Here are the best crafting mods that you can install for Skyrim (Special Edition).
It’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t heard of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This massively popular RPG released back in 2011 still has a huge active player base, and people are still joining in!
The story of Bethesda’s fifth installment in The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, takes place 200 years after the events of the last game, Oblivion, and it is set in the northernmost province of Tamriel, a continent on the planet Nim. You fill in the shoes of the Dragonborn and go out on a quest to defeat the dragon who is prophesied to destroy the world, Alduin.
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Like most other RPGs, you’re set to roam freely in the huge world of Tamriel and take part in all sorts of quests and adventures. Additionally, you can choose to completely ignore the main story line and focus on the plethora of other things the game has to offer.
Skyrim: Special Edition is the latest version of the game that includes all the contents of the three DLCs: Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn, as well as a graphical upgrade.
One of the more nuanced features of the game is the crafting mechanics. However, many overlook this mechanic completely, as the vanilla crafting mechanics feel old and tedious at times.
Top 15 Crafting Mods in Skyrim SE
Thankfully, the modding community has created dozens of crafting mods that add some very needed flavors to the system over the years. Without delaying, let’s dive into what we think are the best 15 crafting mods in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim SE.
15. Hunterborn
Download Link: Hunterborn SE
Hunterborn Mod completely reworks the hunting mechanics in the game. Hunting in Skyrim can sometimes feel unrewarding because of the items you get from it. However, this mod changes the monotonous routine of killing and plotting animals into something much more immersive.
Hunterborn mod makes hunting much more in-depth by including the actual process of dressing down a kill, skinning it for its pelt, gathering materials from it for the purpose of alchemy, and of course, butchering your hunt for its meat. Additionally, the amount of meat you gather actually depends on the weight of the animal you hunted.
Oh, and it brings with it several different new items like hunting knives and many new alchemy ingredients. Although not essential, it’s definitely a nice mod to have, and thus granting it the number 15 spot on this list.
14. Spell Crafting
Download Link: Spell Crafting for Skyrim
Originally, Skyrim didn’t really have the ability to craft spells other than a few enchantments and magic abilities. This Spell Crafting mod adds some much-needed depth to the mechanic by adding upwards of 40 magical abilities that you can apply to your spells.
However, in order to craft the spells, you need to travel to the College of Winterhold and enter the Hall of Attainment. Head to the Alter of Spells and you can start crafting spells from magical effects you have already unlocked.
Also, this mod allows you to control the various aspects of each spell, like its effect duration, the target type, the amount of damage, levels of targets affected, and much more. Each crafted spell can have up to five unique magic effects. Therefore, you can craft spells with combinations of effects that are just tailored for your use.
13. Decrafty
Download Link: Decrafty
Decrafty allows the players to break down various unwanted weapons and armor into their respective crafting components and a few extra resources as a bonus. For example, you can turn your unwanted leather armor into leather strips and metal armor into ingots.
You recover one-for-one ingots for each item you put into the smelter. So you can recover both common and rare crafting materials that went into making a piece of armor or weapon.
Having armor pieces lying around can be pretty hasslesome as you progress in the game, and spending more time sorting your inventory is a task we are not particularly fond of. Thus, this mod greatly helps clean up your storage and grants you essential resources in return.
12. Smelting – A Way to Recycle
Download Link: Smelting – A Way to Recycle
Like number 13 on the list, the Smeling – A Way to Recycle Mod also significantly improves your crafting experience and convenience. We all end up carrying tons of armor we don’t need and feel like we don’t have the materials to craft the ones we do need. This mod allows you to turn all the useless items into valuable craftable resources.
The benefits do somewhat overlap with the last mod, but this one can also smelt rings, amulets, circles, and a whole lot of other resources you have as well. Also, how much of what item you can obtain by recycling differs between the mods as well, so I recommend checking them both out.
11. Ars Metallica
Download Link: Ars Metallica
If you have a decent number of hours in Skyrim, you would know that the Smithing Skill feels unrewarding and unnecessarily tricky to upgrade compared to others. That is why many don’t bother leveling it up.
Well, Ars Metallica adds a multitude of ways that you can use to farm experience towards the skill tree. The mod also allows you to forge arrows, gain skill for smelting and mining, and smelt down weapons as well.
Additionally, You can forge arrows out of various ore materials, wood, leather strips, and feathers, make lockpicks out of iron or steel, allow members of factions to forge equipment appropriate for their guilds, and a whole lot more.
10. Batch Crafting Recipes
Download Link: Batch Crafting Recipes
Why this feature is not in the original game is a question I can’t seem to find the answer to. The Batch Crafting Recipes mod allows you to do just exactly as the name suggests, craft in batches.
I know the feeling of getting a cramp from clicking on the crafting menu over thousands of times. So, this mod has been a life-changer for me. It allows you to add batch crafting recipes for all the raw materials used by the smelter and tanning rack crafting stations in order to reduce the time you need to make your desired item.
9. Solars Portable Crafting
Download Link: Solars Portable Crafting
Solars Portable Crafting allows you to build crafting stations wherever and whenever you want! Hence, with this mod, you can craft on the go.
This means that you can now stop worrying about spending more time than you have to looking for a crafting station or seeking a vendor who is selling just the right stuff.
The mod allows you to drop your crafting kit anywhere in the area you want. The crafting kit model is identical to the one in the game and is well-adjustable. You can pick it up, rotate it, and adjust its position to your liking. Once placed and locked in place, activating the Crafting Station will open the crafting menu, generally like any other station.
