#1 Fallout: London
We had to start with Fallout: London – the recent release of one of the biggest mods ever had us reinstalling Fallout 4 immediately, and this thing barely qualifies as a mod. While it’s using the same engine and many of the same assets, Fallout: London is its own standalone game and an incredible new entry to the Fallout series that takes us out of the continental United States and into a rainier setting.
Fallout: London is a fully-featured open-world RPG, with new quests and factions to join. There are new voiced characters, new weapons that are more impressively animated than anything in the vanilla game, and even an entire new species of creatures that take the place of ghouls. The fish-faced folk are an amazing new addition to the lore of Fallout, and learning more about the world outside of the traditional setting of the series is a delight, especially when everything is so carefully created. There’s a new alternative Pipboy with new animations to go along with the skill system, and there are so many new weapons to play around with. This might be one of the best mods we’ve ever played, and we’ve only just scratched the surface of what it has to offer.
There are some caveats to the experience. FIrst, you’ll only be able to play Fallout: London currently with pre-Next Gen patched versions. The easiest way to play is through the GoG store, which has its own separate launcher that will work as long as you already own Fallout 4. Even if you’re not a fan of Fallout 4, it’s worth buying just to play this masterclass in design. It honestly reminds me of Fallout: New Vegas in all the best ways.
#2 Buffout 4
Fallout: London is an essential mod, but there’s another mod you’ll want to get ASAP. Buffout 4 is an essential mod that fixes engine bugs – that’s really all it does. But it is essential if you want to play Fallout: London. There’s nothing sexy about this mod, but if you want to play Fallout: London without constantly crashing, this mod fixes all our issues instantly. Other guides online will tell you more convoluted methods for repairing Fallout: London, but they’re all a waste of time. Buffout 4 is all you need.
Going forward, it’s also worth mentioning that many Fallout 4 mods are not compatible with the Next Gen patch – there are ways to downgrade your version of Fallout 4 on Steam, but the easiest way is to play the game on GoG. The GoG version of Fallout 4 does not include the Next Gen patch, so you can safely play without doing any funny stuff to your installation. If you’re struggling to get any of the mods on our list working, try playing a pre-patched version of Fallout 4. Some of these mods are compatible, but many of them just aren’t. And that includes some of the best ones like Fallout London.
#3 Fallout Commander
Looking for a little more tactical action in Fallout 4? The Fallout Commander mod puts you in control of your faction, letting you customize and deploy a full squad of NPC soldiers that will fight for you. The customization options are deep, giving you access to classic factions like the Enclave or Brotherhood of Steel, along with the newbies like the Minutemen and the Institute. This mod is also widely compatible with other mods, giving you even more control over your experience – if you want an army of Power Armor troops to do all your fighting for you, Fallout Commander is one of the most fun ways to overwhelm your enemies.
Your troops aren’t just meat puppets either. If they stay alive, you can unlock additional perks for your veterans – and when you’re sick of them fighting beside you, just send them to your favorite settlement to defend. They’ll be waiting for another tour of duty when you’re ready. After installing the mod, you’ll find the WesTek Command Radio item in your Aid items tab. Using the radio gives you control over your soldiers where you can call them in or issue commands. It definitely makes you feel much more connected to your faction, and makes that faction so much more useful.
#4 Vivid Fallout
One of the best simple mods for Fallout 4, the Vivid Fallout mod adds HD textures that look better than the official HD texture pack and improve performance drastically, making this one of the most important bread-and-butter mods for players looking for a simpler solution to the HD texture pack problem.
The latest version by modder Hein84 includes every previous release and version, adding clean textures to all the DLC areas, improving roads, bridges, quarries and rocks in general. There’s even a pack specifically to make Mirelurks more vivid. The level of detail is up to you, and you can install versions that are as small as 1k all the way up to 4k textures, giving you a lot of control over your performance. If your computer can’t handle the big textures, you’re good to bump those textures down a notch and enjoy improved FPS. It isn’t the most exciting mod, but it’ll give you an entirely new perspective on the Commonwealth.
#5 Wasteland Havok
For a series about the post-apocalypse, there’s a distressing lack of cars in Fallout. While you could get your hands on vehicles in some of the top-down Fallout games, Fallout 3 and 4 are totally car free. That’s a real bummer – but thankfully the community joined together to release the Wasteland Havok mod, a work-in-progress that puts you in control of ten extremely cool cars. Before you ask, yes, Mad Max’s car is available to drive and crash within seconds of your next playthrough.
Cars really weren’t designed to work in the aging engine of Fallout 4 and the streets are even worse for bulky vehicles to navigate, but that’s just the kind of risk you’ll have to take. Ignore all the abandoned cars full of nuclear engines that explode after a single touch, because we’ve got a need for speed. This mod is completely ridiculous, totally unnecessary, and exactly the kind of wackiness that absolutely belongs in Fallout. Spin wheelies all over Boston, ramming raiders and sending your vehicle flying with whatever makeshift ramps you can find. This is all for fun, but it’s worth the work.
