Important Mods

The most important mods you need to know about.
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Core Gameplay

Almost every facet of vanilla Skyrim has been overhauled in such a way that is still true to the original game but also refreshes everything for a new experience. This is accomplished through the suite of SimonMagus’s mods, detailed below:

  • Adamant: The perk overhaul.
  • Hand to Hand: An addon to Adamant that combines Pickpocketing and Lockpicking into one skill tree and replaces Lockpicking with a specific unarmed/hand-to-hand combat skill tree.
  • Scion: The vampire overhaul.
  • Manbeast: The werewolf overhaul.
  • Mysticism: The magic overhaul.
  • Apothecary: The alchemy overhaul.
  • Thaumaturgy: The enchanting overhaul.
  • Arena: An encounter zone overhaul.
  • Aetherius: The race bonuses overhaul.
  • Mundus: The standing stone overhaul.
  • Pilgrim: The religion overhaul.

Additionally, there are other mods included to provide you with additional bonuses and change how things work.

  • Experience: Changes how leveling up works, making exploration, clearing dungeons, killing enemies, and completing quests the primary ways to get XP.
  • Perks from Questing: Provides unique perks upon completing certain questlines.
  • Reading is Good: Changes how gaining XP from skill books happen. Instead of increasing the related skill, you’ll learn the related skill faster.
  • Sets of Skills: Allows you to select and master classes as you level up, providing bonuses as you master the class.
  • At Your Own Pace: Allows you to progress questlines as you’re ready to progress them.
  • Leadership: Provides a skill tree that allows you to bring more followers with you as you invest in it.
  • Smart Cast: Allows you to set conditions for spells to be automatically cast, and lets you hotkey spells to cast with a single key press.
  • True Directional Movement & SmoothCam: Combined, these make playing in third-person a joy.

Survival & Immersion

Masterstroke uses a multitude of mods that allow for a survival experience that will challenge you without being overbearing or intrusive. Most things “just work” and doesn’t require constant micromanaging of stats and bars. Additionally, many mods are included to enhance what some might call “immersion”. In the context of Masterstroke, immersion refers to systems that improve realism and balance the game.

  • Sunhelm Survival: The core survival and needs mod. Requires management of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and cold weather.
  • Trade & Barter: Overhauls the game’s economy to make items expensive to buy and worth little when sold.
  • Open World Loot: Provides a framework for distributing and changing loot found on enemies.
  • GIST: Changes how soul gems work and the progression for using them.
  • Improved Traps: Makes traps found in dungeons more deadly.
  • Lock Overhaul: Adds options to open locked chests and doors inclusing smashing locks and opening them with magic.
  • Realistic AI Detection, Suspicious City Guards, and Better Stealing: Makes stealth and being a thief harder in general.
  • Carriage & Ferry Travel Overhaul: Adds destinations to carriages and rebalances the cost of traveling.
  • Journeyman - A Fast Travel Overhaul: Fast Travel requires a travel pack, which can be crafted.
  • Extended Stay: Allows you to book a 3, 5, and 7 day stay at an inn.
  • Simply Knock: Allows you to knock on doors to ask for a place to stay for the evening or speak to NPCs behind locked house doors.
  • Perseid’s Inns and Taverns: Rebalances the cost of purchasing an inn stay.
  • Take Notes: Gives you a journal to chronicle your adventure.
  • Locked City Gates: Leaving or entering a city between 10pm and 6am requires bypassing a locked main gate.
  • Campfire: Adds a full camping system for extended journeys.
  • Hunterborn: Overhauls hunting and collecting loot from killed animals.
  • Voidgate: Provides a town portal scroll/spell you can use at higher levels.
  • Helps to Have a Map: Requires you to purchase/find a map to use it.
  • Service Your Gear: Weapons and armor will degrade over time and require repairs periodically.
  • Spellforge: Changes how spells are acquired to allow for better pacing to mages.
  • Simply Balanced: Allows every aspect of the game to be tweaked to increase or decrease difficulty.

The Combat & Enemy Mods

Combat in Masterstroke is difficult without being on the level of Dark Souls or similar games - it rewards skillful play and knowledge of enemies and their equipment and capabilities. Enemies are more varied and challenging.

  • Valhalla Combat: A new, modern take on combat with many features such as timed block, executions, and more.
  • TK Dodge RE: A scriptless remake of TK Dodge, allowing you to dodge while your weapons are out.
  • Archery and Archery Locational Damage: Overhauls the archery system to require more skill and precision.
  • Arena: Rebalances encounter zones to make them more varied and challenging.
  • Heritage Enemies 2: Adds a simply insane amount of variety to enemies you encounter.
  • Administer Potions & Poisons to Friendly NPCs: Allows you to give potions to allies and they will use them.
  • Dragon War: Overhauls dragon fights to make them significantly more “boss” like.
  • Enemy Releveler: Changes the levels of enemies to make them able to scale higher and start a bit more challenging.
  • True Directional Movement: Adds a lock-on feature and changes the movement system to make combat more dynamic.

