Fallout 4

I like Far Harbor, though you should probably wait on finishing the main quest before you do it. It adds a new landspace and I think tries to expand on some of the RPG elements (you get a lot more speech checks that can change up the direction of the main quest), though it is of course still ultimately more Fallout 4. Nuka-World also stands out, set in a rollercoaster park where you can lead some raiders in taking over the entire area, though if you're a good character you can end up with the awkwardness of pretty much immediately wiping everyone out and destroying the main plot, which I don't think is really as interesting as FH anyway.

The other one to note is Automatron, which adds a small questline and lets you create your own robot companions and customise them and others. (Poor Codsworth◊). It doesn't add as much as the others, though, so I wouldn't really be able to justify the price.

Everything else is settlement stuff. So maybe it could be worth it if you like the settlement system, but it's really not my cup of tea.

Automatron allows you to build sentry bots and assign them to supply lines. Never met enemies on the roads again. Never have to wait for settlers to show up before establishing lines again.

Automatron frees you. It's amazing. All the crafting dlc are worth it.

Far Harbor really is best though. A robot murder mystery, memorable side characters, a new synth haven, new workbenches to craft armor, weapons, and ammo....

I started a Fallout 4 Recommended Mods page back in the day, but since I was the only one adding things to it, it just sort of sat there.

On top of the essential unofficial patch, I'd highly recommend Hein84's Vivid Fallout series, which tweaks the environmental textures to make them look just as good but run better. My framerate still suffers when I run around downtown Boston, but since installing these I haven't had a crash just from moving around a cell. The Enhanced Color Correction mod also works wonders, since trying to make things out with the game's standard visuals actually gave me eyestrain.

Beyond that, what mods to recommend will probably depend on what you feel is lacking as you get into the game. But I will say you should probably get Snappable Junk Fences if you plan on trying to build a wall around any of your settlements. I used to consider the Contraptions Workshop DLC as all but mandatory for any serious builders just because of its convenient concrete walls, but these improved junk fences are a great alternative.

Oh yeah, you might want to re-enable achievements.

Far Harbor and Automatron are the only DLC I would recommend. (Never played Nuka World, so I can't say yay or nay about it.)

I'd say Automatron is the best DLC because even though its questline is like three dungeons long, the stuff it introduces meshes nicely into the main game - those Rust Devils remain recurring enemies, and robot provisioners are amazing.

Far Harbor is excellent as a fleshed-out, self-contained area to explore, with an evocative environment and superior storytelling. But it loses points because 1) all that fog makes a computer cry, 2) Nick Valentine's new lines are in a noticeably different voice than his old dialogue, and 3) it's so good, with skills affecting some dialogue and an open-ended approach to resolving the situation, that it reminds you how much the rest of Fallout 4 fails at being a Fallout game.

Nuka-World is an interesting environment to explore, but if you're not going to embrace the whole Raider lifestyle, all it amounts to is a couple of firefights against reskinned enemies in said interesting environment and some novelty Power Armor paint jobs to collect.

Building a Vault was kind of neat, but not very convenient, what with the lighting and power limitations. A good timesink for a few hours if you have a stockpile of resources to blow through, but not something I'd do every playthrough.

The workshop stuff is probably terribly overpriced considering what you can get for free through game mods, but hey, maybe you wanna build stuff with conveyor belts, or Rube Goldberg machines, or set up cage matches between Deathclaws and Raiders. And again, those concrete walls are superb when it comes to fortifying a settlement. And that fusion generator takes a lot of hassle out of supplying power to a fort.

edited 25th May '17 11:41:42 AM by Tacitus

Tame deathclaws and dogs that add defense points to your settlements.

Tame

Deathclaws

The game still feels complete though without the DLC right?

Sure. In fact, I'd actually call that something of a flaw. In New Vegas, there were plenty of references to the DLC even before the first one was released. Elijah was the previous Brotherhood Elder, Ulysses grafittied all over the place. It made the DLC feel more connected to the main game, but here they can feel a bit tacked on.

Far Harbor didn't. Heck, I didn't even realize I was headed into the DLC until I was up against the hard "if you go any further you're leaving the Commonwealth behind for now" barrier at that house. By its nature, it worked without having big clues leading to it. Automatron . . . not so much. Outside of a few zones here and there, there's no sign of it. No eyebots spamming the Automatron's manifesto. No crazy mix and match bots running around. Just nothing. You would think if they were that big a problem in the commonwealth, you'd see a lot more of them in places untouched by the DLC.

Idk about you, but I found A TON of rogue robots after Automaton came out. In fact, whenever I fast travel, I usually find rogue robots on the other end.

The rogue robots become far less frequent once you finish the quest though.

Thats good, most games with large amounts of DLC usually hold back and leave the game sorely incomplete. Its one thing I hated about Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 3.

edited 27th May '17 8:57:35 AM by Memers

So I was trying to install the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch but apparently you need all the DLC to use it, anyone know of a work around or another patch that does not require DLC?

Check under "Old Versions" on the mod's Files page, there's a vanilla alternative that's no longer supported but doesn't require the DLCs. Which means there'll be more bugs than the main file, which isn't to say that you'd be bug-free with the main file.

Finished the main story campaign for the game, at last.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about that though. It certainly wasn't as much fun in the run in to the end as New Vegas or 3 were, and the writing suuuuuccckkkked. I mean, l spent dozens of hours working with the Railroad only to betray them in a matter of seconds because the writers could not be arsed to come up with a way to avoid doing so and still work with the Institute for at least the short term? Two sentences from Shaun and I am down with blasting Desdemona? Aye, right.

