Skyrim, located in the icy northern reaches of Tamriel, is an unforgiving land of freezing blizzards, ruthless bandits, and fire-breathing dragons. But nestled among all this danger, warmed by fires crackling in stone hearths, are the taverns. These cosy, calming sanctuaries offer weary adventurers respite from the cold and chaos, if only for a few minutes. The hardy, resourceful people who call Skyrim home have mastered the art of comfort and hospitality, as anyone surviving in a place as cold and brutal as this would have to. 

And as you step into one of their inns, stone walls lit by the orange glow of the fire, tables stacked with cold mead and hunks of red meat, you feel like you can rest easy. Like you’ve come home. No mudcrabs or skeevers are going to scutter out of the bushes and attack you here. No fur-clad bandits are going to try and shake you down for gold with their bows and arrows. And, best of all, those pesky ancient dragons are too big to fit through the door. 

The perpetual howl and chill of the wind is replaced by the soothing music of a strumming bard, the murmur of the other patrons and the clinking of glasses. It couldn’t be more different from the white, wild outside, and it’s the perfect place for a tired, hungry adventurer to grab a cold drink, a warm meal and a soft bed for the night. You could always just sleep on some grotty old bedroll outside, of course, but the Dragonborn deserves better.

Entering a tavern in Skyrim perfectly recreates the feeling of escaping into a homely country pub after a long walk on a cold, windy day. That instant sense of tranquility and peace. You know you’ll have to go back out there eventually, but for now it’s just you, the fire and a pint of ale. Your troubles seem like they’re miles away, although the concerns of the average person in today’s world certainly can’t compare to the Dragonborn’s quest to save Tamriel from an ancient, evil dragon which wants to devour the world. 

You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to taverns in Skyrim, and their atmospheres reflects their locations. In the city of Riften, a hangout for criminals and other ne’er-do-wells, you’ll find The Ragged Flagon and the Bee and Barb, which are the kind of establishments where you’d get a dagger in the ribs for so much as looking at someone’s pint. While the Imperial capital of Solitude boasts The Winking Skeever, a luxurious, spacious watering hole with a fine selection of quality booze and grub. And as well as these city inns, there are plenty of smaller ones dotted around the countryside, including the Four Shields Tavern.

As well as offering food, drink, and beds, taverns in Skyrim are also great places to meet reliable mercenaries. You’ll often see these warriors sitting in the corner, like Strider in Lord of the Rings, waiting for an adventurer with enough coin to hire them. In The Drunken Huntsman in Whiterun, for example, you’ll find Jenassa, a Dunmer ranger who’s handy with a bow and arrow and doesn’t seem to mind if the Dragonborn slaughters innocent people. But you’ll need 800 gold pieces to retain her dubious services.

Taverns are also rife with gossip, which can lead to some interesting quests. Talk to the bartender and you’ll hear clues about various goings on in the world, including the Imperial boy Aventus Aretino attempting to summon the Dark Brotherhood: a rumour that ultimately sees you joining its ranks. Or you might hear about a shrine to the Daedric Prince Azura, which leads to you obtaining a powerful Daedric artefact. It’s a good thing the proprietors of Skyrim’s inns are so unashamedly nosy. 

The tavern is an important part of any fantasy world, whether it’s the Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones’ Inn at the Crossroads, and Skyrim is no different. Wherever you drink and whatever your poison, these are fine places to spend your coin

One of the best things about the original Doom was how fast Doomguy could run: you weren't so much a "guy" as you were a "hurtling rocket of death". So it might have taken some adjustment when Quake released, considering how slow the player-movement was by comparison, though the then-novelty of true 3D no doubt compensated for it.

But now we know why Quakeguy ran so much slower: it was because the levels were smaller. That's according to John Romero, who posted a lengthy blogpost at the weekend explaining the adjustment. Basically, all Quake levels needed to be less than 1.4 megabytes in filesize, and to achieve that, the levels naturally had to be smaller than many of those found in Doom.

So how to make them feel less small? Reduce player speed, of course!

"John Carmack decided that we could get more gameplay out of the levels if he slowed down the player's running speed," Romero writes. "In DOOM the player went at crazy-fast speeds and it was incredible. In DOOM we could make huge maps and player speed was not a problem. 

"With Quake's maps, the hallways, rooms, and outdoor areas were all smaller because of the file size. So slowing down the player meant it took longer to finish a level, and longer to finish the game overall."

