Fallout New Vegas High Times



High Times is a side quest in Fallout: New Vegas. (Possibly random loot) After completing the quest High Times you can get 1 from Julie Farkas at the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside once every 24 hours. To complete the quest you will need 10 Fixer.

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:

Before you start

  • This list assumes you’re using the Ultimate edition of Fallout: New Vegas (all DLC). And you’ve installed it somewhere other than Program Files, on an SSD if you have one.
  • Download and install your mod organiser, this guide will be for Vortex, as it’s the simplest to get up and running with. imo. Other mod organisers are available.
  • Specific installation instructions will be displayed as a tooltip, otherwise install through Vortex (But do read the mod pages for proper instructions, I am but a simple moron).
    '

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.

  • New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE)
    Adds scripting functionality for mods
  • FNV BSA Decompressor
    Decompresses some game archives to reduce load times, stutter, and fix missing audio
    If you just want the audio fixes without messing with your game archives grab Ogg Vorbis Libraries instead.
  • JIP LN NVSE Plugin
    More scripting functionality for mods + some tweaks and fixes
  • JohnnyGuitar NVSE
    More scripting functionality for mods

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

  • FNV 4GB Patcher
    Lets you use 4GB of RAM
  • NVTF - New Vegas Tick Fix
    Fixes stutter/FPS on newer systems. A better, less buggier version of NVSR
  • OneTweak for FNV
    Adds borderless windowed mode
  • NVAC - New Vegas Anti Crash
    Stops crashes
  • 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.
  • The Mod Configuration Menu
    Adds menu support for mods that have settings menus
  • UIO - User Interface Organizer
    Lets mods add/change UI elements
  • Uncut Wasteland
    Restores visual clutter that was cut to improve DLC performance on consoles.
  • Lucky 38 World LOD Fix
    Before, looking out the window of the lucky 38, you would see mountains cut in half, a wee fix for that
  • Asterra's Many Fixes
    Text/mesh/texture fixes and more
  • Weapon Mesh Improvement Mod
    Improves weapon meshes, won't conflict with anything here, but does conflict with a lot

If you don’t see it and you have JIP LN NVSE installed correctly how to check (see #8), just a create new blank file called FalloutCustom.ini, or get mine from the downloads

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 (DocumentsMy GamesFalloutNVFalloutCustom.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

  • Regular ENB
    My preset, which aims to just update the look, without doing anything crazy. Others, of course, are available See Screenshots
Transparency fixes
  • 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.

  • EXE - Effect teXtures Enhanced
    Better resolution versions of all the effects textures

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.

  • Charge's FNV HD Texture Packs
    Upscaled versions of most of the vanilla textures, varying quality but all vanilla
  • Vanilla Loading Screens HD
    AI-upscale of the loading screens
  • High Res Vanilla Posters and Graffiti
    AI-upscale but for the posters and graffiti
  • PM's HD Ranger Outfits
    Faithful re-creation of the vanilla ranger outfits
  • PM's HD Legion Overhaul
    Incredible re-creation of the vanilla legion armors/environment
  • PM's Med-Textures - HD Chems and Venoms
    Beautiful re-creation of the vanilla chems
  • PM's HD Ammo Boxes
    Gorgeous re-creation of the vanilla ammo boxes, if you can believe that.
  • Just Mods Assorted
    A collection of little much needed additions (sprint, loot menu, hit indicators, better crosshair, objective markers). Very customisable through the mod menu. You can import my settings by copying the ini from the downloads
  • Ragdolls
    I am just using the ‘Hit Reactions’ feature, to make combat feel that little bit more responsive.
  • B42 Weapon Inertia
    Makes weapon movement feel more fluid, hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it.
  • B42 Quickthrow - an alternative grenade hotkey mod
    If you want a grenade hotkey, this is the mod
    • Quickthrow Stylized FNV Icons v1.0
      But the default icons look incredibly out of place, so grab this
    • MadAce's Ragdoll compatibility patch
      If you’re running Ragdolls, it will conflict with Quickthrow. Download this patch

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.

