So I've recently built a modlist to revisit New Vegas after many years of playing it. It's one of a few games that really stuck with me from a time when i wasn't extremly into gaming. I also put all of those hours into the PS3 version, and since then I've gotten deep into PC Gaming. I mention that because as we know, mods can have a massive impact on these games.

Anyways, This playthrough has been interesting because of how i remember NV. I'm a bit older and just take in the details and dialogue of the game very differently than i did when i fell in love with the game. I've also dumped about 2000 hours into FO4 since it released, so i was a little worried going backwards in terms of clunkiness and graphics.

To the point, I'm sure many of you are veterans of modding these games and I'm curious about what your 10 favorite mods are at this point.1o sounds like a lot, but I'm sure many people have a much bigger modlist than I do,and I really had to give it some thought to narrow it down. I'm not going to include NMC's or Poco Bueno's texture mods, but if anyone uses any others I'd love to know about them. So in now particular order, here's mine:
1. Vurt's Flora Overhaul
2. Strip Open
3. Spice of Life (Adds armor to the levelled lists)
4. FO4 Loot Menu
5. Project Nevada (I'm not even sure of every single thing it adds, but there is a lot that i do know about and love.)
6. New Vegas Redesigned 3 (I really,really love the changes this makes, and i think most of the facial overhauls blend well with the Dragbody faces I use.)
7. Drag Body's Powder Gangers (I add this because the face styles go into the game so well, and the powder gangers being in the very beginning, it improves the experience by a ridiculous amount.)
8. DB's NCR Overhaul ( I also use the distributed patch on the nexus.
9. WMX
10. DB's Brotherhood Reforged.

There are many more that i consider essential, but these mods really transformed New Vegas for me. NV Redesigned 3 and the Drag body factions are my favorite, and make the most important changes that aren't game mechanics. The important NPC's faces actually looking awesome and unique is probably the biggest factor in making my revisit to the game feel so epic. I will say that DB's faces look a lot better than NVR3's, but NVR also adds so much other details that i consider them equally important.

Damn, sorry for the length, i guess I've just been dying to discuss the game. I'd like to make a thread a thread comparing NV to FO4 because they almost compliment each other for me, but I'd end up writing an essay!

I also played New Vegas a lot when I was on the consoles before transitioning to PC gaming. I'll throw in my essential ten mods.

1. Drumber's Fallout Character Overhaul
2. NMC
3. 47 ENB 2: The Sequel
4. Vurt's Flora Overhaul
5. Weapon Retexture Pack
6. Dragbody's Power Armour overhaul
7. Dragbody's old NCR overhaul
8. YUP
9. Stutter Remover
10. Ultimate Ulysses Companion and Race

I picked the Ulysses mod all because his eyes never move. It makes it very uncomfortable talking to him.

Well here comes the most simple one yet

1.Solid Project
2. Project Nevada
3 . EVE by weijiesen
4 . Real Recoil
5 . Mojave Sandy Desert
6 . Automatic weapons fixes by hz
7 . The Black wastelander armor
8 . New Vegas Bounties
9 . The weapon mod Menu
10 . Live Dismemberment

These are my top 10 essential mods when I play Fallout: New Vegas

1. Mod Configuration Menu
2. Yukichigai Unofficial Patch
3. New Vegas Stutter Remover(before windows 10 broke it but I heard that someone made in work)
4. New Vegas Anti-Crash
5. Darnified UI
6. CASM
7. One Hud
8. Project Nevada
9. Disable Courier Stash
10. Alternate Start

There are loads more but these are my essentials.

@ahyuser001 stutter rempver works for me and I'm on the latest version of windows 10. My games actually surprisingly stable, 1 random ctd in a few days of in-game time. I used the fear and loathing guide, not for the entire mod list, but i used it for directions on setting up the utility mods.

@Transient3292

Do you mean this >link< ?

If yes then thanks a bunch.

Yup, that's the one. The beginning parts are extremely useful. All of the steps aren't necessary, for example i didn't use FNV LOD gen or make any merge patches.Those will be my next conquests when i get some time.