The post also goes into some detail regarding the rather clumsy (by today's standard) level editor used to create vanilla Quake's levels. Check out the whole post over here.

Like the rest of Earth’s population, I had a wonderful time with Skyrim when it released in 2011, and for hundreds of hours afterwards. Then one fateful Sunday I realised I’d spent six hours smithing weapons and mining for ore, and decided it was probably time to stop playing now. 

It turns out I got off the train early: in the intervening years the modding community has gone from strength to strength, doing its best to keep The Elder Scrolls V looking like it was released last week. With Skyrim Special Edition’s arrival in 2016 those modders have a new and improved base game to work with, and the results are getting seriously close to the hyperbolic promises made in my YouTube sidebar. ‘PHOTOREALISTIC SKYRIM: INSANE MOD!’ they shout. And ‘ULTIMATE SKYRIM GRAPHICS 2017’. And ‘Justin Bieber FORGETS words to "Despacito" LIVE’, although I’ll concede that’s not immediately pertinent here.

Curiosity got the better of me. Exactly how good can you make Skyrim look these days, using Special Edition as the new baseline and cherry-picking the finest community-made visual mods? Deadendthrills achieved a frankly fearsome level of fidelity with the original version, but years have passed since then and graphics cards have gained multiple zeros on all their spec sheets. Is it possible to get Skyrim looking so realistic that it takes a second for your brain to distinguish it from reality?

The results of my own personal quest surprised me: not only did I get the game looking beautiful enough that I want to play it all over again, but those gorgeous graphics mods have fundamentally changed the way I play now.

Finding the right mods

There’s a particular alchemy to selecting a series of mods that work well together. Very often one mod will want to overwrite another’s files, or there’ll be some overlap between seemingly disparate mods (like a snow replacer and a water overhaul) which will end up cancelling each other out. I’ll throw my hands up at this point and admit I let YouTube’s sizable Skyrim mod content creator community do the hard work for me on this front. Taking the recommendations of Fevir, NcrVet, Ultimate Immersion, and others, I compiled a list of texture mods, weather mods, flora overhauls, water improvements, armours, and NPCs—in addition to essentials like the Static Mesh Improvement Mod—that looked believable, consistent with Skyrim’s world, and above all, beautiful.

Personal preference is the ultimate deciding factor in any mod list like this, but to make Skyrim SE look like my screenshots, these are the ones to use:

Immersive Armors - Really high-quality, high-resolution and lore-friendly apparel for NPC and player alike.

ApachiiSkyHair SSE - In all honesty the vanilla hairs were fine by me, but this hair overhaul is required by Diversity (see below).

Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch - If you only install one mod, make it this. It squashes bugs and refines things you never noticed were broken or clunky before. It won’t make your game look better, but your experience will be much more polished.

Realistic Water Two - A water overhaul that improves everything from transparency effects to foam texture resolution and coloring. I like the watercolor version, but that’s just my preference.

Verdant - A Skyrim Grass Plugin - Fills the outdoors with wonderful grasses, mosses, ferns, bushes and flowers to frolic in. One of the most immediately transformative mods on the list.

Vivid Weathers - I tried out a few different weather mods, and Dolomite Weathers nearly prevailed, but to my eye Vivid Weathers produces the more realistic lighting conditions in conjunction with the lighting mods below and my chosen ENB (more on that later).

Cutting Room Floor - A lot of unused assets were found in Skyrim’s code after release, probably relics of content that Bethesda ran out of time to include. This mod puts it all back into your game, and is required by several other mods.

Simply Bigger Trees SE - Sprawling new four-hour expansion which… just kidding. It makes the trees bigger.

Forgotten Retex Project - Improves the textures of commonly found items and quest items.

LeanWolf’s Better-Shaped Weapons SE - Turns the vanilla weapons into artisanal masterpieces. You can see the individual marks on each blade and the texture where it’s been hammered into shape. Incredible. Works well with Immersive Armors to make the game feel new (and look new in screenshots).

Nordic Snow - Improves snow textures to higher-resolution images, simply. 

Ruins Clutter Improved - Like Forgotten Retex Project, this mod improves a lot of the incidental items used as set dressing throughout Skyrim—specifically, in this case, those found in dungeons and caves.

Skyrim 2017 Textures - Another hugely transformative mod, with enormous scope. Retextures much of the wild and several cities up to 4K. Use this as your base retexturing mod, upon which other more specific textures can be added.

Skyrim Flora Overhaul SE - More lovely plant life to populate Skyrim’s once brown and barren tundras. It’s compatible with Verdant, but be careful which files you overwrite when installing. Load Verdant after this to get the best from both mods. 

Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM - An absolutely staggering piece of work which improves the 3D modelling of items and architecture throughout Skyrim. 

Diversity - An NPC Overhaul - Diversity completely changes the appearance of every NPC in Skyrim. The end result is a slightly disconcerting uniform attractiveness, but if you’re sick of everyone you encounter looking like Danny Trejo this is the mod to fix it.

Enhanced Lighting for ENB (ELE) - Special Edition - It’s not an ENB, but more of a pre-ENB lighting mod which changes light values so that all lights look better after you apply an ENB. To be honest I’m not sure whether I have this working with the below mod or whether one is cancelling the other out, but I’m really pleased with the end result so I’m too scared to upset the apple cart.

Enhanced Lights and FX - Removes all lights that don’t have sources, and modifies the values for the lights that do. That means it gets really dark outside at night and in unlit areas of dungeons. It also means, together with all the other mods in this list and my chosen ENB/Reshade, the lighting always looks believable. 

Enhanced Textures Detail - An incredibly clever mod that doesn’t overwrite any of your current textures but instead uses actual magic to make them look nicer in your game. Magic or .ini file values, at least.

Using the Nexus Mod Manager to install these mods and set their load order is basically essential. It’s theoretically possible to do it all manually, but in the time it would take you to modify the .ini files correctly and ensure the right files live in the right locations, you could have coded The Elder Scrolls VI from scratch. It also affords you the advantage of swapping particular mods in and out to observe their effects.

On to the installation.

Choosing an ENB

Initially I was almost disheartened when I installed this giant list of mods, loaded my game, and found a familiar-looking Skyrim staring back at me. The textures were much improved, yes, and the landscapes populated by much more realistic plant life. But it didn’t look like a generational shift. It was still recognisable, and that was exactly what I wanted to avoid. Applying an ENBSeries preset, a popular community lighting mod available for games like Fallout, Skyrim, and Grand Theft Auto, would change all that in an instant.

You’ll hear it said a lot among the modding community, but there’s no more dramatic change you can enact on your game than applying an ENB to it. Therefore, my particular pick would be paramount. There are so many competing ‘photorealistic’ or ‘next-gen’ variants of Boris Vorontsov’s famous lighting mod that you could lose days watching those transitional wipe videos on Youtube demonstrating them all, but in the end I landed on one I was very happy with: the catchily named PhoenixVivid ENB Reshade. While the majority of ENBs feature way too much contrast and bloom for my taste, this one works beautifully with Vivid Weather and my existing lighting mods. It produces dramatic but believable lighting conditions at any time of day, indoors or outdoors, and also exaggerates the depth-of-field and ambient occlusion effects for a more cinematic view.

Downsampling

At this point Skyrim started throwing out some really impressive imagery, so it was time to take things to the extreme. GeDoSaTo from Peter “Durante” Thoman will let you render games at resolutions far exceeding your monitor’s native output, and then ‘downsample’ the image so that it fits back on your screen. But you likely already know that, because you’re reading an article about making Skyrim look photorealistic. The question, really, is how much closer it can bring us towards that goal. 

My monitor’s native resolution is a slightly unusual 2560 x 1600, so I used GeDoSaTo to render Skyrim at twice that: a retina-seducing 5120 x 3200. All those high-res texture replacements really come into their own at this resolution, and the confluence of ENB, mods, and resolution produced natural landscapes that approached photorealism, given the right framing. 

It’s a frame rate killer, of course. My specs (GTX 1070, i7 2600K, 16GB RAM) were no match for that downsampled resolution and could only render the game at around 14fps. Attempting a 12K resolution resulted in a single-figure frame rate, which was frankly too unwieldy even for screenshot-hunting.

Making Skyrim playable again

My longstanding reservation with mod collections like this when I see them elsewhere is: yes, but is it actually playable? There’s fun to be had by being a photojournalist in Skyrim and scouting out the best locations for screenshots, but after you’ve spent all that effort imbuing all that beauty into the game, it’d be a shame if you didn’t actually play it. 

I was able to pull it back to around 45 fps (I know, I know) by disabling downsampling and making use of BethINI. Simply put, it’s a handy tool that modifies your prefs.ini file and comes with new graphics presets which really boost performance. Using BethINI’s ‘ultra’ preset is much kinder to frame rates than the vanilla ‘ultra’ setting, without compromising any visible fidelity. 