  • Return of the Eyebots
    Adds the flying radio bots from Fallout 3, nice addition imo. Simple and, actually, lore friendly when you think about it.
  • NV Gutsy Handy Animated Eyes
    Little texture that makes the eyes move like in 4. Very basic.
  • DLC Weapon Integration
    Nice way of adding some extra variety to the game weapons, without compromising quality as it’s all from the DLCs. Obviously, very debatable.
  • Populated Casinos
    The entire game is very sparse in terms of NPCs, but this packs out the Casinos. A little jarring to suddenly see so many people given the emptiness of the rest of the game but still neat
  • Faction Wasteland Presence Compilation
    Small additions to fill out the wasteland a bit. imo The Living Desert tries to do too much, this is a lighter alternative
  • Primm Reputation Restored
    Primm serves as a kind of the introduction proper to the games questing, it makes sense for it to have reputation
  • Nuka-Cola Victory - Quartz - Quantum - Vending Machines
    The Nuka Cola machines seem pretty boring, this adds back the chance to get variants from Fallout 3 and 4
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

Fallout New Vegas is Obsidian’s 2010 interpretation of the vast nuclear wasteland of the Fallout universe. This time set in Las Vegas, in the Mojave desert, it’s a bleak and gripping game with plenty of memorable characters, locations, enemies, and weapons. For some, New Vegas is their favorite Fallout game and even their favorite RPG. Check out some of these Fallout New Vegas Nexus mods that have helped cement it as a role-playing great.

Over the years, the hard-working and dedicated modding community have created hundreds of cool, weird and wonderful fallout new vegas best mods to make an already great game awesome.

How to Install Fallout New Vegas Mods

Before you start, here are a few things you’ll want to download to ensure that you can install as many mods as possible with minimal issues.

Step 1: Mod Manager

The Nexus Mod Manager is a great modding tool that allows you to handily store all your mods in one place, and also ensure that your mods are loaded in the correct order.

Step 2: Script Extender

You’ll want to download the New Vegas Script Extender, which will expand the game’s script, allowing you to install far more mods.

Step 3: New Vegas Anti-Crash

Unfortunately, Fallout New Vegas is a game that suffers from frequent crashes, especially if you heavily mod it. NVAC is a simple mod that reduces the chance that your game will crash. Very nice!

Step 4: Mission Mojave

Similarly, New Vegas is a very buggy game, even eight years later. This monumental bug-squashing mod aims to alleviate this as best as it can. With more than 27,000 fixes for a huge variety of bugs, Mission Mojave is an essential mod for a smoother experience.

16 Essential Fallout New Vegas Mods

NMC NV Texture Pack

Ultimate Fallout New Vegas Walkthrough

Fallout New Vegas is an old game at this point. It was never the best-looking game, but eight years later it’s cracks really start to show. This comprehensive texture pack is the only texture improvement mod you’ll need to make New Vegas look as sharp as possible. This mod changes most of the in-game graphics in Fallout New Vegas. This texture pack includes all of the roads, landscapes, trees (trunks/branches), vehicles, buildings, interiors and all medium to large sized objects (toolboxes, chairs, cupboards). It has a detailed description on how to install and use this mod, making that process quick and easy. Your playthrough of Fallout New Vegas will look beautiful in no time!

Download NMC NV Texture Pack.

Nevada Skies

You spend a lot of time in New Vegas roaming around the vast, empty desert with nothing but the sky above you. You might as well make sure it looks as good as possible and does some more interesting stuff. This mod allows a huge number of cloud variations, weather effects, sandstorms, Radiation storms, and even some snow. This mod has a ton of different weather effects to Fallout New Vegas. This includes sandstorms, rain, rainstorms, thunderstorms (with/without rain) and snow. In total, there are over 320 different weather changes into the game. There is more diversity within the different weather themes, each one feeling unique and special. It makes things more realistic and creates an awesome environment for your playthrough.

Download Nevada Skies.

TitanFallout

Do you know what’s an awesome game? Titanfall. Do you know what’s cool? Titans. So why not add a little Titanfall to your Fallout New Vegas? This mod lets you summon Titans that will drop from the sky. You can pilot them and wreak havoc on your enemies. It even allows you different ways to get your Titan. When the game loads with this mod installed, you are given three options. You can be given the Titan right away (if you are at a max level already or just want it asap), you can get it at level 30 (default setting) or you can go retrieve the Titan yourself at a marked location. Once your Titan is summoned, you can immediately start using it and destroying any enemies around you. Don’t worry if your Titan breaks, you can always get another after a production period (35 minutes). It’s a ton of fun, trust me.

