Dubbyk

Is there a main discord for people wanting to talk about fallout 4 modding? I see Nexus has a discord but oddly only has channels for fallout 3 and 76?

So after more digging around for the new set up another old question came back up, Cleaning mods in FO4edit? Back in 2019 there was big debate on if this was or was not a good idea, I know with older mods made before FO4edit had the auto cleaning feature they often had to be cleaned as the mod makers at the time didn't have a quick tool to do it them self's so unless they updated their mod it was on you to do it. I know some things cleaning finds such as ITM records can be left by design and cleaning the mod would break things if done, hence the debate. How do you guys handle cleaning mods? Does it depend on how old the mod is? IE: A mod from 2016 maybe be a good idea to clean it as maybe they didn't know to do this, but a mod from 2020+ assume they had access to FO4edit and they left the records there by design? Do you just trust certain mod makers to know what they are doing, so if it's well known you left it alone ect?

Does anyone know of a mod that adds the Sanctuary retaining walls to the workshop as build-able items? I know they don't have "backsides" but if you line them up correctly with the dirt it's not a problem. In a previous play thorough I used the CK to place these walls around Sanctuary but it's a pain compared to the in game work shop mode. I know there are tons of mods that add "wacky" items like cliff faces and caves to work shop mode that are like the retaining walls in that they only have "one side" and must be placed a certain direction to look right so I know it's possible. I guess I either am not looking with the correct search terms or no one has made these items place able yet. If someone knows of a mod that has them included please let me know I'll see if I can attach some photo's of what I am talking about for reference: https://ibb.co/TRjf0zR

So been doing a bunch more reading, seems like a lot of people are saying merging plugins is an "old method" and not really used anymore. I understand that a lot of the smaller plugins people used to merge like small weapon mods and game tweaks can be .ESLs but I have a lot of simple but large location mods, IE Add a new island or some buildings to a blank part of the map. They are simple mods but have TONS of records due to buildings / tress ect so they can't be turned into .ESLs but since they are "simple" in the fact they have no scripts or moving parts they used to be prime targets for merging. Is there some reason I can't still merge mods like this? Or are the people saying "merging is bag" just making general statements to people who used to try and merge everything?

So I'm in the process of getting back into modding FO4, I know in the past many mods will talk about being best used on a "new game" and for the next probably several hundred hours I will probably be testing mods as I add them. My question is is what counts as a "new game" for most mods. I've seen some people say it's the actual clicking "new game" on the main menu and going though the actual intro section. I've seen other people state that loading mods in the intro section is BAD and can break things and that you should make your "test save" right before you exit vault 101 but already have your pip boy, they state that since you haven't generated the over-world yet this still counts as a "fresh new game" for mod testing needs. What do you guys think? Where do you guys make your "test save" spot?

Thanks to everyone for sharing their info, it does not sound nearly as bad as I thought it would be, I guess I'll be getting back into it then. If anyone has anymore new "must have" or important framework mods I should look into when I start rebuilding my mod list please feel free to share them. I'm hoping a lot of the old workshop item mods have maybe consolidated into fewer bigger mods, was always a chore installing all the workshop mods and then having to test all your menus after each one to make some one didn't bork a keyword and make one of your menus go missing. I'll also have to do some research into that .BA2 limit

I remembering have to make precombine patches in the CK and it being a pain in the butt. I'm hoping all the stuff I've forgotten about using the CK and FO4edit will come back to me once I start poking around in them again. Good to hear the .ESL limit is so high, I take it that applies to .ESL Flagged .ESPs as well?

The CC stuff popping up never really bothered me over much, I never bought anything from the CC and would just ignore the little pop ups when I left vault 101. Hearing that mods that don't have .DLLs mostly still work is good news, many of old mods that I used to have that haven't been updated in forever according to my tracking center are mostly location based mods, stuff that adds new buildings and settlement locations and workshop mods, checking their file lists most of them don't have any .dlls. Looking at the old mods it does make me sad to see most of the assets outside of .BA2 files, I take it's still recommended to pack your assets into .BA2 files for better performance? Was always just a slog having to repack all of the stuff lol.

