Skyrim Special Edition: The Best PS4 Mods You Can Get

  1. Skyrim Special Edition Mods
  2. Skyrim Special Edition Mods

After a bit of back and forth and lots of deliberation, Sony and Bethesda finally agreed to the implementation of mods on PS4 releases. While we all know that Skyrim offers hours of adventure, you can expand your journey with a handful of amazing mods. Here are the best Skyrim: Special Edition mods available right now.

Ys Spell Tweaks

Skyrim Special Edition Is An Underwhelming Upgrade On PC - But! That is that Skyrim has moved from 32-bit to 64-bit, which means it is in theory capable of loading so much more into memory, and in turn that should mean far more epic mods, be it massive dragon armies or far more of the world being visible at anyone time. Taking an old bug from the original Skyrim, the PC release of Special Edition keeps the 60 FPS limit. Increasing your framerate above 60 causes all sorts of problems with the physics engine. The higher your FPS goes above the hard 60 limit, the worse the physics engine performs.

This mod is perfect for all of you mages out there. Thanks to a few tweaks to spell mechanics, you’ll be able to cast faster, have stronger abilities, and it removes any unnecessarily annoying animations from the casting experience.

Even Better Quest Objectives

This is a pretty straightforward mod that is actually very useful, especially for players journeying into Skyrim for the first time. Instead of just having to rely on the map, you’ll be given detailed descriptions of what to do so you don’t get lost following floating arrows.

Point the Way in Skyrim

Want to travel through Skyrim but don’t want to keep bringing up your map for fear of breaking the immersion? Sometimes that can be difficult since it’s very easy to get lost while walking around, thanks to the lack of signs. Point the Way fixes that by placing hundreds of road signs and even having them pointed in the right directions. No more pause menus for you.

God Gear

So you just want to run through cities killing everything and fearing nobody? Then you might want to throw on some God Gear which is just a set of armor and weapons that have some ridiculously powerful enchantments.

Mortal Wounds: No Health Regeneration & Hardcore Difficulty

If you’re the opposite of the players who want God Gear and want nothing more than a brutal, soul-crushing world, then you may want to check out the Mortal Wounds mod. All combat becomes fast and deadly, and the lack of health regen means you’ll have to be careful how you approach danger and keep a healthy supply of potions.

Disable Cinematic Kills

Cinematic Kills are jaw dropping when you first encounter them, but can start to weigh down on you as you start to pile on the hours. Eventually, they’ll just be an obstacle slowing you down as you carve your way through Skyrim leaving death in your wake, so this mod that disables them will certainly prove to be handy.

Go Away Map Clouds!

Looking at Skyrim’s map will become a constant activity, so it would be great if it was always clear and easy to see. Unfortunately, we have to deal with a thick swarm of clouds that likes to appear over the map making it impossible to discern certain roads and locations. This mod removes those pesky clouds so you can see clearly once more.

Dovahkiin Keep

This is a simple mod that grants you a huge manor full of mannequins and storage for all of your armor and weapons.

Scroll Crafting

The Scroll Crafting mod allows you to craft every scroll in the game giving you access to tons of spells without the need to grind for hours to get your magic up to snuff in Skyrim.

Get Seriously Overstocked And Rich Merchants

Despite all the gold and magical equipment being sold by the merchants of The Elder Scrolls, they always manage to be broke. This mod gives the merchants fives times the gold they usually stock and three times as many items to sell.

150% Jumping & Sprinting

Contrary to the name, this mod allows you to jump 50% higher and run for 50% longer. Just for the amazing hops you’ll now have alone, this download is definitely worth it.

HUNT: Dragon Skulls, A Hunters Of Unusual And New Trophies

HUNT: Dragon Skulls, A Hunters Of Unusual And New Trophies is a mouthful, but it’s worth it. It gives you something to do with all the dragon trinkets and items that you’ll find lots of throughout your adventures in Skyrim. It adds more drops from dragons, and let’s you keep things like skulls as trophies and uses other materials as crafting items.

Legendary Creatures

Think of this as a fan-made expansion that adds eight horrifying monsters for you to battle. Each challenging foe guards brand new armor, spells, and weapons for you to collect.

Stay Arrow Stay

Stay Arrow Stay for PS4 is a great mod for career archers as it makes your world, well, more archer friendly. With this mod, you’ll have an increased chance of picking up arrows from bodies, plus, it lets more arrows appear on screen at once, adding to Skyrim’s immersion and realism.

