This week, I'm not going to be talking about an older game. Rather, I'll be talking about something fairly new: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Now, the game looks great as it is, but we all know the PC can look far better than anything on consoles. With a little bit of tweaking, we can make Skyrim into an insanely hot-looking game.
I'm going to skip over all of the reasons of why you should play the game this week, since you'll find tons of people talking about why you should already own Skyrim. I'm just gonna jump right into teaching you how to turn Skyrim into the beautiful game that it truly is.
Time: 2-3 hours
Difficulty: Intermediate
What you need: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
1. We're going to start by downloading and installing the Nexus Mod Manager. This mod manager will let you easily install and remove mods. It will create a folder in your Skyrim install directory called "mods." You'll be able to drop mod archives (.zip, .rar, or .7z files) right into this folder and install them from the mod manager. All of the mods that I am going to show you today can be installed this way.
2. Download and install the Skyrim Script Extender . Copy all of the .exe and .dll files from this download into your Skyrim directory. To make this work properly, you have to launch Skyrim from the "skse_loader.exe" from now on. Make sure you get the newest version, and that your copy of Skyrim is up to date. If a new Skyrim patch comes out it might take a few days for this to be updated to match. It can be a little annoying, but it lets you install more powerful mods.
3. Download and install Skyboost. This helps to increase the game's framerate. Skyrim is a CPU hog, and these files relieve some of the stress on your CPU. Extract the downloaded zip folder, and copy both files from the "bin" folder to your Skyrim install directory.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Skyboost MUST match the version of Skyrim that you have installed. If Skyrim gets updated, you might need to delete "skyboost.asi" in order to get your game running again. Just keep checking for a new version of Skyboost if you want to keep using this mod. It's a bit of a pain, but the performance boost is worth it. (edit: Skyboost is no longer needed with the latest patch)
4. Download the ENB Series Skyrim Injector. This the mod that makes the game really pretty, and they are also the guys behind the insane Grand Theft Auto IV graphics mods. This is still a beta right now, so once you install this you should keep checking back for updates. Make sure you get the latest version of the injector. If you are running Vista or Windows 7 then you'll need to install DirectX 9 in order to make this run correctly.
If you are ambitious, you can edit the "enbseries.ini" yourself. You can find it in your Skyrim install folder. If you are like me and you want other people to do all of the hard work, you can find a ton of nice preset "enbseries.ini" files online. I am currently using Cinematic Lighting ENB. Just replace the existing .ini file with the new one that you download. It's worth trying out different ones because each one can drastically change the way the game looks.
5. Get some mods! This is the fun and easy part. All of the mods I list below can be used together, so you don't have to pick and choose which ones you want. If you want to add more, just be careful that they don't conflict with anything else you have installed. In other words, you can't have two water texture mods running at the same time. I suggest that you stick with this list if this is your first time modding an Elder Scrolls game. Once you have these successfully running, then you can browse around for other mods. Remember, just copy these to your Skyrim/mods/ folder, and then use the Nexus Mod Manager to install them.
The mods:
A Quality World Map - With Roads
This adds high-quality map textures with roads. It makes navigating way easier and the map screen prettier.
Better Sorting
This renames items so they sort better in your inventory. Instead of Potion of Extreme Healing and Potion of Minor healing, you'll have Restore Health I and Restore Health V. It makes it so much easier to find things.
Categorized Favorites Menu
I hate the way the favorites menu works. It's hard to scroll trough all of the unsorted crap to find the one thing you want. This fancy mod will give you a full-screen favorites menu that is sorted by category.
Detailed Bodies
This replaces the default skin textures with higher-resolution ones. No, it doesn't add penises or boobies.
Enhanced Blood Textures
Just some improved blood -- it looks less like strawberry jelly.
Enhanced Horse Skins
It makes your horses appear as if they actually have fur instead of low-quality plastic!
Enhanced Night Skyrim
Adds new HD sky textures, and you can pick from a few different styles.
Glowing Ore Veins
This makes it easier to find ore. I didn't even realize how much ore there was in the game until I installed this mod.
Improved NPC Clothing
NPCs will now have nicer-looking clothing with high-resolution textures.
Intro Music Replacement by Malukah
This replaces the default main menu music with something a little more acoustic.
Nicer Snowflakes
This just gives the game better-looking snow flakes.
Real Ice
Tweaks the game's ice.
Realistic Water Textures
This one replaces all of the ugly water with some much nicer stuff. I recommend that you use the clear and reflective settings, personally.
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
This replaces all of the textures for trees and leaves. It makes forests look awesome.
Skyrim HD - 2k Textures
Still a work in progress, but what it does so far is amazing. It replaces tons of the normal low-resolution textures with much higher-quality ones.
SkyUI
This is my favorite Skyrim mod so far. It changes the game's user interface so it's easier to navigate using a mouse. It also makes the text smaller, so you can see more on the screen at once.
