#fo4 mods

The Technical Ones:

Extended Dialogue Interface You'll need F4SE For this one though I'm pretty sure you need it for quite a few. The extended dialogue interface does what it says on the tin and removes the short four options you have for responses and gives you exactly what your sole survivor is going to be saying so you don't end up being incredibly racist towards Nick when the option says 'sarcastic'.

HUDFramework is a UI framework that makes it possible for mods to add new UI elements to the HUD (I say don't worry about this one until it's in a requirement for mods you're getting)

Cheat Terminal Yes, yes I know how some people feel about this kind of mod. I've been playing fallout 4 for like 10 years, I don't have fun scouring every corner of Boston's armpit looking for clipboards. This is a holotape cheat menu that lets you add anything in the game to your inventory, SPECIAL points and other bits. It also lets you teleport companions to your location if they get stuck in an elevator, fix some faction quest if they get broken. This one is great for me because in my little make believe world I have my soul survivor is either a Courser or the Kellogg guinea pig and there's options to make you a little more deadly

Workshop Framework For Players: New controls and faster, more stable workshop scripts. For Modders: Add new resource types, override settings, and generally change the way settlements work dynamically. You'll need this bad boy for a few of the mods on this list They'll be in the requirements for them on nexus

Fallout Priority Next-Gen - CPU Performance FPS Optimizer Does what it says on the tin and stops me from ripping my hair out. Improves performance by elevating the CPU Priority of the game process and minimizes input lags and prevents stutters caused by other processes.

Workshop Menu Missing Tabs Fix Sometimes your workshop tabs will just disappear which is really really annoying. This fixes that with a holotape

The Immersion/Gameplay Ones:

Realistic Death Physics - No Animations decreases the amount of force of both melee and ranged attacks (especially crits) to more realistic levels

Lowered Weapons I hate how your character is always pointing their gun foward 100% of the time in first person, this has your character relax their hold on their gun when not firing it

Improved Maps and Visible Roads A much better high contrast world map with roads, topography, and waterline all clearly visible. Optional number grid and regions

Reverb and Ambiance Overhaul Increases the diversity and dynamics of in-game sound, Great on the ears if you're playing with headphones. My one problem with it though is that it's a little too loud for me and the settings keep resetting every time I boot up the game, but that can be fixed by going into your sound settings, and it takes less than 5 seconds

Enhanced Blood Textures Mixed blood look a little more like well... blood

Vivid Fallout all-in-one In many cases they sharpened the games original textures somewhat, made new normal maps and enhanced shadowing.It looks really good and the textures are less V-Ram heavy than the original ones

Skip Kellogg's Memories I hate that Bethesda felt the need to try to make me sympathetic towards that man, and so I skip his memories all together. Wouldn't recommend for a first play through

Raiders Nonaggressive Raiders are now name "Wastelander" and they are no longer immediately hostile. If the player gets to close the Wastlander will warn you, if you continue to get close the Wastelander will draw a weapon, if you continue to move forward from there they will then attack

Gunners Overhaul makes the Gunners friendly to the player at the start of the game. It also makes all containers and useful items in Gunner areas belong to the Gunner faction, which means you have to steal it from them.  It basically makes them the mercenary/militia faction they're implied to be

Extremely Long Lasting Stealth Boy There is different scales for the length but I do the one that extends it to 1 minute

Pip-Boy Flashlight This one is one of my personal favorites, it overhauls the flashlight on your pip-boy as well as on power armour making it look more like an actual flashlight and like the light is coming from your pip-boy. You can customise what kind of light it is too and some of the options are really cool

Settler and Companion Dialogue Overhaul reduces or eliminates repetitive companion dialogue and adds new situation-appropriate dialogue for companions. They'll have more to say and seem more aware of their surroundings. Settlers are aware of your quest progression, and while they still occasionally complain about "my back hurts, my feet hurt…", they display increased awareness of the dangers lurking in the Commonwealth, expressing gratitude for the protection you've provided them

Better Third Rail this one makes the 3rd rail a little more lively in a lore friendly way

Combat zone restored-restored brings back the cut content that made the combat zone more than just another dungeon

Friendly East City Downs restores the content where this isn't just another dungeon

Fiddler's deliver animation retexture ooooh my god I'm obsessed with this one it makes the loading animations for unarguably the best gun in the game beautiful. And if you're wearing your wedding rings still you can see it in the animation and it makes my heart hurt each time

Natural expression fix helps make the expressions the player and emphasis have a little more...normal

Project reality footsteps changes almost all footstep sounds into more realistic ones. Including subtle gear and backpack rattle

Commonwealth encounter adds almost 300 new encounters to the game

The Faction/Companion Ones:

Afiinity Gains This changes the rate of how you gain affinity with companions. I choose the one that halves it because of the way I play, I get deacon's conversations a lot sooner than I feel is in character for him

