For me, the best mods in Skyrim are all about minor changes. When these projects are added together into the RPG game, they can quite easily turn Bethesda’s version of Skyrim into something completely different. That’s why this Skyrim mod, which brings in an often overlooked bit of functionality in Dark Souls, and other FromSoftware games like Elden Ring, is my focus today.
With a Skyrim mod that brings over one of Fallout 4’s best features recently released, there’s absolutely a market for enhancing Skyrim with ideas from other games. This time it’s a bit of a UI tweak that makes Skyrim play a bit more like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and any other excellent FromSoftware game you can think of.
While the Soulsy HUD mod from ‘ceejbot’ is a small change in the grand scheme of things, it’s going down a treat. It does exactly what you think it does, and changes the Skyrim UI by giving you a Dark Souls-inspired heads up display, completely changing how you cycle through items as you play.
Much like in Dark Souls, this Skyrim mod gives you hotkeys for four equipment slots, and you can cycle between different items in each slot. If you’ve played Dark Souls before, you can already guess how much more fluid this can make combat, as explained by ceejbot.
“If you want to switch between Flames and Healing spells in your left hand, you’d add each of them to your left-hand cycle,” the modder says. “For your right hand, you might set up a long sword with an anti-undead enchantment, a dagger with Soul Trap, and a bow.”
The inventory and favorites menu have their uses in Skyrim, but if there’s one thing I absolutely hate doing in RPGs it’s having to repeatedly pause the game to use items. Fallout does have the weapon select wheel, but because you can’t actually pause Dark Souls, that game’s design has to let you easily switch between items on the fly.
While each hotkey can have up to 20 items in it, having to cycle through that many items sort of defeats the point, so you’ll want to keep the cycles small. Trust me, if it’s anything like trying to cycle through to your Estus Flask in the middle of Ornstein and Smough when all the slots are full, you don’t want it.
The Sously HUD mod does also come with a configuration menu, which lets you set these different hotkeys:
- cycling through shouts and powers
- cycling through items for your left hand
- cycling through items for your right hand
- cycling through consumables
- using a consumable
- toggling HUD visibility
- reloading the layout
While there isn’t an in-game way to edit the specific layout of the UI, you can go into a text editor and change the placement and details of the Skyrim mod, with ceejbot explaining how on the mod page.
If this Dark Souls UI mod isn’t enough for you we’ve also put together all of the best games like Skyrim you should be playing, alongside the best dragon games that should be on your radar too.
