Fallout 4 Beginners Guide

[gromulos]

1-28-2020 I am now officially back and will be answering any questions myself, THANK YOU VERY MUCH to Dubiousintent for monitoring my guide threads while i was gone.

 

If you use this information all I ask in return is a simple thank you post :smile: I can usually be found in the chat room on a daily basis

 

1-24-17 - I have used the info in this guide to set up and test my own load order with Fallout 4 and I am glad to report too all of you that this guide WILL work :D

 

READ! Read the description pages for each mod. Read the install instructions for each mod or utility. Read the Fallout 4 owners manual. No one was ever hurt by just reading.

 

WINDOWS 10 USERS - I "HIGHLY" suggest using this to bypass the problem of crashing or lockups and having to restart your computer - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/23188 - I tried it with Fallout New Vegas and it works, I love it!

 

This guide will NOT work for any unofficial version of Fallout 4.

 

BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE WITH THIS GUIDE GO INTO STEAM AND TURN OFF CLOUD. WHEN YOU EDIT THE INI'S IF CLOUD IS STILL ENABLED IT WILL GO BACK BEHIND YOU AND RESTORE THOSE EDITED INI'S

 

1) You need to run LOOT, Wrye Flash and FO4Edit, in that order.

 

Loot is not 100% and if that is all you're using you're going to have many problems as you progress through your play through, BOSS is no longer being supported and thus is out of date with newer mods. With many mods loaded, you should be using 2 other programs, Wrye Flash and FO4Edit. Sort the plugins with loot then click apply

 

LOOT = load order
Wrye Flash = verification of load order and primary and secondary file load
FO4Edit = verification of primary and secondary file load

 

 

2) Wrye Flash

 

2.1) When you run Wrye Flash if any checkmarks are not green, those mods are causing problems in your game, you make them turn green by dragging them up or down in your load order in wrye flash till they do turn green.

 

2.2) You HAVE to have either a merged patch or bashed patch file, once again Wrye Flash is your friend because it will automatically make you a bashed patch file when it loads your mods. A bashed patch file makes all your weapon and armor and other mods play nice together, it also keeps track of leveled lists in the game and makes them work better together also.

 

2.3) One other thing, make sure you enable ( check mark ) the bashed patch Wrye Flash makes, then right click it and choose rebuild patch as the one Wrye Flash makes is empty, which should always be last in your load order unless you're using an ENB, SUM, ASIS, or the Reproccer.

2.4) Make sure you go through both lists on the left and right panes of the window and make sure each entry that has a listing also has a check mark for the box next to it. Rebuilding the bashed patch is not going to help you if EVERYTHING is not included.

2.5) Concerning what the red, orange, and green check marks mean in Wrye Flash.

 

A) Red means a missing master file - basically a guaranteed CTD on startup.

B) Orange means that some ESP has requested its master files in an order that is different to the the order that you currently have them in. Orange mods are arguably more dangerous, because you won't necessarily get an immediate CTD every time, so you may be lulled into a false sense of security, whereas in reality you have an unstable load order.
Clicking on the orange/red mods will show you what masters they have, and what order they want them in. From here on in, it becomes like a puzzle: you need to manually drag and drop the various masters in your load order until their order is harmonious ( IE:. you've managed to provide the desired order of master files for every single ESP in your list simultaneously ) and all of your oranges have disappeared.

C) Green means you are good to go for that mod

D) If it's not possible to eliminate all orange mods, you may need to do one of the following:

 

• Manually download and manually install the mod - sometimes they are corrupted, this has worked for other people in the past that I have helped one-on-one
• Ditch one or two mods / patches - last resort
• Sort the master files for the orange mod in FO4Edit - see appendix 1

Appendix 1 -

 

open WRYE
find an orange mod
load in FO4Edit only that mod and FO4Edit will load the rest ( best to do one at a time )
then right click the orange mod and pick sort masters
then close and save

 

Your original game files should ALWAYS be kept in this order, NO EXCEPTIONS, below

 

 

Any mod that changes the order needs to be fixed using Appendix 1 and Xedit.

 

DO NOT USE A MERGED PATCH, USE A BASHED PATCH INSTEAD

 

*************************************************************************************************

 

WARNING - As of 8-11-2017

 

From alt3rn1ty - author of the Wrye Bash Pictorial Guide

 

Wrye Bashes Bashed Patch can import a lot of records for the old Oblivion game, but for newer games like Fallout the patchers all need to recognise the newer games records to be able to increase it capability .. But they need to be developed first (Wrye Bash for newer games is a work in progress) - Because of this people are impatient to get a solution to importing more record types so falsely believe using xEdits Merged Patch aswell as a Bashed Patch solves the situation : It does not, if anything it makes things worse and random.

