One of the most popular installments to The Elder Scrolls has officially released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. While all three platforms will allow mods to be installed, PC gamers have an easier time when it comes to these community additions.
If you never played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or of you’re looking to get back into the journey once again, these ten mods are quickly becoming a must-have for the newly released Skyrim Special Edition. Do you know if a mod worth checking out? Let us know by leaving a comment down below.
Alternate Start – Live Another Life
Not feeling up to going through the lengthy intro sequence at Helgen? Thankfully you can bypass the intro for a new alternate starting point. This is a decent changeup for players interested in replaying Skyrim, but not necessarily thrilled with having to replay the same start over and over again.
Alternate Start puts players into a dungeon where you’ve been locked up and forgotten about. Now as you run low on food, it’s time to make your way out and start your life all over again.
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
Skyrim Special Edition came with a big overhaul in the graphics department, but there are still some bugs that need to be cleaned out for gamers to truly enjoy the gameplay. With this mod, gamers will have hundreds of bugs fixed that makes this a necessity for Skyrim Special Edition.
Essentially, you’ll find that there are hundreds of bugs that fix gameplay, quests, NPCs, objects, texts, and placement issues. Even if you plan on enjoying Skyrim Special Edition without the addition of mods, do yourself a favor and at least give the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch some consideration.
Cutting Room Floor
The Cutting Room Floor mod is actually pretty exciting for both new and veteran Skyrim players. With this mod, gamers can successfully load content that was found within the game code but was never actually loaded into the full game.
With this mod, gamers will find new NPCs, quests, and other miscellaneous content that was ultimately cut from the official release.
Total Character Makeover
While the latest Skyrim iteration has released to the masses, there are still some textures that probably could have been looked at with a bit more detail. The NPCs that dwell the game world of Skyrim are looking a bit dated and there’s a mod that really gives these characters a touchup.
Total Character Makeover is a mod that gives a more detailed texture update for the variety of NPCs you’ll come across on your grand journey. You’ll find that there are improved hand and foot meshes, new complete texture sets for all races, improved teeth textures, beard textures, high-resolution makeups, warpaint, dirt, freckles, and more.
Wet and Cold
Wet and Cold is a nice little mod that adds a little more immersion when enduring some of the elements in Skyrim. Essentially this mod adds a new weather-dependent visual effect for NPCs. Depending on the weather, you may see a variety of new effects play out.
This could range from water drips from an NPC’s body, splash of particles when running across soggy ground, breath moisture when out in frigid regions, new snow accumulation visuals, stronger winds, and more.
Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim
One of the key features to building your character is adding perks. As you level up in Skyrim, your character can be finely tuned to what skills you unlock and really, there’s plenty of perks to go with as is in Skyrim.
With Ordinator, gamers will find over 400 new perks available to unlock. This is one mod that would really open up the customization possibilities for your character and we highly recommend you check out some of the changes added to the perk trees within the official list attached to the download link.
Apocalypse – Magic of Skyrim
Ps4 final fantasy xv theme. If you find that Ordinator to be a bit too much then Apocalypse is a slightly step down by offering gamers 155 new spells. These new spells are unique, balanced, and will be lore friendly to the vanilla magic system for Skyrim Special Edition.
Point The Way
Point The Way is actually a pretty simple mod that is highly effective. If you don’t enjoy constantly opening up your map menu to find out where you’re going or making sure you didn’t lose your route, then this mod is well worth the download.
All-in-all, Point The Way simply just adds new road signs in several major intersections that were previously lacking signs. This way, gamers can look at these signs to assure that they are going the right way to Dawnstar instead of finding that they backtracked and ended right back at in Solitude.
Immersive Sounds – Compendium
The audio in Skyrim was decent as is, though, with the aging hardware and limited disc space, it could have been better. This is where Immersive Sounds Compendium comes in. With this mod, there are thousands of new individual sounds that have been created for the game, which allow players a new element that complements not only the visuals but overall gameplay.
If you want more dynamic and reactive audio experience, this mod is a must-have. You’ll find additions and replacements for foley, weapons, magic, creatures, and more.
Immersive Patrols SE
Want more of a challenge? The mod Immersive Patrols SE will add new fully functional scheduled patrols. This will include major factions such as Stormcloaks, Thalmor, Imperials, Dawnguard, Bandits, and more.
This will add an extra element to deal with when raiding or if you’re wanted by a particular group. If you find that this mod is too much of a challenge, gamers can uninstall the mod without having to worry about their progress.
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Alternate Start - Live Another Life, often referred to as Live Another Life, is a mod created by Arthmoor for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The mod adds alternate beginnings to the base game instead of the default experienced at Helgen. It resembles Skyrim Unbound in a great fashion, though there are quite a few notable differences. This mod, for example, doesn't work with a class system.
