About 50 top mods for starting Fallout 4.

Around 50 of my personal picks for the best mods on starting the game out. If you've never played, or quit and and are thinking of returning, these are my greatest recommendations for the smoothest and most user customized experience. These mods require no additional steps from you to work, just download and play. Majority of them do have options for tweaking to your personal tastes..

These mods assume you have already installed F4SE. If you have not, get it here. https://f4se.silverlock.org/

Mod Configuration Menu

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21497

Framework for other mods that allows you to tweak and configure their settings in game at anytime.

FallUI : Inventory

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/51813?tab=description

Most user friendly hud framework to date. Easy to set up and tweak with no modding experience required. Recreate huds of the older Fallout titles, tweak the vanilla, or build your own all from the mod configuration menu. I use a personally tweaked version of the 3D hud.

FallUI : Workbench

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/49300?tab=description

Expands the crafting menu size, adds additional weapon information, and allows less tedious multi-crafting.

FallUI : Sleep And Wait

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/49070

Expands wait and sleep menu. Wait and sleep for longer amounts of time. Removes a lot of additional time ( In real life ) the vanilla menu wastes on delayed speed.

FallUI : Map

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/49920

Improves map interface with quality of life changes.

FallUi : Item Sorter

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/49656

Sorts inventory into categories with icons and neater names for faster, more convenient searching. Select the unofficial patch version if you choose to use the unofficial patch. You can also choose to remove the weight of miscellaneous items if you're a hoarder like me.

FallUI : Confirm Boxes

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/48958

Removes a lot of tedious pop up boxes in the game. Change the shape / color of them and other menus, to stand out more or be modernized.

DEF_UI Iconlibs Rescaled and Fixed

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/31088

Required by FallUI: Inventory to provide colored and properly sized icons.

Previsibines Repair Pack (PRP)

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/46403

Improves the game's optimization system, also known as previsbines. This controls adding items to a group so that they are less intensive on performance. Reading the page for this one does a far better job than just a short description from me. It requires the following mod in order to function if you do choose to get it.

Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4598

This mod includes debatable unofficial bug fixes. Some people swear by it, others hate it. I personally use it myself, but up to you. It is no longer optional if you decide to use PRP.

Flyable Personal Vertibird

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/47187

Adds craft able Vertibirds you can fly. But can be script heavy, causing other heavy script effects to be delayed. This probably won't ever effect you, unless you use something like Sim Settlements 2. Unlike the vanilla game, this allows you to make your own personal Vertibird in any settlement, have it piloted, use it as storage, and use it to take you wherever you want. I feel it's greatly worth it since it's fun to fly around and shoot a minigun with infinite ammo at whatever you want to. Let alone just the fun of seeing the world of Fallout 4 from a birds eye view.

Game Configuration Menu

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33759

Allows you to tweak majority of the game settings to your personal tastes through the mod configuration menu. Includes options for DLC content.

I highly recommend you use this to lower the overall exp gained by at least half, and disable most of the crafting experience. Otherwise you will level insanely fast and delete majority of the fun of the game. It gets boring reaching level 20 before you even leave the 1st starting area, and having to fight enemies that are like level 1 - 5. Leave food crafting exp on, since it's a nice little benefit to hunting, and only gives 1 - 3 exp.

SKK Fast Start new game

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/29227

Any new characters you may want to make in the future will only take about 2 minutes and you can skip the otherwise very lengthy intro. I personally don't think it's an issue if you skip the intro even on your first play through as you will go through a portion of it again in an unskippable story quest. And there is another optional replay of it by doing a hidden interaction by visiting a certain npc before the story quest. This apparently triggered one user and caused them to flip out in my comment section lol. So take it with a grain of salt, do as you want.

Global Stash (Connect all Workshops and Workbenches) by SKK

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41511

Automatically crunches your junk items into the main scrap materials to make your inventory load faster and be less cluttered. Links all your workshops and settlement items together so you don't have to keep traveling back and forth to access them. Uses a holotape for tweaking.

Quick Trade

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16229

Enables the ability to quickly trade with companions, settlers, and merchants by pressing R and skipping all the dialog. Uses the mod configuration menu to add a user defined hotkey to disable the feature when using multiple mods that replace the R key menu.

Sandman Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15151

Makes the Sandman perk grant exp, since it doesn't for some reason. If you've played previous Fallout games, then it's likely you know this is a stealth killing perk for sleeping enemies.

Classic Holstered Weapons System + Discrete Female Skeleton

1. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/46101

2. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/56115

1. Adds visible weapon holstering like previous Fallout games. You can see weapons equipped by NPC's before they attack you now. If you don't see a weapon, then it's likely they have a heavy weapon like a Minigun or etc.

2. It is highly recommended that you get this mod alongside Classic Holstered Weapons. It makes the game's skeleton more easily compatible with other mods that modify it. Great to have, for the off chance that you end up interested in something else that does. It'll save you a crash and a headache down the line.

No Crippled Limb Pop Ups

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11082

Removes the pop up notifications from being crippled that interrupt the flow of combat.

