While it feels like just yesterday as if Skyrim came out with all that hype, it’s been a whole decade since. Northern parts of Tamriel have been explored inside out by millions of adventurous players for all these years alongside countless fun and exciting memories.

But as with many great games, modders played a vital role in keeping the game relevant for a longer period than it should have been. As much as Bethesda did a great job on many aspects and gave us an unforgettable game, 10 full years of modding also provided us with tons of content and experience to enjoy.

So here we are, coming up with 5 great mods to give you an all fresh Skyrim experience.

Alternate Start – Live Another Life

If there is one thing that gets kind of boring inevitably, that is the intro sequence which can not be skipped unless you do the trick with some previously taken savegame. But this mod actually does the trick in a very successful way by providing you with lots of random preset starting conditions.

You begin by answering a questionnaire about the desired conditions of starting the game, and mod takes care of the rest. You can be almost anything and everything you want to be as a random character in the world, ranging from a rich property owner to a Dark Brotherhood member. All details are taken care of alongside the background story you choose.

Combat Gameplay Overhaul

Let’s be honest with one thing, Skyrim could do much better with its combat system. While it covers the basics pretty well, people who appreciate a realistic experience immediately felt the need to further tweak and improve the vanilla combat system with many different changes.

Combat Gameplay Overhaul indeed does this job on a very wide scale with almost no issues. Beginning with separating the movements of upper body and lower body, allowing player to move in the world while executing attacks all free. Therefore you can truly “dance around your enemy”. 

There are also different attacks like slams and dives for melee, and various improvements for ranged combat. You can fire arrows in mid-air, even to the point of 360 noscopes.

But let’s not just focus on offense, as we also have some defensive improvements too. You can dodge-roll to get yourself to a moment of safety when you detect a serious attack coming your way. The fluent animation and mechanics of this new addition is pretty surprising. 

SkyUI

While Skyrim UI is kind of okay on its own, it becomes cumbersome when the player hoards tons of items. Since it is not possible to change the scale of UI, players felt the need to improve the system for good. 

SkyUI does that very successfully, bringing out the true potential of Skyrim’s UI system for everyone who wants to enjoy a good time in Tamriel. Every single menu ranging from inventory to spells becomes much easier to navigate through. Filters and search menu is also great additions to minimize the hassle for players.

Even better, you can customize everything. You can change the fonts or size of the buttons. If you want further customization, there are also lots of other mods that work with SkyUI to provide more niche benefits.

Frostfall

Frostfall brings the most necessary realism factor to Skyrim – effects of a cold climate. Your character sheet receives new variables like temperature, exposure and wetness. When you do not dress accordingly to the weather, you are actually supposed to sustain certain penalties that should really cause you some trouble.

When you get wet, your exposure will drastically increase. And when temperatures fall to the point of snowing, this exposure will be reminding you that you should have looted some pelts from the animals you hunted so you could have crafted or bought some better clothes. Considering that you are in northern lands, it should be a frequent scenario.

But of course, there are various ways to combat cold. You can eat warm foods, sit near a campfire, also other mods allow you to create campfires and set up tents for the night. When it comes to fast traveling, you also need to wear proper clothes to make sure you can arrive to your destination.

And be careful, as it is not only a debuff that you will suffer. You can definitely die to excessive cold exposure.

Silent Horizons ENB

There is no way without we can end the list without a great graphics overhaul when it comes to Skyrim. ENB is the abbreviation of “Enhanced Natural Beauty”, and ENB plugins are actually taking over the lighting systems of a game. There are lots of games that support ENBs.

You can customize an ENB to your liking, therefore it is now pretty possible for you to find your own taste of graphics in games with some effort. Of course it has some impact on the performance though.

With a great job in volumetric lighting, game looks far more saturated and pleasant to look at. Especially in the indoors and night conditions, individual light sources emit and project light much more naturally.