Skyrim gives us a vast, open world with lots of places to explore, and creatures to meet. And while the game’s variety is impressive, more never hurts (except when it does.) So of course we’re going to throw in lots of modded creatures into our game!
In this list, you can expect a bunch of things. Some of the mods will solely be appearance changes. There will be many that add lore-friendly creatures to the worldspace for you to encounter. You’ll also find a handful of non-violent creatures here and there. And finally, there are the mods that modify behavior.
20. True Wolves of Skyrim
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Let’s jump right into it, because I always thought Skyrim’s wolves were kinda dreadful. Seriously, take a look at a picture of a real wolf, which are majestic creatures. Then come back to Skyrim and look at that malnourished nightmare. Take a hyena and starve it for a few days and you’ll see the likeness. (On a serious note, animal abuse isn’t cool!
This mod will replace the meshes and textures of all wolves in games. It’s just a cosmetic change, so their behavior will depend on other mods you have or don’t have installed. The wolves themselves will look clean and beautiful. The Special Edition version of it also adds diversity to wolves and dogs, so definitely check it out if you’re on that.
You might have noticed that Skyrim’s animals are not fluffy. To be fair, fur in video games is kind of a modern innovation, but no reason for us to not add it! Essentially, it uses a technique called Shell Texturing to generate these models that look very much like fur. So now we can get some much-needed fluff for all animals in the game.
It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s cute nonetheless. This is a pretty old mod and it’s essentially a proof of concept. If you’re on the Legendary edition, you’re kinda stuck with it. Special Edition users have a better alternative that I’ll link down below.
Fluffworks does everything that FusaFusa did, but it looks much better. This is also the newest mod on this list. The fur texture in this one looks quite good in my opinion and covers a wide variety of animals in-game. It also doesn’t cover everything that FusaFusa does, so you might want to pair them together.
Retexture mods are incompatible with this mod, so be careful what to throw in. Your animals might look a little weird. As long as it looks vanilla, it should be fine. The mod also offers options in quality, so you can go for a medium-quality if your computer is on the lower end.
Yet another mod on the furry end, but this one specializes on bears. Which is what you’d expect, with a name like that. Not only does it make them fluffy, though, it also modifies their models to give the three bear types of Skyrim some variety.
The first thing you’ll notice after all that fur is the size of the bears. Now they come in different shapes and sizes. The brown bears are now huge, with thick fur. Cave bears are smaller in comparison and have a distinctive hunched back. And finally, the snow bears are the smallest of the bunch, with a longer neck that’s hard to miss.
If you want a more in-depth description, make sure to check out the mod’s page. This is also purely cosmetic, so aggression level won’t be modified by this mod.
Frost is one of the three unique horses in Skyrim. Unlike the other two, Frost is pretty easy to forget. Before the DLC came out, people only kept Frost around until they got Shadowmere. And after Dawnguard, it was either Shadowmere or Arvak. And a big part of this is Frost’s bland appearance.
This mod changes his color from cream to a gray shade, like the other Rift horses. But to make him unique, he keeps his white mane and tail. He also gets a new saddle to add to his uniqueness.
Keep in mind, this mod isn’t purely cosmetic. While it doesn’t alter any of Frost’s stats, it makes him essential. So if that bothers you, you might want to skip this.
The second of the three iconic horses of Skyrim, Shadowmere is a stunner. This horse is so popular, people sometimes go through the Dark Brotherhood questline only to get this girl. (And I know that Astrid uses the male pronoun, but what does she know? I’m team Lucien!)
Shadowmere is a pretty horse in Skyrim, but suffers from the same problem as most other horses. When you take away the saddle, she’s just a dark brown horse with kinda muddy textures. And don’t get me wrong, I was enthralled the moment she stepped out of the inky pool. But she deserves more!
You just have to look at the screenshots to understand why I’m recommending this mod. It turns Shadowmere into a beauty! The pretty textures come in high quality and are accompanied by new models that look equally impressive. The mod is only offered in 4K, so you’ll have to lower it yourself if you want a different option.
And now, we look at the last of the three unique horses. In the Dawnguard DLC, Bethesda gave us a horse that was really something else. Not only is it a dead horse that you can summon, it looks like a burning skeleton! If that’s not awesome, then we need to redefine the word.
Unfortunately, Arvak’s textures kinda look… plasticky. And this mod came out in 2012, so it’s not even a matter of changing with the times. But enough about that, let’s get into the texture replacer.