 

AND

 

Sharlikran - contributor to Wrye Bash

Gromulous aside from the quote from Alt3rn1ty, you might also want to mention what I said in my other post abut how Elminster originally made it for FO3 and FNV because there was no Wrye Flash for those games until Valda released his versions. The other thing that makes what Alt3rn1ty mentioned correct is because they don't patch all the records. Wrye Bash (with the proper record definitions and patchers) can patch all the records that make sense to patch. There are a few exceptions that you would never touch like the NavMeshes.

You could also add that it's inadequate because xEdit only looks at 10 records, 'LVLI', 'LVLC', 'LVLN', 'LVSP', 'CONT', 'FACT', 'RACE', 'FLST', 'CREA', 'NPC_'. Records like CREA are not in Skyrim, so if the record doesn't apply to the game, it's not used.

 

*************************************************************************************************

 

#1 rule - NEVER delete a mod once you install it unless you are making a new character - N E V E R !!!

 

3) FO4EDIT is used to do 2 things,

 

(A) verify that your load order is not missing any files that your mods need and

 

(B) verify that no primary files are being loaded after secondary files. When you run FO4EDIT it will throw up an error box and the error will be displayed at the bottom of the right pane / panel. All you have to do is read what it says and it will tell you exactly how to fix the problem in Wrye Flash. Yes, you can open Wrye Flash while FO4EDIT is open so you don't even have to write down what the error is :smile:

 

Please remember that while LOOT is a great program it is NOT 100 %

 

Let me know if you need any more help :smile:

 

Additional info that may be of use for some people below:

 

1) MotoSxorpio - If you have removed a plugin or changed load order, a reference ID for objects being missing could cause CTD.

 

2) Oubliette - Error checking mod combos isn't impossible it's just a pain to do and no one wants to do it for anyone but themselves - which answers your other question.

The following is standard trouble shooting for mod issues not pinned to a single mod (this is why you test every single mod in your install as you go, individually and with all your other mods - to pinpoint problems at the mod from the very beginning).

First - have you verified your game files through steam and updated to the latest patch?
Second - uncheck all your mods, start a new game, save after the chargen. This will be your 'tester save.' Do Not Overwrite or Delete this save.
Third - Enable five mods.
Four - Go into game with your tester save. Run from one end of the game world to the other. Go into a few cities. Interact with a few things that are mod related. See if anything crashes.
Five - No sign of problems? Repeat 3-5. It crashed or something's not right? Go to step 6.
Six - something crashed? uncheck one of the five mods then go back to your tester save, repeat step 4.

Continue until you have found and fixed your error.

 

LOOT - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1918/?

 

Wrye Flash - http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20032/?

 

You can also use this - http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/495/?

 

FO4edit - http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2737

 

ONE OTHER IMPORTANT FILE YOU WILL NEED IF YOU ARE GOING TO USE MODS IS THE FALLOUT 4 SCRIPT EXTENDER LOCATED HERE - http://f4se.silverlock.org/

 

My other guides:

 

My Skyrim guide - http://forums.nexusm...ide-to-modding/

 

My Fallout 3 guide - http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2247384-fallout-3-beginners-guide-to-modding/

 

My Fallout New Vegas guide - http://forums.nexusm...ide-to-modding/

Edited January 28, 2020 by gromulos

[trog69]

I can't get look to find FO4. It found Skyrim, FO3/NV, but not FO4.

 

LOOT, not "look"

[trog69]

How is this a "Beginners" guide, when most of us have no idea how to work Wrye Bash or FO4edit? Heck, the page at FO4edit even says if you don't know how it works, you shouldn't install it. Ugh.

[gromulos]

read the read me and you will find a link to the programmers page on how to use each program, in Wrye it's the little colored ? , also you have to use the LOOT version i linked at the bottom of this guide

 

GOPHER also has some excellent tutorials on youtube for each program

Edited April 11, 2016 by gromulos

[mwhenry16]

Thank you for the guide. I am somewhat used to using LOOT, as in run it, sort plugins, read messages and apply. I am a bit used to F04edit, as in looking up values or changing a few simple things, removing ITM and UDR, filtering for cleaning. Wyre Bash not at all am I familiar with. I have tried your guide and my immediate issues are that there are two panes in the WB window, but I only understand the left. The right is blank unless I click on a mod. Also I can't manually move "oranges" (three in my case) due to an access error I can't seem to fix, which leads me to the F04edit sort master method, which worked in 1 case but not the others. I resorted to deleting them, which,silly me, was a Never! Or in this case never again. Lastly, I don't see a way to make the bash patch.

 

TY

[gromulos]

anytime you can't move orange mods, it's usually because of 3 problems

 

1) you need to click up top where it sorts your mods in numerical order, then you can move the mods around, OR

2) you have another program open at the same time that is accessing your load order, OR

3) reboot

 

Please remember that you can NEVER move an ESP file above an ESM file, and also that some ESP's are actually ESM's falsely marked as ESP,s One example of this i believe is the Falskaar mod for Skyrim, another example of this also were some of the files for Project Nevada for FONV

 

Bashed patch making

 

2.3) One other thing, make sure you enable ( check mark ) the bashed patch Wrye Flash makes, then right click it and choose rebuild patch as the one Wrye Flash makes is empty, which should always be last in your load order unless you're using an ENB, SUM, ASIS, or the Reproccer.

