Bethesda games have long been a haven for the modding community, and Fallout 4 is no different. There are a ton of mods out there for this game. Considering it originally came out way back in 2015, enthusiastic modders have had plenty of time to show off their creations to the world. One of those is the highly-anticipated Fallout: London, which has a whole team behind it, but since that’s already had its fair share of hype, let’s explore other options that might’ve gone under your radar.
Sites such as Nexus Mods are great for discovering mods, with new entries every single day. For example, as soon as we took a look at the Fallout 4 category, we could see 24 ‘new today’ and 166 ‘new this week’ – and we say full steam ahead. On top of that, the game has seen somewhat of a resurgence following the popular TV show.
Our top five Fallout 4 mods at the minute (apart from Fallout: London)
There are so many mods to choose from that making a condensed list wasn’t easy. Sure, Fallout: London deserves the spotlight right now, but here’s what else should you check out once you (eventually, maybe?) get bored of it.
#1 Be The Dog
Any Fallout player should know who Dogmeat is, the lovable companion that’s always by your side. Anyway, as you could probably guess from the name, the Be The Dog mod allows you to play Fallout as a dog. You’re not just stuck with Dogmeat either, as you can also play as a raider or feral dog. There’s a bit of jankiness to the mod with a couple of bugs here and there, but nothing that ruins the fun. Plus, dogs are even combat-ready:
- Right Attack = “basic bite”
- Left Attack = “basic bite 2”
- Bash/Power Attack = “jumping bite”
Better yet, you can still recruit Dogmeat as a companion and work together as a dynamic duo. This captures the fun of modding and is a whole new way to play the game, two reasons why it gets our number one pick.
#2 Annex the Commonwealth
One of the best mods for Fallout 4 is one for all the citybuilders out there. The ‘Annex the Commonwealth‘ mod allows you to expand on your settlements dynamically, increasing build volumes and budgets, essentially allowing you to build an empire. It features “dynamic growing settlements”, starting from the vanilla settlement area and allowing it to expand further than is usually possible.
It’s all pretty simple in premise and can turn Fallout 4 into a much bigger experience than what the base game offers. There’s also “out-of-box support” for Sim Settlements, meaning your settlers will claim land by thesimselves and expand your estate.
#3 Robot Home Defence
As the description eloquently puts it: “You spend a lot of time wandering into other people’s houses and being shot at by robots. Why not copy them?” and we couldn’t agree more. Robot Home Defence is a mod that adds a bunch of extra content, giving you the opportunity to build a whole defence force at home. These include Protectrons, Mister Gutsies, Assaultrons, Sentry Bots, and more. Better yet, they can take commands, share inventory, and can even fast travel with you. Best of all, there’s an unlimited amount at once.
#4 Take Cover
Finally, we wanted to include something that improves the combat of Fallout 4. Sure, it’s not bad in vanilla, but why not take a more tactical approach? That’s where the Take Cover mod comes into play. It brings 3rd-person cover to Fallout 4 which has been compared to something like Deus Ex, though Gears of War comes to mind personally. We know that many people like to play Fallout in 1st-person, otherwise, we’d rank this higher.
Regardless, the cover system is fairly in-depth and adds to the combat. Sprinting into a wall automatically takes cover behind it, or you can use double-tap functionality in the beta version. If you don’t like the automatic style, you can assign a hotkey to enter cover mode instead. You can choose between standing cover and crouching cover, exit cover freely, and even vault over low objects. Aiming down sights will pop you out of cover as well.
#5 Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide
Next up is the Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide, a mod by TurntLogic. This mod adds a new magazine series scattered around the Commonwealth, with eight new books to be exact. These come with a custom perk called “Overseers Prodigy” which permanently raises experience gains by 2% per book, making for 16% overall. The eight Survival Guide books are listed as follows:
- Gardening In The Post-apocalypse
- With The Power Of Science!
- An Indesctuctible Resolve
- The World You Knew
- The Unappetizing Truth
- Keeping Up On Regular Checkups
- The Strongback Nomad
- Exterminating Rodents
Fallout: London, a total conversion mod
Yes, Fallout: London now gets its official launch, something we’ve been anticipating for some time now. We knew its time was near as we got to follow a countdown teaser earlier this week. It has struggled with numerous of delays, the latest being the annoying Fallout 4 next-gen update issues that got in the way of launch. But now it has, it is surely up there with the best, if not our number one pick.
If you aren’t yet aware of Fallout: London, get yourself over to the Fallout4London website and have a closer look at what’s to come. The developers (Team Folon) have been hard at work creating a “DLC-sized mod” that takes Fallout away from its usual American setting and places it straight into the UK capital. For reference, the world map is about the size of vanilla Fallout 4 Commonwealth and Far Harbor combined. It’s a PC-specific mod with no plans for a console release as of yet; that remains a pipe dream.
