I'm about to do a big ass list of the mods I'm using in blog form, with a bunch of links, better descriptions, info on load order, maybe even a couple of videos showing it all in effect together, so I'll link that to you when I get that gone but in the meantime I'll list some needed stuff:
Into the Depths, Wyrmstooth, and Moonpath to Elsweyr are all really good community made content addons. They add new areas and quests, and in some cases I believe even custom gear.
JaySuS's Swords, Immersive Armor/ Weapons, Skyforge Shields, Insanitys Dwemer Weapons, Bandoliers, and Weapons of the Third Era all add a pretty sizeable chunk of lore-friendly gear. More gear is a must, and it's all really good and fits the world. It's not all super crazy bad ass anime bullshit, it's pretty grounded and most of it is actually less fantastical than the higher end stuff in the vanilla game.
Unique Weapons Redone: New meshes for unique weapons to make them actually unique. Unique Uniques does the same, not sure if they are both complete, it may be that one has some that the other does not. If that's the case it should be easy to pick the one you like best and as long as you install that over the other, you should have mostly the ones you wanted, and then the few it doesn't do will be from the other mod.
Open Cities. Does what it says, makes the cities open which means no loading when you want to walk into a stronghold. You just open the gate. It's really awesome.
Frostfall. This is a survival type mod which adds a lot of mechanics and has pretty robust customization. It adds stuff like hypothermia (you'll get cold over time, and different gear has different protection against the cold. So you have to actually bundle up in furs and a cloak to travel in the snow, which is awesome) and other similar mechanics. It's sort of like the Hardcore mode from New Vegas, but more awesome. I use a few other hunting/immersion mods to enhance and add to the survival mechanics, but I'll leave those out for now. Check out Frostfall if you want. This is basically what I built my current mod setup around, wanting to make it very survival heavy.
Skyrim Redone or "SkyRE" is an awesome mod that overhauls most of the gameplay, and is customizable for things like leveled zones instead of scaled zones, fixes the biggest shortcomings of the combat (like any AI using magic) and reworking a lot of the perks and adding a little more depth (such as different branches for different kinds of weapons like blades and axes instead of just one handed and two handed). It does some more stuff, but you should check out the description for more. There are a couple of suggested mods that you can combine with that as well like locational damage that further increase the intensity and complexity of gameplay.
Keep in mind you'll need to be careful of the version you download, as the most recent version requires Dragonborn, but the version before that has all of the features and should work for you. Just read the description and it'll tell you which version is right for you.
As far as I know, Morrowloot doesn't conflict per-say with gear mods, but it may change how you see those in the game, or if you do at all. Honestly, I don't think Morrowloot is really worth it. You get uneven loot drops without having to earn it by going into more or less dangerous areas, and it will probably limit your ability to really get a benefit from community made gear, which is in my opinion WAY better than having gear drops not scale. Some may have compat patches but I wouldn't count on it.
How's your PC? There are some pretty good mods to pickup if you have a decent PC, and I'd say that getting a proper texture for the Dwarven Shield (Best one I've found is "Hectrol DWARVEN SHIELD DELUXE HighRes Retex") is essential because jesus fucking christ it's bad in vanilla even with the high res DLC. Dragon Glyphs HD is also essential, as it makes the dragon text look less like complete fucking garbage, and obviously won't hit performance much. Those are two of the worst forward facing textures in vanilla, so do yourself a favor, especially if you plan on being a shield bearer in first person.
Hvergelmirs Armor and Shield retextures are pretty easy to run assuming you're already running the game at high settings, and they make the armor look ohhhhhh so much better. Book of Silence can be used to round out the armor that isn't covered by Hverelmirs and also has a weapon mod as well. They aren't too intense because they are for gear and usually there aren't a million dudes on screen or whatever and they are only double vanilla. They do have a lot more details and look a lot better though, especially in specific cases. I would say the Shields one at the very least is essential because man they can be bad in vanilla.
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