Possibly Obnoxious, I apologize, but I forewarned you!

So back in the oblivion days it was simple,

I'd get FCOM and be extremely satisfied because I did not get a mod crash every 5 minutes like I did with Skyrim with a similiar setup.

My question is what is the new cookie cutter combination of mods for Skyrim?

What are my options?

Sure I could do hours of research and formulate my own opinion, but I do not desire to be a hipster and just want to be main stream.

Any opinions?

Not sure what you mean by cookie cutter, buthttp://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/topalltime/?advlt=2 of the most endorsed files on the Nexus. I've excluded the advlt oriented mods for obvious reasons. If you want those, you'll have to find them on your own, sorry.

Run of the mill, cream of the crop.. etc etc

Basically the most commonly used mod combo that is proven to work stability wise.

I've never had so much trouble in Skyrim getting a stable mod setup, in oblivion with FCOM my game had a plethora of additions without the 2-3 min CTD intervals.

I've taken about a 4 month break from skyrim and was hoping there was an established set of mods to use.

Major overhaul, and relevant mods that work hand in hand with said major overhaul, just like FCOM had.

I don't think we'll ever see FCOM for Skyrim.

IMO, modding attitudes in general have changed drastically with the advent of the steam workshop.

With Oblivion, it seemed there was more "let's work together" and less of the "my work - don't touch it" attitude.

A lot of the more knowledgeable modders of Oblivion have not or possibly will not make the transition to Skyrim.

(Not to gainsay today's mod authors by any means, but the current crop imo, don't want to spend the time on other mods to make them work together with their own.)

Skyre is a fairly major overhaul. In some ways it reminds me of fcom. The base mod, re-balancing all the vanilla perks/weapons/armors. And reproccer re-balances every armor/weapon mod you find. (Assuming the mod author tagged the items right. If not, you can fix it easily enough)

Honestly, if you want to avoid lots of ctds, be picky about what types of mods you install. Intensive graphical upgrades for everything, will cause ctds. Or adding in multiple script intensive mods. (Or mods that add in dirty scripts)

So my advice in a nutshell, is look at skyrim redone, look at reporoccer. If memory serves half the fcom installation was just dealing with various armor/weapon mods.

I think the main thing here is that Skyrim doesn't need the kind of overhaul that Oblivion did. I couldn't play OB without OOO after the first few months and it was still somewhat unstable without additional mods. Skyrim is pretty good as is IMHO.

Aww if this definitely true even if you have an adequate computer?

My video card is a 650Ti Boost.

But then again, this would explain the instability because I had STEP installed on every new installation.

Even though the debugger text said it had to do with a vampire quest or something (I wasn't a vampire so I don't know)