Graphics
Enhanced Wasteland Preset
There are loads of ENBs and Reshade mods out there that can dramatically alter Fallout’s appearance through post-processing wizardry, but I’m rather partial to the Enhanced Wasteland Preset, which has been around forever. If you find the Commonwealth a bit too gloomy, then this might be exactly the panacea you’re looking for, significantly livening up the world with more vibrant colours and lighting.
If the thought of pretty colours makes you violently retch, and even the default appearance is too chipper for you, then Stalker Lightning might be more up your street. By draining the world of its vibrancy, the Commonwealth starts to look a lot like STALKER’s Zone. You will feel depressed, and maybe you’ll even start questioning why you’re fighting your way through this miserable world (it’s for your terrible son), but that’s all part of the post-apocalyptic experience.
The Texture Optimization Project is more of a performance mod than a graphics overhaul. It takes the original Fallout 4 textures and replaces them with compressed and resized versions. If your PC is straining and a wobbly FPS is giving you a headache, these textures might be a big help. There’s very little loss of quality, but a noticeable performance boost.
So we have the usual visual tweaks to make pretty stuff more pretty. Not much content there if you want more to the game besides standing around looking pretty in the rain. Pass.
Settlements
Spring Cleaning or Scrap Everything
The nuclear apocalypse happened centuries ago but the settlements of the Commonwealth look like they were hit by a bomb only yesterday. They’re a mess. And even when you start building, there’s a lot of detritus that you simply can’t get rid off. Unless you use one of these mods. They let you scrap everything, from mounds of mud and tree stumps to smashed glass and litter. I use Spring Cleaning, but it doesn’t look like it’s being updated anymore, so Scrap Everything might be the better choice.
So you’ve got a nice new settlement up and running, happy settlers and a lovely house — now you need to protect everything. Robot Home Defence lets you build robo-buddies who can guard your home, or even follow you around as you go questing around the Commonwealth. If you don’t have the Automatron DLC, this is the next best thing.
These are probably the most tempting mods for any fan to add since the whole settlmeent system was half baked to begin with. Problem is there is no reason to do it since the AI is sh*t and Fallout is not Minecraft or Rust or whatever the hell they wanted to turn the series into. Pass.
Weapons and Armour
Armorsmith Extended with Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource
This is your one-stop mod for all of your armour-related needs. Armorsmith Extended does the work of several mods, taking a holistic approach to improving your wardrobe. With it, every outfit in the game can have armour worn over it, and you can mix and match hats and masks, combining, say, a gas mask with a stetson. It also massively expands the armour mods system, as well as letting you mod all clothing items. This is on top of all the new craftable clobber that it adds. You’ll need to download AWKCR to make it compatible with other mods on this list.
Another huge mod collection, Weaponsmith Extended combines countless exotic weapons and features, including rocket-powered axes and The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Remember to take a look at the requirements though. It needs most of the DLC and a few other mods, including AWKCR, though you should have that already if you’re using Armorsmith Extended as well.
Instead of spending hours shopping (or killing and stealing) around for new guns and armour, why not craft them instead? This mod adds new crafting workbenches from which you can create whole weapons and armour pieces, rather than just customising pre-existing ones. You can craft everything from basic weapons to custom power armour, and lots of things inbetween. An ammo workbench is also available, where you can disassemble ammo and craft new bullets, fuel and cells.
Any Mod Any Weapon lets you become the Frankenstein of weapon crafters, designing ludicrous things like a minigun that can fire nukes or a shotgun with a suppressor. It’s not just guns, either. Stick a claw on a boxing glove if you want to. This is obviously not balanced and the weapons look absurd, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Wearable Backpacks and Pouches
This one’s for the pack rats. If you’re constantly overloading yourself because you can’t leave the house without 10 guns, or because your pockets are always full of junk, craft yourself some backpacks and pouches. It’s a great, practical mod, but it also makes you look more like a post-apocalyptic survivalist.
Craftable Armor Size adds light, medium and heavy mods to the workbench. So if you’ve got some light armour that you’d like to beef up, you can add heavy mods to each piece. Alternatively, if you want to lighten your load and sneak around, you can downgrade heavy armour, making it lighter.
Sometimes you want the safety that armour can provide but don’t want to be too showy. Or maybe you’ve downloaded Armorsmith Extended and you’ve noticed that, since armour pieces weren’t originally designed to go over outfits, there’s a lot of clipping. Concealed Armors gives you the option to change the visibility of armour from the workbench, at no cost. You can make all of it invisible, or just specific parts. You can even traipse around in your birthday suit, fully-armoured.
More stuff you can shoot or walk around in looking cool. Problem is there is no reason to shoot things when you have no real goal besides LARPing from place to place. As is usually the case any potential mod worth adding is only worthwhile since the entire game needs redesigning/tweaking to be fun. Even more than Fallout 3 which at least made an effort to be like the old games.
