The past few weeks I've been playing vanilla (except for MCCC, I use the heck out of MCCC) because the HSY patch broke a bunch of things. But that said...
I mostly play with occult sims, so my favorite mods are occult related. I really like mods that create more occult gameplay, Here's some of the most essential when I'm playing a modded save:
Zero - Vampires can kill, Werewolves can kill, Untamed Magic is Untamed, Vampire Magic, Black Magic
SpinningPlumbobs - Whitlighters, Fairies vs Witches, Expanded Mermaids
There's also an occult-hybrids mod. I forget who makes it, but it allows you to shift-click on a sim and change their occult type or use various occult cheats. From the same menu, if you have a hybrid, you can access the UI of either occult type. It's very nice. The vanilla game gave me some vamp/spellcaster hybrids natively without mods (Grace Anasi was their mother for the record) and this mod has been essential for managing them because otherwise the only way to get to their vamp skill tree was by disabling the spellcaster trait with cheats.