Download TitanFallout.

IMPACT

Fallout New Vegas is an excellent RPG, but it’s somewhat lacking as a shooter. Primarily, it lacks substantial hit effects when you shoot an enemy. This mod seeks to alleviate that problem and make the gunplay more satisfying and visceral. IMPACT is a mod that completely makes your guns feel more dangerous and powerful with completely new visual effects and details. So what does it do? Bullet holes are more substantial and reflect the caliber of the bullet, hitting objects will cause a spark of particle effects, and more. Overhauled custom particle effects that affect most surfaces in the game, including wood, metal, stone/concrete. Fallout New Vegas can feel like a pea-shooter game at times, but not anymore. IMPACT is a nice mod if you’re to make the guns more impactful and more powerful.

Download IMPACT.

Weapons of the New Millennia

Weapons of the New Millenia is a quite self-explanatory mod. This mod provides a large number of new guns to the world of Fallout New Vegas. These include an AK-47, a Colt M1911, an M4A1, and many more. You can even choose how you obtain these guns, whether that be from a cheat sheet or a level list where you must defeat enemies to get your hands on them or simply purchase them.

Along with the guns, it even adds a quest line type of element to your game. So not only can you get these new weapons, but you can test them out in their own special questline. This mod was developed with an emphasis on compatibility and modding capabilities, so the community can continue to expand on this work. This mod has had a lot of work put into it, and it would be a shame if you didn’t give this one a try, it is truly unique!

Download Weapons of the New Millennia.

Five Nights at Vault 5

Inspired by the Five Nights at Freddy’s horror games, this mod drops you in a vault with no equipment and no weapons and sets murderous robots on you. You have nothing but your wits to survive the hunt. The arena will also periodically fill with deadly gas.

This mod is fully equipped with a new voice pack specifically designed for this mod. Like your typical Five Nights at Freddy’s game, it requires you to play that hide and seek style game to close doors on the impending doom. The one main way this mod differs from Five Nights at Freddy’s is that it requires the player to move from room to room to evade enemies and continue forward rather than stay in a single room. Overall, this mod provides hours of unique gameplay that is vastly different from a normal Fallout New Vegas gameplay, but it certainly is fun and unique.

Can you survive this cruel gauntlet? Download Five Nights at Vault 5.

New Vegas Bounties

What is the desert without a little bounty hunting? The series of quests that allow you to take on the role of a bounty hunter. Take contracts, seek out your targets, and take them out without mercy. You will have all different types of enemies as targets, including rangers, fiends, raiders, smugglers, cannibals, and pistoleros. All of these enemies will be a challenge, as they are all set in the same difficulty as regular bosses are, and they become harder and tougher as you progress through the storyline. Featuring over 436 lines of new dialogue, you can truly immerse yourself in brand new experience in Fallout New Vegas with this mod.

Download New Vegas Bounties. There’s even a second installment if you’re looking for more.

Note: that these mods require this mod to work.

MTUI

Fallout New Vegas is a game that was clearly designed for consoles. The text is too big and seems to be designed for players who are sitting across the room from their TVs. It doesn’t make the best use of the real estate of a monitor and isn’t as optimized for PC as it could be. This UI overhaul fixes that, by doing many essential adjustments that PC players need, including smaller font sizes, larger item selection areas, improved conversation menus, etc. These menus and adjustments are made with the desktop player in mind, built for PC screen resolutions. However, if you do not like this mod, do not worry. You can always uninstall the mod and restore the original textures if that is your preference.

Download MTUI.

Populated Casinos

The casinos in Fallout New Vegas are uncharacteristically dead. The game builds New Vegas up into some kind of paradise full of life and energy, but when you get there the casinos are empty and devoid of life. Pretty disappointing. This mod fixes that problem and brings life back to the casinos. It makes the heart of the Mojave wasteland actually feel like a bustling center.

You will find a lot of NPCs, a lot of them look the same, but in the grand scheme of things the goal is to liven up the casinos, and that is what this mod accomplishes. This mod can be very performance intensive. Since it is spawning in a lot of NPCs, it tends to use a lot of resources. If you have a decent PC, that should not be an issue, and this mod will simply just make your game better.

