Do i have to download skyrim special edition mods

This companion mod is a particularly sweet one, based on popular octogenarian YouTuber Shirley Curry, otherwise known as the "Skyrim Grandma". Created by fans and voiced by Curry herself, the Shirley companion shares Curry's likeness. Tamriel's Shirley has her own lore-appropriate backstory too.

After you've completed her recruitment quest, Shirley will join you, fighting alongside you as a barbarian warrior—Curry's preferred combat style. Curry has already started playing with the mod herself, which you can catch the beginning of in her new video series. Maybe you don't think a blue Khajiit who follows you around commenting on everything and being sarcastic about Lydia is what Skyrim needs, but trust us on this.

Inigo has tons of dialogue, some tied to his own questline and more that crops up at appropriate times depending on the location you're at. He can be told where to go and what to do by whistling, and will follow you even if you've got an existing companion, chatting away with them thanks to skilfully repurposed voice lines.

A sequel to a much-loved Oblivion mod which Terry Pratchett contributed to , Vilja in Skyrim adds the great-granddaughter of the original Vilja as a follower. She's an alchemist with her own questline to follow and a unique system to give her orders—essentially spells bound to hotkeys that can be used to co-ordinate attacks.

Like Inigo she doesn't count toward your follower limit, and if introduced to each other Inigo and Vilja will even chat among themselves. Will we ever tire of crossovers between our favorite big RPGs? No, we definitely will not. This follower mod adds a custom-made Yennefer that re-purposes her lines of dialogue from The Witcher 3.

She dual wields magic, of course. Sadly, she isn't eligible for marriage. The same modder has also made a Ciri follower mod and contributed to mods for Geralt and Triss followers all based on their Wild Hunt selves.

This extremely popular mod for Oldrim is one you'll want to grab the Special Edition version of too. It lets you micromanage a lot of details about your companions like their gear, how to fight, and which of your many houses to live in.

This mod makes having a horse much less of a headache. You can have conversations from horseback. You can loot and gather herbs while mounted. Your followers can even buy and ride their own horses instead of sprinting helplessly behind you.

Despite the Special Edition's visual overhaul, its dragons are still a bit ho-hum. This mod, contributed to by a large collection of modders, adds 28 new and unique dragons with different models and textures, and capable of over a dozen new breath attacks and abilities. The dragons come in different ranks as well, to ensure you have a challenge no matter what your level.

With Strigoi installed, whenever vampires spawn there's a chance to meet some of its new varieties of bloodsucker. These powered-up undead might turn into bats, throw you around, or just generally be a lot tougher than regular vampires.

Why is it always spiders in RPGs? Well, it doesn't have to be. Insects Begone replaces all the spiders and chaurus insects with bears and skeevers instead. It also removes decorative spiderwebs and other spider-related decor. If you can't deal with all the giant spiders plaguing Skyrim, this mod will squash them.

If being the Dragonborn isn't enough, these mods give you new abilities to tinker with. Some are mundane skills like additional crafting abilities, others are new shouts and spells to play with. Arcanum is a huge addition to Skyrim's magic system. It lets you summon tornados and meteors among many other feats. It doesn't just throw all these new skills at you as soon as it's installed, though. Arcanum is great for starting a new playthrough of Skyrim with because unlocking spells is a more lore-friendly journey of custom quests, crafting, and adventuring.

CGO strikes a great balance for those wanting a bit more out of Skyrim's combat without turning it into too much of a fast-paced action game. It adds the ability to dodge roll, which surprisingly looks pretty decent in first-person. There's also the ability to switch between one- and two-handed grips to change how attacks land. Oh, and you can attack in midair, along with lots of other smaller tweaks.

Modder "DServant" also created the Archery Gameplay Overhaul which takes a similarly even-handed approach to improving bow use. Wildcat is a much heavier combat overhaul, and an extremely popular one. It makes combat more deadly with increased damage and stamina use, but that's not all. It also adds an injury system where taking enough damage has a chance to give you a serious injury that could knock you down, unequip your weapon, or give you other dangerous effects.

It rewards you for properly timed blocks and for attacks of opportunity while enemies are performing other actions too. For the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood members among us, Sneak Tools adds extra functionality to being good at hiding.

Instead of just a damage bonus, you can kill NPCs from behind with daggers, knock them out with fists, and assassinate them while they're sleeping.

You can douse torches and arrows to better sneak through the shadows and use a bunch of new arrow types with sneaky benefits. When you're not playing a metal-plated tank, there's less use for smithing. Archers, thieves, and other stealthy characters have no issues finding light armor on their adventures, so there's never been much reason to make it themselves. This mod by Arthmoor gives slippery sorts reasons to learn smithing by letting them forge arrows, lockpicks, and guild-specific armor, as well as melt down bulkier armor they'd never actually wear into ingots.

