how to have 2 fallout 4 games

[uba409]

Hi guys, i was wondering if it was possible to have 2 different fallout 4 games, one running with mods and 1 vanilla.

[chucksteel]

what I do is to re-name my Steam apps/ Common/ Fallout 4 folder to Fallout 4 Modded. Then have steam verify the game, it won't find it and re-Download it again.

 

To change between games just rename the new version to Fallout 4 clean and the old game back to just Fallout 4. Steam, NMM fo4edit will all still work.

 

I'm sure their is an easier way but I have the disc space and it works for me.

[MissingMeshTV]

I do pretty much the same thing as chucksteel, but go a few steps further by having separate Save folders for each install instance and do the same renaming dance when swapping out game folders. I started doing this when I started playing FROST so nothing in my main game or the save file would be touched or corrupted. I’ve carried it over to having a separate install for testing my mods in. I now have four separate FO4 installs on my main machine and swap between them simply by renaming the related folders. Steam doesn’t know the difference.

While I use NMM to manager my “main” game, I dislike how it handles profiles for using different mod combinations. So, I use Mod Organizer 2 to manage mods for each of my additional installs. I really like the fact that you can install is directly into the game folder and it handles the mods with virtual folders leaving your game’s Data directory untouched. This way each FO4 install is portable and I can use different sets of mods with each install. I can transfer it to another drive or partition and the mods and all the files Mod Organizer uses to keep track of things follows along seamlessly.

The only other thing I need to do is to temporarily rename the default plugins.txt that NMM uses. If I don’t, Mod Organizer 2 uses that and of course, can’t find any of the mods listed in the file.

NMM might work the same way as MO2 for using virtual folders, but if it does it’s not something I'm yet aware of. I only know about its handling of profiles, which I personally find dismal. This method works fine for me so I go with it.

[jones177]

Hi

 

I use the AppData\Local\Fallout4 plugins.txt file.

 

I keep a vanilla version of the file for testing.

 

Later

[Greslin]

Use Modorganizer 2. I do more or less what RedRocketTV does, at least for test builds.

 

My primary build is all NMM, mainly because I haven't fully figured out the finer points of using MO2 with my own xEdit merge patch habits. So all of my primary mod files are stored in the official Data directory. But when I need to test one of my mods on straight vanilla, I run an MO2 profile with only that mod enabled. Then later I can just go back to my NMM build.

 

Eventually I'll figure out this MO2 overwrite stuff. To be fair though, I haven't dedicated much time to it. But for running FO4 vanilla, it works great.