Equipment and Crafting Overhaul Redux (ECO)

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/67679

Most modular and up to date weapon / crafting frame work of 2022.

Craft weapons, clothes, armor, and ammo. Use mobile work benches. Make legendary farming less tedious by scrapping crappy legendaries to get parts to build the ones you want to have.

As of 2023, ECO has been split into parts. I recommend you also grab the parts below to keep all the original effects such as legendary scrapping, and open armor slots.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/66900 ( LEO )

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65761 ( NEO )

Community Fixes Merged

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/74945?

This was originally just a fix for the trade craft quest. ( because it can unfairly locks you out of a companion and a pair of upgraded glasses.) I have changed it to a merge that contains a ton of other great quality fixes that aren't intrusive. It that will save you lots of load order slots and downloading 100's of fixes separately. This also fixes the trade craft bug too, so no worries.

Whose Quest Is It Anyway

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/51979

Changes the generic you can't drop this item message to an informative one that tells you what quest the item belongs to.

Unlimited Fast Travel / Unlimited Survival

1.https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25568

2. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/26163

Another 2 quality of life that go together.

1. Allows you to fast travel from anywhere, even fast travel disabled locations. Do not do this during area related quests though, or you may experience bugs.

2. Allows you to restore specific disabled features in survival to have your own fully customized rule set.

Console Name Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25568

Fixes the names of various items in the console, for someone who intends to use it to modify the game world.

Vault 75 and 95 Vault Suits

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/54660

Adds the missing Vault 75 and Vault 95 suits to the game in their respective locations.

Vault 81 - Timed Mole Rat Disease (60 minutes)

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15012

Makes a bugged in game disease expire after 60 in game minutes instead of being permanent so you don't always have an annoying icon and reminder of it.

Crafting Highlight Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27479

Disable ugly shaders and highlighting at workbenches.

Third-Person Movement Speed Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/28737

Self explanatory.

Encumbrance 76

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42384

Fallout 76 overweight mechanics and strong back perk changes.

PerkPointsPerLevel

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3938

Set any number of perk points you want to gain each level. I use 2.

AnotherOne Immersive Radiation

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/52637

Changes radiation from just lowering your health and killing you to the penalty inducing style of older Fallouts and giving you a chance to cure it before dying.

Sprint Stuttering Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/47760

Self explanatory.

Third Person Melee Tweak

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15769

Lets you do sideways attacks with melee weapons. Still pretty clunky, but an improvement nonetheless.

No Negative Affinity + Visible Affinity + No Passive Affinity

1. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10660
2. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3276
3. https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/77021

This is technically 3 mods, that all go together like bread, peanut butter, and jelly. Use them all, use some of them, use none of them, it's up to you.

1. Enables less tedious min / maxing all companion relationships without being penalized for doing certain things they don't like.(Vanilla heavily restricts how you can play the game and behave, especially with a certain companion to the point of "why bother".) I personally use "no ♥♥♥♥♥ given" with the normal cool down version. (It's comedic to me.)

2. This allows you to check your affinity progress at anytime with an accurate percentage and no need to initiate dialogue. Vanilla gives you a vague message of your progress and requires you to speak to each individual companion to ask them, just like real life. But this is a video game, I'd rather see all this information at the click of a button in a menu.

3. Disable the passive bonus, so your actions have more weight. No longer will companions suddenly want to sleep with you because ya put them in the companion slot, as you proceed to stand around and do literally nothing.

No Local Leader for Crafting Stations or Stores

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/39840

Removes needing to invest points into an otherwise meaningless perk just to make crafting benches and stores. Skk Global stash handles supply lines already.

See Through Scopes

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9476

Changes a lot of scopes to 3D and see through models.

Workshop Framework

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/35004

New workshop scripts, quality of life features, and makes settlement stuff more easily modifiable. Includes some tools in the MCM that can sometimes save corrupted settlements and power issues caused by your removal of unsafe mods.

Remove Ugly Flat Trash

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/19711

Modular installer to remove various trash decals that look bad and some rubble. More specifically, these are the flat decals that are low resolution and filler. There is still plenty of trash in the game, from piles of trash that are part of the map, to the classic Fallout assortment of clutter items.

Blur Killer

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16446

Removes a lot of ugly blurring effects and increases performance.

Insignificant Object Remover

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9835

Removes a lot of small rocks and unnecessary performance eating objects.

DLC covered as well here.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/53535

Snap Snap

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22992

Adds more snap points to object building, makes some items snap together that didn't in vanilla.

Recommend also using this to add guard posts to the list.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/13755

Remove Annoying Idles

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/37081

Lets you choose certain animations to remove various annoying idles. I recommend the hammering, slog, and driveway ones to remove. Why would you remove these? Because these idles constantly interrupt your settlers from doing what you want them to do. And should you have scrapped the objects related to them, npc's will appear to interact with objects that used to be there but no longer exist.

Mouth Brightness Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/17865

Fixes a bug with mouths that make them overly bright at night. It can be very weird to see people's mouths glow in the dark.

