Fores New Idles in Skyrim (animation framework for other mods.)

Immersive Armors (adds a ton of new lore friendly armors to the game, a big compilation of the works of many modders)

Improved Closefaced Helmets (Even more essential if you play an argonian as many helments in vanilla will retain a human head shape, effectively shaving the front half of your head off)

The Book of UUNP (Get the non-skimpy patch, trust me. Otherwise you will get everyday guards in ridiculous bikini armor)

ApachiiSkyhair SSE (A million new hairstyles for character creation.)

True Eyes (More eyes for character creation)

Better Gray Quarter (Improves the Gray Quarter in windhelm to be drastically more slummy & immersive)

Immersive Jewelry (a goddamn million new pieces of jewelry added to the game, beware that the leveled loot you'll find when killing and dungeoning will have valuable items from this mod meaning that selling them off will make gaining gold much easier. some high level stuff you will rarely find can sell for like 20k gold too)

Mortal enemies SE (combat mod that makes enemies actually fallible in combat eg they can overshoot on power attacks and miss you if you dodge, they can't turn 180 during an attack to get you)

Realistic Water Two

EFF - Extensible Follower Framework (makes followers easy to manage, allows you to have as many followers as you like, improves their AI namely so that they will move out of doorways if youre trying to get past them, and all-around makes dealing with followers a pleasure)

INIGO (adds a follower to the game that is incredibly well written and VA'd and beloved by many)

Sofia - The Funny Voiced Follower (same idea as above but with more dirty jokes and female)

Alternate Start - Live Another Life (lets you choose from a huge variety of alternate starts to the game instead of doing the helgen scene. it links up with the main quest seamlessly by having you investigate the ruined helgen or you can go off and do your own thing. top tier for roleplay value. get the extension for even more alternate starts)

Cutting Room Floor (restores a lot of pointlessly cut content including mostly quests and npcs back to the game)

Wet and Cold (adds effects for when you are wet or cold and makes npcs wear furs and masks when there's a blizzard out... immersive!)

Insignificant Oject Remover (removes ugly pebbles and kelp that needlessly hamper graphics performance)

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim (THE god-tier magic pack that adds a fuckton of lore friendly spells to the game. Lots of fun utility stuff as well as filling out and expanding the schools of magic (adding things like damage-dealing spells to restoration and to illusion)

Skyrim Flora Overhaul (brings the foliage in the game to a 2018 standard, looks absolutely beautiful and each region of skyrim looks more distinct due to different flora)

Beyond Skyrim: Bruma (one of the only New Lands mods i say is a MUST have, it's just that good. Missing this mod is like missing an entire DLC)

OBIS - Organized Bandits in Skyrim (makes bandits have unique gangs with different attributes and characterization, basically it fluffs up bandits to be way cooler and adds a ton of variety)

Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival (absolutely must-have for immersion. If you don't like survival you can tone down the penalties as you see fit with the configuration menu in-game. I currently have it so i cant die from cold but it does cause immense debuffs if im out in a blizzard. basically with this mod you cant run around naked in the middle of a blizzard without suffering consequences)

RSSE Children Overhaul (makes it so that children don't all share that same potato face, basically it 2018-ifies them)

Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim (the perk overhaul I prefer over all the others, it allows for a lot of different creative playstyles and which perks you take actually have a crazy effect on how you approach combat)

The Notice Board (basically adds the same notice board system from The Witcher 3 into Skyrim. A great mod for doing odd jobs and bounties and also reading random funny messages from townspeople)

Amorous adventurers - CLEAN (adds a bunch of funny romance quests for vanilla NPCs using spliced dialogue. Basically you can roleplay as a pickup artist now. it's all super tongue in cheek and you'll get some laughs out of it)

Andromeda (i believe this is the standing stone overhaul i'm using. It makes the standing stone perks do much more interesting things and they now affect your playstyle in deeper ways.)

Diversity - An NPC Overhaul (basically 2018-ifies the npcs in the game. It improves everything about the visuals of npcs. Faces look way better as do bodies. Hair can lean a bit to the anime side at times but it's 10x better than vanilla potato faces)

Immersive Weapons (adds a ton of lore-friendly weapons to the game.)

Interesting NPCs (ABSOLUTE MUST HAVE. This mod is massive so be aware that nexus mod manager might have trouble with it. Adds hundreds of fully voiced npcs that are well-written and lore friendly. also adds many many quests involving said npcs, a few new locations, and lots of followers with interesting things to say about your travels. Fallout 4's follower system was practically an attempt to recreate what this mod did.)

JK's Skyrim all-in-one (if your computer is decent by today's standards I recommend this as it beautifies all of the cities of skyrim by adding tons of interesting detail and character. Just be aware that you'll take a performance hit)

Morrowloot Ultimate - No Artifacts Version (This mod overhauls the gear progression to not only be more lore friendly but also more interesting in general IMO. It makes it so that all exotic materials (everything above steel) are buffed to be more powerful but also rarer and only appear in contextually appropriate places. For instance, to find orcish equipment you will likely have to go to an orc stronghold. to find dwarven equipment you will have to delve into dwemer ruins. Elven equipment is mostly only carried by thalmor. Ebony is exceedingly rare, valuable, and effective. Daedric, stalhrim and dragonbone live up to their legend in rarity and power. also instead of being able to easily craft these things using smithihing perks, the player will have to undergo quests to gain the specific training required. The main thing to look out for in this mod is that you will NEED to get patches for every weapon and armor mod i have listed so that the high tier items they add will not appear in leveled lists. Otherwise the integrity of this mod is ruined.)

