Warning, Spoilers



When I first booted up Fallout 3 on my PC I didn't stop playing until I was supposed to be waking up the next day. I had enjoyed Oblivion, but on nothing close to this scale. At first I mostly wandered doing random quests because I couldn't find the GNR studio, but I accidentally skipped it by finding Rivet City. Over the next few days I blazed through the main quest, and even though I knew what was going to happen once I finished I was still disappointed. Disappointed enough to put the game down for a few weeks. About a week and a half ago I started thinking about the impending DLC and decided to start a new file and go through the game again, this time with mods.

Being a Bethesda release the game is already incredibly well-supported by the community, and it looks like this will continue for years, in much the same way that their other releases have endured the test of time. The rich background of Fallout lore helps this situation, as does the simple to use yet powerful G.E.C.K. toolset.

I realized as I started my new mod-enhanced game that there might be many people out there who didn't know how mods worked for Fallout 3, where to get them, or which ones were good. Because of this I decided to start a series of articles reviewing the various mods available. Right now I have a list of 47 mods that I picked out a few days ago. These fall into a myriad of categories, from simple weather mods, to complete chem overhauls. I will endeavor to list the changes they will make to your game while letting you know whether or not I think they're worthwhile.

In this post I'll try to cover some of the most basic mods that people might be looking for. Most dealing with More leveling and play past the ending.

First off you will need to make an account at fallout3nexus.com. Without an account you can download any file under 2MB, and most are, but occasionally some are bigger, plus if you an account yo can rate and give kudos to the creators of these awesome mods.

After that the first mod you should look for should be ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated. This is really more of a program than a mod, but it will stop Fallout 3 from trying to use it's own texture files over the ones in mods always, getting rid of one of the most annoying step that had previously been present in installing mods.

Next you have an option, there are several Mod Managers available, such as Fallout Mod Manager. I had no problem without one of these, but they can also be useful, so feel free to grab one if you want to make your life a little easier.

Now that you've registered and ran Archive Invalidation, and if you chose to, gotten a Mod Manager, you're ready to download some mods. Once you've downloaded one, unzip the files into the data folder in your Fallout 3 Directory. When you want to play the game start the launched and click on data files, then pick and choose the mods you want to enable.

Free Play After MQ. This mod allows you to continue play after the Main Quest has ended, very useful for anyone who wants to finish the main quest but still continue to do other things in the game. This mod works great, but there are a few more mods that I would use in conjunction with it. Assuming you're at or near the level ca at this point these mods help to deal with that issue.

Level Cap Increaser. The name says it all, this mod allows you to continue to level up past 20, although the number will remain 20. There are two different mods here you can run. One allows you to keep the perk and skill changes you chose during the level up but not additional hit points, while the other one allows you to increase your HP as well.

The next two mods are linked, the first is Wasteland Mastery. This gives benefits for having skills beyond 100. The other is Level Cap Increaser Skill Workaround. This mod allows you to increase your skills beyond 100, making the previous mod useful.

Finally, this mod purports to allow you to continue to hear of your exploits on GNR past level 20, GNR Fix. I say purports because people have reported mixed reviews on it, and I have had some similar issues, it did work for me, then it didn't. I would recommend getting this because it may work for you, so it is a semi-valid option until a cureall is released.

And Lastly a more "fun" mod to round out this post's selections:Ultimate Perk Pack. Ultimate Perk pack is awesome, The descriptions are well done, and none of the perks are crazy unbalanced. This really adds something to the game and makes the level up screens even more interesting. There are several different packs that allow perks to be achieved in different ways, while there are two packs that simply add more perks to the normal level up screen. This is especially useful when used in conjunction with the ability to level up beyond 20.


Next post I'll cover some mods that will give you some more stuff to do with your character that may now seem overpowered, with caps removed and more perks available.

Let me know if this is helpful at all, because if it's not received well or at all, there's no reason for me to continue.

None of these mods adversely affected my game's performance.