Fallout 3: Mods
Core mods listed below are actively being tested together to create what I consider to be the best experience in game. What I am trying to create is a game that looks better, is more challenging and is more immersive and atmospheric. Mods are constantly being evaluated through play-testing and may be added, removed or put on the optional list based on their quality, compatibility and features. Hopefully, this will save you time when modding your own game. I have chosen to steer clear of most large overhauls such as the Fallout Wanderer's Edition and FOOK 2 in favor of a more modular mod selection allowing for greater compatibility, flexibility and customization.
I recommend using Nexus Mod Manager to manage all your mods for this game. (See the Utilities page for details.) Mod Organizer has more features built in but NMM has far greater compatibility with the mods I recommend below. Plus it's easier to use. Just be sure to look for notes regarding conflicts between mods and which ones should be overwritten. Also, be aware that too many intensive script-based mods that require FOSE to operate may result in reduced game performance. This can lead to framerate loss, bugged scripting behavior, crashes, and even game save corruption. The script-based mods in this list should work fine together. Add additional script-intensive mods at your own risk.
Bug Fixes
Audio
Companions
Gameplay
Graphics (Animation, Meshes, Textures, Visual Effects)
Be sure to toggle Archive Invalidation off and on after installing any texture-related mods to ensure that they load correctly.
Overhauls
User Interface
World Spaces (Buildings, Interiors, Homes, Worlds)
Under Reevaluation
Optional Mods
I recommend using Nexus Mod Manager to manage all your mods for this game. (See the Utilities page for details.) Mod Organizer has more features built in but NMM has far greater compatibility with the mods I recommend below. Plus it's easier to use. Just be sure to look for notes regarding conflicts between mods and which ones should be overwritten. Also, be aware that too many intensive script-based mods that require FOSE to operate may result in reduced game performance. This can lead to framerate loss, bugged scripting behavior, crashes, and even game save corruption. The script-based mods in this list should work fine together. Add additional script-intensive mods at your own risk.
Bug Fixes
- Updated Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Picks up where the original patch left off with an updated and massive collection of bug fixes. Download and install the "newb friendly" version which comes packaged in its own installer. Note: Be sure to install this patch first and allow the following mods to overwrite it when conflicts occur.
Audio
- Fallout 3 - HD Audio Overhaul - Replaces the game's bland, vanilla soundtrack with more cinematic and atmospheric music that fits the tone of the game better.
- GNR Enhanced - Adds 100 new songs to the GNR radio station playlist and corrects or improves scripts that control news stories and comments by Three Dog regarding the player and their actions.
- Improved Sound FX - Replaces most combat-related sound effects with louder, more vibrant samples.
- No Bad Karma Noise - Removes the annoying sound effect that plays every time you suffer bad karma for doing something the game considers bad.
- Tenpenny Lobby Music - Bach - My own mod that replaces the repetitive and tacky lounge music in the Tenpenny Tower with Bach's classy "Air on the G String."
Companions
- Companion Share And Recruit (Testing) - Adds a perk that allows the player to recruit and trade with nearly any friendly NPC they can talk to so long as they can meet a charisma skill challenge. An additional perk allows the player to heal companions in combat in a more roleplay-friendly way. Players can also share equipment, heal the NPC, teach them new skills, and issue a variety of commands including picking locks, looting containers, hacking computers, picking pockets, and planting explosives on NPCs. This is a good mod to use for NPCs that are not scripted as companions by default and/or cannot be controlled through the superior JIP CC&C mod.
- Follower XP - Script-based mod that allows the player to collect up to full experience when their companions kill an enemy and provide dominate kill assists. Useful when using damage-increasing mods that often cause companions to kill enemies before you have a chance to score the minimum 40% damage in vanilla FO3 to gain XP. Includes an options menu in the Pip-Boy that allows you to change the amount of XP earned by your companions.