 

"Occasionally" Wrye will not make the bashed patch for you, this is a simple fix since there is a blank one located in one of the folders you installed, just copy it and paste it to inside your data folder then rerun Wrye, it should show up at that point

Edited April 11, 2016 by gromulos

[mwhenry16]

Thank you. I added back a mod that I knew would be orange, to try and resolve my not being able to use Wyre as you laid it out. After LOOT, the Orange resides at the very bottom of the order. In the left pane I see the esm and esp's, their order and position number, with an arrow above the order number, currently facing up. There are 5 tabs, the default being mods, the others being installers, saves, INI edits, and screenshots. The right pane shows information on which ever mod is highlighted.

 

I don't see an immediate way to move a mod, and when I try manually I get a plugin file access denied file could not be written error. This I'm rather used to, because no matter how many time I check or un check read only when filtering and applying loot, I sometimes have to check and un check read only in the plug in properties 2-3 times. However, in Wyre's case, this does not work.

 

There are no other programs open accessing order, that I'm aware of, and rebooting does not work.

 

I find no bashed patch in any of the Wyre folders, nor is there a box to check in the Wyre window.

[gromulos]

anytime you can't move orange mods, it's usually because of 3 problems

 

1) you need to click up top where it sorts your mods in numerical order, then you can move the mods around, OR

2) you have another program open at the same time that is accessing your load order, OR

3) reboot

 

Please remember that you can NEVER move an ESP file above an ESM file, and also that some ESP's are actually ESM's falsely marked as ESP,s One example of this i believe is the Falskaar mod for Skyrim, another example of this also were some of the files for Project Nevada for FONV

 

the bashed patch Wrye comes with should be in one of the sub folders inside the MOPY folder, if it's not let me know please located below

 

Wrye Bash 307.09 EXP - Standalone Executable-3699-307-09.7z\Mopy\templates\Fallout4\Bashed Patch, 0.esp

 

I downloaded it and found the file for you due to the fact that I could not believe a blank bashed patch was not included

Edited April 12, 2016 by gromulos

[mwhenry16]

Thank you. I had seen the "template" bashed file, but didn't recognize it as what I needed, sorry. After fiddling with plugin.txt, which is driving me nuts, I am able to move mods. However, this orange wouldn't change no matter where it was in the order, but the F04edit/sort master fixed that. Hopefully this will fix my random CTD.

 

Regarding Wyre, am I supposed to run it after adding or disabling any mods or changing order, or both? After running LOOT, and Wyre do I run just the added mod to an F04edit? And lastly, after adding a mod am I replacing the latest bash in the data folder?

 

Add: When opening Wyre, I don't see any "build patch" buttons, or the others as shown in the read me. Am I missing something?

Edited April 12, 2016 by mwhenry16

[gromulos]

Thank you. I had seen the "template" bashed file, but didn't recognize it as what I needed, sorry. After fiddling with plugin.txt, which is driving me nuts, I am able to move mods. However, this orange wouldn't change no matter where it was in the order, but the F04edit/sort master fixed that. Hopefully this will fix my random CTD.

 

Regarding Wyre, am I supposed to run it after adding or disabling any mods or changing order, or both? After running LOOT, and Wyre do I run just the added mod to an F04edit? And lastly, after adding a mod am I replacing the latest bash in the data folder?

 

Add: When opening Wyre, I don't see any "build patch" buttons, or the others as shown in the read me. Am I missing something?

 

k 1 thing at a time lol

 

1) that orange mod - you are missing / skipping step 2.5 D Appendix 1

2) Running Wrye - you always run Wrye after adding more mods as for removing mods: #1 rule - NEVER delete a mod once you install it unless you are making a new character - N E V E R !!!

3) FO4Edit - Always load the entire load order UNLESS you are just sorting masters for 1 particular mod

4) replacing Bash - you are not replacing, but you DO have to rebuild it each time you either add mods or change the load order

5) BUILD PATCH - READ THE GUIDE

 

A) STEP 2.3) One other thing, make sure you enable ( check mark ) the bashed patch Wrye Flash makes, then right click it and choose rebuild patch as the one Wrye Flash makes is empty, which should always be last in your load order unless you're using an ENB, SUM, ASIS, or the Reproccer.

 

B) 2.4) Make sure you go through both lists on the left and right panes of the window and make sure each entry that has a listing also has a check mark for the box next to it. Rebuilding the bashed patch is not going to help you if EVERYTHING is not included.

Edited April 12, 2016 by gromulos