Skyrim: 10 BEST VR Mods [Expert Opinion]

To this day, Skyrim is kept alive, not only by its re-releases but also by its community that keeps bringing all kinds of mods whose scale ranges from small QoL changes to ambitious projects that add new areas and side quests into the game. Likewise, the community has also actively worked on many mods for Skyrim VR that bring tons of meaningful changes to the VR version of the game to increase player immersion. The VR version of the game is built on the same engine Skyrim Special Edition was on, so naturally, the mods of the Special Edition are compatible with the VR version.

Here’s a summarized list of all the best Skyrim VR Mods: 

Mod	Description
SMIM – Static Mesh Improvement Mod	Improve the appearance of countless static 3D models in Skyrim
Sounds of Skyrim	Merged version of the three individual mods, Sounds of Skyrim - Civilization, Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds, and Sounds of Skyrim - The Dungeons
Simple Realistic Archery	Automatically unequips your arrows after shooting them, then reequips the arrow after pressing the trigger over your shoulder
MageVR	VR-ized actions that let you immersively use spells, weapons, potions, poisons, shouts, powers, realistic archery and soul gems and pick locks
No Stagger Mod	Makes your character unstaggerable
HIGGS	Adds many native VR mechanics and enhanced physics to Skyrim VR
PLANCK	Offers a physically-driven animation in Skyrim
Onyx – VR Weathers	Weather mod based on Obsidian Weathers
Dragon Speaks Naturally	Adds speech recognition to Skyrim so that you can speak the dialogue lines aloud to select them
VRIK Player Avatar	VRIK will display the player character's body in SkyrimVR and animate it to match your movements

10. SMIM – Static Mesh Improvement Mod

SMIM mods add thousands of improved meshes and placements that make those objects look just as good as the others. In VR, where every immersion is very important and can be ruined once you start seeing these little inconsistencies, SMIM guarantees a consistent experience where the low-poly models will no longer ruin your immersion.

9. Sounds of Skyrim

Sounds of Skyrim is a massive mod that adds more than 460 sound effects to the world of Skyrim. The aim of this mod is to make the environments feel authentic and immersive. It merges various Sounds of Skyrim modules such as The Wilds, The Dungeons, and Civilization, overhauling almost the entire game with various sound effects, which also change in accordance with the time of the day.

8. Simple Realistic Archery

If you want to play as an Archer in Skyrim VR, we highly recommend going with the Simple Realistic Archery mod. This mod allows you to map different arrows to different buttons while also being able to change the position and size of the quiver along with the attribute costs. 

7.MageVR

As evident from the name, MageVR adds a much more realistic mage playstyle in Skyrim VR. This mod allows you to cast spells on the go by drawing various signs and glyphs by your hand instead of selecting them from the menu.

While this looks very immersive on paper, the developers warn the players about the difficulty curve that comes with this mod, as you won’t be able to pause the game for casting spells and instead will have to rely on muscle memory.

6.No Stagger Mod

Due to no VR-exclusive enhancements made in Skyrim VR, the combat system, especially melee, can fall apart since it was not developed with the VR version in mind. Getting staggered in VR is janky and ruins the flow of the combat.

No Stagger Mod makes causes you not to get staggered by enemy attacks and allows you to continue the flow of the combat without making you feel dizzy or nauseous.

5. HIGGS

I believe Skyrim VR has many features missing that are integral to the VR experience. Luckily, the Skyrim community has developed such mods that turn Skyrim into a proper virtual reality game, and HIGGS is one of those mods. HIGGS basically adds real-world interaction similar to other VR games.

Additions such as weapon and hand collision, the ability to two-hand weapons, picking up objects with either hand, grabbing distant objects through “gravity-glove,” grabbing and moving bodies around, real-time looting, and much more are possible thanks to the HIGGS mod.

4. PLANCK

PLANCK complements HIGGS by making further adjustments to the improvements and changes brought in by HIGGS mod. The most notable ones are the adjustments to the player’s and enemies’ ragdolls. Actions such as petting a dog, holding someone else, or throwing any weapon or object at others feel more natural and accurate, which obviously you can’t do in the base game.

Apart from the adjustments made to weapon attacks and their hitboxes, PLANCK also allows you to use grabs as a means to stop a character, whether an NPC or an enemy, from performing a stabbing attack. A highly recommended mod from me to use alongside HIGGS.

3. Onyx – VR Weathers

Some weather aspects, like volumetric lightning, are disabled in Skyrim VR, and according to the creators of the mod, trying to make the foliage look consistent and balanced is very tricky, and more so in VR. Onyx VR Weathers balances the lighting so that flora and fauna look consistent and parts of the environment don’t have different colors, which kind of ruins the look of the scenery overall.

It includes five different versions of night-time darkness, as normally night-time doesn’t have one color, and depending on the time of the night, the sky and the scenery can look less or darker. This mod makes the environment looks more natural and consistent due to accurate volumetric lightning and weather colors to ensure a consistent VR experience.

2. Dragon Speaks Naturally

Dragon Speaks Naturally is another immersive mod that allows you to interact with NPCs via actual speech. Upon interaction, instead of selecting any option, you’ll be able to speak out the option out, adding a layer of immersion in Skyrim VR.

It is basically a speech recognition mod and plays a vital role in adding immersion to Skyrim VR. It should be noted that this mod isn’t compatible with the Anniversary Edition, and the developers have advised the players to stick with Skyrim Special Edition for this mod to work.

1. VRIK Player Avatar

Diving into huge RPGs via VR increases the player immersion tenfold, but that is often ruined when you start to notice that your character is just two floating hands instead of an actual character. VRIK Player Avatar aims to fix that problem by rendering the entire player model into the game along with all of the necessary animations to make it look more natural overall.

Fully configurable weapon holsters, hand gestures, drawing out weapons in real-time, compatibility with other mods, mod configuration menu, and displaying complex scenes in 1st or 3rd person are some of the features that come with the VRIK Player Avatar mod.

My Take On Skyrim Mods

Out of numerous mods options in Skyrim, these are my top favorite ones to try out as it gives us the most interesting features. Keep in mind the mod discussed in my list don’t include launcher or script-loading mods that enable other mods to work. Each mod has a separate requirement for working, and I recommend referring to the linked websites in order to know the required mods for these mods to work. 

If you are considering hopping out of Virtual Reality and diving back into the base game, consider checking out our guide on the best Skyrim mods. As we have talked about followers several times in our guides, you can check out our guides on Serana and Skyrim Wives. Regarding armor and weapons, you can check out our guides on the best light armor and best one-handed weapons in Skyrim.

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