Despite its technical and narrative achievements, Fallout 4 lags behind its predecessors in one regard – enemies get repetitive pretty fast, and encounters tend to rely heavily on numbers to keep fights interesting.
After you’ve been prowling the Wasteland long enough, killing enemies starts to become a chore, and little by little you start realizing that you can’t keep playing the same game for years and expect it to surprise you… without mods, that is.
Given it’s been over 200 years since humanity nearly wiped itself out, biodiversity should be through the roof rather than stunted as it looks like in Fallout 4, and since Bethesda didn’t check their science before making the game, it’s up to modders to populate the Commonwealth with new and exciting creatures.
The next best Fallout 4 mod is the Looks Menu. This mod allows you to add engine modifications to improve your character’s looks. Some of the options included with this mod are things like, facial features can now be selected from the list, instead of selecting the actual face, and you can save/load presets.
Whether you’re just getting into the game and want an augmented experience from the get-go, or a returning player hoping to experience what mods have to offer in the way of creatures, you’re sure to find something you like here.
- Fallout 4 has two potential multiplayer mods! Fallout 4 Multiplayer Mod being developed by Hyunsung Go and Fallout 4 Together that is 100% source available t.
- Add effect of high heels without modify any files of the game.
- The mod Build Your Own Pool creates craftable, and working, showers that add happiness to your settlements. Settlers actually use them too I'll have to look into that mod, thanks! I think a pool room and bathrooms with showers would work great with my vault Be warned: when you or a settler takes a shower, they look retarded doing so.
- The level of detail is just overwhelming and the quests, they just never stop. I completely forgot that fallout 4 was just this great, I remember it being above average. New Vegas is my favourite fallout game but dare I say it, is fallout 4 my new favourite fallout game? Fallout 4 is the best fallout game.
15. Absolutely Cursed
Some mods, you look at and instantly know you’re going to install them.
That’s what I felt when I first saw Absolutely Cursed, a mod that adds an interesting new creature to the Wasteland – the Dead Head.
And then my game was forever cursed.
There isn’t anything quite like combat music kicking in and realizing that you’re up against hermit crabs living inside ghoul heads.
It’s like trying to induce a phobia on yourself for entertainment purposes.
14. Protected Unique Brahmin
It’s often hard for us animal lovers to play violent games where innocent wildlife may get caught in the middle of our struggle to survive.
Despite being irradiated abominations with two heads, brahmin don’t fail to activate that same caretaker instinct with their cute, absent-minded faces.
Plus I need them to poop so I can make Jet and get high off my mind.
This mod by NexusMods user HerDustIsVeryPretty helps keep your cattle healthy by making unique brahmin immortal. You can now have shootouts in your settlements to your heart’s content without worrying about your walking fertilizer factories.
13. More Realistic Cats
In the same way that brahmin risk being turned into Swiss cheese just by living in your settlements, so do cats often find themselves caught in the line of fire.
But cats are smart, right? Surely they’d be able to avoid the carnage.
Well, modder and fellow cat-lover Greslin was quick to realize that vanilla cats in Fallout 4 are little more than slow-moving targets too stupid to flee or get to cover.
Greslin fixed this by tweaking their behavioral tendencies a bit, making them smarter and avoidant of combat… and just in case, they also have more health. Protect the kitties!
12. Nightstrikers
While generally not an issue, Fallout 4 doesn’t quite have the same enemy variety some other open-world games have.
Modder Shadowliger decided that their humble contribution to improving biodiversity in the Commonwealth would be to create the local version of Nightstalkers from Fallout: New Vegas.
They called it the Nightstriker, a poisonous irradiated coyote that can really mean trouble if you’re not on top of your game.
There’s five different variants of the beast, as well as a Nightstriker companion waiting to be discovered somewhere in the Wasteland.
11. Commonwealth Critters
Among the best ways to make an open-world feel alive and realistic is filling it with wildlife just doing its own thing, not necessarily interacting with the player.
This can be resource-heavy, so, understandably, Fallout 4 developers didn’t put much emphasis on this detail.
Since nowadays most gaming PCs can run the game perfectly, modder Giggilymoeromicon thought it was high time the Wasteland was repopulated, so they added several spawn points all over the Commonwealth for small passive animals to do just that.