That’s a tough one indeed.
These are 10 essential mods for me, not necessarily my favourite.
I won't include texture mods either.

1. New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE)
   
2. New Vegas Stutter Remover
   
3. NVAC - New Vegas Anti Crash
   
4. JIP LN NVSE Plugin
   
5. Yukichigai Unofficial Patch - YUP
   
6. Fallout New Vegas Redesigned 2
   
7. JSawyer’s Mod
   
8. Collision Meshes
   
9. Dragbody’s FO4 Power Armors
   
10. Dragbody’s Upgrades from the Commonwealth

@TheHermit, what makes you use NVR2 instead of 3? I know there are differences but notbsure exactly what they are.

BTW i could be mistaken, but i thought i used a tutorial for installing NVR3 with Mod Organizer 2 by TheHermit.

@Transient3292 You remembered correctly. I decided at the beginning of the year that I prefer NVR2 due to its more focused scope and simplicity. Although I love NVR3, I'm not keen on its reliance on FCO -- believe it or not, I'm not a fan of Drumber’s art style as much as I used to be. YouTuber: ManyATrueNerd may have had a hand in that. It makes the NPC's look perma-angry. The eyes also have a lot of incompatibilities, even with NVR3 itself. I'm helping Dracomies with his Brave New World mod. He's also going to take another pass at NVR, keeping the best bits of NVR3, but streamlining it closer to NVR2 without the added FCO dependency.

TheHermit wrote:

@Transient3292 You remembered correctly. I decided at the beginning of the year that I prefer NVR2 due to its more focused scope and simplicity. Although I love NVR3, I'm not keen on its reliance on FCO -- believe it or not, I'm not a fan of Drumber’s art style as much as I used to be. YouTuber: ManyATrueNerd may have had a hand in that. It makes the NPC's look perma-angry. The eyes also have a lot of incompatibilities, even with NVR3 itself. I'm helping Dracomies with his Brave New World mod. He's also going to take another pass at NVR, keeping the best bits of NVR3, but streamlining it closer to NVR2 without the added FCO dependency.

Yeah I know what you mean about FCO art style making NPCs look angry. It would be nice if Dracomies gets rid of the dependancy. I have seen some of those update videos for Brave new world, and cherry picking from NVR3 sounds pretty awesome. I've only been back in new vegas for about a month,I'm not as familiar with all of the subtleties that NVR3 changes yet, but there are some definite improvements that i do remember from vanilla. What would be the most ideal is an overhaul with Dragbody faces and Dracomies lore changes. Not to slight Dracomies' face work, but the faces from Dragbody really bring NV visuals up to par with FO4 and other newer games.

I'm just glad that him, you and others are still interested in New Vegas. Also, thanks for taking the time to make that tutorial. Those kinds of videos don't get the credit they deserve for what they contribute to the community.

Drags overhaul mods nowadays, just for the updated art styles. Not technically a mod, but ENBs go without saying as a must have these days.

As far as actual .esp/.esms go, I'd say things like Solid Project really add to the game overall and just make playing Fallout New Vegas a much more interesting experience. Saxson's Quest Pack, Niner, Willow and NVB's have been the most permanent feature of my game as far as mods go, since way back when I first started on Fallout NV, before I could do much heavy texture modding, and I really can't imagine playing the game without them.

FCO was a fixture, but I recently switched to NVR, not because I dislike the FCO style, but because FCO can look quite jarring compared to vanilla faces. I still use it for a few faces, but most of my companions now have custom faces I've edited or taken from other packs for them, so FCO doesn't really feature too much in my game anymore.

1. darnui
2. eve - essential visual enhancement
3. immersive minigames
4. more perks
5. new vegas bounties series
6. project nevada
7. solid project
8. lootmenu
9. weapon mod menu
10. flashlight nvse

Not sure if these are my favorite mods but they are the ones that always stay enabled in my load order.

Put some thought into this and came to the conclusion I don't actually have 10 mods I consider essential, its much less then that, probably closer to 3 or 4, if you sit down and think about it you'll realize you don't need as many things as you think you do. Anyway here's what I came up with for 10 in no order.

