The Best Mods For Skyrim VR

Summary

• PC offers the best Skyrim VR experience due to modding flexibility.
• Mods like NavigateVR, Physical Torch Lighting, and VRIK Player Avatar enhance immersion.
• Increased actor limit and Pseudo Physical Weapon Collision improve gameplay quality.

There isn’t a soul alive that hasn’t encountered Skyrim in some way. Whether that’s one of the many ports on a plethora of platforms, through memes and pop culture, or from a friend slapping a virtual reality headset on your bonce and letting you loose in Tamriel for a while.

By far the best experience you can have with the game is on PC, and that’s primarily down to the modding scene. On PC you can find workarounds for Bethesda’s stranglehold on the Community Workshop pretty easily, and if you introduce virtual reality, there’s a lot more you can tinker with. For those looking to upgrade their next adventure as the Dragonborn, here’s a list of recommendations for the must have mods for Skyrim VR.

10

NavigateVR

Skyrim is a huge place, and it’s very easy to get turned around and lost. Whilst the ingame map is handy, it still requires hopping into a separate menu screen to find it. Plus the navigation HUD is a little immersion breaking. Step forward Navigate VR.

This fun mod removes the HUD and adds a fully functioning Compass and handheld detailed maps of different areas of Skyrim. From there it’s up to your orienteering skills to find the right way to where you want to go. It’s a very simple to use mod that makes navigating the game world a little bit more interesting and slower paced as you take in the sights to find landmarks to navigate with.

There’s also an add-on for the mod called Map Markers that allows you to place map markers on your handheld maps.

9

More Interactive Objects: Throwing Things VR

One of the downsides of Skyrim VR is that there’s not a lot of interactivity in the basegame. Sure you can swing a sword and nock an arrow, but that’s about it. With the More Interactive Objects: Throwing Things mod you can pick up and toss things like a maniac.

Plus, they’ve also coded in some neat effects for certain things that are chucked. For example, potions and poisons explode on contact with a surface or creature, flour bags can be burst to blind enemies, and soul gems can be smashed to watch the damned within escape. There’s plenty of other little touches, but those are the most notable ones.

8

Physical Torch Lighting

Not a major mod, but a nice little addition to the immersive feeling of getting lost in another world. The Physical Torch Lighting mod allows you to light torches by hand with a flame spell. All you have to do is place your flaming hand near it and voila, instant light source.

It’s a simple to install and easy to use mod, plus in the future the mod creator has said they’re adding fires and wall torches to the list of things you can light. Torches in Skyrim were mostly underused, and the way they just popped on was always odd to see, so this is a nice fix for that little bugbear.

7

VRIK Player Avatar

If you really want to get lost in Skyrim then we highly recommend picking up the VRIK Player Avatar mod. This unique mod is a big hit in the community because it animates and matches your entire body movement, whilst also adding up to 14 holsters for equipment on your body.

What that means is, you get a wider range of movement, especially minute delicate stuff, you can perform gestures, move the individual fingers on your hand, draw weapons with your hands by grabbing the handles and so much more. It’s a solid mod that really helps you fall further into the game and away from real reality.

6

Wearable Health Bars: Soul Gauge

Whilst Skyrim’s HUD is kept fairly minimal in the base game for a reason, the health, stamina, magic and voice bars are still kinda bland and distracting at times. The Wearable Health Bars mod fixes this pesky issue by putting your critical information on your hands.

But it’s not just one specific design, there’s a few. From gloves, to bracelets and even rings can all be worn and each has little gems corresponding to a specific stat. For example, red gems mean health, green are stamina and so on. It’s a neat little mod that keeps your critical stats available at just a glance, and over time once you get used to them it’s a really nice quality of life improvement for the game.

5

Physical Dodge VR

Something VR games always trip-up on is dodging. The human body can react faster, and move in a wider degree than a game character’s already modelled rig, and in VR you’re often stuck with moving a joystick. The Physical Dodge mod gets around all this, and it’s highly recommended to grab it.

Whenever you dodge, either with a side-step, feint, duck or a physical dash or lean back, the mod will activate slow-mo for a few seconds whilst also applying i-frames to your hitbox. So you can do some pretty slick bullet time dodges in melee if timed right. Overall, it makes the combat much more survivable instead of an alarmed arm waggle fest as you try to kill them fast before your health gets chunked.

4

Increase Actor Limit For VR

Another slight downside of VR is that there are sometimes limits placed upon a game by the introduction of new hardware. One particular bugbear in Skyrim VR is the actor limit, this basically means that after a certain amount of NPCs are on the screen, weird glitches start to happen.

With the Actor Limit increase mod, not only can your rig now handle more NPCs wandering about, you’ll also notice less issues with them. Such as seeing characters float several feet above the ground, struggle with pathing, or walk off ledges. In general it makes no major change, but smooths out the overall experience. Plus, you can tweak the actor limit to your heart’s desire to match your machine’s stability levels.

3

Pseudo Physical Weapon Collision And Parry

It’s a bit brutal to say, but the melee combat in Skyrim VR is not good, at all. In the basegame, melee attacks are bound to stamina and timed swings. In virtual reality, you can wave your sword manically without fear of stamina drop and still do max damage at all times. So each fight descends into a mess of who can waggle their arms the fastest with the pointiest thing.

This unique parry mod overhauls all of that by making combat actually fun. Now you can parry projectiles and swords, actually block swings with a shield, and do a riposte that can throw your foe off balance. If you hate the melee combat in Skyrim VR, and who doesn’t? Then definitely pick up this mod, it fixes so many of those problems.

2

Spell Wheel VR

Another must-have mod, Spell Wheel VR keeps your head out of a menu screen by placing all your items in a selectable wheel on the screen. Each item appears as its in game object instead of a description, and you just have to grab it.

It’s a nice little immersive touch that makes encounters a lot smoother and faster. Since all you have to do is pop the wheel open, grab what you need, and then let loose. It’s also a great way to have a visual reminder of what gear you’ve got, and which spells you’ve been using the most. So you can keep track of what magic is worth investing more skill points in, what items should be trashed or sold, and so on. It’s a nice little feature that improves your experience substantially.

1

Weapon Throw VR

One thing that would make Skyrim so much better is if your weapons weren’t magnetized to your hands at all times. Not only does it lead to accidental swings at passers by, but it’s not great for the immersion if you’re just trudging along dragging an ornate great axe behind you.

With Weapon Throw you can now take your hands off your favorite pointed weapon, and also watch it soar right towards someone and impale them. It’s a fun feature that gives a bit more freedom to how you go on your adventure. Plus, you can also set up the weapons to return to you. Combine that with a hammer, and you’ve got a fun Thor themed adventure. If you like something simple and silly, pick this mod up.