Mods I use

I. Patches, utilities, and other essential files

	A. Files required in order for other files to work
		1. DienesTools - Required for Grimy's Utilities. Not sure what else
		2.File Access Interface for Skyrim Script FISS - allows mods that use it to save MCM (and other) settings.
		3. Fuz Ro Bork and/or Fuz Ro Dah - The plugin plays blank sound files for unvoiced dialogue. Bork is supposed to tie into your Microoft Text To Speech to provide robot voices, but I never got TTS working so I can't say it. Now off nexus not sure why.
		4. HDT Physics Extensions - This is a framework to add physics to... anything, really. Mostly used for hair, clothes, boobs, and schlongs. HDT PE *or* HDT SMP (the new version that everyone says is better but no one understands because documentation is in korean). You can use both at the same time as long as both aren't trying to affect the same object (boobs), and there will not be collission between them. I'm using HDT PE because the mods I'm interested in (pony tails!) are HDT PE. There's a really interesting race mod on Nexus, Alexander Race, that is entirely SMP. Think Witcher 3 level of physics coolness.
		5. Papyrus Util - modders are supposed to package this. Some noobie modder didn't so I gotta have it. I think?
		6. KMX Utility Plugin - Don't remember why I have this. It's required for something.
		7. HDT High Heels - required for some armors.
		8. Grimy Plugin - Required for Grimy's mods.
		9. SkyUI - needs no introduction. If you are a heathen who prefers the default menu, SkyUI-away.
		10. SkyUILib- Supposed to be packaged when it's needed. Again, I think some noobie modder didn't. *shrug*
		11. Realistic Ragdolls and Force - I guess this fixes ragdolls and force, but I only use it because it's required for XPMSE. *shrug*
		12. UIExtensions - Requirement for other mods. You don't need the seperate version if you use EFF.
		13. Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS - Needed for any mod that adds new animations, also needed for XPMSE.
		14. XPMSE skeleton - a redone skeleton that allows more animation options, bounce, and a number of bugfixes.


	B. Fixes for vanilla or very common modded bugs.

		1. USLEEP.
		2. Enchantment Reload Fix - prevents enchantment charges from changing between reloads. Not in USLEEP because requires SKSE.
		3. Safety Load - probably not needed. There is a small subset of people who have perfect SKSE.inis and don't run out of memory but still crash or get ILS. These people should run Safety Load. All other people should not as it can cause other bugs.
		4. Stable uGridsToLoad - Essential stability mod, even if you don't (and you shouldn't) touch ugrids.
		5. Better Jumping - Also known as Double Jump. allows jumping while sprinting.
		6. HDT Height Sitting Fix - prevents floating when you are sitting down and tall, or sinking into the chair when short.
		7. HDT beast tail - there are two, one done by b00marrows and the other as part of the hdt dragon tails series (both on loverslab). The first is pretty stiff and the second distractingly float. At some point I'll learn JFF and edit the xml...? Either way it fixes the stupid "khajiit tail keeps moving on death" problem.
		9. Main Menu - Lets you sort through your save games from the main menu by character name and other identifiers. Can be pretty slow if you have 800 save games.
		10. Better dialogue Controls - Makes use of the enter key in dialogues more consistent and improves the bounds for mouse clicking.
		11. Better MessageBox Controls - Makes use of the enter key in messageboxes possible and improves the bounds for mouse clicking.
		12. Skyrim Ice Shader Fix, Skyrim Particle Patch, and Skyrim Subsurface Scattering Patch - sometimes packaged alongside ENBs, good even without it. Fixes a number of issues with various settings in various vanilla meshes. Some of the fixes are not very good but the others are essential. Should be overwritten by SMIM.
		13. Static Mesh Improvement Mod - includes a huge number of fixes for bad vanilla meshes. Even if you are concerned about performance you should use the lite version.
		14. 360 walk run plus - I consider this a fix because it fixes cloak clipping with its new cloak animation.
		15. A Quality World Map with Roads - maps without roads are useless.
		16. No Dragon LODs - Makes it so dragons are fully rendered as far as they are loaded. Which is good, because, like, lod textures on a moving object is kind of weird.
		17. Hearthfire Display Case Fix - Lets you plop the weapons into the display case properly instead of dropping them in like a pleb.
		18. Follower Trap Safety - Wouldn't be needed if the AI weren't complete shit
		19. Traps Make Noise - More Dangerous Traps - be sure to grab the follower trap safety compatability patch
		20. Wiseman's Trap Fixes - be sure to install the correct compatability options.
		21. Bookshelves Updated SKSE script - Improves placement of books on bookshelves.
		22. Brawl Bugs Patch - Prevents brawling bugs.
		23. Size Does Matter (RV markers) - makes it so NPCs don't change size (scale up and down) when using various idle markers.
		24. Same Walk and Run Speeds - Make so NPCs move at the same speed as you instead of some awkward middle speed.
		25. Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed - Changes movespeeds to be better. Now you no longer crawl when overweighted.
		26. No Killmove Blur - From Steam Workshop, the blur is annoying and makes taking good screenshots of epicness hard.
		27. Wiseman's Flora Fixes - Prevents a bug where harvestables do not respawn correctly. Why pick this over Flora Respawn fix? It seems to work in a slightly better way, and it's the one that works correctly with CACO.
		28. NPC Smarter Water AI - Because why shouldn't NPCs be able to cross water...
		29. High Res Female Lips for SKSE - prevents the weird pixelated lips when using high res facetints in skse.ini.
		30. Dragonborn Black Book Fix
		31. Multiple Floors Sandboxing

