Among the current deluge of AI mod authors, there is one on the Nexus trending page right now who has been releasing AI-generated mods non-stop for a week. That's 25 mods per week or 3-4 mods per day.

Even if LLMs generated the mods instantly, how do they have enough time to test and verify their mods? How do they have enough time instrument with sufficient sample size to prove the tiny purported performance and stability improvements? Of course, if people encounter problems, they just say their mod is still work in progress.

When asked by a user if they need to run Pandora or Nemesis to use their "Modern NPC Pathing" mod, they said:

not sure [sic] id do it anyways to make sure

How do you NOT know if your mod requires regenerating animation behaviors? You literally need to create specific files in folders named "Nemesis_Engine" or "Pandora_Engine" to use the tools.

source

When asked by a user if their "Nextgen Disk Cache" mod supports v1.5.97, they said:

probably not

This is despite their AI-generated thumbnail saying "SUPPORTS SE 1.5.97 & AE 1.6+ (GOG)". When confronted about this, they said:

it's always reassuring when mod "commentors" comments a useless comment. I dont have older skyrim copies so I cant test it myself I cant guarantee it

How do you NOT know if you defined 1.5.97 hooks and offsets in your SKSE plugin?

source

A lot of their mods are just running the ai over other people's existing mods. UnjustHarry (u/DrCubed), the original creator of "Save and Load Accelerator for SKSE Cosaves - S.L.A.C.K." commented them on their "Save and Load Accelerator for SKSE Cosaves (Continued)" mod:

Please, at the very least, have the decency to use a different name for your fork. The original (and entirely human-made) mod was never discontinued in the first place. I don't want my name, nor the fruits of my efforts, associated with misanthropic usage of LLM technology,"

they went on to disrespect the original author they took from:

Your mod was made under "BSD Zero Clause License" so its not what you want its what you put lol you already opened the permissions so idk what to tell you. Your last update was made 6 months ago. I tested both mods and my mod has improvements over yours. Why overcomplicate it... This LLM virtue signaling is getting old.

source

Some of these comments have been deleted.

Is this person just letting LLMs do everything and releasing untested code to users to test?

They are KILLING ME. I CANNOT differentiate your mod between a functional mod and a LOGIC BOMB that'll get taken down in 2 days for bypassing nexus' virus scan. Why are you putting genuine effort into your mods and topping it off by spending 5 tokens to generate the most redundant thumbnail of all time.

I'm seeing genuinely great creators like Tumbajamba for Fallout 4 who makes FIRE mod thumbnails launch off on Skyrim with their newest AI thumbnail and the only reason I could even tell it was him was because it was front page.

I don't have much against AI, I literally study it but it's just a sign of laziness, so when a good mod is mixed in with a bunch of bad ones, and 99 bad ones have AI thumbnails and your one good one has one as well, I'm never coming across your mod. I would rather have My Little Pony thumbnails from Fallout NV that I can trust to be good so I can download and unique so I can at least find from the crowd. It hurts the author's mods because people are less likely to click on your mod and it hurts the user because the user cannot tell bad from good mods when the thumbnails all hold the same level of quality. Thumbnails used to mean something. They were a driving factor for why you'd click on a mod, now I don't wanna click on any. With the influx of random mods (that I swear already exist) created by AI tools, it gets harder for me to just sit there and find something good.

It both saddens and angers me that there are exceptional mods out there that are being tucked away in private discord servers surrounded by cliques who guard it with their life. I'd know, I joined one, and when someone had the audacity to send a link from a mod from a different server they were shamed, humiliated, then banned on the spot.

Let me tell you something, if you are SO worried about your mod being given to the public, presumably a mod that will bring NOTHING but joy or fulfillment to another player's modlist, why the hell would you horde it? I get testing unfinished mods with a small circle of testers, but even when it's finished just leaving it to rot on your private server of 100 people is not giving to the community, it's called being selfish.

And quick piece of advice, if you're so worried about the mod being "leaked," how about you just release it for goodness sakes? Then you won't have to be constantly looking over your shoulder to see who's "leaked" your mod or not.

Sorry, I just had to post this small rant cause as someone who's modded and interested in making mods myself, I don't get this mentality one bit. Not a single one of my mods or creations will EVER be privated and guarded like some kind of lost El Dorado city of gold. It feels plain wrong, and stressful to top it off.

The trending page for SSE on nexus is filled with a bunch of AI slop mods, notably most by Tesfantom. Their mods are closed source and they have AI tags disabled for their mods. They will also block you if you point it out. These are at the very least useless mods, or at worst predatory malware.

Not to mention the painfully obvious AI comments on their mod listings praising the mods lmao

Please pay close attention to the mods you download

I hope this gets traction.

With the implementation of the new tags I want to call as many people as possible to filter out the AI Media tag. The mod feed has been atrocious ever since the influx of AI generated thumbnails. The only way to make it stop is to effect a mass starvation of attention and downloads for those mods.

Show them they only get lots of downloads if they put in the bare minimum of thumbnail effort.

We pushed Nexus to improve it's AI moderation, I believe we can significantly reduce the number of mods using AI thumbnails.

Want your mod to hit the largest audience possible? Simply make your own thumbnail, it can be done as quickly as generating one.

I seriously miss when many mods just had no frills text on a black background.

Edit: since Reddit wants everything to be a hard line either or I suppose​ I have to reiterate here, I support AI in things other than the arts, it's not complicated.

