Fallout 3 and New Vegas Mods you can't play without

[Dynastia]

I tried out AWOP and felt it just added a bunch of nonsensical dungeons to the world, all willy-nilly and out-of-place. If I remember rightly there was a trapdoor in Goodsprings that led to a lakelurk cave. To be fair, I think that was a very early version of it, and I don't know if it's still all about the loot-dungeons put all over the place without method or reason, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Plus, it adds a boatload of weapons and I run so many combined weapons tweaks and rebalances it'd day me days to integrate them to my game.

New Vegas Bounties is great. Probably the best quest-mod I've played, it fits into the game ALMOST seamless, I just wish they'd patch the two versions together so you can have them both loaded and the second one only starts when the first one finishes. But if there's a better questmod for NV or FO3 I don't know of it.

I love mods that let you take up a secondary occupation, whether it's bounty hunting with NVB or slave-hunting with FNNCQ or digging up mounds of crap with Scavenger World.

[thermador]

Here's my list - they are mostly for improving visual quality:

1. 
   MTUI + iHUD + MCM for user interface


2. 
   Type3 and Breezes for bodies / clothes graphics


3. 
   NMC's texture packs for general graphics


4. 
   Nevada Skies for sky graphics


5. 
   Vurt's Flora for tree and shrub graphics


6. 
   Project Nevada, WMX, and EVE for graphics/gameplay enhancements


7. 
   Chucksteel's Interiors mods - just say no to boarded-up doors!

Those are the mods that I always come back to with a fresh installation or playthrough.

Many of the companion and quest mods on Nexus are fun (New Vegas Bounties is great), but finding good voice acting in mods is like finding a needle in a haystack.

[Delphi]

Oh, this is going to be a long list for me, I will use the mod names from the nexus :)



Most important:

Project Nevada (too much content to list)

Project Nevada Extra Options (also too much content)



These mods are so essential! I absolutely can´t play without them any longer. PN adds so much new and interesting content, many features, as well as lots of configuration options to the game. And PN Extra Options expands these features and options even further. These 2 are honestly my most important mods, since they also allow to rebalance the game quite drastic, which is great to keep it a challenge :)



A Close second:

WMX (tons of additional weapon mods)



I also can´t think about playing New Vegas without WMX. Personally I think weapon mods were the best new feature of F:NV, and WMX expands these greatly.



Important challenge adding mods:

No Crosshairs When Weapon Drawn (you need to use aiming instead of shooting from the hip all the time)

Manual Reload (No more auto reloads when a weapon is empty)

Vertical Recoilmod (adds recoil to weapons, you can no longer keep the crosshair on target after shooting)

Increased Weapon Jamming (weapons can also jam while shooting, not only when you reload them)

More Realistic Aiming (adds some movement to the weapon to make aiming a bit more difficult)

No Repair Without Workbench (you can only repair weapons/armor when you are near a workbench)

Barter Repair (repair costs depend on bartering skill)

No Combat Music - ambient music continues (There will be no combat music when enemies are near)

No NPC Compass Ticks (removes all npc markers from the radar to make combat more difficult)

AG Weapon Reload Speed Mod (reduces the agility bonus for weapon reloads)

Armor and Weapon Degradation (increases the degradation of items)

No Danger-Caution-Detected-Hidden-Empty (I use no danger, no caution and no hidden to make combat more difficult)

No Message Hints (You wont see which skill level is required to pick a lock or hack a terminal)

No Dialog Tags (You will not if you meet minimum requirements for skill checks in dialogue)



All of these mods make the game a bit more challenging and realistic. I really like to play the game this way, just because of the added difficulty.



UI Improvements and general feature additions:

Ammo Vending Machine - AVM (You can buy all kinds of ammo for your currently equipped weapons)

Unified HUD Project (essential for multiple UI Altering mods)

WMVM - Weapon Mod Vending Machine (You can buy weapon mods for your currently equipped weapon)

The Mod Configuration Menu (Adds lots of configuration options for many mods)

The Weapon Mod Menu (improved weapon modding interface)

Selective Fire (Allows different fire modes for some weapons)

FPS Weapon Wheel (enables the mouse wheel to act as weapon switcher)

Magic Fingers Perk (you can steal everything of NPCs, even clothing and equipped weapons)

Essential Companions (Makes you companions essential in Hardcore mode)

MTUI (improves dialog menus a lot)



Most of these Mods add either new features to the game or improve the UI. Some of them make the game a tad easier, but not to a point where it becomes unbalanced. Although they are only fourth place on my list, I still consider them as pretty substantial.



Bugfix and Content restoring mods:

Mission Mojave - Ultimate Edition (adds a lot bugfixes in a complete package)

New Vegas Uncut - Outside Bets (restores a lot of content which was originally in the game)

New Vegas Uncut - Freeside Open (changes freeside to one large space without the annoying gates)

The Strip Open (changes the strip to one large space without the annoying gates)

Perk Fixes (fixes some broken perks)

Music Recovery (adds some unused music to appropriate places)

Hard Luck Blues - Vault 34 Survivors - Horowitz Fix (small quest fix)

Child At Heart Perk (no longer needed with TTW)



These are the more optional mods, which I don´t consider exactly essential, but still very nice to have. They deal mostly with bugfixing and restoring some cut portions of the game.

[Befo]

I just ran into this as I started a fresh Alpha playthrough. While I was hoping to go as mod free as possible for testing purposes, there are just some mods that I've learned I am unable to do without, some for FO3, some for FNV.

