At their core, open-world RPGs like Skyrim are massive power fantasies.
They show you a world where it’s possible to just push forward, boldly defeating all odds in your path to victory.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a sophisticated mage or a burly brawler, so long as you manage to survive everything this wild world throws at you.
And it’s tempting to give yourself a slight power boost to really show the game who’s boss. And to really push it, that power boost can only come from one place: mods.
Let me share some of the most overpowered mods from my load order!
The first step to becoming over-powered in Skyrim is reaching the limits Bethesda has set for you. You must acquire every perk on every skill tree.
It’s actually impossible to get them all in one run, as you’ll only earn about 80 skill points before you’re max level.
Instead you’ll need ClearanceClarence’s Max Skills & Perks, which automatically lights up every star in the firmament.
With this, you’ll be able to wear heavy or light armor indistinctly, enchant your equipment with the best buffs, and tap into a different fighting style for every encounter.
Unlike perks, every shout can be unlocked and fully leveled up in an unmodded game if you have the patience to hunt down that many dragons.
But shouts have a limit.
You can have the best shouts in the game, but there’s no getting around the lengthy cooldown, meaning you can’t shout people to pieces.
The lore treats Dragonborn and other Thu’um masters as gods among men who can build cities or bring them to heel just by shouting. If you want to be like that, you’ll have to reduce your shout cooldown.
Infinite Shouts by TrinityKill pulls out all the stops granting you an Amulet of Talos that reduces the cooldown by 99%. That’s only a couple of seconds!
Watch out, Nine Divines – there’s a newcomer in town.
Few things can make you feel over-powered like picking up items with your mind.
This is doubly true if those things are your enemies!
Psychokinesis by TeemingSniveling is an enhanced version of Telekinesis that’ll let you grab, hold, and launch enemies in any direction like it’s a mudcrab’s shell after dinner.
This spell will work on humans, animals, and mythical creatures alike.
Even Dremora aren’t immune to your big brain… and neither are your followers.
WarriorKeKe’s Spells & Powers has been a staple of magical modding since 2013.
The Skyrim community never fully embraced it, but one group never forgot it: the ones who liked the game unbalanced in their favor.
Spells that let you throw lightning balls, auras that absorb the souls of people around you, and sorceries that make you unreachable by physical damage are only some of the additions in this mod.
They’re not all overpowered individually – but if you take them seriously, they can make you nigh-invincible in battle.
Colorful Magic is another classic magic mod that’s garnered popularity for being overpowered.
Creator Gardemarin offers an absurd 345 all-new spells, along with some valuable magical items for even more power.
Most of these spells are of the Destruction school and include enchanting your weapons to spit fire or thunder whenever you launch a power attack.
If you’re not interested in the immersive new items, enemies, or followers, and just want to become overpowered, download the Simplified Edition which only contains spells. You’ll find full details on how to set that up in the mod description.
Mastering Destruction is hardly the only way to become OP in Skyrim.
If there’s something Skyrim NPCs aren’t great at, it’s movement.
Sometimes it’s enough to stand on a tall rock to make them short-circuit and stand around looking confused while you snipe them with your bow.
As such, spells and powers granting mobility will elevate you away from the masses – sometimes literally.
The Blink Spell by Meh321 is inspired by the same-name spell from Dishonored, and basically it lets you teleport to the location you point to – no matter how far away.
There’s nothing more classic in the way of becoming overpowered than LordZandor’s Cheating Chests.
This awesome mod lays out four chests in Riverwood or Whiterun that contain almost every powerful item in the game.
There’s one full of high-level gear, one with crafting materials, one with alchemy ingredients, and one full of magical items like spellbooks and powerful enchanted equipment.
Every edition of Skyrim has at least one mod like Cheating Chests. Hell, there must be one for Oblivion as well.
Putting a bunch of powerful items in chests and giving them to the player at an early stage is the simplest way to cheat in a Bethesda game.
Ending a hard-won fight with a brutal kill animation is one of the finest pleasures of playing Skyrim.
Still, wouldn’t it be cool if it happened just a bit more often?
You can control the frequency of these killmoves and more with Reko’s Violens.
No more looking at killmove compilations on YouTube. With this mod, you can increase the chances of triggering one past all moderation and execute entire bands of outlaws while the rest look on in horror.
Violens isn’t the most overpowered mod, but it will make you feel like a god.
There’s nothing quite as overpowered as absolute control over the rules of reality.
Making monsters appear from thin air, resurrecting the dead, and having any item that’s ever been crafted at your fingertips are only some of the boons you can get from MCM Cheat Menu.
Creator ArrowFX included a wealth of potent cheats such as maxing out your septims, increasing your speed, or the most overpowered cheat of them all: activating God Mode.
The mod also gives you complete control over stats, perks, enchantments, and just about anything you could think of.
If this doesn’t make you feel powerful, nothing will.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
