Now, I know I’ve been dark on the site for a little while. Blame my job and my new found fascination with community made mods for Skyrim. I first picked this wonderful little game back up since purchasing the Dawnguard DLC on the 360. That sparked my interest in re-installing my copy on the PC and toying around with an old save. Thus begins an adventure crafted from the hard work of a community that has made a great game even better.

I always meant to do a bit of a review or synopsis of Skyrim for AMMIH, but it just never happened. What I will do now is spin a short little tale about my experience tossing mods together to make Skyrim something a bit more than the original vision of the designers.

One of my biggest gripes about the Skyrim experience on the PC is the user interface feels a bit weird, it is definitely more tailored to a console’s controller than a keyboard and mouse. The mod SkyUI is an easy fix to implement and gives a much better interface for your inventory and skills. Highly recommended for anyone to install. Be warned you need to add in the Skyrim Script Extender framework for the mod to even work correctly, but the added step is tremendously worth it.

Another small issue I had with Skyrim is a bit minor by comparison. Skyrim is in a state of civil war. Why do we only see a few fights here and there, and only a few quests to engage in (rather small) skirmishes after the main campaign is finished? It seems many in the modding community has agreed with me on this and a mod called Warzones – Civil Unrest was coded for the game. It creates warzones in the game that spawn enemies, and from what I’ve seen the mod is a much needed improvement to the battles. I’ve randomly come across several battlefields with at least twenty people in total just duking it out. At that point, pick a team and join in or wait until the battle has thinned the ranks and go for the loot.

One last mod I will mention that has really helped make my Skyrim experience a little better is going to be controversial. Understand this one point, the children in Skyrim are little brats and being able to Fus Ro Dah (Unrelenting Force) those bastards off a cliff is immensely satisfying. The mod Killable Children will always be installed on my copy of Skyrim just for those instances when I decide to kill a whole town, no one will be left not even the snotty little son of the Jarl.

So this is my thanks to the modding community and Bethesda for giving them the tools so I can shape Skyrim into a vision so much more than what came in a shrink wrapped box. Now I can pick and choose mods that enable me to explore deeper quest lines and craft a new story of my dragon slaying Nord. So begins the legend of my warrior, and long will stories be told of this Nordic hero known only as The Beard. As my Nord always says, “You have not lived until you have punched a dragon to death.”