We’ve found the best perk mods for Skyrim!
These mods will fix existing perks, add new perks, and make your Skyrim experience a lot more remarkable.
Skyrim’s best perk mods differ, depending on the player and what one wants from the game. That’s why this Skyrim’s best perk mods list is not a Top 10. It’s rather a showcase of each perk overhaul, so you can decide for yourself which fits your playstyle best.
There’s a whole range of perk mods and community-made changes that deserve a place in our Skyrim’s best perk mods list, to make your leveling experience feel like new every time.
#1 TTRSO – TheThirdRace Skill Overhaul
TTR.S.O. is a minimalistic skill overhaul that balances the vanilla skills while still maintaining the original feel. All skill trees have been rebalanced to offer more meaningful choices.
If you feel vanilla Skyrim was good enough, but there was still something missing, then this mod is for you. Best of all, it’s modular!
#2 EPO – Efficient Perk Overhaul
EPO aims to reduce the number of perk points players need to spend on unavoidable and boring perks. It is designed for players who don’t want to waste their perk points.
EPO levels up all base and spell level perks automatically, as your skill progresses. This way, you don’t need to waste perk points on perks that are not crucial to your skill’s progress. The Smithing skill is excluded, as it has no base perks. It has been combined into one branch instead, where you learn both heavy and light Smithing as you progress.
A new single perk called Elemental Enchanter combines Fire, Frost, and Storm Enchanter in Enchanting. Enchanting also has Another new Enchanting (optional) perk called Unarmored Enchanter increases the effectiveness of enchantments on clothing and circlets. If you are playing as an unarmored mage, it will make your gameplay a little more effective. The base Enchanter perk levels up automatically.
In Alchemy, Experimenter and Alchemist perks level up automatically as your skill progresses. This lets you save perk points for more interesting Alchemy perks.
This mod doesn’t have any heavy scripts and can be safely installed/uninstalled at any time.
#3 Leveling Perks Original
With this mod, perks level up with you.
Rather than constantly dumping perks into the bottom of the tree, most lower-level perks will level up with your skills all the way to 100. This keeps the early perks from being overpowered, while freeing up more room to spread some perks around, and often making it more rewarding to reach level 100 of a skill.
There are some other changes throughout, like the ability to place up to five runes at level 100 destruction if you have the rune master perk, for example.
#4 Vokrii – Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim
Vokrii is a lightweight perk overhaul that improves build diversity, while respecting vanilla vision and balance.
It overhauls all perk trees for a total of 276 new perks. It is much more closer to vanilla than many popular perk overhauls. New perks are aimed at making a wider variety of builds viable without a significant balance impact.
Best of all, it uses lightweight scripts that don’t cause save bloat, and you can install it during your playthrough!
#5 SkyPerk Overhaul
SkyPerk is a complete perk overhaul. Nearly every perk has been changed in some way, plus a few new perks have been added. The skills themselves level up much slower than before.
The multitude of new options and slower leveling make it much more rewarding and exciting to play the game, and replay it as a new class type.
The mod author has created an entirely balanced system for both new characters and experienced dragon slayers. Most first-tier perks have been lowered in the bonuses they give. Advanced perks will yield better benefits than before. In order to become the best in a skill, you’ll have to specialize in a class related to this skill. Low-level characters can no longer become hulking sword-wielding behemoths in three hours. Nor can they sneak by an enemy camp. Or destroy a 30+ level dungeon with a couple of master level spells. This mod makes you specialize, or improvise.
In addition to the alterations, the mod features several new perks and game changes. Some perks unlock new unique spells that have varied effects depending on the skill they are based on. Out of all the spell perks out of any given tree, you can only choose one. Taking one disables the chance of getting the other(s).
Many perks now come with hidden benefits. The benefits are not shown, but are pretty noticeable. If you delve far enough into the tier, that is. But you will only know if you take a perk. You’ll just have to experiment with the perks and see what they do.
#6 T3nd0’s Perkus Maximus
Perkus Maximus (PerMa) is a large-scale perk, skill, and gameplay overhaul. The mod author implemented new gameplay mechanics, enhanced existing ones, and rebuilt all perk trees from scratch to support the revamped mechanics. The result will completely change the way you approach the character-building process, and thus the entire game.
With Perkus Maximus, perks affect the way you play the game, and reward you for good gameplay. Passive perks have their place, but they either require some form of interactivity to unfold their full value or consume very few perk points. There are no useless perks. In general, there is a wide variety of perks and no “point sinks”; most perks only have a single rank, only very few have three.
In this mod, a strong sense of progression and immersion are king. Mastering a skill should give access to things that genuinely make you feel like a master. No perk has more than three ranks, and quite often, perks gain new effects as you invest more. Good mage perks are worthless without good spells, and warrior perks are impossible without good combat mechanics they can build upon.