The Ring of God Mode

You can probably tell by the name of the mod that this is going to make you very powerful. It adds a ring you can find in Whiterun that increases Health, Magicka, Carry, and other stats to 99,999, making you an unstoppable killing machine.

Cauldian Race

Perhaps you don’t think there are enough races to choose from in Skyrim. If that’s the case this mod adds the Cauldians, complete with resistances to Fire and Spark damage, as well as new followers found in the world.

Nicer Children

Let’s be honest really quick, the children in Skyrim are downright rude. This mod makes them all a bit nicer by removing some of their less welcome dialogue.

Resurrect Everything

While the ability to resurrect defeated enemies already exists in Skyrim, you were very limited. This mod allows you to resurrect all of your foes, excluding dragons.

Skill Up Cheat Items

This is one of those mods for players who just want to do as they please in Skyrim, as it will remove the immersion that comes through challenge. You’ll find a set of books in Riverwood that will help you instantly max out your abilities and even go beyond Legendary. You’ll also get a ring to help you level up faster.

Think of EasierRider’s Dungeon Pack as a small, free DLC expansion that just adds a handful of cool dungeons. There’s a total of five dungeons that range from small to very long.

Unlimited Werewolf Transformations

You, my friend, are a powerful beast who shouldn’t be confined by the sun and moon, allowed to transform only once per day. Unlimited Werewolf Transformations lets you turn into a beast as often as you please.

Unlimited Shouts

One of the most fun actions in Skyrim is shouting people off of high ledges. This mod allows you to do it without waiting for a cooldown. Unlimited Fus Ro Dahs for the world.

The Gardens of Whiterun

Skyrim Special Edition Mods

The Gardens of Whiterun is exactly what it sounds like. It adds a lot of plants, insect life, fish, and just greenery all around Whiterun making it a much more beautiful city. You can download it for PS4 here.

Slow and Freeze Time Spells

As its simple name suggests, this mod will add time-freezing and slowing spells to the game, purchasable from a special spell vendor in Markarth.

Immersive Patrols

A lot of mods based around immersion sadly aren’t available on the PS4, but Immersive Patrols for PS4 luckily is. This mod makes all the various factions in Skyrim patrol around in groups together, making these factions in Skyrim feel more lifelike and impactful.

Necromany Overhaul

This mod makes raising the dead a little more fun, removing the level cap and allowing you to summon a permanent undead companion, among other tweaks to the spell school.

Easy Weather Change

Cause over a dozen weather types, including Nightmare Fog, using the spellbooks added by this mod.

Phenderix Magic World DLC

This massive mod goes all out, adding new areas, 400 new spells, tons of new items and more. Not everything will work on PS4, but it’s still a very comprehensive addition.

Easy Lockpicking for the PS4

Lockpicking loses its luster after you’ve done it for the 10 millionth time for some people. If you count yourself among those tired of having to pick locks, Easy Lockpicking for the PS4 makes it dramatically easier to pick any locks you come across.

Dark Water Home

Dark Water Home is a mod for the PS4 that adds a beautiful new livable home by Darkwater Pass. As the modder puts it: “The first time I came out of Darkwater Pass I knew I had to build my home there. A large secluded grounds surrounded by waterfalls centrally located between Windhelm, Whiterun, Ivars, and Riften the Darkwater Home has all the amenities you need without being absurdly large and empty.”

STAR: Triple Gold! A Superior Treasure and Rewards Mod

Get three times the gold from quests, bodies, pockets, chests, and more with this mod.

Believable Crime Radius

Believable Crime Radius for PS4 does exactly what the title hints it. It reduces the vanilla version’s insanely large crime report radius and turns it into something far more realistic. If you’re a career thief, this is one you’ll want to pick up.

Animal

Birds and Flocks

This mod is another one that focuses more on making Skyrim prettier, and more immersive. Birds and Flocks, adds detailed flocks of avian creatures all throughout the game.

Multiple Followers System

Keep five followers and five pet followers with you at all times thanks to this mod. Just remember to make a backup save file.

Bridges of Skyrim

Bridges of Skyrim is yet another mod that does exactly as described. It makes the bridges in Skyrim prettier, and reflect the region in which they were built.

Skyrim Restored

Skyrim Restored adds a bunch of cut content back into the game including some caves, weapons, a prison, camps and more.

Faster Leveling

If you’re having trouble raising those stats, this Faster Leveling mod will help you get all of those better perks for your character.

Skyrim Special Edition Mods

Immersive Citizens

This Immersive Citizens mod aims to revamp how the townspeople work by giving them better schedules, interactions, and even a new “survival instinct” feature.