Meaningful gameplay improvements

I was surprised by how far I could push Skyrim, which is another way of saying I was surprised by the sheer talent and enduring commitment of the modding community. What surprised me even more, though, was that the concessions I made on my photorealistic screenshot quest actually improved the gameplay experience, too. 

Firstly: play without the HUD. Really. I disabled it just to take screenshots at first, and my inherent laziness meant that it stayed disabled while I played. I soon found that not having a bunch of quest markers, a crosshair, dialogue subtitles and health meters is, to use the Skyrim modder’s favourite word, a hugely immersive experience. Archery was suddenly satisfying again, and in the absence of a big quest arrow guiding me forth I engaged with the environments properly, looking for signposting cues and navigating using landmarks. 

All my efforts to produce realistic lighting changed the way I played, too. Suddenly going out at night without a torch was a terrible idea (a mechanic I always loved about Dragon’s Dogma), and certain areas of caves and dungeons were simply pitch black unless I illuminated them. It meant I had to treat lighting like a game mechanic, like Skyrim had suddenly become a Thief game. 

Having those little moments of revelation as I realised I had to play the game differently was a wonderful thing. It’s inspired me to go through Skyrim all over again, which is what I always secretly hoped the right collection of mods would do. And now as I do it, I’ll perpetually be on the lookout for killer screenshots.

The Creation Club was Bethesda’s most contentious E3 announcement. A follow-up to Valve’s failed paid mods program, the Creation Club will allow third-party developers, including modders, to create sanctioned add-on content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim: Special Edition. This content will be sold through in-game marketplaces for Creation Club Credits, which can be purchased via Steam.

The short version is that it’s paid mods. Bethesda insists that the Club isn’t paid mods, but it is. Crucially, it’s also a dramatically improved version of paid mods. Many questions remain unanswered, but we do know that Bethesda will screen applicants, curate Club content and optimize everything themselves to prevent conflict between mods. Club content must also be original, meaning existing mods won’t suddenly cost money. Perhaps most importantly, Bethesda says “there will still be plenty of free mods as well.”

Assuming Bethesda follows through on these rules, the Club could actually be a positive development for modding. It’s not perfect; as our own Chris Livingston wrote, Club content would be better off free, with the store itself acting as a way to promote the best mods and compensate talented modders. In any case, it is a rare opportunity for modders to profit off their passion. 

With all of that in mind, I spoke to three of the top Fallout 4 and Skyrim modders from the NexusMods community to gauge their thoughts on the Club. As it happens, everyone I spoke to has already applied to be a Club creator.  

Improvements and inquiries

“At first I was against it, but after talks with some other modding friends I changed my mind and actually decided to put an application in,” says Troy Irving, creator of Fallout 4’s Settlement Supplies Expanded mod, which contains over 400 new objects and structures. “I saw it as another paid mods scenario, which was terrible the first time, but it’s a bit different this time around.” 

For Irving, the Club’s improved quality control process, coupled with the fact that existing mods cannot be sold, was a big draw. It protects his mods and ensures the market won’t become saturated with overpriced garbage like $10 golden potatoes (yes, Skyrim had those). Many modders feel the same, including Doug ‘Gambit77’ Shafer, best known for his Armorsmith Extended mod for Fallout 4. 

“It seems like they’re really taking all those problems from [Steam’s paid mods] and are trying to stamp them all out,” Shafer says. “With the curation process, I don’t see people stealing other people’s work and trying to sell it. Their policy of not allowing already released content will stop any possibility of thievery. People can’t steal other people’s identities and shit like that. It seems like they’ve thought it out quite a bit.” 

Certainly, the Club is head and shoulders above the system Valve proposed in 2015. But there are still holes in Bethesda’s proposal, one of the biggest being how modders will be paid. Will they receive royalties based on sales of their content or a flat rate based on the scope of their project? Do creators get to decide? The modders I spoke to were divided on what payment model they’d prefer. One thing they did agree on was what kind of content they expect to see en masse on the Club store, namely custom armor sets and weapons. 

“They don’t have much conflict with each other and they’re easy to put in,” says Brendan ‘Expired6978’ Borthwick, creator of Skyrim’s RaceMenu mod, which greatly enhances the game’s character creator. “I mean, I wouldn’t say they’re easy to make, but they’re easy to put in the game and install in your game.”

The advantages of a simple mod like a piece of gear are two-fold, Borthwick explains. Firstly, it’s just an item entry, so it doesn’t inherently conflict with other mods. Secondly, it would be easier to instantly generate in-game, which is one of the Club’s most-vaunted features—being able to buy a cool new sword and wield it within seconds. 

