Ok, I'm finally burned out on Skyrim, so I figured it's time to go back to the Beth game I never managed to make it all the way through. I did log probably 70-80 hours on two partial FONV playthroughs, but never actually made it to Hoover Dam (first time stopped when Mr. House wanted me to blow up the Brotherhood, second time just scooted him out of the way and went through Yes Man style, but without House around the game lost a lot of character and appeal). Not a newbie to modded games at all, but having some trouble figuring out what New Vegas mods to use. Questions:

1) For overhauls, I was a big fan of FWE for FO3 and TIE for Oblivion. There doesn't seem to be anything like either for New Vegas. Project Nevada is by the same team as FWE? But from the readme files, it seems less comprehensive than FWE is. I'm mostly looking for a mod to make combat deadlier, loot rarer, the game economy less forgiving, stimpaks heal over time (edit: oops, they do this already!), enemy and follower AI better, and hardcoe mode more hardcoe. But TIE and FWE are a good point of reference, so whatever is closest to either of those would be great, if such a beast exists?

2) I remember there being a mod that re-enabled a dialog option for Mr. House that let him play nice with the BoS in his questline. I can't seem to locate it though. Could someone hook me up with a link please? (edit: found it myself. link is: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37729 )

3) A World of Pain looks really nice -- my biggest complaint for New Vegas vs. FO3 was that the FO3 world seemed to have a lot more random places to go. I downloaded AWOP + the reduced loot patch. Does the reduced loot patch reduce loot enough so that the game will still be hard with all the new locations/items? I want a harder experience not an easier one, but I'd really like to have the extra locations if possible.

4) Is there a DarnUI for NV? It's not on the Nexus, and the one link I found elsewhere seems to be for a version that's a year and a half old.

5) Any other mod suggestions? I prefer mods to have a light touch and lean toward making the game more challenging, but I'm curious to hear what's out there that I may not have seen from my few hours poking around the Nexus' Top 100 lists and such.

Thanks a bunch in advance.

1. I played Fallout 3 before I started using mods so I have no idea what FWE is, but many of those things are in Project Nevada. With the Rebalance module you can change your starting HP, how much HP you get per level(you can set this at 0 so it will never change) and points in Endurance, you can affect how rare food, water and ammo is and you can change how quickly your Food, H2O and Sleep meters fill up. Stimpaks healing over time is already a feature of hardcoe mode. I'm not sure about making the economy less forgiving though.

2. This mod is included with http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=44204, but if you don't want to get the whole thing then you can just download http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37729.

3. This is something I am not sure about.

4. I found http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1143482-wipzbeta-darnified-ui-nv/.

5. You could try http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=35998 if you want the weather to be more realistic and the darker nights adjustment is a great bonus.
If you do get that or any other darker nights mod then I'd suggest getting http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37908. It adds lore-friendly lights to certain parts of the wasteland.
http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=40176 adds more NPCs to towns and areas to make them feel a bit more...populated.

5. Well I'd suggest getting Project Nevada so you can tweak the game but also use console commands to tweak your character, I used the player.setav health to lower my health. I'd also suggest getting that random encounter mod and get my mod Gabriels Gangs Expanded.


So mods that raise the challenge:


Project Nevada
DFB - Random Encounters
Gabriel's Gangs Expanded

You might want to take a look at http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=34759, it has some optional modules to make the game harder.

Thanks for the recommendations. So far in my LO, I have:

-MTUI
-NMC's Texture Pack
-NVInteriors
-WMX
-Project Nevada
-MCM
-AWOP
-Conelrad Radio
-RobCo Certified

Considering DFB's Random Encounters. I'm curious about Arwen's...there's a lot of stuff in there that I like. But there's also some things I don't care for, and it doesn't seem to be as configurable as PN. It's also a pretty heavy approach...as far as I can tell from reading about it, it seems to fundamentally alter the way the game plays. Not sure how I feel about that. It does sound challenging though, which I like. Tough call.

It really seems like the FONV mod scene is either dead or in hibernation. Most of the mods I turn up haven't been updated in a year or more, so who knows whether they'll work with the final updates to the game. Wonder why FONV didn't inspire modder love like Oblivion or FO3...

And first problem discovered. I play with a 360 Controller (no idea how anyone tolerates Beth games with a keyboard + mouse -- they're clearly designed for controllers), but PN doesn't allow assignment of controller buttons to Sprint, Bullet Time, etc. So I assigned the keyboard shortcuts for these features to 360 buttons using Xpadder, as recommended in the PN FAQ, but it still sends the original button to the game as well as the Xpadder-assigned key. So, for instance, I assigned Sprint to Left Bumper since that's how it is in Skyrim and I'm used to it...but instead of just sprinting when I hold down LB, it also pops me out into third person view. Very annoying. Does anyone know of a workaround for this? I could have sworn I had a similar problem in FWE, but got it working somehow, but I don't remember how.

I still can't understand how there are PC players who still prefer the controller over the keyboard and mouse. The mouse is so much more accurate then the anolog stick of either console, its ridiculous. I'd suggest just trying the keyboard and mouse setup for one playthrough of New Vegas, put the difficulty on very Easy if you want to, but if you continue using the controller then I wouldn't bother with the Grenade, Vision mode or Sprint hotkeys for PN.

I have tried all the Bethesda games with KB + mouse. It may be more accurate, but it's not a FPS, so ultimately I don't see how that matters much. The menus are a royal pain to navigate with keyboard & mouse, and you ultimately spend more time in menus than you do shooting things. Anyway, debate aside, using a controller is non-negotiable for me, so if I can't use it with PN's main features, that reduces PN's appeal quite a bit for me.

