Skyrim Mods

THE ESSENTIALS
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SKSE
SkyUI
Unofficial Skyrim Patch
Unofficial Dawnguard Patch
Unofficial Dragonborn Patch

These should be fairly obvious.

The Enhancers
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Immersive HUD - A simple little mod that clears up the clutter on the screen when I don't need it.
A Matter of Time - Customizable clock widget for Skyrim.
Better Dialogue Controls
Better Messagebox Controls - These two are for making navigating interactive UI just a bit more convenient.
Timing is Everything - Lets you adjust the timing triggers on certain quests. Don't want Miraak's cultists to attack you until you've killed Alduin and are level 25? No problem, you can adjust that.
Jaxonz Utilities - a number of useful and clever little utilities that can be handy. I'd personally turn Smartlooter off. Positioner is by and far the most impressive thing ever.
Race Menu - Less shitty character creation.
The Choice Is Yours - Most quests aren't just shoved into your quest journal just by hearing about them. Now you have to accept them (or can turn them down).
Safety Load - A little security blanket I use for long loading screens. I think this might be baked into SKSE by default now, but I'm not sure.
Brawl Bugs Patch - A handy little thing that makes it so that more complicated mods that put harmless magic effects on your characters don't end up pissing people off during fist duels.
SkyComplete - A tracker for various tracking purposes.
FileAccess Interface - Lets Skyrim read and write text files. This is important for some mods!
FNIS - Fore's New Idles gives some mods toys to play around with.

Graphics or Miscellaneous Immersion Boosters
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A Quality World Map - Lets you get a non-useless world map. Comes in paper too, if that's your thing.
Realistic Water Two - No more jello water.
Realistic Boat Bobbing - Boats bob, the shit on the boats doesn't clip. Everyone wins!
Lightning during Thunder Storms (Minty's Lightning) - You kind of have to see this one in action.
True Storms - A storm enhancer, especially good with Minty up there.
Superior Lore-Friendly Hair - My go-to hair replacer.
WSCO - Windsong Overhaul - I couldn't find male and female replacers I wanted, so I went with this instead.
RS Children Overhaul - No more potato babies.
Wet and Cold (and Ashes) - You get wet if you jump in water. Who knew?
(I still need to find Khajit and Argonian mods)
Appropriately Attired Jarls - You do the civil war, Jarl replacements wear Jarl clothes. Simple.
Designs of the Nords - Hold banner replacer. Makes Jarl palaces not look so ragged.
Hold Border Banners: Don't know what hold you're in? No problem. Posts have been set up every so often with banners flying from them telling you exactly what hold you're heading into or out of. Compatible with Designs of the Nords, too.
Point the Way - Just in case you were really lost, more roadsigns have been added to major intersections.

Pump My Game Up
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Immersive Armors - Huge mod with gobs of awesome looking armors. Gives General Tulius and Ulfric Stormcloak unique armors too, which might look a little silly at the opening execution scene, but it's workable.
Wintermyst - Adds a shitton of unique enchantments to the game.
Apocalypse Spell Package - All the spells. ALL THE SPELLS.
Ordinator: Perks of Skyrim - A perk replacer I wanted to try out. It seems to be popular.
Winter is Coming - Adds a number of beefy fur cloaks to the game.
Campfire - A camping mod by the same dude who made Frostfall. This is going to be the base file for Frostfall in the future, so I'm just preparing now. I'll install his exposure mod (Frostfall 3.0) and needs mod (Last Seed) when he's done with them.
Art of the Catch - Proper fishing!
Immersive Horses - A lightweight, modern alternative to Convenient Horses.
Action Combat A number of combat tweaks, especially around stamina. I might add in a damage increasing mod on top of this if it's too easy.
Thunderchild - Epic Shouts: Adds new shouts to the game earned via a mini-game played in a new section of High Hrothgar. These shouts are formed out of words you already know, giving you incentive to go out and hunt those word walls. Unlike vanilla shouts, these seem to have some different effects at each tier.
Deadly Dragons - Why would you not
Enemy AI Overhaul: Revenge of the Enemies - Let's make shit tougher without affecting their health.

Quests
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Spectraverse - Magic of the Magna-Ge - Something about saving the world from a crisis being caused by star people.
Spectraverse - Only After Dragon Rising - No psychic Khajits
Dwemertech - Magic of the Dwarves - Let's go find the Dwemer!
Legacy of the Dragonborn - HOLY SHIT
Heljarchen Farm - Oh boy, my own farm to manage!
Windstad Mine - Oh boy, my own mine to manage!
Helgen Reborn - An enormous quest mod to restore Helgen from a burned out husk into a respectable city. Can't do the vanilla start with this installed, because of edited navmeshes that fuck up the carriage ride. So use Alternate Start to start somewhere else, or install this after having started the game.

Misc
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Guard Dialogue Overhaul - Less repetition of the same three lines you always hear. You start to hear a lot of the more context sensitive lines.
Trade Routes
Trade and Barter - These two give skyrim a sort of economy.
Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul: This gives everyone but followers a sort of survival instinct based on what kind of npc they are. Dragons? Vampires? Yeah, they'll run if they're not well equipped. Guards and mercenaries will still fight. More clever characters might use magic from a distance, then run if their health or magicka gets low. Only thing is that this mod doesn't play nice with city replacers, indoors or out. Use Run For Your Lives! and When Vampires Attack if you want basic functionality and still mess around with your cities.
Take Notes: Journal of the Dragonborn - A book themed interface that lets you take notes. Neat for roleplaying.
Alternate Start: Plops you into a prison cell at the start, where you make your character. A Statue of Mara gives you options on what kind of life you can start with. You can still choose the vanilla start, too. I like to use this mod as a buffer to load script heavy mods without disrupting the beginning, though it may not even be necessary this time.
Moonlight Tales - An update to a classic werewolf quality of life mod.
Practical Female Armor: Less boob plate. There's probably enough of that in Immersive Armors anyway.
Touring Carriages - Carriage fast travel isn't instant. The carriage gallops along the roads in real time, and the driver talks to you at various points along the way. You can nap to speed ahead to the end by talking to the driver, or hear various lines of cut dialogue concerning points of interest along the roads. Also I once made a game out of counting how many wild animals the cart ran over from Whiterun to Riften.
Winterhold: Expanded Ruins - Okay, so this is an exterior city mod, but I don't think it fucks with Immersive Citizens any. Puts some ruins on the edge of Winterhold to show where some of the original city was. There are also buried ruins you can explore, as sort of a dungeon featuring the modder's reindition of the lost bits of the original city. Neat looking shit.
Thieves Guild Requirements - Fuck off, Brynjolf. Of course my coin is honest, fuck you. With this mod, if you never get into pickpocketing and yoinking shit, Brynjolf never approaches you to recruit you.


Deserves His Own Section
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Inigo - Best follower in the game. Inserts himself into your backstory a little (or is a case of mistaken identity) but... fuck, man do I really have to explain him. https://youtu.be/YMNN_WGcvFQ  Have a fucking trailer.