The focus on these scaly behemoths brought the game closer to the broader Western fantasy narrative, evoking the terror of LOTR’s Smaug and the dragon from the English heroic poem Beowulf. That said, the vanilla dragons are not perfect. They’re epic and fearsome for sure. But some of us would like a little more variety, a little more ferociousness, and all sorts of traits that describe our ideal dragon. And modding is here to help. I’ve put together this collection of the most amazing dragon-centered mods available for The Elder Scrolls V.
20. Enhanced Mighty Dragons
Check Out This Mod Dragons may be big and strong. But after fighting a few, they become ordinary. Enhanced Mighty Dragons by the Sands of Time Team gives dragons back their dignity by making them as menacing as Skyrim lore describes them. The mod makes them stronger in every way and customizes them to have different resistances and weaknesses depending on their nature. It adds a degree of strategy to a fight that used to be downing potion after potion while slashing away furiously.
19. Dragons Fall Down
Check Out This Mod Before you learn Dragonrend, you’ll only kill a dragon in Skyrim if it lets you kill it. They can always take flight, and you’ll be lucky if you manage to get an arrow in while they’re circling the skies. Still, every once in a while, you’ll manage to land a final hit as the dragon flies overhead. A spell or an arrow finally finds its target, lowers its health to zero, and the beast… keeps on flying until it finds a place to land. Not very immersive. Dragon Falls Down fixes the issue by making the scaly beasts fall unceremoniously from the air the moment they’re struck down.
18. Immersive Dragon Sounds – Enigma Remaster
Check Out This Mod Another great way to promote your immersion is enhancing the sounds that dragons make. We just want them more detailed and threatening, right? Immersive Dragon Sounds does that and more. The flapping of dragon wings sounds calamitous, their breath apocalyptic, and every one of their attacks has also been made more fearsome. But that’s just scratching the surface. The mod also adds countless new sounds for dragons in the sky, on the ground, in the distance, or close by. It’s a lot, so try it out for yourself and see what you think!
17. Half-dragon Race
Check Out This Mod One of my greatest disappointments while playing Skyrim for the first time was finding out the “Dragonborn” wasn’t a human-dragon hybrid. I fully expected to grow horns, maybe wings, or even to turn into a dragon after leveling up enough! The Half-dragon Race mod will let you make a character with draconic traits such as scaly skin, bad-ass horns, and draconic abilities. These include poison and disease resistance, shorter shout cooldowns, and greater melee damage.
16. Animated Wings Ultimate
Check Out This Mod If you want the full dragon-man experience, you’ll also need to get the wings. Animated Wings Ultimate is a massive mod featuring a staggering 83 fully functional wing models, including fairy wings, feathered wings, and – of course – dragon wings. Not only are they fully animated and beautifully detailed, but they’re functional too. You can glide over gaps in the terrain, for example, and they’re fully compatible with flying mods as well. You can also choose to give other characters wings; maybe make an entire town into a dragonspawn village. The sky is the limit.
15. Immersive Dragon Wings
Check Out This Mod These relatively small wings are perfect for lifting a human off the ground – but dragons? They need a lot more surface area to soar the skies. If you’ve ever taken a class on aerodynamics or watched a video on YouTube on how animals fly, you might have noticed vanilla dragon’s wings are tiny for such massive creatures. Once you’ve seen it, it can’t be unseen – and your immersion will never be the same. The solution is the Immersive Dragon Wings mod, which scales them up considerably. This keeps the game as realistic as a fantasy RPG can be while making dragons even more ominous than before.
14. Diverse Dragon Collection
Check Out This Mod Dragons that fall down and realistic wing sizes are great. But I know most of you just want more dragon diversity. By Akatosh, you will have them. The Diverse Dragon Collection mod introduces 28 unique dragon foes with distinct models, textures, and abilities that’ll overhaul your dragon hunting experience. There are purple dragons, spiky dragons, decaying dragons – and my favorite, the feathered Zephyr dragon. That’s a divine beast if I’ve ever seen one!
13. KS Dragon Overhaul 2
Check Out This Mod Fighting Dovah is pretty simple in vanilla Skyrim. You just run around until they decide to land and pray to the Aedra that your skills are good enough to kill it before it burns you to a crisp. Well, not anymore. KS Dragon Overhaul turns dragon battles into some of the most intense experiences in the game. No two dragons fight exactly the same, and they’re considerably more powerful. Don’t worry, though. Dragons can also be injured now, which weakens them in different ways and levels the playing field.
12. Bellyache’s New Dragon Species
Check Out This Mod On top of the 28 unique dragons featured in the Diverse Dragon Collection, here are another 13 all-new species to hunt down. Something I found interesting about this mod is the inclusion of weaker dragon species that hunt in packs. It boosts the diversity of encounters, and your pals at Jorrvaskr won’t believe it when you tell them you felled not one but two dragons at the same time. Most of this mod’s dragons are initially grounded, meaning you’ll happen upon them on the ground rather than having to look at the sky like you’re trying to spot a UAV in Call of Duty.
11. Elemental Dragons
Check Out This Mod Dragons are chaos incarnate – physical manifestations of powers beyond human comprehension. So it would make sense that they’d rule over different elements. And here’s a Skyrim mod to help us with that. Elemental Dragons replaces the vanilla dragons for 45 scaly beasts endowed with the powers of Fire, Frost, Poison, Lightning, Water, Wind, Blood, Sun, and Acid. I don’t know about you, but an Acid Dragon sounds hardcore to me. Defeat them, and you may get the privilege of summoning them to fight for you in the future. They’ll also drop all kinds of new items like unique scales and dragon blood potions.
