Best Texture Mods For Skyrim
Skyrim: Most Realistic Female Face Texture Mods. TL:DR; The best female face texture mod IMHO is SG Female Face Textures Renewal!.All the following photos are taken in the same location/lighting using a modified version of the Poupouri Morning Star ENB (less saturated, more sub-surface scattering). All the face settings for the character are exactly the same in each photo. Nov 24, 2011 We've taken the time to sift through nearly every mod on Skyrim Nexus just so we can tell you what the best Skyrim mods are (and the most stable). Enjoy these graphical improvements to an.
Graphics
Static Mesh Improvement Mod
It’s a terrible name for a mod that you absolutely need to get. Basically, it spruces up a huge pile of 3D models, making all of Skyrim look nicer in hundreds of tiny ways. You’ll probably not even notice it most of the time, but it works its magic everywhere. It’s also a key ingredient in several other mods, so it should be one of your first downloads.
Skyrim HD
Skyrim HD is a long-running texture mod that replaces over 600 textures. Everything from the sky and mountains to the interiors of ramshackle hovels has been done up. There are two complete versions, one of which is a 1K resolution ‘lite version’ for less powerful PCs. Optionally, you can download just the cities, landscapes, dungeons or miscelleanous packs. This is specifically for old Skyrim, but there are plenty of great alternatives for the Special Edition.
Skyrim 2018 Textures
Another huge, broad texture mod, this time specifically for the Special Edition. The latest version of the mod only comes with one complete file, but the 2017 version is more modular. You can pick what you want retextured, whether it’s just the roads, only mountains or all of Riften. The mod’s creator advises people with the old version to keep it, as it has some files that haven’t been added to the 2018 version yet.
RealVision ENB
More than most other mods, the lighting, post-processing and colour tweaks made by ENBs and Reshade mods are down to personal preference. In OG Skyrim, I was rather partial to RealVision ENB, and it still makes the seven-year-old game look absolutely gorgeous, though it does come at the cost of performance. You definitely won’t be able to use a PC that ran Skyrim in 2011.
SkyrimSE Re-Engaged ENB
When the Special Edition first launched, flashy post-processing options were limited while we waited for ENB to be updated. SkyrimSE Re-Engaged started out as a Reshade mod (it has since made the jump to ENB) and proved to be the best alternative, and while there’s now no dearth of competition, it continues to be my favourite. There are seven presets, not including vanilla, each dramatically different and designed with a specific weather mod in mind, and if there’s something you don’t like, you can adjust it.
Realistic Lighting Overhaul
If you don’t want to fiddle around with ENBs or take the inevitable performance hit that comes with the most impressive ones, Realistic Lighting Overhaul might be just your horn of mead. It’s a comprehensive lighting mod that doesn’t use any post-processing or screen injector tricks, so there’s no performance cost. It’s not as dramatic, either, but that’s the point. It aims to light up Skyrim realistically, based on actual light sources, whether it’s the sun or a candle.
Enhanced Lights and FX
Enhanced Lights and FX is similar to RLO, but it’s more dramatic and stylised. ELFX wants to make Skyrim pretty, not just realistically lit. Both mods are great, so it really depends on what kind of atmosphere you want to generate. You could always mix and match, and even throw in an ENB for good measure.
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Since Skyrim is full of forests, Skyrim Flora Overhaul has a pretty dramatic effect. It includes lots of new, high-quality tree models, even more grasses and plants, and loads of visual tweaks that generally make forests look deeper and more imposing. There’s a grass-only and trees-only version, too, which obviously have less of a performance impact. This is one of those changes that’s worth sacrificing some frames over, mind.
Simply Bigger Trees
Simply Bigger Trees does exactly what it says on the tin, giving Skyrim’s forests a growth spurt. It’s a surprisingly significant improvement, and though it’s only partially compatible, I like to pair it with SFO. Some of the trees get overwritten, but there’s still plenty of variety and the forests look considerably more striking.
Realistic Water Two
Realistic Water makes the pools, coasts, rivers and lakes of Skyrim distinct, so it doesn’t look like they’re all full of the same murky bath water. If you see some H2O in the game, it’s probably been improved. There are so many tiny touches that make this mod brilliant, like curated sound effects and animated icebergs. The Special Edition introduced a new water flow system, which is nice and all, but it was applied to all bodies of water indiscriminately, which made less sense. Realistic Water also fixes that.
Better Roads
Better Roads makes Skyrim’s trails and highways more interesting, giving them a bit more character and adding some lore-specific touches. More walls and fences have been added – touches of civilisation – while bridges have been made a bit more diverse and in keeping with the architecture of the areas they’re built in. Generally, they’re just less drab. It’s a subtle improvement, but Skyrim’s a much better place to walk around with this in your mod library.
Climates of Tamriel
Climates of Tamriel is a massive weather and lighting mod that replaces all of Skyrim’s boring weather with hundreds of different weather variations, from sunny days to cataclysmic storms and everything in between. It’s predominantly a visual mod, but there are plenty of audio improvements to go along with it. Climates of Tamriel is at its best when paired with an ENB like SkyrimSE Re-Engaged ENB and Realistic Lighting Overhaul’s interior lighting.
Best Texture Mods For Skyrim Se
Skyrim is a very special game. Gamers (like myself) have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours playing it. We've felt truly connected to those characters. I know personally, I've sat at the edge of a mountain, looked out, and wondered what it would be like to be fully immersed in that world.
Then Skyrim VR came out. And I lost my mind.
