Mods to install for a new guy?

[GeoffBedlam]

After years of scepticism I finally bit the bullet and got myself a PC setup. I've always wanted this solely for modding Bethesda games and I'm starting with New Vegas. Before I get into mods for quests, weapons, enemies, etc. I wanna overhaul the game and make it look as new and shiny as possible without blowing up my PC. PC gaming is completely foreign to me so I'll attach my PC's specs (which I can't entirely find so I just got them through the "Can I run it?' site lol) so everyone knows what I'm working with. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

 

[madmongo]

Chances are the game itself will blow up long before your PC does.

 

If you are going to be installing texture mods, ENB type stuff, etc. then you will absolutely want to get the 4 GB patch. Fallout New Vegas is a 32 bit game and by default the max memory it will access is 2 GB. You can double that with the 4 GB patch, but that's as far as you can go. It won't access more memory than that. Pretty much any PC these days will have a lot more memory than that, so your system specs almost don't matter at this point.

 

You're also going to want to get the New Vegas Anti-Crash mod (NVAC).

 

The game's texture caching system seems to leak memory. The game will probably crash on you at some point no matter what you do, but installing high quality textures and ENB type stuff tends to run the game out of memory and cause it to crash more frequently. For this reason I personally have the game set to moderate texture level and I don't use texture mods. I can usually play for many hours without a crash, but I still get some crashes occasionally. I can make it through most nights without a crash though. But, unfortunately, this is the choice you have to make. You can make the game prettier, but then you are more likely to have it crash, or you can suffer with a less pretty game that is more stable. I personally went for stability over prettiness. If new and shiny is more important to you, make sure you save your game often so you don't lose too much effort when the game dumps.

 

Since you are running Windows 10, make sure you don't install the game to its default location as this has caused issues for a lot of people. I personally never had a problem with it but some folks have.

 

Other than that, my advice to you is just to play around with it. Put some mods in, test it out, see how you like it and how well it works, etc. One thing I always do is that once I find a good combination of mods, I copy my entire Fallout New Vegas folder so that I have a copy that works and that I like that I can get back to. Then if I install mods and something goes south and the mod doesn't uninstall very well, I can at least get back to my known good configuration quickly and easily. If you have a lot of mods this can take up a bunch of disk space, but most PCs have gobs of disk space these days.

 

One final note - Fallout New Vegas has a bug in it related to the maximum number of mods. Technically the game supports up to 256 mods, but somewhere over 128 mods will cause you problems. You'd expect it to break on an even power of 2, which would be right at 128, but most people can run somewhere around 135 to 140 mods without problems, sometimes as many as 160. We don't know what causes it, but at some point over 130 mods (varies from system to system) things will start going squirrely and you'll see texture glitches and all kinds of weirdness. If you combine mods so that you have the same amount of modded stuff just condensed into fewer mods that fixes the problem, so we know it is actually caused by the number of mods and not by how much content you are adding. I had it break around 145 mods in one configuration and almost got to 160 mods in a different configuration before it broke. These days I've reduced things down to about 90 mods and all is well.

[dubiousintent]

Please see the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article. It is written for peole just like you, new to "modded gaming". It cover some additional points that supplement the excellent advice already presented by madmongo, including essential stability mods.

 

-Dubious-

[m1lonas123]

Also it is recommended if you are a starter to start with nmm...if you have the time and patience[a lot of patience] the better solution would be to learn modding with mod organizer as it has many more capabilities from nmm...

also never isntall 10 mods right away,install 1,2 test it out and then continue...it would be better to finalize your load order before you start the game as many bigger mods have problems when you install them mid-playthrough...

i recomend you to go to the step page[typer new vegas step] read the page REALLY well and then begin moding...install 1st the essential performance mods and then pick and choose what the page has to offer[there are many great mods that are not in the page]

my personal recomendations are...

solid project

armed to teeth

weapon inertia

diagonic movement

These are fairly new mods there are qountless others that are more popular im sure you will stumble upon them...

 

Anyways these are the tips i can give you im not experienced modder myself im just trying to help based on the things i know

dont give up you will have many crases and you will curse often but in the end it pays off

[drwcomics]

--While I'm new to these forums I've been on the "modded games" scene for a long long time. I mod the crap out of pretty much everything. For Fallout New Vegas my go-to mods are:

 

Project Nevada: Adds cool stuff like a Grenade Hotkey (as opposed to having to select them from your pipboy), sprinting, bullet time, visor-overlays for the various helmets you can pick up, cybernetic implants that give you various awesome abilities, and the option of rebalancing the gameplay to make the game more realistic/challenging, and adding new weapons and armor to the wasteland. And if you don't like some of the features, that's fine because you can pick and choose which features you want to install.

 

Dynavision 3: Lets you play around with the game's lighting system to make it look prettier, without slowing the whole game down to a slideshow.

 

Lazurus Project: Adds a cool wheel quick-menu sort of thing for your weapons like the new DOOM game. It works the same way the DOOM weapon wheel does, and it makes weapon switching during combat feel more fluid than pausing all the action to open up your pipboy and scroll through your inventory to find a different weapon.

