*edit. I should note a good modding api and/or editor is great for any game.
I started programming though making mods for battle for middle earth 2.
However, we must make sure to keep in mind the ways in which capitalists will exploit the goodwill of developers and free software wherever it may be.
i dont have access to that computer right now, but i remember the key ones for the wilderness survival were the old classic combo of frostfall+campfire (with all the overly pedantic and punishing options on), but with sunhelm for food/drink/exhaustion. and a no fast travel mod and a deadlier combat mod (smilodon i think), and a slower xp mod, and a less suicidal wildlife mod, and most of the simonmagus overhaul mods for perks and alchemy and cooking and spells etc. and an economy mod and loot scarcity mod so i wasnt drowning in cash and fancy loot. and immersive spell learning + dinos spell discovery + grimoire so i could craft/study spells for a few hours before sleep at a campfire or an inn, or spend whole in-game weeks at home in research while doing my crops and herbs and alchemy and crafting and woodchopping and cooking and arranging my spellbooks etc. and i remember tel jerdein was the name of the cottage and its unbelievably cozy and nice for a wizard, sitting under cover on the top deck on a rainy day with my plants and reading spell books, looking out at the misty valley.
and yeah a tonne of graphics mods but definitely the most impactful was somehow getting rudy enb to work on linux, holy crap what a difference but it seriously hurt my pretty decent computer. cathedral grass, cathedral weather, majestic mountains, smim, relighting skyrim, and skyrim 2020 textures were the other main ones i remember.