A guide to show all performance and stability boosting mods that are essential to making Fallout New Vegas a more stable game and tools and mod managers to help with modifying your game.
This guide assumes you have basic computer literacy and know how to at the very least find your New Vegas folder. Be aware that your game can crash if mods are installed incorrectly, nexus mod manager or even better, mod organizer is highly recommended!
New Vegas Anti Crash
New vegas Anti Crash is a mod that is absolutely essential no matter what. Even if one is doing a vanilla playthrough they should still get this mod. It will get rid of many of the crashes you will experience throughout the game. This is however a NVSE plugin so you must have the script extender installed.
New Vegas Script Extender
New vegas script extender is another absolutely essential mod that is required by most other mods. A lot of mods on the nexus require the script extender including some of the mods on this list. Installing New Vegas Script Extender should be done manually. You have to simply open the file and your game directory and drag and drop everything except for the SRC folder and the read me files.
DO NOT PUT THE FILES IN YOUR DATA FOLDER
The NVSE files must be dropped into the main directory where your exe file is located.
This file is not available on the nexus!
Yukichigai Unofficial Patch
This is a unofficial patch which is a giant compilation of patches and bug fixes for Fallout New Vegas and it’s dlc’s. This is STRICTLY a compilation of patches. There is no restored uncut content or balance tweaks.
Here is a list of just some of the fixes from the nexus page:
This is all with only 1 ESM!
New Vegas Stutter Remover
New vegas stutter remover is a plugin for New Vegas Script Extender that fixes the games stutter. Vanilla Fallout New Vegas has really bad stutter that is really noticeable when jumping and side stepping. This plugin gets rid of all that stutter and comes with its own INI file that you can tweak to your liking. The stutter remover is a PLUGIN so it must be placed in the correct folder which is Fallout New Vegas\Data\nvse\plugins. This is done for you if you use a mod manager.
IMPORTANT FOR WINDOWS 10 USERS
If you use windows 10 than stutter remover can be unstable and can cause crashes. I have done extensive research on the topic and found many INI tweaks for stutter remover that have been said to fix the problem but none of them have been 100% stable in my experience. If you use windows 10 than it is best to not use stutter remover!
Manual Save Key
Save Key is a mod that allows you to create a manual save using a hotkey (F11). Quicksaves are notorious for causing save corruption. When your save becomes corrupted it can cause infinite loading screens and crashes when trying to load your save. This means you lose all of your progress. Manual saves however can’t become corrupted as easily however when you want to manual save you have to pause the game and go save which lacks the convenience of a quicksave. This mod fixes said issue and I would highly recommend it over other mods such as CASM.
FNV 4GB Patcher
There have been many patches and solutions to make Fallout New Vegas 4GB. Fallout New Vegas by default used only 2GB. By using this patcher you can simply run it and it will patch your exe file to run at 4GB instead allowing much smoother gameplay especially with high resolution texture packs such as NMC or Ojo Bueno. The front pages for these texture packs actually stongly recommend or even require you have your game 4GB. This patcher DOES NOT go in the data folder. It goes into your main directory with your exe file and you run it once and it will patch your exe and create a backup. Once that is done your game will be patched! With your game being 4GB it will not get out of memory crashes and will run much smoother even without the high resolution texture packs.
Mod Configuration Menu
The Mod Configuration Menu is a menu that is added when you pause your game and allows you to tweak options with mods that are supported by it. For example there is a version of CASM that is compatible with MCM that allows you to tweak how often you want the game saved and the time you want between each save. This mod allows for much more control over how your mods work.
Here are a few mods that are supported with MCM, these are NOT all of the mods supported:
There are many mod managers/organizers for you to choose from but there are ones that are clearly superior than the others. Here are a list of the mod managers/organizers:
Downloading Mods Manually
Now the question most people ask is which should I use? Well the first one you want to rule out is downloading your mods manually. Downloading mods manually is a terrible idea unless it’s a small plugin or something that needs to be done manually such as New Vegas Script Extender. I would never recommend installing mods manually unless your installing like 5 or less small mods and that’s all. Now that that is out of the way lets look at our list again!
Vortex&Mod Organizer 2
You may ask why I grouped these together but you will soon find out why. Now Mod organizer was made by some really smart dude named Tannin42. Now he started Mod Organizer 2 but was asked by the Nexus Team to help them make a new Mod Manager to succeed NMM. He left Mod Organizer 2 and started working on what is called Vortex. Now Vortex is still in alpha and is not meant to be used for actual modding. It doesn’t even have a release date yet so that one is out of the question. Now since Mod Organizer 2 was abandoned it was taken over by some really nice fans, sadly the fans suck♥♥♥♥♥♥at this and Mod Organizer 2 has issues like memory leaks so it isn’t recommended for modding. That leaves us our last 3 options!
Nexus Mod Manager&Fallout Mod Manager
The reason I grouped these 2 is mostly because this section is really long. Fallout Mod Manager is good but that’s just it. It lacks the simplicity of Nexus Mod Manager but also lacks the features that Mod organizer has. Some say it’s better than Nexus Mod Manager which is true but why not just use Mod Organizer which is WAY better. As for Nexus Mod Manager, it is really simple but has issues, it can good for a beginner to download less than I would say 20 mods but once you start really getting up there in numbers it can become really bad and messes up your game. I would say use Nexus Mod manager if you are just starting to mod and once you become more experienced use the Mod Organizer, which just so happens to be our next option!
Mod Organizer
Mod organizer is the BEST way to mod your game. It is slightly more complicated than Nexus Mod Manager but is just so much better. It allows you to create profiles for mods so if you want different mods on your charisma character you can have a profile for him/her and then a different set of mods for your Grognak the Barbarian character. It also has options to add ini tweaks for certain mods and you can merge mods such as merging patches for mods etc. It also does not fill up your data folder with all the mods contents but rather injects them at launch to keep your folder clean. This means if you mess up modding, you can simply uncheck the mods rather than uninstall all your mods and deleting your whole game like you would do with other mod managers. Mod Organizer is the best way to mod Fallout New Vegas and the best part is it also works for other games like Skyrim (I don’t like Skyrim but for you filthy peasants it is an option).
In conclusion, use Nexus Mod Manager for beginners and then Mod Organizer for more experienced modders.
This was a really long section.
Now that you have chosen your mod manager/organizer, you can get some extra tools to help make your game more stable!
Tool #1 Load Order Optimization Tool (LOOT)
The Load Order Optimization Tool (LOOT) is used to do exactly as it says, optimize your load order! Your load order is the order in which your mods will load. If your load order is incorrect, mods can get overwritten or messed up and even worse crash your game and make it unstable. LOOT is a tool that will automatically, with the click of your mouse, optimize your load order to the best of its abilities. Now when I say “To the best of it’s abilities”, LOOT is usually really good at determining your load order, however sometimes it can make mistakes and in that case manual action must be taken. For the most part LOOT gets it all right and using it can make a big difference!
Tool #2 FNV Edit
FNV Edit is a program that lets you check for errors such as mods that are incompatible and also allows you to create merged patches which can help make mods work nicely together. Make sure that if you create a merged patch that is on the BOTTOM of your load order. LOOT will detect merged patches and will automatically put them at the bottom. FNV Edit is a really useful tool that I highly recommend you give a try.
This guide took a really long time to make. It also caused my hand and keyboard several injuries. Maybe if you rated it my carpal tunnel will go away.
My final words are don’t buy Fallout 4 and make sure you don’t get sriracha in your pee hole.
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