	C. Utilities
		1. MFG console - provides more info about anything you click on in the console. Essential.
		2. Racemenu - The best chargen mod in existence. Also includes NiOverride which is required for many other mods, and a number of other bugfixes.
		3. AddItemMenu - Lets you see and add to your inventory all items from any mod in your load order.
		4. Jaxonz Series - I use diagnostics, Positioner, Real Names, and Crafting Helper. The first two are great. All the rest of her mods cause varying amounts of script lag. Real Names is fantastic, Crafting Helper is convenient, and I personlly don't like the remainder.
		5. A Matter of Time - If you can tell time in the middle of a dungeon I'm impressed. However, my character should be able to judge the passage of time SOMEWHAT via physiological cues.
		6. Memory Blocks Log - lets you ensure that skse memory blocks isn't the cause of crashing.
		7. Sometimes Pick Up Books - Lets you choose whether to pick up books or read them.
		8. SkyTweak - balance your own game!
		9. Grimy Utilities - a number of useful stuff.
		10. Skyrim Community Uncapper - Lets you customize leveling to your liking. Slow, fast, some skills faster than others, it's all configurable.
		11. The Choice is Yours - Lets you choose whether to accept a quest or decline it. Keep your quest log clean!
		12. Timing is Everything - Lets you delay or prevent a number of important quests.
		13. Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions - requires new game to allow > 2 adoptions ;)
		14. Extensible Follower Framework -  Why pick this over UFO or AFT? UFO's pretty out of date and doesn't have as many features. AFT isn't under active support so isn't recieving new features. EFF has better fallbacks for bugs that occur in all of them, and in general is scripted in a better way.
		15. A Closer Look - Simple Smooth Hotkey Zoom
		16. Immersive HUD - Lets you hide HUD elements. I just wish there was more ability to pick and choose.
		18. Immersive Horses - Improved horses with better control options
		19. Thieves Guild Requirements - No Auto Quest Start Brynjolf - FUCK OFF BRYNJOLF


	D. Should have been that way all along
		1. Actual Windows - gives an illusion of transparency to farmhouse windows.
		2. D13 Get up stand up - A dragon just knocked you on your ass, you gonna get up like your alarm went off an hour early?
		10. Dual Wield Parrying - should have been in the base game. Unfortunately doesn't work as quickly as something native to the engine.
		3. Cutting Room Floor - Cut content restored by Arthmoor.
		4. No Poison Dialogues - as it says.
		5. Face to Face - Oblivion style conversations so you actually look people in the face when you talk. So far, have not encountered *any* problems with this one.
 		6. Skyrim - Enhanced Camera - Greatly improves 3rd person with a variety of options. So far has worked nearly perfectly (other first person mods I have tried don't).
		7. No Blowing Fog During Rain - removes that annoying blowing fog mesh.
		8.  Sell Unusual Gems - Stones of Barenziah - Lets you sell those annoying things assuming you're not gonna collect all of them.
		9. Training Dummies and Targets - lets you train off dummies and targets.
		10. Armor and Clothing for Kids - lets kids wear all armor and clothing. Unfortunately gives the female kids boobs.
		11. Children Fight Back - Lets children fight back.
		12. My Home is Your Home - lets you bring followers to any home.
		13. More Follower Voices Mod - remixes voices to allow more follower lines for voice types that don't normally follow.
		14. Player Head Tracking - afaik this is the least buggy implementation. Seems to be ab it "sticky" for me as in the head stays in one direction too long. There's also a "3.3 patch" by a different person on a different page on the nexus. *shrug*
		15. No Spinning Death Animation - as it says. Ragdoll on death.


We are now up to 61 esps (some of which are mergeable, some not), and over 20 MCMs.

Before I begin, a word on stability.

This (VERY much WIP) modlist is, for lack of a better word, stable. That is, in all my testing, often running around at very high speeds for hours at a time, I did not crash. I did freeze up once (wasn't able to repeat). However, I've only actually *played* this modlist for about 10-20 hours. And while those 10 hours were crash-free, they certainly weren't bug-free, and many, maybe even most, bugs don't show up until dozens or more hours of play.

Let's discuss the kind of bugs that people often see with very heavy load orders... even when they've done everything right.

Let's say you've spent hundreds of hours (as I have) picking out mods, and perfectly crafting your load order. Everything is compatible, or if it isn't compatible, you made your own patch, tore mods apart until it worked, or begged for a patch from the mod author. Most people's modlists are not perfectly compatible. You have to be a god at TES5edit to get a modlist even a tenth this heavy perfectly compatible, and even that is often not enough. (Not to mention, mistakes get made!) Let's assume you've got everything *perfectly* optimized as far as memory usage - that is, SKSE memory patch is being used to its full potential, ENBoost is being used to its full potential, you don't have unnecessary shit running that's going to eat memory. Let's assume all your mods are stable, and no heavier than they need to be to get their various jobs done.