Nooooooo, do NOT get the unofficial patch!!!!!

   It will prevent you from assigning jobs to settlers. I repeat, do not download that patch!!!   

The worst part is, it bakes the error into your save, so that even if you uninstall the mod, the bug will still be there.

The whole experience is much more immersive if you chose to betray the Institute. They have nothing further they can contribute to the commonwealth. All the division leaders make it pretty clear they see you as a nepotism choice. The division leaders aren't interested with supplying to Commonwealth with food, power, or medicine. They sure are interested in robbing the Commonwealth though.

So I blew them all up.

edited 28th May '17 11:33:02 AM by blkwhtrbbt

The weakest part of recent Bethesda games has always been the writing, they really need better writers. Not to mention how formulaic their plots are, Fallout 3: Play as child and find parent, Fallout 4: play as parent and find child. I love their games but generally not for the writing or story.

edited 28th May '17 11:32:50 AM by Fourthspartan56

Ahh ok. Guess I will have to deal with the usual bugs.

The thing is, I actually love Fallout 3. It's much better written than 4, (as long as you ignore that slow-motion car crash of an original ending that was wiped from existence in, I think, the third DLC pack), and the voice acting is far superior. All of the V/As from 4 are "who are they?", whereas 3's got Liam "world's worst daddy and he's done three Taken films that prove it" Neeson, Malcolm "star of films I actually like, like "If...", A Clockwork Orange and Caligula" Mc Dowell, and Stephen "hey, he was Garrett in the only three real Thief games AND Mercer Frey in Skyrim?!?" Russell.

Yet I just spent about ten seconds scrolling down 4's voice cast page on IMDB and I don't think I recognized ANYONE.

I don't know what Emil Pagliarulo, Fallout 3 and 4's head writer, was drinking in the seven year time gap between those games, but he lost something of his writing chops. Indeed if I didn't know better, I'd say the Brotherhood of Steel were written by two totally different guys.

Eh, personally I found the quality of writing as roughly equivalent but I haven't played a massive amount of Fallout 4 so YMMV. But writing is really Bethesda's weakest point, I wish they could improve on it but I'm not convinced they will.

edited 28th May '17 4:18:37 PM by Fourthspartan56

The worst part is that it's not ufo4p's fault, apparently it's deactivated code in the base game that the developers ufo4p accidentally reactivated when making their patch. There's nothing that can be done about it unless Bethesda themselves disables it.

I found this out the hard way. I lost about 4 hours of gameplay to that bug.

-_-

The biggest problem with the writing of Fallout 4 is their isn't even the illusion of urgency after you reach the institute. There's no feeling like some tipping point event is coming. It would improve dramatically if the Institute had some grand plan they were about to unleash on the Commonwealth, that you either have to stop or fulfill.

edited 28th May '17 7:47:14 PM by BigMadDraco

They do have a grand plan - a shiny new generator, allowing them to retreat even further from the surface they keep fucking up.

Someone I talked to who gave up on Fallout 4 did so because of the urgency he felt in the plot. Like, he figured that if he was a dad whose son had been stolen, he'd try very hard to get that son back. So he went through the main quest as quickly as possible, wasn't at all interested in building settlements up for the Minutemen, didn't join the Brotherhood, barely interacted with the Railroad, so by the time he reached the endgame, he was locked on the Institute route for want of any other option. Unfortunately, to even have a choice of how you want to end Act Three, the game expects you to get distracted from the "rescue your son!" plot and do sidequests for the other factions.

I'm preeeetttyy sure I've been able to tell my settlers to do specific jobs, even with the unofficial patch installed. Marcy's still womanning the business I told her to, Preston went on guard duty like I wanted, etc. I've had a bigger problem in that regard with Sim Settlements, in which workers like to abandon their crops in favor of starting up a business or industrial plot, making caps while the settlement starves. Like Jamestown all over again.

Did you, like, not talk to them at all at any point around setting up the way to get into the Institute? 'cause if you use them to get inside, or mention that you've been inside before doing too much for the Institute, I think it's pretty easy to get on the Railroad track (hur) to the endgame.

Also, let's mind the spoilers, we've got a new player in the thread at the moment.

edited 28th May '17 10:07:37 PM by Tacitus

So long as their plan wasn't some cartoonishly evil plot like "poison the entire water supply of the Commonwealth!! (Why? Because eeeviiiilllll)". Looking at you, Mr. "President".....

I'm satisfied with what the Institute's goals were.

Game came out in 2015. Our spoiler policy no longer applies. If you are going deliberately blind into a game like Fallout 4, one of the most controversial and discussed games in the last twenty years, well that's down to you.

While I don't inherently disagree, we can still be courteous to new players. Rules don't call for it, but doesn't mean we can't be nice anyway.

Yeah, Bethesda writing tends to be REALLY weak. Which is why I do get genuinely frustrated when I've had someone try to tell me how Skyrim's story is better than that of the whole of the Dragon Age series and... If it were possible to glare daggers...

What makes Bethesda's bad writing even worse is when Obsidian comes in and ends up doing a stronger story with the same assets. New Vegas had a stronger story than Fallout 3 did with themes, morals, and some overall vision for the game as a whole with or without the DLC chapters which do feel naturally integrated into the bigger picture.

I have pretty high hopes for whatever Obsidian can do with Fallout: New Orleans.