I’ve returned to the game too, after a fairly long break, and ended up settling on Thuldor’s preset. I love Simonrim, so it saved me the time on putting it together, but all the newest fixes/modernization efforts are there too. Strongly recommended. The leveling process is completely different, and that’s something I haven’t tried before. About 60 hours in, it’s really damn solid

Schlongs of Skyrim, Apocalypse Magic of Skyrim, Interesting NPCs,

And I can’t recall or find the name of a follower that had really enjoyable voice acting and can process based on your preference.

There’s a mod that puts a museum in solitude and hundreds of unique collectables into the game as well as several small quests. The whole of it is comparable to the Thieves guild in content and the stories are well written. Plus it gives you a place to store all the beautiful unique items and radiant quests to go get them.

Personally I love it, it’s everything I want in Skyrim.

It’s super dorky but I had a blast with SkyVoice - use your mic to say the shouts! It made the shouts way more fun and got me to use them more since you don’t have to go through the menu to equip a shout before using it.

There was a macro mod I paired it with that let me make voice macros - pick a word and key binding, then in game set the binding to whatever you wanted the voice line to do. Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of that mod, just wanted to point out that SkyVoice can do more than just the built in shouts

Spellsiphon changes the gameplay massively. Its what I found when I had the same question as you a few months back and it was exactly what I was looking for.

If you really want a fresh experience and don’t wanna spend more time modding than actually playing, I cannot recommend more strongly Wabbajack. It’s a fully automated modlist installer with a huge gallery of available lists.

Some of the available modlists are foundational, giving you just the essentials (Engine tweaks, HD assets, community bug fixes, etc.), and some are total conversions, turning the game into a fully-realized modern third-person action game, with controls, animations, and graphics as good as any modern game.

It does everything for you, from installing Mod Organizer 2 to creating game launch shortcuts, and everything in between. All you have to do is log into Nexus (and whatever other mod sites your modlist of choice might use). It’s worth getting Nexus Premium at least temporarily to speed up the process.

Here is the Skyrim Special Edition modlist gallery.

If you haven’t played Enderal it’s worth a playthrough. It’s a free total conversion mod of Skyrim.

I can’t give specifics because it will depend on the version you play and also it’s been a while and I don’t remember all mods by heart. So it’s just gonna be suggestions; in no particular order:

• First of all you’ll need the fundamental bug fixes. There’s (still) lots of bugs in vanilla Skyrim.
• You will need the new improved menus, most mods rely on them.
• Personally I can’t play without improving the aspect of PC and NPCs, so improvements to bodies, faces and hair are a must for me. If you get down the rabbit hole there’s things like mustaches, beards, tattoos, eyes etc.
• Armor and weapons is a close second for good looking stuff.
• You will want a mod that improves polygons as well as something that enhances vegetation, skyboxes, water and weather.
• There are mods that fill the cities and villages with a lot more… stuff. Things like decorative vegetation, benches etc. You will not be able to play without it once you’ve tried it.
• The skill trees and the professions all need specific mods that apply balances and fixes. You can also go one step further and apply mods that actually make them interesting.
• If you can find one for your version of Skyrim, I strongly recommend a mod that improves dragon AI and makes the fights actually challenging. It always seemed ridiculous to me how easy they are by default.
• Better horses is a good idea, lots of convenience there.
• Smithing improvements. Nuff said.
• Personally I can’t stand the default fighting in all aspects of it. I must have didn’t roll and some extra brains for the enemies. Some mods the spruce up the dungeons aren’t bad either.
• You can get lots of extra quests and NPCs with Interesting NPCs.
• I typically avoid shaders and ENBs in favor of simpler mods that let you adjust the game colors (contrast, saturation etc.) They have very low impact on performance and give you that color jolt that’s 90% of why people use ENBs anyway.

On an even more personal note, I like to play like a classic RPG. I get mods that allow multiple companions and interesting NPCs and when I met somebody interesting I take them into my party. There are also mods that let you order them better, you can adjust their flags to set what armor and weapons they prefer, how they level up, and whether they have “plot armor” so they can die for reals. I usually end the game with a party of 4-6 people and it’s a blast. But you may want to adjust the difficulty accordingly as you go out you will start rolling everything.

Another very interesting approach I’ve tried a couple of times is mods that remove all identification clues (no town names, no directions, maximum map fog of war) and start you in some random point of the map. Add some difficulty mods so you have to be really careful who you meet, perhaps some survival mods, and it’s a real blast. You can also use rogue rules and restart when you die (and not save scum).

While it’s not a gameplay mod, LORKHAN will freshen up your Skyrim experience all the same. It’s a complete soundtrack replacement mod created by the legendary young scrolls himself. It’s a stark departure from the original Skyrim’s soundtrack while still fitting in perfectly with the game.

Go ahead and go to the Collections section and get one of the most downloaded mod collections. I added Gate to Sovngarde to my list but you can customize it however you wish!

Anything from loverslab should on your mod list