You're still going to have issues.

Sometimes you have minor bugs, often due to an oversight. Things like visual glitches from a wild edit in a mod you didn't catch, or your enb working fine for every weather but one. Sometimes these bugs get bigger, like all my trees floating 6 feet off the ground (due to an old patch from SFO for a texture mod that didn't work with the current version of SFO). Sometimes you'll have NPCs stuck in log piles or just plain stuck (because even if your navmeshes are perfectly patched, *and mine are not*, you still have to deal with shitty navmeshes and too much stuff in the world).

All that's minor. But you're still going to get crashes.

Maybe you're really excited about your new Yarl's (typo original) robe mesh that has HDT. But then you can't do the Wolf Queen quest without crashing. Ok, so you add another mod to fix that. There's a lot of little bugs like this that are totally emergent from having a heavy load order... and there are mods or work-arounds to fix most of them. But some of them are going to be very very difficult to figure out and fix.

But you're still going to get crashes. Not in 10 hours of playing, maybe not even in 50 hours on the same character, but hundreds of hours in... eventually, if you're unlucky, your save will simply not load, or you'll find some location you'll never be able to go to again, or something else.

Because Bethesda devs have *no idea* how much mods can add to the game. There is management of resources, of forms, of scripts baked into saves, of memory, that is baked into the game, that is *barely enough to handle vanilla*. And Todd Howard says 'Oh, it's ok, mods just add a few armors or maybe there's some followers or houses, that won't really stress the engine.' But that's not true. Because with a heavy modlist like this, you are doubling, tripling, sometimes even more, the number of *things* in the engine. And I don't even have any new lands mods squeezed in here! Those increase the chances of having issues by an order of magnitude *because* they're DLC-sized. If you play a short amount of time like I did, this isn't an issue because you just don't encounter that many things all in one save if the save is short.

But if you play a long time, you come up across many issues. Weird interactions. A missed script initializement or something else that happened 30 hours ago that you didn't notice, and now you crash on a particular quest or location.

And reaching the magic number of more forms than can be stored in a 16 bit integer in the save. The save will play fine. But it will never load again.


This is Skyrim Magic. This is modding. It *will* crash. How many mods are you brave enough to stuff in there before it does?

Arthmoor says I'm greedy. Maybe I am. But the fact of the matter is you *can* play like this, and it will be stable and it will be great fun. You just have to be aware of the risks.

Some people are greedy of course. There are mods that really... just don't do much. So for every mod... Ask yourself what it's really doing for you. If it's Journal of the Dragonborn, are you actually going to write in it? Does your character even know how to write? If it's a mod that makes aroused people blush... how much does that really do for your sexytimes experience? Keep in mind... that arousal mod is running scripts continuously on every NPC. If all it did was add a blush texture to everyone's warpaints, it probably would be worth (although it wouldn't be a very good mod). But the cost of running it is very high and the benefit very low. So you need to evaluate that as part of your decision making for every mod in your load order.

I've done that evaluation. And maybe Arthmoor is right and I *am* greedy. But there are lots of mods I decided *not* to use even though I could, so you know. I have SOME standards!


I. Bugfixes, Tweaks, Utilities, and other essential mods.

What's the difference between a bugfix and a tweak? A bugfix is something that is *absolutely* the way the Skyrim devs intended it, but just didn't make it into game for some reason, or something that improves stability.

A tweak is something that is the way it *should* have been in game, even if it's not that way. IMO all tweaks are essential, but some people may disagree.

Utilities add or alter new mechanics. Things like adding quest delay or player headtracking.


  A. Bugfixes
    1. USLEEP
    2. Enchantment Reload Fix
    3. Fuz Ro Doh (I consider this a bugfix because it would have totally fixed a bug I had in vanilla. :-/ )
    4. Better Dialogue Controls
    5. Better Messagebox Controls
    6. HDT Height Sitting Fix
    7. Skyrim Ice Shader Fix
    8. Skyrim Particle Patch for ENB
    9. Skyrim Subsurface Scattering Patch for ENB
    10. Hearthfire Display Case Fix
    11. Brawl Bugs Patch
    12. Dragonborn Black Book Fix

Safety Load and Stable uGridsToLoad: I don't use these but I wanted to put them in here so I could talk about them. First of all, increasing your uGridsToLoad is never going to be as stable as leaving it at the default. It is just impossible for it to be equally stable. And with DynDOLOD, or a nice TES5lodgen setup, the visual impact just isn't that big anymore. The most you'll get it out of it is being able to see people or fully rendered grass a bit further out (about 10-20% further out), and that's just more fps impact for a tiny gain.

So that said there isn't any reason to use UGridsToLoad. Some people said that it improves grid load even at default ugrids, which is why I had that in my load order to start with. However, there's been little to no evidence that that is actually the case in the years since its release.

And there is a very good reason not to use uGridsToLoad. Namely, the author made a mistake (which is easy to do in these mods that totally change some aspect of Skyrim memory handling...), which causes memory handling in your save to gradually become corrupt over time. It's not a 100% thing... it's a die roll, whether your game ends up looping through the bit of code that causes the issue. But when it happens, your save *will* die eventually.

So I can't recommend this mod anymore. There is one good reason to use it, and that is: If you have ugrids set higher than 5 in your current save, you can install stable uGridsToLoad, change the value in the ini down to 5, and then load your save. This is not possible without the mod. However, once you've saved your game at the lower uGrids, there is no more reason to use Stable uGridsToLoad.

Safety Load is a little bit more of an edge case. First of all, for 99.9% of people SKSE memory patch is enough, and you will never get infinite loading screens as long as SKSE memory patch is working (There are a LOT of people who don't have it working and don't realize it. But that's a seperate issue). There is that 0.1% (numbers totally made up throughout this post, btw) of people where SKSE memory patch is working just fine, you can test it and it's working beautifully, but they still get infinite loading screen which is fixed by Safety Load.

There is no reason to use Safety Load unless you are in that 0.1%. It changes memory management in the game to decrease the number of objects loaded on each loading screen. While this shouldn't cause game-breaking issues, it can cause stuttering or other issues. Plus, some people have linked some graphical artifacts in the UI to it. So just... don't use mods you don't need. You don't need this mod, don't use it.

B. Mods that are in my modlist *only* so that other mods can use them.You should go endorse these. If it weren't for these authors, a lot of the cool stuff you actually use wouldn't be possible.

  1. FileAccess Interface for Skyrim Script (FISS)
  2. DienesTools
  3. UIExtensions (not needed if you use EFF)
  4. NetImmerse Override (not needed if you use Racemenu)
  5. KMX Utility Plugi
  6. HDT Physics Extension
  7. HDT High Heels
  8. Grimy Plugin
  9. PapyrusUtil
  10. Realistic Ragdolls and Force
  11. Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS

C. HUD
  1.SkyUI (duh)
  2. A matter of time. (Preset saved in backup folder).
  3. Immersive HUD - grab Grimy's Preset patch from the Skytweak page for this and SkyUI to save presets.
  4. Minimal HUD - full
  5. Immersive Undiscovered Locations - Minimal HUD version.

D. Tweaks
  1. OneTweak
  2. MainMenu
  3. Eli's Main Menu Replacer (or replacer of your choice)
  4. Either Chesko's Lore-Based Loading Screens or Sheogorath's screens, up to you. Maybe both! But that might be silly.
  5. Face to Face Conversation
  6. Player Headtracking (I also have the 3.3 patch from a seperate page on nexus, it looks good to me).
  7. Skyrim - Enhanced Camera
  8. Better Jumping
  9. 360 Walk Run Plus
  10. No Spinning Death Animation
  11. Size Does Matter - NPCs do not rescale shrink or resize - less camera restrictions, RV markers
  12. Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed
  13. Same Walk Run Speeds (note, I may have tweaked these a bit)
  14. D13 Faster get up stand up animation vanilla friendly
  15. No Dragon LODs
  16. No Killmove Blur (This is from workshop, to install with MO just launch the skyrim launcher through MO after subscribing and it'll download it straight to your overwrite folder.
  17. Follower Trap Safety
  18. Traps Make Noise - More Dangerous Traps
  19. Wiseman's Trap Fixes
  20. Wiseman's Flora Fixes (should be installed after SMIM if you have it).
  21. Children Fight Back
  22. More Follower Voices Mod
  23. Armor and Clothing for Kids (note that this just resizes armor to fit kids, so female kiddos will have boobplate).
  24. Vendor Sale Delay - GONE
  25. Unlimited Bookshelves (There's several mods that do this same thing, with the improvements by Nazenn this is once again the forerunner for bookshelf tweaks).
  26. Thieves Guild Requirements - Not Auto Quest Start Brynjolf
  27. The Choice is Yours
  28. Sell Unusual Gems - Stones of Barenziah
  29. Multiple Floors Sandboxing
  30. Hearthfires Multiple Adoptions (with custom home support for kids and spouse)
  31. A Quality World Map with Roads

Phew. Did I miss any?

E. Utilities
  1. AddItemMenu
  2. Extensible Follower Framework
  3. A Closer Look
  4. MFG Console
  5. My Home is Your Home
  6. Grimy Utilities
  7. Racemenu
  8. SkyTweak
  9. Sometimes Pick Up Books
  10. Jaxonz Diagnostics
  11. Jaxonz Positioner
  12. Jaxonz Crafting Helper
  13. Real Names (updated jaxonz real names by nellshini)
  14. Memory Blocks Log - only needed for testing
  15. Skyrim -Community- Uncapper.
  16. Dual Wield Parrying
  17. XPMSE
  18. Training Dummies and Targets
  19. Timing is Everything
  20. Violens

Here's another note. To be one of the above mods, I have to consider the mod *essential*. And for a mod to be essential, it must be completely stable. Some of these tweaks and utilities *do* have an impact... a lot of them run start up scripts at beginng of game, some of them run scripts throughout the game. But as far as I am aware they are all stable and they all have reasonable impacts for what they do... namely... the impacts are microscopic.

