The World

First and foremost, you’ll find that Skyrim isn’t quite as you remember it. Major cities and towns have been ruined by Alduin, scattering the people of the world to tiny outposts, hamlets, and farmsteads. Inns, merchants, and safe places in general have been majorly reduced thanks to Shattered. To combat this, we’ve included many of the small towns and hamlets created by Axis1211 and Schlitzohr. You’ll still find safe havens, but you’ll have to explore to find them and the protection they provide will be minimal.

You’ll also find that the world is filled with undead, thanks to Shattered’s World Eater add-on. Skeletons and draugr patrol the roads and dragons reside in the ruins of cities.

The Horror

First and foremost, the undead you encounter have been beefed up and are now truly scary to fight thanks to Draugr Upgrades and Improvements. You’ll also find a new collection of horrific monsters in the world thanks to Mihail. I’d tell you what they are, but that would ruin the surprise.

We’ve also included several horror themed locations and quests, such as Clockwork. You’ll have to explore (or read the modlist, I guess) to find out what other goodies are included in this.

Survival

Silent’s version of Skyrim is a truly brutal and unforgiving place. Diseases are amplified, the weather is harsh, and food and drink are scarce. This is all thanks to the survival mods included in Silent Skyrim: Campfire, Frostfall, Last Seed, Hunterborn, and Survive The Night.

You also can’t freely fast travel thanks to Journeyman. Silent Skyrim heavily rewards exploration and wandering the world, so you won’t want to fast travel very much anyway.

Leveling and Perks

The leveling and perks in Silent Skyrim is almost entirely governed by Synergy. With Synergy, you start with 3 perk points that you can allocate into the “Aspiring” perks for the various trees. These perks allow you to gain experience in the chosen skills. Beyond level 1, you’ll need to find a skill book to be able to take the Aspiring perk for other trees. It is highly recommended that you read most of the mod page for Synergy to understand how the entire system works.

For good measure, we’ve also included Manbeast, Scion, and Stormcrown for the other perk trees.

Magic

The two main magic mods you need to know about are Mysticism and Steady Spell Learning. Mysticism rebalances all of the spells in the list and adds a few new ones. Steady Spell Learning allows you to learn spells of your chosen magic skill by actually casting spells. There’s a chance, every time you cast a spell, that you’ll learn a spell of that school and of which you are the appropriate skill level.

Combat

There’s really only one mod for combat in Silent Skyrim: Valravn. Valravn introduces stamina management, improved combat AI, attacks of opportunity, and more. It’s strongly recommended you read this mod’s page to learn how it works. It will feel similar to vanilla Skyrim combat, just… harder.