Mods (in order of importance):

CASM or CASM with MCM - It is damn near impossible to play either FO3 or FNV without a proper save manager to fix Bethesda's broken auto-/quick-save system. This was the first mod I had to install, and it was just so I could load saves to test in the first place.

NVSE, 4gbNVSE, Fake Fullscreen, NV Configurator, Stutter Remover, some minor personal .ini tweaks - This was the second group of "mods" I added, though none are really mods; they are fixes for stability and performance. All of them are pretty much required for me and greatly reduce crashing and lockups. 

Project Nevada - I won't go too much into this one, as it should be obvious. It adds a ton of features that once you've played with them, it's hard to live without. Plus, it has lots of rebalancing features that work well with TTW, such as level cap and xp stuff.

Practice Makes Perfect - If not for TTW, I most likely would never have known about this mod. I found it in the XP discussion and after reading it's description on the Nexus, I had to DL right away and give it a shot. This is how leveling should be and it works great so far on TTW. I think this will become a staple for me in all future playthroughs of Fallout, be it FO3, FNV, TTW or even Brazil when it hits. (I will save more on this for the appropriate thread.)

Interface Mods - I use a mix of DarnUI fonts, Interface Revelation menus and OneHUD and Asuka HUD onscreen HUD elements, and combine them with Unified HUD and the MCM. The MCM works well with a few mods I mentioned above.

More Perks - I am currently using the FNV version until some enterprising modder here releases a combined FO3/FNV version with a single .esm (load order friendly!) With the leveling system I am testing (a mix of Practice Makes Perfect with XP, skills above 100 (150), subskills, reduced xp - 50%), the perks (one at each level in my build) go a long way to easing the burn of no skill points at level up. This would be a standard for me either way since I find many of the vanilla perks downright boring compared to the great work done in the More Perks/More Traits series. 

These are the absolute basics, and do not touch on other things I would like to have, such as WMX for proper weapon modding, EVE or CFW for some great guns and effects, graphic enhancements such as Poco Bueno or NMC, companions mods like Niner, Willow, Sydney or Amy Wong, awesome quest mods like Merc 2 (still can't get it to work with TTW), or MZC, dungeons like the ones from AWOP or the Rumblezones of MoMod/AWOP, or even the greatness that is NVEC (the content patch with all of the awesome game changes, weapons, armors, clothing, collectibles and quests, not the bug fixes...though the fixes would be nice to have eventually.)

[thermador]

Tilc, you may be interested in this mod: http://www.taleoftwowastelands.com/content/rel-humping-mojave-ttw

[KennyMcCormick]

Mods I can't play without? Hmm...

 

For New Vegas: Darnified UI, XRE - Cars, my business suit mod, a couple of custom races, body replacers, Willow, and Fellout. Oh, and Radio Active Channel Extender, because Mr New Vegas is boring and I absolutely loathe the music on that station by default.

For FO3: Darnified UI, Fellout, Human Catapult, Personal Terminal, coupple of custom races, body replacers, Fellout, a pure water mod that renders the entire Potomac rad free and crystal clear, and a Galaxy News Radio extender that lets me rip the 50s music out and toss in everything from AC/DC to Metallica to Zeppelin to The Eagles.

[alphaidiot]

None atm. Whack effect must to be put into every 'new' weapons(including fo3 assault rifle and such) manually via FNVedit or GECK. TTW uses separated leveled lists for DC thus new items(most importantly, food) have chance not to appear there. Arwen is not supposed to be very compatible with PN anyway as the author confirmed. You will need tweak & merge method manually making them flawlessly work.

[alphaidiot]

Not I have known of, yet, but generic new vegas FPS things will do much same of you want I suppose. They mostly alter peculiar global values(effect entire game including DC in TTW) such as decreasing health level multiplier and damage skill multiplier; so to reduce health fluctuation. That makes both Player and others fragile to damage but not too much in high level. Arwen is more apt to RPG setting thus you will need to overwrite with something, or to adjust manually.

[alegendv1]

I'd love to get Cirosan's Classic Overhaul (http://ooccommunity.com/media/gamemods/cirosans-classic-overhaul/) working with TTW. As far as I can tell it works, but it is a very script intensive mod, I believe, with many esp plugins (it also probably caused some of the bugs I experienced when I played TTW with mods). Unfortunately, Cirosan stated recently that he's retiring the mod so I don't think he would work on a compatibility patch. It works perfectly in New Vegas and was developed with compatibility patches for Project Nevada, and those also work fine. 

It would be nice if someone with the expertise could take a look at this mod, but there's alot to it, and I think it would take a while before it would fully function with TTW (For instance it adds a different kind of DR system that functions alongside the DT system). Honestly, the first two mods I always install (besides a billion texture mods) with a fresh install of New Vegas are Project Nevada and Cirosan's Classic Overhaul. I love the old Fallout games, and CCO adds some of that flare to New Vegas.

So those are my two mods from New Vegas that I can't play without.

[delta534]

My core mod list is Project Nevada, parts of CCO, Signature weapon,Signature armor, CASM, Weapon Mods Expanded,  a tweaked version of OHUD,darnifiedUI, weapon mod menu and all the dependencies of the previous mods. With that said everything works with TTW just not quite as intended.

As for compatibility patches I will see what I can do with CCO. The only portion of it I foresee me having issues with is the gameplay changes portion, the part I don't play with. The perk portions should work out of the box, the follower tweak portion is just a matter of adding the TTW companions to the scripts, and the DR portion is just adding the FO3 armors to the right form lists.