About

This guide is based on and builds on the STEP: Skyrim SE Guide. The STEP team has built a base with mods that enhances and fixes Skyrim without breaking the vanilla look and feel. This guides further enhances Skyrim, adds to it and alters elements of it in several ways.

The mods featured in this guide are chosen to be immersive and realistic. Realistic in a fantasy setting means believable. The mods should feel like they expand or enhances vanilla Skyrim, like they could have been there from the beginning.

What to expect

  • Minimalistic survival mode with Creation Club Survival Mode, SunHelm or The Frozen North which both uses the same minimalistic and non-intrusive HUD icons as the Creation Club Survival Mode does.
  • HD textures for landscapes, structures and buildings that keeps the vanilla look and feel.
  • HD textures for clutter, armors, weapons other items.
  • Bigger trees for a truly immersive forest.
  • Enhanced visuals with Cathedral Weather, Relighting Skyrim and Luminosity Lighting Overhaul.
  • New unique armors and weapons.
  • New weapon types with custom animations.
  • More adventures with new quests and new lands to visit.
  • Overhauled cities, towns and villages.
  • Expanded character creation, optionally with the CBBE female body with realistic presets.
  • Overhauled character leveling and skill system:
    • Overhauled skill trees with new perks.
    • Overhauled magic with new spells.
    • A new class system.
    • New experience system that encourages exploration.
    • Slower leveling to allow you to experience the dlc-sized added content before maxing out your character.
  • New, tougher bandits and dragons.
  • New NPC’s and followers.

This guide is made to be easy to install

  • Almost no custom LOOT rules, every conflict is resolved by the patches.
  • No Bashed patch. All level list conflicts are resolved by the provided patches.
  • No merging of plugins. Every patch is esl-flagged to make sure the plugin limit count is not reached.
  • Advanced FOMOD installer for the patches. No need for you to choose which patches to use, the installer does the work for you.

Almost all mods are optional

All mods in this build are optional, except for:

  • Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
  • Cloaks of Skyrim and Winter is Coming. Use them both or not at all.