That being said, Borthwick is more interested in expanding Skyrim’s core features, such as its follower system. Irving wants to make improved and custom weapon animations for Fallout 4, whereas Shafer is interested in building some from-scratch armor sets. 

Above: Enderal is one of the most ambitious Skyrim mod projects to date, but it won't be sold on Creation Club.

The impact on free mods

 Bethesda says the Club will include myriad content, from weapons and apparel to new locations and NPCs. But there’s been no mention of total conversion mods like Enderal: The Shards of Order, despite the fact that such massive mods are arguably most deserving of a price tag. So, why is the Creation Club ignoring the grandest mods in the business? Well, Borthwick believes total conversions are actually too big. .

“I don’t know about seeing that sort of stuff as DLC,” he says. “Those would be heavy engine mods, so they’d have to actually update the executable of the game to do anything with that ... I don’t think that’s really the target of the Creation Club mods, because that isn’t something you can easily put into your game.” 

Total conversion mods essentially build a new game out of an existing engine, so they wouldn’t mesh with existing Fallout 4 and Skyrim save files. To offer them via the Creation Club, Bethesda would have to sacrifice compatibility, which they’ve trumpeted from the get-go. Meaning total conversions will all but certainly remain free passion projects—as will plenty of other mods, according to everyone I spoke to. 

“I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact [on free mods],” Borthwick says. “People are still going to be making mods on Nexus, and not everybody is going to try and push mods on the Creation Club … I don’t think it’s going to be something where people are just going to jump ship and start uploading tons of mods and go completely paid.”

Shafer agrees. “I don’t really buy into all the doom and gloom,” he says. “I know myself, and there’s plenty of projects that I would still be working on that would be free projects. In fact, most of my stuff would still be. I can’t speak for everybody, but if I was part of it, it wouldn’t stop me from working on the bigger picture stuff.” 

The gist of the knee-jerk doomsaying which followed the Club’s announcement is that free mods will dry up as modders all sell their souls to Bethesda, but these experts are eager to continue producing free mods. The other common argument against the Club, and paid mods in general, is that involving money in any way somehow taints the spirit of modding. Shockingly, none of the modders I spoke with agree. 

“We do this in our spare time. I don’t do it to make donations or money, I do it because I want to do it,” Borthwick says. “At the same time, I’m spending a lot of my time to do this and get almost literally nothing out of it … Most people would say ‘go find another job,’ but if you like doing this, what’s wrong with getting paid to do it?”

Shafer points out that if modders are being paid, they’re more likely to take on larger and more ambitious projects. Similarly, Irving expects the Club to attract new and talented creators to the modding scene—people who do stellar work but don’t have time to work for free. All of which could result in more and better mods. 

Yes, Steam’s take on paid mods was a dumpster fire. Yes, Bethesda could have done a better job selling the Creation Club. (Dwarven mudcrab armor, which we lampooned in 2011, probably wasn’t the best headliner.) And yes, there are still lots of blanks that need to be filled. Even so, many modders are optimistic, not just because they may finally be paid for their time and effort, but because the Club may well benefit the modding community as a whole.  

Pity Skyrim's humble courier. He's charged with tracking you down in an incredibly dangerous fantasy world to deliver notes, letters, and quest instructions. While as the Dragonborn you're definitely recognizable, finding you as you race around the map killing monsters and looting dungeons can't be easy for the young man (though he does at times appear to be quite psychic), and the truly tragic thing is that this poor fellow doesn't even have his own place to live and rest between his deliveries.

Thankfully, celebrated Skyrim modder Arthmoor has stepped in with an equal dose of mod skills and empathy, and the Provincial Courier Service mod is the result, giving our favorite letter-carrier a proper home and base of operations. In it you'll find a desk, a bed, a dining area, a kitchen, and other creature comforts the courier can enjoy when he's not running all over the world trying to stick a letter in your pants.

The mod also provides an optional home delivery service, which means the courier can just bring his missives to your house (or one of your houses, if you're doing quite well) instead of materializing in your immediate vicinity, which certainly sounds like an improvement from his perspective. And, now that you can track him down for a change, you can also swing by his shack during your travels and collect your mail from him there. Everybody wins.

Okay, it's not a palace, just a humble abode, but we can all agree the fellow deserves it. You'll find the courier's new digs on the road outside Whiterun, and you'll find the mod, and the instructions on how to install it, on its page at Nexus Mods.

