• Unequip Quiver | This irritated me incessantly for years back in the day when I only played on PS3. I am grateful every equip/unequip for this.
• AddItemMenu & AddItemMenu NG | Cheaty mod, but I use it to get mod-added armors immediately. They’re my spiffy clothes, and I want them now.
• TNF Vanilla Homes | Vanilla homes, but upgraded. I have a lot of modded homes ofc, but sometimes I want the classics. It makes them much more luxurious, but not super over the top.
• Thane Weapons Reborn | Becoming Thane and being bestowed with a weapon is always, like, “uhh… thanks…” but this changes that. It is a simple joy every time my characters become Thane somewhere, it’s such a fun RP thing, and having a fancier weapon to use or at least hang on the wall makes me happy.
• Motion Sickness Begone | Not for everyone, but I suffer headaches and this helps so much. It removes the camera head bob.
• No More Radial Blur | For the same reason as the motion sickness mod.
• Encounter Zones Unlocked SE | This makes it so that locations do not get permanently set to the level you were when you first visited. So when going back to a dungeon at a higher level, you’ll get high level enemies/loot this time. It keeps familiar places interesting.

Grimacing with pain… I’m going to say that for the purposes of this question, I’m going to skip all the bugfix mods and the staples-of-everything mods like SKSE and SkyUI. I’m also going to skip the enabling mods like OAR and Base Object Swapper, because so much is built on top of them now that they’re requirements.

When I mod Skyrim, once I have the base layer in place, what do I always include even though I don’t need it?

True Directional Movement. This is so good that for me it’s now a base mod. I love that third person mode both feels good and looks good.

High-Poly Head and NPC makeovers using it. Hard to un-see the clonk in the old heads once you see the nicer ones.

QuickLoot. Massive QOL improver.

Any mod that adds cloaks.

ENB Lights. They make the game so pretty.

Oh man, that’s hard to say

Wabbajack is pretty incredible, the ability to get a full working list with like zero effort is wild

As for mods themselves, I love Clockwork, the creepy emptiness of it is amazing

In terms of stuff that goes in the backend of the game, increasing the overall functionality I’d say SPID (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/36869)

And also Base Object Swapper (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/60805)

A lot of the mods that take advantage of these I find to be much better in terms of ease of use and compatibility for distributing new armors, abilities, weapons, etc. And a few older, script heavy mods like Immersive Armours and Wet and Cold have been given SPID versions if you’re still interested in using them but wanted less script bloat to your save

Now that I’ve played with it, I also really like Seasons of Skyrim (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62861) with the Turn of the Seasons or Seasonal Landscape add-on. It’s not too hard to install but for me it definitely helped me get better at modding, and in game in is really cool to see Skyrim in a totally new way. I would recommend you get some of those time passer mods like Time Flies (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/39426) so that you can see the seasons a little more as this mod will allow time to pass while you do things slike read, smith, or sell stuff.