How to Install Skyrim and Fallout 4 Mods with Nexus Mod Manager
Like many Bethesda games, modding is one of the big draws of games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 on the PC. Nexus Mod Manager is one of the best ways to install mods on your favorite games, and were here to show you how to use it.
Nexus Mod Manager actually supports many other games, too, including The Witcher games, Dragon Age, Dark Souls, and other Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, so you should be able to adapt the instructions for any other game Nexus Mod Manager supports. Well use Fallout 4 in todays example.
How to Enable Modding in Fallout 4
Even though youll be using the Nexus Mod Manager, youll still have to perform a quick tweak to Fallout 4s game files before it will accept the mods you install. (Other games, like Skyrim, wont require this tweak, and you can skip to the next section).
First, navigate to the Fallout 4 folder in your documents directory. Youll find it under .
Double-click the file to open it in your default text editor. Itll open in Windows Notepad unless youve installed another text editor like Notepad++.
Scroll down to the very bottom of the text file and youll see a section. Add the following line below it:
bEnableFileSelection=1Click File>Save to save the file, and then close Notepad.
Double-click the file to open it in your default text editor. Add the following lines to the end of the file:
[Archive] bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 sResourceDataDirsFinal=Click File > Save to save the file, and then close Notepad. Fallout 4 will now accept and use the mods you install.
How to Install and Configure Nexus Mod Manager
Its possible to manually install mods for a lot of games, or use Steams built-in Workshop (for games that support it). However, we recommend using the Nexus Mod Manager tool to make this process easier and reduce the risk youll break something while installing a mod.
Download Nexus Mod Manager and install it on your PC. If you dont yet have a Nexus Mods account, youll be informed you need to register for a free account to download it. Youll be asked to sign up for a paid supporter membership during the sign-up process, but you can just scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Create Account to continue.
Launch Nexus Mod Manager after you install it and it will search your PC for games. If you have Fallout 4 installed, it will find it. Just click the checkmark to confirm Fallout 4 is installed at that location and then click OK.
Select Fallout 4 in the list of installed games and click OK. If you always want to use this program to manage Fallout 4 mods, click the Dont ask me next time checkbox here.
Youll be informed that you need to set up the paths where Nexus Mod Manager will store mod-related files. Click OK to continue and youll see a Fallout 4 Setup screen. By default, Nexus Mod Manager will store these files under .
Theres a problem with these default folder settings. It wont work unless you run Nexus Mod Manager as Administrator. If you run it normally, youll see an error informing you that Nexus Mod Manager is unable to get write permissions for the directory.
To solve this, set the folder paths to something like . Alternatively, keep the default folders and run Nexus Mod Manager as an Administrator. To do so, right-click the Nexus Mod Manager shortcut and select Run as administrator.
To always run it as Administrator, right-click the shortcut and select Open file location. Right-click the Nexus Mod Manager Shortcut, select Properties, click the Compatability tab, and enable the Run this program as an administrator checkbox. Click OK to save your settings and Windows will always launch Nexus Mod Manager with Administrator permissions.
How to Install Fallout 4 Mods
Youll want to sign into Nexus Mod Manager with your Nexus account for easy mod installation. To do so, click the profile icon next to You are not logged in at the bottom-left corner of the Nexus Mod Manager window. Enter your Nexus Mods username and password here.
Youll then see a Logged in message here, informing you youre logged in.
You can now head to the Fallout 4 Mods category page to browse and search the available mods. If youre logged in, youll see [Name]s account at the top-right corner of each web page. If youre not, click the Log in link at the top-right corner of the web page.
Locate a mod you want to install and click the Download (NMM) button to download the mod with Nexus Mod Manager. Your browser will hand off to the Nexus Mod Manager application, which will download the mod you chose.
The Download link at the top of each mods page will download the main, current version of the mod. However, some mods offer multiple versions, or additional files.
To download multiple versions or optional files a mod offers, scroll down on its download page and click the Files tab. Youll see the various files the mod offers, along with explanations from the mod author about what they do. Click Download With Manager to download the mod files you want.
Once its downloaded and installed, locate the mod in the list, select it, and click the green checkmark button in the sidebar to enable it. You can click the red cancel button that appears in this location afterwards to disable a mod.
Some mods will walk you through a setup process the first time you enable them. Youll be able to choose different options, depending on the mod. Go through the setup process and select your desired options to enable the mod.