Fallout 4 Pool Mod
10. Institute Centaurs
Bethesda had many creatures planned for Fallout 4 that never really made it into the game.
Among them were the Institute Centaurs, which have nothing to do with what you’re thinking about when you hear the word “centaur”.
Modder TheFriedTurkey, along with their team, decided to bring this scrapped content back from the trashcan, making new models, textures, and animations to bring it to life.
The result is a horribly deformed, badly spliced abomination that looks just like the one in Fallout 4’s concept art. Charming.
9. Gojira 2.5 – Standalone Giant Deathclaw
If you want to add a new formidable enemy but aren’t quite fond of the “Please kill me now” vibe the Institute Centaurs give off, perhaps you should consider introducing some kaiju goodness into your Wasteland.
This mod by creator Neeher adds a new Legendary Deathclaw named after the Japanese version of Godzilla – Gojira.
This name makes more sense once you see its size, which is seven times that of a regular deathclaw.
This towering beast presents a serious challenge to anyone not armed with a Fat Man or something of the sort, and the way it randomly spawns at any point while exploring the Wasteland makes it feel just like being attacked by a dragon in Skyrim.
8. Plutonium Creatures
Seeking to add both new challenges and more variety to Fallout 4, modder Hopper31 created an entirely new tier of enemies – Plutonium Creatures.
These orange-glowing horrors are what happens when a regular glowing variant comes into contact with a municipal plutonium well, becoming even stronger.
There are currently 20 plutonium creatures, and while they’re effectively OP when compared to their normal counterparts, they also won’t start spawning until several levels later.
This way they’ll be a challenge without completely breaking your game.
7. Glowing Animals Emit Light
A perfect companion mod for Plutonium Creatures is Glowing Animals Emit Light by MM137, an add-on that turns glowing variants of creatures into light sources, as they should always have been.
This will make fighting strong enemies in the darkness a much more immersive experience, albeit a somewhat easier one as well.
Getting mauled at midnight by a radioactive Yao Guai had never looked this cool.
6. More Deathclaw Variety
Deathclaws have always been beautiful killing machines that never fail to rip me to shreds when I get distracted admiring the spiky beauty of their being.
Modder Hopper31 apparently agrees, so they decided to add over 20 new varieties of deathclaw into the game – all using only vanilla assets.
Red Deathclaws, Glowing Deathclaws, and even Albino Deathclaws may now come out at any moment to separate you from your limbs in style – and you’ll be thankful for the spectacle.
5. Crows and Creatures
Of course, there’s no point in upgrading deathclaws if you’re going to leave everything else the same.
Instead of adding more variety, modder Xazomn decided to upgrade the textures of every creature in the Wasteland so they look more detailed and, in consequence, lifelike.
Gone are the days of playdoh models of radioactive dogs with shiny, beady eyes trying to kill you.
Now you can get disemboweled by a pack of abominations without breaking your immersion.
4. True Legendary Enemies
Are you tired of “legendary” enemies having boring, run-of-the-mill names like “Legendary Thingamabob” instead of something special?
Don’t legends have proper names?
Modder Pwnstar fixes that by giving each and every Legendary enemy in the Wasteland either an epic, intimidating name or something a little more lighthearted.
I’ll never forget my first encounter with Dominatrix Alpha, the Legendary Assaultron, and I still get fits of laughter when remembering the time I faced a Radroach called Gorbash The Devourer.
3. Deadlier Deathclaws
Deathclaws look terrifying and are fittingly strong as hell when you first encounter them in the Commonwealth, but once you get the hang of things, such events become underwhelming.
Creator Mpankey decided to fix this by buffing these Dragons of The Wasteland considerably – as well as adding stronger varieties such as the Quantum Deathclaws that were cut from the Nuka World DLC.
If you want to test out just how much stronger they are, head to the hills west of the Glowing Sea, where you’ll find a cave overrun with deathclaws that’s appropriately called The Devil’s Den.
2. D.E.C.A.Y – Better Ghouls
Among the most common enemies in Fallout 4 are feral ghouls, former humans turned into quasi-immortal mindless shells, gone crazy due to hunger and suffering.