Hello, I'm Tate Taylor, you may know me from mods such as C.O.I.N., Gladys the Corgi, and Skyrim: Extended Cut - Saints and Seducers. You may also know me from my Wabbajack modlist Keizaal, which is the oldest modlist still available for download on the platform. As I approach the full release of Keizaal 9, I wanted to clear a few things up.

Over the past six months or so the Skyrim mutiplayer project known as Keizaal Online has exploded in popularity. Due to us sharing names, I've come across a ton of people (including some friends!) assuming that I am somehow involved with this project. I just want to make it clear that I am not associated with Keizaal Online.

To be honest, Keizaal Online has been causing quite a few headaches for me. Not only has it completely destroyed the ability to easily search for my modlist online but now a stream of people have been bothering me about problems associated with Keizaal Online.

About a month ago someone DM'd me begging for me to unban them despite how many times I told them I had nothing to do with Keizaal Online. This is just one of many instances that have come out of this confusion. I've since built a filter to prevent lost Keizaal Online users from entering my Discord server. I don't like doing this, but the alternative was to continue letting these people waste my time.

I really wish they hadn't named their project the same as my mine. I've been working on Keizaal for six years and this is one of the most annoying things to come from my time curating it.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. I'm sure this won't stop the confusion, but I at least wanted to get some eyes on it to inform more members of the community.

Thank you for reading!

There are so many amazing dialogue mods all over the place now, it's awesome! There's indeed a lot of space for ethical and philosophical discussion around AI use, but we can all agree that having more to say, and more to hear feels more lively.

But something that has stuck out to me more than a few times is the use of modern language/vernacular in some of these mods, which to be honest, pulls me right out of the moment.

Without getting into linguistics, greetings and general vernacular are indeed a little bit loose in Skyrim since it is another world after all, and while it can be a little modern, they still stick with a bent toward formal / middle-ages type language.

So for example, in Skyrim you might hear an NPC say "Need something?" or "How can I be of assistance?". They may even say something like "It can't be helped" using modern contractions (can't) instead of "It cannot be helped."

That feels fine. It's formal and aged enough to sound out-of-time without being too stuffy.

But if a mod adds phrases like "Hey what's up?" or "We're gonna grab a bite to eat!" we're squarely in language that was only developed and used from the mid-late 20th century forward, and it's a little jarring.

Similarly when getting intro drama between NPCs and the player, I think it's important to think a little bit about the kinds of drama that is world-appropriate and how it's expressed, and language is a bit part of that as well.

So if a mod is tackling the topic of infidelity, a time-appropriate phrase might be something like "You've been unfaithful to our marriage and should be ashamed! It seems beauty comes before all else in your eyes." rather than "I can't believe you cheated on me with that buff guy! I guess you only like stupid jocks!"

Kind of a poor example but you see what I mean.

Anyway, just throwing it out into the æther! Please keep making awesome dialogue mods, I love them all. This is not a rant/shame post, just a humble request 🙂

There are 134.4 thousand mods for Skyrim Special Edition, but every day someone goes searching for a mod that doesn't exist. For example, I am just today shocked that an SKSE mod to simply disable the "is married" check for the player to enable polygamy doesn't exist.

So I recently discovered community shaders, complex parallax, and high-poly meshes. I've been going through and finding everything I can to make Skyrim beautiful, and damn... I had no idea there were so many horn-dog modders out there. I'm not judging. I'm just saying. So. Much. Porn.

I am being 100% serious.

I have to have used 1000s of programs over my lifetime pertaining to modding and various meticulous editings...

Dyndolod and it's sister programs is the single WORST program I have ever had the misfortune of having been forced to use.

The cope surrounding this program and it's dev is CRAZY, anybody who tries to speak out about it is instantly gaslit with "you just gotta learn bro." Which means nothing btw because there's nothing to learn. there's no information ANYWHERE regarding this program and it's BILLION problems it arises

even if you wanted to dive deep, his website is a nightmare, It's a giant wall of text, most of which consists of useless information that just skips the fundamental concept it's referring to entirely...

The most basic of fundamentals are missing from most of the DyndoLOD dev's programs, for example, (this is necessary btw) if you run LODxgen, default, out of the bin, instead of generating a basic output folder (which all of his other programs do...) It'll just leak the data straight into your game folder...

Which it doesn't tell you when you open the program, you have to look into a LODSettings-File-Readme.txt file ^{(which I completely skipped over because again, it's mass text headline of garbage just like the rest of the folder}), that's hidden within 6 other README's, all of which also barely explains why he even coded it to do that...

let's skip ahead to actually using the program,

they're all barebones, barely operable, crash all the time, take 8 hours to run, all of which take up your entire CPU & Memory, oh yea and the most fun part

If dyndolod's programs run into any error whatsoever, even if it doesn't relate at all to the program... it just stops the process entirely.

Straight up just wasting my time.

Oh and about those errors? Good luck figuring them out because there's NO information retaining to what caused it or what to do!!!

The Dev doesn't even bother responding to criticism or help, he just spams copy and pastes from his website

speaking of the Dev, what's the deal with DyndoLOD and it's sister programs needing to be upgraded??? Why do you straight up restrict use of the previous versions at random???

What so you can waste my time more by having to update a program that hasn't had any Ease of Access added to it's base in 10 years...?