Just between you and me, the first time I played Morrowind it was on an Xbox. It was still a great game, but getting the PC version and being able to mod it made it even better. We praise it for being the last truly weird Elder Scrolls game, but we should also remember Morrowind as one of the clunkiest. To enjoy its mushroom trees and settlements built in dead insects meant putting up with rough combat, a leveling system that needed gaming, plenty of bugs, and a bit too much walking.

In the 15 years since its release modders have done an intimidating amount of work making Morrowind better. The best Morrowind mods are now spread over sites like Morrowind Modding History, the Morrowind Nexus, and Mod DB. Here's our collection of the greats, though even this list only represents the tip of a big iceberg. 

If you've never played Morrowind before it's worth trying unmodded to see which parts you'd most like to alter before diving in. It's also recommended to use a loader like Wrye Mash or Nexus Mod Manager to organize mods once you start. And even when using them, always read the installation instructions.

Table of contents

• Patches and tweaks
• Getting around
• Visual Overhauls
• New locations and quests
• Creatures and NPCs
• Combat and skills

 Patches and tweaks 

Believe it or not, there were a few bugs in this Bethesda RPG. These mods fix those and greatly improve the fundamentals.

Morrowind code patch

Download link

A massive effort committed to fixing bugs and mistakes, from savegame corruption and missing objects to the in-game calendar not having the correct number of days in each month. There are plenty of optional changes, including modern resolutions and an over-the-shoulder version of the third-person view. The Morrowind Code Patch is also an essential foundation for the Tamriel Rebuilt mod, but can conflict with leveling mods like Galsiah's Character Development or Madd Leveler if you don't turn off skill/attribute uncapping when installing it. 

Tribunal Delayed

Download link

Bethesda isn't great at seamlessly inserting DLC into their games, and in Morrowind that manifests in Dark Brotherhood assassins trying to murder you in your sleep until you start the Tribunal expansion. If you're not interested in being assassinated at level one or surviving the attempt but then scoring assassin gear that's way too powerful for you, this mod puts off the nightly murder visits.

The Unofficial Morrowind Patch

Download link

Each Elder Scrolls game has one of these, tidying up hundreds of minor leftover bugs ranging from spelling errors in dialogue to problems with quest progression. If you've ever had a quest stuck in the journal after you've finished it, or noticed “Edryno” spelt “Edryon” this is for you. It also fixes a lot of errors relating to NPC barks playing in the wrong situation or not at all.

AltStart

Download link

If you're sick of the rigmarole of going through the Census Office at Seyda Neen every time you make a new character, this mod lets you race through character creation and then choose which of the island's ports to disembark at. It also puts some basic equipment in your inventory, suited to your skills.

Skyrim UI Overhaul for Morrowind

Download link

User interfaces have never been a strong point for Bethesda's open-world games. If looking at Morrowind's borders makes you miss the Skyrim color scheme and slightly cleaner look, this mod adds that while keeping the basics of the UI the same.

Getting around

Why run when you can run really fast? New methods of transportation and tweaks to existing methods make life in  Morrowind less tedious.

Andromeda's Fast Travel

Download link

When you're crossing the Ashlands for the fifth time or bouncing back and forth between distant NPCs for certain quests, you really need a more convenient way to travel than a muddled network of giant fleas. This mod makes roadside signs into fast travel points. Look at the sign pointing to your destination, press spacebar, and you'll arrive with six hours added to the clock. Mods that add new landmass can make it a bit hinky and I did once travel to Gnisis only to find myself stuck in the middle of the ocean, but it's still worthwhile for journeys free of Cliff Racers.

Run Faster—Faster Running Speed

Download link

Another way to speed up Morrowind is to increase the running speed, which makes a mockery of the incremental increases to the Speed stat you can buy at level-up but is worth it to reduce a lot of the slog. There are multiple speeds to choose from, with Fastest a solid choice if you want to run like a Looney Tunes character but still be able to see the world as you zip past it.

Silt Striders

Download link

Cool as it is having giant fleas that can be steered by twiddling their central nervous systems hanging around settlements, the Silt Striders always seemed underused in Morrowind. With this mod you can actually see them travel across the land when you hire one, though they're less jumpy than I expected. Their speed is adjustable in case you want to zip over to Vivec but don't have half an hour to watch scenery go by.

