Anyone who’s ever played a Bethesda Softworks game will tell you the studio’s works are inextricably entwined with its modding community, forming a sort of symbiotic relationship, and no game illustrates this better than The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. With over ten years on the market and 80,000 published mods (and rising), however, it can be difficult to pick out the very best from the pages upon pages on Nexus Mods—but luckily, I’m a huge RPG nerd and I did it for you.
No matter what playstyle you’re going for in your next run, these mods are the best of the best.
The 10 best Skyrim mods for your next playthrough
10) Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
USSEP, as it’s known in the modding community, barely even merits mentioning because it’s so ubiquitous. While other mods on this list make Skyrim more interesting, USSEP is essential, even for an otherwise completely vanilla game. USSEP fixes a laundry list of bugs left in by Bethesda’s (in)famous QA team, bringing Skyrim closer to a stable, complete, bug-free experience. It’s also required for most mods, including several on this list.
9) Hand to Hand
If you played as a Monk in Baldur’s Gate 3, this is the mod for you. Hand to Hand adds an entirely new skill tree, based around fighting barehanded—a dangerous prospect in vanilla Skyrim, but now you can roleplay as Bruce Lee to your heart’s content. As you progress through the skill tree, you’ll unlock new moves, abilities and perks to fulfill your destiny as the Fist of the North Province. Who needs all those overpriced weapons anyway? Pro tip: pair this one with a Khajiit or Argonian character for extra claw damage.
8) Windsong Immersive Character Overhaul
Skyrim‘s art style—and especially that of the higher-fidelity Special Edition—still holds up well enough that you don’t exactly need any fancy-schmancy graphics mods to have a good time… except the characters. Granted, we’re not in the potato-faced days of Oblivion anymore, but ten years on, Skyrim’s denizens are looking a little rough. The answer? WICO, which is a lightweight, plug-and-play character overhaul that beautifies everyone (Argonians and Khajiit included) without being quite so finicky as other mods that do the same. With everyone in the province freshly Botoxed, you’ll finally be able to tell the villagers and the Draugr apart.
7) Interesting NPCs
Skyrim—well, Bethesda in general—has a reputation for populating its world with dozens of characters voiced by the same handful of people. Interesting NPCs sets out to fix this problem, populating roads, taverns, temples and more with all-new NPCs that are a good deal more fleshed out than most residents of Skyrim you’re likely to come across. They’ll discuss philosophy, entrust you with minor quests, entreat you with song, and sometimes outright refuse to talk to you altogether, supported with hundreds of lines of voice acting. This mod makes the world feel so much bigger and gives the impression there’s life going on in the background you aren’t the center of.
6) Shadow of Skyrim
The Nemesis System from WB’s Shadow of Mordor games was genuinely one of the single best and most innovative emergent gameplay mechanics of the past decade. It’s also copyrighted and will probably never be used in a game again.
Instead of weeping for what’s been lost, try Shadow of Skyrim, which implements said system into Skyrim. Instead of simply dying when you’re defeated, you’ll be hauled off somewhere else, and the enemy that killed you will become a special, powered-up version with unique traits. This mod truly lets you carve out your own story, getting into fights, making personal enemies, and taking them down in glorious battles.
5) Skyrim Together
Did you think Skyrim was strictly a singleplayer game? Think again. Skyrim Together is one of those mods that’s truly legendary, and for good reason: it jury-rigs Skyrim into an online multiplayer game, letting groups of players adventure together, pursue quests, and slay dragons. Although it gets unstable with groups larger than a handful and there’s still a good bit of Creation Engine jank, delving into dungeons with your friends is a totally unparalleled experience that’s more than worth the few hiccups.
4) SkyUI
You can install all the graphics overhauls and fancy reshades you want, but Skyrim is still going to show its age every time you open up your inventory. It’s huge, it’s clunky, it was obviously made with a controller in mind—but no longer. SkyUI brings Skyrim‘s menu interfaces into the 21st century, streamlining every aspect of the UI and providing far more useful information. This one has to be seen to be believed.
3) Alternate Start: Live Another Life
For repeat players, waking up on the same cart over and over again has doubtlessly gotten stale—not to mention the way it hampers role-playing potential. What if you don’t want to be a prisoner chosen by destiny? What if you want to be a noble who owns a local farm, or a member of a Khajiit trading caravan, or wake up blood-spattered and penniless in the snow after a bandit attack leaves you for dead? Alternate Start: Live Another Life has all that and more. Rather than the vanilla game’s opening, you’re tasked with putting together a backstory before being thrown into the cold with gear and an opening quest matching who you’ve chosen for your character to be.
2) Inigo
There are friends, followers and even lovers around every corner of Skyrim, but one stands head and shoulders above them all: Inigo. This companion mod adds its eponymous Khajiit to be stumbled upon in the natural course of your travels, and from there, you’ll become fast friends. Inigo is both smarter and wordier than any other vanilla or modded companion you care to name, with a truly staggering amount of sharp, witty voice lines for any situation you can think of. His custom AI system gives him an almost uncanny level of reactivity, making it feel like it really is you and him against the world. As an added bonus, he even interacts with vanilla companions and certain popular modded ones, making your adventuring party feel truly alive. If you’re an adventurer in Skyrim, Inigo is the best friend you could ever have.
1) Beyond Skyrim: Bruma
Beyond Skyrim: Bruma might be the ultimate Skyrim mod, and it’s certainly the most ambitious that’s ever actually been completed. What does it do, you ask? Simple: it adds the entirety of Cyrodiil province’s northernmost county to the south of Skyrim’s border, painstakingly recreated from its depiction in 2006’s Oblivion and packaged with its very own questline. No big deal, right?
It’s essentially an entire free expansion, rivaling Bethesda’s official Dragonborn DLC in size and scope. Dozens of quests, hundreds of handmade assets, professional-grade writing and voice acting from end to end—what the Beyond Skyrim team has accomplished is beyond impressive, and the way it slots seamlessly into the rest of the game is a testament to the thousands of hours of work that have been put into it.
The team has promised further expeditions into the Tamrielic territories beyond Skyrim (get it?), so keep an eye out—but for now, County Bruma is more than enough of a treat on its own.
With these mods slotted into your game, you’ll be playing the best version of Skyrim—just keep an eye out for any more ill-timed patches that might break the whole thing.