The HUD & UI Mods

The HUD and UI is going to be different in Masterstroke, even if you’re coming from other modlists and especially if you’re coming from vanilla Skyrim. All of the HUD elements have been condensed to the lower-left corner of the screen. The mods that affect the HUD and UI are as follows:

New Quests and Dungeons

Masterstroke ships with several new questlines and dungeon mods to increase variety and options as well as provide quality additions to the main questlines of the game.

  • Hammet’s Dungeon Pack: Many high quality and extensive dungeons found throughout Skyrim.
  • Land of Vominheim: An entire new land filled with new dungeons.
  • Faction - Pit Fighter: A new faction to join focused on gladiator-esque battles.
  • Clockwork: A spooky new questline themed around the dwemer.
  • The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal: A thief-themed questline
  • Vigilant: Roughly inspired by Dark Souls and focused on the Vigilants of Stendarr.
  • Wyrmstooth: A new land and quest mod focused on dragons.
  • Maids 2: Deception: A somewhat NSFW themed and lighthearted questline.
  • The Forgotten City: The critically acclaimed quest that was recently turned into its own standalone game.
  • Sirenroot: A dialogue-heavy quest with puzzles, platforming, and a focus on water mechanics.
  • Warden of the Coast: An intricate adventure that takes place on an isolated island with fully voiced companions and romance.
  • Maelstrom: A large, multi-layered dungeon with new enemies, equipment, and more
  • The Trappings of Fate: Devious Devices meets Escape Room.

Followers

Masterstroke includes a number of new followers for you to find and recruit.

It also includes some minimal mods to facilitate multiple followers and interacting with them.

Player Homes

Masterstroke also has a few new player homes scattered throughout the world for you to acquire and inhabit.

The NSFW Mods

Of course, Masterstroke is designed around sexy elements and interactions. The core NSFW package is as follows.

  • SexLab: Makes the whole NSFW world go around.
  • OSL Aroused: Makes your character and NPCs have arousal to affect various other things.
  • SexLab Defeat Baka Edition: The defeat mod of choice. Adds surrender and defeat mechanics to combat.
  • SexLab Separate Orgasms: Adds a minigame to NSFW scenes.
  • ZaZ Animation Pack: Adds animations for various scenes.
  • Devious Devices: A framework for NSFW equipment and managing of that equipment.
  • Devious Lore: Incorporation all these devices better into the world.
  • SexLab Fame: A framework for characters to gain NSFW fame in areas across the land.
  • Scrappies Matchmaker: A matchmaking framework that allows NPCs to get busy with each other.
  • Milk Mod Economy: Adds a new layer to the Skyrim economy focused around the production and sale of milk.
  • Simple Slavery: A framework to allow the player character to be sold into slavery.
  • Public Whore: An alternative to being sent to jail, instead your character might need to become the Public Whore of a city.
  • SexLab Eager NPCs: Makes NPCs eager and allows for NSFW interactions with your followers.

Some fun additions that expand on the frameworks defined above:

  • OBody NG: Allows you to change your character’s (or NPC’s) Bodyslide preset on demand in game.
  • Deviously Enchanted Chests: Traps containers such that you might get equipped with some devious devices.
  • Milk Addict: Allows you to get addicted to milk and its friends.
  • Furniture Marker Sex: Expands on the furniture options available and makes scenes line up with existing furniture in the world.
  • SexLab Solutions: Provides alternative endings to some quests.
  • SexLab Drunk Redux: Allows your character to experience loss of control when drunk.
  • Fill Her Up: Adds events for being filled with fluids.
  • Transformative Elixirs: Adds elixirs that can be found that modify a character’s body when consumed.
  • Gender Bender: Allows your character to swap genders on a whim. (Only works for female characters)
  • Skooma Whore: Your character can get addicted to various drugs/concoctions.
  • Submissive Lola Resubmission: Allows your character to consensually enter a dom/sub relationship with a follower.
  • Devious Device Helpers: Adds additional options for removing devious devices.

Quality of Life Mods

No modlist would be complete without an entire suite of mods to improve the quality of life of playing Skyrim.

Optional Creature Profile

Masterstroke includes an optional creature profile allowing for even more degeneracy. The mods that make this possible are:

To use the Creature Profile, you should use the Profile dropdown menu in Mod Organizer 2 to switch to the Creature Profile.