about to re-download...

[horouboi]

but have no idea how i can make this game stable, i mean yes theres mods but what ones should i use? what ones are the best?

 

o yeah, what i'm asking is a good little list of mods that will help the game from crashing... and maybe some cool mission mods :P

[dubiousintent]

Having a stable game is less about the mods you choose (though those are important) and more about approaching the process properly: with patience and research. Please see the the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article. Pay particular attention to the advice to install and TEST mods one at a time. Rushing things is the first mistake people make and they seldom are able to recover from it without spending much more time than they "saved" by rushing.

 

That article (and the ones it links to) lists the "essential" mods you need to overcome the basic game problems.

-Dubious-

[madmongo]

First, you absolutely need New Vegas Anti-Crash (NVAC).

 

The next big thing with stability is to focus on the game's graphics. FNV is a 32 bit game, and can only access 2 GB of RAM. One of the most common causes of game crashes is that the game runs out of memory, most often because of textures. The game's texture caching system seems to leak memory, so the longer you play the game, the more memory will leak, the slower the game will get, and eventually the game completely runs out of memory and crashes. To some extent you can't completely fix this. The game is just buggy. While you can't completely fix the problem, you can reduce the problem to the point where you can usually play the game for a reasonable amount of time without crashes.

 

The first fix is to install the 4 GB patch. This doubles the amount of RAM that FNV can use, so while it doesn't fix the problem, it makes the game take a lot longer before it runs out of memory. Unfortunately, since FNV is a 32 bit game, this is as far as you can take it. Even if you have 64 GB of RAM, the game will only use 4 GB with the patch at most. 4 GB is better than 2 though, so the patch definitely helps.

 

The second thing is don't use high resolution textures. Those higher resolution textures do make your game prettier, but they also take more memory. Unfortunately, what this means is that you have to make a choice between a pretty game or a stable game. If you want stability, don't go for pretty.

 

The third thing is to not set your graphics option in the game to the highest level. Again, it's a trade-off between a pretty game or a stable game. If you set the graphics to the highest level, you'll use more memory for graphics and you'll eventually leak enough memory to crash the game.

 

With just these three things, I have my game stable enough that I can play it for hours and I usually won't have a crash.

 

I also run my game on a computer that has been intentionally downgraded to Windows 7 since it's the best configuration I have found for all of my older games. Many people don't have multiple computers and don't have this option.

 

Also, be cautious about mods that add a lot of stuff to any given area. For example, there are mods that add NPCs to casinos. They are great because they make the casinos feel less empty, but every NPC has textures for their skin and clothing and any objects that they are carrying that all need to be loaded. Mods that add a lot of clutter to an area to make it look realistic will also tax the game's memory system. Mods like Freeside Open have a lot more things being displayed at once. It's nice to have a Freeside that isn't chopped up into annoying sections, but displaying all of those objects at once is hard on the game's memory system. That's the whole reason that Freeside was chopped up into sections in the first place.

 

Most PCs have a lot of disk space these days, so what I always do is I keep a completely unmodified copy of the game on the disk in case I ever want to get back to it (saves me from downloading it from Steam). Then, when I get a stable version with the mods I like, I keep a copy of that as well. Sometimes when you install and uninstall mods you can get things screwed up. It's nice to be able to just delete your screwed up game copy and then copy over your saved stable version to get back to that.