Fallout new vegas high times quest

Download Populated Casinos.

New Vegas Fixer

Roleplayer’s Alternative Start

If you’ve played Fallout New Vegas a few times, the opening can get pretty samey. Sit on Doc Mitchell’s couch and answer the same old questions, go out to Goodsprings and do the same old stuff. It can get old after a couple of times. The Alternative Start mod gives you the chance to get a fresh start in the Mojave desert, placing you in a randomized location and setting you free into the world.

This mod will make Fallout New Vegas into a much better role-playing game.

Other features include: fixing starting quests, over 95 starting locations across the world, faction specific starting points and everything is fully randomized. There are also different forms of history for you, and all these factors will affect what kind of weapons, gear, and skills you may have. What this means for the player is, that no matter what, every game you start will have a different gear and item set, meaning a fresh new experience every time.

Download Roleplayer’s Alternative Start.

Project Mojave

Project Mojave is a massive overhaul fallout new vegas weapon mod split into multiple parts so that you don’t have to incorporate them all if you don’t want to. The core of the mod focuses on tweaking and improving the shooter elements of the game, adding bullet time, a grenade hotkey, variable zooms for scopes, and more.

Another part of the mod lets you surgically upgrade your character, adding improvements to speed, durability, strength, vision, and more. The third module adds a number of rebalancing changes that aim to make the combat more frantic and the survival more challenging, whilst a fourth module adds new weapons and gear, including stuff brought in from other popular modders.

Download Project Mojave.

Oxide ENB

Oxide ENB is a collection of mods that aim to overhaul the visual design of New Vegas’ world. Instead of the drab and colorless browns and greys, this mod brings the wasteland to life with a vibrant and varied color scheme. It also includes it’s own weather mods and other things so you don’t need to mix and match them.

Download Oxide ENB.

Essential Visual Enhancements

This mod improves a number of visuals elements in New Vegas, from animations to particle effects from guns and other weapons. Critical hits, explosions, impact wounds, and more are re-done to look much more impressive and violent.

Download Essential Visual Enhancements.

Monster Mod

There are a variety of vicious and nasty creatures in the Mojave wasteland out for your head, but if you play the game long enough you’ll probably get bored fighting the same old monsters. This mod has a number of new monsters for you to fight in the wasteland, some of which are more challenging than anything you’ll find in the original game.

Download Monster Mod.

Coloured Map and Icons

The Pipboy is your most reliable tool, and you’ll certainly be using it a lot in the adventures. So why not make it a bit more appealing to look at? This mod adds colored icons, lets you change the resolution of the Pipboy, add custom icons, and more.

Download Coloured Map and Icons.

Improved Throwing

Fallout

Throwing weapons in New Vegas are undeniably pretty lame. Weak, awkward, underwhelming and just not very viable. This mod improves throwing weapons by letting you pick them up after throwing them, craft spears and knives to throw, turn your weapons into projectiles, and even throw random debris at your enemies if you get desperate enough.

Download Improved Throwing.

Project Nevada

Project Nevada is a mod that seeks to make your Fallout New Vegas experience more interesting and unique, as well as more difficult and challenging – all while remaining fun and interactive. This is a very large project that has a lot of different features including Dynamic crosshair, bullet time, sprint, grenade hotkey, slower backpedaling, immersive health visuals, immersive primary needs, explosive entry, control panel, inventory sorter, chargeable weapons and more.

Being one of the largest and most detailed projects for Fallout New Vegas, it completely changes the game and makes it a lot better than before. It may take some time to try out all the new features, but I assure you it is worth it. Try it out today!

Download Project Nevada.

New Vegas Script Extender

The New Vegas Script Extender is a resource for the modding community that increases the capabilities of different resources and scripts. It does all this without changing any of the actual executable files that are in the disk, meaning no permanent side effects. It is a necessary and essential tool for any and all modders.

Download New Vegas Script Extender.

These are just some Fallout New Vegas mods available right now. The modding community for this game is dedicated, talented and always busy, so there’s sure to always be more to check out in the future.

Let us know if you think we missed something!

Check other Fallout Mods Posts