II. Graphics.

  A. Textures

    2. Stunning statues of Skyrim - Mix and match your favorites
    3. Hvergelmir's Shield Retexture
    3. aMidianborn

      b. Book of Silence - Needs optimization badly. Good quality armors, creatures, and weapons.
      c. Caves and Mines - high quality mines
      d. Farmhouse - high quality farmhouse
      e. Imperial Forts - Parallax imperial forts
      f. Solstheim - parallax dragonborn
      g. Whiterun - parallax whiterun. More all inclusive than pfuscher.

    4. Ruins Clutter Improved - I dunno, it improves stuff.
    5. Arri's Snow Elf Ruins Retexture - t'ain't enough of these.
    6. Azura Retexture - 4k statue of azura
    7. BAD NEWS BEARS - bear.
    8. Barenziah's Glory - gems are truly outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous.
    9. Benitoite's Jazbay Grapes Retexture :D
    10. Better Goats -
    11. Bloodstone chalice Reborn
    12. Business Ledger HD Retexture
    13. Deathbells HD
    14. Designs of the Nords - better banners
    15. Dragon Glyphs HD
It kinda gets fuzzy here...
    16. Dramatic Clouds?
    17. LITTLE THINGS - I pick 512, 256 would be fine.
    18. Falmer Clutter Texture Mod -....
    19. Falmer by Kajuan -
    20. Fhaarkas Softer Animal Fur
    21. Gemling Queen Dragon Claws
    22. Giant by Kajuan
    23. Gemling Queen Jewelry
    24. Glorious Daedric Retexture
    25. Glorious Stalhrim Retexture
    26. Hagraven by Kajuan
    27. HD Linens
    28. HD Ore and Ingots
    29. HD Sacks
    30. HD Stone Quarry and Clay deposit for Hearthfire
    31. High Quality Food and Ingredients
    32. High Quality Grindstone
    33. Holy Wards - a retexture
    34. Horncandles
    35. Hybrid's HD Plants and Herbs Retexture
    36. Dragon Priest by Kajuan
    37. LeanWolf's Better-Shaped Weapons
    38. Icy Chillrend with Transparency
    39. EotW Mage Robes of Skyrim
    40. LInd's Robe Replacers. All of them.
    41. Elaborate Textiles
    42. Highland Cow retex
    43. OH GOD BEES
    44. Real Glaciers V2
    45. Realistic HD Baskets
    46. Realistic HD Blacksmith
    47. Realistic HD Ingots
    48. Realistic HD Misc
    49. Realistic HD Mushrooms
    50. Realistic HD Pickaxe
    51. Realistic HD Woodcutter's Axe
    52. Skyrim Shaders 2015
    53. SkySight - HD Hi-Res Pillow
    54. Realistic Instruments - Flute Lute and Drum HQ
    55. White Phial Replacer
    56. Realistic Smoke and Embers
    57. Refracting Stalhrim with optional transparency
    58. Ren's HD Flame Atronach by Rengel
    59. Ren's HD Shrines by Rengel
    60. Retexture for Soup
    61. Retexture for the Scroll - picked the varied option for maximum vram usage.
    62. Revamped Alchemy Lab HD - it's got transparent little glass bubbly things! and smoke! green smoke!
    63. RUGNAROK
    64. Rune Magic HD
    64. Rustic Clutter Collection
    65. Rustic Cooking Station
    66. Rustic Dragon Corpse
    67. rustic East Empire Company Signage
    67. Rustic Monuments
    68. Rustic Nordic Murals
    69. Rustic Oven
    70. Sabercats of Skyrim and the optional Saberpelts of skyrim
    71. Semitransparent Stalhrim Deposits
    72. Serious Mammoth Bone Retex HD
    73. SkyGazer Moons
    74. Stone Quarries Retextures
    75. Superior Silverware - HD Textures
    76. Sweet Mother - the Night Mother Improvement
    77. The Divine Amulets Retexture
    78. Skyrim Skill Interface Retexture
    79. Transparent and Refracting Glass Armor and Weapon
    80. Peltapalooza
    81. True Textures - Bird Nests - Elianora notes a bad texture seam on the eggs. As long as you ignore that (Hah, too late, I told you!) it looks great.
    82. True Wolves of Skyrim
    83. Ultimate HD Fire Effects - imo only looks good with ENB
    84. Visible Windows - nice windows
    85. Wabbajack HD Texture Pack
    86. Actual Windows - Farmhouses - gives farmhouse windows the illusion of transparency
    87. Alternative Azura Crystals
    88. Ethereal Cosmos
    89. Trees HD Skyrim Variation WITH upgrade and fix for Trees HD by Pfuscher
    90. Azura's Star Retexture
    91. Bellyaches HD Dragon Replacer Pack
    92. Better Gold
    93. Better Mammoth Cheese
    94. Books Notes Paper HD 2k
    95. Cultist HD retexture - Champion of Mora
    96. Death Hound HD
    97. Detailing the Eldrich
    98. Dragonborn Mages Robes Retexture Pack
    99. Dwemer Automatons
    100. Elven Weapon for Silence
    101. Embers HD
    102. Ethereal Auroras
    103. Glass refracting wine bottles
    104. Hana's DB window
    105. Hana's Shrooms
    106. HD Combat Training Targets
    107. HD Foxes
    108. Horizon of Dreams - Night Sky and Moon Textures
    109. MAPS
    110. Masque of Clavicus Vile UHD
    111. Miraak HD Retexture - Champion of Mora
    112. More Dramatic Alduin Retexture
    113. More Dwemered Textures - the Markarth and Dwemer Ruins
    114. Psiji Robes Retexture - Keeper of the Ogma HD
    115. Psychosteve's DragonPriest Masks
    116. Real Wood Textures - Farmhouses
    117. Recolored Edwarr's Spelltomes
    118. SkyFix - HD Blacksmit Signs
    119. Skyfix - Unique Inn Signs HD
    120. SkyGazer- HD 2k Constellations
    121. Skyrim Effects Project
    122. Skyrim Realistic Texture Overhaul Dragonborn.
    123. Solitude Dragonhead HD
    124. Troll Skull 4k HD
    125. Troll by Kajuan
    126. Ultra HD Ebony Blade
    127. Ultra HD Hrothmund's Axe
    128. Eyecandy Staff of Magnus
    129. Vivid Landscapes - Woods
    130. Alduins Wall Retexture - Concept Art
    131. 2X clothing remix
    132. Redefined Dungeons WIP -... just the ivy... renamed to farmhouse ivy...
    133. Lepidoptera of Skyrim
    134. Spellbreaker Mystic Reskin
    135. Aeterna Circlets
    136. High-Res Dartwing Texture
    137. Real Gold Trophies
    138. Rustic Clothing - WIP
    139. Skall clothes HD revival
    140. Texture for Safe with Lock
    141. Trifle from Hiro the Gate Solityyud
    142. Whiterun Trellis Redesigned and HQ
    143. XRC HD Imperial Armory
    144. Deathbell HD
    145. Thistle 01
    146. Telvanni Reborn
    147. Temple Preist Robes HD Retexture
    148. The Art of Dragonbone
    149. Thicket Natural
    150. Skyrim HD - TErrain Parallax Tribute

