I’ve never used a modpack before, I actually like doing the research and finding which mods to use. In general I actually quite like the look of vanilla Skyrim so my graphics mods tend to be pretty tame.

Here’s some mods I like to use, with links to their Nexus page. A lot of these have prerequisite mods so you’ll need them too obviously, but I didn’t bother writing them out here. The mod pages will link to their required mods.

Absolutely necessary mods for every playthrough, even vanilla:

Skyrim Special Edition Unofficial Patch - fixes many, many bugs and exploits in the game.

Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE64) - not really necessary if you’re just running the mods in this section as all it does is allow certain mods to work, but I always keep it enabled anyway since it doesn’t hurt at all.

SkyUI - if you’re using mouse and keyboard. The original UI is great if you’re using a controller but it’s definitely not designed with M+K in mind. SkyUI makes playing Skyrim with M+K so much nicer. I’m sure it also works well with controller too.

Mods I always use:

A Quality World Map - makes the map much nicer to look at. There’s a few versions, pick your favourite. I like Vivid with Stone Roads personally.

Realistic Water Two - self explanatory. Makes water look way better.

Alternate Start - definitely necessary to me, lets you choose how to start the game. It’s the main reason I’m able to have so many playthroughs of the game.

Immersive Patrols - adds patrols for different factions, and they can interact with each other too.

Cutting Room Floor - adds cut content to the game.

Blended Roads - fixes weird visual problems with some roads.

Footprints - adds footprints when walking in the snow and ash.

Open Cities - makes cities part of the overworld so there’s no load screens when entering/exiting, similar to Morrowind.

JK’s Skyrim - improves cities.

Some mods I’m using right now:

Obscur’s College of Winterhold - vastly improves the college, which is by far the most underdeveloped major area of the game in my opinion.

Lightened Skyrim - removes some objects you can’t actually see (rocks under the ground and stuff) which makes the game run a fair bit smoother without a noticeable difference in the landscape.

Magic Sneak Attacks - using magic while sneaking counts as sneak attacks. Not sure why this isn’t in the base game but it’s getting used on all future magic runs for me now.

Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim - adds a ton of new spells to the game, great for a mage playthrough.

Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim - overhauls the perk trees. Works really well with Apocalypse.

Remember Lockpick Angle - when lockpicking, if your lockpick breaks, the new one starts in the position where the previous one broke, making it much less annoying.

Instantly Skip Dialogue - lets you skip unskippable dialogue. Most dialogue is skippable but some of the annoying monologues aren’t. This fixes that.

Beyond Reach - content expansion. Haven’t used yet, so I’m not sure what’s involved with it. I’ve got it loaded on my current character but I haven’t explored there. It’s supposed to be really good though.

Beyond Skyrim - Bruma - adds Bruma from Cyrodiil to the map. It’s so cool to see what the city (and surrounding area) looks like post-Oblivion crisis. It’s been a long time since I’ve used it, I’m really looking forward to going back again. It’s probably my favourite content mod.

Medieval Markets - vastly improves the markets in the cities.

Glorious Doors of Skyrim - new door designs. They look way better than vanilla to me.

I’d recommend getting an ENB, as well as Lux. I don’t usually, since I like the vanilla look, but ENB+Lux definitely looks objectively better.