1. Darnified UI NV (or really any UI mod that makes the elements a little smaller and the lists a little longer, Darn's just the go to for compatibilities sake)

2. NVSE (Even if you don't count it as a mod in and of itself it is, and its needed for the memory patch)

3. Yukichigai Unofficial Patch - YUP (Self explanatory, bug fixes)

4. JIP LN NVSE Plugin (Requirements mostly but I also like to add back in Big Guns to act as something to dump the excessive skill points the game throws at you into, so its a content mod as well as a resource)

5. Uncut Wasteland (Undo all the damage Obsidian did to the world in an attempt to get it to run better)

6. 4GB Patch (Roy's one, don't even try to mod the game without it, skirts the definition of a mod slightly but still)

7. NVAC - New Vegas Anti Crash (See the name, just nice to have, this is one of the ones I could go without however, FNV isn't as crash happy by default as people think)

8. LOD additions and improvements (Nothing like being able to see stuff in the distance, not adding FNVLODGen as that's an external tool that doesn't run with the game)

9. The Inheritance (I'd like to cheat here and just say the Someguy Series as a whole but I won't. This is by far his best mod so I'm picking it over the rest)

10. JSawyer Ultimate Edition (The big one, I'll never not use it, JSawyer's is simply what FNV was meant to be from the start and this is the best, most compatible version)

That's what I consider the best overall set up you can have for FNV, if you wanted to play FNV and you could only have 10 mods that's what I'd tell you to go with every time, good thing we're not limited to 10. haha

Unrelated but I wanted to mirror the sentiment about Drumber's stuff, both as part of FCO and NVR3, I think they're obviously vastly more inhuman looking then the vanilla assets. Never understood how they were so popular, because they're different, new and shiny I guess, glad I'm not the only one who dislikes them at least.

Cheers

1. New Vegas Bounties: All of them, well once I'm finished one I'll download each of them one by one.
It's weird to see Marko standing in front of Randal's shack without punching him in the face.

2. WRP by Millenia: A must have for me, I'm too used to it already so no point of not including it in.

3. NMC Texture Pack: What is a man without his overhauls, a man without change; just kidding.

4. Griffey the Boxer dog: I just use him as a base companion, I replace his model with other dogs or wolves.

5. Drags creatures: I change the entire Mojave into a nightmare, apparently into a completely different game according to my peers.

6. ADAM: The best armour overhaul in my opinion, well not ever but one of my favourites for sure.

7. Boom to the moon: It's funny to think a mod can change the way you look at life, we think everything is finite including love itself.

8. PKM by Millenia: This LMG is the eradicator of all things, I wiped the Mojave clean of the NCR with this; including the legion.

9. Cheat Terminal: The greatest terminal ever known to man, who needs console commands when you can change your height via terminal. I never liked how I was always shorter than everyone =/

10. All of Drags commonwealth Overhaul: The Whole Mojave Is Different, I like different!

Excluding the no-brainer mods like NVSE and the likes, here are my personal essentials:

1. NMC Texture Pack
2. FNV LOD Generator
3. Some more mods that add lod into the game
4. Weapons Retexture Project including the addons
5. EVE
6. A Definitive Armor Mod AIO (ADAM for short)
7. Vanilla Caesar's Legion armor mesh fixes
8. Wasteland Clothing HiRes
9. Book of Steel
10. Vicious Wastes

These mods would always be in my list. It's easier to work with and much more compatible with other mods. Another thing is that I don't like straying away so much from the vanilla look. I prefer an enhanced vanilla version of everything than a complete replacement (dont know if that makes sense, but yeah)

Here's mine, though in no specific order. Also, for most mods you'll need to download utility mods such as FNV4GB Enabler, NVSE and such.

1. Fallout Character Overhaul (many people have said it hasn't worked for them, but it worked for me after a while.)
2. Vurt's flora overhaul.
3. NMC's texture pack.
4. More Perks/More traits.
5. Weapons of the New Millenia.
6. Project Nevada.
7. Improved Heavy Weapons.
8. IWS.
9. Wasteland Clothing Overhaul HD.
10. ENB (does this count?)