So I last played and heavily modded fallout 4 in 2019, I have some questions about how things have changed and if it's worth getting back into it. 1: The Next Gen Patch: How bad did this break everything? And like in some other mod heavy games like Stellaris did the player base and modders break into Pre and Post update community's where half the people never get the patch and the other half do, if you update the active mods get updated but all the older mods that had worked just fine are left in the dust bin? If this did happen, do you guys think it's better to update to latest version and give up on the older mods? Or stay with the older version and have access to the older mods. Preferred method of mod installation: Vortex was still pretty new when I last played around with fallout 4 and many people still used NMM and MO2, has a consensus been reached and one method risen to the top? .ESLs: They where still pretty new when I stopped playing and many many mods that could be turned into .ESLs had not been and you pretty much had to trial and error converting them and see if they ran, have people embraced .ESLs more as being released as such by the modders directly or is it still pretty much on the end users to convert them if they fit the requirements? Mod limit: There was an open debate on how many .ESLs you could have on top of the 254 limit, was there every a answer reached on just how many .ESLs you could have on top of 254 .ESP / .ESMs? Linchpin / Framework mods: It looks like many of the old major framework mods like Armor-smith Extended, Armor Keywords, Settlement Keywords ect have not been updated since 2018/2019. Are all of these projects dead and no longer work with modern mods or have they just have had no need to update? And overall do you guys think it's feasible to get back into modding Fallout 4 in 2025 or should I just play Fallout London and let Fallout rest until Fallout 5 comes along.

Now that you bring it up I do remember having to flag files and run some sort of "checker" program that would look into the file and count the ID's and see if it was eligible for .esl flagging. And MMM was marts mutant mod but I derped out and forgot that was a FO3 mod not FO4, I'd have to go into my nexus history to find what the big mutant overhaul mod I used for FO4 was, luckily I was pretty dedicated to liking and following all the mods I used so I could use that as a starting point on rebuilding.

So I played Fallout 4 for god knows how many hours, most of it spent modding, bug hunting and playing around in the shallow end of GECK to make incompatible mods run together. (I never actually finished the story lol) Then .ESL's came out and blew the lid off the normal 255 mod limit and then I spent even more hours trying to see what mods I could turn into .ESLs to cram more mods into my load order, I think at one point I had almost 400 plugins running (granted many where tiny one weapon mods or .ini tweaks) And then my hard drive crashed........... Uncounted hours of modding and testing down the tubes and I just could not bear to do all that work again after just doing it. So now it's years later and I've foolishly starting watching some Fallout lore videos on Youtube and that's gotten me wanting to try it again. So my question is, how is the state of modding in Fallout 4 now years later? Has .ESL's become the standard for small mods or do end user's still have to convert them? So is normal to still have to clean mods with FO4 edit and look for deleted nav meshes? Have the bigger staple mods like MMM, Raider Overhaul and Sim Settlement's died off? Also with the coming news of the "Next Gen" patch coming in 2023 is it better to wait to get back in? Is it known if the patch will destroy modding for weeks / months after it's release and or kill older mods that are no longer being worked on as there has not been a patch in so long for the PC and while the mods may have been working fine for years this new patch will blow them all up. So please share with me your thoughts on if it's a good time to come back to the game or if I should just preserve my sanity and wait for Fallout 5 sometime in ten years.

So I was merging a bunch of location / dungeon mods and was going around in the CK fixing landscape seams. Then for some reason I got a wild hair and decided to re-sculpt Sanctuary Hills, I have now spent enough time and changed enough there it might as well be a mod of it's own. So now the problem I have is since I was doing all this editing in a merged plugin of dozens of other mods I need to find out if I can somehow just get my changes to Sanctuary into a separate .ESP Is it just a matter of opening the merged .ESP in Xedit and "Copy Records" of the cells dealing with Sanctuary or is there more too it?

I'm trying to bug hunt some messed up dialog in a mod I down loaded, but after opening up the plugin in Xedit, i can't see them find where dialog records are, thought it would be under NPC's or quest but I don't see it there. Can some one point me in the direction (tab) where dialog records are?

If anyone has been watching this thread, I found the issue, it was Private-Profle-Redirector : https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33947 completely uninstalling this fixed the CK, and lucky since it's just a FOSE plugin I can easily uninstall and reinstall as I need to use the CK.

And just to clarify what I am looking for, I'm looking for mods that replace a vanilla file outright, so mod added BA2 files don't count, and overwrites via .ESP don't count, just things that hard replace a file?