10. Deadly Dragons
Check Out This Mod Deadly Dragons is one of the coolest & most famous dragon-enhancing mods available for Skyrim. As the name suggests, it makes dragons into much more powerful and memorable creatures – much like their lore would have you believe. I’ve seen giants and bandits holding their own against dragons in vanilla Skyrim – not anymore. My favorite feature of Deadly Dragons is the Assault Events, where dragons spawn and charge you in unusual places like dungeons, villages, and just areas that never had them before.
9. Fully Flying Dragons
Check Out This Mod If Daenerys Targaryen can ride dragons, why wouldn’t Skyrim’s #1 hero? Taming and riding dragons is undoubtedly a feature in vanilla Skyrim, but I’ve always felt constrained by the dragons available for taming. As the Dragonborn, killer of Alduin, I’d expect most dragons to show respect. This mod lets the player summon one of 62 dragon mounts, including every single one in the vanilla game, the DLC, and many interesting fan-made additions. Whether you wish to ride on Paarthurnax, a crystal dragon, or something ridiculous like a flying chaurus, this mod has you covered.
8. Dragon Aspect Toggle
Check Out This Mod As a dragon aficionado, my favorite shout is Dragon Aspect. This lets your dragon’s soul manifest physically around you like an aura, granting you some draconic abilities. Given its power and how taxing it is to the caster, this shout can only be used once a day in vanilla Skyrim. That’s all fine and dandy when it comes to balance. But some things are so cool that we’re willing to break the game to have them. That’s why I find the Dragon Aspect Toggle a fundamental mod for dragon lovers. It removes the shout’s 24h cooldown and makes its effects permanent until the shout is used again to deactivate it.
7. More Draconic Aspect – Become the Dragonborn
Check Out This Mod Even after making the Dragon Aspect a toggle, many players feel underwhelmed by its effects. As one of the main additions in the Dragonborn DLC, some expected a true dragon transformation, and all they got was a lousy aura. More Draconic Aspect by EdmondNoir greatly improves the situation by overhauling your dragon transformation. There are some combat effects, but my favorite change is being able to fly with dragon wings Couple it with a spell that shoots a stream of fire, frost, or shock, and you’ll finally feel like a real dragon.
6. Ultimate Dragons
Check Out This Mod Now that you’re able to fight dragons on equal terms, battling the ancient tyrants might feel a bit underwhelming – and I’ve got just the mod to fix it. Ultimate Dragons is a unique combat overhaul that adds 20+ fully animated new moves that profoundly alter how dragon fights play out. Dragons will now drop meteors on you, shoot tracking icicles, turn around to bite you, and much more. They’ll even use familiar shouts like Fus Ro Dah and Marked for Death against you, giving you a taste of your own medicine.
5. HD Reworked Dragons Collection
Check Out This Mod Those of you running Skyrim on monstrous gaming rigs are in luck. HD Reworked Dragons Collection does exactly what you think: It elevates Skyrim’s many dragons – DLC included – to incredible 4K quality. Unlike other dragon overhaul mods, this one doesn’t mess with the lore. It’s the same canonical dragons – but their blurry textures are no more. The mod also affects dragon skeletons, the bones you can pick from them to make armor, and so on.
4. Zim’s Dragon Improvements
Check Out This Mod I love subtle mods that introduce changes you might have expected in the base game – the kind that blend into the game so smoothly, you’ll forget about them completely. Zim’s Dragon Improvements provides minor boosts to dragon variety and combat so that every encounter feels meaningful and unique. Every dragon gets its own name rather than “Young Dragon” or “Frost Dragon” and stuff like that. You’ll also get a special tooth trophy from every felled beast to commemorate the battle. Their dragon breath is also much more deadly – which is actually more in line with the game’s lore.
3. Regal Dragons
Check Out This Mod If you’re not as interested in keeping things lore-friendly and would rather give your dragons an extreme makeover, Regal Dragons is the mod for you. Many people find the regular vanilla dragons to be lacking variety and fantastical elements. It’s a game where dragons soar the sky – so do they all have to look like oversized alligators? With Regal Dragons, every beast – base game and DLC alike – has a distinctive coat with unique patterns that set them apart from their brethren and gives them a more fearsome look. With it, every dragon encounter will be 100% more memorable.
2. Dragon Bone Weapons
Check Out This Mod Back when Skyrim first came out, the lack of dragon bone weapons was frustrating. I just kept killing dragons and carrying their valuable bones back, only to store them indefinitely as I had no interest in dragon armor. Eventually the Dawnguard DLC brought us some fine dragon weapons – but for a lot of us, it was not enough. I find these modded Dragon Bone Weapons a lot better. They look savage, and they’re perfect for the kind of Dragonborn that spends a lot of time hanging out with the Companions.
1. Dragon War – A Dragon Overhaul
Check Out This Mod Dragon War is meant to switch the power dynamic of dragon encounters back to how it was when you first escaped Helgen – that is, the player holding on to dear life while the dragon hunts them down. Now you’ll have to take cover and strike when the time is right rather than charging into battle, trusting your heavy armor will keep you safe. You’ll get boiled inside it if you’re not careful, so you better keep an eye on your enemy’s weaknesses and resistances, and use them to level the playing field. Something this mod does beautifully is give the Dragonrend shout the importance it seemed to have in the game’s story. With it, dragon fights become much more manageable – which makes getting Dragonrend a priority.
