After over 10 years of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and numerous ports, some players find it challenging to continue playing the same content. It was a wildly popular game that won many awards, but even the greatest must fall sometime. Luckily for Elder Scrolls fans, the modding community isn't quite ready to let go just yet.
In fact, on Steam Workshop alone, there are literally thousands of mods to choose from. Even in 2020, users continue creating and updating new content for the game. It's high-quality content as well, with some even winning major awards. For those who adore Skyrim but need more content to hang on a decade later, modders have just about everything players could ever dream of and then some.
Updated on December 6th, 2022, by Ritwik Mitra: Skyrim is a game that has an extremely active modding community everyone is pretty familiar with. However, while a lot of people look at Nexus Mods to download and set up the majority of their mods, there are other places where players can also download mods to augment their experience of playing Skyrim. One such unlikely area that many people don't really think of is Steam Workshop, which has a surprisingly decent collection of mods that players should check out. The best of the bunch are mentioned below.
15 LOTR - Sword of Strider And Companion Knife
Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular fantasy series out there, spawning a bunch of movies from a book series that established the majority of common tropes seen across most fantasy media. So, it was only a matter of time before modders would pay tribute to this series in perhaps the most popular fantasy role-playing game ever made.
With this mod, players can add the legendary Sword of Strider from this series into the game. There are both one and two-handed versions of this sword along with a small knife to compliment this set if need be.
14 Village And City Homes
While the villages and cities in the game are pretty crowded, some people might still find the number of buildings to be a bit lacking. This mod adds some houses near these settlements to make these areas feel more lived-in.
It's a small but great way to enhance the ambiance of this title. Exploration is already a major strong suite of Skyrim and mods like these just enhance this immersion even more.
13 Ghosty's Guardhouse
Players love the city of Whiterun. Chances are that this is the first city that players will interact with in the game, with this area being an absolute blast to explore with its large number of houses and quests.
Steam Workshop houses a mod that adds a quaint guardhouse southeast of Wihterun, near the Honningbrew Meadery. It's kitted out with everything a player could need to brew potions, make weapons, or perform pretty much every useful function in the game.
12 Immersive Patrols
It's odd that Skyrim is meant to have huge wars between warring factions, yet the land is barren of any patrolling troops or skirmishes. This changes with the advent of Immersive Patrols, which is an absolute must-have for this game.
It adds patrols from different guard groups in the game at appropriate locations, with a few combat situations arising if these patrols overlap and are hostile to each other. The fact that this mod adjusts to the decisions a player makes in the world makes it even better.
11 FRIENDCRAFTER
Players love having followers in Skyrim, even if the vast majority of them don't exactly have the most in-depth personalities around. For these people, the FRIENDCRAFTER mod is absolutely perfect.
This simple mod allows players to create their own followers from scratch! Their physical attributes can be customized quite a bit, and the mod allows for a total of ten companions to be made!
10 The Forgotten City
With its claim to fame being the first mod in history to win a national Writer's Guild award, Modern Storyteller's The Forgotten City is a truly epic experience. With nearly 8 hours of original content, players find themselves immersed in a murder mystery that involves interrogation, exploration, and deep moral dilemmas.
Other features of this incredible mod include a series of multiple endings, an original music score, and high-quality voice acting. IGN, PC Gamer, Kotaku, and more gave it rave reviews, making it a must-try for any Skyrim fan, new or returning.
9 Amazing Race Tweaks Collection
Those looking for more enriched and immersive gameplay may appreciate the race stat changes that come with Amazing Race Tweaks!. This collection of mods reworks statistics for each race in the game, making them both more realistic and more individualized.
Luck, blessing, persuasion, intelligence, and more are all slightly changed. Some races even get new lore-friendly passive abilities such as Imperials being able to cheat death once per day. The Amazing Race Tweaks! full collection includes mods for Imperials, Khajiit, Orcs, Argonians, Nords, Redguards, Bretons, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, and High Elves.
8 Moonpath To Elsweyr
Tired of adventuring in Skyrim? Fans of Khajiit or their homeland of Elsweyr as seen in The Elder Scrolls Online might enjoy all that Moonpath to Elsweyr has to offer. Join a caravan of Khajiit and journey with them into the untamed wilds of Elsweyr. This massive mod features new creatures, quests, and environments.
