How will the Fallout 4 Anniversary update on Nov. 10 affect mods, and what to do?

The Game Room
1

So, per this thread, I’ve been enjoying a number of quest mods lately in FO4.

I recently noticed the game load screen now says “Prior November 10 please disable any mods altering the main menu, as these may break with the patch.”

So, how do I know whether the mods alter the main menu? As far as I know, I’ve chosen quest mods that stand alone and don’t affect the main story, since I didn’t want to start a fresh game.

I’ve been reading all kinds of stuff online, like it’s not a good idea to disable mods, especially if they are mid-playthrough (which a couple are) since it can destabilize the game.

I’ve read that mostly mods that use the ‘Fallout 4 Script Extender’ are vulnerable. I looked at my Nexus Mods downloads the F4SE file did get downloaded this past July, but I don’t see that any of my quest mods specifically require that file. Most say in the ‘Requirements’ section " This mod does not have any known dependencies other than the base game." or the requirements are DLC content, like Automatron, Contraptions Workshop, Far Harbor, Nuka World, Vault-Tec Workshop, and Wasteland Workshop. The only exception seems to be 'Children of Ug-Qualtoth" which had “Fallout4Custom.ini Archive edits” under ‘Requirements’.

So, should I disable the quest mods? What happens if I don’t do anything-- does it possibly break the quest mods, or the game itself? I think I can also stop the update from happening. But I don’t know if I want to miss the anniversary content.

2

Not sure if there’s any point to giving an update to this thread since it got a big ol’ goose egg for number of replies, so maybe y’all have moved on from this 10 year old game, and understandably so.

But, on the other hand, it did get 182 views, so maybe there is still some interest in FO4 out there, but nobody felt like they had good enough advice to leave a post here.

Anyway, I did a bunch of googling, and still wasn’t sure exactly how to prep for the patch. I didn’t want to disable updates, since I was curious what the updates would be. I wasn’t quite sure what the “Prior November 10 please disable any mods altering the main menu, as these may break with the patch.” message on the game load screen meant. As far as I could tell though, none of my quest mods seemed to be of a type that affected the main menu, except possibly one, which I disabled. The rest I left enabled and crossed my fingers.

Post-patch, about half my quest mods had been disabled. When I’d try to start the game, I got a message saying “the current save includes these mods Creations [as they’re called now], and they are currently disabled. Enable them?” But when I tried to enable them, I got a ‘missing files’ message. So it looks like the update broke half my quest mods. Oh well, I had already completed them. When I started the game with those disabled mods, it’s like an alternate universe in which those mod adventures never happened. I collect power armor, and maybe a half dozen power armor suits I had collected were gone. So all my collected loot must be gone from those quests too. Again, oh well, no big deal.

I do get a few new quests, so overall, I’m happy: according to google AI “Tale of the Beast Hunter,” “Sea Scavengers,” and the “Enclave Remnants” storyline “Echoes of the Past,” along with the “All Hallow’s Eve” quest from the Halloween Workshop. I downloaded “Tale of the Beast Hunter,” and started playing it. I’ll go into more detail on that quest mod in Fallout 4 quest mod questions.

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I don’t currently play, so I’m not affected by the update (although I do sometimes revisit old games), but was still interested in the effect on mods.

Side note, it’s been 4 years, so how has that system held up for you?

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By “it’s been 4 years” I assume you must mean the last major FO4 update? Back when that update happened my FO4 game was strictly vanilla, other than the major DLCs. I heard that a lot of mods got broken with that update, but all that happened for me was a few new mini-quests popped up. I never had any complications with the game after that update, or since then until yesterday.

I had been worried about the 10 year anniversary update that happened yesterday, since I had downloaded more than a dozen quest mods. And half of those got broken with yesterday’s update. But I had finished them and I got new quests with the update, so I guess I’m happy, though I suspect these “official” quests that got added are kind of short and insubstantial, similar to the ones with the older update.

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Naw, I was referring to that PC you got from MicroCenter. :slight_smile:

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Ah, you remember! It’s been holding up fantastically well, thanks for asking. Though to be honest I haven’t been testing it with the newest, most bleeding edge games-- I’ve been staying somewhat retro with games like Half Life 2, Black Mesa (a remake of Half Life 1), and of course FO4. The newest games I own, like Outer Worlds, Subnautica, Red Dead Redemption II, etc., are still no newer than my computer.