- JIP Companions Command and Control - Excellent mod that introduces vastly improved UI enhancements for controlling vanilla and select modded companions. This includes RPG-style companion icons on the left of the screen and a scrolling command bar accessed from a quick key that allows you to directly control your nearby companions at any time without entering a dialogue menu. Supports all of the vanilla game's companions as well as many of the most popular companion mods. Be sure to install or reinstall the mod after installing any supported custom companions as JIP will automatically recognize these mods and install the appropriate support files. Also be sure to install or reinstall the Unified HUD Project after installing this mod to ensure that there are no conflicts with other supported UI-enhancing mods.
- Sydney Follower - Allows you to recruit Sydney as a follower after completing the "Stealing Independence" quest. She is a full-featured companion with 420 line of audio dialogue featuring the original voice actor, possesses several non-combat abilities to aid the player, comes with a radio transceiver to manage her whereabouts when away from the player, you can improve her skills, unlock new features and dialogue, change her hairdo, she comes with additional idles, and she can be easily managed via the JIP CC&C mod.
- Sydney Companion Retextured GFM - Provides a relative improvement to the facial looks of Sydney while changing her hairstyle as well. Requires the mods Sydney Follower and Fallout 3 Redesigned. I recommend installing this before you first meet her or else her armor may disappear.
Gameplay
- Auto Aim Explained and Properly Applied - Extends the range of the game's auto aim so that sniping accurately from afar actually works. Due to the flawed implementation of ballistics in FO3, this is a better solution than other mods that try to eliminate the auto aim.
- Auto Gates - Sets the gates to Megaton, Paradise Falls, Rivet City, Citadel, Little Lamplight, and Tenpenny Tower to open on approach and close after each visit rather than staying open after the player's initial visit as they do in the vanilla game.
- BA Repair - Allows the player to repair weapons, armor and clothing with a much wider range of common materials found throughout the Wasteland. Mod contents must be manually re-packaged before install as multiple versions are available. Read the mod instructions carefully. For this core list I recommend extracting "BA_Repair_GOTY.esp" and "BA_Repair_GOTY_Xtras.esp." Add them to a new archive and install.
- Combat Enhanced-Tactics - Introduces major changes to NPC and creature behavior resulting in more dynamic and realistic action in general. Enemies will now engage from further away, use cover and firing suppression, run from battle when seriously wounded, and search more thoroughly for the player when they go into hiding or create a disturbance nearby. This mod applies the same self-preserving behavior to all enemies including the most dangerous ones such as supermutant behemoths which may not be to the liking of everyone.
- Deadly Turrets - Mini overhaul that randomly increases turret damage and turret damage resistance. Adds turret locations around the Wasteland. Turrets now have five levels of difficulty to scale with player level and may be set to fire bullet, laser, plasma, or rocket rounds. Hack-able turrets can have their A.I. reprogrammed to target specific NPCs and creatures based on their relationship to the player.
- DK BulletTime - Allows you to toggle a slow motion mode on or off. Expends action points as an alternative to VATS. In-game configuration available. This is a very useful mod when using FWE, MMM and Combat Enhanced-Tactics as you can otherwise be easily overrun by a superior number of fast-moving enemies.
- Essential Followers and Caravans - Makes vanilla caravan members and player companions essential to everyone but the player by default, meaning they can only be killed by you. This is a necessary mod if you use any other mods that increase weapon damage or hostile spawns since these NPC's can be easily killed otherwise, resulting in failed quests that console resurrections of dead NPCs cannot fix. Pair with the mod "Make Essential NPCs" to toggle essential status on or off manually once the quests are completed.
- Hacking Terminals is Easier - Allows you to reduce or completely eliminate optional word choices when hacking terminals. You will still need the appropriate science skill level to hack terminals but this mod can do away with the mini game. Download and activate only one of the three enclosed esp files.
- Impervious Power Armour - Grants added reduction of incoming damage that is equal to 25% of armor rating (ie. power armor with an armor rating of 40 will take 10 points of damage off any incoming attack. An attack of 10 or less would do zero damage and an attack of 20 would only to 10). Essential when paired with mods that increase weapon damage.
