Current version: 5/20/2020 1.8.0
The Living Skyrim Modlist focuses heavily on adding highly interactive content. New questlines and world spaces are given high priority as well as mods that add NPCs, followers, and things to do. Some prominent examples are Interesting NPCs, Immersive Creatures, Legacy of the Dragonborn V5, VIGILANT, Falskaar, Animallica, and more. The core idea of Living Skyrim is to make the world feel full of life and activity in almost every area, whether it's a bandit patrol from OBIS or a conversation overheard between NPCs provided by Realistic Conversations. It is designed as a complete overhaul and expansion to many of the systems present in the game. It is aimed at providing a lore-friendly experience that enhances the core game rather than adding tedium and monotony to the game. Some mods are avoided intentionally so that unnecessary systems that slow down the game aren't included. The few inclusions that do slow things down are included for balance and pacing reasons.
Additionally, Living Skyrim is intended to provide replayability and roleplay potential. Classic Classes & Birthsigns, Ordinator, and other related mods allow for nearly infinite character customization to play the character you want, whether it be raving barbarian, paladin of Akatosh, archmage of Winterhold, or a hunter in the woods. The Take Notes mod allows you to chronicle your adventures and build a story that is uniquely yours. Sharing your stories with others is welcome and would be amazing to see.
All of this is on top of a high-quality graphics package intended for higher-end PCs. 4K textures and 2K normals have been given preference except in situations where there is little to no noticeable difference or a 4K option isn’t available. The ENB, Weather, and Flora/Fauna package are intended to ensure that your lighting, effects, and landscape are the highest quality possible without causing your computer to explode. See System Specifications for more details of a reasonable computer that can run this list consistently at 60 FPS.
As for stability and conflict resolution, Living Skyrim includes a number of patches, fixes, and compatibility resolutions including Bash and Smash Patches. Custom patches have also been created for certain awkward interactions between some mods (most notably, Awakened Magicka, Invested Magicka, and Ordinator.) It also includes DynDOLOD, TexGen, and SSELODGEN data pre-packaged for ease of install.
Lastly, Living Skyrim exists solely as a Wabbajack installer. A manual installation guide is not planned.
Wabbajack no longer requires that you have Nexus Premium to install the modlist, however, having Nexus Premium will cut your install time to a fraction of what it would be instead of downloading each mod individually (and save you a thousand clicks or so).
As of v1.7.0, the modlist requires ~127GB (42.5GB Downloads/85GB Mods) of hard drive space on top of the ~10GB Skyrim: Special Edition base files. Installing onto an SSD is not required, but strongly recommended. Download and installation times vary based on your computer and internet speeds but expect the entire process to take a couple of hours.
NSFW Warning: By default this modlist contains nude models for female NPCs. See the FAQ for more information about changing the list to NeverNude if that interests you.
Support is not provided for adding to, changing, or removing mods from the modlist. If you’re uncertain of how to use xEdit at a minimum, making any changes at all is a great way to have a Bad Time™.
My computer is not the most powerful, but it can run this modlist at a consistent 60 FPS using the High preset. My specs are as follows. Please use this as a guideline to see if you are able to run this modlist. Anything better than what’s listed here should have no issues, anything worse may need to use the Medium or Low presets in the Skyrim graphics settings or go without ENB/use Re-shade instead. Support is not provided for Re-shade.
Skyrim is very heavy on processors. Generally, anything above 3GHz should be fine but I can’t guarantee it. I would also recommend at least 8GB of RAM and 6GB of VRAM before considering installing this modlist. During my testing, this list averaged 3.2GB of RAM usage (9.2GB max) and 5.5GB of VRAM usage (7.9GB max).
The Modlist Spreadsheet
Living Skyrim FAQ
Living Skyrim Bug & Suggestions Tracker
User Testimonials
Living Skyrim Discord
Living Skyrim Patreon
One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven
Leora Allavi (full roleplay playlist)
As with any modlist, it is strongly recommended that you start with a clean, unmodified installation of Skyrim: Special Edition. To get your Skyrim SE to this state, follow these steps:
Launch Skyrim SE to create any INI or registry entries the game needs. Immediately exit after the launcher has successfully selected a graphics preset for your hardware. The INIs will be overwritten by the ones included in the Wabbajack installer.
If you are updating your existing installation of Living Skyrim, skip to Updating Living Skyrim.
Once complete, Wabbajack will say “Installation complete! You may exit the program.” If it does not, visit the Wabbajack Discord server for assistance. Don’t forget to upload your log file!
If Wabbajack fails to download a particular mod, it means that the mod has likely been updated. This also means that an update to Living Skyrim is imminent. Be patient and wait for the new release. Do not ask other people to share older files as this is a violation of the Nexus ToS.
Now you have to copy some files to their correct locations. Navigate to C:\Living Skyrim\Game Folder Files. Copy all of the files inside the Game Folder Files folder into [Steam Install Location]\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\ and Overwrite if prompted.
ENB is not required to run Living Skyrim, but it is intended to be used with SkyrimSE Re-Engaged ENB. You may skip these instructions if you don’t want to use ENB. To install ENB, follow these steps:
If you have issues using Re-Engaged ENB with Predator Vision, check the FAQ for more details on how to fix this.
If you are updating Living Skyrim, the process is very simple. Before you update, you should at a minimum backup your saves. Updating will delete any saves that are present.
This section details the most asked about mods included in Living Skyrim and is intended to give you a basic understanding of what to expect when you start the game.
Living Skyrim includes a number of mods that increase the population of both creatures and characters in the world. The first and most important one is Populated Skyrim. This mod adds well over 100 new NPCs to locations throughout the world: cities, dungeons, caves, etc. Next is OBIS, which adds a ton of mid to high-level bandits to the world. Also for your consideration: Immersive World Encounters, Immersive Patrols, and Interesting NPCs. For creatures, you'll find SkyTEST, Skyrim Immersive Creatures, and Animallica.
