What are some good mods for rebalancing/overhauling Survival?

[peppermint hollows]

Gonna be honest, I don't like Vanilla Survival. I really like the concept however, just not the execution. My main issue is that enemies can be really spongy while you are made of paper skin and glass bones. I don't mind being made of wet tissue though, if that means the other enemies are also mostly wet tissue.

[CEPHY]

I don't play survival, but "Wasteland Ballistics" makes weapons hurt - a lot.
Also comes with a wound mechanic.

But if you're like me and don't enjoy bleeding out from a single hit, there's a mod called "_Balance_", which is basically the same mod but without the wound mechanic.

There should also be a mod called "realistic survival damage" or something that adjust the damage multipliers of damage taken/dealt by player and NPCs to 2x for both, rather than ~0.75x/2x

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by CEPHY:

I don't play survival, but "Wasteland Ballistics" makes weapons hurt - a lot.
Also comes with a wound mechanic.

But if you're like me and don't enjoy bleeding out from a single hit, there's a mod called "_Balance_", which is basically the same mod but without the wound mechanic.

There should also be a mod called "realistic survival damage" or something that adjust the damage multipliers of damage taken/dealt by player and NPCs to 2x for both, rather than ~0.75x/2x

The player's char takes 3x as much damage from enemies versus normal on Survival. 2x as much as on Very Hard. And if you count adrenaline buff ( which is not that hard to build up ) the player's char does more damage on Survival versus normal.

Not used it myself OP, but "Survival Options" is suppose to be a good mod. I use no mods.

[Pronoun Paladin ☯]

I always play on survival and I usually crank up the difficulty by adding a mod called NPC Travel. It takes the various factions in the game and gives them random patrols that you can increase in difficulty. So raider patrols, super mutant patrols. gunner patrols, at night you'll get packs of the mutant bears or death claws.

And to balance it out I use a mod called Amazing Followers Tweaks. This mod fixes various companion bugs and adds all sorts of neat features like the ability to not collide with your companions, suddenly they won't be blocking your way anymore. It also enables you to have up to 5 companion at the same time and that's a good alternative to messing with the survival damage, give yourself an extra companion or three to fight alongside you.

I've used Survival Options, and it has a variety of features that will allow you to tweak your damage and how much damage you take. You can turn off diseases and make all beds be able to sleep 8 hours in. Just a ton of options, but the "save" function gives you something to hot-key that enables quick-save and it didn't always seem to work properly

So instead I downloaded Unlimited Survival. It doesn't have the same number of features Survival options does but it does stuff like gives full access to the console mode, and turns on the regular way of saving your game which for me was HUGE. You don't have the ability to tweak damages or turn of diseases or things like that with this mod though.


If you're looking for a complete overhaul. Then take a look at Horizon. It makes survival significantly harder and drastically changes the game. Damage is drastically modified, things like ammo are scarce. And leveling up is REALLY slow, but it's very rewarding. You have to focus on settlement building.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Ole Greg ☯:

If you're looking for a complete overhaul. Then take a look at Horizon. It makes survival significantly harder and drastically changes the game. Damage is drastically modified, things like ammo are scarce. And leveling up is REALLY slow, but it's very rewarding. You have to focus on settlement building.

Yep. I would definitely recommend Horizon as well.

However Horizon is incompatible with a lot of mods or makes them not function because it loads last and overwrites stuff.

It also completely removes level limits on mobs as well, meaning you can run into high level mobs fairly easy. The stalking mobs and random booby traps are a really nice addition.

[Some Idiot]

In order to avoid downloading stuff off 3rd party sites or potentially incurring crashing issues, I prefer to use the console to prevent my player level from advancing beyond a point at which I like the damage balance in combat. I'm probably the odd man out here, though. Most people prefer mods over console commands.

"player.setvalue 2c9 0" sets your xp back to zero. You'll have to re-type the command every time you load a save and periodically while playing.

IIRC, it takes 1,000 xp to advance through the initial levels. So, if your're level 2, then you have between 1,000 and 1,999 xp and if you're level 10, then you have between 9,000 and 9,999. If you zero out your xp while at level 10, then you need to earn 9,000 xp again before your xp starts counting towards progess through level 10. Those numbers might not be exact, but the point is you go through a fairly long period in which xp don't count towards advancing your level. Once they do start counting, you have to re-enter the command to keep your player level from advancing, hence the need to periodically re-enter the command.

Of course, you'd have to use the console to obtain higher level perks and items too.

[Jouchebag]

Originally posted by S_U_D_S_Y:

snip

That is an absolute clusterf.

I googled up this in a few seconds:

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6838/?

...and it seems a much better solution. It's not even about "I prefer not to mod." It's "I'm afraid to mod." Objectively, skydiving is better than not skydiving.

[peppermint hollows]

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up going with Better Locational Damage, JOURNEY, and Sleep or Save. These 3 mods fix my main issues with vanilla Survival without radically changing it too much, which is more my preference.

[The Inept European]

Nice minimalist solution.

[The Inept European]

Sleep and Save

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12262

I normally solve this problem just by doing a 0-hour sleep - start the sleep and immediately cancel. You do get a disease check that way though, and lose your adrenaline bonus.

What I really want is the opposite - a mod that lets me sleep in Survival without clobbering one of my 3 precious save slots.

[peppermint hollows]

Originally posted by The Ex-ept European:

I normally solve this problem just by doing a 0-hour sleep - start the sleep and immediately cancel. You do get a disease check that way though, and lose your adrenaline bonus.

Yeah, that's the main reason I wanted Sleep and Save. Randomly getting a disease just because I wanted to save is super annoying.

[The Inept European]

Agreed. As is randomly overwriting a valuable save just because your character needs to sleep!

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by peppermint hollows:

Originally posted by The Ex-ept European:

I normally solve this problem just by doing a 0-hour sleep - start the sleep and immediately cancel. You do get a disease check that way though, and lose your adrenaline bonus.

Yeah, that's the main reason I wanted Sleep and Save. Randomly getting a disease just because I wanted to save is super annoying.

I used the Survival Options and turned on the Save on Wait. That way it bypassed the disease check and did not cause a loss of adrenaline.

[Some Idiot]

Originally posted by Jouchebag:

Originally posted by S_U_D_S_Y:

snip

That is an absolute clusterf.

I googled up this in a few seconds:

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6838/?

...and it seems a much better solution. It's not even about "I prefer not to mod." It's "I'm afraid to mod." Objectively, skydiving is better than not skydiving.

I use mods, just not for stuff I can do with the console. And I don't find typing a single command every two hours to be particularly onerous.

[Fake]

Vanilla Survival wasn't that much harder than normal, starting was a bit rougher, but after you make Hangman's alley as your base, it gets stupidly easy once you get your water empire going.

Tons of water pumps and raiding Benton Brewery for bottles became a way of life.

[peppermint hollows]

Originally posted by Fake:

Vanilla Survival wasn't that much harder than normal, starting was a bit rougher, but after you make Hangman's alley as your base, it gets stupidly easy once you get your water empire going.

Tons of water pumps and raiding Benton Brewery for bottles became a way of life.

Spongy =/= hard. It's not even hard, just annoying.