Skyrim: 13 Essential Character Creation Mods
LAST UPDATED: 28 Aug 2015
Welcome to my list of essential Skyrim character creation mods! If you’re like me, you spend more time in the character creator than playing the actual game, so I hope you enjoy this list :D
Best Character Editing Mod (Sliders)
Enhanced Character Edit – I cannot live without this mod! It lets you alter so many tiny details about your character’s face and body that the vanilla character editor doesn’t let you touch. It also lets you set the expression on your character’s face. LOVE THIS MOD. I like it better than Racemenu – I think it gives you a lot more flexibility.
Best Female Hair Mods
KS Hairdos Renewal – This is by far the most expansive and wonderful Skyrim hair mod pack out there! There are over 400 hairstyles to choose from, and it also comes with a ton of hairstyles for men!
SG Hairs 268 – This adds 268 gorgeous hairstyles ported over from custom Sims hairs. Sadly, the original author took down the mod but this is 100% hands down one of the best hair mod for females and I refuse to let it die, so download it here :)
Apachii Sky Hair – These are also beautiful, unique hairs that you cannot live without. Download them!
Showracemenu Precache Killer – This mod is absolutely essential if you’re using hair mods, otherwise your game will likely CTD every time you go into the character creation menu. Must. Have.
Best Male Hair Mods
KS Hairdos Renewal – Like I mentioned before, it comes with a ton of hairstyles for men … and they don’t all look like weird womanly anime hair!
Apachii Sky Hair – Make sure you download the male versions of the hair (v. 1.5 AND v 1.2) as well!
Best Female Face Textures (for a full breakdown, see this post)
Univision Face – I like that this texture makes your characters look very Final Fantasy-esque, but I know that’s not for everyone so …
SG Face Textures Renewal – I love this face texture for a more realistic effect. I think it’s a great balance of realistic yet not too worn.
Best Male Face Textures (for a full breakdown, see this post)
Better Males – Beautiful Nudes & Faces – There are several different face texture packs for males in this mod, but I prefer the Younger Faces Combined with Geonox version – gorgeous!
Best Eyebrow Mod
True Brows – These high def eyebrows show each strand of eyebrow hair and come in dozens of shapes and sizes for both males and females!
Best Eye Mod
The Eyes of Beauty – This is my top eye mod because it adds tons of different eye textures and colors that look hyper-realistic and range from natural to supernatural. I especially like that there are so many multi-colored eye options and even the dark eyes look bright and beautiful.
Mikan Eyes – I like that this includes mismatched eyes, too. There are a ton of pretty colors to choose from!
Best Warpaint Mod
RAWR-paints – Ok, shameless plug for my own mod that adds some video game themed warpaints for male characters hehehe.
Ravens Warpaint – I love these warpaints – they’re so varied and beautiful! There is something for everyone, whether it’s tough bandit stripes or delicate florals. This is for females only.
Battle Hardened Warpaints – This is the best warpaint for male characters! You can mix and match from each set to create your own ideal palette of warpaints.
Best Lips Mod
Seductive Lips – This mod gives your character a pillowy soft looking set of lips. I like to install this mod over the face textures I use!
Want to read more about Skyrim modding? See my other posts here!
Which female face texture mod is your favorite? Let me know in comments!
Thanks for doing this series. I’ve heavily modded other games but never got into Skrim (even though I did buy it). I may just have to give it another try. I hope you’ll post recommended game play mods as well. Oh, and I’m also interested in your favorite mod that changes NPC’s. I hate adding tons of mods for my character but then all the NPCs still look stupid
if you are interested in starting out modding Skyrim I’d suggest looking through MMOxReview’s Skyrim Mods Weekly, that is where I could at least 3/4 of my nearly 200 mods, he can be a little on the nose with his remarks, but I don’t find him nearly offensive as a lot of other youtubers, and you can tell it’s just a jest
oh my god, seriously, i am in love with your opinions on mods! i apologize if i’m bothering you, but wow!
i’m very picky with what mods i use – as is everyone, i think – but i agree with most, if not all, of your choices and i am definitely looking forward to another installment, if you’re not already playing “The Elder Scrolls Online”, that is~ anyways, i just wanted to let you know that you definitely have a new fan! i hope that you have a wonderful day and a happy life! ^w^
Hey, I tried all the same mods you suggested to try to achieve a similiar look for my male character. Yet he didn’t turn out nearly as good as yours. Is it possible to get a copy of the file of your character, or is there another way to get your character somehow?
I must be a complete moron when it comes to modding,i have watched guides and read forum threads over and over but i cant get any good results with my charracters.Ill line up some questions and i hope someone could answer these for me.
1.I ALWAYS get misscoloured skin (face and body skin colour does not match).How do i prevent this.
2.Face models get a bit corner-ish,i have tried allmost every face/skin mod to prevent this without good results.
3.When nmm asks me to overwrite files associated with charracter mods i dont know how to do,for every mod i install it always wants me to overwrite something from the previously installed mod.Is there only certain parts that i should overwrite?
I used to get the gray skin bug too! It usually only happens with followers, not my main character. I honestly am not sure how to fix it permanently, but each time I see it happen, I go into console, select the gray faced character, and change his weight with setnpcweight 75 (or whatever number you want) and that fixes the skin color until the next time I restart the game. If your face models are showing corners, it probably has to do with your quality settings – make sure you have your settings as high as possible. If you’re getting overwrite prompts on nmm, it means your mod you’re trying to install is conflicting with another mod. You’ll have to decide on a case by case basis if you want to overwrite or not.
Is that a champion mage armour in skyrim? I want one… >___>
Yey pretty! This will be my first time modding, I just am getting tired of the same faces all of the time!