What does this mean? Well, to put it simply, there are a lot of NPCs to find and interact with now. Silent Moons Camp for example now has somewhere in the range of 40, yes, forty enemies to fight. It is impossible to go more than 5 minutes without coming across an NPC of some kind be it bandits, a patrol, or an animal. Getting a follower or two (or five) is highly encouraged. This also means you will come across enemies that are significantly higher level than you when starting out. Embershard Mine can be about 50% cleared at level 3-5 before encountering level 30 enemies. You will have to revisit dungeons once you are stronger. The Take Notes mod is included to chronicle your adventure and also to help you remember what places you need to revisit.
Master of Disguise is a very simple mod: If you dress like a faction, you will be treated as that faction. So, if you dress as a necromancer, you will be attacked as if you are a necromancer by guards, soldiers, townsfolk, and so on. Be careful what you wear! This also allows you to infiltrate enemy factions if you dress carefully, but beware: they have a chance to see through your disguise and figure out you're an imposter.
Sustained Magic is another simple mod, with much larger gameplay consequences. Certain spells, such as Oakflesh, now last forever instead of having to recast them every 60-90 seconds. This does come at the cost of reducing your maximum available Magicka, so be careful how many spells you have sustained or you'll very quickly find yourself with near zero Magicka to use for spells like Flames. To dispel the effects of a Sustained Magic spell (and therefore recoup your Magicka), either cast the spell again or cast the "Dispel Magic, Personal" spell.
Archery Gameplay Overhaul completely revamps the archery system in Skyrim. You'll find it now has much more realistic gameplay including arm fatigue, the ability to spread poisons across multiple arrows, stamina drain while the bowstring is pulled, and so on. This mod is highly configurable via its MCM menu, so feel free to tweak it to suit your playstyle.
Classic Classes & Birthsigns changes the way your character specializes and starts the beginning of the game. When you first equip a weapon or spell, you'll be prompted to select (or create) a class and birthsign (standing stone). This choice is permanent and cannot be changed once selected. You can still change your standing stone by visiting the appropriate stone, but the class choices are irreversible. Choose wisely!
Enemy Releveler is a mod that on the surface seems very simple, but has a huge impact on the longevity of Skyrim. You'll now find enemies around your level to levels 50, 60, 70, and beyond. Alduin is capped at level 140, for example. Encounter Zones Unlocked dynamically adjusts the levels of enemies for dungeons you've already visited unless the level of the enemy is pre-set by a mod that adds said enemy. This means that, for the most part, when you revisit a dungeon, the level of the enemies will be updated to approximately match yours. This also means that you'll have challenging fights no matter what level you are (no more one-shotting draugr all the time!).
Gamepad++ is a mod specific to users who will be playing the game with a controller. Gamepad++ remaps a lot of the controller buttons to a new configuration and greatly expands the amount of actions you can perform with your controller. I highly recommend reading the mod description for this if you are going to be playing with a controller. Also be aware that by using Gamepad++, your keyboard with be completely useless while playing the game. Thankfully, Gamepad++ allows for over 100 custom shortcuts to be set by you, so anything you'd want to do on your keyboard can now be done on your controller.
Immersive Needs is a lightweight, concientious needs system that seeks to implement needs while being as unintrusive as possible. The beneficial effects of food and drink are not altered, and neither are diseases (though there are some nifty drunk effects from alcohol). You'll be expected to eat a balanced diet of meat and fruits and vegetables, while raw meat is harmful to consume. Any drink will allow you to satisfy your thirst needs. Sleep is handled on a set schedule: Every 16 hours you become tired. This should allow you plenty of time to go exploring and then return to a bed. Vampires only require sleep. This mod cannot be disabled, it has no MCM. However, with how lightweight the mod is, you should be able to satisfy your needs even without keeping a close eye on them. The beneficial effects of food and drink are kept, so you'll be stocked up on them and using them frequently anyway.
Immersive Spell Learning completely changes how your character learns new spells. Instead of "eating" the book and learning the spell, you now have to spend time studying notes about the spell to learn it over time. The amount of time it takes to learn new spells is completely configurable through this mod's MCM menu, so feel free to tweak it to your liking. This mod's inclusion is intended to help balance magic as the combination of magic mods included in Living Skyrim make magic significantly stronger.
Living Skyrim includes a completely different UI and HUD experience than what you're used to, probably even if you've played modded Skyrim before. SkyHUD is 100% customizable and has a number of presets available you can choose from to relocate the health/stamina/magicka bars and also relocate any HUD element, such as the stealth indicator. EZ2C Dialogue Menu changes the dialogue menu to be easier to read and use and is also 100% configurable. See the mod description pages for EZ2C and SkyHUD to see how to configure these to your liking. Immersive HUD keeps pesky HUD elements out of the way when you don't need to see them. Lastly, Favorite Things greatly expands the SkyUI Favorites menu to make it larger, easier to use, and more customizable.
Nether's Follower Framework has too many features to list, but what you need to know is this: You can have multiple followers, you can configure just about anything about them, and you'll have a lot more flexibility with controlling your followers. You can also import followers added by mods to be able to use NFF's features on them. Important!: Do NOT import standalone followers (Inigo, Lucien, etc.) into Nether's Follower Framework. It will 100% break them. The notable exceptions to this are Auri, Sophia, and any of the Interesting NPCs followers.
The hard part is now over. Carry on, the end is in sight!
In general, Living Skyrim is a bit more unforgiving to new characters than usual. You can't expect to wade into a group of 10 enemies and walk out alive. Here are some tips to get started on your adventure: