Fallout 4 Mods – How to Install and Play Mods on PC

How to install and play Fallout 4 Mods on PC. Step by step method that explains how you can effectively do that without breaking your game.

There are a couple of ways using which you can install PC mods in Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 Mods

Considering the fact that there is always a chance of messing things up, it is a good practice to backup your save files and configuration files which are normally located in:

Steam > SteamApps > Common > Fallout 4
My Documents > My Games > Fallout 4

Once you are done backing up, you need to edit a couple of.ini files named ‘Fallout4.ini’ and ‘Fallout4Prefs.ini’. Both these files are located in the first directory above.

After finding these files, open up ‘Fallout4.ini’ and replace the above line with the bottom one:

sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\

sResourceDataDirsFinal=STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, MUSIC\, SOUND\, INTERFACE\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX\

Next up, open up the ‘Fallout4Prefs.ini’ and enter the following line just beneath the ‘Launcher’ heading:

bEnableFileSelection=1

You need to ensure that the value is set to ‘1’ and not ‘0’.

Using Nexus Mod Manager – the Easier Method
After downloading the required program; you need to ensure that you have an active account on Nexus Mods and have enabled direct download in the program.

Once this is done, you simply need to scroll through available mods and select the one you need; click the ‘Files’ tab and select ‘Download with Manager’. With that out of way, click ‘Enable Mod’ and start the game.

Installing Manually – the Slightly-Harder Method
In this process, you simply need to download the mod that you need, unextract it, and paste the contents in the data folder of the game. One thing to note here is if the mod file contains .esp or .esm, you need to copy these files directly into the data.

If there are ‘Meshes’ and ‘Strings’ folder, you need to copy these folders as whole. Once you have done so, you need to open up the launcher and then close it in order to activate the mods.

How to Activate Plugins
In order to activate plugins, you need to locate Fallout 4 in AppData and open up ‘plugins.txt’, and see if there are .esp and .esm under ‘Fallout4.esm’. In case you are unable to find them, manually add them there to activate plugins.

If there is something else you would like to know, make sure to let us know in the comments section below!

Haider is a freelance contributor, who loves video games, playing guitar, and aviation. He is a competitive FPS player and also enjoys exotic RPG games like Diablo and Xenogears (his favorite game of all time) ...