Top mods you yearn for every time you play…
 

For me, they tend to fall into the interface category…

1. Better skill/perk screen,

• Why must I deal with this unwieldy constellation screen every time I want to check my skill levels or peruse available perks…?! And why must it zoom in on itself so damn much that i can hardly see anything beyond one or two perks when it does so?

2. Better inventory management

• Remember the days of a simple paper doll enabling you to see what your character had equipped? Bethesda apparently thought it too convenient a design; they'd much rather enumerate a giant list of items in alphabetical order. Hopefully you already know ahead of time what you can and cannot wear… and have a penchant for keeping mental track of equipment. And why is there no filter for quest or 'new' items?

3. Overhaul of spell/favorites interface

• Why do I need to go through 5 irritating consolized menus to simply hotkey a spell?

So very frustrating. And I have to wonder if such overhauls are even possible with mods or if this junk is hardcoded into the game beyond reach.

The UI is without a doubt horribly inefficient. I need to try out the SkyUI mod. I think I'll install it this evening and give it a spin. It annoys me that I have to install the Script Extender too, but oh well.

I've been using SkyUI and it is a lot better. It brings most of it up to previous (modded) Bethesda game standards. Conversation and the quickmenu need fixing, though.

Remembering past Gamebryo games, I never even bothered with Skyrim sans SkyUI. My pet peeves above are mainly on a macro design level, which makes me worry if they can even be modded out. It also makes me wonder about just how blind Bethesda is to the concept of a functional UI.

-Josh sawyer-esque hardcore mode.
-Drastic reduction of level scaling(to morrowind's level)

Everyone knows Sky UI, so no need to repeat how awesome it is :)

I'm not using many mods (yet), but these few have proven themselves worthy.

Smithing Perks Overhaul
Complete Crafting Overhaul
Weapons and Armor Fixes.

Those three mods work extremly well together (they are all from same author). While vanilla smithing works fine and it ain't broken, there are still many oversights and missing things. These mods are lore friendly and balanced. They don't add new items, armors or weapons. Every weapon or armor is already in the game. Like crafting different types of arrows.

An other great feature is how faction or quest related armors / weapons are crafted. For example when you join imperial legion, the recipes for imperial armors / weaponry appear in the forge menu (provided you have learned the basic smithing perk). If you join the stormcloacks, you'll get the option to craft stormcloack gear instead. Same applies for other factions.

Also many items that couldn't previously be improved on the forge or whetstone can now be improved if you have the required smithing skill and crafting material.

Furthermore I really like that all the armor recipes are more logical and a bit more costy material wise. Fear not you can still level up smithing just as fast, but it just requires more materials which brings more much needed balance.

I'm also using these clever mods:

1. Helmless warrior. Remember the armor perk bonus you'll get if you have 4 pieces of armor equiped? Well no longer you need to wear helmet to get that bonus. Trade off of wearing no helmet (or using a hood) is ofcourse that you leave your head unprotected (lesser armor rating), but you'll get the +25% armor bonus from the remaining 3 pieces (feet, hands, torso)

2. House map markers. Adds map markers to player houses.

3. I'm also using a mod that adds an enchanting table to the house in Whiterun.

4. RNG (Dynamic) Guards. Makes the guards look more unique and different from eachother. Guards for example may use closed or open helmets or no helmet at all. Warmer the climate, more chance to see guards without helmets for example. Their armors also vary hold wise.

If you want some challenge, you can give Deadly Dragons a try: you can install it via Nexus Mod Manager and choose which setting you prefer (Hardcore is better :P). With this, Dragons become just what they are: a threat with scales and wings. Also, WARZONES - Civil Unrest adds many locations where Imperials and Stormcloak fight with each other, or maybe against bandits, etc. etc. it's enough lore-friendly and gives some "life" to the wilderness.
Also, No Fast Travel and More Carriages adds a bit of immersion though: the first is self-explanatory, the second adds carriages in every major city and in many villages, such as Rorikstead.
Last but not least, Horse Fast Dismount removes the annoying dismount animation, so that you can jump off the horse and start the fight with full health ;).

The one mod I can't live without is the revised horses mod. It requires Script Dragon, or at least it did, but it allows your horse to carry your loot and it also allows him to run faster, carry more based on feeding him. If the dismount mod works with this, I'll have to grab that one too.

I'm not sure, check it out on Nexus:http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3145

I'm waiting for a proper balancing mod, especially related to sneaky gameplay. Pretty much everything related to the stealth skill is too easy and lacks challenge.

Also, the enchanting skill was ridiculously powerful towards the end. Crafting, overall, just wasn't balanced right.

Stuff like that - hopefully in some combined quality mod like FWE/Project Nevada - is what I'm waiting for.

While I have not tested it myself yet, there's this quite recent mod, "Path of Shadows", which might address your concerns about stealth. There was already some mods that basically made stealth more difficult overall, but this one seems a little bit more subtler than that, according to its description at least.

here it is :
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10456

It's very sloppy the way they handled enchanting. To be balanced, no more of one enchantment of each type should be applied to your character at any time… Should have been patched on day one, IMO.

By level 40, I had to turn the difficulty up to Master to still get a challenge - and that's without exploiting enchantments. In contrast, I can't imagine why people gear up for 1,000 damage per swing/hit; may as well turn on godmode - you ruin the game just the same.

Indeed by level 34 there isn't any (supposedly major) magical item, found while questing/killing "bosses", that's not put to shame by what I can enchant myself. :-(

Female Asian faces !!!!

Wow, how nice. Does a lot of what I want!

Thank you for pointing that one out.

Now, I just need a proper crafting balance mod, specifically related to enchanting.

You're welcome. I'm currently testing it myself and so far I like it.

Mods that I'm favoring at the moment :
- Better Horses
- Ask Followers skills (a must have, imho)
- Weapons and Armor Fixes
- Quality World Maps (with roads, and removing the annoying clouds)
- Shadow stripping Fix, and HD textures Fix (no more "pink" burning woods)
- Glowing Ore Veins
- Not a mod in itself, but a tool to modify (or create) Skyrim NPCs : Skyrim NPC Editor

What I'm yearning for :
- re-balanced Enchantment skill/Perks, and for smithing too (although that's less urgently needed I'd say)
- ENB profile that give the nice color correction from ENB but without the overdone contrast that is just making ambiant shadows too dark and grass lands so reddish. So far, without success…

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The only real must-have mods for me are the eye candy mods: Skyrim HD, 3D Vision Compatibility, and Purewaters to make it so the sun isn't reflected by every wave in the water, no matter the angle.

My only wish is to make my character left handed - which would likely make every NPC left handed as well. Then my left mouse button could activate my left hand weapon/spell and my right mouse button could activate my right hand weapon/spell. Unfortunately, I'm guessing that will mean modifying half the animations in the game.

Oh, and a poser mod! Both Fallout 3 games had a great mod that would let you put your character and NPCs into various poses which made for some great screenshots. I've seen a few mods that mess with idle poses but nothing that lets you change an NPCs current pose.