Baseline: Skyrim Realistic Overhaul - the most complete texture mod of all texture mods. 2k/1k mix, pretty well optimized, generally better than the HRDLC, easy to use.

Lighting and Weather

1. ELFX with all optionals (especially the enhancer)
2. Weather and Ambience Overhaul with all requirements (including immersive sounds: compendium and true storms). I merged everything except COT, True Storms, and Minty's Lightning Mod.
3. ENB: I've tested both Vividian and Spectra fairly intensively, both looked good. Other ENBs will require more testing.
4. Wonders of Weather
5. No blowing fog during rain
6. Vivid Snow - Real Skyrim Snowflakes
7. Real Clouds - still undecided on this one. It's interesting, but the clouds are a little... funny.
8. DOWNPOUR
9. Ethereal Auroras
10. Horizon of Dreams - Night Sky and Moon Textures
11. Ethereal Clouds
12. Skygazer Moons
13. Skygazer Constellations
14. Downpour
15 - Here's where I put vivid clouds and fog, which is a WAO requirement, to overwrite the other cloud textures where it does.
16.


I just ditched all of the above to try out Vivid Weathers. I'm now using ELFX with all optionals (especially the enhancer), Wonders of Weather, AOS, SoS, ISC, (yeah, you need a lot more patches now than with WAO, that's ok, they're mergeable), Ethereal Auroras, Skygazer Moons, and... that's it!

The Wilds

  1. Tamriel Reloaded HD - new rocks, new trees, new grass, etc. etc.

I made some heavy edits to TRHD. The first, and the one absolutely everyone should do whether they make further edits or not, is to optmize its textures using SMCO. This won't touch the parallax textures, so you needn't worry about that. What it will do is add mim-maps, fix compression levels, and just generally make TRHD more useable and a smaller size.

Secondly, I hid (or deleted) its whiterun meshes. While these meshes are necesary for TRHD's edits to whiterun, they frankly suck. A lot. And I ended up not using parallax for whiterun anyways so I didn't need parallax meshes.

The third edit is to make custom rock textures for four of its six rock texture sets. I'm not very good at making normal maps yet, but nulldusk made normal maps for me. He's pretty good at it. But I lost the granite one :( Those custom rock textures can be found in my dropbox folder. If you don't like which types of rocks I put where, it's easy enough to rename the textures to be something different.

The last thing I did is to delete all of its landscape edits and grass so that I could use SFO grass. This is only necessary if you want to use SFO or another grass mod that does not make its own landscape edits. If you use Verdant or Unbelievable Grass, their landscape edits will simply overwrite TRHD's (assuming they load after), so this edit isn't necessary. (And if you want to use TRHD's custom grass or soil textures, you absolutely do not want to do this!)

I have all of TRHD's textures that strictly overwrite vanilla, themselves overwritten. Nothing remains. If there's stray parallax or something, that isn't overwritten by one of my other parallax mods, I've hidden it.

So what remains?

- The texture sets for rocks in the esp, so I don't have to apply those by hand to a trillion different rocks.

- The new trees and other objects added throughout Skyrim. This is certainly a bit of a performance impact.

- The new meshes for several cities, with the custom textures. This adds some visual interest to Solitude and Riften in particular. However, I've mixed and matched textures for these meshes a bit too. (I'll make notes on where I've done that for the relevant cities).