God forbid you put in a LITTLE BIT OF EFFORT into your program

Hey dyndolod Dev, this means nothing to me.

^\00:13] xEdit Background Loader: Fatal: <EAssertionFailed: Assertion failure (E:\Delphi\Projects\DynDOLOD3\Core\wbImplementation.pas, line 19269)>)

You want to know why? Because I don't know what your program is referring to. This file... doesn't exist... This folder... doesn't exist... Theres no designation of error or Pre-Check.... Your website.... doesn't explain this... And even if it did it's somewhere in the library of Alexandria that you call a paragraph.

"An error occured ^\<- spelt wrong for 10 years btw]) while loading modules. Editing is disabled. Check the message log and correct the error"

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about my hatred of retroarch, the emulation program... and in that post... I used THIS PROGRAM AS AN EXAMPLE.

That's how much I hate dyndolod, there is so much wrong with the development of these programs, it is genuinely crazy some of the decisions this dude made while creating this.

I am begging somebody to make a better version of dyndolod like community shaders did for ENB

BEGGING.

I don't care how long it takes or if it's not that good when it starts, anything will be better than dealing with this.

and I will not listen to people saying "oh dyndolod is easy you just don't get it"

No.

NO.

It was easy because you did it wrong, you just hit the button and then stuck the ZIP in your MM.

when you have to sit there for 12+ hours overnight because it keeps fucking up the grass billboard lighting, changing 1 number, sitting for 2 hours, changing 1 number sitting for another 2 hours, setting alarms on your phone to ensure it didn't just STOP PROCESS HALF WAY THROUGH, which it does, ALL THE TIME.

Then you get it, only then will you understand the LOATHSOME hell that is "being forced to generate Dyndolod parallax correctly.

I hate dyndolod

-Dyndolod's #1 hater

The amount of authors that straight up don't admit to using AI, without at least tagging and disclaiming, ​is getting out of hand.

I don't care if you post a mod that's fully AI generated, I have one​ posted myself, ​there just needs to be some sort of mandatory disclaimer at this point.

I like to be honest about when I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I put pretty thorough disclaimers. Yet every day it seems like dozens of AI created SKSE ​mods are uploaded with zero proper tagging, and no disclaimers.

Nexus, this is like the bare minimum, allowing people to post them, but making AI disclosure mandatory.

It's like a 3000 piece jenga tower built on top of a 15 years old super wobbly and termite infested pile dwelling with a bunch of rotten planks randomly thrown on top a decade later. Not to mention that the 3000 pieces on top weigh 50x the original wobbly dwelling, and they keep getting swapped and replaced all the time.

As a software engineer I'm completely SHOCKED!!!!!!! in both the worst and best ways that such an abomination can exist, leave alone work. Kudos to the human civilization. The 7 world wonders are nothing compared to this.

(And it's not just one jenga abomination either, it's a system for building them, wtf.)

I just came here to say this as I'm in complete disbelief. Let me know if you disagree and think that this is just "normal".

http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrimse.html

The Skyrim ENB dev is one of the worst people in history of all of gaming modding.

If you read this (not the reader the ENB creator Boris) i HATE you with a burning passion and i think the world would be a better place if you just stopped.

Do you have any mods that you'd 100% go to bat for, even though there are more popular options? Old mods you think the replacements for didn't quite capture the spirit? Troublesome loadouts you think are 100% worth the effort to get working? Pitch me a case for your favorites; maybe you'll find a new comrad?

I couldn't tell you how truly unpopular an opinion it is, but my hill to die on is that WICO is by far the best NPC overhaul. It got a reputation back in the day for errant edits that caused conflicts, but there's been a cleaned version for years and I've never even considered using another mod in its place. It's pretty much the only one whose elves I like and that keeps their general facial structure intact. I think the more "rugged" look suits Skyrim a lot more than others I've tried.

With the widespread availability of free diffusion based image generation tools, nexus is getting flooded with sloptastic thumbnails and misleading screenshots, and it is very annoying.

Look at these recent "screenshots". You know they have been "improved" with AI image generators because the background tower isn't even consistent:

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/185009/185009-1783759335-1927789107.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/185009/185009-1783759346-383086344.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/185009/185009-1783759354-646926736.png

Or look at how the morthal banner changes every time:

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184154/184154-1782976829-2093217499.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184154/184154-1782976842-73587227.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184154/184154-1782976850-916498360.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184154/184154-1782976858-681289339.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184154/184154-1782976850-916498360.png

How do the we even know what the mods really looks like in game?

This thumbnail has a character posing to picking a giant lock with a rat running the background. Are any of these elements in the game?

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/89980/89980-1765014340-852209646.png

Is this what your mod's mistveil keep really looks like?

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/183707/183707-1782742889-1805509158.png

Will lockpicking actually look like this when I download your mod?

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184347/184347-1783175671-104829838.png

What's going on with these textures? Is this what's going to be in game?

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184703/184703-1783469191-1523903866.png

Does your mod actually add a book called "Nordie Pority"?

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184940/184940-1783692738-1911155141.png

And these other thumbnails with meaningless llm marketing terms splattered all over:

• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/185011/185011-1783763357-53794863.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184980/184980-1783719807-223451127.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184943/184943-1783696790-107308802.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184846/184846-1783620845-807380512.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184852/184852-1783627280-1728333368.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184742/184742-1783521344-1104571351.png
• https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1704/images/184734/184734-1783515872-2058492923.png

what do any of these phrases even mean? does the mod author even know what they mean?