All Map Locations Discovered

Sometimes you just want to see the complete map without having to travel to each and every location. This mod uncovers everything you need to see, so you can plan your trip ahead.

Marry Almost Anyone

Skyrim is one of those games where you can actually marry someone and start a family, although not with every NPC. This mod expands you marriage options and lets you pick more NPCs that were previously non-romanceable.

Ys Spell Tweaks

This mod is perfect for all of you mages out there. Thanks to a few tweaks to spell mechanics, you’ll be able to cast faster, have stronger abilities, and it removes any unnecessarily annoying animations from the casting experience.

Even Better Quest Objectives

This is a pretty straightforward mod that is actually very useful, especially for players journeying into Skyrim for the first time. Instead of just having to rely on the map, you’ll be given detailed descriptions of what to do so you don’t get lost following floating arrows.

Point the Way

Want to travel through Skyrim but don’t want to keep bringing up your map for fear of breaking the immersion? Sometimes that can be difficult since it’s very easy to get lost while walking around, thanks to the lack of signs. Point the Way fixes that by placing hundreds of road signs and even having them pointed in the right directions. No more pause menus for you.

God Gear

So you just want to run through cities killing everything and fearing nobody? Then you might want to throw on some God Gear which is just a set of armor and weapons that have some ridiculously powerful enchantments.

Mortal Wounds: No Health Regeneration & Hardcore Difficulty

If you’re the opposite of the players who want God Gear and want nothing more than a brutal, soul-crushing world, then you may want to check out the Mortal Wounds mod. All combat becomes fast and deadly, and the lack of health regen means you’ll have to be careful how you approach danger and keep a healthy supply of potions.

Disable Cinematic Kills

Cinematic Kills are jaw dropping when you first encounter them, but can start to weigh down on you as you start to pile on the hours. Eventually, they’ll just be an obstacle slowing you down as you carve your way through Skyrim leaving death in your wake, so this mod that disables them will certainly prove to be handy.

Go Away Map Clouds!

Looking at Skyrim’s map will become a constant activity, so it would be great if it was always clear and easy to see. Unfortunately, we have to deal with a thick swarm of clouds that likes to appear over the map making it impossible to discern certain roads and locations. This mod removes those pesky clouds so you can see clearly once more.

Dovahkiin Keep

This is a simple mod that grants you a huge manor full of mannequins and storage for all of your armor and weapons.

Scroll Crafting

The Scroll Crafting mod allows you to craft every scroll in the game giving you access to tons of spells without the need to grind for hours to get your magic up to snuff in Skyrim.

Get Seriously Overstocked and Rich Merchants

Despite all the gold and magical equipment being sold by the merchants of The Elder Scrolls, they always manage to be broke. This mod gives the merchants fives times the gold they usually stock and three times as many items to sell.

150% Jumping & Sprinting

Contrary to the name, this mod allows you to jump 50% higher and run for 50% longer. Just for the amazing hops you’ll now have alone, this download is definitely worth it.

HUNT: Dragon Skulls Mod

HUNT: Dragon Skulls, A Hunters Of Unusual And New Trophies is a mouthful, but it's worth it. It gives you something to do with all the dragon trinkets and items that you'll find lots of throughout your adventures in Skyrim. It adds more drops from dragons, and let's you keep things like skulls as trophies and uses other materials as crafting items.

Legendary Creatures

Think of this as a fan-made expansion that adds eight horrifying monsters for you to battle. Each challenging foe guards brand new armor, spells, and weapons for you to collect.

Stay Arrow Stay

Stay Arrow Stay for PS4 is a great mod for career archers as it makes your world, well, more archer friendly. With this mod, you'll have an increased chance of picking up arrows from bodies, plus, it lets more arrows appear on screen at once, adding to Skyrim's immersion and realism.

The Ring of God Mode

You can probably tell by the name of the mod that this is going to make you very powerful. It adds a ring you can find in Whiterun that increases Health, Magicka, Carry, and other stats to 99,999, making you an unstoppable killing machine.

Cauldian Race

Perhaps you don’t think there are enough races to choose from in Skyrim. If that’s the case this mod adds the Cauldians, complete with resistances to Fire and Spark damage, as well as new followers found in the world.

Nicer Children

Let’s be honest really quick, the children in Skyrim are downright rude. This mod makes them all a bit nicer by removing some of their less welcome dialogue.

Resurrect Everything

While the ability to resurrect defeated enemies already exists in Skyrim, you were very limited. This mod allows you ressurect all of your foes, excluding dragons.

