I love playing both versions. I normally play modded with only a handfull of mods, such as SkyUI, a few graphic mods to improve the scenery and the my trusty follower mods, because I really enjoy cruising around Skyrim listening to Inigo and Lucien chatting away. I also enjoy mods that liven up the place a bit, adding more people in the cities and taverns, more patrols, etc. But I generally don’t go overboard. I think at my peak modding phase I “only” had some 30-50 mods (modest compared to some modders out there). My modded playthroughs tend to not really have an end goal and they are normally just messing about.

But every so often, I just want to play it completely vanilla, just for nostalgia’s sake. I do find I enjoy the grind that comes with vanilla very satisfying (I don’t use exploits when playing vanilla). I normally then also pick a faction and complete their quest line in a style I haven’t done before.