- JIP Selective-Fire - Adds single shot, burst and/or full auto firing modes to select vanilla weapons. Includes a HUD display that's compatible with the Unified HUD Project.
- Make Essential NPCs - Kill annoying essential NPCs or keep your favorite non-essentials safe. This mod allows you to make any NPC you can talk to essential or non-essential via a dialogue option. Works best when paired with All Speak.
- Quick Start - Bypasses the childhood portion of the introductory Vault 101 quest and starts the player at the point where Amata wakes you up and you're forced to flee the vault. You still gets two chances to pick your gender, name and starting stats.
- Realistic Death Physics - Bodies no longer get knocked back unrealistically when struck fatally by gunfire and will instead crumble to the ground.
- Responsive Kill Reactions - Cause enemies to react when you kill one of their own within a reasonable detection range.
- RH_Ironsights - Allows the player to use the ironsights on vanilla, non-scoped guns to aim at targets. To get the most out of this mod I recommend disabling the game's target reticle in the options menu. Be sure to keep the esm and esp files at or very near the bottom of the load order.
- RWD - Realistic Weapons Damages - Significantly increases limb damage for most enemies and the player. Robots and select monsters have more damage resistance but still have weak spots. Explosions do knockdowns and do more damage.
- Slower Backpedaling - A simple mod that reduces your run speed when in reverse so that you now have to choose between shooting at or running away from a charging enemy.
- SmoothLight - Pip-Boy Light Enhancer - Port of a popular FNV mod that upgrades the Pip-Boy light with greater range, lesser fading and a color change from green to soft amber.
- Stealth Kills Enabled - Allows the player to kill a member of an otherwise friendly faction and not have the remaining faction members in the area turn on you when no witnesses are present.
- VATS Cinematics Gone - The slow motion effect when using VATS can look cool but quickly gets old after seeing it hundreds of times. This does away with the visual camera effects while retaining the functionality of VATS for those who choose to use it.
Graphics (Animation, Meshes, Textures, Visual Effects)
Be sure to toggle Archive Invalidation off and on after installing any texture-related mods to ensure that they load correctly.
- Better HiRes Skill Books - Download both the main file and Wasteland Survival Guide Redone and optionally extract both, re-pack into one archive and install.
- Bornagain Combat Armor - A re-texture of all combat armor in the game featuring assets from Cabal, whose well known for his peerless work on Skyrim armor textures. Download "Lite Version - BornagainCombatArmor2048."
- Combat Shotgun Replacer - Beautiful and original remodel and retexture of the combat shotgun. Compatible with RH_Ironsights.
- DC Moods - A successor to Fellout with optional support for ENBs, this mod enhances indoor and outdoor lighting and sky textures including clouds. The author has paid special attention to interior lighting to create darker, more atmospheric spaces that look fantastic. Download the main "DC Moods 2-1" file and both "Point Lookout Moods 1-1" and "The Pitt Moods." Like most "realistic" lighting mods, this one will make low light interiors and nights outside much much harder to see in than vanilla.
- Earth from Space Texture for Mothership Zeta
- Enhanced Blood Textures - Increases blood and giblet texture resolution to 1K.
- Enhanced Night Sky - A higher-resolution replacement of the game's night sky that is based on real starfield photography for enhanced realism.
- Epic Mini Nukes - Upgrades the look of mini nuke explosions.
- Eyes Addon - Replaces dull vanilla eye textures of all NPCs with more vibrant and realistic ones. Download the "eyesaddon" file.
- Fallout 3 Redesigned - Formerly Project Beauty HD - Improves the facial structure and skin tone of nearly 500 NPCs in game to appear more natural and lore-friendly.