I'm going to be perfectly honest here, the main reason I bought a PSVR was for Skyrim. I simply could not wait that whole year for it to come out for PC, and I sunk a slightly embarrassing amount of hours into it. It was (almost) everything I wanted. However, one of the few things lacking, in my opinion, was modding support.
Now that Skyrim VR is on PC, there are a ton of mods that I think improve the experience even more. That being said, here are some of the must-have mods for Skyrim VR!
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Start Now12 Skyrim 2017 Textures
There's not much worse than seeing something in VR that looks like it's made out of crayons. While there might not be many textures that look quite so rough on a monitor or TV, when you're in VR, they jump out at you like they're going to attack you. Skyrim 2017 textures improve an incredible amount of textures to upgrade their resolution and look. It makes a huge difference and, in my opinion, is a must-have.
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11 Dragonborn Speaks Naturally
Quite possibly the coolest mod on this list, Dragonborn Speaks Naturally allows you to say the dialogue options in the game to select them. This might not seem like a huge deal, and for some, they might honestly prefer selecting them the old-school way. But for me, being able to actually physically talk to the characters in-game is an incredible experience, adding a ridiculous amount of immersion. Just, y'know, make sure everybody else in the house knows about the mod, or they might think you've finally gone off the deep end.
10 Flora Overhaul
Much like the Skyrim 2017 Textures mod, the Flora Overhaul mod improves all of the flora in Skyrim, making each of them look better and react more realistically to the environment. It also improves the LOD distance for some of the plants, allowing you to see them from a bit farther away to avoid the scary pop-in. Be warned, though, this mod can have a real impact on your PC's performance.
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9 Realistic Water Two
The water in Skyrim has always looked pretty good in my opinion, especially considering how long ago the game released. But this mod takes it to another level. Realistic Water Two adds better water flow, animations, LOD distance, particles, color options, rain ripples, and a whole slew of new sounds. Water has always been a thing that's amazed me in VR, and it doesn't get much better than this.
8 Realistic Lighting Overhaul
While the lighting did get a major improvement in the Skyrim Special Edition, there are still some places in the game that make you scratch your head. Realistic Lighting Overhaul greatly improves the lighting engine without having any impact on performance whatsoever. Dark places will finally actually be dark, and there are no “fake” light sources to be found anywhere. I'd definitely recommend keeping a torch with you at all times; it helps.
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7 Vivid Weathers
Weather effects are always something I look forward to in a game. I'm one of those weird people who absolutely loves rainy weather, so I'm always bummed when a game has sub-par weather effects. That's not to say Skyrim's weather effects weren't good, but Vivid Weathers adds so, so much. There are over 500 new custom weather effects and sounds, ranging from tons of different kinds of thunder, rain effects, snow, fog, and so much more. This mod does so much to increase the immersion in Skyrim, and that's what VR is all about.
6 Enhanced Blood Textures
I am by no means a gore-fiend, but let's be honest here; sometimes the blood textures in Skyrim can be pretty.. meh. After a particularly brutal fight, it's kind of a weird feeling to look around, see half a dozen bodies lying on the ground and only a couple of tiny blood splatters. It kind of takes the weight of what just happened away, in my opinion.
With Enhanced Blood Textures equipped, I look around after a fight and feel a little bit bad about it. Maybe it could have gone differently? Maybe the sword through the face was a little bit much..
In all seriousness, this mod adds tons of new blood textures, bleeding animations, and sound effects. Blood even looks different on various surfaces, like snow compared to stone.
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5 Lanterns Of Skyrim
Ever wonder how the citizens of Skyrim stumble around in the dark? (Especially with the Realistic Lighting Overhaul mod equipped?) Lanterns of Skyrim adds a ton of new lanterns all around the world, and I do mean all around. The lanterns just give the world a more lived-in feel, in my opinion, making the world look a little bit nicer and, here's that word again, immersive.
4 Sounds of Skyrim Complete
Ever walk around Skyrim and have it just feel kind of.. empty? Like, you see all of these cool things around, but there can be these weird moments in the game that are really pretty silent; especially when you're out walking around in the woods. Sounds Of Skyrim does a lot to fix that, adding a quite-frankly ludicrous amount of in-game sounds everywhere in the game, from cities to dungeons to the wilderness.
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3 Immersive Patrols
This mod is totally a preference thing, but personally, there's a lot of times that I'm walking around Skyrim and don't see anyone for a while. Like, a long while. And I start to wonder if maybe I've gone insane. Immersive Patrols does a lot to ease my mind, adding a healthy amount of new patrols around the world, from Stormcloaks to Thalmor to new trading caravans that move from city to city. Like Sound Of Skyrim, it makes the world feel a little less empty.
2 Amazing Follower Tweaks
Let's face it, we've all had that moment where we're convinced our follower is an idiot. Sometimes you would just love for them to do something, or not do something, and it sort of breaks that all-important immersion. Amazing Follower Tweaks adds a ton of new options for your follower, like the ability to make a camp, recharge their own weapons, teach them spells, level them up, turn them into a vampire or werewolf, controlling them combat style, and a lot more. It also increases the maximum follower count to five.
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1 Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch
There are a lot of bugs in Skyrim, ranging from small unimportant bugs to progress-impeding bugs. The Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch aims to fix every single bug not officially fixed by Bethesda, and I've got to say, it does a pretty spectacular job of it.
NEXT: 25 Amazing Things Deleted From Skyrim (That Would Have Changed Everything)