Companions Infinite Ammo Gives the vanilla companions infinite ammo for all weapons, just like settlers. As long as they have 1 round in inventory they can fire indefinitely

Companions Stealth Distance Companions can sneak is the one I got before this but it's no longer compatible. It prevents your companion from charging up your booty at full speed whenever you enter stealth. Also slightly increases their follow distance. Now also prevents Dogmeat from entering player crosshairs every damn time you stop

Immersive Dogmeat Makes him a little more sneaky and a little more deadly. He'll wait for you to attack before doing anything for the most part. It also removes his level cap

Everyone's Best Friend Speaking of dog meat, this mod let's you take him with you and a companion at your choice like how it was originally intended before the game was launched

Preston Garvey No Radiant Settlement Quests Until you take the Castle, Preston will give you the quests as normal. After you have control of the castle and the radio powered up again, he'll stop giving you new quests every time you speak with him. Now to receive further quests you simply tune into the Minutemen radio station and will receive the alerts from there.

Deacon outfit change change stop deacon from changing clothes every three seconds. This one's for my own little game play reasons where he gets to a point where he feels like he no longer needs to change his clothes every 5 seconds when he's with Wanderer

Improved Railroad Overhauls the Railroad faction (in a lore friendly way) to more closely resemble the Underground Railroad and put them on the same level relative to the other major factions

Cleaner Railroad HQ Environment This is when I instal a little bit after joining the railroad, it gets rid of all of the trash and random bricks scattered throughout HQ

Railroad redone is an overhaul of HQ Even though the Railroad is a struggling faction in the commonwealth at the start of the game, I still feel that their base of operations in vanilla fallout 4 is extremely underwhelming. This mod fixes that by changing the physical environment. There's now personalized spaces for iconic characters like Desdemona, tinker-tom, deacon and others. The Player character also has their own quarters with a private terminal, bed, and power-armor station. It cleans up all trash -and some bricks and re-navmeshed the cell. And there's a pathway across the waters in the escape tunnel

More railroad exits adds a small little dungeon and two more exits into the inner city through the escape tunnel

Diverse railroad adds new faces to the unnamed NPC associated with the railroad

Railroad redemption This adds more bits to for the railroad associated with settlements, and allure friendly way it makes the railroad feel bigger and outside the scope of just the player

Railroad perks All of the quest reward perks for Railroad quests were cut before the game was released. This mod enables them at the appropriate times in doing Railroad Quests through a scavenger hunt style "quest"

You and what army Have you ever felt like the minutemen were a bit lacking? Perhaps the settlement system feels tedious, extra, or simply lacks real progression for you. Maybe even wondered why the minutemen seem less relevant the more you play? This mod aims to fix that, using your settlements as a base to expand the Minutemen and improve their ability to help the commonwealth. No longer will everything be entirely on the shoulders of one general. I love this one because in my head Preston and I are co-generals

We are the Minutemen The Minutemen are supposed to be the best alternative for rebuilding the Commonwealth because : More settlements = More resources = Better materials = Better fire power and a larger presence in all the Commonwealth. But currently this is not the case, this mod attempts to fix that

We are the men an alias framework gives the Minutemen ranks and lets you find out their names using the Alias Framework.

The Pretty Ones:

Forest Transforms the Commonwealth into a dense and overgrown forest landscape without disabling precombines. It's my favorite nature overhaul. Tree Trim is a 2024 patch for it that improves tree placement and compatibility (but you can open console commands and type 'disable' after selecting one if there's a tree in a place where a tree shouldn't be)

Animated Traffic Lights This makes the traffic lights thought the Commonwealth work again which I think is fun and goes nicely visually wise with the next one on my list

Lighting Series - All In One lights up red rockets, Starlight and other diners neon, bus stops adds, and illuminates billboards in the Commonwealth

Lightweight Lighting The lighting overhaul lighting mod I use, there are others out there higher on the endorsement list, but this is the best I've found for not tanking my fps while still looking fantastic

Interiors Enhanced - Darker Ambient Light and Fog Ambient light power and fog brightness inside all interiors reduced by 60%, without touching any directional light sources whatsoever, keeping lighting 100% true to vanilla except for those dark corners and unlit areas. Subways are actually dark and scary! Not just a filter, actual light data has been altered. 10/10 my fav lighting mod

Enhanced Lights and FX creates more atmospheric and realistic lighting. It overhauls the lights, effects, ambient light and creates a new mood for interiors. If you get a weird teal light at some locations it might be because of this mod

Darker Nights The lighting ones above look really cool with this. I have the lower setting that doesn't make the nights longer but adds just a little more night

The Flora and Fauna Ones:

Glowing Animals Emit Light Makes glowing animal variants emit light, scaled to their size

Fireflies This adds fireflies at night. It gets a little heavy at the start for my taste but there's a holotape that can tweak the settings

