Skyrim mods downloaded 13 million times on Steam. Which mods are the most popular?
Bethesda tweeted a tidbit today to make our Skyrim-playing console brethren even further jealous: a Thu’um-worthy 13.6 million PC mods have been downloaded to date, through Steam Workshop alone. That’s almost as many dragon bones as I have gathering dust in the front cabinet at Breezehome!
In recognition of this colossal milestone, here are some of the most subscribed mods from the last month in Steam Workshop. Also, remember to bookmark our ever-updating list of the 25 best Skyrim mods!
Five essential Football Manager 2012 Mods
Ahhh – Football Manager. Every so often I kick the habit, but then I play football or watch a game and I suddenly relapse. Recently embarrassing shambling real-life matches with Rich, Graham and Tom S. have knocked me well off the wagon. But if I’m going down, I’m taking you all with me.
Here’s a list of the five essential updates, graphical tweaks and utilities to tempt you back in.
The best free armor sets for your Skyrim Dragonborn
We love mods at PC Gamer. Earlier on today, Tom posted about the two Steam Workshop collections we’ve assembled for anyone who wants to quickly and easily enhance their Skyrim experience. All good stuff, but now it’s time to model some armour, and showcase some of the best, most detailed sets currently available for download.
Skyrim’s initial wardrobe of armors is fine – splendid, even – but after a dozen hours looting the same sets began to get monotonous. Praise Talos then, because modders are on hand to deck you out in a wider range of garments. There’s an emphasis on “lore-friendly” sets; gear that’s fitting with the icy setting of Skyrim and not, say, the world of an JRPG (though there’s plenty of those outfits, too). We’ve hand-picked eight of them. No Space Marines here.
PC Gamer’s Skyrim mod collections on the Steam Workshop
If you haven’t already seen, we’re pulling together all our favourite Skyrim mods from the Steam Workshop into two collections. Collections are just lists of mods, but they make it super easy to install them all at once: we check they’re good and that they all work together, and you just click a ‘Subscribe to all’ button. They’ll all be downloaded and added to your game the next time you start it up, and they’ll even be updated as the creators improve them.
To give you more choice, we’ve split our favourites into two collections. The Improvements collection is full of mods that just tweak the game, round out rough edges and add useful features. The New Content collection is about mods that add something substantial to the game, new areas, or more significant features like camping.
We’ll be adding to both collections continually, so you know any mods you think we should add, let us know in the comments and we’ll check it out. Here’s what we’ve put in both collections so far, and what it does.
Team Fortress 2 mod recreates Bomberman with Demomen
Would Bomberman have been better if its little arsonists were replaced with angry one-eyed men with grenade launchers? Absolutely yes. A pair of modders spent just 24 hours coding this multiplayer Bomberman mod for Team Fortress 2. The rules are simple: use sticky grenades to blow a path to nearby enemies, and then reduce them to a blood splatter using more bombs when you get there.
It looks like the bombs don’t behave in quite the same way as they did in Bomberman. The old explosions would obliterate almost the entire length of a corridor, but there’s still plenty of destruction, and a lot more blood. There are power-ups, too. These will increase your Demoman’s running and reloading speed. The map’s currently playable on rotation on the modders’ server. You can get there using the link below the video on the MechatheSlag site.
The best Steam Workshop Skyrim mods
Last night, the Steam Workshop was updated to support Skyrim mods. It’s a central repository for community made content, from tiny tweaks to total overhauls. After one night, there are already 459 mods up that you can add to the game with a click.
Update! We’ve now made two Collections of our favourite mods, so you can subscribe to them all with a click. The PC Gamer Skyrim Mod Collection: Improvements, for the community’s best tweaks and touches, and another for our favourite New Content – much more substantial additions that change the game, but still for the better. You can subscribe to either in one click, add both, or even pick and choose from within our selections.
Skyrim Creation Kit to be released tomorrow with “special surprise”
A tweet from Bethesda’s VP of PR, Pete Hines, on Friday announced that the long-awaited Skyrim Creation Kit will be out tomorrow. TOMORROW. The tools will let modders create their own campaigns using the same tools that Bethesda use to create their environments. Take a look at last week’s Creation Kit trailer for an idea of what’s included.