Roleplaying and immersion mods are all aimed at making Skyrim Special Edition feel just a bit more real. Sick of NPCs repeating the same catchphrase from across the street every time they see you? Sick of guards commenting on your best skills, which they somehow know all about just by looking at you—even Sneak?

This mod has a few options for fixing the issue, whether you want to reduce the distance these barks trigger at, or get rid of them altogether. Sometimes you don't want to break into someone's home and have the local guard after you. Instead of lockpicking, this mod gives you the option to just, you know, knock on the door. If someone is home they might answer, giving you the option to earn entry with your speech abilities. If they don't answer, then get your lockpicks out.

Hear us out, fishing in Skyrim is good. It's a great addition for survival playthroughs. No more fishing with your hands—there are fishing poles, nets, bait, and even Dwarven "explosive" fishing. You can even catch some junk to sell. If you're playing Special Edition, you're starting from scratch whether you're a newcomer to Skyrim or a veteran.

Why not start your new game as someone other than the Dragonborn? Alternate Start—again, by Arthmoor—is a roleplaying mod that gives you choices on how you'd like to begin your next playthrough. Are you a patron at in inn, a visitor arriving by boat, a prisoner in a jail cell, or a member of a guild?

You can start as a soldier, an outlaw, a hunter, even a vampire. It's a great way to re-experience Skyrim from a different perspective, and skip the tutorial while you're at it. It's a little immersion-breaking to enter a city through a gate and encounter a loading screen. Open Cities aims for more of a Morrowind feel: the cities aren't instances, they're part of the larger world.

Stroll right in—or ride in on horseback—without a break in your experience, and these cities will feel more like real places than loaded-in maps. This mod, by elderscrolliangamer, changes and enhances Skyrim's opening sequence by restoring dialogue that Bethesda chose to cut, but which is still present in the game files.

With that content restored, you'll learn more about the world you're preparing to inhabit by listening in on additional conversations and seeing full sequences that were snipped before release. Best of all, if you choose to side with the Stormcloaks, you'll actually be able to escape Helgen with Ulfric himself at your side. This mod by cloudedtruth adds thousands of lines of voiced dialogue for NPCs to make you feel like you have a closer and more personal relationship with followers and friends.

Your spouse will no longer sound like a random follower, but address you in a more personal manner, and those you've angered will have a host of new insults to hurl your way.

There's no need to play Skyrim as a humble warrior. Become a giant, fly, walk through walls, spawn any item you want, and even become Santa Claus with Skyrim console commands , and give yourself every item in the game with Skyrim item codes. Looking to turn SSE into a survival experience? Then bundle up and look no further. These mods from Chesko make the frosty world of Skyrim more dangerous more immersive and enjoyable with a system that makes you manage your temperature in the cold climate.

Hypothermia is an issue, especially if you swim through icy water, so you'll have to dress warmly, and camping elements include craftable tents, torches, and other gear. There's even a crafting skill system. Also, check out Wet and Cold , which adds weather-dependent visual effects and sounds.

What could possibly be more immersive than walking around in your underclothes and being lavished with compliments by strangers? OK, maybe it's not that immersive but it is a fun one. Chris started playing PC games in the s, started writing about them in the early s, and finally started getting paid to write about them in the late s.

Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in , probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Christopher Livingston. See comments. Originally posted by jefferygalusha0 :. Originally posted by Dylan the Cartographer :. Last edited by Sinsling ; 8 Feb, am. Originally posted by Sinsling :. How can anyone want to mod Skyrim, none of the mods are any good. Now, Quake II, that was good mod days during multiplayer days. All good Quake II multiplayer mods. Skyrim Modding is basically Fashion Modding and it is all for Single Player and nobody is even designing anything good.

And people are literally just designing things which do not belong into the game. It is sad to watch. It makes some people wish that Todd Howard would just delete all their stuff off the Steam Workshop because there are people who would actually thank him for it. Surmene View Profile View Posts. There is no Steam Workshop for SE fortunately. Bad manners at best, potentially illegal at worst, and will get you banned from most mod hosting websites and generally ostracized by the modding community.

Converting mods for personal use is absolutely fine, though, so no worries there. Last, but certainly not least, you may eventually encounter. From my hours of scouring the interwebs concerning what these files are and do, they are files that are only necessary as part of the subscribe feature of Steam Workshop mods, and are completely unnecessary if using a Mod Manager or manually modding Skyrim or Skyrim SE. You must delete them, otherwise your converted mod will not activate and it can have some unpleasant effects on your save.

There are even some mods that you will come across on Skyrim Nexus, while converting to SSE, that still have these. It takes a little more time, but will save you a LOT of potential let's just be honest here and say "inevitable" heartbreak down the line concerning your save. Hope this will help someone now or in the future. Last edited by thomdane ; 26 May, am. Lothic View Profile View Posts. Originally posted by Lothic :. They call this necroing old threads and that's something most of us hate around here.