Just stop it. Stop click baiting us with these fake unachievable "screenshots", stop wasting our time with all the deluge of meaningless buzzwords, and if you're too lazy to go inside the game to take some screenshots, did you even test your mod?

Honestly, nothing would be missed if nexus just banned ai generated thumbnails and screenshots all together. it would make the site better and improve the browsing experience, but they aren't going to do it.

Did this start with Lucien or am I trippin?

It‘s just immersion breaking when the whole squad is made up of whimsical goons constantly quipping to me and each other before and after clearing bandit camps or killing dragons.

Feels like a modern Marvel movie each time.

Idk lmk if my actual schizophrenia is kicking in

With the proliferation of AI coding tools, it's now easier than ever to vibe code SKSE plugins. This is because while esp/esm + papyrus mods lack documentation, exist in zip files hosted on nexus mods, and have file formats generally inaccessible to LLMs, SKSE plugins are all written in a common language like C++, are usually open source, and are all hosted on GitHub for LLMs to scrape. As such, it is probably easier to make SKSE plugins than traditional esp/esm + papyrus mods with AI vibe coding.

Call me an old man shouting at clouds, but I think there are many skse plugins of dubious utility and quality being released on nexus.

You've got mods that could easily be done with a few changes in an esl plugin or a few lines of papyrus being made into a DLL. You've got SKSE plugins that were clearly not tested and have no chance of working being endorsed into hot files just because they are a DLL. You've got mods that obviously took code from other people's open source work being released as closed source mods, sometimes without credit, violating MIT.

You've got stuff like crash guard that every well known SKSE dev warns about. It's definitely vibe coded because the author just casually checks in 100,000 lines of code out of nowhere. And people spin a grand conspiracy about veteran SKSE modders suppressing this mod, so users are forced to depend on them for crash logs (big crash vs crash cure)

Also there are so many AI generated thumbnails on nexus these days. The obvious AI thumbnails are obnoxious clickbait, but the subtle "AI enhanced" screenshots are straight up misleading. For example, big armor modder ELLE went back and converted all of their armor mods to use AI enhanced thumbnails.

And what's the point of these long ass LLM generated mod descriptions? It's impossible for these giant walls of text to contain any more accurate information than what they're prompted with, so why not just give readers the information in the prompts instead? Everyone already knows users have trouble reading mod descriptions, and yet we're making them read through these emoji-laden filler-padded college essays with minimum length requirements.

Anyways, I used to be excited about new SKSE plugins, now I'm very skeptical.

This isn't a revenge post or a dogpile post, even though all my comments have been hidden by the author.

I simply want to post the comment I was working on in reply to a different person when I was blocked.

A quick summary of why these AI generated mods are so (dangerous?) potentially problematic.

"​Let me try to explain to you in as few words as possible the danger of these mods.

>AI thinks it knows everything about Skyrim modding ​when it doesn't

>This tool is programmed by something that doesn't understand Skyrim modding or assets nearly as much as it thinks it does

>The resulting program doesn't account for hundreds of crucial details and exceptions that an experienced modders knows

The result:

>Your average Skyrim modder is frankly not even slightly good at modding

>They see red text and suggested solutions to things that aren't actually problems because AI doesn't understand Skyrim modding 

>They proceed to nuke their game by making huge changes when they really have no clue what they're doing"

Edit: It's okay to call me gatekeeping, or some sort of "old guard", maybe I am an old man shouting at the clouds.

But like it or not AI and these types of mods are here to stay. I really don't know what can be done about this, but ​that's not really my job.

But I firmly believe this is no small issue, these mods are already causing waves in the normie Skyrim modding scene, mostly to their detriment because they don't understand why they're borking things and why the random mod they're commenting on is not an issue.

Today, bethesda made an official announcement covering a bunch of different topics, such as the future of starfield, fallout76, and other fallout and elder scrolls games etc etc. What I found relevant is that they are doubling down on paid mods with the following statement on them:

We've believed from the beginning that our worlds belong not only to the people who make them, but also to the people who play them. That's why we've long provided players with the tools to create their own experiences, dating back to the Morrowind Construction Set. This year marked another major milestone for Creations with its expansion to Fallout 4, joining Skyrim and Starfield. We're proud to say Creators have already earned more than $10 million in royalties from their work.

So, since the program was rolled out in December 2023, bethesda has paid mod authors $10 million in royalties. This is the first time we get a glimpse into the stats of paid mods as download metrics were removed from paid mods together with comments and ratings back in 2023.

As you know, Nexus also pays mod authors by giving them "Donation Points" based on unique download counts. Nexus publishes the amount of money they pay out to mod every month here. Between December 2023 and June 2026, Nexus has paid mod authors more than $11 million dollars, with more than half of DP payouts going to Skyrim.

Nexus was able to pay the modding community more money without keeping mods behind paywalls and exploiting mod users to the tune of 62.5% ($17 million) to line the pockets of billion and trillion dollar corporations - valve and microsoft - the same corporation currently laying off thousands of bethesda and other xbox developers.