This mod gives you several varieties of textures to choose from. Personally, I like the Soul Cairn version. It looks like the vanilla design but with much better textures. But if you want something different, you have the option. And despite the name, nothing but the textures are rewritten.
I honestly don’t know if I think these guys are cute or disturbing. But considering how I want them in my game so much, I think… both? These little chicken-looking things are natives to Morrowind, where they’re raised for meat and eggs. So they’re literally Ashland chickens.
Now, you’ll find them in Skyrim. To be precise, you’ll find them in Solstheim, since Skyrim’s temperature would be too cold for them. Expect to see these guys in Raven Rock and Tel-Mithryn, though you might run into some in the ashy wilderness as well.
The mod author has a plethora of other mods that add creatures to Skyrim. Some of them are from the The Elder Scrolls series, others are inspired from outside sources. Feel free to check them out from their profile. Be wary, though, enemies added by their mods can be overpowered.
If you’re read any of my other articles, you already know this. If not, here it is. I don’t love cats. But in a world with dogs, goats, chickens and even bantam-guars running around, it’s inconsistent to not have these felines. And Khajiits don’t fit the bill, ESO has cats so they’re quite canon.
This mod adds little cats to all of Skyrim. You’ll find domesticated and stray cats. They’re just harmless little guys like all the other farm animals in Skyrim. You can even kill them, if that’s your thing. Not that I’m saying you should, but this is Skyrim. The mod has an MCM menu where you can configure everything.
If you want your own cat, that’s also doable. You can either adopt a stray, but you’ll need to earn its trust. Otherwise, you can buy them from two pet stores added in the outskirts of Whiterun and Riften.
Since I’ve been talking about consistency for a bit, let’s tackle another relevant matter. Skyrim has these giant camps all over the land, and all you see are the dudes and their mammoths. It almost feels like the premise to a country song, but let’s return to the topic at hand. Where are the women and children?
Like other Mihail Mods, it’s pretty straightforward. The mod adds giantesses and younglings to the giant camps. Their designs are pretty great and keep in style with Skyrim’s original design. A concern with many mods from the author is a lack of balance but this one’s minor enough to not cause too much trouble.
One of the most impressive modders of our times is 4thUnknown, and they bring us this amazing compilation of Morrowind creatures. Seriously, their work is so high quality it’s astounding. All you have to do is take a look at the pictures and admire them.
The mod description is a little sparse, so the best way to really experience it is playing it. You’ll find wild Guars and Shalks in the wildernesses of Solstheim. You’ll also find them in some areas of the Rift as well. And most importantly, there’s a guard you can buy in Raven Rock that you can ride like a horse!
The Daedra are awesome, and Skyrim does not have enough of them. I mean, sure you can do quests for all 16 Princes. And you can summon and fight against Dremora, but that’s just the bare minimum. If you’ve played the older games, you’re probably dying to kill a scamp or clannfear or two. With this mod, those dreams of yours will be fully realized.
The daedric creatures that you can find are scamps, clannfears, hungers, daedroths, ogrims and dark seducers. The game doesn’t have an abundance in the visitable planes of Oblivions, except the pockets of Apocrypha. So the enemies are distributed throughout key locations. You’ll also find spell tomes that let you summon them.
When it comes to mods that add enemy variety, I can’t think of anything that can rival Immersive Creatures. The sheer amount of enemies added is mind-blowing. There are so many of them added to so many locations, it makes replaying the game and exploring a sheer pleasure. It also adds a few that aren’t immersive at all, but the MCM configuration makes it easy to select which enemy types will show up.
The creatures added are also given special abilities. They’re also supposed to be slightly more challenging than the vanilla variety, and I can attest to that from my own experience. Version 7, which is only available for Special Edition, also adds a few more creature types, including some from my previous entry. But the two mods are fully compatible, you just have to load Daedra after this one.
There’s a few mods that alter animal behaviors, but this mod is probably the lightest and also unique in some ways. You won’t see realistic migratory patterns or get knocked down by sacrecats. But the MCM Menus of One With Nature offers multiple ruleset that modify behavior, creating a unique interaction in Skyrim.
With this mod, you can configure animals to be Allies, Friendly, Cowardly, Defensive or just plain Vanilla. So if you’re roleplaying as a druid and it hurts your suspension of disbelief every time Spriggans run after you, this is the mod for you. The rules can actually get quite extensive, so you have a lot of flexibility in how to configure them. Think of yourself as a dungeon master creating your ideal Skyrim. Needless to say, this mod is incompatible with anything that modifies behavior.
