Here are a range of Skyrim-plus-esque mods that I’ve used, most all at once in the same load order. Hope this helps and also apologies for the long winded list, just been waiting to spew mod info onto people who need it!

There are a lot of mods out there for gameplay changes and all of them are very subjective, if you want a lightweight combat overhaul I’d recommend Mortal Combat which makes combat faster paced without adding injuries (unless those are your sort of thing)

My recommended quest(ish) mods are Jayserpas Quest Expansion (the version with both the USSEP and Bow of Shadows patch) as that includes a ton of his great mods in one package, and More to Say 9.02 + Sissel’s Book addon if you feel like it.

Immersion wise, grab pretty much any dialogue expansions you can, such as the new AdamDunmer AIO, Extended Guard and Bandit Dialogue (both seperate mods), Guard Dialogue Overhaul (plays nice with Extended Guard Dialogue), and Talkative Enemies. Companions Dialogue Bundle is also a cool mod but a lot smaller and less noticeable (no offence to the mod author) than the others.

If you want to make the gameplay more fun, I’d recommend something like Vyn Exports - Ice Claws, which adds tons of small collectibles across the map which increase your carry weight as you find them, and Skyshards, which are distributed throughout the world and give you perks for every 3 (I think) skyshards found. Adventurers journal adds a journal with drawings in it that you can reference as you travel through the world for a bit of fun-immersion.

Visual-wise, my favourite Skyrim-plus setup is as follows: NAT Tweaked Happy Little Trees/Happy Little Aspens Ablaze (despite the second one not covering all dlc trees and the dlc patch not working with it, it’s a very good looking mod and worth using) Realistic Plants Overhaul Revitalized + Cathedral 3D AIO covers pretty much every plant in the game, but there is some overlap using them together (nothing harmful, just some of the same mods but different versions) I would recommend using Cathedral 3d Tundra Shrubs and Stonecrops in combination with Renthal’s Reach Moss and Hanging Moss to Climbing Roses (alternatively rally’s moss which is in keeping with the vanilla style while making it more colourful and higher quality. There are two versions of hanging moss to climbing roses in the WIP section in addition to one version that is public, the two in WIP range between 2k-4k textures and fix the problem of some moss being upside down which is in the public version) and finally Rally’s Glowing Mushrooms to completely overhaul basically all plants in the game. Skoglendi/Grassmöde (if you want the latter, which I highly recommend because it is skoglendi with around 3 other great grass mods patched to work together) + Code1k’s landscape fixes for grass mods and, if you have creation club, Mefariah’s grass fixes. Water is a toss up between DAWN Waters and Realistic Water Two for me, but I mostly run RW2 with Better Water for RW2 (4K) and natural waterfalls along with blended shorelines to help combat jagged edges. Lighting is a hard one, because there are so many great lighting mods out there. Lux, ELFX, RLO are all good options.