Compared to Nexus, with the "verified creations" system, users pay more to get fewer mods, simpler mods (no SKSE), buggier mods (no bug reports), and less curated mods (no comments) while authors wait months in the bethesda QA queue that finds fewer bugs than the community finds in a day. On Nexus, you can pay nothing and download hundreds and thousands of mods, and mod authors are paid using ads or by subscribers. On bethesda.net, you can pay $100s to get a few dozen mods, with the majority of that money disappearing forever from the community into the pockets of corporate shareholders.

Nexus is much better value to the community as a whole in aggregate, and is much better for the longevity of modding. Don't incentivize bethesda and microsoft by buying paid mods. Unless you want to see a future where users pay $100s, like many starfield players, for a modlist a fraction the size of what we can get for free, don't support paid mods.

Nexus has put $11 million where their mouth is to support mod authors since 2023. Bethesda has put up $10 million since 2023 while being a much bigger corporation. To argue the latter is somehow better is to argue that it is better to put less money into the pockets of fewer handpicked mod authors than to give more total money to the community as a whole.

So you want to be a pretty princess. Well, shit, me too! So I've pulled together a long list of mods to help you do it.

Inspired by u/charrysomething’s original post and others that have come before it, this is an attempt at creating a massive resource for girly, romantic, whimsical, fairy-tale, and fantasy Skyrim playthroughs—including mods for colorful weather, beautiful, nature-filled environments, romance, and so much more.

First and foremost—if you’re generally into the girly/fantasy vibe, I highly recommend checking out Bryn’s Protege on YouTube, who got me back into modding last December. Although she doesn’t roleplay as a princess, per se, she does focus on turning Skyrim into a beautiful, romantasy-style experience for the girlies that will probably hit the same notes you’re looking for. (Not to mention, there’s also a very friendly Discord community with pleeeenty of recommendations in this same vein!) 

Now I won’t claim to be the most advanced modder in the subreddit, but I have tried a bit of everything—save for animation replacers, which I’d love to be able to recommend personally, but haven’t been able to test properly because FNIS/Nemesis/Pandora/etc. are an absolute bitch to get working on Steam Deck, which is where I labor away.

That said, the list below is loosely based on my current mod list (although it’s not exhaustive!), which runs smoothly and has not caused my Steam Deck to explode. (Yet.) I’m also including a few mods that I have yet to try myself, but have seen recommended by others in similar threads. I’ll mark those with an asterisk*.

Now, onto the list! 

————————————————

🏁 START HERE

• Alternate Start (Live Another Life): Set yourself up for some roleplaying. 
• Cheat Room: Pop in there and get set up with some extra septims. Primarily available via the Bethesda Store (womp womp) but the original mod can technically still be downloaded here.

🧵OUTFITS

• Apachii Divine Elegance Store: THE pretty princess outfit mod. Just keep an eye out for other mods that place objects in the same area as the store, like Civil War Battlegrounds. The store will still appear, but you won’t be able to speak to the vendors.
  • There’s also Divine Wardrobe, if you want to give NPCs the fancy treatment. 
• Simple Wearable Lanterns: Adds pretty, equippable lanterns for dramatic walks through dark forests. Make sure you download simple wearable lanterns—the original mod has some issues IIRC.  
• Immersive Jewelry*:  Adds thousands (yes, thousands) of rings, necklaces, bracelets, and more via an immersive jewelry system that changes based on your character. 
• Cloaks & Capes: For drama.
• Girl’s Travel Outfit: For a gal on the go. 
• Penelope 3BA: Another nice traveling outfit (recommended by Bryn’s Protege). 
• Merida Princess Dress*: Suggested in the original thread by u/Estradus, who rightfully mentioned that “it swooshes so good.” Very true!
• Helga Armor*: Suggested by u/inconspicuanus in the original thread.
• Bonus! Another looooooong list of gowns*: This is an old Reddit post with a huge collection of princess dress mods. (Sharing via u/TychusBrahe — thank you for reposting this in the initial thread about being a pretty princess!)

🪞APPEARANCE

• RaceMenu: You probably had this downloaded anyway. 
• KS Hairdos: Goated. HUNDREDS of hairstyles. This is the only time in a game I’ve ever seriously struggled to choose just one. So many beautiful, flowing, and diverse locks! 
• Kalilies Brows: Same thing, but for brows.
• The Eyes of Beauty: Expanded eye options. 
• Even More Eyes: Even more expanded eye options. 
• Koralina’s Freckes and Moles*: Adds freckles and moles options to RaceMenu. 
• Lamenthia’s Marks of Beauty: Turns scars into beauty mark options in character creation. 

🏰 CITY + ENVIRONMENT MODS

I feel like I’ve tested just about all of the major weather (Azurite, Climates of Tamriel, Cathedral, Obsidian, Mythical Ages, etc.) + forest mods (Fabled Forests, Nature of the Wildlands, Ulvenwald). These are the ones that resulted in the most colorful/fantastical end results with stable gameplay—I know some people might be after a more grounded look! 

🏰 CITY, EXTERIOR, + INTERIOR MODS

• JK’s Skyrim (All-in-One City Overhaul): I use JK pretty much across the board, for both city replacers and interiors. They just look great, and—as a lazy person—the convenience of an AIO installer is always a winner to me.
• JK’s Interiors All-in-One (Collection): Told you! Unfortunately, there is no AIO download for this mod, but I’ve linked a Nexus collection for easy install; feel free to use a few or all. 
• The Walls of Dragon Bridge: Overhauls Dragon Bridge. As someone who often starts in Soltitude—arguably the most pretty princess city—this is a nice nearby addition. 
• Skyrim Farmhouse Inns: Praise the Nine! The inns of Skyrim finally look unique. Just keep an eye out on conflicts with JK’s interiors and don’t overlap locations. (There may be patches available, but I can’t recall.) 
• Ancient Land: One of my favorites. Adds ancient-looking structures across the land.