Companions
Fallout 4’s companions are a mixed bag, but Synth-detective Nick Valentine makes up for the more forgettable ones by being a constant delight. He’s a grumbling gumshoe with a CPU of gold. Valentine Reborn retains your robo-buddy’s rundown, crumbling exterior while giving him an HD makeover. His outfit in particular looks significantly higher quality. As a bonus, you get three eye colours to play around with and a Terminator-style metal skeleton for other Synths that you’ll come across.
Unfortunately, even Nick is a bit rubbish when it comes to fighting. And sneaking. And not getting lost or stuck. Companions can become a bit of a burden, frankly. Better Companions alleviates some of the issues, however, by making them better at switching weapons, and more importantly, the right weapons. It also adds a bunch of perks and tweaks that generally make them less of a pain in the arse, including unlimited ammo, improved stealth and improved accuracy. Finally you can configure your companions, modifying how close they stick to you and how aggressive they are.
Fallout 4’s best non-robot companion is, of course, Dogmeat, your loyal canine. He was meant to be like New Vegas’ ED-E and Rex, neither of which took up the single companion slot. He very much seems to be designed as an ‘extra’ buddy. His DPS is rubbish, his carrying capacity is low, and he can be used even when you’ve got the solo Lone Wanderer perk. For whatever reason, Bethesda changed their mind. This mod just follows through on their original plans for the doggo.
What’s the point of friendship if you can’t see, exactly, how much they like you? Fallout 4’s companions each have their own moral compasses and ideas about how things should be done, and their affinity towards you rises and falls based on how closely your actions align with their views. But there’s no way to tell how much any given action changes their affinity. This mod clears that up, detailing the percentage increase along with the current affinity. You can also just ask your companions and the number will appear after they tell you how they feel.
Says a lot that there is not one original companion as a mod. Wonder why? Voiced dialog maybe? Does Bethesda even give a sh*t about mods or is making money off them the only goal now? Imagine how dead Nexus will be in the future if this is the case...
UI
Fallout 4’s UI looks great but sucks to use. DEF_UI contains the DEF_HUD and DEF_INV mods that overhaul the game’s HUD and inventory. The former makes the HUD totally customisable, so you can move, remove and resize each element, and in some cases specific parts of an element. The latter contains a slew of inventory improvements, like replacing sorting tags with icons and adding new tabs that tidy up those messy screens. You will need an additional sorting mode, though.
Speaking of which! Valdacil’s Item Sorting renames and tags items so they’ll be easier to find in your inventory. It groups items by type; puts the most common, frequently used items near the top, for easy access; and it’s modular, so you can download extra files to customise it.
Fallout 4’s dialogue interface is a mess. Like Mass Effect and other fully-voiced RPGs, it tries to distill dialogue options down to their essentials rather than describing exactly what you’ll say. Unfortunately, it distills them to the point of absurdity, so you never really know how your character will react. It’s not even necessary, given that you usually only speak in short, single sentences. Full Dialogue Interface simply brings back the traditional system where you select exactly what you’ll say. No more ruined friendships just because something was lost in translation. 1 Point
I will give this dialog mod a point since it attempts to fix one of the most glaring flaws...but it still can't fix how broken the system truly is. What does it matter if you can see the response when they are all the same?
Hacking terminals in Fallout is about as much fun as you’d expect from a word jumble, so instead of spending ages trying to pick the right password, download this Easy Hacking mod. If you’ve got a high enough skill, you’ll only be shown the right password, cutting out potentially hours of faffing around.
Exactly the same as above, but for lockpicking.
Just have to comment on how most popular mods are simple sh*t like this.
Even with your new hacking skills, you’ll still spend quite a bit of time staring at terminal screens, waiting for them to boot up. Faster Terminal Display increases the speed at which text appears on the screen, up to 100 times the original speed, depending on which version of the mod you select, letting you read dead people’s emails and hack computers with limited hassle.
Survival Options is a configuration tool that will help you to create a custom survival experience. Instead of relying on the rules from Bethesda’s Survival Mode, you can tailor it, toggling on or off myriad options. Hunger, thirst, sickness, fatigue, fast travel, even how you save — they’re all there. The only things you can’t do are change the weight of items or how quickly you heal.
This should have been in the main game, but Bethesda hate Obsidian for making a superior Fallout. Either that or they didn't even bother to play New Vegas to see what Obsidian did. I choose that option. Too much reading I bet. 1 Point
LooksMenu expands Fallout 4’s already robust character creation options. It’s easier to parse as you can see more of the customisation list, including things you’d normally have to click on a specific part of your character’s face to change; you can save and load presets, both your own and ones you’ve downloaded; and it offers up more hair colours. You can also use it to tweak characters you’re already playing with.
2 out of 3
Nope. I couldn't find three that would actually improve the game enough for me to attempt a playthrough. A bunch of visual weather/lighting nonsense, weapon customization, and tweaks to the UI. Did you see all of those quest mods? Amazing! It just works...barely enough for people to muster up the energy to mod for it.