FeaturesEdit
The Dragonborn starts off in a cell in the Abandoned Prison. In it is a statue of Mara that, if talked to, will ask them how their new life shall begin. All races other than Wood Elf get special options unique to their race. Once chosen, the Dragonborn must sleep in the bed and their new life will begin. Despite making a choice, it is not final until you activate the bed, and therefore going back to the statue of Mara and reactivating it will allow you to change the decision, which can be useful to get lockpicks as if you ask to escape, you will be given lockpicks and then you may change your mind but will still have the lockpicks.
It should be noted that this mod has the potential to spawn the player character in locations that are generally not accessible unless on a specific quest, such as Blackreach. This can make it tricky to get out of that location and start exploring.
The Dragonborn is presented with the following choices:
- 'I came by ship to Skyrim.'
- 'Solitude'.
- 'Dawnstar'.
- 'Windhelm'.
- 'I own property in one of the holds.'
- 'Proudspire Manor'.
- 'Vlindrel Hall'.
- 'Honeyside'.
- 'Breezehome'.
- 'Karnsdale Farmhouse.' (earlier versions)
- 'I'm a new member of a guild.'
- 'The Companions'.
- 'College of Winterhold'.
- 'Dark Brotherhood'.
- 'Thieves Guild'.
- 'The Dawnguard'.
- 'I'm a patron at a local inn.'
- 'Windpeak Inn'.
- 'Four Shields Tavern'.
- 'Dead Man's Drink'.
- 'Vilemyr Inn'.
- 'Braidwood Inn'.
- 'Moorside Inn'.
- 'Nightgate Inn'.
- 'Sleeping Giant Inn'.
- 'Frostfruit Inn'.
- 'The Frozen Hearth'.
- 'I'm a soldier in the army.'
- 'Imperial Legion'.
- 'Stormcloak Rebellion'.
- 'I got caught crossing the border illegally.' (this basically starts the game as if this mod was not installed at all)
- 'I'm an outlaw in the wilds.'
- 'I am a Vigilant of Stendarr.'
- 'I am camping in the woods.'
- 'I was shipwrecked off the coast!'
- 'I am a vampire in a secluded lair.'
- 'I am a necromancer in a secret location.'
- 'I was attacked and left for dead.'
- 'Escape this prison cell.' (won't need sleeping in bed to be activated)
- 'I'm a Thalmor agent' (only available when Dragonborn is an Altmer)
- 'I am a member of the Alik'r' (only for Redguards)
- 'I live in an Orcish stronghold.' (Only for Orcs.)
- 'I am an Argonian dockworker in Windhelm.' (Only for Argonians.)
- 'I am a Forsworn native.' (Only available to Bretons.)
- 'I am a refugee from Morrowind.' (This option is only available to Dunmer - all players have the option of starting in Windhelm, and players with Dragonborn may also start in Raven Rock.)
- 'I am a Khajiit caravan guard.' (Available only to Khajiit.)
- 'I am Erik the Slayer's childhood friend.' (Only for Nords.)
- 'I am an agent of the Penitus Oculatus.' '(Only for Imperials.)
- 'Surprise me' (the game makes a random decision)
CompatibilityEdit
There are quite a few workarounds of the following issues. Be sure to read the description page of the mod to find more elaborate information on the issues.
CompatibleEdit
![Best Best](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123719411/301947498.jpg)
- Helgen Reborn: vanilla start option not compatible
- Return to Helgen: compatible if not going to Solitude before having triggered the activities in Helgen
- Schlongs of Skyrim: vanilla start option not compatible
- Helgen Reborn: as of 105.3 vanilla start option is compatible
IncompatibleEdit
- Any mod that removes the essential-flags from the NPCs in Helgen
- Mods altering the Abandoned Prison - navmesh of this cell (00021594) has been edited. Can be patched to make it work.
- Shlongs of Skyrim: vanilla start option not compatible
- The Forsworn Legacy: workaround available
- Return to Helgen: compatible if not going to Solitude before having triggered the activities in Helgen
Skyrim Alternate Start Issues
Skyrim was first released in 2011 on the previous console generation and PC, and to say it was a great game would be an understatement. It won countless awards and is almost always high ranking in Top 100 Best Games Lists. Spawning countless memes, and the various strange glitches we could manipulate, Skyrim is great and fun. Fans of the game helped push Skyrim to new heights, with a strong modding community on PC.
Due to the game's on-going popularity, we were blessed with a gorgeously overhauled newer, shinier Skyrim, bringing mod support to consoles for the first time. Here are our favorites.
![Best Skyrim Alternate Start Best Skyrim Alternate Start](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123719411/974479800.jpg)
We have compiled some of the coolest mods available right now for Skyrim: Special Edition. Since the game also includes all of the DLC, there is no need to worry about incompatibility. And we've only selected free mods, nothing from the Creators Club.