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Sorry, missed the thread the first time around.

As for what they seemed to be saying the first time around, was that there was going to be a new loading screen, but some variants use different backgrounds for the load, different launchers, and other mod-friendly customizers (Mod Manager was one of them IIRC) on the load screen. Those would all be killed.

It sounds like, from what died, that they may have moved, combined, or renamed a couple of files, which means the game pukes and dies when it tries to reference them. I haven’t tried (still trying to finish my replay of Outer Worlds I so I can move to II.

In general Bethesda supported content from the Creation Club are “Creations” and fan-related content is “mods” but not everyone makes the distinction and just call ALL of it mods.

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FWIW, I disabled updates in Steam for the game as soon as I heard the update announced. My game is too heavily modded (including the specific “mods that alter to loading screen”), so there was zero chance the update would be compatible with my installation.

These are not operating system security patches. They’re always Bethesda’s addled idea of value-added content so completely optional when my already-installed content is superior and not worth trading away.

When the Next Gen update landed a few years ago, I prevented it until every one of my installed mods had been updated for compatibility. That was about 6 months ago.

I will wait as long as it takes (including “forever” if necessary) before I allow this update as well.

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Hey, not your responsibility to answer all of my dumb FO4 questions just because you happen to be a fellow fan of the game-- though I do appreciate when you do!

I was wondering how your OW replay was going and if you had started OW II yet. Full disclosure, part of the reason I started up FO4 again and got into the FO4 quest mods was because I got frustrated with a late part of OW (could not beat the RAM mechanical after what seemed like 6 dozen tries) so I wanted to go back to FO4 where I’m so leveled and weaponed up I’m practically onmipotent, and just do some ‘Hulk smashing’. But I feel bad about abandoning OW. I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back to where I left off, or do a OW replay and maybe this time level up my hacking and lock-picking enough so I can just stop the RAM mechanical without fighting it. It takes like 100% hacking and lock-picking to do that and I was only up to about 75-80%. Where are you at in your OW I replay?

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Not dumb questions, there are reasons I’ve bookmarked Nukapedia. And sharing a common hobby or game is almost always fun.

As for OW, I got too into licking every brick again (near 100% completion, so it was going sloooow) and I just corrected myself, so I just finished Monarch and was moving on to the Murder DLC, but been too busy getting caught up since I got back from my Texas trip last week with IRL issues that I haven’t had time to play.

As for the conflict in question:

Due to my licking every brick, I was pretty max leveled and geared the first time I fought the boss (pre DLC) and died anyway, though I was certain I could have won the second (third time at worst) once I knew it’s attacks. But I didn’t -care- so I subbed in my always carried secondary gear for hacking and lock picking and bypassed it. My third playthrough, I had the advantage of higher levels and gear from the DLC and was able to win in a straight up fight. This time I have semi-reasonable levels of hack + lockpick, but will probably not need the cheese as I’m going with a companion-forward build, so the bonus points from them should be more than enough.

11

So, I’ve been doing some investigating and learned that half my quest mods broke because they were dependent on the DLCs, and the Creations menu does not recognize that we have the DLCs installed. So even though the DLCs still work (from what I understand; I haven’t tested that yet, but I did see that Far Harbor and Nuka World are still on my map), no mods that depend on DLCs installed are allowed to run, unless you do some sort of hack to the game files.

Lots of hate out there for the new anniversary upgrade and how it’s a half-ass cash grab that breaks a lot of stuff. In addition, there are a lot of reports that the new Creations menu is buggy and does not load reliably (which I noticed at first, but it eventually started working for me) and “quit to desktop” causes the game to freeze for up to several minutes before it finally closes, or you have to force-close it, which I’m also experiencing.

Heh, ‘licking every brick’ to describe 100% completion gameplay attempts-- first I’ve heard the expression :smirk:

12

It’s something a friend came up with years ago when we were playing Castlevania Symphony of the Night - they had 192%, and I had 196% explored and they claimed I must have “licked every brick” of the castle in search of hidden passages and rooms.

And we’ve used the phrase for decades now, to the point it’s instinctive for us to use it, even if it makes no sense to anyone else (like you). Mea culpa.

13

No mea culpa necessary-- it’s a very evocative phrase, and I knew exactly what you meant by it :laughing:

I just assumed I hadn’t heard it since I’m still very much a newb when it comes to gaming culture terminology.