New Vegas modding help for beginners

[baddude1337]

No workshop? Don't worry, all of New Vegas' mods are over at Nexus:

Click here to find out![www.nexusmods.com]

The website itself is totally legitimate and while a subscription service is available, you neither have to pay anything nor give any bank account information in order to register an account to download mods.

If you're new to modding, check out Gophers videos below. They are very helpful in explaining the basics and how to install mods:

Click here for Gopher tutorials

For those who don't mind some reading, here's some extra personal little bits:

1: Achievement hunters rejoice! Using mods, including alternate launchers, do NOT disable achievements at all. However, using the console does, but only for the session you have used it in (IE, save and exit the game for achievements to be activated again).

2: New Vegas Script Extender[nvse.silverlock.org] is needed for pretty much every mod, so it should be the first thing you get.

3: While you're at it, I also highly recommend getting the community fix mods to make the game less crash=prone and more optimised:

New Vegas stability/anti-crashing mods and improvements

4: If you aren't too confident on manually moving around files, Nexus has it's own mod manager, very creatively called Nexus Mod Manager. This application automatically downloads and installs most mods for you:

Nexus Mod Manager[www.nexusmods.com]

5: The other main alternative is Fallout Mod Manager, which is a bit more complex, but not by much. It's main advantages are having programs like TESSnip with it so you can easily find item numbers and edit some basic things about mods:

Fallout Mod Manager[www.nexusmods.com]

6: READ THE MOD DESCRIPTIONS/READMES/POST SECTION! All the mods not only have install instructions, but also tell you if you need another mod for it to work, any known incompatibilities with other mods, and fixes for known bugs.

7: A lot of people seem to buy the game, install 10 mods without ever playing the game, crash, and then come here for help. Protip: NEVER INSTALL MORE THAN ONE MOD AT A TIME! After installing a mod or at the very most 2, run the game for a bit to make sure the mod hasn't broken anything and is working properly. It make's trouble shooting issues a lot easier when something does go wrong.

8: On a similar note, don't dive right in installing mods. I personally recommend playing through your first game with no mods, but at the very least play the game for a fair chunk so you can get a feel for the game and know what sort of mods you would like.

9: When your mod list starts getting bigger, check out Gopher's Load Order and LOOT videos. LOOT is a program that basically checks if there are any problems with your mods not mixing together and makes them kiss and make up, so everybody's happy! In normal speak: Any mods that conflict this will sort out and give you the optimum load order. Another program called BOSS does much the same thing.

10: As for what mods you want to install, the best of the best can be found by either sorting the Nexus' mod list by most viewed/downloaded, or by reading the pinned thread at the top of this forum:

All the mods you could want

If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the forum. I don't check it myself much lately, but the community is very helpful and tend to know what they're talking about!

[R5CYA]

reported!

[baddude1337]

My totally mature response

[baddude1337]

Originally posted by R5CYA:

lol!
i used the "report", cause i didn't know how else to get ahold of an admin, to ask about making it "pinned".

That's gonna be one confused moderator!

[JAGGzilla]

Good post. I just started getting into modding and found out most of this the hard way. But it's been great fun doing it and I shouldve started it years ago. Gophers vids have been a lifesaver, too.

[baddude1337]

Pike very kindly put a moderator link on my profile, so I posted a comment to him. Hopefully he sees it.

And I hope that's pike as in a long spear and not pike-y, which here in the UK is a totally different thing.

[baddude1337]

We got a pin! Thanks forum Jesus!

[pike]

congrats on the pin , now people just need to read it

[OMGWTFLMAO]

I installed Nexus Mod Manager. I had it find the games I have. But when I launch it, it just opens internet explorer and it's blank. I don't really want to use internet explorer. I use Mozilla Firefox. Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?

Also, I used FOMM but I would prefer NMM since it supports alot of games I have for modding.

[baddude1337]

I don't know too much about Nexus Mod manager. I believe there is a wiki about setting it up and general problems with it though.

If you have it installed, you should be able to just click on a mod that says 'Download with NMM' and should automatically open the program, as far as I'm aware.

[pike]

somethings not right with your install, after nmm detects your games you should get a window where you select which game to open , a browser shouldnt open , reinstall it as an admin ,the current build is .51 if thats isnt the one your installing go to nexus and redownload it

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Originally posted by pike:

somethings not right with your install, after nmm detects your games you should get a window where you select which game to open , a browser shouldnt open , reinstall it as an admin ,the current build is .51 if thats isnt the one your installing go to nexus and redownload it

yeah, it opens a window to select a game to open. After I select any of the games on the list, it just opens a blank browser window. I wouldn't really call it a browser window but the internet explorer icon is on it. I'll try to install it as admin again. Thanks.

[talgaby]

That blank window is where the mods should be, after you download them from Nexus. It is sort of a very simplified file manager.

Addendum: Also, baddude, you may consider adding ModOrganizer from the Skyrim nexus to the list. It works for all GameBryo games and is a very unique alternative method for mod installing (it uses a virtual file system).

[nitelite]

Thankfully this got Pinned. Tired of the flood of "Add wokshop plis plis" on the Forums. Thank you for posting this.

[R5CYA]

this won't stop it. (BenWah's thread is a great example) but it will be easier to ignore them now.

[baddude1337]

Originally posted by Rylo151|OCP:

do people just ignore the pinned threads or what?

Well, we get a LOT of posts here asking about mods and why there isn't a workshop, so my hope is people will at least see this first before they post about where to get mods/ask why there isn't a workshop etc.