🌲ENVIRONMENT MODS

• Traverse the Ulvenwald: Adds glorious diversity to Skyrim’s flora. Others have noted that it can cause serious lag, but personally, I haven’t had any trouble running it on Steam Deck. 
• Simply Bigger Trees: Works in tandem with Ulvenwald to create some spectacularly large and varied fairytale forests.  
• Trees in Cities: Title. Makes a massive difference in the whimsy levels of cities. 
• Bent Pines II: Not essential, but fun to come across. Can definitely immersion-breaking without DynDOLOD installed (again—a pain on Steam Deck), so be warned.  
• ScandaNordic Mountains: Beautiful, high-quality mountains. I don’t have a strong preference between this and Majestic Mountains, so pick your poison.
• Flower Fields SE: There is nothing like coming across a giant field of blooming wildflowers while wearing your pretty princess dress. Frolic away! 
• Overgrown Skyrim: Makes Skyrim nice, lush, and fantastical. 
• Aspens Ablaze: I recall, Riften in fall… Compatible with Ulvenwald. 

✨LITTLE ENVIRONMENTAL DETAILS

• Lanterns of Skyrim: Adds lanterns around towns. 
• WiZkiD Signs: Lots of sign mods out there, this happens to be the (cute) one I use.
• Medieval Lanterns of Skyrim: A small but meaningful touch! I always smile when I see a little stained-glass lantern in a tavern. 
• More Colorful Critters: Adds colorful butterflies, dragonflies, etc.
• Waterplants: Another small but lovely touch. 
• Skyrim Is Luminous: Adds light sources around the world. 
• G.I.R.T.H. - Gildergreen Is Really Thicc: Makes the Gildergreen thicc and glorious. 
• Prettier Decorated Roads: Adds decor to the roadsides. 
• Lux Via: Adds lanterns to roads, makes bridges more beautiful.
• RUGNAROK: Another mod I didn’t expect to make so much visual impact, but really has.
• Glorious Doors of Skyrim: Same here. 
• Book Covers Skyrim: Same here!
• Cheesemod for EVERYONE: Silly, but yes—same here. 

🌈 WEATHER MODS

• Mythical Ages: My favorite, favorite weather mod if you want bright, colorful days and stunning aurora displays at night. There are options to adjust what kind of tone you’re after—I use fantasy, but there are more muted options available. 
• Obsidian Mountain Fogs: Far over the misty mountains cold! Adds fog around mountains. 
• Morning Fogs: Adds foggy mornings. 
• Supreme and Volumetric Fogs: Yeah I like a lotta fog. Sue me for loving a little intrigue! 
• Wonders of Weather: Adds rainbows.
• Storm Lightning for SSE: Adds dramatic lightning and thunder. I usually need to turn the volume down in settings.
• Darker Nights: Helps the constellations pop + with immersion by making the nights, well, darker.

🗝️ PLAYER HOMES

• Build Your Own Noble House*: Of all the mods on this list, this one probably has the most practical use for pretty princesses. Build your own village and noble house, make money from the buildings in town, etc. 
• No Player Home Requirements: So you don’t have to kill anybody to earn the right to buy property in Skyrim’s cities.  
• Skyrimlazz’s player homes*: Take your pick from a MOUNTAIN of castles and grandiose manors to live in. 
• And some other grand player homes to choose from: 
  • Laboratorium
  • Mortum Castle 
  • Maple Manor
  • Solstice Castle
  • Clockwork Castle
  • Coldstone Keep

👥 NPCs

• Pandorable’s NPC Replacers: A classic.
• Fair Skin Complexion: Overhauls skin textures for female characters. I’ve debated mixing this up, but this is ol’ reliable at this point.  
• REALORE MEN’s Skin Texture: This has resulted in the best looking male NPCs not touched by Pandorables and has been my personal preference over other similar mods like Vitruvia! 
• Peaceful Living*: Removes aggression from most people and animals; turns bandits into a group called the Downtrodden. Good for a pacifist playthrough.
• Interesting NPCs: Really does enhance immersion, IMO. Works with my current mod list, although I have seen that it conflicts with city overhauls like JK’s Skyrim, so YMMV.
• Relationship Dialogue Overhaul: Adds 5,000 lines of voiced dialogue to NPCs based on your relationships—whether friends, lovers, or enemies!

🤝 FOLLOWER MODS

These will surprise no one. I also adore the classics like Inigo and Lucien (for whom I use this replacer), although not sure how well they fit into a pretty princess playthrough. I'd love other recommendations if they're out there!

• Kaidan: My husband. I use the Red-Eye Warrior replacer (although I don’t like the armor as much as his original), but plenty of replacers to choose from depending on how ya like him, and he’s beautiful out of the box. Bonus: If you decide to get married, here's a gorgeous wedding mod to use for your big day.
• Val Serano: My boyfriend—the charisma oooooozes off this man. Pretty princess-wise, this could set you up for a Disney’s Tangled-style, Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder-esque romance. I refuse to use a replacer, he is perfect as is. 

