I know mods add a LOT to the game but Im super lazy and nooby when it comes to sutff like mods. Yea I COULD watch a tutorial but I dont really feel like watching one. I just wana download the game and play it. Is it a crime playing this game WITHOUT mods? :P

It isn't for me anymore, but that's just because I've already played so much vanilla Skyrim. You should be fine without mods. That said, unless you're trying to install a bunch of mods and they start conflicting with each other, modding Skyrim is really easy.

I played it fine without mods....my buddy eventually convinced me to install some, but even then it was just cosmetic. I was happy enough just for the vastly improved load times, compared to console.

Play the game how you like to play it :) Don't ever let anyone sour an experience for you by stating how you "should" do something. Fuck those people.

....k maybe a tad harsh lol

I don't enjoy Skyrim without mods. It was only recently (like, maybe a few months ago?) that I found myself enjoying the game, and only after heavily modding it over the course of a week or so.

That being said, if somebody can enjoy vanilla Skyrim, then good for them. It's not a crime to enjoy playing a game.

Download the high res texture pack (it's under DLC and it's free). And the answer is yes. I played like 120 hours on my PS3 and loved it. Picked it up on PC recently and plan to play the DLC and a couple of mods that look interesting.

I've played most of my several hundred hours with out any gameplay mods. In order to make the game more fun with mods, you need to know what else you want out of the game. It's an awesome game without mods, and don't listen to people who've grown bitter about the game since release or who are overly attached to their mods.

Play the game till you're around level 30, and then you can look into a couple of mods to install. Hell I can suggest all of the major gameplay mods at some point, and most of them are really easy to install actually, thanks to the Nexus sites having a mod manager that lets you download easily from your browser directly to the program that'll let you enable the mods with a simple click. Mods are super easy to install as long as you aren't like me and don't have like 150 mods installed and have to figure out the load order for all of them

If you have a good PC there are a few easy to set up visual mods that I'd say are worthwhile, and there's one that if you are on a low-mid end PC would help your performance, but vanilla skyrim is absolutely fine. The world is just too much fun to explore to say otherwise, even if there are a ton of mods that add all kinds of different mechanics to make inhabiting said world more interesting

If you do go for a gameplay mod, I'd recommend Skyrim Redone. It's a full rehash of the gameplay basically, rebalancing it and making perks much more interesting and divers, it's really great and it's just one mod so you can install it very easily. There are also a lot of things like survival mechanics (quite a few different mods cover this so you can easily customize it to your liking).

The biggest hurdle is getting the Skyrim Script Extender or whatever it's called going, and that just requires a small download that you drop into your Skyrim directory and use to run the game from, and not all mods need that. Although that and SkyUI will make mods and the game in general a cut above vanilla just because of how it fixes the interface.

@e30bmw: i dont have the game yet, but once i do get it the high res texture pack will appear somwehere in the menu under some options?

Of course! Skyrim is incredible without mods. In fact, most people probably played and enjoyed that game without any mods whatsoever considering you cant mod on console. I'm playing it on pc these days, and I still haven't modded the game. Now maybe it would be hard to go back to an unmodded game if you got used to heavy modding, but that doesn't mean it's not fun without mods. It's in NO way a necessary experience.

It's also a game with a shit load of content, so if you get deep in, you can always mod then.

I played the heck out of it on a console and loved it.

the game is completely fine without mods.Sure mods can add a lot to it but are definitely not required to enjoy it. Just make sure to set aside a bunch of time...

Wouldn't call It a crime exactly but you might get some nasty looks .

Naw, it's not in the game proper. Once you have it on your Steam account (I'm pretty sure it requires Steam), go to the store page for it and it should be listed there.

Its alright. I platinumed it on PS3. Its definitely insanely better with mods though.

All you do is download Nexus Mod Manager and browse cool mods and click install. Its the same difficulty as installing a game. Or just use the steam workshop to download them, its so damn easy you don't really have any excuse not to try it.

Its alright. But modding is so easy you would have to brain dead to fail at it, so give it a shot.

The game is good without them, but with Steam Workshop and Nexus mods are very easy and shouldn't really be a problem unless they conflict with each other, and if they do when you start the game you can disable the latest mod from the options and it should work. Play a little then consider adding mods as you go, some of the UI mods are very useful.

I never really modded it, just used the official texture pack. I played 195 hours of it so yes... the 2011 GOTY is in fact a good game.

It's unfortunate Dark Souls had to come out that year too and ruin that there statement.

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls have pretty much made it impossible for me to appreciate any other modern RPG. Skyrim is fetch quest 2011 with shouty vikings and tedious dragon fights.

Yes. It sure is. I played a lot on consoles before I got to the PC version.

But taking seriously like the 5 or 10 mins to get a few basic mods would be time well spent. Really not hard to do.

Also, people who have to come in to shit on Skyrim every chance: we get it. You aren't contributing to discussion. Dark Souls blah blah blah. Go discuss that game.

Well, I played 120 hours of Skyrim mod free (on xbox no less) back in 2011 and it was my game of the year. Earlier this year I transferred my save to PC and played for another 115 hours, mostly finishing up the disc content I hadn't done and playing the DLC. Now playing on PC, my game was heavily modded.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of my time with Skyrim, both on console and modded on PC. With texture mods, visual enhancements, and an ENB installed, the game looked monumentally better than vanilla and the addition of tons of custom armor, weapon, and clothing options was great.