Note: Achievements are disabled while mods are active.
This mod gives you an alternate opening, where you're left to fester in a jail, forgotten, instead of the Helgen opening we know so well by now. You still get to pick your race, and your choices here still have as much of an impact on the rest of the game. This mod expands character creation so that you'll find yourself faced with a choice of 13 new beginnings.
Campfire - Complete Camping System
In addition to the new attributes you get in Frostfall, Campfire also grants you Resourcefulness and Instinct. Instinct allows you to stalk your prey and has its own skill system which can be accessed from any lit campfire.
Cheat Room
Less than 1MB in size, this cheat room has it all. It adds a spell to your roster and teleports you to a room where you can do anything. Resurrect NPCs (because seriously, eff those vampire attacks), spawn any item, make anyone a follower, as well as all the skills leveling up, and changing the weather. It's THE cheat mod to get.
Classic Oblivion Jail System
The jail system in Skyrim is pretty tame compared to Oblivion's. When you're locked up in jail in Skyrim, depending on the length of your sentence, you may lose progress towards your next level in a few skills. It's not really a hardship. This mod implements Oblivion's system, whereby the longer your sentence, the more levels you lose. Not just the progress towards them, actual levels. If you want being imprisoned to be any kind of threat, you should get this mod.
The Forgotten City
This award winning, critically acclaimed mod is, basically, a fan made expansion bordering on official DLC quality realms of brilliance. With this installed, from level 5 your character will be approached by a courier who directs you to the Forgotten City. What follows is a six-to-eight-hour original and non-linear experience, in an incredibly intricate and beautiful new city. Even boasting complex moral decisions with consequences, and several different endings, it would be a shame to miss out on such beautifully crafted modding!
Frostfall - Hypothermia Camping Survival
If you wanted to turn Skyrim into a potentially fatal survival game, Frostfall would be the mod to do it. The three main components of this mod are hypothermia, cold water survival, and camping. This mod tracks everything from time of day, and weather to what you are wearing to create an immediately immersive experience. Your character can visibly become wet and snowy. It is also deeply customizable, making the experience as pleasant or unpleasant as you feel comfortable with. It adds new attributes to your character, Wetness and Exposure, and defenses for Warmth and Coverage. As you get colder, it raises your Exposure, and your skills suffer as a result; and when you are Wet, it increases your Exposure quicker. Warmth will always reduce Exposure, and Coverage decreases Wetness. You'll need the following mod to implement the effects of this fully.
Hardcore Difficulty - No Milkdrinkers!
Ouch. If you thought the Legendary difficulty was hard, go cry off into your sweet roll, dumpling. This mod isn't for you. It scales the leveling of enemies, making higher level enemies tougher, and keeping weaker ones weak. It also tweaks the block rate and damage output, and forces enemy AI to close in proximity during combat. Install this mod while you have Legendary difficulty active to switch it on.
Immersive Citizens
The NPCs in Skyrim aren't the ost intelligent lifeforms you'll come across in gaming. In fact, the entire AI isn't the smartest, which is what Immersive Citizens attempts to address by making NPCs you come across feel a little more lively. They'll travel places, have more immersive schedules for each day and react better to any threats that may pop around the corner.
iNeed - Food, Water, Sleep
Couple this with Frostfall, and you've pretty much got yourself a Skyrim/The Sims cross-over. If keeping your Dragonborn alive wasn't hard enough, you'll now also have to make sure they're well rested, and well fed and watered. Messages appear to keep you informed of your status, as well as sound effects so you hear your stomach rumbling. The heavier the food, the more filling it is, and you'll begin the game with a waterskin but they can be crafted and purchased if you need more.
Just Walk - No Fast Travel
This mod disables fast travel options from the map screen. If you want to get somewhere, you'd better be prepared to use your legs. And why not, the overhauled graphics and lighting systems are wonderful to behold, it'd be a shame to waste so much exploring to fast traveling! Fast traveling by coach, boat or being arrested is unaffected.
Natural Eyes
If there's one thing I largely dislike about Skyrim, it's the default textures for eyes. Simply put, they're awful, with little to no detail, and why does there always have to be a 'blind in one eye' option? This mod replaces all of the eyes with newer high resolution versions. It beats staring at elves who look like they've had their eyes pulled out with corkscrews.
Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim
This is a great mod for those who want to level up but are tired of selecting the same old perk. Want to create an entirely new character from scratch with upgraded perk trees? Ordinator is the one for you! It has completely overhauled the perks system, adding new ones, so you have more fun building a character exactly how you want them.
People are Strangers XB1
If you ever thought it was a bit weird that for some reason you automatically knew every character's name without ever speaking to them before, install this mod. Now, instead of showing the NPC's name, it'll show a ? until you speak to them. Jarls will just be called The Jarl until you are introduced.
