There are so many tiny touches that make this mod brilliant, like curated sound effects and animated icebergs. It includes lots of new, high-quality tree models, even more grasses and plants, and loads of visual tweaks that generally make forests look deeper and more imposing. Since Skyrim is full of forests, Skyrim Flora Overhaul has a pretty dramatic effect. You could always mix and match, and even throw in an ENB for good measure. ELFX wants to make Skyrim pretty, not just realistically lit.īoth mods are great, so it really depends on what kind of atmosphere you want to generate. When the Special Edition first launched, flashy post-processing options were limited while we waited for ENB to be updated. In OG Skyrim, I was rather partial to RealVision ENB, and it still makes the seven-year-old game look absolutely gorgeous, though it does come at the cost of performance. More than most other mods, the lighting, post-processing and colour tweaks made by ENBs and Reshade mods are down to personal preference.
The latest version of the mod only comes with one complete file, but the version is more modular. Open port on cgnatĪnother huge, broad texture mod, this time specifically for the Special Edition. This is specifically for old Skyrim, but there are plenty of great alternatives for the Special Edition. Optionally, you can download just the cities, landscapes, dungeons or miscelleanous packs. Everything from the sky and mountains to the interiors of ramshackle hovels has been done up. Skyrim HD is a long-running texture mod that replaces over textures. Basically, it spruces up a huge pile of 3D models, making all of Skyrim look nicer in hundreds of tiny ways.
Before you test anything in-game, run LOOT. There are several good ones, but Nexus Mod Manager is your best bet. You can hop directly to the kind of mod you want via the links below.Ĭheck the bottom of each write-up for the Special Edition link. What I like to do is create a new, unmodified game, get somewhere like Riverwood and then create a save that I can use for testing. For one thing, what was once nine pages long now all sits on a single page.
This list is regularly updated, though the most recent revision deals more with changes to formatting and structure than wholesale content changes. There are options available whether you want to improve graphics, make your companions better company, turn the dragons into something silly, or play a whole new adventure as good as the original story. The best Skyrim mods let you tweak or overhaul nearly every part of the game.