 

Fallout 4 Quickloot for New Vegas: It's exactly what the title says; the quickloot menu system from Fallout 4 ported to Fallout: New Vegas. It's a great system that adds a lot of fluidity (there's that term again) to the gameplay.

 

NV Interiors Project: A mod that adds TONS AND TONS of explorable buildings to the Mojave Wasteland. A lot of buildings in the game are just set dressing and are unexplorable. This mod for real is a must-add. It elevates an already great game to the next level.

 

Unlimited Companions: The vanilla version of this game only lets you have so many companions. One human companion and one animal or robot companion. This mod lets you collect *all* of the companions that the game offers. Now, you'll be able to have an entire gang of badasses following you around the wasteland.

 

The Mod Configuration Menu: it adds a menu option to the pause menu to let you configure each individual mods options. It's the sort of thing that really helps once you start stacking up the mods (and you will. trust me).

 

There are so many more, but I'd be sitting here all night typing if I tried to list *all* my favorites (I have 90 mods installed and active at the moment in my game). These are some good starters to get you going.

[SnakeSlippers]

I made a topic about the mods I'm running that turned FNV into a random fun game. I have a crappy Geforce GT 610 video card at the moment and these mods all run, I can run it at around 25 FPS. It's now winter time, with random zombies everywhere, build your own bases, more people, random traveling people, random attacks and cars.

[X] SolidProject.esm

[X] STUN.esm

[X] Endless Warfare.esm

[X] rePopulated Wasteland.esm

[X] AWorldOfPain(Preview).esm

[X] Active Wasteland.esm

[X] oHUD.esm

[X] Brahmin Bess.esm

[X] MeleeHotkey.esm

[X] XRE - CARS!.esm

[X] NVR - Extra Actions Lib.esm

[X] Project Nevada - Core.esm

[X] Project Nevada - Extra Options.esm

[X] NevadaSkies.esm

[X] NVInteriors_Core.esm

[X] NVInteriors_ComboEdition_AWOP.esm

[X] Interior Lighting Overhaul - Core.esm

[X] Interior Lighting Overhaul - L38PS.esm

[X] Stimpak Hotkey.esp

[X] Immersive Minigames.esp

[X] NoPipboy.esp

[X] Pushabilitator.esp

[X] PMT - Responsive Kill Reactions.esp

[X] JIP Companions Command & Control.esp

[X] UsefulMedicalBraces.esp

[X] Zombie Serenade.esp

[X] After War Nevada.esp

[X] FO4Crafting.esp

[X] AWOP Revs - Extra Gear.esp

[X] FlashlightNVSE.esp

[X] After War Nevada - DLCs.esp

[X] AWN-AWOP CP.esp

[X] AWOP Revs - LD Nothing.esp

[X] Active Wasteland - Vanilla Replacements.esp

[X] Loot Vehicles.esp

[X] XRE - CARS!.esp

[X] HireAndRecruit-V1.1.esp

[X] AWN - Project Nevada Core CP.esp

[X] Ragdolls.esp

[X] MoreContainers.esp

[X] All Weapon Sounds Overhaul .esp

[X] Active Wasteland - Coffee Maker.esp

[X] Throwing Rock.esp

[X] Rustyhwys.esp

[X] GoodspringsFarmhouse_v1.2.esp

[X] Camp Grills.esp

[X] LFox Five Finger Discount.esp

[X] STUN.esp

[X] Light My Flare.esp

[X] FarmingSomebodyNotBob.esp

[X] AWOP Interim Fixes.esp

[X] FNV NPCs Travel.esp

[X] Base building.esp

[X] Near Death.esp

[X] Reactive People - Ultimatum.esp

[X] AWOP Revs - Help In Goodsprings.esp

[X] After War Nevada - Vanilla Minigames.esp

[X] After War Nevada - Realistic Combat.esp

[X] aaaJNFCamp.esp

[X] Item_NV_GhoulBait.esp

[X] Active Wasteland - Goggle Tints.esp

[X] Throwable Money.esp

[X] ThrowableFixes.esp

[X] ThrowAndRetrieveDLC.esp

[X] NewCollectibleItems.esp - My mod to pick up more random stuff

[X] Assassins v1 The Organ Harvesters.esp

[X] Assassins v2 Greetings from New Reno.esp

[X] Wasteland Assassin.esp

[X] EnchancedHighway.esp

[X] ManualReload.esp

[X] ManualReload-OldWorldBlues.esp

[X] Grave_Digger_v021.esp

[X] Frozen World.esp

[X] FPSWeaponWheel.esp

[X] Solar's Bottled Water.esp

[X] Solar's Bottled Water - Bottlecaps NH.esp

[X] The Weapon Mod Menu.esp

[X] The Mod Configuration Menu.esp

[X] NVR - Lock Bombing.esp

[X] B42 RWMS.esp

[X] SnowBallFight.esp - My mod I made to collect snowballs and throw them

[X] Interior Lighting Overhaul - Ultimate Edition.esp

[X] ILO - A World of Pain.esp

[X] ILO - NVInteriors Project - AWOP.esp

[X] NevadaSkies - Ultimate DLC Edition.esp

[X] ILO - Nevada Skies Patch.esp

[ ] Wasteland Defense.esp