What Are Your Foundation Mods?, Ones that are always in the rotation Options

[SubRosa]

I have a ton of mods, many of which add new weapons, races, armor, etc... But I don't keep them all active all the time. Typically I will only turn on the mods I want to use for a particular character, and turn off the other clothing, weapon, etc... mods that they are not using. The reason is that there is a hard limit on how many mods you can have active - 252 or so. Also the more mods you have active will eventually start to slow you game down, especially script-intensive mods or massive 2k and 4k texture packs. It all depends on how powerful your computer is to begin with of course. 150 mods might not make a beefy comp blink, but could bring one that is slow to begin with to its knees.

But even that said, I have some mods that are always active, no matter what character. These are what I mean by Foundations. They are the rock on which everything else is built. Some of them are:


General Graphics

No Tint and Desaturation (wow, there are colors again!)

No Stretching (textures)

No Blood (No Blood Splatter On Your Hud option)

No Bloom


Landscape Detail

Shrine of Azura LOD Fix

A Clear World Map

A Quality World Map - With Roads

Enhanced Distant Terrain

Enhanced Night Sky

High Quality LODs

Pure Waters (makes the water semi-transparent from above, so you can actually see the shallow parts you can walk through without swimming)

Distant Detail Hearthfire Edition

Footprints

SkyFalls and SkyMills - Animated Distant Waterfalls and WindMills


Quests

Thieves Guild Requirements - No Auto Quest Start Brynjolf

Dawnguard Delayed Start


Armor & Weapons

Auto Unequip Ammo

UltraHD - Stormcloak and City Guards

Open Faced Helmets

Runed Draugr Greatswords

Well Placed Weapons and Quivers


Gameplay

Ash Pile Expiration

Open and Lock Spells

Lockpick Pro

Player Headtracking

Puppeteer Master (pose mod)

You Are Not The Dragonborn

Improved Skill Books


Creatures

Real Foxes


User Interface

SkyUI

Immersive Hud


Other Stuff

Female Mannequins

Neutral Hjerim

Guards Equipment Comment Tweak

Long Lost Smelters of Skyrim


Then of course I have my whole array of body and face mods Listed Here


So what do other people have that is always in the rotation? It is nice to share, because that is how we learn about mods we never knew existed.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Nov 21 2016, 03:27 AM

[Lopov]

A Matter of Time adds a clock to the HUD. I

Hey, thanks for this one, it'll be really good to know the exact time before pausing the game.

I use a lot of mods, I have no idea how many, but all of them are active for every character. I'm not at home currently, so I can't check the list, but some essential that first come to my mind are:

Character Creation Overhaul - I couldn't play Skyrim without this mod.

Live Another Life - I rarely use a custom start but this mod allows me to create my character before starting the carriage trip to Helgen. I want to know how my characters look like while being on a carriage.

Xenius Character Enhancement - it's a perfect mod for making NPCs look better (not necessarily prettier) while still keeping the feel of vanilla game, almost every other mod that alters appearances, makes character too modern and not fitting for Skyrim, IMO.

Face to Face Conversations - I couldn't play Skyrim without this mod either, now I finally know how NPCs look like and NPCs feel less like robots, because you can actually see their facial animations from up close.

Guard Dialogue Overhaul - makes guards correctly recognize our titles and random achievements.

I will add other mods tomorrow when I return home, there are many more which I consider essential. As much as I don't like to say this, Skyrim would be completely unplayable for me without mods.

EDIT: I remembered a few more:

Timing is everything - allows you to adjust random dragon & vampire attacks, start of the Dragonborn and many other things.

Mercy - makes yielding enemies in fact yield.

This post has been edited by Lopov: Dec 14 2013, 09:41 PM