Hi all,
I am looking to get a second-hand SteamDeck at some point in 2025, primarily to play Skyrim SE with mods. I’ve played a lot of Skyrim on console over the years and am at the point where I want to play with a few mods.
I’ve seen that it’s possible to mod Skyrim SE on a SteamDeck but I’m aware that there’s a limit to the hardware and wanted to sense check with the community in case anyone has had any experience. I’m not interested in graphical mods, mostly expanded content and some quality-of-life mods which help with RP’ing and some immersion.
My question: does anyone foresee any problem with any of these mods running on the Steam Deck?
- Moonlight Tales
- Frostfall and Campfire
- Immersive Armors
- Immersive Patrols
- Cloaks of Skyrim
- True Thane SE
- Civil War overhaul or Open Civil War SSE
- Vanity Mirror SE (or equivalent)
- Multiple Followers
I’d also maybe be looking into a player home.
Any help appreciated, ta.
Can’t say for sure (there’s always a chance some mod or other is horifically optimized) but these look like they’d be fine. Skyrim was originally designed for 0.5GB of ram and SE for 8GB (PS4/XOne), the steam deck has 16GB unified memory so you’ve got headroom to add extra textures/objects npcs to the loaded space. I remember playing a lightly modded FNV run on the deck at solid 60fps, also some unmodded F4 at 40-60fps depending.
The real issue you’re going to have is using a mod manager through a translation layer like WINE - there’s easy installers available, but there’s still a layer of finicky-ness to them. Once you’ve got it set up right though, it’s just one more click (or tap) to get to the game. On that note - while it’s possible to use the touchscreen to install mods, I wouldn’t recommend it :P
Thanks so much for the swift reply, and the incredible info.
Yeah I’ve never modded games before (I’m techie, but not that into games) but there’s a few tutorials knocking about which has made me confident that I can manage to wrap my head around it.
Thanks again this was incredibly useful :-)