The Elder Scrolls: The Biggest Content Mods

Summary

• Massive mods like Wyrmstooth bring DLC-sized expansions to Skyrim, featuring new lands and quests.
• Darker mods like Beyond Reach offer a grittier take for Skyrim players with detailed storytelling and settings.
• Projects like Tamriel Rebuilt aim to integrate Morrowind’s mainland seamlessly with the base game, expanding lore.

The worlds in The Elder Scrolls series are massive places to explore. However, since most fans have playtimes running into the hundreds and even thousands of hours, there is always a hunger for more exploratory expansion. Thankfully, ever since Morrowind in 2002, modding communities have had Bethesda’s construction set tools to help expand their worlds.

The following mods represent some of the most ambitious efforts by modders to extend each game in the Elder Scrolls series, including Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. While there are “total overhaul” mods available (Nehrim, Enderal) or mod remakes of previous games (Skywind, Skyblivion) that are more or less games in and of themselves, they will not be included here.

Elsweyr The Deserts Of Anequina (Oblivion)

Integrating The Home Of The Khajiit Into Cyrodiil

• Development Time: ~4 years (unfinished)
• Scope: A New Desert Provence
• Download Link

Although this old-school mod is still considered largely incomplete today, it is still one of the largest and most fondly remembered attempts to enlarge Oblivion‘s playable borders. The Deserts of Anequina allows the hero of Kvatch to traverse the sanded dunes and tropics of the Khajiit homeland, Elsweyr.

Although the region is deserving of its own game, thanks to the richness of Elsweyr’s lore and history (moon sugar, magic lamps, majestic trade caravans), this Oblivion mod impressively adds towns, cities, three small-sized guilds, and plenty of quests.

Wyrmstooth (Skyrim)

A Dragon Slayer’s Hunting Ground

Skyrim is ostensibly a game about slaying dragons, and this mod adds an island roundly the size of Solstheim and makes hunting dragons its central premise. With clever writing, talented voice work, and a smooth difficulty curve, Wyrmstooth perfectly emulates the original design philosophy behind The Elder Scrolls 5 and manages to refine some of its bumpy elements.

There is plenty of space above and below ground to roam with meticulously detailed quests, NPCs, enemies, and treasures, and as such, Wyrmstooth feels like an organic extension of Skyrim‘s base game. For those who really enjoy their experience on the island, there is even a player home to build up and inhabit.

Beyond Reach (Skyrim)

A Darker Tale Of Intrigue And Squaller

• Development Time: 12+ years, since 2013 (ongoing)
• Scope: A DLC-sized mod
• Download Link

Skyrim is known for its beauty and occasional humor, but there are parts of the game that are darker than midnight in Nocturnal’s realm of Oblivion. The Beyond Reach mod leans into these grimmer shades in setting, themes, custom music, and story.

The size of three of Skyrim’s holds combined, Beyond Reach takes place where the home of the Nords borders High Rock. The lands and architecture featured in Beyond Reach look markedly different from those found eastward and are dotted with colorful (all shades of gray) NPCs with plenty of optional dialogue, although not all are voiced yet.

Chanterelle (Skyrim)

A Mostly Untouched Land And A Survivor’s Dream

Calling Chanterelle a DLC-sized mod is an understatement, as the land it adds is around half the size of Skyrim‘s. However, while it boasts an impressively massive amount of wilderness or hunting grounds for survival enthusiasts, its addition of NPCs, dungeons, and story is minimal.

There is a story to unearth about the land and its few inhabitants that is told diegetically through loot and lore scraps, but Chanterelle is largely intended for Skyrim players who enjoy survival, hunting, crafting, and rough camping with all the associated mods pre-loaded.

Lyithdonea – The Azurian Isles (Morrowind)

The Lands Between Tamriel And Akavir

• Development Time: 8+ years (ongoing)
• Scope: A large-DLC-sized mod
• Download Link

Canonically, after fulfilling Azura’s prophecy at the conclusion of Morrowind‘s main quest, the Nerevarine’s fate was that of disappearance, as they were rumored to have ventured to the far-away continent of Akavir. While there have been attempts to depict these exotic lands in mods, none have been extensive.

