New to the SubSim but seems like a fun game but a few questions

[Krono99]

Hey everyone. A buddy let me try Silent Hunter 5 for a bit at his house and it seemed fun so I went out an bought it on steam and activated it on Uplay which I thought was unusual. You would think that it would just run from steam directly like most other games do but ok. So I got Uplay going and I tried updating the game from the steam Directory(Steam--SteamApps--Common--Silent Hunter 5--Support--Gameupdater)
Cause well everyone says the 1.2 update is a must have for Silent Hunter 5 but it updates then says no installation of Silent Hunter exists which is well stupid because im updating the game from the installed directory!!!!
(Using Windows 8 64bit) The game runs cause ive run it and it loads and plays etc.. It just wont update. If anyone has a solution to that It would be appreciated and then the second question is mods.. I hear there is like 50 ofem and you pay to get them. For a beginner are they worth it? I have a highend card(GTX 760) So any graphic enhancements would be cool. Thanks for reading and for any help