Around 13 new areas await players upon downloading this mod, such as lush jungles, dark forests, and deserts. Within these new biomes are fearsome creatures unlike anything seen in Skyrim, such as raptors, sload, hyenas, and more.
7 Towns And Villages Enhanced Collection
Although it's a fantastic game, Skyrim was released a long while ago and shows its age in many areas of the game. One of the best mods to combat this is the Towns and Villages Enhanced collection. This series of mods introduce new, higher resolutions items, textures, and clutter for the towns and villages of Skyrim.
The Towns and Villages Enhanced collection includes mods for Riverwood, Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, Wilhelm, Falkreath, Markarth, and small villages. As with any mod that brings graphic improvements to the game, it may increase the minimum spec requirements to play.
6 Sjel Blad Castle
At first glance, Sjel Blad Castle may seem like a fancy housing mod, but it's so much more. This mod includes the usual gambit of features for housing, such as gear storage, and role-play areas, such as a dining hall and bedroom. However, this huge castle also includes an armory, forge, vault, trophy hall, stables, guards, and both humanoid and creature followers.
The castle's features don't stop there. It includes a Hall of Ascension which adds new ways to customize class gameplay and character appearance. The stables come with over 30 mounts, including some of the most exotic beasts featured in The Elder Scrolls V. There are even a handful of dungeons to explore on the property. For this mod to function properly, it requires Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC packs.
5 The Evil Mansion
The Evil Mansion is no ordinary mansion. Take a closer look. This is a lore-friendly Resident Evil remake for Skyrim. After many hours of studying game maps and YouTube videos covering the game, the developer of this mod created a faithful rendition of the infamous Spencer Mansion.
The complex offers both player housing and an initial challenge to unlock it. It's a full rebuild of the original mansion which includes additional areas such as the basement, dormitory, and laboratory. Progressing through the mansion involves battling dangerous creatures and solving a series of puzzles, very reminiscent of the original Resident Evil game. Other features include unlockable vendors and companions, horse parking, unique loot, and more.
4 Falskaar
For those who want new Skyrim-centric content, Falskaar opens up an island off the coast of the province. The mod features a whole new land to explore, people to meet, quests to follow, and dungeons to dive into. In total, it adds around 20 hours of content to the game.
There are 26 quests including 9 main quests and 17 side quests. Players access this new realm for the first time by speaking to Jalamar in Riften or going straight to Echo Deep Mine. This mod doesn't require DLC content, but the creator asks that players wait several hours of in-game time before heading into Falskaar so that it loads properly.
3 Build Your Own City - Becoming a Lord
Ready for a whole new experience in an Elder Scrolls game? Do just that with the Build Your Own City - Becoming a Lord mod. The goal of this mod is to slowly build a city on an empty plot of land, all owned by the player.
As of September 2020, the mod remains in its alpha stage, currently featuring Lord house options, citizen house options, NPCs, AI packages, and more. Future content additions include graduating a town to tier 3 (or city status), a diplomacy system, court wizards, trade depots, and barracks.
2 ColloseusX's Lore Friendly Zombie Mod
Turn the land of Skyrim upside-down with zombies! The Lore Friendly Zombie Mod brings an eerie mist to Skyrim that turns mortals and creatures alike into mist-burned undead. At this time, there are 3,400 undead populating the world with more to come. Build and upgrade a sizeable defense at Mistwatch with the Mistguard Militia and rescue survivors in a world fallen to Molag Bal.
With high-risk gameplay similar to Dark Souls, even the smallest scratch from a zombie brings a chance of death. Only extreme vigilance and evasiveness ensure players survive this new world. Not only are large portions of the map shrouded in mist, but the mod also includes new monsters such as Mistwalkers, Mistbringers, Mistburnt, and even a Mistlurker Dragon.
1 Markarth Undercity
For players who ever wanted more to the story of Markarth, take a deep dive into the vast Markarth Undercity. This cavernous new area under the city of Markarth features an in-depth main questline and several side quests.
Don't get too overly confident with this mod. It's designed for high-level players, and even those in the level 50 range get one-shotted. Enemies within the depths are fully overhauled with new stats and abilities, offering a level of challenge unlike anything players faced in the base game. Other features include custom enemies, items, merchants, followers, and plenty of backstory to fully immerse players into this fantastic under realm.
Skyrim is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, PS5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.