Lyithdonea is an attempt to give Morrowind players a taste of this land by allowing them to explore the Azurian Isles, a place between Tamriel and Akavir, with influences of both. Despite eight years of work, the mod is still unfinished. However, as of 2024, the mod author expressed that they plan on continuing work until completion.

The Forgotten City (Skyrim)

A Time-Traveling Adventure That Grew Beyond Skyrim

• Development Time: 4+ years
• Scope: A large-DLC-sized mod
• Download Link

Although most other content mods extend Skyrim‘s map size or fill in unplayable space, The Forgotten City mod sends the player down into a lost Dwemmer outpost deep underground. The Forgotten City is not physically expansive but is rich in story, gameplay, and characters.

The premise of the mod is that nobody in the city is allowed the break the law, lest the entire populace be killed. With a little detective work and occasional time traveling, the player will have to find a way to escape the tyranny of the “golden rule.” With so much depth, including multiple endings, this mod was developed into a standalone game, naturally called The Forgotten City.

Project Tamriel – Project Cyrodiil, Skyrim: Home Of The Nords, And More (Morrowind)

The Provinces Reimagined By Morrowind’s Lore

• Development Time: 17+ years, since 2008 (ongoing)
• Scope: Making all of Tamriel explorable beyond Morrowind’s borders
• Download Link

Of all the already-ambitious designs of content-expanding mods of The Elder Scrolls games Project Tamriel (really a collection of projects) has to be the most ambitious, but, by its own aims, the most incomplete. It aims to recreate the entirety of Tamriel within Morrowind and with Morrowind‘s original lore, which was significantly different before being rewritten in Oblivion and Skyrim.

Two of the most complete (but far from finished) are Project Cyrodiil and Skyrim: Home of the Nords, which (currently) cover the westernmost part of Cyrodiil, the Gold Coast and the city of Anvil, and Skyrim’s Reach region. Despite being a small portion of the map in Oblivion, Project Tamriel’s Gold Coast is huge. All other areas of Skyrim and Cyrodiil are in the works, and Project Tamriel is also currently working on their version of High Rock and Hammerfell.

Beyond Skyrim (Skyrim)

Giving Adventurers More To See In The Fourth Era

• Development Time: 14+ years, since 2011
• Scope: Making all of Tamriel explorable beyond Skyrim’s borders
• Download Link

While Skyblivion, the fan remake of Oblivion, and Beyond Skyrim both seek to depict Cyrodiil as seen in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Beyond Skyrim’s aim is to expand the Skyrim map to allow players to experience the Heartlands in the contemporaneous Fourth Era, with a respect to old and new Elder Scrolls lore.

Every province in Tamriel is planned. So far, Bruma is the only fully complete area (with Morrowind and Atmora’s exteriors well into development). While this may seem like slow progress, the team is clearly going for quality over quantity, as the content (quests, NPCs, landscapes, architecture, dungeons) available is breathtaking.

Tamriel Rebuilt (Morrowind)

The (Grand And Intoxicating) Dream Of A Complete Morrowind

• Development Time: 24+ years, since 2001
• Scope: Integrating Morrowind‘s mainland into the base game
• Download Link

Although the mod team for this entry has changed over the years, the original dream for a unified Morrowind under one game began before The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind was even released. Similar to Project Tamriel, modders have been expanding playable areas within Morrowind with the intent to make it fit in seamlessly with the rest of the game and story.

This means not only making the game several times larger than Vvardenfell, the original playable area but also developing the depth and intricacy that made Morrowind so special. Unlike later games, its volunteers do not have to contend with voice acting or graphical realism. However, an extra emphasis has been put on balance and lore-friendliness that might explain the project’s two-decades-plus lifespan.