- The new road textures. There are other mods that do this, but I was already using this one, so meh!

Basically this mod just adds a LOT more variety to Skyrim and makes a lot of places look more unique. It's actually a pretty great concept and it's clear the author has worked very, very hard on it. It's a shame the actual quality of the work is a bit mixed. That's true of a lot of big mods, but this one has more bad than usual. However, with a bit of mix and matching of textures the ideas the author had are preserved, you can have much better textures, and it's an excellent addition to a heavy load order like this one. If you have a much lighter order or don't want to think about it very much, you could be well-served by simply using TRHD as it stands (after running the optimizer of course).

  2. Skyrim HD - Terrain Parallax Tribute
  3. Vivid Landscapes - All in One (non bsa to overwrite TRHD and SHD. Include: Classic grey mountains, SMIM patch, skyforge rock, moss rocks).
  4. Vivid Landscapes - Woods
  5. Realistic Water Two
  6. watercolor for ENB and Realistic Water Two (I actually decided this was too bright and am playing without it at the moment).
  7. Stream Fix
  8. Transparent Wave spray retexture by Pfuscher
  9. Ruffled Feather pack: Choices: Water Plants, Better Dynamic Snow, Decrease Those Plants, Moss Rocks, red mountain particle plume, just ice
  10. Pure Waters - Waterfalls
  11. Skyrim Flora Overhaul
  12. Hybrids HD Plants and Herbs Retexture
  13.
  14. Deathbell HD
  15. Thicket Natural
  16. SFO Bent Pines for SFO v2.0
  17. Unique Flowers and Plants (don't forget to grab the performance textures)
  18. Unique Grasses and Groundcovers - Nature and Landscape Enhancement
  19. Skyrim Bridges - IMPORTANT NOTE: This mod has a lot of navmesh issues and conflicts, either just plain bad navmeshes or ones that conflict with other mods like ETAC. Also, I can't get dyndolod to make proper lods for it, so it's got that going for it. So why is it here? Well, the bad navmeshes just cause pathing issues, not stability (they're not deleted, they're just a bit iffy), and... the bridges are awesome!
  20. Dyndolod
  21. Enhanced Landscapes
  22. Skyrim HighPoly Fern Meshes
  23. True Textures - Bird Nests
  24. Trees HD Skyrim Variation
  25. Upgrade and fix for Trees HD by Pfuscher
  26. Transparent and Refracting Icicles and Frost Atronach


The Dungeons

  1. aMidianborn Caves and Mines
  2. HD Ore and Ingots
  3. HD Stone Quarry and Clay Deposit for Hearthfire
  4. Semitransparent Stahlrim deposits
  5. Stone Quarries Retextured - hearthfire
  6. HD Linens
  7. Ruins Clutter improved
  8. Arri's Snow Elf Ruins Retexture
  9. Alternative Azura Crystals
  10. Dragon Glyphs HD
  11. Detailing the Eldrich - Higher-Res Apocrypha/temple of miraak/black books
  12. Detailing the Eldrich - Higher Res Riekling Architecture
  13. Dwemer Metal retexture
  16. Gemling Queen Dragon Claws
  17. Rustic Nordic Murals
  18. Hana's DB Window
  19. Alduin's Wall Retexture - Concept Art
  20. Langley's Texture Workshop
  21. aMidianborn Imperial Forts
  22. Falmer Clutter Texture Mod

Civilization
1. aMidianborn Farmhouse
2. aMidianborn Whiterun
3. Designs of the Nords
4. Real Woods Textures - Farmhouses
5. Visible Windows
6. Actual Windows - Farmhouses 1.02
7. HD combat Training Targets
8. HQ College of Winterhold
10. ENB water of Horse Trough and Blacksmith Forge
11. Skyfix - HD Blacksmith Signs
12. Skyfix - Unique Inn Signs hD
13. Re-defiend Dungeons WIP ivy texture renamed to farmhouse ivy
14. Trifle form Hiro the Gate solityyud
15. Whiterun Terllis Redesigned and HQ
16. Like a Moss - Whiterun Moss Fix
17. Better Farmhouse Interiors
18.
19. Fences of skyrim - no more flickering fences.

Note: incompatible meshes.


MO users: When I say hide a file, I mean double click on the mod or right click > information, filetree, go to the level specified and then right click > hide (or delete if you like to keep things clean).
NMM users: When I say hide a file, I mean when you install the mod, don't install those assets from the mod, or delete them afterwards (but make sure you only delete the assets from the mod specified! If I say "delete farmhouse meshes from tamriel reloaded, please don't also delete the smim meshes you installed earlier!)

Farmhouse:

Install:

SMIM
Vivid Landscapes - hide: farmhouse01_p.dds
Vivid Landscapes - SMIM farmhouse stuff patch
Actual Windows - Farmhouses
Better Farmhouse Interiors
Designs of the Nords
Real Wood Textures - Farmhouses - hide: stonewall01.dds and stonewall01_n.dds
Skyrim Project Parallax Revisited: Real Wood Textures - Farmhouses
Peltapalooza (whichever you prefer)
Fences of Skyrim - If you want bark textured fences, pick the main file. If you want parallax non-barky fences, pick the "version for vivid landscapes" file (other file is not needed), and hide wovenfence01.dds and wovenfence01_n.dds.
Noble Skyrim - small towns and villages only (or the whole thing, doesn't matter). Find the "farmhouse" folder in that mod (BEFORE installation, nmm users) and rename it to "farmhouseint".
Download Re-designed Dungeons WIP. Find the ivy texture in the zip file. Rename it to ivy01.dds and the normal map to ivy01_n.dds and place it in textures\architecture\farmhouse.