To change these options later, right-click the mod in the Nexus Mod Manager list and select Reinstall Mod. Youll see the same setup screens again.
Now all you need to do is launch Fallout 4. You can do so using the Launch Fallout4 button at the top-left corner of the screen or just launch it through Steam normally. Load your existing game or create a new oneeither way, the mods you installed will immediately take effect.
To disable or uninstall a mod later, close Fallout 4 and open Nexus Mod Manager. Right-click the mod you want to disable or uninstall and select Deactivate to disable the mod or Uninstall and Delete to remove the mod from your system.
You can also click the settings icon at the top of the Nexus Mod Manager window and use the Disable All Active Mods or Uninstall All Active Mods options to quickly disable or uninstall all currently activate mods.
How to Configure Your Mod Load Order (and Why It Matters)
The above process should work perfectly if youre only using one mod. However, if you plan to install several mods, you may need to think about your mod load order.
This is exactly what it sounds like. Fallout 4 will load mods one by one, in the order you specify.
If you have multiple mods installed, some of them may overwrite each others changes. For example, you may have one total overhaul mod that tweaks a large amount of things in the game, including all the weapons. Second, you may have a small mod that makes a single weapon function in a certain way. If the game loads the small mod before the larger mod, its tweaks will be overwritten by the total overhaul mod. To have the second mod function, the larger total overhaul mod needs to be loaded first.
This only applies to mods that have plugins. If you install a mod with a plugin, itll appear on the Plugins tab, as well as the Mods tab. To control the load order, click over to the Plugins tab. Select a mod youve installed and click the up and down arrows in the left pane to adjust the load order. The Masters information for a plugin tells you when a mod depends on another mod. For example, in the screenshot below, Homemaker SK Integration rushbrookrathbone.co.uk depends on rushbrookrathbone.co.uk, rushbrookrathbone.co.uk, and rushbrookrathbone.co.uk It must appear after all these other plugins in the list. Nexus Mod Manager wont let you move it above those other plugins in your load order.
It may take some trial and error to get the load order working the way you want it. Some mod authors may provide information about recommended load order on their mods download page.
If you want some additional help, you can try using LOOT, the Load Order Optimization tool. It works by examining your mods and attempting to decide the correct order so that all dependencies are satisfied and that each mod has a maximum impact on your game. It will recommend you a load order you can configure in Nexus Mod Manager.
How to Deal With Mod Conflicts, or Overwrites
Theres another way mods can conflict, and its totally separate from your plug-in load order. Sometimes, two mods overwrite the same files in your game, and youll need to decide which one you want to take precedence. Well use Skyrim here as an example. Skyrim and Fallout 4 share the same engine, and work similarly.
Texture packs are a great example of this. For example, the Skyrim HD mod adds over 2, high-res textures to the game, making it look absolutely fantastic. But there are also smaller mods for specific textureslike this Real Ice and Snow modthat (sometimes) look even better. Lets say you want to replace most of your game with the Skyrim HD pack, but want the ice and snow from the Real Ice and Snow mod.
First, you select the Skyrim HD mod and enable it, just like you would any other mod. If you start the game at this point, youd see that the Skyrim HD textures have been applied. Then, when you enable the Real Ice and Snow mod, youll get this message:
This happens because you have two modsSkyrim HD and Real Ice and Snowattempting to modify Skyrims snow and ice textures. If you want Real Ice and Snow, youll click Yes to All or Yes to Mod to overwrite Skyrim HDs textures. If you prefer Skyrim HDs textures, youd click No to All or No to Mod, and any conflicting textures from Real Ice and Snow would not be applied.
You could load these mods in the opposite order, too. If you loaded Real Ice and Snow first, youd get the ice from that mod, and decide whether to overwrite it with Skyrim HD after the fact.
If youre installing a lot of mods, we recommend loading the bigger, game-sweeping mods first as your base layerin the example above, thats Skyrim HD. Then, load the smaller, more specific mods after, always choosing Yes to All.
The more mods you install, the more complex the process becomes, and weve only scratched the surface herethere are many mods that require even more steps outside of Nexus Mod Manager to work (like ENBs or interface modifications). But the more you do it, the more itll become second nature. If you ever have questions, check the Discussion tab on the offending mods Nexus pagetheres a lot of good info to be had, and developers are often pretty responsive.
Chris Hoffman is Editor in Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for nearly a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since , Chris has written over 2, articles that have been read more than million timesand that's just here at How-To Geek.
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