Rich Skyrim Merchants
You've just looted everything out of a dungeon, and you have so much expensive stuff to sell - but you have to offload it to multiple merchants to actually make any money. Vanilla Skyrim merchants don't often carry an excess of a thousand gold, making hoarding money a slow process, especially if you want to get on with homesteading. This Rich Skyrim Merchants mod gives every merchant five times more gold.
Sheogorath's Cheat Menu
There are other cheat mods available, and this certainly isn't the tidiest but I selected this one in particular due to one of the additional things it does. This mod spawns a book on a stool that you can find at the Standing Stones just after you escape from Helgen on your way to Riverwood. Selecting the book adds a spell to the Restoration section of your magic, which is the cheat menu. You can fast level, or add items and money, etc.. but you can also turn off collision detection, enabling you to bypass entire sections of the map just by aiming into the sky while you walk! See my personal screenshot above of this in action! The good thing about this cheat mod is that it only requires a free spell to launch.
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
The most comprehensive mod for straightening out all the bugs, kinks and glitches left in the game post-release. Made to be compatible with as many mods as possible, you'll want to install this for a cleaner and less messy game. The fact we still need an unofficial patch is rather laughable, though.
Over to you!
The list of mods available on Xbox One is still growing, and there are more being added daily. Have we missed any already that you think should be on this list? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
Updated on June 01, 2018: We refreshed the list, fixing any redirect issues with Bethesda moving pages and removing/adding mods.
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If you're looking to start a new game of Skyrim, you've got plenty of options for how to play as different versions of the legendary Dragonborn. You can play as a different race, or different class, or give yourself different motivations or a new backstory. Even playing the same questlines again, you can have a fresh experience.
But better yet, you can ditch the role of Dragonborn altogether. Why not make this next playthrough about a completely different person—not the hero of prophecy but someone else entirely? Here are five great mods for playing Skyrim as a character other than the Dragonborn.
For many, many more ways to play Skyrim, check out our guide to the best Skyrim mods.
Alternate Start
This is no news flash: Anyone who's dipped their toe into modding Skyrim will most likely have heard of Alternate Start, even if they haven't tried it. And if you haven't, you really should.
Alternate Start lets you skip the opening sequence and create a character living in Skyrim for a different reason. Maybe you've arrived by boat with a few basic supplies or maybe you're a homeowner with a house and plenty of belongings. Maybe you're a random commoner visiting an inn, or an outlaw hiding at a camp in the wilderness, a soldier in the army, or even a vampire living in a secluded lair. These are just a few of the many intriguing options available in the mod.
The nice thing is, if you do want to start the main quest at some point, you still can. Just start asking around about rumors with innkeepers, and one of them will mention Helgen. At that point you can kick off the main quest.
Download it here.
Interesting NPCs
If you're not the Dragonborn, romping all over the world completing quests and slaying dragons, you're going to find yourself spending more time among the locals. And in the vanilla game, many of them aren't especially fascinating characters—especially if you've met them before in a prior playthrough.
The Interesting NPCs mod adds new backstories, dialogue trees, and custom voice acting to give Skyrim's citizens far more depth and personality. Many even have new quests, and some can become your followers—there are even a few you can marry.
Download it here.
Live Anywhere
Live Another Life Skyrim Options
If you're not the brave and mighty Dragonborn, you're going to miss out on a few perks of celebrity, like people giving you houses to live in. Some homes come to you through quests and some you can buy, but the Live Anywhere mod will let you build your own house pretty much wherever you'd like.
It's a humble home, to be sure, but there's something pleasant about not living in a big city and being able to choose any location in the game you find appealing to call your home.
Download it here.
Hunterborn
Maybe you won't be slaying dragons, but considering how hostile the wildlife in Skyrim is, you'll probably be slaying something. So, you might want to make hunting and killing animals a bit more immersive than just treating their bodies like containers that hold a few scraps of loot.
Hunterborn adds new actions when you have killed an animal. You can pick up the body, field dress it, or loot it manually. It adds skinning, butchering, harvesting, and carcass disposal. It also provides a skill system by assuming you are not naturally an expert hunter or butcher, plus special weapons and tools, new alchemical ingredients, cooking recipes, and lots more. You won't even miss dragon shouts when you're the Hunterborn.
Download it here.
NPC Bartering
A big part of roleplaying is imposing restrictions on yourself. Skyrim makes it easy to get around the world via fast-travel, but if you want to feel like a real citizen of the world, you may choose to travel from place to place without shortcuts. This means if you find yourself in need of a particular item and you're far from a town or city, it can be a real undertaking to reach the closest merchant.
NPC Bartering, however, lets you trade with any NPC you meet, which is not only helpful for roleplayers but feels reasonably realistic. You can't buy the clothes off their back, but you can trade for anything else they might have.
Download it here.