Strap in, buddy. Ghouls can’t drive 55.
#6 Diamond City Expansion
The most important settlement in Fallout 4 has to be Diamond City, and the first time you arrive in the baseball stadium-turned-town, you might be shocked by how small it really is. Modder statsmakten helps improve the Diamond City experience with a mod that adds more to Kenway Field, adding more areas to explore inside the stadium building itself and the field. There are new houses in the upper stands, abandoned hallways in the stadium itself, and multiple new functions you can use in the city – including a Red Seat District for all you pitchers looking for a catcher.
The Diamond City Expansion adds multiple new districts that instantly enhance the look of Diamond City, turning the backwater into a sprawling community packed with different strata of society. There’s an expensive watering hole in the upper boxes, a repair shop, a full-on brothel and more. This is a lore-friendly enhancement that adds so much more to our favorite little Fallout town.
You can further enhance the Diamond City expansion with mods specifically made for it – new quests, new outfits, new music tracks and more.
#7 Mutant Menagerie
One of the biggest expansions on the list, Mutant Menagerie adds more than 60 new monsters to Fallout 4 – turning the wastelands truly wild with some terrifying creatures we’ve never seen before in the Fallout universe. The entire bestiary has been updated, with new creatures appearing in familiar places all over the Commonwealth. If you’re looking for a way to refresh the main game, these new enemies keep us on our toes. And after blasting mutant turkeys or two-headed raccoons, you can craft new recipes from the parts or earn totally new perks related to hunting mutants.
Even the fauna has changed in the wasteland. There are over 30 new plants, more than 50 new fish, and they’re all required for those crafting recipes we talked about. The monsters range from pure jank to totally plausible new Fallout enemies – there are mutant frog men that look like they’d belong in any game in the series. Mutant Elephants escaping from the zoo are one of our favorites. There are way too many monsters to talk about here, but if you’re sick of the old same mutants you’ve blasted a thousand times in Fallout 4, this is a pretty good way to change things up.
#8 Game Configuration Menu
The GCM is the best way to change what you want in Fallout 4. Instead of using the cheat console and memorizing a bunch of weird strings of text, you can make things so much easier with the Game Configuration Menu. This simple little mod lets you change almost everything about Fallout 4 – you can change difficulty, barter settings, skills, legendary drop rates, what types of enemies spawn, random encounters, visual tweaks and so, so much more. If there’s something you want to change in Fallout 4, you can probably do it from the GCM menu.
The most fun you can have – for us – with this little mod is jacking up the XP modifiers so you’ll earn 8,000 XP just for finding new areas on the map. Why grind for levels or cheat in XP when you can just earn it ridiculously fast naturally?
There’s so much stuff this mod gives you control over, it’s surprising when you can’t configure something – if you want to alter the Survivor Mode settings, you’ll need to download and install a separate mod made specifically for that. Otherwise, you’re free to cheat infinite money for yourself, or just make tiny tweaks to make the game more fun for you. Give yourself the skills you want for a specific build, or even make the game more difficult for some added roleplaying. This mod makes all of it incredibly easy, and for that we’re infinitely thankful.
The only thing this mod doesn’t do is add more stuff – but the new mod on our list covers that.
#9 cVc Wasteland
For the ultimate settlement building experience, you’re going to want cVc Wasteland. This mod completely revamps building your own settlement, adding useful features and tons of custom assets so you can build the settlement of your dreams. There’s an entirely new Workshop menu tab that includes more than 1,000 custom assets for you to play with. If you’re the type of person that loves building your perfect Sims house, cVc Wasteland is the in-depth mod you’re looking for.
The core version works with vanilla Fallout 4, and there are multiple add-ons with even more stuff to bring lore-friendly customization to your perfect Commonwealth cottage. This is also one of the few mods that actually works with the Next-Gen Update, so there aren’t any loopholes you’ll need to hop through to install this one. Look, we just love having lots and lots of stuff to decorate with. While this mod gives you more control over customization, it doesn’t fully overhaul the settlement experience.
Fixing settlements is what the last – and maybe best – mod on our list can do for you.
#10 Sim Settlements 2
Sim Settlements 2 is easily one of the best mods in Fallout 4 today, changing up settlements to become a truly fun and immersive part of rebuilding the wasteland. Instead of building everything yourself, your settlers will build up their settlements for you, turning Fallout 4 into a fully-featured and fun city builder game. By streamlining and adding depth to settlements, we wanted to engage with a feature we’d normally skip.
And Sim Settlements 2 adds more than just simple useful functions like making settlers build their own houses. Sim Settlements 2 includes an entire new storyline – you’ll face challenges as your community projects grow, eventually leading to war against rivals and so much more. The story is split into multiple chapters, each with a separate release. It’s an incredible achievement and we’d put this mod right up there with Fallout London. If you haven’t tried out Sim Settlements 2 because you don’t like building junk farms for your disgruntled residents, this mod completely overhauls the experience and turns one of Fallout 4’s biggest albatrosses into a very welcome feature.
