I wouldn’t say any are really “essential.” Personally, I did find the Primary Needs display pretty helpful for Hardcore, but wasn’t all that excited by anything else. I was also surprised by how difficult it was to install mods, it’s not quite the “drop in the mods folder” that I’ve encountered with other games, such as World of Warcraft.
Skipper
4362
Essential mods depend entirely on how difficult you want the game or how many graphical tweaks you want.
For what it’s worth I found the best mod for me was built in, hardcore mod. I love all the choices it’s had me make in the game so far, even despite the pin in the rear it’s been at times.
Essential mods for F:NV are none. Seriously. I’ve gone through F:NV with and without a slew of mods, and without them it is just fine. It probably doesn’t help that the mods I like the most – additional quests – are ones that end up giving you a bunch of game-breaking goodies. (Even the Bounty Hunter mods, which tries to keep things on the level more than most, still ends up giving you some seriously overpowered gear early). F:NV mods are pretty much nice to haves, not need to haves. FO3 was kinda the same way.
Contrasted of course, with, say, Oblivion that, even if I were to load the thing up again in some distant parallel universe, would require about 30 mods before it reached a decent baseline.
Yeah, I’ve only played Oblivion heavily modded out its ass. The only mod I used for New Vegas that I would consider essential is making the interface better.
I think the radio expander mod(s) are pretty critical. The only reason I’ve not used one with New Vegas is the last time I checked it was all ported from Fallout 3 and I’d rather not have exactly the same music for both.
So, did some modification to graphics and now it seems that the game has a tendency to freeze on occasion, even though I can play for 2+ hours with no incident. Guess I’ll have to lower details and see which settings causes it.
I see this talk about a 4GB Fix? Isn’t the game patched to be Large-Address Aware already?
Hmm. Guess I’m grabbing it and testing to see if that solves problems.
Edit: Annoying that I need to use the fnv4gb.exe + helper.dll since Steam will refuse to launch a .exe with the 4GB flag manually set. Damn Wrappers.
Still, only crashed once since installing it… when the game froze when I used the map to jump to a location.
Just getting into a habit of saving often and its not too bad.
when the game froze when I used the map to jump to a location
Get used to this. Especially in Old World Blues.
The best fix I’ve ever used wasn’t any of these downloads, but was rather the bThreadedAI modifications mentioned several times here and elsewhere. From that point on the only time I’d get crashes was on quick travel or the occasional area transistion.
malkav11: I know another man’s ceiling is another man’s floor but how is “flavor text” CONRAD radio “critical”?
Speaking of CONRAD radio, I have an idea for a mod: have the slide projectors play “Atomic Cafe” in its entirety :)
Yup. I have to wonder why they don’t just patch that in? It’s such a simple fix.
Open up the fallout.ini file in: Documents\My Games\Fallout New Vegas
Find the line: bUseThreadedAI=0
Change it to: bUseThreadedAI=1
Add another line after it and insert: iNumHWThreads=2
This will prevent the game from using more than two cores. Multi-cores cause crashes in the Gamebyro Engine.
If the game still crashes change to: iNumHWThreads=1
You need to change the root as well or every time you play it will overwrite and revert:
Goto: \Steam\Steamapps\common\FalloutNV
Edit Fallout_default.ini that same way as above.
The radio extenders are critical because by default the stations in both games seem to have perhaps five songs in their playlists. Ten at most. That level of repetition is perhaps accurate for commercial radio but drives me absolutely insane.
According to the wiki, Galaxy News Radio in FO3 has 20 songs while Radio New Vegas only has 13. The repetition bothered me much more in NV.
Oh, people actually listen to the radio? I’m probably missing out on something because I check them out when I first discover them and then promptly turn them off. Is there anything useful for initiating/advancing quests among the stations?
No. You can safely never turn them on. You’re only missing out on flavor.
I like them mainly for Mr. New Vegas/Three Dog commenting about quests I’ve completed and how my actions have changed the world. The music helps set the mood, but it gets repetitive very quickly.
Unless you want to hear about my spurs that jingle jangle jingle
I hate the radio in F:NV with a passion. Well, except maybe Black Mountain.
Does the radio affect sneaking, by any chance? I know they warn you not to use the light on your PipBoy, to avoid attracting attention, but do the various beasties and miscreants of the wasteland have auditory awareness as well?
Oh, that might be interesting to hear. Will have to check it out.
Considering that hearing things around you is a big part of the game, having a radio constantly playing would be a tad distracting, I’d think.
Good question. You’d think so if they can “hear” your footsteps.
I don’t know. I keep my radio off all the time.
MR. NEW VEGAS SPOILER
While looking up the soundtrack for on the Fallout wiki, I noticed that Mr. New Vegas is an AI created by Mr. House decades ago. When/where does the player learn that? Unlike Three Dog, I never encountered Mr. New Vegas anywhere in the game, and I thought I was pretty thorough in my obsessive completionist ways.
nKoan
4379
In my experience, the radio doesn’t seem to notify enemies, though any other sounds does.
Yeah I see that on the Wikia page…no idea where they got that, it’s never mentioned in game AFAIK.
