One of the great things about the Elder Scrolls series is that they are basically built to support mods. This is a good idea for fan and developer alike: it engenders interest, replayability, and fan commitment. This I fully admit.
However, I have mostly just played the vanilla games. I’ve played vanilla Morrowind over and over again. I played vanilla Skyrim for one full playthrough, with a smattering of a few games started up and abandoned.
Side note: I really liked Skyrim, but for some reason it didn’t draw me in again and again like Morrowind did. I dorked around on side quests endlessly, but the moment I killed Alduin was the last time I ever loaded Skyrim. I then went back and re-re-replayed Morrowind. I have my speculations as to why this is, but enough of that.
The first mod I ever installed on an Elder Scrolls game was Tribunal Delayed, for the very reasons I’ve already covered here.
I still vastly prefer the vanilla aesthetic to updates or most mods, and yet I still found myself installing mods after that, so I thought I’d compile my list of mods that I’m using now. I’ve even started installing Skyrim mods, and that seems to have rekindled my interest in the game.
For Morrowind
- Tribunal Delayed – As discussed above. Delays the events of Tribunal (and the assassins) until you’ve killed Dagoth Ur – as it should be!
- HD Vanilla Textures – I love the aesthetic of the old game, and I don’t much care how all the textures/skin mods seem to make everybody look like Fabios and Barbies. That’s just weird. So now you can keep the vanilla aesthetic but make everything look cleaner and less muddy. I swear I noticed things like embroidered peacocks on clothing – that were there the whole time – but I never noticed before this mod!
- Patch for Purists – Fixes legit bugs without actually changing intentional gameplay. Good for purists like me 🙂
- Uvirith Unleashed – To spiff up Tel Uvirith a bit, in an attempt to get me to finally stop hanging out in Tel Vos all the time a la Seinfeld’s Kramer (or Bojack Horseman’s Todd)
- Face of the Hortator – I just like the idea of a “terrible aspect of Nerevar” being a mask
For Skyrim (Note that I got Skyrim Special Edition, so all the mods listed will be for that version – it is only fitting, since I’ve purchased Morrowind in at least 3 different forms over the years, so now I’ve purchased Skyrim twice)
- Practical Female Armor – Seeing women with massive Madonna boob-cones on their their chests just looked plain silly and was a part of the reason why I never wore plate and just gave all plate to Erandur instead. Well, now women will wear regular old plate mail with this mod! No Madonna boob-cones.
- Spouse’s Freedom – As you might recall from here, I’ve long lamented the fact that spouses essentially got super depressed if you ever moved them into a different house. They’d stop doing their usual cycle, and just refuse to ever leave the house or even TRY to make new friends. Well this mod solves that! Your spouse actually leaves the house and does stuff!
- Dawnguard Delayed – I never bought Dawnguard before, ON PURPOSE (despite buying the Dragonborn and Hearthfire DLC), so when I found out SE comes with all DLC, I immediately installed this mod