*This is a 2 part series\*

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Elysium is a Wabbajack Mod pack that is available for Skyrim SE with the Anniversary update. I have been using this modpack along with a few other mods for a while now and I was really dissatified with the lack of information around what this mod pack actually does considering it includes about 1600 mods. I would consider Elysium a complete ground up overhaul of Skyrim and I would recommend it for Next Gen PC setups as it really does bring the game forward a decade and really makes it look, feel and perform well.

The rest of this post will be my best attempt at highlighting Elysium's mods and describing the changes you can expect from them. I will also point out the gaps that Elysium does not cover in part 2, although the list is small. The remainder of the post is divided into sections based on the type of mod that is being described in an attempt to keep this post organized and helpful to players trying to spend the least amount of time possible download and installing and instead playing this awesome modpack. Cheers!

Essentials, Fixes and Tweaks:

I will not go into specifics here but the first and arguably the most important part of the mod pack are these essentials, fixes and tweaks. The essentials are the most common requirements for the majority of mods, fixes perform an incalculable number of bugs fixes in Skyrim and the tweaks improve annoying gameplay issues, enhances camera movement with Smoothcam and makes common sense improvements like Vampires will not have shadows and NPC's walk and run at your pace.

Interface Enhancements:

Skyrim's interfaces are dated. That's why Elysium starts out with SkyUI, SkyHUD and TrueHUD, which modernize your inventory, magic and other interfaces plus gives you the ability to completely customize your HUD with MCM options to tweak to your style. There are over 30 interface mods which change just about every aspect of your relationship with the Skyrim interfaces.

Graphics Baseline:

Graphics baselining is like priming before you paint. We all know Skyrim was created over a decade ago and suffers from low resolution textures, bad skins, bodies and more. Starting out with Basecoat this mod enhances all 31,828 textures and ALMOST all of them upscaled. This is meant basically just to be a starting layer for the game where more mods are stacked on top of it or just for a visual update for people who just want to play vanilla. DynDOLOD Resources SE 3 are the resources needed for DynDOLOD to drastically improve tree and object LOD generation taking advantage of the improvements in computing that can now handle the updated LOD generation. SMIM is a staple of most modern builds and greatly improves the appearance of 3D static models in Skyrim it makes clutter, furniture and architecture look much more up to date.

Next we have a few Architecture mods, most notably Noble Skyrim 2k and Skyrim 2020 Parralax. Noble Skyrim enhances vanilla textures to 2k resolution making Skyrims architecture feel much cleaner and newer than the decade old textures in vanilla. Similarly, Skyrim 2020 Parralax does the job of making Skyrims architecture, landscapes and even dungeons POP. This mod is specifically designed to create the illusion of depth with high resolution textures. High Poly Project greatly increases the overall quality of models in the game by adding many more polygons. You can obviously see the massive improvement this mod makes.

The remainder of these mods I will cover for graphics baselining revolve around your character and NPC's. Caliente's Beautiful Bodies Enhancer is a mod most of us have used for years. The body mesh in this mod is completely custom and has 13554 vertices, which is more than 20 times the resolution of the vanilla Skyrim body. Female Characters have never looked better. If CBBE is the engine then BodySlide and Outfit Studio is the engine block, this mod is the home for all body and clothing mods that have been developed the last few years. It allows you to completely customize your body and the shape of your characters clothing on your body. You could roleplay the hottest mage or the plumpest tavern wench in all Skyrim. OBody essentially randomly distributes bodyslide presets to every NPC in the game, but has many features and improvements on top of that to improve the quality of the bodies and more. OBody is a total rewrite of Racemenu's semi-obscure bodygen feature to be far easier to use.

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Weather:

The real star of the show here is NAT ENB. This mod enhances climates and weather diversity, recreates all weather, adds new thunder and rain sounds, enhances clouds, enhances volumetric lighting along with mist and fogs. Some of the best playthrough's I've had are now during the night time where it is almost required to carry a torch to navigate the darkest of nights. Couple that with 8K night skies and look up to the heavens with a significantly enhanced night sky. Finally, Wonders of Weather creates rain splashes, shooting stars and even rainbows to really create a sense of wonder when you look out into the distance.

Lighting:

Skyrim's shadows and by extension volumetric lighting (VL) aren't synchronized with the sun all the time, during sunrise/-set they disconnect from the visible sun. EVLaS fixes this problem by synchronizing the shadows with the visible sun for the entire duration of the day. This inherently fixes specular from the sun and moon(s) as well. Another problem EVLaS solves is shadows/VL during the night. Normally they follow a invisble, backwards moving sun but with this mod they will be synchronized to one of Skyrim's moons (Masser by default) instead. This new moonlight will also vary in strength depending on the current moon phase for that extra bit of immersion.

Lux is a consistent and complete rework of Skyrim interiors lighting. This mod takes advantage of the latest developments in enb, including enb light and really, I mean really creates some atmospheric interiors in Skyrim. Dungeons now require torches and truly give an eerie feeling to Skyrims dungeon delving experience. Inferno enhances all of the vanilla flames in Skyrim. This includes spells, fireplaces, campfires, and torches, candles and creature attacks, and more. The textures are high resolution and there is much greater variety in the type of flame that can be produced with flame glow, color, size and tile options. Similarly, Embers XD reworks campfires and many other ember sources. Look at how damn sexy those embers are. This combination of lighting mods truly transforms Skyrim and provides a true sense of realism to the environments you will find yourself in. Sunsets are fantastic and photo worthy, the local inn feels cozy and warm, the dungeons are dark and dangerous, and emerging from forest cover into a sunlit field of amber grass will really diversify the experiences that you have. Much can be said about lighting enhancements, but IMO besides texture enhancements, this bundle of mods are the hero's of this modpack.

