous properties of horses serving as the best bets to overcome obstacles. SkyClimb by sokco816 opens up ledges in the game to proper climbing, using a procedural method to check for all ledges and provide a visible prompt if it's possible to climb them. This opens up better avenues for possibilities like clambering onto roofs to shoot at opponents below in a manner more similar to games like Assassin's Creed Mirage and generally adds an extra dimension to the overall experience.

9 Gems In All Mines (Undriel)

Crafting

Skyrim has no shortage of gems to collect, but they mostly exist on the periphery of the game, found in chests or as occasional drops while mining. Gems in All Mines by Undriel is the perfect mod for anyone who enjoys resource collection more than combat, adding gems to every mine in the game to make exploration more rewarding. This isn't the most extensive mod to mining in Skyrim, but its straightforward applicability makes it an easier addition than most.

8 Gourmet - A Cooking Overhaul (SimonMagus)

Crafting

Food plays a big role in Skyrim, but its implementation has always been a bit wonky. Of all healing solutions that games have ever offered, relying on cheese wheels as a battlefield staple is one of the most humorous, and cooking is generally a fairly useless mechanic in Skyrim. Luckily, Gourmet - A Cooking Overhaul by SimonMagus changes just about everything in regard to Skyrim food, from recipes to vendors to effects. This mod is perfect for anyone looking to become a master chef, but it can add a lot to any playthrough, with specialized buffs from different food types making for more strategic and consistent use in general.

7 Photo Mode (Powerofthree)

User Interface

One of the great pleasures of visually stunning games is opening up a photo mode to take the perfect screenshots, so modding Skyrim into graphical perfection and being unable to employ such a feature can be disappointing. Photo Mode by powerofthree fills in that gap with all the functions that might be expected, including toggles for depth of field, character visibility, time of day, and more. The photo mode can be accessed through the pause menu, making it quick and easy to pull up at a moment's notice.

6 Valhalla Combat (dTry)

Combat

See Also

Skyrim: Top 15 Quest Mods, Ranked

Skyrim's combat felt a bit clunky even at the time of its original release, and it can be especially hard to go back to now. Valhalla Combat by dTry addresses this by overhauling combat to follow the model of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, with better blocking, parrying, and stamina features for a more fluid experience. This is obviously intended for third-person play rather than first-person action, but anyone who prefers the former can get a lot out of installing this mod.

5 Comprehensive First Person Animation Overhaul (PolarRobotFrog)

Animation

First-person loyalists can still up their Skyrim experience with Comprehensive First Person Animation Overhaul by PolarRobotFrog, known as CFPAO for short. CFPAO takes on the enormous task of overhauling thousands of first-person animations to make combat look and feel better from the traditional viewpoint. This can be installed along with combat mods to try to create a better sense of overall fluidity, but its impact can be felt even as a standalone addition.

4 Wheeler - Quick Action Wheel Of Skyrim (DTry)

User Interface

Wheeler - Quick Action Wheel of Skyrim by dTry is another impressive work from the creator of the Valhalla Combat mod, once again seamlessly incorporating influence from modern games into Skyrim. Wheeler adds customizable circular menus to get quick access to key spells, items, and more. This can be particularly refreshing when contrasted against the long list menus that define the Skyrim experience, saving unnecessary time and effort to make the game move faster than ever before.

3 Improved Camera SE (ArranzCNL)

Immersion

Improved Camera SE by ArranzCNL picks up where CFPAO leaves off, adding a first-person view for animations that are only available in third-person in vanilla Skyrim. Whether sitting down in a chair or working at a forge, being able to stick with the same perspective is a valuable addition to immersion. This isn't the first mod to attempt such an overhaul, but it pulls it off with fewer issues than such fixes usually incur and achieves generally smooth results.

2 Precision - Accurate Melee Collisions (Ershin)

Gameplay

Precision - Accurate Melee Collisions by Ershin is the perfect way to improve Skyrim combat without completely revamping it, serving as a nice choice for anyone who finds Valhalla Combat to be a bit too different. The big addition of the mod is physics-based hit reactions, which replace the vanilla game's simple time-based system. This is an effective option for both first- and third-person play and works nicely with CFPAO to soup things up.

1 Nature Of The Wild Lands (Fxckthisworld)

Visuals And Graphics

The world of graphical mods for Skyrim is a major rabbit hole, but one recent mod that makes enormous changes is Nature of the Wild Lands by fxckthisworld. This mod makes use of photogrammetry technology to add hundreds of new elements of forestation to the game, significantly increasing the potential density and variety of woodland environments and making Skyrim's graphics beat Starfield in some key regards. Nature of the Wild Lands is a must-have for any flora enthusiasts, and it can generally add a lot to the overall look and feel of any playthrough.

Source: NexusMods (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)