How to mod fallout 4 mod organizer 2
How to Start Modding Fallout 4 in 2021 (MO2 + F4SE Tutorial)
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so you want to start modding fallout 4
in 2021
either that or you just want to see how
i do it either way you've come to the
right place
today we're going to be taking a look at
how to install mod organizer 2 and how
to use it properly
in 2021 with its most current updates
additionally showing you how to install
fallout for script extender as well as a
couple of tips on organization and
making things
play nice with each other at the end so
let's go ahead and start with the things
that you're going to need today
first of all is going to be 7-zip or
winrar to open up zipped files
we're going to need the mod organizer 2
itself as well as the fallout 4 script
extender
and all of these links will be in the
description so you can just click on
that to get to where you need to go
now this does specifically focus on
fallout 4
but a lot of these concepts apply as
well to skyrim
fallout new vegas etc all of those games
work with mod organizer 2 so you can use
them
just the same pretty much
interchangeable information here
now before we start anything with mod
organizer you're going to need to
install your game so grab it on steam
download it and most importantly launch
it you don't have to start a character
or anything but launch the game it's
going to create the necessary save files
that mod organizer 2 is going to draw
from otherwise
things aren't going to work exactly as
intended so download the game
launch it and then we can start so once
you've completed that we're going to
move on to
mod organizer 2 which you can grab
weirdly enough on the skyrim special
edition nexus
i'll have a link to that down below it's
in the mo2 section
click there and from there you're going
to go to the mod page
you're going to navigate to the files
section from the file section there will
be a manual download button
you're going to click it it's going to
take you to a new page that says slow
download you're going to click that
unless you're a premium member you can
do
fast download then you're going to wait
for it to pop up in a new window
in the meantime while you wait you can
endorse or donate if that's something
you want to do
once enough time has passed you will be
prompted with a pop-up as to where you
want to install
your file this is just the executable
file that launches
an installer so download it wherever
probably just your downloads folder or
your desktop click save then navigate to
wherever you downloaded that folder make
sure you kept track of that because
we're gonna need to click it so this is
an executable file that will
prompt the installation of mo2 once we
have mo2 installed you can delete this
file
you may be prompted with the windows
defender pop-up if so
just click on more info and then click
run anyways
now you'll be in the installation wizard
go ahead and accept the license
agreement
select where you want to place your mod
organizer
now typically for a first time installer
you probably just want to leave this to
normal however if you know what you want
to do with your files you can absolutely
choose a different location to save your
mod organizer to folders
i set up a specific file for this
tutorial so however you want to do it
go ahead and click browse if you need to
select a new folder and you'll be good
to go
after that just click ok and you're
going to click next
from there it's going to ask you if you
want to do the recommended install
you're going to say yes
and then do you want to create a start
menu folder
in my case i'm going to say no because i
already have an installation of mod
organizer but for you
you're going to say yes click next and
then you're going to be asked if you
want a desktop shortcut
click yes if you do next and then
finally you can click install
once it is done installing you will be
prompted with the final window that asks
you if you want to launch
mod organizer you can decide if you want
to immediately or not
and then click finish now once you've
installed it you will have two mod
organizer icons one of which is your
actual file and the other one is the
installer we used to
install mod organizer find the installer
you can go ahead and delete it it's
going to be the one without the little
shortcut icon
now before we move on to mo2 itself
we're going to need to grab
the fallout 4 script extender so you're
going to head to the f4sc website which
will be linked in the description
and you'll be prompted with a few
options you see fallout 4 runtime and
fallout 4 vr runtime so
obviously we're not doing vr at the
moment we're doing just fallout 4 so
we're going to click the fallout for
runtime
7zip archive go ahead and click on that
and it's going to ask you where you want
to download it
just download this to your downloads or
desktop wherever because again this is
just an installer
now from there you will have installed a
7-zip file so hopefully you already
installed 7-zip or winrar
something that you can open the archive
too because we're going to need the
files that are inside of that folder
once you've opened up the 7-zip folder
you will find another subfolder
you can go ahead and drag that out to
your desktop open it up and you will see
that it has a bunch of data files
including data
source etc a bunch of files that we're
going to need to throw into our game
manually so we're going to pull our
f4se folder to the side and open up a
new window
we're going to browse to wherever we
have installed fallout 4 in my case
that's the local disk
we're going to head to program files x86
find steam
then steam apps common and then fallout
4
and from there we have the location we
actually need
then we're going to highlight all of the
items in our f4se folder you technically
don't need things like the readme but
it doesn't necessarily make a difference
we're going to drag and drop all of that
stuff into our fallout 4 folder
make sure to drop it just into the
fallout 4 folder itself and not one of
these subfolders like
tools now you can go ahead and open up
mo2 and
your mo2 might look a little bit