Perkus Maximus features a large selection of perks; perk trees are at least twice as large as what vanilla Skyrim offers, enabling a lot of new builds.
#7 SPERG – Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay
SPERG is a minimalist perk overhaul. Its purpose is to make leveling more fun and rewarding, and SPERG’s perks are truly exceptional. With SPERG, you automatically earn basic perks. You don’t have to spend perk points on basic perks, but can save them for specializing your character with advanced perks. SPERG also comes with an easy installation, many configuration options, and high compatibility with other mods.
In vanilla Skyrim, some perk trees are nearly worthless, and some skills are much harder to level than others. SPERG fixes both things by adjusting skill leveling rates, adding a number of different sources of skill gain, and completely overhauling the skill trees. These adjustments reward players for actually going out and playing the game instead of just grinding skills that are difficult to gain.
Far from being the dull perks of the regular game, each perk is meaningful and unique.
Characters in vanilla Skyrim almost always end up playing the same. With more varied perks and abilities, each character has a truly unique feel. This makes the game more fun on its own, and it creates more interesting tools for role-playing.
Play as you want, the way you want. Characters like pacifist mages and sneaky thieves are much more viable with this mod. Want to play a hunter who lives in peace with wild animals? Now you can. Forget about grinding and just play. SPERG takes care of the rest.
Give SPERG a shot and see why so many people refuse to play without it.
#8 Path of Sorcery – Magic Perk Overhaul
Walk the Path of Sorcery, and become a true master of the arcane!
This mod may not be a complete perk overhaul, but we believe it deserves a place in Skyrim’s best perk mods, as it overhauls all the Skyrim magic perks, and that’s still 1/3 of all the perks. Plus, an overhaul of the magic perks is a must for all Skyrim mages, much more useful than overhauls for warriors and thieves.
Path of Sorcery is a complete perk overhaul of Skyrim’s magic skills. With more interesting perk options and more ways to role-play, this mod improves the experience of playing a mage immensely. All without changing Skyrim’s magic system into something completely new.
The vanilla magic perk trees are pretty dull, and lack the depth needed to make progression enjoyable. Your perk choices have no real weight. Virtually, you can become a master of everything, even when it doesn’t make sense.
Path of Sorcery fixes Skyrim’s magic progression system, and adds all sorts of exciting goodies on top of that.
#9 Adamant – A Perk Overhaul
Adamant is a complete perk overhaul of Skyrim’s skills. It aims to balance existing skills and add powerful new perks to the game. It provides the player with compelling choices and smooth progression from start to finish.
While Adamant does increase the total number of perks in the game, it avoids bloat, sprawl, and power creep by balancing its selection of perks around vanilla perk gains.
Like many modern perk overhauls, it supports popular gameplay styles that are underutilized in the vanilla game, such as shouts, staves, and unarmed combat.
#10 Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim
Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim is an immersion and gameplay overhaul mod. It changes the perks presented by the vanilla game and expands upon them to make the game more challenging and elaborate.
Ordinator overhauls all perk trees for a total of 469 new perks and enables many new viable character builds.
It’s highly compatible, and best of all, it uses lightweight scripts that don’t cause save bloat, and it can be installed during your playthrough!
Being the most popular among Skyrim’s best perk mods, we can only recommend to at least try it.
Skyrim’s Best Perk Mods special mentions
While the Skyrim’s best perk mods list above contains all the complete perk overhauls we recommend, there are some specialized mods that overhaul one skill only. We believe they still deserve to be at least mentioned, so here they are:
#1 Lopsided – Perks for empty left hands
A simple perk mod to enable a duelist/fencer playstyle.
#2 Simplified Lockpicking Tree
If you don’t like mods that drastically change vanilla, but also think that vanilla lockpicking tree is useless and unattractive, then this mod is definitely for you.
#3 Enhanced speech tree – Reloaded
A simple minor overhaul to the Speech tree, reuploaded and fully working.
#4 Stealth Skills Rebalanced
This mod re-balances Skyrim’s stealth skills (Sneak, Lockpicking, and Pickpocket) to add more significant challenge and immersion to the game. If you play a stealth-based character, this mod will make your game more challenging and much more rewarding.
#5 Smithing Perks Overhaul – Remade
This mod allows smithing perks to apply more consistently to all armor and weapon types, and provides a more balanced smithing experience.
#6 Linear Smithing Tree
Linear Smithing removes the need to choose between heavy and light Smithing. Perks have been combined to allow you to craft items from both sides of the tree.
#7 Simple Enchanting Tree
Simple Enchanting Tree combines some Enchanting perks together, so you can save perk points when filling out the Enchanting tree.