- Flora Overhaul - Adds new trees and ground cover to many areas of the Wasteland. Not only does this dramatically change the environment it also provides additional tactical cover for you and your enemies. Download either the Dead, Forested or Total Devastation Edition. Which edition you choose is completely subjective as they all look suitable for a post-apocalyptic environment. The only problem is that some flora may poke unnaturally through various structures such as bridges.
- Healthier Yao Guai
- Hi-Res Weapons - Boosts the texture quality of the game's vanilla weapons. Do not overwrite any other custom weapon textures from other mods as this will always be the lower quality option.
- Improved LOD Noise Texture - Increases texture noise resolution at range to 2K for better looking terrain in the distance.
- Mothership Zeta DLC Retextured - A complete 2K re-texture of all Mothership Zeta DLC content.
- NMC's Texture Pack for FO3 - Download the Maximum Pack with 2K textures and normals. Large-scale collection of higher-resolution textures for much of the environment including landscape, building, vehicles, litter, and interiors. During installation overwrite the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch only.
- Omnis Hi-Res Pip-Boy 3000 - FIXED - Lore-friendly and high-resolution re-texture of the Pip-Boy.
- Precision Collision - Clutter - Reduces the collision detection range around movable objects to allow for more accurate placement and stacking. Most useful when decorating a player home or arranging a scene for screenshots or videos. During installation overwrite the Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch and do not overwrite EVE.
- PureWater - A re-texture of sea and river water that adds a blue tone and greater transparency.
- Retex Gory Corpse Parts - Improves texture quality of body parts found throughout the Wasteland.
- Smaller Mesmetron and Microwave Emitter - Reduces the size of the mesmetron and mricrowave emitter by a third and moves them down slightly in first-person view so they now take up less space on the screen.
- Swampfolk Backwater Retexture
- Type N Body Replacer - My favorite female body replacer for FO3 and FONV is from Nessa and is based off of Luchaire's Type V. It features more realistic proportions, narrower shoulders, smaller breasts, BnB animations and skeleton, and smaller hands. Comes with a total armor conversion covering all FO3 and FONV clothing and armor including all DLC content. Download from Lovers Lab (requires free registration) and use the FOMOD installer. Be sure to select the FO3 option. Note: I have found a bug with the included business suit mesh which does not properly display textures. For now I recommend either deleting the suit file to revert back to the vanilla mesh or replace it with a mesh from another clothing conversion mod.
- UHQ Terrain Overhaul - Dramatically improves the look of the Wasteland by replacing landscape textures with high-resolution variants sampled from photos. Download the HQ Terrain Overhaul file for the best mix of quality and performance.
- UWWUT - Unique Weapons With Unique Textures
- Vandr HD Creatures - Upgrades creatures with higher-resolution textures, new bump maps and sharpened detail at long range.
- View Distance Decreased - Modified - Purely subjective modification of the game's outdoor view distance. It makes it harder to see further due to increased fog or haze. Paired with lighting mods and ENB presets it creates additional atmosphere, masks the game's distance terrain limitations and looks very appropriate for a post-apocalyptic wasteland littered with radioactive waste and debris. Make sure the esp file loads last or at least near the bottom of the load order to overwrite any other conflicting mods.
- Wasteland Clothing HiRes Retexture - While created for Fallout New Vegas and the additional clothing and armor found in that game, this mod works just fine at improving the texture detail on a lot of the vanilla clothing and armor in FO3. Do not overwrite Type N Body Replacer files if prompted.
Overhauls
- Children of the Wasteland - Overhaul of children that improves their appearance, optionally allows users to play as children and adds an optional, mostly lore-unfriendly shop near Big Town that's stocked with new and refitted clothing and headgear for children. Download the master file only.
- EVE - Energy Visuals Enhanced - Complete audio/visual overhaul of energy weapons including critical effects, muzzle flashes, projectiles, animated impacts, explosions, flamer effects, sound effects, and custom weapon meshes. Also includes a couple new weapons including shredder grenades and the PT900 plasma thrower.