different than mine but don't fret i
have a bunch of mods installed and i
have themes set up already but
a lot of these concepts are going to be
the same you're either going to be
prompted immediately with the selection
of a new instance or you may just end up
in mod organizer 2 itself if it
automatically detects your game
either way you're going to click the
logo in the top left to create a new
instance you'll see that i already have
some set up for fallout 4 new vegas
skyrim etc
mod organizer 2 actually supports a lot
of different games which is super cool
so we're going to go ahead and select
the create a new
instance button and from there it's
going to tell you what a new instance is
you're just going to go ahead and click
next this is just what actually houses
the game and all of its mods inside of
mod organizer
you're going to want to click create a
global instance not a portable instance
portables are
not great for compatibility when you
have several games so then you can see
that we have a bunch of games already
detected in my library that it supports
we're just going to grab fallout 4
click next and then we're going to
decide where all of these
data folders are going to be housed i'm
just going to select next because i like
where they're set up normally
you can feel free to change those though
if you want to
by all means but it's going to change
where all of that pathing is so i like
to let mod organizer 2 do all the work
in that regard
from there it's just going to confirm
that we're done and we're going to click
finish now your game is almost ready to
start accepting mods but we're going to
need to set up the fallout 4 script
extender executable
this is going to make it so you can
actually run the mods in fallout 4
through the f4se rather than fallout 4.
so by default you may have this fallout
4 icon and you'll click
run to start the game on the right there
but what we want is
f4se any mods that rely on the script
extender for any reason
will not work unless you run it from the
fallout 4 script extender executable
so we're going to need to set that up
now typically when you install f4se
it will detect it automatically and
it'll already be there in your menu
and if you want to launch the game
you'll just click that run button right
there on the right
but let's say you open it up and it's
not there here's how you set it up
you're gonna click the green and blue
cog wheels at the top left of your
screen
and you can see we have a bunch of
executable options we're gonna click the
plus sign to add a new executable from
file
and we're gonna find our common
directory for fallout 4 just like we did
before
and find where we have installed the
f4se loader
dot exe we're going to select that you
can change the name of the file or the
executable if you'd like
after that you're going to click apply
and then okay and then the f4se
executable should now appear in that
drop down menu
right there from there you're just gonna
click run every time you wanna play the
game but in case you don't wanna open up
mo2 every time you can create a shortcut
from the shortcut button
and you can determine if you want it
from your desktop or the start menu or
however
so there are shortcut options available
if you need them now that that's all set
up you're
technically almost ready to start
downloading mods but there are still a
couple of steps i want to talk about
first
for starters we're going to talk about
the pathing
now for pads typically you can just
leave all of these default
and all the files will go where they're
supposed to but if you have a small c
drive or wherever you installed fallout
doesn't have enough space
i can recommend changing the mods
directory
to a different hard drive however it is
very important to note that you need to
do this before you install any mods
so you can change this pathing once
before you install the mods but once the
mods have been installed
do not change any of these file
directories or it will break your game
make mods not appear or
that worse just tons of ctds so
be careful change this directory if you
know what you're doing if not
leave these still and hope that you have
enough space now while we're in this
menu we're actually going to navigate to
the
tab right next to this called nexus
we're going to click right there
and then we have the option to connect
to nexus now i'm already connected as
this is my regular profile
so what you will do is click connect to
nexus it's going to prompt you to
connect your profile from the nexus page
which you should have already if you
install the mo2 so that's
pretty simple then also you're going to
have a button down there that says
associate
with the mod manager links now you're
going
to click that because anytime you
download with a mon manager file
you want it to associate with mo2 and
not something like vortex if you have
that installed
you really only should have one manager
installed but just in case you do
this is the button you need to click
before you install any mods but
so long as mo 2 is your only installer
you should only have to do this once
and now before we leave this page there
is one small thing i want to talk about
which is the theme section
completely unnecessary purely optional
but i do like it and it's something you
should know about
your screen is probably white and very
bright and intimidating but
this theme section has a bunch of preset
themes to choose from that are all
really
great i like the vs 15 dark series
they all have different colors so i
color coordinate all of my games but
that's just because i'm
ocd you can do whatever you want there's
some really cool skyrim and fallout
themed ones in here so
go hog wild check out everything there
is to offer the theme section
now it's time to actually download our
first mod so we're gonna check out the
nine iron golf club we talked about on
the channel not too long ago
it's a really simple mod nice and small
but really cool and also contains a
plug-in so i can show off what that
looks like in-game so
go ahead and find the first mod you want
to download off of the fallout 4 nexus
you're going to make sure that it's
exactly what you want to download and