Skyrim is fantastic without mods, but it's even better with them.

Sure. I enjoyed it without mods, and mods can just make it even better.

I don't think Dark Souls falls under RPG for me, it's more of a dungeon crawler (the best damn dungeon crawler).

The game's okay without them. It definitely becomes shallow once you reach level 30 and one shot everything.

If nothing else, I'd recommend trying out one of the inventory sorting/interface mods. Maybe it's been patched since I last played it (before any of the DLC was released), but I remember the UI being a nightmare once you started accumulating stuff.

I would have to agree completely.

@redloopz: It's....okay

Same. So much fuckin same.

Even without mods Skyrim is a great game if you can get past the crappy combat. I will say the first 30-40 levels are the best though after that combat either gets much easier or ridiculously cheap if you can't negate magic damage. I had a lot of trouble in the rooms of high level mages killing my melee character with a metric ton of ice attacks.

After recently getting all of the DLC's since I never played them before, and deciding to check out what mods have happened over the last while I absolutely find vanilla skyrim not even just ugly and bad looking, but a rather meh game all together. If it weren't for modding I wouldn't be able to even play it. As much as I'm looking forward to the next fallout and when it happens Elder Scrolls, I hope people get certain types of mods out fast for them following release, cuz I'm sure it will be behind what I currently need gameplay wise.

As a fellow duder that has heavily modded his Skyrim (67 and counting); I say that I enjoy the game much more than Vanilla. Of course, most of them are just improving textures, sounds, and that awful console UI.

Some of my personal favorites would be the Immersive Weapons Mod and Immersive Armours Mod.

Overall if I could recommend just one, get SkyUI. Literally revamps the UI of the game if you are using a KB+M to play Skryim.

I played the 360 version for about 80 hours before moving onto the PC version, so yeah vanilla Skyrim is pretty fun.

However, installing mods is super easy and if you're playing on PC, then you have to install Rich Merchants and SkyUI. Rich merchants because most merchants hold less than 1000 gold in vanilla, and SkyUI because the UI of Skyrim lacks features that it should have. There's a program called the Nexus Mod Manager that lets you easily turn mods off and on and automatically updates them.

The only mods I ever really used on my first playthrough of the game was the bag of holding (I hate dealing with encumbrance) and the one that shows you where the stones of Barenziah are. Second playthrough I went all out though, adding mostly survival mechanics like body heat, hunger, and some texture mods. Made Skyrim a completely different game - kinda like a fantasy version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

I think the game is totally playable without them though.

Nope

The game is still fun without mods. That is especially true if you've never played the game before. That being said, if you are playing on PC, you should absolutely get some must-have mods. It will make you're experience much richer and satisfying.

Start by checking out this thread on Neogaf. It'll help.

This is the first big Bethesda RPG that doesn't need mods to fix glaring issues. I entirely agree with the folks saying that you should play enough of it vanilla to get an idea of what you might want to change before hitting the mods. A word of caution: this is one hell of a game, and it's easy to end up with mods that make the game worse not because they're bad mods but because Skyrim is a game that really feels like it was cut from a single piece of stone, and mods can have the side effect of muddying that singular vision.

You know, downloading mods for Skyrim is easier than watching TV. Go to steam -> Community -> Workshop -> Skyrim -> Browse and find whatever the fuck your heart desire and click "subscribe" to add them to the game. It's that easy, just press "subscribe".

Not really. I have never been a big fan of Skyrim as I find the combat tedious, none of the story or side quests were interesting, and I just generally found the world drab and uninteresting to be in. So when you add mods to it, it's like putting sprinkles on a turd in hopes of making it prettier. Mods can't change the underlying problems with the game. At least not without a HUGE amount of work on the modders.

As is the case with all games with lots of mods though, play it without anything first to get a feel for how the game works. Once you have played it long enough to know what you hate about it then go looking for mods to fix those problems. Except for the nude mods. Get them first. Always.

The first play-through doesn't require mods. Although, there are various added missions in the Steam/Nexus databases that enrich the experience. Second play-through, Kryptonian powers.

As long as you play it the first time without mods it's totally great. but once you have mods you can;t really go back.

yes, the ridiculous glitches still make it fun. The writing and combat on the whole are more tolerable with more mods, however.

For me, it was for about 5-7 hours. Then it got really dead and boring. In contrast to Oblivion... mmm my beautiful Oblivion.

Mods are great

Yes, playing without mods is fine, though even then I'd recommend some basic ones, bug fixes, maybe SkyUI, things like that, just to make the actual game a bit more usable without affecting the content.

The uninstall mod significantly improves the game.

Game is fantastic without mods.

Open Cities.

'nuf said.

Ah Skyrim, it can be as tedious as fuck, but there is something kind magical about it. Perfectly fine without mods.

+110 hours without mod so I'd say yes, it's fun without mods.

I just feel that if you are going to spend the hundreds of hours people usually spend with Bethesda's games, you might as well have the best experience possible. I actually spend more time modding Oblivion, than actually playing it.

Yes.

It can be cool for sometime but since mods are in Steam Workshop its pretty easy to add them.