Wildlife overhaul less aggressive creatures and companions This mod makes prey cautious but still scared - also stops companions from hunting them down without cause. Additionally randomizes the animals height slightly, and adjusts some stats. Adds aggression radius to most creatures and robots

Squirrels of the Commonwealth there's squirrels now :)

Mutant Menagerie is a real fun one with all new creatures gathered from a wealth of public access sources. These new, lore-friendly creatures come with unique drops and hand-placed spawns. This mod also adds in dozens of dynamic spawns for new, vanilla, and DLC creatures alike! I'm not going to tell you what it's using as a shell but there's a giant hermit crap and the first time I saw one I was genuinely afraid

More Radstags adds more radstags

Commonwealth Chickens and Rabbits adds, you guessed it! Chickens and rabbits

Commonwealth wilderness overhaul adds a ton of hand placed scenes, objects and creatures across the entire commonwealth wilderness

DECAY makes feral ghouls terrifying

The Player and NPC Ones:

Rusty face fix so there's this bug right? Bug changes the colour of your characters and NPC faces and it's really annoying. This mod fixes that

Classic Ghouls Redux Every Ghoul in the vanilla game gets a Fallout 3/NV ghoul look. It gives them that gruesome falling apart look like the older games

FCO - HD Eyes My fav eye mod that just enhances the vanilla eyes. There's the eyes of beauty but I feel like that mod is too over the top and the eyes, while beautiful, don't fit the game

Ponytail Hairstyles This is the hair mod I think fits best with the vanilla textures, also 13 is my favorite

Lore-Friendly Maxson I don't even see his stupid face in my games, I just need to know that he actually looks like a 23 year old before I blow up his stupid blimp. But seriously, there's something more heavy about knowing that you're destroying a ship whose captain is someone who is so so young

Magnolia is not a cartoon makes Magnolia look a little bit more like the fantastic Linda Carter who is her voice actor. Hi Linda!

Shawn goes to bed this one's a spoiler so don't click on it unless you know what happens at the end of the main quest but now your son goes to bed at night

Eli's Armor Compendium Adds a bunch of new lore friendly armors and outfits to the game

Wasteland fashion also adds a bunch of more friendly outfits and armors

Black Metal pip-boy Makes the pip-boys in game black

Player comments and head tracking makes your character speak other then just in dialog scenes. Includes combat taunts, player hello's, responses to NPC's and much, much more including player head tracking

The Settlement Ones:

Transfer Settlement Blueprints This mod is currently not working if you're playing with the next gen. The author's most recent update on the 5th of June says that their hard work's paying off, and they're getting to a point where they're testing the mechanics of it. Basically this mod lets you download other people's settlements that they've made and posted on Nexus to have them be in your game and vice versa. Since this mod is currently out of commission, I won't include any transfer settlement mods in this list but Fiddleflaps has the best one's in my opinion

IDEK's Logistics Station 2 Adds a system to automatically manage supply lines, improve the efficiency of inter-settlement resource sharing, and adds a handful of minor convenience features.

Place Everywhere My beloved, makes building where you want them a lot easier

Scrap Everything And in game version of a console command disable that lets you delete things while you're in build mode. Be very careful with this 'cause if you delete a part of Sanctuary's road I'm not responsible for the 30 minutes you had to reload to

Icebreaker Settlements 400+ new carefully selected lines of settler dialogue to reduce the repetitive sound of the 168 original. All lines in the original actors' voices. Intended to blend in very naturally with the default lines. Settler dialogue lines that insulted the player character were also tweaked

Graygarden Planters Unlocks the ability to craft the planters at Graygarden after you clear the water purifying plant and talk to Supervisor White. Each planter yields the same amount of plants that are visible in the planter

Proper trading stores and animation Changes how trading stand look and settler animations to be the same as the crafting workbenches So now, an armor-smith who sells your armor would be seen like he actually made the armor

Settlers Go Shopping Your stores in your settlement are no longer empty and silent. Settlers occasionally go shopping and start different randomized conversations with the vendors. Or maybe just the vendors asks them about buying something. Invisible Shopping Marker version is available too

Dino's Decorations Gives you the option to craft static clutter, makes settlements feel more lived in

Sanctuary Hills Overhaul is my favorite Sanctuary mod and the one I used for like 7 years straight . It makes it so there were a few plane crashes near sanctuary and previous settlers used the bits of those planes to build walls and homes

Rickety restored Sanctuary bridge fixes the bridge in Sanctuary but in a lore friendly way

Anom's Sanctuary Hills Overhaul makes the houses there somewhere to the ones and the rest of the commonwealth instead of 'houses of the future' It also adds a community centre and a hotel in a lore friendly way

Starlight bus barricade is an overhaul of Starlight Drive, it's very fun but very big

CVC Dead Wasteland Workshop adds 1000s of unique, lore friendly items to build in your settlements and I love it, The candles and other lighting they have or an excellent touch for low/no power settlements