you're going to hit to the files
section from there we're going to click
mod manager download
now you can download mods manually but
we'll show that off later after
selecting it you will click slow
download
and then after a few seconds it will be
in your game
so once you hop on over to mod organizer
2 you may be a little confused where
is my mod well important layout on the
left here we have all of your
organization stuff and on the right is
your actual plugins
and you'll see at the top right it does
say plugins and then a few other tabs
you're going to want to navigate over
to downloads from there you will see
your 9 iron that you downloaded or
whatever mod you chose to download first
with a nice green download symbol
from there double click the mod and
other tutorials may say to click ok at
this point but i prefer to click manual
to check if the data directory is set
correctly
and in this case it actually wasn't not
that that's a bad thing or that
anything's broken with the mod it just
means
that there's no data set on the top
level all we're going to do is right
click data
click set data directory and then bam
all looks good and then we click install
this just ensures that the game loads
everything in the most efficient way
possible
now we're going to scroll down we see
our mod installed it is not yet
activated
first we're going to go and check out
the plugins where we scroll all the way
down
we'll go ahead and activate the mod on
the left side and you will see a new
plugin appear on the right
which means it is all installed
correctly and everything went perfectly
now let's say that you need to install a
mod manually it's not often that you do
but in some cases you may need to
in that case you head over to the nexus
once again you will see the option to
click
manual download you will click that
that's going to take you again to the
option where you choose slow download
wait a couple seconds and then it's
going to prompt you as to where you want
to
install the mod now you're going to need
to decide a permanent spot to keep these
mods but once you've done that go ahead
and click download
now when it comes to installing that
manual mod we downloaded you're actually
going to click at the top left there is
a little icon with a
disk that says install a new mod from
archive we're going to select that
we're going to head to where we
downloaded that mod
here we have the 9 iron zip file we're
going to click it and click
open from there we're prompted with the
same quick install menu i'm going to
click manual
set the data directory again everything
looks good
and there's the mod pretty simple
and now one last thing i want to talk
about is organization something that is
really really cool when it comes to the
mod organizer too
there's actually a lot of organization
utilities that help with keeping your
game looking
very nice and clean for your sake
now it's important to note that the left
side here and the right side are two
different lists i get questioned about
this a lot
the right side is your actual plugins
this is your actual
load order the left side while you have
a lot of controls over here
moving say awkcr below armorsmith
extended will have no effect on your
plugin load order on the left
however it will if you were to move it
on the right because these are your
actual plugins
so the left side is really just for your
own organization which is great you can
move things around to group
items together by category and even has
these really cool category options so if
you want one of those you simply right
click
select all mods and then click create a
new separator
and then you can enter the name of the
separator we'll call this one example
and you will see that we have a new
separator right here called
example and then you can move that
around it just really helps with
organization i love it i have everything
categorized even down to the weapon type
we scroll down you'll see that i have
armors based on faction
and then weapon fixes weapons explosives
weapons heavy
energy etc i go a little ocd
with my weapon mod organization however
it does help a lot
and helps me navigate things when i'm
looking to fix problems so
people ask how i have such a stable game
this is a small part of it
but a much bigger part of it is the
actual plug-in organization now
without any special tools you can
actually use this system i have on the
left here
to keep a pretty stable game all you
have to do
is create all of this organization first
install the mods but do not enable them
and then enable them in the order that
you've created and this will actually
reflect it pretty similar on the plug-in
side of things now
you can always of course just move the
plugins manually yourself
say move armor keywords down here but
that's going to take a long time
you can do all the organization on the
left side here with the categories
and then just enable them in
chronological order and that'll make
things
a little bit nicer so long as you know
the general idea of where plugins should
be in your load order this is a good
system
now if you want proper control and easy
bug fixes
you're going to want to download a
program called loot loot will organize
all of that stuff for
you find conflicts and make everything
run beautifully
now i'm not going to go over the exact
details of installing that if you want a
full tutorial on
actual stabilization for your load order
later i can do that so let me know in
the comments if you want to talk about
that because my game i like to think is
relatively stable and running nice and
smooth
very minimal crashes and when i do have
them i typically know
why so if you want to see that let me
know but otherwise
i hope you enjoy the video i hope you
learned something i hope this helped you
in any way in regards to your
modding endeavors so if you did enjoy
the video consider dropping a rating
and subscribe if you want to see more
videos just like this one or any other
fallout modding
content skyrim as well so otherwise i
hope you enjoyed and i hope to see in
the next video
peace and hey shout out to all of our
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