User Interface
- DarNified UI F3 - PC-friendly overhaul of the HUD, GECK and menu system that greatly improves the look and usability of all UI elements. File setup required prior to install. Download and open the archive. From inside open the DUI folder and then open the "dui_f3a11.zip" file and extract the "dui_f3a11.fomod" file. Load this fomod file into your preferred mod manager. It will automatically attempt to change the fonts in your Fallout.ini file. Let it do so.
- Immersive HUD - Press the "i" key to toggle all HUD elements such as the health bar and compass on and off.
- Unified HUD Project - Allows 21 popular UI-enhancing mods to work together by automatically recognizing the installed mods and applying patches. This mod must be reinstalled after each supported mod is installed and all overwrite prompts must be accepted.
World Spaces (Buildings, Interiors, Homes, Worlds)
- DC Interiors Project - Adds dozens of new interior locations throughout the Wasteland to explore.
Under Reevaluation
- Attentaters Wasteland Economy Revived - Creates a greater sense of security and sustainability to settlements by adding new defensive and practical infrastructure, factions, NPCs, and caravans.
- Barter World Reloaded
- Breezes FO3 Males - An improved texture and mesh replacement mod for male NPCs in FO3 that includes clothed, nude and adult-themed options. Includes several adult-themed raider armors. Download all three main files.
- CASM - An autosave mod that acts as a superior alternative to the vanilla game's buggy, crash-prone save functions. From in game you can set the number of game saves to cycle through, how often auto saves occur and/or at what events. The classic quicksave function is moved to the "F4" key. This mod functions much like the newer Extended Save Manager. I've tried them both and prefer CASM for its more intuitive and feature-rich options. As playing a heavily-modded FO3 can lead to periodic crashes, this mod is essential.
- Fallout 3 - Enhanced Camera - Small but immersive improvement that adds a complete body to the player when in first-person mod. This allows you to see your own legs and feet when looking down and you now cast a shadow. In addition, you now always stay in first-person mode even when knocked down. Note: Found a possible incompatibility with RH_Ironsights that causes the weapon to tilt up when attempting to use iron sights.
- JIP Realistic Weapon Overheating
- Join the Raiders (formerly Evergreen Mills Enhanced)
- Mesmetron Works on Everyone
- Mini Hideout
- NPCs Travel - Adds over 60 new friendly NPCs and domestic creatures that travel the wasteland and populate four new outposts.
- Ultimate Perk Pack
- Underground Hideout
- Wasteland Encounters
- Weapon Mod Kits - Allow select vanilla weapons to be equipped with custom scopes, auto-fire, extended clips, silencers, and/or laser sights. This improves the look, functionality and durability of modded weapons.
- Weight Rebalance
- A World Of Pain - A large, lore-friendly content expansion with new interior locations, enemies, quests, companions, notes, collectible items, traps, and more.
Optional Mods
- All Speak - Allows you to speak to just about any friendly NPC in the game. While not useful on its own, when paired with dialogue-enhancing mods such as Companion Share and Recruit, it can open up many new possibilities. Download and install the "allspeak1" file instead of the merged "dlc" version. The trade off is you end up with more esp files but after extensive testing I have found that they have greater compatibility than the supposed merged file. Make sure that the esps always stays at the bottom of the load order.
- Blackened - A compilation of patches that improve compatibility between several popular FO3 overhauls. Download the version that matches the mods you have installed.
- Bridge Town
- FNNCQ - A Fallout 3 Slavery Overhaul - Roleplay as a slaver with this mod that allows you to enslave almost any NPC and then optionally sell them or keep them as trained prisoners. Adds a shop just outside Paradise Falls that sells slaver gear.
- Marts Mutant Mod - Excellent creature overhaul that adds new mutant variants, creature drops and allows for many in-game options including increased spawns, creature vs. creature conflict and NPC scavenging. Download the FOMOD ready version.
- Omegared99 - ENB First Person Transparency Fix - For use with ENB presets, this mod keeps your weapon from becoming transparent when in first-person mode.