Skill Up Cheat Items

This is one of those mods for players who just want to do as they please in Skyrim, as it will remove the immersion that comes through challenge. You’ll find a set of books in Riverwood that will help you instantly max out your abilities and even go beyond Legendary. You’ll also get a ring to help you level up faster.

EasierRider's Dungeon Pack

Think of EasierRider's Dungeon Pack as a small, free DLC expansion that just adds a handful of cool dungeons. There's a total of five dungeons that range from small to very long.

Unlimited Werewolf Transformations

You, my friend, are a powerful beast who shouldn’t be confined by the sun and moon, allowed to transform only once per day. Unlimited Werewolf Transformations lets you turn into a beast as often as you please.

Unlimited Shouts

One of the most fun actions in Skyrim is shouting people off of high ledges. This mod allows you to do it without waiting for a cooldown. Unlimited Fus Ro Dahs for the world.

Gardens of Whiterun

The Gardens of Whiterun is exactly what it sounds like. It adds a lot of plant, insect life, fish, and just greenery all around Whiterun making it a much more beautiful city. You can download it for PS4 here.

Slow and Freeze Time Spells

As its simple name suggests, this mod will add time-freezing and slowing spells to the game, purchasable from a special spell vendor in Markarth.

Immersive Patrols

A lot of mods based around immersion sadly aren't available on the PS4, but Immersive Patrols for PS4 luckily is. This mod makes all the various factions in Skyrim patrol around in groups together, making these factions in Skyrim feel more life like and impactful.

Necromancy Overhaul

This mod makes raising the dead a little more fun, removing the level cap and allowing you to summon a permanent undead companion, among other tweaks to the spell school.

Easy Weather Change

Cause over a dozen weather types, including Nightmare Fog, using the spellbooks added by this mod.

Phenderix Magic World DLC

This massive mod goes all out, adding new areas, 400 new spells, tons of new items and more. Not everything will work on PS4, but it's still a very comprehensive addition.

Easy Lockpicking

Lockpicking loses its luster after you've done it for the 10 millionth time for some people. If you count yourself among those tired of having to pick locks, Easy Lockpicking for the PS4 makes it dramatically easier to pick any locks you come across.

Dark Water Home

Dark Water Home is a mod for the PS4 that adds a beautiful new livable home by Darkwater Pass. As the modder puts it: 'The first time I came out of Darkwater Pass I knew I had to build my home there. A large secluded grounds surrounded by waterfalls centrally located between Windhelm, Whiterun, Ivarstead and Riften the Darkwater Home has all the amenities you need without being absurdly large and empty.'

STAR: Triple Gold! A Superior Treasure and Rewards Mod

Get three times the gold from quests, bodies, pockets, chests, and more with this mod.

Believable Crime Report Radius

Believable Crime Radius for PS4 does exactly what the title hints it. It reduces the vanilla version's insanely large crime report radius and turns it into something far more realistic. If you're a career thief, this is one you'll want to pick up.
Edition

Birds and Flocks

This mod is another one that focuses more on making Skyrim prettier, and more immersive. Birds and Flocks, adds detailed flocks of avian creatures all throughout the game.

Multiple Followers System

Keep five followers and five pet followers with you at all times thanks to this mod. Just remember to make a backup save file.

Bridges of Skyrim

Bridges of Skyrim is yet another mod that does exactly as described. It makes the bridges in Skyrim prettier, and reflect the region in which they were built.

Skyrim Restored

Skyrim
Skyrim Restored adds a bunch of cut content back into the game including some caves, weapons, a prison, camps and more.

Faster Leveling

If you're having trouble raising those stats, this Faster Leveling mod will help you get all of those better perks for your character.

Immersive Citizens

This Immersive Citizens mod aims to revamp how the townspeople work by giving them better schedules, interactions, and even a new 'survival instinct' feature.

All Map Locations Discovered

Sometimes you just want to see the complete map without having to travel to each and every location. This mod uncovers everything you need to see, so you can plan your trip ahead.

Marry Almost Anyone

Skyrim is one of those games where you can actually marry someone and start a family, although not with every NPC. This mod expands you marriage options and lets you pick more NPCs that were previously non-romanceable.
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This article originally appeared on GameSpy as 'How to Make Skyrim Awesome(r)'

Nothing like taking apart a new toy as soon as you get home. Skyrim's been out for less than a day and there has been a flood of information on everything from mods, to tweaks, to common sense settings that never made it into the game's instruction booklet (looking at you Favorites system). So we took some time today and put together a small compilation of a variety of tweaks and guides to help you get the most out of your new toy known as Skyrim.