Get Off My Face - Laser Weapons 1st Person Reposition

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/76121

Makes Laser weapons take up less of the screen and no longer be a bulky annoyance.

Weapon Drop Stop

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/65674

It's not what it seems, this is a fix for a bug that has existed since Skyrim where sometimes when an enemy dies and drops their weapon that it becomes detached from the npc. So it's left in your game world forever, causing save bloat, longer loading times, and lag from extra weapons being loaded in.

4estGimp - AI Edit

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/60417

Best Lightweight AI improvements to stealth awareness, combat styles, and performance without bloatware as of 2023.

America Rising 2

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/75767

An exceptional quality quest mod to add the Enclave to Fallout 4 as a join able faction with a dlc sized expansion. They exist alongside vanilla faction lineup for seamless integration.

The Attachment Pack

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/76924

A long standing project that I kept up with that was finally completed In time for Christmas of 2023. This is the most outstanding expansion I've ever seen to vanilla weapons with tons of interesting attachments to flesh out weapons. Enjoy the look of classic Fallout weapons on Bethesda's iterations thanks to some of the new ones. As well as more variety in how your weapons can look, while also adding new stats to play around with like the vanilla framework.

Energy Weapon Calculation Fix

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/75565

Fixed a longstanding issue with the way damage is calculated for energy weapons which caused them to be less effective than their ballistic counterparts.

Bastion - A Power Armor Overhaul

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/75184

Overhauls Power Armor to be the true tanks they are worked up to be. With this you can disable taking damage from small firearms, and only take damage from heavy calibers and broken / exposed parts. NPC's in Power Armor are also more threatening. Easily configured with the mod configuration menu.

Let Me Use That

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/74440

Great quality of life mod that allows you to instantly eat food out of the world or pick up and equip items without going into your inventory to do it.

NPC Landmines

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/60440

Shameless self promotion. Does exactly what it says, and was created by me. This mod effectively fixes inconsistencies with how landmines behave, while doing some tweaks that allow NPCs to use and spawn with them. Creates some interesting experiences in doors, as you can suddenly find a doorway unexpectedly sporting a recently placed mine in the middle of a combat encounter. Just as an example.

Honorable Mentions

These are mods which may appeal to more niche interests or require a lot of other mods to do their thing.

NamePlates

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21636

Adds floating, color coded nameplates and health bars to everyone. You can customize how it shows bars. Personally I use it just to show health bars for companions / lovers.

NPCs Use Items

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/73717

Requires the mod below and a bug fix for the Jet script (Located in the requirement section of the mod page.) This mod allows NPC's to spawn with additional stimpaks and drugs that only they can use to make combat more difficult and interesting. It's fully customizable, and now you can experience junkies with the same power as you the player usually have.

Robco Patcher

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/69798

A revolutionary mod that applies patches at runtime. Allows mods to edit parts of the game without conflicting ESP's, so end users can download and enjoy without the hassle of manual patching. This would of made it in the top 50, but I placed it here as without mods to utilize it, it won't do anything. If you're interested in it, you can click the link above and browse the requirements section for mods that do use it.

The Eyes of Beauty Fallout Edition - Remastered

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/73874

Best looking eye re-texture mod of 2023 in my opinion.

.44 Glow Sights.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/76288

Get those sweet looking glow sights for your .44 revolvers.

Smooth Ghouls

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/50962

If you don't care much for how ghouls look and would rather they look like normal people.

Immersive Hunting

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/53964

Adds a new and realistic framework for hunting.

[Loser]

@RobCobBob thank you for the info, I must of overlooked it. I updated the section with that notice.

[RobCobBob]

PRP lists the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch as a requirement btw, so it is necessary in this mod list if you use it.

[Loser]

Go in with mods of course. There's so many quality of life features available, I'd say it's a crime in my opinion to not utilize them. But it's up to you when it comes to game play altering mods. I enjoy vanilla + the most myself, with subtle stuff that just builds upon what Bethesda envisioned. More attachments for existing guns, more craftable items, things like that. I Like my Fallout to be Fallout and not Call of Duty or Tarkov like I tend to see other modlists attempt to make.

[_Hx4_]

ive played on console before, just got the goty edition for pc and will start my first pc playthrough when installed. think i should go in immediately with mods or do a playthrough on pc first ?

[Loser]

Thank you. It's a metaphorical name. I also enjoy how it filters out people who are shallow take everything at face value.

[Moninja92]

You may be a loser, but you are our loser.

[Loser]

Some stuff requires F4se to work but not everything. I can try to help you with some basic trouble shooting if you let me know exactly what part isn't working for you. All you really need to do is use your mod manager to install F4se and then launch your game from the f4se.exe instead of the vanilla launcher. But what kind of error / issue are you getting?

[rhamantauri]

Can't get F4SE to run/respond. I guess i'll just try this all out vanilla after all.

[Bird Mcrandom]

well it's definitely gonna take an eternity for me to download this paragraph so ill update you tomorrow when im actually cogniscent

[Loser]

You're welcome Rambi.