KenMOD - Time on Loading
This adds a clock to the loading screen. It's nothing fancy, but it is really nice to see what time is when you're playing. I think we all know how easy it is to spend way too many hours playing Skyrim.
5. Open up "My Documents/My Games/Skyrim". There are two files in here that we are going to edit. The first one is "Skyrim.ini". Open it up with Notepad add "uGridstoLoad=7" at the end of the [display] section.
Now open up "Skyrimprefs.ini" and edit these values:
bMouseAcceleration=0
bDrawLandShadows=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
iShadowMapResolution=8192
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32
fGrassStartFadeDistance=14000.0000
Make sure you save all of the changes that you make to these files.
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Making all of these changes may take a little bit of time, and you'll probably have to do some tweaking to get it all running right for your setup, but the investment is worth it in the end. You'll have a version of Skyrim to show off to all of your friends and the console kiddies will be mad with jealousy.
Contest:
4:00 PM on 02.04.2012 | 
Great article man. I cannot stress the importance of SkyUI enough.
Because all the real adults define themselves by the gaming platform they use.
I would omit the part about Skyboost, taking into account that the 1.4 patch adds the same functionality of it and actually ends up surpassing it in fps gain. It also isn't compatible with the 1.4 patch.
@Andy Shutzman
Texture and aesthetic mods for the most part won't change with the coming of the Creation Kit, so the majority of this guide is still solid.
lets not encourage the "master race" stuff please, the hatred and jealousy directed toward PC gamers here is already bad enough.
anyway, i came here hoping the SCK had been released and there would be awesome mods everywhere, but oh well, i guess this is pretty much a good account of the best mods currently around. to be honest though, skyboost, the PP injector (realistic nights/colours version) and the flora overhaul are the only three i really like. better water is okay, but to be honest i prefer the vanilla look and uninstalled it.
My advice to anyone looking to mod their Skyrim is to make a Nexus account so that you can track/follow all the mods you want, or bookmark their threads on the Bethesda forums.
give me a grappling hook, thats a mod.
Grappling Hooks would be pretty boss though...
Just wait for the combat and quest mods that come out. This is just the preliminary stuff that HAD to be fixed because Bethesda didn't do right by the PC platform in the first place.
YOU SHOULD NOT USE SKYBOOST
DO NOT USE SKYBOOST
The current patch completely invalidates it (it has everything it did and more), and if you try to use it with Skyboost you WILL crash ALL THE TIME.
As far as ini settings go, having "deferred shadow mask" higher than 5 is a great way to ultra-blur your shadows, and anything higher than 4096 for your shadow resolution is insanely taxing on performance for a very minor visual boost. Here's the trick nobody knows about skyrim's shadows - the quality of shadows is DIRECTLY related to the view distance. The default shadow view distance is 8000 - AKA everything in your cell will have shadows even if you can't see it.
Halve that value. Suddenly, you have much better performance, and your shadow quality is DOUBLED. You also, in 90% of situations, still won't notice the cutoff point of where the shadows go away. You can go even lower for even better quality shadows and perofmrance, though obviously you'll more easily be able to see the shadow cutoff point.
SkyrimHD is a waste because 90% of the textures it includes are just upscaled versions of default textures with a terrible sharpen filter applied. Just wait till next tuesday when Bethesda releases the offical HD texture pack.
ENB isn't bad, but its a massive perofmrance hit, causes stability issues, and you really must tweak it to hell and back to get it to look anythign but ugly. If you want similar effects but without the performance drop, use FXAA. If you don't want all the bullshit but want better lighting, use the "Realistic Lighting Without Post Processing" mod. It has the advantage of making nights darker AND also affecting sneaking, since it actually changes how the game handles dark/light instead of just putting a performance intensive overlay on your game like ENB.
Every thing else I can vouch for. That favorites menu looks completely terrible though, no offense.
Here's some more suggestions:
1. PISE (pluto's improved skyrim experience). The "OOO" for Skyrim basically. It's one of the few mods out right now that adjusts stuff like level scaling and monster spawns, while ALSO being very well designed and made by a very skilled modder. It has a long way to go but what he has there now is great.
2. Weapons of the Third Era. Compatable with PISE, and its easily the best weapons mod for the game. Adds very high quality and expertly crafted swords/staves/axes/etc to the game, using previous games as inspiration. The weapons are lore friendly, balanced, look sweet, and a nice bonus treasure to find.
3. Deadly Dragons. The mod as a whole is somewhat poorly made, and filled with total bullshit. But, as long as you don't install all the terrible optional stuff (except maybe the half-dragon spawns), you'll love playing against dragons because they will actually be hard.
Thanks for motivation boost Joshua.
However I'm sure they are upset over the mindset that PC is this platform that makes you superior to the console gamer.
I personally don't care. MODs are sweet as hell, but I can still play the game just fine on my 360.
But I'm gonna be honest, I am a little jealous.