How to Set Favorites to Number Keys[edit]

GameSpy fan, KronicCusador, figured this out in a matter of minutes. First, assign a weapon, item, or spell to your Favorites. While in-game open your Favorites (Q) and highlight an object name. Now press a number key on to assign that object. That's it!

But what if you want to assign these objects to a specific hand? By default the above description will only hotkey something to your left. In order to assign an object to your right hand, you must press Shift + number key.

How to Change FOV[edit]

According to reddit this is a fairly simple five step process that both IGN and Rock, Paper, Shotgun</a>have talked about as well. In case you're not in the 'know,' FOV is your field of vision. In this case, it's the field of view from the perspective of your playable character.
If you want to see more of your character's hands and weapons, you'll want to follow these instructions (we found 80 to 85 to be a good range). While in-game, press the '~' key and then type 'FOV=XX' minus the quotes with XX denoting the FOV number you wish to enter. Experiment with it for awhile to find a viewpoint that suits you.

Should You Turn FXAA On or Off?[edit]

This stands for Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing. If you've been PC gaming for awhile, you've no doubt run into anti-aliasing options in the past. Typically, if you turn AA off you'll increase performance at the risk of running into a whole bunch of jagged texture images. FXAA is kind of the same thing, except its performance hit to your machine tends to be minimal with comparable quality to playing with anti-aliasing turned on.
How We Tested
To see if there really was a difference, we used a copy of FRAPS for benchmarking and then had AA and FXAA settings battle it out. The rig that we ran this test on is a decidedly mid-range machine powered by a AMD Phenom II 1055T 2.8 GHZ processor, 6 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GTX 460 786 MB GPU with a resolution set to 1920 x 1080 at Skyrim's ultra settings.
Ultra Settings, FXAA On, 8 Sample Anti-aliasing Off
We completely turned off anti-aliasing and turned on FXAA, then ran around the open world of Skyrim for about a minute and came away with an average framerate of 41.6 (min: 21, max: 64).
Ultra Settings, FXAA Off, 8 Sample Anti-aliasing On
Using the exact same setup and settings, we then set anti-aliasing to 8 samples and then turned off FXAA and came away with an average framerate of 35.216 (min: 18, max: 46).
Overall it's not a huge gain but we'll continue to play the game with FXAA on instead of using anti-aliasing. This can vary depending on your rig of course, so see which setting works best for you.

What's Up With Radial Blur Quality?
[edit]

When you are hit in combat you'll see your screen blur slightly. Well, that's Radial Blur, designed to give the effect of you becoming disoriented when you're getting knocked around by an enemy. You can reduce the quality of the effect if you want to improve combat performance, especially if you're noticing some slowdown.

How to Modify Your Skyrim.ini
[edit]

GameSpy fan, wazups-2x, has provided some other nice tweaks in our comments and we've re-purposed his contributions here. This involves modifying the Skyrim.ini file, so make sure you make a copy of it first in case you wind up breaking something. You can find the Skyrim.ini file in Documents -> My Games -> Skyrim. Edit the .ini file by opening it in Notepad (as seen in the screenshot above).
Fixing Mouse Lag
If your experiencing mouse lag you'll want to disable vsync -- this isn't included in the game options. To do this go to the part of the Skyrim.ini that says '[Display].' Copy 'iPresentInterval=0' (minus the quotes) to the very bottom of the .ini, then save, and close the file.
Improve Shadows on Trees and Land
Open the SkyrimPrefs.ini. You won't have to look far: it's located in the same Skyrim directory and remember to make a copy of it first before you start modifying it. These instructions will allow you to improve the look and shadows of trees and some land objects by allowing them to receive shadows.
Under '[Display]' there are two commands you need to change to a value of 1:
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1
There's some other variables that you can adjust as well and they're fairly descriptive as to what each one will do (i.e. improving depth of field, how many times the game will auto-save, etc.):
bDoDepthOfField=1
bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1
bShowQuestMarkers=1
bShowCompass=1
bMouseAcceleration=1 (recommended setting is 0 for better mouse movement)
fAutosaveEveryXMins=15.0000

Know of any Good Mods or Tweaks?
[edit]

Skyrim Nexus is a great place to start as well as our sister site FilePlanet. As for tweaks,SegmentNext has put together a fairly in-depth guide on how to increase performance, so we recommend you check that out as well.

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