So, I'm finally taking the leap to Skyrim after nearly 3000 hours on Oblivion, including a few hundred hours as a modder. I'll be playing with an 8 year old laptop, so I won't be loading up on high-res graphics, script-intensive mods, etc.

So, I'm looking for opinions on "must have mods for a vanilla experience". In other words, what mods would you consider essential to someone who wants the vanilla experience, nothing more and nothing less? The official DLCs and unofficial patches are obvious picks; anything else?

For example, in Oblivion there is Streamline, Oblivion Stutter Remover, various fixes for vanilla meshes and textures, 4GB patch, recommended INI tweaks, etc. These don't change the gameplay but they do improve how the game runs and fix a lot of problems. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for. I'd also be interested in any realism mods (body or behavior/AI improvements, etc.). Thanks in advance.

USLEEP, SKSE memory fix and any map/UI mods you feel necessary, like SkyUI, iHUD, Less Intrusive HUD, Quality World Map/Warburgs Paper Map. That's about it for a first/vanilla playthrough. Maybe Violens to fix broken killcams.

Really - Skyrim has a memory issue as well? You don't say...

Any other suggestions are welcome, but again, I'm wanting to keep it pretty vanilla this first time.

Then just USLEEP and SKSE memory patch.

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. In addition to the unofficial patches, I probably will use SkyUI and a new map like you suggested, and a few other basic "skin" mods. It's fairly obvious that both Oblivion's and Skyrim's UIs were designed to work well on console, moreso than PC. And I wouldn't consider a UI change to really be a substantive deviation from vanilla. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a few graphics reskins or AI tweaks to be notably different either. I'd just shy away from things that add new quests, new equipment, new bonuses or leveling up functions, or anything that substantially changes gameplay.

There's also one other category I'm interested in - realism/immersion. Anything that adds to realism, anything from making animals look and sound and act like the real thing to making characters behave more like real people, would be of interest as well. I'll have to browse Nexusmods' "Immersion" category, I suppose.

And that memory comment was a gentle barb against Bethesda - it seems like memory management is always a problem for their engines

There's also a bug that stops plants from respawning. There are two different patches to fix that. Flora respawn fix and another one by wiseman.


Another mod that may be considered more of a fix is Convenient Horses. I find horses too annoying to use without it.


As far as immersion goes, there are many options (Frostfall, iNeed, RND, Hunterborn, Immersive Ingestibles) but all stray a bit from vanilla and go well beyond mere fixes.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65013/? is awesome IMO.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35008/?...cause otherwise they all look alike...and bark...a lot!

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59174/?.. so all wolves don't look alike. ( only the types )

I'm not sure if those are perfect 1st play through mods but Dog's of Skyrim was in my 1st download batch.

Ah, good! That's just the kind of mod I'm looking for, thanks. Are there any others that further diversify the animals, creatures, enemies etc.? For example there was a good mod in Oblivion that diversified the horses so that there were stallions, geldings, mares and foals, each of which looked far more like the real thing and had different stats, breeds, behaviors, etc.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/24913/? has loads of variations of vanilla creatures. It also has lots of new creatures, but you can control which ones you want or not in the MCM menu if you want to keep it vanilla.

There are a few... but I don't use them... Last I looked one that added more "real" animals was pretty glitchy still, but it has been a couple months since I looked.

I did just add..http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73164/? it's just a re-texture, but better than vanilla... I also have http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/70448/?, the horses are beautiful, but limited in color... and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57456/?.. which one I use depends on the RP...

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35321/?<<~~this is always active... I love having the herds around.