• Skyrim Weapon De-larp-ification Project

Overhauling a game with mods can be an intimidating process, but the only thing you really need in order to make Skyrim shine is patience. Since each mod needs to be properly installed and configured, it can take hours to get everything in working order - certain methods of beautifying the game, such as S.T.E.P., or the Skyrim Total Enhancement Project, have been known to take as long as eight to ten hours to fully configure. Rather than force you, dear modder, to spend those precious hours that could be better used actually playing Skyrim, here is our list of the 15 (and then some) best mods to use that will drastically improve your adventurous experience.

Save changes to your plugin, make sure Skyrim loads it (by clicking Data Files on the Skyrim splash screen. Test your hard work by hitting '`' from the Skyrim main menu (to display the console) and type coc molagbalvoicecell (a really small area that loads fast).

You can read about all the mods below, or watch the video above (complete with plenty of heavily-modded Skyrim eye-candy).

Let There be Light

Installing Boris Voronstov's ENBseries modification and configuring it is actually far simpler than one would expect - simply download the necessary files and copy them into your main Skyrim game folder ( if you're using Steam, this is usually C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/Common/Skyrim ), and then run the game and configure your own personal settings. You can also download a preset created by a member of the community. The one we've used is by Nexus member Opethfeldt, though other excellent choices would be RealVision or Seasons of Skyrim.

Once you've gotten your ENB set up and have begun installing your other modifications, consider also adding a lighting mod or two (if they're compatible) that will enhance the local light sources in-game - torches, lanters, candles and so on. We're using Enhanced Lights and FX by NM user anamorfus alongside Ultimate HD Fire Effects.

What a Wonderful World

Once you've installed your ENB and preset of choice, then the real work begins. There are hundreds of texture mods and updates for flora, fauna, armor, weapons and more that players can choose to include in their game, but here are our recommendations for must-have mods when trying to make Skyrim look beautiful:

• Skyrim HD: Replaces standard game textures with 2K-4K textures. Lite version includes 1K textures.
• Static Mesh Improvement Mod (SMIM): Updates static textures and meshes (furniture, rubble, buildings, etc)
• Lush Trees and Grass: Updates and greatly improves the quality and fullness of forested areas in Skyrim.
• Grass Field: Replaces most of the ground area textures with 3D grass.

Skyrim Weapon De-larp-ification Project

There are many other mods that affect the game world's plant life - Glorious Grasses, SkyRealism and Vurt's Flora Overhaul are all great, but if you can only run two we recommend LT and GF, as they look best during actual gameplay. For quality visuals at a distance, be sure to install one of the many distant LOD (Level Of Detail) mods, such as Enhanced Distant Terrain, HD Enhanced Terrain or the Skyrim Distance Overhaul. Additionally, be sure to install a water mod to ensure you aren't stuck swimming around the boring vanilla rivers - we're using Pure Waters, though the Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux (WATER) is another excellent option.

Beautiful People

The NPCs in standard Skyrim look... well, a bit off. Giving them a hearty facelift is somewhat of a necessity if you're attempting to update the game graphically - and can be one of the most challenging aspects of your mod configuration. Dozens of plugins and texture packs (some are NSFW) exist to do just this, and many are compatible with other mods. In our configuration, we're using the Xenius Character Enhancement (XCE) mod coupled with No More Blocky Faces, which smooths out the originally pixelated facial textures. We're also using Xenius's Better Beast Races, which overhauls the look of the Argonian and Khajiit characters ( though we also recommend using CoverKhajiits) to improve the nonhuman models. To spruce up the human characters, we've installed Better Females by BellaGail, as well as some various face texture and mesh replacers for the male NPCs, such as Detailed Faces and Beards.

These are far from the only mods out there to be used in the beautification of Skyrim - remember, patience is the only necessary component to making this game look great. Well, patience... and the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of mods that are at your disposal. For more modding suggestions, game secrets and more, be sure to check out our full Skyrim wiki the next time you visit Tamriel.

Any graphical mods you can't adventure around Skyrim without? Let us know in the comments!

Jon Ryan spends more time modding Skyrim than actually playing it. Don't be like him - but do follow him on IGN and Twitter.