Ah, lovely draugrs! Can’t live with or without them. Considering how they’re native to Skyrim and can be found in almost every dungeon you enter, you’re guaranteed to run into them. Granted, you could be roleplaying as a merchant, but that’s a different conversation.
Haugbui gives the draugr bosses some much needed love. This mod takes the generic bosses and modifies their appearances based on their lore descriptions. It also adds one unique boss from the lore and increases draugr tiers to make the encounters much more entertaining. You’ll also find rebalanced stats and new unique items in your exploration.
The dogs of Skyrim are cute, but useful is not a word I’d choose in describing them. They don’t do much besides following you around and fighting for you, but their stats are bad enough that they die pretty quickly. So you can either lead Meeko to his death, or you can leave him in that shack with his master’s corpse. Not very nice either way.
Now your dog will actually do things for you. You can ask the mutts to look around the area for certain things, and after a while they’ll come back with whatever they find. Of course, this is limited to only things that are lying around, but it’d be weird if Meeko was unlocking chests left and right. It still doesn’t make them invulnerable, so be careful.
I love horses in Skyrim, and they’re an amazing feature to have. Can you imagine scaling all those mountains on foot? You’re welcome to if that’s your thing, but I’m definitely doing it on horseback. That being said, Skyrim lacks certain quality-of-life features that modders have added for us. This is a lightweight mod that adds management systems and QoL updates without being overbearing.
You can now interact with horses to manage any horse you own. That means checking its inventory, renaming it, giving it to a follower, or even getting rid of the horse altogether! And one of the coolest and simplest features is a whistle button. Using the MCM menu, you can configure a hotkey to whistle and call your horse.
This mod also makes changes to the unique horses. Frost is now the fastest horse in the game and quite sturdy. Shadowmere is the strongest and most aggressive. And the undead horse Arvak has limitless stamina. Almost everything is configurable using MCM, so you can just unbind or ignore whatever feature seems overkill to you.
With a name that includes ‘savage’ in it, you probably know what to expect from this mod. Increasing the savagery and aggression, however, is only part of the mod’s goal. The main objective is to give the animals a sense of mass when you’re fighting them. But there’s a bunch of bonus stuff here with it.
The first and foremost is the feeling of weight. Thanks to tweaked stats, you’ll feel staggers and even knockdowns when encountering these critters. The mod author has also tweaked the models of the animals to give them that ferocious edge. This looks pretty amazing for the most part.
While it’s awesome for the most part, there are some issues. One of the notable ones is that the changed model of slaughterfishes causes them to float on land. Another issue I personally faced is the extra aggressive elks. You could walk past an elk and it would take offense and pick a fight.
In real life, the patterns of animals change with seasons. Now I think it would be too much to ask for a 2011 game to have it out of the box, but I’m not complaining when a brilliant mod does it. This mod makes changes to which animals you’ll see in the wilderness depending on the season.
The way Skyrim spawns creatures is by using a leveled list, which determines what will show up in places. This mod simply checks for conditions based on the seasons. Now in Winter, you’ll end up seeing a lesser number of creatures altogether. Bears will be hibernating and elks will retreat deeper into the forests. Summer will bring these people out, alongside the large insects in the marshes.
Spring and Autumn is used as a transition period, so the numbers will increase or decrease from the previous season. Using these simple variations, the mod simulates an effective sense of migratory behavior in animals. And the best thing is, it is compatible with the next mod with the help of a patch.
1. SkyTEST 2022 Redux - Realistic Animal and Predators
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When it comes to animal behavior, no other mod even comes close to doing the things that SkyTEST does. It tweaks the existing system to create animal variety and enhances their AI to make them behave more realistically. It will also make them much tougher to deal with, and add interesting behavior to them.
Let’s start with variety. Unlike the other mods on this list, the only variety this one deals with is by adding children. That’s right, you can run around and encounter tiny wolf cubs, though killing them kinda sucks. With the new AI edits, animals will work together, predators will hunt the prey and during fights, they will flee before dying.
There are some stat bonuses as well. Most animals are harder to fight, some more than others. You’ll find that some of them can easily knock you off your feet when they attack. Other features include pack mentality, where bigger numbers will make some enemy types more aggressive. And that’s only scratching the surface of the things this mod does.
With a scale this big, make sure to check for available patches when using with other mods. The 2022 version is only available for Special Edition, so some of the newer models and quality of life features might not be available for Legendary. And while it makes a lot of other mods unnecessary, the compatibility patches make them work together quite well.
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