I recently went back to Skyrim, and I’m having fun with Gate to Sovngarde. It’s a collection of roughly 2000 mods, chosen and integrated by a mod author. I think he knows what he’s doing, because even with all those mods, Skyrim’s original style is preserved and crashes are rare.

There are lots of enhancements in here. Followers (including Inigo), perk and mechanic overhauls, textures and shaders that look good but don’t kill performance, animations (via Open Animation Replacer), uncapped frame rate, expanded dungeons, expanded cities, new areas, more player homes, a reasonably balanced climbing ability, alternate starts, character traits/quirks, seasons, and probably lots of things I haven’t discovered yet. A modified survival mode is included, and I think it adds to immersion without being intrusive. (I’m more vulnerable if I don’t take care of sleep/food/warmth, but I’m unlikely to drop dead from neglecting those needs for a while.) You can also disable it, just as you can disable many other features.

The game is made significantly harder, in a way that I find fun. I have to think and prepare if I want to win boss fights, and there are some fights that I just won’t win until I’ve improved my skills and equipment. A (relatively) easy mode is available, but I haven’t tried it.

To give you an idea of quality, it has become the second most endorsed collection on Nexus. The one in first place is a porn mod.

I haven’t needed to use Wrye Bash or TES5Edit. I did need to do a LOOT sort, but I didn’t need to install LOOT because it’s built into Amethyst Mod Manager. I had to downgrade Skyrim.exe, but the collection includes a tool to automate that for Steam players. The Anniversary Upgrade (Creation Club content) is supported, but not required.

General information is available on the wiki: https://gatetosovngarde.wiki.gg/

Edit: The Gate to Sovngarde maintainer is planning to release a new version within a few weeks, which will not be save-compatible with the current v118. You might want to wait until that new version becomes available, or test drive v118 now and plan to start over when v119 arrives.

I managed to hunt down the list. If you’re interested, see my edited post.

Thank you.

Hm… The icons there don’t match what I see on the HUD, but now that I look closer, one of the ten active effects in that list is on a countdown that might correspond to the vertical bar in the HUD icon. Thanks; that’s a start, at least.

I still hope someone can identify what mod displays these HUD icons. It might have docs explaining the details (like the small disc with an arrow pointing top-right) and listing other icons that it can show.