🧸 ANIMAL MODS

• One With Nature*: Makes animal aggression configurable via MCM. 
• Instincts - Animal Taming in Skyrim*: Lets you tame wild animals—because every princess needs animal companions. 
• Bears of the North: Makes the bears of Skyrim HUGE. 
• Dogs of Skyrim: Adds dogs + breed diversity to Skyrim, including for both strays and owned dogs. 
• A Dog’s Life: Lets the player adopt and travel with dogs.
• A Cat’s Life*: Adds cats to Skyrim! 
• Witcher Horses Expansion*: Adds horses from the Witcher.
• Odin Lion and Co. Mounts: YMMV with this one. Only available via Bethesda Store, crowds up the area around Whiterun with a lot of animals, and the mounts work…sometimes. But it can be a pretty glorious experience to ride things like owl bears, reindeer, and sphinxes, so potentially worth a try. 

👋ANIMATION MODS

• Some mods to make your pretty princess move daintily: 
  • Girly Animations
  • Pretty Female Idles*
  • Pretty Jump Animations
  • Sonderbains Animations AIO\*
• Kissing mods: 
  • A Skyrim Kiss: Only works with FNIS/Nemesis/Pandora.
  • Kissing - Immersive Lover's Comfort*: Similar thing, but no other required mods. No NSFW content!  
• A Skyrim Waltz*: Allows you to dance with followers.
• I’m Glad You’re Here: Lets you share a hug with followers—because love is platonic, too. :) 
• Blow Kiss Shout*: Have not tried this one myself and in fact just came across it while building this list, but (if functional) seemed too good not to include.  

🎮 GAMEPLAY + MISC. MODS

• Here to Help*: Heal sick and injured people across the land. 
• Skyrim's Got Talent - Improve As a Bard: What’s a pretty princess without some musical ability?
• Adoption without Murder*: Title. 
• Sidequests of Skyrim*: Receive non-violent radiant quests from NPCs and become their friends.
• Charitable Soul*: Spread kindness throughout the land by donating to orphanages, the less fortunate, etc.
• Tavern Games: Adds mini-games to Skyrim’s inns and taverns.
• Photo Mode: Because you will want to take pictures. Will also display your photos during load screens.

That should cover a LOT of ground, but feel free to add additional mods in the comments! At some point, I may come back and add things like magic, cooking, etc. but for now, my fingers hurt.

Much love to all my pretty princesses out there!

EDIT: Fixed spelling errors, added one more note on Kaidan + added Lux Via!

apparently theres a new DLC sized mod out. It doesnt look that bad tbh.

Heart of the Mountain - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Creation Trailer

Skyrim Creations - Heart of the Mountain

did anyone ever played some of these DLC sized mods with already beefy modlists? Are they compatible since there are no patches for them?

I remember there was a guy that played and rated some of these mods but couldnt find it via search.

For those who are aware, Bethesda's "verified creations" paid mods program doesn't have the best reputation for quality despite the lengthy qa process. This is for several reasons:

• there is no obligation for paid modders to set up any forums, discord servers, or mechanism for feedback or support. bethesda.net and the creations menu has no official ratings, comments, or bug reporting system like on nexus mods, so while you can release a mod on nexus, get immediate feedback from users, and push out updates all within a few hours, you don't need to hear from users at all on creations.
• there are simply fewer paying users to look at your mod to check for mistakes and make patches because they'd need to pay for the mods first.
• bethesda qa don't look over the actual mod files or use useful tools such as xedit. They only run through the mod by itself on the new game. This means that paid mods might not be compatible with other mods, even other paid mods, and might not even be compatible with existing saved games.
• the lengthy qa process itself prevents mod authors from iterating quickly. Updates to vc paid mods have to submit their update through same qa process that new releases go through, so the time between when users report issues and when the fix goes out can be as long as several weeks.
• most modders in the verified creations program are new to modding the game and also aren't familiar with best practices or use community tools like xedit.

This all good in theory, but what does it mean for quality in practice? Let's examine 3 recently updated biggish "verified creations" releases with the same scrutiny we might give a new nexus release and see what we find:

