Does anyone have any good Skyrim mod recommendations?

Hey everyone, I just started a new playthrough and need some solid mods to make things interesting without breaking everything. What are your all-time favorites?

Skyrim is great but honestly I've been thinking about this for like three days and there are so many mods that it feels overwhelming -- you have to be careful with load order or everything breaks. I remember my first time playing the base game, no mods at all, just a fresh install on 2011. There was one quest where I had to find a hidden cave behind some waterfall and I spent like an hour looking for it when there's basically nothing in that area except rocks -- that kind of frustration is what drives you toward modding because once you have better textures and more NPC dialogue the game opens up completely. Oh man, speaking of caves that took forever to find reminds me of this camping trip my dad and I went on back in 2014 where we got lost for like four hours looking for a specific trailhead near Moab -- there was this huge red rock arch right above us pointing at nothing and he kept saying 'it has to be around here' while I could see the parking lot clearly from where we were standing. We eventually found it because an old man on his ATV pulled over and told us we were going in a circle, which is exactly how Skyrim feels sometimes when you're trying to find that one specific dungeon entrance -- but seriously for mods, start with SKSE64 first then get the Unofficial Patch of Skyrim Special Edition since there are like 500 tiny bug fixes in there and don't forget Apocalypse - it overhauls every single weapon and spell in a way that makes combat actually interesting instead of just spamming Fireball.

Oh man, I'm glad someone asked this because the mod list for Skyrim is basically a mountain and it can be overwhelming if you don't know where to start.

My personal recommendation depends on what kind of experience you want:

If you want a more realistic combat feel, look into MCO (Modern Combat Overhaul) paired with Precision — that completely changes how sword fighting works from clunky clicking to actual directional attacks. For lighting and atmosphere, ReShade setups like Community Shaders make the game look modern without needing a NASA rig.

If you just want quality-of-life fixes: Ordinator for revamped quest rewards/skills (makes leveling feel much more rewarding), Alternate Skyrim Weathers for dynamic weather changes