With such a horrible backstory, it’s kind of underwhelming just how leathery and old they look.
To fix this, modder Thumblesteen replaced their textures and models with something reflecting decay rather than mummification.
Now, these radioactive zombies feature exposed bones, skin mold, missing limbs, and much more – all in glorious 2K textures.
1. Respawnable Legendary Bosses and Hard Legendary Giant Creatures
After playing the game several times and experiencing the godly powers of maxed-out characters, most of us start finding the vanilla creatures and bosses increasingly boring.
To keep things spicy for seasoned players, modder Charrisx decided to place many respawnable Legendary creatures hidden throughout the Commonwealth so that there’s never a dull moment in your adventure.
This mod adds 27 unique bosses, including a bunch of giant abominations that’ll make you feel as if you’re playing Monster Hunter World.
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Back when Fallout 4 came out in 2015, not everyone had the 8GB RAM and Nvidia GTX 780 required to run it as it was meant to be played.
It was expected of a game as expansive and beautiful as the latest Bethesda masterpiece. But it was still a lot.
Five years down the line, these requirements are much easier to meet. Even with budget gaming rigs – but not everyone has the spare cash, and few things beat playing Fallout 4 on your laptop at work when you should be double-checking accounting files.
Luckily modders have been working tirelessly since release to optimize the experience in such a way that even the most humble of rigs can run the game acceptably well.
Even integrated cards, if you’re willing to play at 20fps.
As a low-spec gaming enthusiast, I consider myself an authority on the subject of performance. So I’ve put together a ranking with the most useful mods to boost your FPS and stability while roaming the Commonwealth.
You’ll be surprised what your toaster can achieve with the right mods.
15. Great FPS Boost
We start our list with an easy-to-install compendium of small tweaks to give your game a performance boost without messing too much with the textures or anything of the sort.
Modder Terso simply played around with the settings for how the game handles fog, the quality of shadows and the amount of grass, among other things, looking for the most FPS with the least loss in graphical fidelity.
Optionally, there’s a version that’ll make your weather remain clear to avoid performance drops due to weather effects like rain.
14. Load Accelerator
If rather than a performance boost to an old rig you’d rather take full advantage of your powerful PC, then Load Accelerator is a must.
Created by Chairo_Hippo, this mod endeavors to reduce all loading screen times by controlling Vsync and CPU affinity while loading.
For this reason you may see a spike in your GPU’s processing load during this time.
If working correctly, it should dramatically lessen loading times in general, especially for systems running on SSD storage.
Also check out this preview video to see the mod in action.
13. Light Sources Do Not Cast Dynamic Shadows
As anyone with expertise in low-spec gaming knows, shadows are among the most resource-consuming graphical features you can run into.
This goes double for the sophisticated dynamic shadows present in modern games.
This mod by HicSuntDracones1 simply swaps all shadow-casting lights in the game for more basic, less GPU-heavy ones that don’t cast shadows.
The game will definitely look less realistic, but the change is relatively minor and can improve performance drastically.
12. Dynamic Performance Tuner and Load Accelerator
And if you’re not entirely down with eliminating all shadow-casting light, perhaps something more dynamic is a better fix.
This mod by StochasticTinker promises to dynamically adjust Shadow Dir Distance and the quality of godrays in the game for minor FPS gains without a major loss in aesthetics.
It also caps FPS, improves loading times, and so on.
Admittedly, the difference in performance is minor.
But you’ll barely notice the change in graphics and it all adds up to a better experience.
11. FPS and Performance Fix
On the other hand, our next entry aims to give you anywhere between 10 and 35 more frames per second.
A very substantial improvement under any circumstances.
The mod, created by SiTheHandsomeGuy, is ideal for those with basic setups.
It works by tweaking preferences in the game’s internal configuration to reduce render distance, among several other things.
Despite being a relatively new fix, it has received a lot of support from NexusMods users and it may be the thing that’ll finally let you play the game in a stabler fashion.
10. Faster Workshop
Perhaps you run the game perfectly well on your mid-range gaming rig.
But have you noticed just how long it takes to open a simple workshop menu?
Modder Registrator2000 also took notice and found out that the reason was simply inefficient code lines that funneled your processing power into nothingness.