Visual FX:

If you're like me then you want to spill the blood of your enemies in the harsh mountain of Skyrim. Enhanced blood does gives a facelift to the water of life and makes slaying your enemies so much more gratifying. Deadly Spell impacts make it so fire, lightning, frost, and spit (Spider/Chaurus) spell impacts now have their own unique textures. This mod also increases the variation in impact size, increases the size of dragon breath impacts, and adds melted snow impacts for fire and lightning spells. The Dirt and Blood mod enhances blood and dirt textures in Skyrim. Not much else needs to be said. Wet and Cold for SSE is one of my favorite mods. This mod adds weather dependent visual effects and AI engancements to players and NPC's. When you walk up to High Hrothgar your character will get cold and their breath will start to show. It also adds the ability for NPC's to wear gear based on the type of weather.

Trees and Plants:

Just like Elysium enhanced architecture, it also takes a stab (and a good one) at modernizing Skyrims Fauna problem. When Skyrim was released Fauna pushed the engine to it's potential and it was the decision of the developers at Bethesda to skimp out on adding more vegetation to fill in the vast forests of Skyrim. Well, with significant improvements in the engine, tools, and resource utilization we can now fill Skyrim with lush greenery to our hearts content. Skyrim 3d Tree's and plants is a mod that modernizes forests by enhancing textures significantly. Happy Little Trees is a similar mod that also enhanced the look of the forests of Skyrim. Skyrim 3D Lanscapes is a significant forest mod that not only enhances the textures of fauna, but also greatly increases the amount of forest fauna around Skyrim.

Landscapes:

Similar to the trees ad plants section, the landscape mods also modify the natural surroundings in Skyrim. Starting out with Cathedral Landscapes, this mod author is a juggernaut and has created several high quality mods for landscape enhancements. Increased vegetation and grass will turn a barren slab of dirt outside Whiterun into a lush field full of that beautiful amber tallgrass. Majestic Mountains is the Defacto mountain mod. This mod creates breathtaking mountain scenes by modifying the textures of stones and moss while also reworking the lighting of mountains to produce a natural geologic look. Finally, we have Realistic Waters 2. This mod reworks all water textures and effects with a ton of improvements to vanilla water. Ponds, marshes, volcanic and other waters have their own unique colors, lakes and rivers have new ambient sound effects, and the surface textures are now 4k. A notable mention here is also Blended Roads Redone which provides8k textures to all roads in Skyrim.

Vanilla Locations:

This section is just too big to cover completely and even my highlights will not do it justice. When I say every city, town, village, and dungeon is reworked and enhanced I truly mean it. All cities, towns and villages are larger with more buildings and population while staying completely lore friendly. These are the updated Next Gen locations we deserve. The arguable king of interiors, JK, is featured in this modpack with JK's Skyrim and all of his sister mods. When I say this dude is a God... I mean it. The interiors are beautiful and gives a true breath of fresh air to the all major locations both interior and exterior. Next up, Cities of the North is included with all of the North mods making an appearance in this modpack. There are too many to cover, but here is a great example of the unique buildings that have been reworked or added from scratch to the northern most cities. The Great Cities mod series is also added to this modpack and does similar work as the Cities of the North series. Here is an excellent example to the changes to Winterhold... can you spot them? Expanded towns and cities is a mod that covers Darkwater Crossing, Dawnstar, Kynesgrove, Morthal, Riverwood and Rorikstead. This mod enhances these towns and adds buildings, walls, and more. It adds over a total of 30 buildings and 50 NPC's to the game. The mod was removed from Nexus so I don't have many images to share unfortunately. What about Dungeons, in Dungeons Revisited we get a doubling of the size of most dungeons adding new paths, rooms, and enemies.

NPC Overhauls:

Skyrim's NPC's are dated, look boring and many of them completely forgettable. That's why we have 4 series in Elysium that will modernize the vast majority of NPC's and even add some new ones. Northeborn is a series that covers all of the northern holds and towns in Skyrim. Falkreath, Haafingar, the Rift, and Winterhold are all covered. Do you like lots of hot women? So do I. Well if you want the Dragonborn try his luck with 85 of the biggest smoke shows in all of Skyrim then you want Pandorable's NPC's. Pandorable didn't stop at 85, no, he then went on to modify 120 male NPC's that are also featured in Elysium. So whatever your preference... Pandorable has your back. Bijin's mod series are also added for even more literally stunning females that I didn't even think were possible to create in the Creation kit. If you thought I'd stop there you're wrong. We have even more NPC enhancements from Modpocalypse. Very impressive retextures as well.

Condensed Sections:

There are a great number of other architecture and structural mods that add both 3D and 2K textures to Skyrim. In addition 48 clutter improving mods have been added, high definition food texture replacements, all vanilla clothing and weapons have been enhanced and all unique artifacts have had HD texture replacements. Additionally, there are around 20 HD creature replacement mods ranging from horse textures to wolves to trolls and mammoths.

Part 2:

In my next part I will cover the remainder of the sections in detail. Appearance, gameplay overhauls, non-texture NPC improvements, combat, near gear additions, new quest related content, music and sounds and last but not least skeletons and animations.

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If you enjoyed this please upvote and share. Again, this post is just because when I downloaded Elysium I couldn't even find the remastered modlist. I went through the full list so you don't have to. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for part 2!