Top 5 Best Skyrim Combat Mods 2023

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#1 Combat Gameplay Overhaul

 

There has been one reigning supreme when it comes to combat mods since its release in March of 2020, and it is easy to see why. CGO entirely reworks combat in Skyrim by removing any limitations the engine had on character animations or combat moves themselves. 

 

The most immediate changes are the camera lean and dodge rolls, which add weight to your character’s movement and add a way to subvert damage in combat without blocking. 

 

The second biggest change comes with the weapons themselves, allowing you to switch how you’re holding your weapon by choosing between using two hands or one hand. One-handed attacks are faster and more precise, but two-handed attacks strike in an ark in front of you, hitting all enemies; this also changes which skills are used, as using a one-handed weapon with two hands still relies on your two-handed skill and vise versa. 

 

The dodge roll can be utilized by both the player and NPC, which brings a drastic change to combat. The player can change settings to allow invincibility frames while rolling, causing you to time your rolls very similarly to Dark Souls and other action games. 

 

Aside from numerous minuscule changes, the last change CGO makes involves reworking the animation system of Skyrim, allowing for the upper body to attack while the lower body moves. In practice, any attacks used to root the Dragonborn in place can now be performed while moving.

 

 

#2 Ultimate Combat

 

This mod aims to improve combat on all fronts. To start with, it adds multiple attacks to the AI to help improve and diversify their attack pattern and aggressiveness. This affects almost all humanoid races, from lowly Draugr and humans to the mighty dragon priests and dwarven centurions! 

 

It also adds some light load scripts to the AI to help them make smarter decisions, such as trying to flee should they take serious damage and friendly NPC’s actively attempt to protect the injured opponent from the Dragonborn. Mages will now utilize their full arsenal, using healing spells and other often forgotten about magics.

 

Additionally, this mod removes some rather annoying features from combat in the vanilla game, such as that unbelievable dodge to the side some enemies will pull off while being shot at with a ranged weapon. It also reduces the tracking speed of all NPC’s, forcing them to shoot and swing at a similar pace as the player, and removes the disarm shout from Draugr. 

 

Finally, this mod also introduces timed blocks that allow for a counter hit if you block fast enough and locational damage to keep you on your toes mid-combat. Locational damage works by adding special debuffs to different areas that are hit. For example, if you hit someone in the leg with an arrow, it will slow them down and stagger them. 

 

 

#3 Wildcat Combat of Skyrim

 

This is the last of the big three most recommended combat mods and is more streamlined than the last two, but it is still a full overhaul of combat in its own right. Its objective is to make combat more dangerous and deadly by increasing damage, adding injuries, and increasing the AI’s aggressiveness. 

 

This makes the enemies much more relentless in their assault on the player than sitting around waiting for the player to make a move. All characters now spend stamina when attacking or dodging, causing stamina management to become a huge part of winning any fight. Losing track of your stamina for too long can put you into a fatigued state that causes your attacks to slow by 15%, and staying at low health causes your Magicka and stamina to regenerate 30% slower. 

 

To make matters harder on both sides, this mod also introduces injuries that can be afflicted to the player and NPC’s; these injuries can range anywhere from an arm being injured causing you to drop your weapon to your head being injured, causing your Magicka to drop to zero and health to drain. Lastly are the attacks of opportunity. These are attacks that deal extra damage if certain conditions are met, the most obvious of which being a 50% increase in damage if the enemy is power attacking when you hit them.

 

 

#4 Mortal Enemies

 

There isn’t much to say about this mod other than it heavily improves the other three mentioned mods. The main feature here is to remove the annoying aim bot attacks from all enemies in the game while also setting some limits on attacking NPC’s. 

 

In essence, this mod forces your enemies to commit to their attacks instead of seemingly always tracking you with quick turns; this makes dodging and positioning far more critical than they ever were in vanilla.

 

 

#5 Ordinator

This mod is the icing on the cake to however you want to play your game. 

 

I physically can not go over everything this mod achieves, but to give a brief description, it reworks the perk system in Skyrim by adding nearly four-hundred perks to help fine-tune your playthrough to any build you might want. 

 

While this is technically less of a combat mod itself, it works heavily to improve your combat mods by giving you an almost infinite number of ways to approach the game.