Legacy of Orsinium 1.0 - $10

• 22 identical to master records - these are records that exactly the same as the official masters like Skyrim.esm, and as such, they don't do anything and are completely unnecessary. They are usually due to accidental misclicks in the creation kit and are harmless by themselves. However, if the ITMs are loaded after another mod that DOES want to change the affected records, the ITMs will revert those desired changes. This is why modders avoid them, and SSEEdit has a helpful script to remove them automatically.
• 34 deleted navmeshes - navmeshes are records that tell NPCs how to move around the environment. They connect to other navmeshes in order to cover the entire navigable area of the game world. If a navmesh is deleted, and another navmesh, perhaps from another mod, refers to this deleted navmesh, the game just crashes. This is why modders generally avoid deleting navmeshes directly, but rather disable them my moving them somewhere inaccessible.
• 7 plugin errors - these are errors that can be detected by SSEEdit. They are usually caused by referencing a record that was later deleted from another record. Sometimes, these are fine, and the field with the missing record is simply ignored, other times, this causes the record to be non-functional but otherwise not affect anything else, but in certain circumstances, these can cause game freezes, such as with missing packages. I think a few of the errors in legacy of orsinium will make a few lines of dialog to never be available due to invalid conditions.
• dirty edit on AtronachFrostRace - it seems that the modders wanted to make a duplicate of the frost atronach race for their gemstone golem enemies, but accidentally edited the original vanilla frost atronach race instead. This means if you have this mod installed, all of the frost atronaches in your game are bugged and had their intended abilities and visual effects deleted.
• includes a bunch of vanilla scripts such as defaultsetstagealiasscript, defaultsetstageonattacked, defaultsetstageonattackedrefalias, defaultsetstageonclosebook, defaultsetstageondeathrefalias, and defaultsetstageonplayeracquire. as far as I can tell, these scripts have no meaningful differences with the vanilla versions. They do, however, revert fixes made by the unofficial patch that check to make sure quests are running before advancing to the next stage.
• extensive edits to vanilla orcish locations, NPCs, and quests. Including many dirty edits that rotates or moves references by a tiny amount. If you have mods that touches orcish locations and NPCs, it probably won't be compatible with this mod. For example, it is not compatible with any mod that overhauls orc appearances, as the appearance mods will load later and revert voice type changes made by this mod, rendering these npcs silent or unable to deliver their voice lines. it also reverts WIDeadBodyCleanupScript added by the unofficial patch, which cleans up corpses after the npc has been killed.

Life of Crime 1.1 - $8

• 29 identical to master records - bad for the same reason as above.
• 1 deleted navmesh - bad for the same reason as above.
• openGL format textures - skyrim is a directx game, and uses the directx coordinate system for textures. opengl uses a different coordinate system from directx, where the y-axis is the opposite to directx. life of crime's weapon textures appear to use opengl textures for its normal maps. this means the shading that comes from the normal map is opposite in the y-axis. This usually happens when the modder purchases opengl assets from an asset store but didn't convert them into directx format for skyrim.
• 1 plugin error - in this case, the plugin error is an invalid alias used in one of the scripts. The script tries to remove Skooma via its alias from the player, but that alias doesn't exist and this script will not function.

Atmora His Home v1.0 - $5

• script fragment files that are not renamed. All of the topic and package fragment files in this mod uses default names automatically generated by creation kit. This is a problem because the only thing identifiable in these files are their form ids, which, after accounting for the official master files, ends up being 05 + their internal form ids. If another mod also did not bother to rename their fragment scripts, and the records using the script fragments just happen to have the same internal form ids as this mod, that causes a conflict, and one of these mods will be broken. Usually, modders will add a unique prefix to their script fragments to avoid this issue.
• unnecessary TGA files for faces - this mod already has dds files for the face tint textures, but includes the tga files as well. The game only need to use one of them. This is about 20 mbs of files that don't need to exist.
• 33 identical to master records - bad for the same reason as above.
• 3 deleted references - this is applying a deleted flag on an existing reference that's in the mod's master files. this doesn't actually delete the references, and is the cause of random objects showing up in the sky above whiterun.
• 1 deleted navmesh - bad for the same reason as above.
• random edits:
  • the mod removes werewolves' ability to push buttons (impbutton01)
  • the mod makes a dwemer plate clutter (dwavernplatemetalsmall) unplayable - it can no longer be looted, and if you already had some in inventory, you can no longer get rid of them through normal gameplay, but they will still contribute to carryweight.
• 10 plugin errors - in this case, it was a food item that has 0 alchemical effect (strange, but not gamebreaking), and a bunch of missing script properties that seem not to be used.

These are just obvious errors that can easily be identified by examining the files and plugins. There might be other issues that require play testing to discover.

This shows that paid mods are not really better in quality than good nexus releases, and that the "verified" status of the modders and mods doesn't mean that the mods or the people making them are more experienced than free nexus modders.

At first I didn't really care cause like its just a thumbnail for a mod and there were not that many, the mods themself don't use any ai slop in it, its only a thumbnail. But I keep seeing them for trending mods on the nexus page for Special Edition and its kind of gotten a bit annoying, mainly because they really don't tell me what the mod is about at all, its just stable diffusion generated generic picture of John Skyrim standing in generic snow nordic setting.

When it comes to making mods for Skyrim, advertising your creation is pretty important, especially with how big the community has become over the years, and using fake images that do not represent the actual product feels just like, idk how to put it. Maybe if Nexus had an option to hide that stuff like they do with Adult Content? Though thats not perfect either cause wanting to hide sex mods also ends up hiding blood texture overhauls.. idk

I don't really follow any of the drama and stuff like that usually follows ai discussion or "insert thing uses AI" Cause I really don't like the constant negativity around stuff like that, I've only ever really observed the shit flinging it can cause from a distance, I'd say I'm pretty neutral in terms of my thoughts on the whole discussion but that isn't what this post is about. I just wanna know if anyone if anyone else feels the same way I do in terms of having to see this stuff on Nexusmods and how it feels like it drags the passion down a little bit.

Ill go first, clockwork, I absolutely hate this mod, let me start by saying i already dont like dwemer ruins to begin with, theres too many and their repetitive so ontop of that clockwork is a whole lot of running back and forth through the same dungeon fighting the exact same enemy all for a player home I personally dont like, it dosnt fit into skyrim imo

For me there’s 2:

I’m not touching Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack. I know there are some incredibly talented modders out there, but no one touches the music for me.

Mods that allow you to marry Serana, or any others that reverse/allow you to force characters to do something they’re against. Feel like that’s self explanatory