8. Scroll Crafting
Download Link: Skyrim Scroll Crafting
In my opinion, Skyrim Scroll Crafting is a lot more useful than Spells Crafting, which is why I ranked it higher up the list. This mod adds a bunch of new scrolls to the game that can be crafted. 85 new scrolls in particular. Additionally, it also gives you the ability to craft every single scroll that is originally in the main game.
The mod also adds a unique new crafting table and perk system dedicated to Scroll Crafting. And if that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a player-owned dungeon with an Inscription Table that is easily accessible via College of Winterhold so that you can craft in peace.
7. Smithing Oils
Download Link: Smithing Oils
The Smithing Oils mod adds new potions in the form of oils, crafted with smithing ingredients. So why is this mod ranked this high on the list? It’s because of the players who are the main Warriors.
Warrior mains have little to no magic spells in their arsenal. Therefore, they are cut off from the schools of magic and nifty abilities like Enchanting and Alchemy, essentially giving them a lack of options when it comes to healing.
That’s where this mod comes into play, as it opens up new options to craft different attribute-granting potions. From healing yourself over time to granting you the ability to walk on water, this mod feels great.
6. Useful Magical Staves – UMS
Download Link: Useful Magical Staves – UMS
Useful Magical Staves – UMS is a mod that completely overhauls the current stave enchantments. It is kind of disappointing that staves are not all that useful after a certain point in the game, especially in the late game.
However, with this mod, you can enchant your staves in different ways like scaling the spell magnitude of your staves with your enchantment skill, augmenting your attacks so that they can paralyze the target, increasing the duration of your stave spells. For example, Magelight staves can cast unlimited light spheres and won’t disappear when casting another one. Meaning you can light up caves with this ability.
Also, Soul Siphon will work for staves now as well, so if you kill a target with a stave and you have a stave equipped with the weakest soulgem, then it will be consumed, and double his charge will be added to the staff charge, having a higher enchanting level will also trigger the magnitude of the skill up depends on the soulgem used.
5. Honed Metal Additional Materials
Download Link: Honed Metal Additional Materials
With Honed Metal Additional Materials mod, you can actually just hire blacksmiths to craft things for you. This would be a much-welcome addition to players who have spent hundreds of hours in the game already and now want a more convenient way to get their gear.
This mod allows you to just straight up buy power weapons and armor from the blacksmiths throughout Skyrim. Also, you can hire blacksmiths to upgrade your existing gear as well.
4. Mystic Condenser SE
Download Link: Mystic Condenser SE
Mystic Condenser SE is a mod that can convert lower-tier weapons and materials to higher-tier ones. This is another mod that helps you with managing your inventory as throughout your journey in Skyrim, you’ll be filling up your inventory with a lot of low-level stuff like potions and weapons.
Honestly when you have 300+ HP, the potion in your inventory that heals for 25HP is a complete waste of space. Likewise, weapon poisons are just as useless against giants and dragons. Also, selling them for a few coins feels like a waste of time as well.
With this mod installed, you can combine them and turn everything that you don’t need into something more useful. This mod even works for potions, poisons, and soul gems. For example, The Mystic Condenser will combine 2 or more potions/poisons/filled soul gems of the same type into 1 or more of their higher-level counterparts, with no loss of efficacy.
Meaning, 3 standard Potions of Healing (restore 50 points of health each) will condense down to 2 Potions of Plentiful Healing (restore 75 points of health each), preserving the total 150 points of health, while taking up 0.5 less weight (and being worth a few more septims as well).
Out of all the other mods that perform a similar function, I found myself using this the most for its convenience and usefulness, which is why this mod is ranked at number 4 in this list.
3. Honeystead Meadery
Download Link: Honeystead Meadery
Honeystead Meadery is a mod that adds a completely new aspect to Skyrim. With this mod, you can become a master brewer in Skyrim! You have the option to construct, furnish, and run your very own meadery in the vast world of Tamriel.
Some of this mod’s more notable features are adding several new consumable items and crafting ingredients into the game. Enjoy the whole new process of mixing, brewing, and aging your products, face new NPC dialogues that change dynamically based on your decisions, and a whole lot more!
Utilize and dive into an enhanced crafting system to brew dozens of new consumables. Afterward, you can save them for yourself or even sell them in nearby cities where the market trends change over time.
2. Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim
Download Link: Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim
Number 2 on this list is the Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim mod. This mod is one of the most downloaded mods out there for the game and for good reason as well. It overhauls the existing perk trees of Skyrim to increase the depth and functionality of character building.
Specifically, this mod overhauls all perk trees for a whopping total of 469 new perks. We all have had character build ideas that piqued our interests at some point playing the game. However, building a viable character with the ideas in mind felt next to impossible due to the limited build paths.
This is where Perks of Skyrim mod showcases its usefulness. With this mod installed, you can go wild with the type of character you dream to build as the diverse perks have the potential to make almost every character viable!
1. Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade
Download Link: Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade
I know we’ve gone over multiple mods that overhaul the crafting system in one way or another, but as far as completely overhauling the entire crafting mechanic goes in Skyrim, I would pick this mod any day of the week.
After putting in some hours into Skyrim, you will realize that the vanilla crafting system, especially the smithing system, leaves much room for improvement in its functionality and balance. The Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade works to correct the logical inconsistencies and prove the most comprehensive, consistent, and fully customizable crafting experience in Skyrim.
Some of the features include a customizable recipe display, decreased clutter, removal of penalties for completion of certain quests early, adjustments to the speed of mining and chopping wood, and a whole lot more. So all in all, I believe that this mod rightfully deserves to top the list of the best crafting mods available for Skyrim Special Edition.
And there you have it, the 15 crafting mods that have entirely changed the way I go about playing Skyrim. But I think it goes without saying that this list is based on what I find to be the most useful and how often I use the mods myself, so this isn’t necessarily a strict tier list.
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