You now have a beautiful game, but shouldn’t a beautiful game deserve beautiful characters? This next set of recommendations will help you remove the potatoes and give your game more realistic (or not, we won’t judge), detailed, and overall pleasing characters to look at.
Please note that some of the mods listed here contain softcore nudity in the images. All nudity is optional so double-check the mod page. If you selected “NeverNude” for your body mod, you will not see any nudity no matter what skin mod you use. All LE mods linked here work fine on SE.
RaceMenu or Enhanced Character Edit - Both are overhauls to the vanilla character creation menu. We recommend sticking with RaceMenu as it has the most support and allows for importing character presets, but ECE is an option if you so choose.
XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended - Common requirement you might have installed already. If you don't have it yet, you will probably need it, so it's best to install it. At the very least, you should install the skeleton. You should also grab the Papyrus Stack Fix. Note their version numbers on XP32's mod page.
FSMP - Faster HDT-SMP - Dependancy for hair physics.
CBPC - Physics with Collisions - Dependancy for body physics.
Mfg Fix NG - Common dependencies.
Expressive Facial Animation Male and female - Dependency, mainly for NPC replacers and character presets. Also just nice in general.
Expressive Facegen Morphs - Dependency and RaceMenu add-on.
High Poly Head - OPTIONAL. Many RaceMenu presets use it, and it looks really good. Unfortunately, clipping will happen if you use mods that add/replace beards, brows, scars, etc. without proper patches. There are HPH versions for many mods. If you do choose to use it, set the correct headpart in RaceMenu and select HPH versions of beards/brows/scars etc. We will provide HPH options wherever available.
BeastHHBB - Lots of new customization options for beast races. Optional NPC replacers. Player-only version is in optional files.
KS Hairdos SSE - Large hair pack. Get the physics add-on here, and a retexture here or here. If you don't want as many hairstyles, try the lite version.
ApachiiSkyHair - Another large hair pack. Not as lore-friendly, but has lots of cool options. You can grab a retexture here.
High Poly Vanilla Hair - Makes vanilla hair look much better. Also works with vanilla hair retextures like Bed Head or Salt and Wind.
VHR - Vanilla Hair Replacer and Vanilla hair remake are other options for vanilla hair.
Superior Lore-Friendly Hair - Another vanilla hair option.
Mild Hair Colors - More realistic hair colors.
Kalilies Brows - More brows. HPH version here.
SG Female Eyebrows - More brows. HPH version here.
Beards of Power - Lots of beards. HPH version in optional files.
SUEMER SSE - Base eye fix, you should have it anyway.
Eyes Normal Map Fix - Another fix you should install.
BnP - Eye Overhaul - High quality vanilla eye replacer.
Authentic Eyes - Subtle and realistic vanilla eye replacer.
Improved Eyes Skyrim - Replaces vanilla eyes and adds some new ones.
The Eyes Of Beauty - Adds a lot of high quality eyes. Vanilla replacer is in old files for some reason.
Kala's Eyes - Adds a lot of realistic new eyes. Also grab the elf, beast, and vampire versions.
FabULook Eyes - Extremely detailed beast eye replacer.
Lamae's Gaze - A vibrant vampire eye replacer.
Please note that for HD makeup and warpaint you will need to set iTintTextureResolution=2048 in SKSE.ini (which you have to make yourself). Just download this.
We included some bodypaint in this section as well, which can be applied via the RaceMenu makeup tab.
Vanilla Makeup HD - Good retexture for vanilla makeup.
Female Makeup Suite - Adds quite a few new makeups.
PAINTERLY - a High Res Vanilla Warpaint Retexture - It is on the LE Nexus, but it works perfectly fine for SE.
Wolfpaint - Face - Facepaint Collection for Racemenu Overlays - A lot of new warpaints.
Skin Feature Overlays - A lot of different options for skin features.
Community Overlays - Large pack of warpaints and bodypaints. Also grab versions 2 and 3.
Northborn Scars - HD vanilla and new scars. HPH version here.
The world of body mods is an interesting one. As mentioned earlier, there are NeverNude options for most of these, but the mod pages themselves are NSFW.
First you should install BodySlide. There are tutorials and resources linked on the mod page, but we'll give you a run-down later. For now, let's look at some options.
The world of male body mods is fairly small. Many people won't even use one, and just stick to skins.
Highly Improved Male Body Overhaul -HIMBO- - Has the most support for BodySlide, and has different presets. It has Schlongs of Skyrim as a dependency, but you don't need to install that if you don't want nudity. Get SOS-compatible skin textures if you use this.
Schlongs of Skyrim Full/Light - We won't link it, but you can search the internet or find the link on HIMBO's mod page. SOS is often used as a sex mod, but it is also a high quality body replacer. The New Gentlemen is an alternative.
SAM Light - Another option. It is a very good mod that unfortunately doesn't have as much support. There is a high poly version available.
Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Enhancer -CBBE- - Most popular female body replacer, with the most support for outfits. Can be cartoonish, but there are loads of presets available. If you want body physics, get the 3BA add-on, and RFBBBT if you want less jiggly and more realistic physics for 3BA.
BHUNP - Lots of sliders for BodySlide. Built-in physics. Get vanilla clothing refits here.
Touched by Dibella - Extremely oversexualized, CBBE-based body.
UNP Female Body Renewal - A classic option. Get vanilla clothing refits here. If you want bigger breasts/thighs at max weight, get this version and the refits.
Vanilla Body with UNP Textures - Use this if you don't want to use a body mod. You will need it for custom skin female textures.
Xenius Character Enhancement Complete - Good "base" that covers things other mods might not touch. It includes skin textures, but you can pick up some others.
SC - Khajiit Improvement (works on SE except for the morph plugin)
Coverkhajiits (face only)
The video to the right shows you how to build outfits in BodySlide, but if you need help setting everything up, check this video.
If you use CBBE, you will need to download CBBE conversions for any custom armor you install. Most have them available. It's ok if there aren't any, the armor will just have a vanilla body shape.
Cathedral Player and NPC Overhaul - HMB II - Massive overhaul, including resources from other mods, acting as an all-in-one solution to player and NPC enhancement. We don't recommend the full mod if you are using a lot of the character mods in this guide, but it's good for vanilla+ mod lists.
Nordic Faces - Another vanilla-friendly option, similar to HMB II. You can download the facegen only in optional files.
Pandorable - Author that has a lot of high quality NPC replacers.
froztee - Author of the Re-Imagined mod series.
Southpawe - Author of the Northbourne NPCs series.
PoeticAnt44 - Author of the Pride of Skyrim and Courageous Women series.
Metalsaber - Author of Metalsaber's NPCs series.
rxkx22 - Author of the Bijin NPCs series.
We recommend mixing and matching NPC overhauls using EasyNPC, which we cover in this section.