Sell N Sail Galleon

Download link

If walking up to a ship's captain and asking for a lift to Ebonheart isn't doing it for you, Sell N Sail makes both a small boat and an expensive galleon (205,000 septims!) available for purchase. The galleon has a fancy below decks area you can make your new home, and both craft can be sailed around via slightly fiddly controls. Buy them from the island just off Gnaar Mok.

Melian's Teleport Mod

Download link

The Mark and Recall spells are essential for returning to out-of-the-way locations, like your home once you build one or that mudcrab merchant with loads of gold. Normally you can only have one place Marked at a time, but Melian's Teleport Mod lets you cast Mark as much as you like and name each one individually.

Visual overhauls

Morrowind's showing its age after 15 years, but these mods go a long way towards maintaining its otherworldly beauty.

Better Heads

Download link

The landscapes of Morrowind were impressive in 2002 and can still look surprising today, but the faces were always a mess. They look like photos stretched around cubes. Better Heads is one of many mods that improves the way faces look in Morrowind, an easy to use choice that's low on compatibility issues. However, if you're interested in other options with varying degrees of fidelity to the original looks, here's an old Comparison of NPC Head Replacers.

Better Bodies

Download link

While you're at it, maybe you'd like nicer body textures as well? These were based on high-res scans of the modders' own skin. There are versions that let you leave your medieval underwear on and also a nude version, though given that some enemies run around in their underpants that's more likely to be disconcerting than anything.

Visual Pack Combined and Mesh Improvements

Download link (Visual Pack Combined)

Download link (Mesh Improvements)

The easiest way to make Morrowind's buildings and scenery look better is with this combination of five existing texture packs. Follow that up with Mesh Improvements to get small objects like bowls and candles looking noticeably less angular.

Morrowind Graphics Extender XE

Download link

On a modern PC the draw distance option in the menu can easily be pushed to the max, rolling back Vvardenfell's fog. If you want to go even further the Morrowind Graphics Extender XE mod will let you see Vivec from Pelagiad with ease.

Skies Version IV

Download link

The ash storms, drifting clouds, and starry night skies can be made to look a lot prettier with this mod. It changes the way weather is rendered as well as replacing repeating sky meshes with unique ones, and there are multiple options for changing how you'd like the moons to look.

New locations and quests

It's a whole new world. Seriously: you can add enough content to Morrowind to keep playing it forever, and the ones we've highlighted here are the best of them.

Tamriel Rebuilt

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Bethesda had planned for the entire nation of Morrowind to make it into the game, but focused instead on the island of Vvardenfell to its ultimate benefit. If you dream of exploring the mainland however this mod will let you do it, greatly expanding the map and adding some gorgeous new cities. The quests are a little rudimentary, but mostly you'll just want to explore all this new land.

The Underground

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If you wish Morrowind felt more like Vampire: The Masquerade, then your dream's come true. The Underground is a questline based around a nightclub for the undead hidden in the Balmora sewers, where sexy vampires will send you on quests and one of them can even be romanced. From the moment the club starts blaring songs by The Beastie Boys and Garbage you'll feel a long way from the atmosphere of Morrowind, but it's goofy, gothy fun nonetheless. You'll want additional mods that add a walkthrough book, and if you finish the questline one that clears up a couple of lingering issues like, oh, infinitely spawning spiders.

Immersive Madness

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The kookiness of The Shivering Isles (a classic Oblivion add-on) has inspired mods for several Elder Scrolls games, and Immersive Madness is the Morrowind equivalent. It lets you join the cult of the Madgod Sheogorath by visiting their shrine south of Molag Mar where you'll find quests to recover an Orc's stolen buttocks, defeat a rock and then a puddle, win a staring contest against a rival cult, and other similarly wacky missions.

Morrowind Rebirth

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Once you've played Morrowind long enough it stops feeling uncanny and becomes familiar. To regain some of that feeling, try the complete overhaul Morrowind Rebirth. Each settlement is recognizable but different, with more houses and NPCs. There's also new equipment, creatures, music, and more. Morrowind Rebirth on its own is enough to make another playthrough worthwhile.

Official Plugins

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If you got Morrowind from GOG it will already have this selection of plugins made by Bethesda. If not you can grab them from the Nexus, either individually or collected. They include quests to restore the propylon travel network and take an island fortress back from the undead, more armor, arrows, and sounds, and an option to entertain the drinkers at the Eight Plates in Balmora.