Mass Effect texture mod makes massive improvements to main characters
A couple of us in the office are going back through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 to prepare ourselves for the finale when the third game comes out in March. The first game is four and a bit years old now and the textures are starting to look a little runny. Thankfully, Duncan Harris presents a solution via the excellent Dead End Thrills with a link to a massive texture pack that adds masses of detail to all of the main characters of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.
Skyrim mod lets you summon undead dragons and dual wield greatswords
If there are three words you’d want above any other in your Skyrim spell book, “Conjure Undead Dragon” would be the those words, closely followed by “Conjure Spectral Bear.” The Tytanis mod adds both of these abilities, along with a fat tome of additional updates, including new magical greatswords that can be dual wielded with a beefed up Warmaster perk.
PCG Plays: GoldenEye Source
In this edition of PC Gamer Plays, we’ve harnessed the mystical powers of moving pictures to showcase one of our favorite mods: GoldenEye: Source. Check out the introduction above to set the stage, then find out why the remake comes so highly recommended in the following videos, which include a black tie duel against the mod’s developers (spoiler: they’re really good).
The 25 best Skyrim Mods
Skyrim mods are amazing. In the two months since release, thousands of mods have been released, some of them quite spectacular. It’s not like Skyrim was an ugly game to begin with, but with new high resolution textures and post processing it becomes truly stunning. Then there are the new items, expanded crafting and full UI overhauls.
With so many mods available, choosing them can be a little daunting, which is why we’ve rounded up the 25 best here for you to enjoy. Check inside for the full list.
Red Orchestra 2 mod tools released
The full version of the Red Orchestra 2 SDK has been released for free, giving RO2 owners the opportunity to create maps and game modes for Tripwire’s multiplayer shooter. The developers have released a few limited versions of the SDK, but the full suite of tools is now available.
“Users can now make and publish everything from simple mods and mutators, through custom maps and on to full total conversion mods,” Tripwire say, mentioning that big mods like Rising Storm, In Country Vietnam and Iron Europe are already in development. You can grab the mod tools from the Tools tab of your Steam account.
Tripwire are no strangers to the modding scene. Killing Floor and Red Orchestra started out as mods for Unreal 2004. Hopefully the SDK release can inspire another wave of talented modders.
Skyrim Online adds multiplayer: not quite ready for primetime
Skyrim Online has achieved what many thought impossible. It’s giving Skyrim players the chance to play online. Previous attempts to do the same with Oblivion and Fallout 3 ended in failure, but modder awpsoleet has managed to get a rudimentary alpha version of a Skyrim MMO up and running even before mod tools have been released.
The mod is currently extremely basic. Players can chat with eachother and see a representation of other players. The mod’s description claims other players are represented by a ‘spectral horse’, which sounds hilarious, but the version I tested instead had unclothed player models in a standard animation pose, gliding around. You can attack and cast spells on other players, but they don’t currently display any effects.
Despite all this simplicity however, the mod represents an impressive first step on the road to a true Skyrim MMO mod. We’ll definitely be adding it to our Skyrim Mods list, and keeping a close eye on it.
Skyrim ENBSeries mod boosts visuals, version one out now
Do you remember this impressive Deus Ex: Human Revolution mod? It was built by Boris Vorontsov, author of the ENBSeries graphical mods which also formed the basis of the spectacular ICEnhancer mod for Grand Theft Auto 4. He’s just released the first version of one for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. You can download it now from Skyrim Nexus.
Skyrim Mods: the 20 best so far
Skyrim mods incoming! It’s now been two weeks since the game was released, and there’s been and explosion of modding activity. Skyrim was already an amazing looking game, but with just a handful of these mods it can look even better. Not to mention a whole host of bug fixes, stability improvements, interface tweaks and gameplay enhancements.
Once again we’ve rounded up the best, prettiest, most useful and funniest mods to enhance your Skyrim experience. Check inside for the full list.