Solitude:
fjalw;kej234 see solitude file

High Hrothgar: Dire HD

Markarth: granite markarth with custom TRHD granite texture

Riften: Noble Skyrim and TRHD

Windhelm: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

ended up being osmodius > langley's > NSMwith visible windows and thd's groundmud

Winterhold: HQ college of winterhold

#Actors
bellyache animal and creature pack
amidianborn book of silence - creatures
bad news bears
better goats
falmer by kajuan
giant by kajuan
highland cow retex
grace darkling dogs and foxes
hagraven by kajuan
dragon priest by kajuan
ren's HD flame atronach
rustic dragon corpse
sabrecats of skyrim
true wolves of skyrim
Immersive Horses
fhaarkas softer animal fur
death hound hd
dwemer automatons
better dwemer spider textures
krittakitty's hd werewolves
bellyaches hd dragon replacer pack
more dramatic alduin retexture
troll by kajuan
rabbits of skyrim
More Dramatic Alduin Retexture (if you don't like any of its options, a solid black alternative is the World Eater HD).
Vampire Lord Retexture


#Armor and Weapons
UNP Female Armors
Practical Female Armors
Less Sexual Female Armor
Gemling Queen Jewelry
aMidianborn Book of Silence - Armors
aMidianborn Book of Silence - Weapons
aMidianborn Book of Silence - Unique Items
aMidianborn content Addon
Refracting Stalhrim with transparent weapons
transparent and refracting glass armor and weapon with amidianborn patch (optional file)
XRC HD Imperial Armory
amidianborn book of silence - weapons
Glorious Stalhrim
Glorious Daedric
LeanWolf's Better Shaped Weapons
Icy Chillrend with Transparency
The Divine Amulets Retexture
Elegant Circlets 2k
Elven Weapons for Silence
Masque of Clavicus Vile UHD
CL's Ebony Weapon Replacer
Insanitys Ebony Sword Replacer
Ebony Blade Replacer
Ultra HD Hrothmund's Axe
Spellbreaker Mystic Reskin (blue!) or spellbreaker oblivionized
Eyecandy Staff of magnus
Wabbajack HD Texture Pack
Psychosteve's DragonPriest Masks
Insanitys Kahvozein Fang
Unique Uniques
Elaborate Textiles with yarls' clothes optional file
EotW Mage Robes of Skyrim (do not need hearthfire optional)
Dragonborn Mages Robes Retexture Pack
Skaal Clothes HD Revival
Miraak HD Retexture - Champion of Mora
Psiji Robes Retexture - Keeper for the Ogma HD
Rustic Clothing - WIP
Lind's Robes Retextures (all of them, there are a lot)
Archmage of Winterhold HD Retexture
The Art of Dragonbone
Dragon Masks Retexture
Dragobone Arrow and Quiver Replacer
Rustic Forsworn


#Everything Else

Barenziah's Glory
Bloodstone Chalice Reborn
Skysight Pillow
HD Sacks
High Quality Food and Ingredients
Rustic Cooking Station
Retexture for Soup
Better Mammoth Cheese
Realistic HD Food
Realistic HD Beverages
Spirits of Skyrim
Glass Refracting wine Bottles
Horn Candles
Ren's HD Shrines
Rugnarok
Peltapalooza
Revamped Alchemy Lab HD
Entire Realistic HD Series
Skyrim Shaders 2015 with all optional files
Superior Silverware - HD
Alternate Summoning Visuals
Rune Magic HD
Holy Wards - a retexture
Embers HD
Skyrim Effect Project
Realistic Smoke and Embers
Ultimate HD Fire Effects
Retexture for the Scrolls
Business Ledger HD Retexture
Book Notes Paper HD 2k
Book Covers Skryim
Potions Replacer
White PHial Replacer
Improved Frosty Frost Salts
Improved Glowing Glowdust
Improved Fire Fire Salts
Multilayer Parallax Soulgems
Azura's Star texture
Seirous Mammoth Bone Retex HD
Sweet Mother - the Night Mother Improvement
Skyrim Skills Interface Retexture
Better Gold
Cultist HD Retexture - Champion of MOra
Hana's Shrooms
MAPS
Recolored Edwarr's Splltomes
Stunning Statues of Skyrim
Azura Retexture
Real Gold Trophies
Texture for Safe with Lock
Enhanced Blood Texture
LITTLE THINGS
Rustic Elder Scrolls
Northfire's Skidmarks
Honey Pot
Designs of the Nords - Markarth
Edwarr's Enchanting Workbench
Chicken Butthurt Minimizer


#Player and NPCs
Better Beast Races
CoverKhajiits Male and Female
JazzQ Coverkhajiits body Male and Female
Skysight Males
UUNP Bodyslide
True Daughters of Skyrim