So, I'll be grabbing Skyrim soon...

[Sar1n]

I'll finish my New Vegas game soon (well...in a week or two, probably), and next thing that I'll play will be Skyrim. I've been hesitant to get it, after Oblivion's messed up leveling and leveled artifacts that took a lot of fun out of it for me...and eventually made me abandon the game before completing it.

But I've been reading on Skyrim a bit and it seems like the issue isn't present that heavily in Skyrim. So...I'll get to it. I'll be definitely grabbing some unofficial patch like in any other BEthesda game, and probably a few things to improve graphics, but I want to keep the experience as much vanilla-like as possible...for first playthrough. So, what mods do you recommend for that?

And on the side note...are there any mods that ease the horrible leveling system of Oblivion, so I could perhaps play it later?

[Colossus]

Don't worry about the level issue at all. The first bandits you fight who are reasonable to begin with will be terrible should you go back 20 levels later. In general, rather than scaling the same enemies to match, new, harder enemies appear in certain places depending on your level. Things in the outside world remain fixed as what they generally are, e.g. rubbish bandits and wolves... but also giants, frost trolls and mammoths which you wouldn't touch early game unless you are particularly determined. When you go on quests or dungeons in other locations that respawn new enemies appear, e.g. early on you will get just draugr and the odd slightly more powerful one, but later you could have multiple deathlords. Definitely get the expansion packs as well; even if their own plots aren't the best (I found Dawnguard much better than Dragonborn), they add a lot of stuff in general, including much harder dragons, which keep some level of challenge.

As you can probably gather just from looking at the top nexus mods list, SkyUI is the main 'essential' one (makes the inventory and quick select a lot better), along with the unofficial patches. Beyond that, it depends what you define as vanilla-like really, and how much you want to 'experience' the game as intended. For example immersive weapons and armours are very good, but you might consider that a big change as it does add more content. Some visual ones that don't affect gameplay at all though might be good, such as Enhanced Character Edit. There are a lot of things for improving skies, water, trees etc. as well. I would really just look on the top list and pick what appeals:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/topalltime/?

You will probably end up wanting to play again anyway with a different sort of character once you get a better feel for the game and know in advance what sort of decisions you want to make, so could always save the bigger changes like new/multiple followers and crazy weapons for then!

[beckyolt]

Skyrim GEMS is an excellent 1-page reference site.

http://skyrimgems.com/

I recommend Interesting NPCs. Doesn't alter vanilla content and is easly the best mod for Skyrim.

[Seljuq Prince]

If you know moding and spending time with it, requiem is the best mod I would recommend.. It makes combat, leveling everyting different and like real rpg.. The world is static so npcs dont level along side you..you just cant kill a dragon at level 5 or sth.. Its a harsh mod and may take sometime to get use it but, just to let you know about it..

[Sint]

Hmm some of my favourites:
-SkyUI ,you need this if you play with mods.
-Unofficial Patch
-Deadly Dragons(Loremonger edition if you don't want some of the new dragons)
-Hunterborn,makes hunting a lot better and more rewarding.
-LeanWolf's Better-Shaped Weapons,makes the weapons look a bit more realistic.
-Pumping Iron,allows your character to gain muscles when training combat skills.
-Run for your lives,makes most npcs run away when dragons attack.
-Timing is Everything allows you to customize when some quests and events start and happen(maybe not on your first playthrough)
-When Vampires attack,same as run for your lives just with vampires.
-Frostfall,adds Hypothermia and camping.

All can be found on the Nexus.And look at the top list.

I recommend Interesting NPCs. Doesn't alter vanilla content and is easly the best mod for Skyrim.

Far to silly in my opinion they just try too hard to be funny and special.

[Leonardo]

I'll finish my New Vegas game soon (well...in a week or two, probably), and next thing that I'll play will be Skyrim. I've been hesitant to get it, after Oblivion's messed up leveling and leveled artifacts that took a lot of fun out of it for me...and eventually made me abandon the game before completing it.

But I've been reading on Skyrim a bit and it seems like the issue isn't present that heavily in Skyrim. So...I'll get to it. I'll be definitely grabbing some unofficial patch like in any other BEthesda game, and probably a few things to improve graphics, but I want to keep the experience as much vanilla-like as possible...for first playthrough. So, what mods do you recommend for that?

And on the side note...are there any mods that ease the horrible leveling system of Oblivion, so I could perhaps play it later?

I know you can use OblivionXP in Oblivion to make leveling more exciting and rewarding, but AFAIK a SkyrimXP mod doesn't exist yet not that I'm aware of.

I know for one thing that's definitely different in Skyrim compared to the earlier moddable games, Morrowind and Oblivion, is that you cannot *fix* a mod issue in your game by uninstalling a mod after you have installed it due to Papryus, because everything is baked-into saves in Skyrim thanks to Papyrus.

Your best option to avoid that is to go back an earlier save before you installed a mod, which later was removed. If that doesn't help then reinstalling everything, and I mean it everything from scratch e.g Skyrim, mods, tools, SKSE etc, and start over in a new fresh game.

I strongly suggest that you read these threads about the Unofficial Skyrim Patches and using obsolete/outdated mods before installing a bunch of mods just to prevent unnecessary mod issues later in your game.

http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index....icial-patches/
http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index....icial-patches/



In comparison to the earlier TES games the Unofficial Skyrim Patches requires both Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC to be installed otherwise USLEEP won't work, so getting the Skyrim Legendary Edition is the easiest way to ensure you can use USLEEP.

Also, keep in mind that BOSS are designed for Oblivion and would probably not work for Skyrim, so you need to use LOOT for Skyrim and avoid using LOOT for Oblivion. Although LOOT should work for Oblivion, but IIRC some people have reported that LOOT doesn't work for some mods.