Quick Light (adds a lantern or magelight that you can toggle with a hotkey, think pip-boy light from fallout but now in skyrim)

Real Bows (replacer that makes bows look more actually realistic while retaining the character of their material)

PC Head Tracking (makes your character's head turn to look at the people youre talking to. Just some extra immersion)

Static Mesh Improvement Mod (big mod that makes a lot of items, terrain, equipment, etc have better meshes with an increased polycount. First thing you'll notice when you use this is how beautiful barrels look but it does so much more)

Sacrosanct - Vampires of Skyrim (overhauls vampire gameplay and the vampire lord perk tree to be all around better and offer more options to do in-depth roleplay with your vampirism instead of having it just be kind of a side thing like in vanilla)

Moonlight Tales (same as sacrosanct but with werewolves)

Realistic Needs and Diseases (adds a ton of food to the game as well as making the player need to eat, drink, and sleep like a normal person. Good for immersion and not too obstructive to gameplay one bit)

Helgen Reborn - (really fun quest mod that lets you clean up the ruined helgen and restore it to working order as a town. A good story as well as great voice acting and lasting effects in-game make it a fantastic example of a quest mod)

Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim (another MUST HAVE mod that adds a ton of new enchantments to the game. There's so much to go over and it really gives the player options for builds and synergies)

Common Clothes (adds a ton of new clothes to be worn by common npcs in towns or elsewhere. Very immersive)

UNP Female body renewal (improves the female bodies to look more current gen as well as serves as a base that a lot of armor mods require. Yes there is nudity or you can install the version that gives the characters underwear if you're a busta)

Schlongs of Skyrim OR Better Males (use schlongs of skyrim if you want male nudity, use better males if you do not. They both use the same body otherwise, it basically just makes the male bodies look better and more current gen)

Visible Favorited Gear (makes all of the gear in your favorites list show up on your body as if they were currently equipped. Very immersive)

XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended (essential mod for anyone. Basically extends the number of animation "bones" on creatures and npcs as well as the player. but beware that there is a bug currently that can cause crashes upon save load. When you install this, make sure that you disable the plugin but dont uninstall the mod. This will keep the script that causes the game breaking bug to not be implemented but the important part of the mod (the skeleton itself) will still be installed)

Enhanced Blood Textures (does a few things more than just enhancing the blood textures, adds blood spurting and twitching corpses, basically good carnage)

Footprints (adds immersive footprints to the game, doesn't sound like much but it does a lot for immersion)

CL's Replacers (replaces the vanilla style weapons with high quality, beautiful renditions. Pick and choose which ones you like but I always went for the orcish replacer, ebony replacer, daedric replacer, and chillrend replacer. Keep in mind that mods like immersive weapons add vanilla-style weapons so you can actually have weapons that follow the vanilla art style alongside the replaced versions.)

Iron Weapons Redux (fulfills a similar purpose as CL's replacers but this one is for iron weapons)

Skyforge Weapons (makes it so that the skyforge steel weapons you get in vanilla actually look unique instead of being perfect copies of regular steel weapons as in vanilla)

Daesdric Artifact Overhaul (Buffs daedric artifacts to actually be very usable late-game instead of having such crappy stats that they're only usable as wall-hangers once you get high smithing and enchanting.)

Unique Uniques (Makes unique items actually have lovingly crafted unique models instead of sharing the same model as generic weapons)

Wildcat: Combat of Skyrim (improves enemy AI mainly, and adds tons of features that you can tweak to your liking)

Visual Animated Enchants (adds really cool visuals for the enchantments. Fire enchanted weapons will have fire on them instead of just a red glow, etc)

Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch (most mods require this. It fixes massive number of bugs in vanilla)

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THE MODS BELOW THIS LINE I KNOW ARE SKSE64 ONLY, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO INSTALL THE EARLY AND POSSIBLY UNSTABLE VERSION OF SKSE64 THEN IGNORE THESE
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Critical Hit - Backstab and Parry in Skyrim (basically adds the ability to backstab enemies by going into a special animation after attacking their back, similar to dark souls. also adds the ability to parry incoming power attacks with a guard bash, which freezes time for a moment. If you attack the enemy while time is slowed, an animation will play and they will take high damage and be knocked to the ground, again similar to dark souls' system)

Customizable Camera (allows you to configure many different settings about the third person camera

TK Dodge - (ABSOLUTE MUST HAVE mod that allows the player to dodge/roll attacks by pressing a hotkey at the right time. a great way to balance out the difficulty of certain combat overhauls)

Ultimate Combat (ANOTHER MUST HAVE mod that gives tons of enemies new attacks and new AI. Has a huge effect on the enjoyability of combat)

FNIS PCEA (allows you to install animations that will only be used by your character exclusively. Idles, attack animations and such will no longer be shared with npcs. I love using this mod to give each of my characters a unique animation set that fits their personality)