Arktwend and Myar Anath

Download link (Arktwend)

Download link (Myar Anath)

SureAI are a German team you may know for their Oblivion total conversion mod Nehrim, or Enderal for Skyrim. Arktwend and Myar Anath were where they started, total conversions that replaced Vvardenfell with a slightly more traditional fantasy world, though one with some gothic touches. They're not as polished as Enderal—you'll get killed by huge mobs of enemies a lot and hear some characters speak German even with the English patches—but they're still impressive achievements.

Creatures and NPCs

Inject more life into Morrowind, and make those critters prettier, to boot. 

Better Dialogue Font and Less Generic NPCs

Download link (Better Dialogue Font)

Download link (LGNPC)

If you're sick of squinting at the font for Morrowind's dialogue, journal, and menus then the Better Dialogue Font mod ups the resolution on all of them. Meanwhile, if you're sick of NPCs rehashing the same paragraphs of information the Less Generic NPC project has been working to give every character their own dialogue, which is a heck of an undertaking.

Better Beasts

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In the spirit of Better Bodies and Better Heads, this adds new textures for lizard-people and cat-people, making the Argonians and Khajiit look plenty nicer. If you're playing as one you'll have a few new head options as well.

Morrowind Children

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Bothered by the absence of kids? Ma'iq the Liar would like a word with you. If you need to have rugrats running all over the place this mod will do it for you, though as with all mods that add NPCs en masse it can cause slowdown and they absolutely will get stuck between you and a door at some point.

Morrowind Advanced

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Bethesda staff member Gary Noonan, known to modders as WormGod Elite, made Morrowind Advanced to add more challenging encounters. It rebalances existing creatures as well as adding new ones like Centurion Rippers and Giant Earth Golems, and eventually you'll have to deal with high-level raiders too. A few new dungeons and some new equipment thrown into rebalanced loot tables round it out.

Creatures Version XI

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Adding new animals to Vvardenfell is tricky because the existing ones are so alien. Horses would just feel wrong. Modder Piratelord walks a fine line in new additions that feel appropriate to the setting like the Ash Poet and Land Dreugh as well as more vanilla creatures added sparingly, like moose and butterflies. As an added bonus this mod makes Cliff Racers less aggressive the more of them you kill so that eventually the damn things will leave you alone.

Combat and Skills

Overhaul Morrowind's clunky combat with some some welcome changes, like removing the dice roll behind each melee strike and increasing the pace at which you accrue skill points. Now go out there and be a warrior.

Faster Skill Increases

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One of the more straightforward balance tweaks available, with Faster Skill Increases all it takes is a single attack or a few seconds of running or jumping to make the relevant skills go up. You'll get sick of the angelic sound that plays with each increase, but you'll also be able to tackle the interesting quests a lot quicker without grinding around in Ratmurder Town forever.

Oblivionized Magicka Regeneration

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Even if you're not playing a spellcaster you'll want access to the occasional Levitate to cross a mountain or Mark and Recall to bounce back to a quest-giver. Wizards have to nap a lot in Morrowind though, because magicka regenerates at a glacial pace. If you're not ideologically opposed to the idea of making Morrowind more like Oblivion, this mod borrows its rate of magicka replenishment and honestly it's a godsend.

Accurate Attack

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Whether an attack hits or misses in Morrowind is based on a random roll behind the scenes based on your skill. In a more abstract RPG that's fine, but in a 3D one where you can see that spear hit someone to then be told by the math that it whiffs it can be jarring. With Accurate Attack any blow that looks like it hits actually hits.

Projectile Overhaul

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The lovely, thunky speed of arrows in Skyrim was inspired by a mod for Oblivion that made them less dodgeable but much more fun to shoot. Projectile Overhaul puts some of the same arrow juice into Morrowind, increasing the velocity of everything you can launch, including throwing knives, shuriken, and spells.

Madd Leveler

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Install Madd Leveler to take away the worry about effectively leveling and grinding the appropriate skills, as it'll do all that for you. Madd Leveler raises attributes based on which skills you've been using and does it quietly in the background so you don't even notice. There's also Galsiah's Character Development, which is a bit more complicated and can be restrictive if you're trying to play the kind of hybrid character who doesn't fit a single class.

TESIII Sneaking Realism

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Each Elder Scrolls game makes sneaking a little less ridiculous, but even in Skyrim we're still crouch-walking invisibly in broad daylight because our skill's high enough. This mod doesn't make stealth perfect, but it does add modifiers based on the time of day, weather, what armor you're wearing, and whether you have a weapon out. It also increases sneak attack damage to x10 so it's worth all those potential penalties.