With this mod, the faulty code is replaced to make loading the workshop almost instantaneous.
Even if you have no issues with workshop loading times, you should install this if you plan to get mods that add more workshop functionality.
9. Upscale
This baby created by TheCyberShadow is a clever and very necessary tweak that allows the game to be run in borderless fullscreen in any resolution you like.
While it can be useful to improve performance by playing the game at a lower resolution without losing the benefit of fullscreen, it truly shines in the way it lets you run the game in borderless fullscreen on 4K monitors that lack native upscaling.
8. Boston FPS Fix
Keeping with the tradition of very obvious names for very complex mods comes Boston FPS Fix, which promises to… well, you get the point.
Modder Valyn81 describes what the mod does as tweaking the game’s treatment of precombined meshes, which is especially relevant around Boston because of the way the area is built.
The performance improvement is notorious, especially for low-end PCs.
And it comes with no visual downgrade of any sort. Free FPS!
7. Optimized Vanilla Textures
It would be weird to make a list of performance improvements without touching on textures, wouldn’t it?
Fallout 4 Pee And Poop Mod
Modder AlpineYJ noticed a lack of proper compression for a lot of textures found in vanilla Fallout 4.
To fix it, they put each and every one of them through a texture optimizer called Ordenator to improve the situation, therefore helping the game run better.
You’ll get some marginal FPS gains, but it’s mostly about stability.
6. Max Performance – All Interiors
I like extreme solutions to difficult problems – problems like needing to run Fallout 4 on a toaster, for example.
To help everyone dealing with such a great challenge, modder MxmOvrDrv manually removed all shadow-casting lights, beams of light and several effects such as mist, smoke, and decals on every interior area.
This should assure a massive FPS gain in such areas for low-spec systems, and improve stability for mid-range ones.
5. Wasteland 512 Textures Reloaded
Another texture-based improvement is Wasteland 512 Textures Reloaded, a mod by Darthanimal that offers very nice FPS gains at virtually no graphic cost.
What it does is optimize the vanilla textures and resize them to 512px.
The creator did everything in their power to set things up so that this resizing isn’t noticeable, so you can rest easy knowing your game will look just fine.
Although it isn’t perfect, the performance improvement can be substantial-enough to justify it.
Fallout 4 Poop Mod
4. Blurkiller – Visual Pollution Remover
On the other hand, the next mod in our list seems almost too good to be true in terms of the cost/benefit ratio it offers.
Blurkiller, by Sortitus, focuses on removing several effects triggered by events such as explosions to improve stability and prevent crashes on lower-end systems.
Blur, Bloom, HDR, and Depth of Field effects in the environment are left intact, but completely removed from such events.
Not only will it drastically improve performance, but it’ll give the game a cleaner look that some people may appreciate.
3. Fog Remover – Performance Enhancer II
Among the most popular performance enhancers for Fallout 4 is Fog Remover by Glass1411.
This offers better FPS and also gives the game a much cleaner look.
It’s simple. The mod removes effects such as mist, steam, dust, smoke and, of course, fog, from the environment. Airborne miasma, begone!
It’s not as immersive as the vanilla look of the game, and some things such as fires look weird without the smoke… but I think a stable performance trumps such details, right?
2. FAR – Faraway Area Reform
Fallout 4, like many other open-world games, spends a tremendous amount of resources rendering things you won’t ever see. Some of those are distant places and objects.
FAR, by modder SparrowPrince, seeks to save you some processing power by optimizing and improving over 6.000 distant land textures for better performance and reduced stutter on higher-end systems.
Fallout 4 Pee And Poop Mod
As a bonus, faraway areas actually look better and less cluttered.
1. Insignificant Object Remover
But if we’re talking about saving resources spent on things you won’t pay attention to, Insignificant Object Remover offers you the best returns.
This mod by Akkalat85 removes a wide array of useless objects placed in the terrain to make it look “more realistic”, such as stone formations in riverbanks and the like.
Once gone you’ll notice a significant improvement on your FPS, and the Wasteland will simply look a lot less cluttered.
You’d be surprised at how much of your processing power lays in the bottom of rivers, lakes and other places you’ll never look into in the form of algae and random debris.
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