I'm thinking I might go with Arwen's instead of PN. It sounds different enough to be interesting.

If you haven't seen Gopher's superb "modding New Vegas" videos, check them out. I found a lot of what follows there. His mods are way cool, too. As good a starting point as any: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-3c1a9cLL8

There's Josh Sawyer's hardcoe mod: http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/01/jsawyeresp-v3.html Going back through his blog posts - there aren't many - will show what this does. I'm playing this with an additional XP slowdown and liking it a lot so far.

Arwen's Realism mod looks really interesting to me as well, but like you, I found the all-or-nothing nature a blocker. I'd really love to use most of it, tbh - and will try it by itself at some point. Puce Moose does have a modular set of tweaks at http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=35015 - I load his exp rate slower after jsawyer.esp to slow down leveling further - with the two combined I'll be at level 30 instead of the level 35 I'd be in JSawyer's already slowed down exp rate (the latter by itself slows it down by ~35% over vanilla, PM adds another 35% when combined with it).

Puce Moose's Tales from the Burning Sands looks great, as does New Vegas Bounties by someguy2000. Those are the only content adding mods I use - I found vanilla NV to be a superb game, content-wise, and there's the DLC for me to do as well, so I'm just adding more difficulty and tweaking a few things in my PC play through.

Here's what I'm using in that realism/difficult/hardcoe/core gameplay tweaks vein:
- Josh Sawyer's mod
- Some of Puce Moose's Tweak and Balance Center
- Immersive Sneaking
- Tuckered Out
- No Dialog Tags
- Bottle That Water
- WMX
- The Weapon Mod Menu
- Smoothlight (a PIPboy light tweak that adds immersion)
- Faster Terminals
- Legion and NCR Assassins - Balanced Lists

Bugfixes:
- Mission Mojave - Ultimate Edition.

UI: DarnUI, even though it's labelled a beta and looks out of date, is flawless, superb and highly recommended! Don't be turned off by the fact that it's only available as a download from a beta thread - it Just Works and looks great. Other tweaks:
- Less Intrusive Kill Camera
- Centered 3rd Person Camera
- One HUD (aka oHUD - get this! you can have the HUD disappear almost all the time for a great improvement in immersion)
- Unified HUD (manages all other HUD elements added by random mods. Essential.)
- Mod Configuration Menu - wish all the Elder Scrolls games had this!

Weather: makes a huge difference to the feel of the game - as these mods control all the light in the game, not just the weather. Use one of Project Reality or Nevada Skies. They're both superb. The big difference is that Project Reality is a drop-in - you shouldn't install Enhanced Shaders with it, for e.g., nor does it really need the other tweaking tools (cinematech, etc., see below). I'm using Project Reality right now, but used Nevada Skies for a long time, too. Like both.

If you're using Nevada Skies, first go to the oh-so-awesome FNV Visual Concoction Cookbook page at http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=40179 and see which of those appeal to you and then install the necessary bits: Custom Lighting, Cinematech, Dynavision, Imaginator, Enhanced Shaders. I tried both the Au Naturel and Sweet Calamity recipes and found them both excellent.

Or just use Project Reality by itself (remember: NO Enhanced Shaders with it! Ditto Custom Lighting.).

Either one of the above will darken nights so they look better, so you don't need a mod for that. Adding Electro-City enhances night-time towns, though I found its Cities and Highways option a bit too much.

I've got both NMCs Medium and Poco Bueno texture packs loading, in that order.

That's about it, for me. I don't add any weapons or armor packs. I didn't find that to be an issue in my only play through - on the xbox. WMX's weapon mods do seem really nice, but I'm noticing that I'm not finding the ones I need at merchants - too many new weapon mods to luck out and find the ones you need, I guess. Playing Unarmed does tend to reduce the set I can use, too, of course.

Edits: Gopher's updated his FoNV tweaking videos, so I updated the link. I'm really glad that we can donate to these modders now, the commitment and quality of the effort put in just blows me away.

Thanks for all the recommendations. Probably going to go with Project Reality...looking at a couple other things on that list perhaps as well.

A question surfaces from my first few hours of playing: I have combat basically tweaked the way I like it for me, but my lone companion (ED-E) is just destroying everything around me. He's way overpowered compared to me or anything I've had to fight yet. Is there a mod to tone down companion damage? I can't seem to find one, but I'm not really sure how to search for that either.

What difficulty are you on? If you're on Easy or Very Easy then you can just let your companions do all the work. When you do it on Hard or Very Hard you are going to have to start protecting them(in hardcoe mode) if you want to keep them alive.

Playing on hardcoe, Very Hard.

So no follower damage-nerfing mods out there? Kinda surprised at that one.

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=44027 has an optional module that changes companions to do only half-damage.

haha! that looks like exactly what i wanted. thank you.

Likewise! That followers module is needed to keep Boone from clearing out the whole map by himself. Had to remove the encumbrance nerf for followers (-75) to use with JSawyer, which has its own nerf in place for everyone (-100!).

Cirosan's Classic Overhaul looks great, thanks for the pointer! I hope he makes it work with JSawyer, as I'd love to use it as the basis for a full play through of the core game. Currently doing my first DLC run with JSawyer and I really like its changes. I also added in the CCO nerf to remove DR while in VATS: +25 DR for just using VATS - who knew? There's also a +5% crit chance modifier for using VATS.

The XFO Combat AI mod is playing really well with JSawyer, too.