FIXING

A minimal modlist for a modern, vanilla-esque experience. For first-time players and nostalgia-bait. Nostalgiabaters?

The goal here is to retain as much of the vanilla experience as possible, while making improvements that bring it up to the expectations of 2020. Check out the video if you haven't

I worked on this list over my first 2 (and a bit) playthroughs, with only maybe ½ of that time spent with the final list here, so I can’t guarantee a bug-free experience. That being said, it’s probably the lightest modlist you’ll find, and I personally didn't run into problems.

This isn't one of these complete massive overhaul guides that they have now, just a wee little list of my slight remaster. I’ll try explain everything enough to get you up and running but if you’re looking for a proper guide, some great guides/lists that helped me are:

Rika's Guide Nuclear Modlist Viva New Vegas r/fnv Modding Guide

Before you start

Boot up the launcher, go to settings and turn off Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering, V-sync, and (in the advanced tab) water displacement. Load the game, make a test character, go outside (in the game), make a test save.

Beyond this point you should only be launching the game through Vortex (Using New Vegas Script Extender)

  • Yukichigai Unofficial Patch - YUP
    Massive bugfix compilation
  • Unofficial Patch NVSE
    Additional fixes that require NVSE
  • lStewieAl's Tweaks
    Massive collection of optional engine level tweaks, everything comes OFF by default so be sure to change the .ini file.
  • Tweaking lStewieAl's tweaks
    Install as normal, run the game, walk around and then customise the generated .ini file (Data/NVSE/plugins/nvse_stewie_tweaks.ini). Or download a preset, I have one that attempts to be faithful to vanilla (in the downloads), while Axonis’s one comes with every setting annotated.

If you don’t want to make any .ini changes I have included a one size fits all version in the downloads

JIP LN NVSE lets us customise the game settings in a very clean and easy way, using a new file called FalloutCustom.ini (Documents\My Games\FalloutNV\FalloutCustom.ini) I don't see it

Open it in notepad and paste the following code:

Disable the horrific mouse acceleration

[Controls]
fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0
fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0
fForegroundMouseBase=0
fForegroundMouseMult=0

Performance improvements

[General]
bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=1
bUseThreadedAI=1
INumHWThreads=Set to number of threads in your CPU

[BackgroundLoad]
bSelectivePurgeUnusedOnFastTravel=1

[Display]
iPresentInterval=0

[Audio]
iAudioCacheSize=4096
iMaxSizeForCachedSound=1024

And, if you’re feeling overconfident about how well the game is going to run, you can overcrank your LOD settings, as described here

The vanilla dialogue UI is iconic, and all the UI overhauls I tried messed with that, while not really offering enough improvement to convince me. There’s no SKYUI for Fallout: New Vegas. Though if you want to try some out, fortunately it’s a type of mod which you can tell what it does from screenshots.

  • FOV Slider
    Easily change your FOV (note: this can be done through the console or your FalloutCustom.ini)
  • Pause Menu HD
    Just changes the pause overlay texture, pretty nice.
  • JIP Improved Recipe Menu
    The vanilla recipe menu almost unusably awful

ENB’s, if done right, can be a massive improvement over the vanilla game. If done wrong, they can be distracting and performance intensive

Transparency fixes
  • ENB First Person Transparency Fix
  • My hair fixes
    Changes hair mesh flags so that ambient occlusion doesn't shade areas which should be transparent. Use FiftyTifty's fix for a far more drastic solution, or both (load mine last)
  • And (anecdontally) go to Data/Shaders, and replace shaderpackage013.sdp with a copy of shaderpackage017.sdp (make a backup first!)
Tweaking your enblocal.ini

Not strictly necessary, but I think an obvious stumbling block that people have with ENB’s is that they haven’t got the settings right for their system

In your Fallout: New Vegas folder, open your enblocal.ini, and make the following changes

[MEMORY]
ReservedMemorySizeMb=Lower for older systems, higher for newer. (128, 256, 384, 512, 640, 768, 896, 1024). The official recommendation is to start at the lowest and incrementally increase until you stop noticing stutter.
VideoMemorySizeMb=Use VRamSizeDX9.exe, to get a "video memory available" number. For Win 10 subtract 350, for Win 7 subtract 170, for Win 8 use the number it gives you.
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

There are some HD overhaul packs available, but I’ve been (broadly) unimpressed with how different they are in art style.

If you absolutely MUST have HD textures, here’s the best of the vanilla look. Be warned though, on the poor old Gamebryo engine, they can cause a bit of a performance hit for not a lot of difference.

If you’ve installed everything in this section there will be a few file conflicts. Just make sure the load order matches the order they’re listed here.

I have included some crucial combat AI tweaks in my Stewie's tweaks .ini, under [GameSettings], if you’re not using my preset, copy and paste the below into your own. If you’re not using Stewie’s Tweaks at all, Combat Enhancer will make enemy combat AI a bit better, at the expense of a few bizzare and unnecessary tweaks.

Make enemies less likely to dodge bullets
fAIDodgeDecisionBase = 2
fAIDodgeFavorLeftRightMult = 0.5
fAIDodgeWalkChance = 15

Make it harder to literally run circles around enemies
fCharacterDefaultTurningSpeed = 100
fCombatFiringArcStationaryTurnMult = 0.8

Increase exterior combat/search range, so enemies will actually react to sniping
fAIUseWeaponDistance = 16000 fCombatAbsoluteMaxRangeMult = 5
fCombatSearchCheckInvestigateMaxDistance = 1024
fCombatSearchExteriorMaxRadius = 3500
fCombatSearchExteriorMediumRadius = 2048
fCombatSearchExteriorMinRadius = 1024

Now as I understand it, immersion means unnecessary bullshit. So here is the unnecessary bullshit I would recommend.

  • Better Posture
    The resting pose in F:NV is noticeably weird, this makes it look normal
  • Strip Wall Billboards
    Makes the discarded billboards around the outside of the strip have the occasional billboard texture on them. So they actually look like billboards.
  • Old World Blues Path Lighting
    There's some path lights that never turn on. Now they do
  • Ghost People Perception Fix
    There’s NPC’s that you can supposedly sneak around in the Dead Money DLC, the only problem is their perception is set to 0 which is interpreted as infinite. This mod sets it to 1, which is a low number. As far as I can tell it’s not included in any other fixes, and it seemed to work. 
  • Delay DLC
    Delays Story DLC so they show up in release order (the order they were written in)
  • Pre-Order Packs Scattered
    If you don't want to start with all the preorder DLC gear in your inventory, this is the cleanest fix i’ve found.

If you’ve installed everything in this section there will be a few file conflicts. Just make sure the load order matches the order they’re listed here.

Downloads

My Minimal ENB

A little lightweight preset, that aims to update the look of the game without going too far. With a light grade, some tasteful shaders, the goal is, an ENB you can forget is even there. See Screenshots

Nexus Mods
My ENB hair fixes

Fixes ambient occlusion affecting areas of hair which should be transparent

Nexus Mods
My .ini files
Includes settings for:
  • FalloutCustom.ini
  • Ragdolls
  • Just Mods
  • JIP NVSE
  • Stewie’s Tweaks
Download