I have been playing the game using FWE, MMM, WMK, EVE, Project Beauty, Fellout, Street Lights, 20th Century Weapons, and eXcalibur munitions shop. Along with some extra weapon, armor, and housing mods. Now I have come to notice there is alot of new stuff thats in the game and because of FWE the game is more difficult, which i like. But i found myself cheating occasionally, be it for some needed stimpaks or some caps cause i seen something new that i didnt get my hands on yet. Well i dont like that, so im going to start over, well be for a i do i was wondering if i could get some pros/cons and general opinions about the overhaul mods. Only ones i know of are FWE, Fook, and Arwens. I wish i had the time to try them all out on my own, but i just cant swing the time work and family. The little bit of time i do get i want to spend it playing. It took me long enough just to get my current setup working. So let me know you guys think.

Well, if it's just difficulty and new stuff you want, why use anything like FWE/FOOK/ART** at all? Note: I'm not familiar with FOOK, as in, using it, so maybe that's an exception here. Anyway, point is, why not keep the rest of the mods, add "stuff" galore as you like, and turn the difficulty dial from Normal (presumably) to Hard or even Very Hard? If that's not enough, perhaps try one or more of the modular options (ESPs) from ART, rather than the whole package. Also, there are other singular ESPs out there that tweak only a few settings (if that.) *

Someone with some FOOK (*and* FWE) experience might want to clarify the relative difficulty / scarcity of items of each.

* edit: One of those that I like is Realistic Kill Reactions, but it wouldn't suit everyone, naturally.

** Arwen's Realism Tweaks, sorry.

Not all difficulty is created equal. Dialing up how many shots it takes to down a Yao Guai is different from stopping you from chain chugging healing cola while killing it.

As stated, there is a lot more that goes into making the overall game more difficult than fiddling with relative player + NPC damages (as done with the difficulty slider. One of the biggest things is reducing the abundance of chems, ammo, and other vital stuff found in the wasteland. No amount of difficulty slider manipulation will counteract the fact that you can accumulate 100's, if not 1000's of stimpaks, relatively easily and spam them the whole way through combat, effectively negating the difficulty slider anyway. The other big change that makes the game more difficult is making skills + SPECIAL's matter more, so that if you have a low skill, you really are "bad" at that thing, and that has an immediate bearing on the gameplay. Barter tweaks is a good example of this.

Anyway, that's just my take on it.

One of the bad things about the difficulty slider.

The harder you make it, the more xp you get. Bad idea in my opinion.

Oh, I know. It's just that I, um, forgot exactly what the slider does. :blush2: For some reason, I seemed to recall that it also cut down loot a bit, and maybe slowed levelling. Heh.


Word. When I first fired up FWE (as opposed to bizarre collections of individual tweaks, etc.) and sent my character off into the wastes, what a shock to see what that extremely low Strength score (normally no big deal except for very specific builds, in my experience) did to encumbrance! :ahhh:

But that kind of thing is good, IMO... if one hell of a surprise for the unwary.


edit: And, in my defence, but in a small way, the OP did specify that they don't want item scarcity to be such a feature, indeed "cheating" at times to offset it. But yes, I was still quite possibly off the mark with the suggestion.

It is difficult to find objective pros and cons on these overhauls, as people tend to stick with their favorite one, which is the one that they are going to praise.

My suggestion is that you figure out exactly what you want (and write it down), then read the opening post in the [RELZ] thread for each overhaul, and then pick the one that comes the closest to meeting your wish list of changes. I realize that this is difficult, as the overhauls all add a ton of changes, which can be really difficult to fully digest . . . and it is impossible to fully grasp exactly how all these written changes will actually alter your game play.

Personally I found it impossible to fully cover all of my Realism Tweaks' changes in a [RELZ] post or in a ReadMe, since the beast has become so complex. So I've linked my mod to a section of my website where I can give the full details (along with my reasons behind many of my changes): http://amito.freehostia.com/Fallout/FO-mods04.htm

This way I can keep my changes up to date . . . although I'm still working on updating my site to match my latest version (which just came out late yesterday)

FOOK2 is primarily focussed on adding content rather than addressing SPECIAL issues and stuff like FWE (poor example I know, but it's been a long time since I played and what FWE does is pretty well documented in this thread already). Granted, we make some balance changes, like destroyable Power Armour or barter tweaks, and on the whole many mobs are harder, but AI and gamesetting tweaks are not really what FOOK2 does. But stuff is a different issue - 250+ new weapons, 50+ new armours, script fixes, follower overhaul (Phalanx, with integrated FOOK2 weapon compatibility), integrated EVE, integrated Fellout Street lights, an options menu where you can change many aspects of the game and of FOOK, and other countless changes. Yes it makes the game harder, but not in the same way FWE does; FWE changes game mechanics, FOOK2 really just makes enemies stronger.

Nothing against the big overhaul mods, but after trying FWE I went back to using a combination of smaller mods. The big problem with major overhauls (and I'm going back to the early Morrowind days here) are that they often try to cater for too many people and put in too many things, some of which aren't going to please everyone. Sure, many big mods allow for configuration of certain aspects, but I'd much rather struggle through trying to get a bunch of small tweaks working nicely together to give me the gaming experience I want than use whatever someone else's idea of how the game should run.

Massive kudos for those who have had the patience and given up their time to come out with these "biggies" - I haven't even got the patience to work on a small mod, never mind something the size of FWE or FOOK. They just aren't for me, I'm afraid.

I'm pretty much the same, I'm also used to Morrowind modding where there weren't a couple of big overhauls that everyone used, but instead a large selection of smaller mods.

But actually right now I've settled with Arwen's Realism Tweaks, which is considered an overhaul. I've seen it grow bigger over time and it continues doing everything almost exactly as I like it best. I also like how it doesn't add as much content as the other overhauls (no new armors/weapons/etc). It's just a very large collection of tweaks.

I just wanted people to say what they like about this ovehaul mod or that one. I got no problem with FWE, just need to start a new game where i play 100%legit and change my play style a little. I was just think since im starting over i can ask what people like about some of the other mods, and maybe switch based on positive results.