Hey Duders,

So I am relatively new to the whole pc gaming scene. I just built myself a nice pc back in November and have been loving it ever since, and now I'm ready to dive a bit deeper and explore this whole Mods thing. I love skyrim and figure that's a fun place to start but since I know nothing I figuredon't I'd reach out to you lovely people for advice!

I've got a gtx 980 Ti so I'm pretty much looking to get this game looking as good as I can, any beginner advice, mod recommendations, maybe an explanation on what the heck enb stands for?

Thanks all

The simplest thing to do with a complete beginner is to sit them down with Gopher's video tutorials on Modding Skyrim and Nexus Mod Manager, then have a look at his Skyrim Mod Sanctuary series. Nexus Mod Manager has changed a bit since he made those videos (added functionality) but the basics are still the same. Gopher's great - Not only are his tutorials and reviews super helpful but he's also the maker of some of the most popular Bethesda game mods.

Next, get yourself over to the Skyrim Nexus and have a look at the all time most downloaded files, which will give you an idea of what's well thought of.

Using the Steam Workshop will give you mods, sure, but nowhere near the same selection as what's found on the Nexus.

ENB is fancy lighting and shadow effects, as well as a built-in fix for a Skyrim bug which causes crashes when mods use large amounts of VRAM. No idea what it stands for. ;)

I have 1300 hours in the game, at least 1000 of that is just mucking about with mods. Prepare to only play one game for quite a while...

My advice is to use Mod Organizer instead of Nexus Mod Manager. It offers way better management of mods leaving the games install folder intact and it detects what mods are conflicting and screwing up your game.

Best place to find mods is Skyrim Nexus as stated by Dave_Tacitus.

These sites offer good tutorials for starting:

Beginners guide at r/skyrimmods

Guide for Mod Organizer and the main STEP guide and other good tutorials provided by STEP.

Skyrim G.E.M.S is another good site for finding interesting mods.

Basically first you need tools for modding and then it's wise to fix the game with unofficial patches and other fixes. Then you need ENB and graphical mods to make the game look better. One big gameplay overhaul and other gameplay mods to make the combat more interesting. After that you can tinker with realism and immersion mods to add more content to the game.

Or if you are feeling lazy then just install all the mods in this list made by Dansgaming when he modded skyrim a month ago. Or you could only install the tools needed for modding and find mods yourself that look interesting, it's your call.

@icemo: I used Mod Organiser a fair bit but now that NMM has virtual install folders (never felt the need to use it though, either in NMM or MO) and multiple profile support I see no need for it.

@dave_tacitus: If NMM does detect conflicting mods and decides what textures are loaded with only load order instead of overwriting textures completely then I guess it's fine to use it then.

But every up to date guide for skyrim modding uses Mod Organizer, so I would still recommend MO for beginners.

@icemo: Never had a problem with that for any mod manager I've used. Maybe it's because I've been modding Bethesda games for so long (even modded Morrowind on console) that laying down the big graphics overhauls first then picking and choosing what overrides them is second nature, but it's a pretty logical operation.

@dave_tacitus: Maybe I'm misunderstanding your answer but I meant the ability to easily swap between textures, like in this example from r/skyrimmods:

Example: Installing Texture Mod A and Texture Mod B, both of which retexture cities. They don't all replace the same textures but they do overlap on a few textures (these are the conflicts between these mods)...

1. Nexus Mod Manager:

With NMM, you first install Texture Mod A. When you install Texture Mod B it will ask if you want to overwrite the conflicting textures from Texture Mod A. You decide yes or no for the conflicts and click OK. Next you hop into your game and run around looking at your sexy new textures. You find yourself thinking "I like the wood textures from Texture Mod A better than Texture Mod B". Now you would have to exit the game and reinstall Texture Mod A, telling it to overwrite Texture Mod B. Depending on the size of the mod and how specific you like to be with your texture choices, this can take 2-5 minutes. Now imagine that you have 50 texture mods...or even 10....let's look at the same conflict in MO

2. Mod Organizer:

Open Mod Organizer and install Texture Pack A. Then we install Texture Pack B. There is no overwrite prompt and they are both loaded into the left list (Mod List). Texture Mod B is below Texture Mod A and thus is winning the conflict. Hop in game and decide "Yeah Texture Mod A grass is way better than Texture Mod B!".Exit the game, drag Texture Mod A below Texture Mod B and drop it. Done. It took 3 seconds. Reorganizing those 50 texture mods is as simple as dragging and dropping.

This function alone will save you hours

To make your Mod List drag and drop choices even easier MO will indicate a conflict with either a lightning bolt with a plus sign (conflict winner) or a lighting bolt with a minus sign (conflict loser). If it is a lightning bolt with a plus and a minus it is winning some and losing some. You can check these conflicts by double clicking a mod and navigating to the "Conflicts" tab.

Maybe it's a bit nitpicky but sometimes a texture pack has an ugly texture and I want to switch it easily to something else. MO is pretty good with that when you use a lot of mods.

First mod I recommend getting is Live Another Life. You start the game in character creation in a prison cell and from there, you answer a series of questions that dictates where in the world, and what equipment you start with. You've played Skyrim before, that intro is long...

I'd be careful about uninstalling mods once you get a character going. If you do a lot of uninstalls, it's probably best to start a new game.

If you go the ENB route, in game, shift-enter should bring up the ENB menu. From here, you can do additional tweaks to those settings. I tend to turn off things like depth of field as a lot of ENBs have it cranked like a super wide open camera lens.

@icemo: That sort of thing doesn't really bother me. I used it a bit when I was running MO but soon forgot about it but agree it's a useful thing to have if you're running multiple texture mods. I generally end up with Skyrim HD, Pure Waters, SMIM, a weapon reskinner and CaBaL 120's armour textures so not a lot of conflict there.