I’ve played through it once on the Xbox and have downloaded it from Steam. I’ve heard that Bethesda’s games often greatly benefit from mods. Which ones should I get? What do they offer?
First mod I get is a radio extender.
You can find all of these mods at New Vegas Nexus.
**Project Nevada **- A lot of options for rebalancing the game. Also adds new combat options like sprinting.
**MTUI **- UI improvements, for example fitting more dialogue options on the screen. Install this first and then Project Nevada if you get both.
Nevada Skies - Adds more weather effects and darker nights among other things
Electro city - Adds a lot more lighting in the wasteland.
Underground Hideout - An underground home mod. Lets you sort food and beverages on shelves in the kitchen, ammo on ammo shelves, weapons on a visible wall, and a lot of other things. Amazing if you like to collect things, and it’s by far the best home type mod I’ve seen.
Centered 3rd person camera - Makes the 3rd person camera centered behind you instead of to the side.
I’ve also heard good things about the New Vegas Restoration Project, but haven’t tried it myself yet. It redesigns the Strip to be bigger and cleaner.
Where to start?
Barber Mirror - give yourself a haircut, rather than relying on the one barber in the entire wasteland.
Bottle That Water - allows you to reuse water bottles. Very useful in Hardcore mode.
CONELRAD 640-1240 radio - adds a new radio station with loads of Cold War atomic themed songs and public service announcements. Good for when you’re sick of Johnny Guitar on the radio.
Dog City - a kind of mini lore-friendly DLC - the Courier goes to Denver. Could do with a bit of polishing but overall has a great feel.
New Vegas Bounties I & II - adds an extensive new quest chain. The second I’ve run into one or two big bugs, but the first is great.
Ninja Perk Fix - if you’re a melee or unarmed character this one’s essential. Makes the bonus critical chance what it should be.
Populated Casinos - what it says on the tin. Makes Vegas feel more like Vegas.
Simple Strip Markers - hate having to fast travel to the Strip’s North Gate, then having to go through another loading screen to get to the Strip? This adds fast travel markers for all sections of the Strip and bits of Freeside.
Warzones - adds a load of battlefields to the wasteland, between the NCR and Legion, Fiends and Westside Militia, Super Mutants and Vipers…
Wasteland Defence - construct your own fort, anywhere you want. Hire guards, build defences and repel attacks.
It cannot be unseen.
I’m using an unlimited level cap mod that I got fairly early on. I also recently put in a power armor mode (from here) that’s pretty cool. Other than that my game is relatively unmodded at this point. What I’d like to do is find something like the vault of your own mod from Fallout 3 that I can set up with all my stuff, but I’m waiting to heavily mod the game until after the last DLC comes out (next month IIRC). Then I’ll check out some of the mod expansion quests and modded weapons and the like.
-XT
Haven’t tried it yet, but this looks cool as well. Looks like you could fight for the Legion or NCR, with quest lines for both. Might be worth a try.
-XT
The thread seems to be mainly dead, but I’ve been wandering through Fallout Nexus and thought I’d post some links to interesting looking mods. This one is one of the top rated and top downloaded mods…it’s an underground hideout by the same people (I think) as the ones who did a vault of your own in Fallout 3. Looks pretty cool (there are 3 video walk throughs for this if you care to watch).
No video for this one, but it’s a mod line quest adventure that seems to be set in Area 51 (I had thought this mod had been abandoned, but looks like someone finished it or this is a totally new version). It got decent endorsements and a decent number of downloads if you look for those things, but it’s not top rated.
Here is a Bobblehead Scavenger Hunt which might be fun for fans of Fallout 3. Again, not the top endorsements, but decent numbers of endorsements and lots of folks downloaded it.
Here are the top modded quests/adventures based on endorsement in descending order for anyone who just wants to look them over. Some of them seem pretty cool and I’ll probably be downloading Area 51 and a few others once I’m finished with Old World Blues.
-XT
I bought this during the July 4th Steam sale. Thanks for the suggestion of the Underground Hideout mod. It’s fantastic. Perhaps a little too big and anal-retentive (why a separate drawer for EACH KIND of medication? It weighs nothing - why store any of it at all?) but *really *well done. Beats the heck out of the abandoned shack at the Yangtze Memorial I was using.
This might be cool as well (I’m posting most of these links for myself, since I plan to get them when I get back in town and can play). It’s a sniper rifle mod that gives some new rifles and some mod kits for silencers and new scopes that look pretty cool and might be a bit easier to use in RT mode.
-XT
This looks pretty cool as well…it’s called A World of Pain, and "Adds 97 intense locations to the wasteland filled with enemies and loot. They vary from small Gas Stations to huge maze-like sewers and derelict factories. Adds several days of new gameplay possibilities. A massive new linked Underground complex awaits filled with quests, NPCs with dialogue, vendors and some of the toughest enemies you will encounter anywhere in the game. Also adds many modified weapons, armors and items to the game with enhanced stats to help and hinder you throughout. "
Lots of downloads and endorsements for this one, FWIW.
-XT
I’m trying to hunt down the mod this guy is using for the ghillie suit and sniper rifle in this Youtube video (it’s a video from the World of Pain mod I linked too previous). All I can find is a mod for Russian special forces that has a ghillie suit but it doesn’t seem to be the same. If anyone knows what mod(s) he’s using in there I’d appreciate it.
Loaded the underground hideout mod last night and it was way cool. If you like to obsess over sorting and displaying all of your goodies then this is definitely the mod for you. I spent hours lugging in all most stuff from my various houses and setting up the mannequins and my wall of weapons (they don’t have a place for Old World Blues stuff yet, unfortunately). The ammo sorters and crafting sorters are especially cool, as is the ability to order stuff from Crimson Caravan (it is delivered to a box just outside the hideout). There is even a quest sequence to gain access to the hideout (if you want to do it…sort of a pain in the ass).
I tried to load the Area 51 mod as well but it keeps crashing my system for some reason. Going to try to load the World of Pain mod tonight as it looks like lots of death and destruction (I have a final save before mods that I’ll probably go back to once the last DLC is released).
-XT
Sorry if anyone thinks I’m turning this into my own personal blog…I realize I’m the only one responding at this point. I think the mod with the ghillie suit WAS the Spetsnaz Armor mod, and wanted to give myself a link to it so I can give it a try.
Haven’t had time to load the World of Pain mod or even fire up the game for a couple of days…hoping to get some play time in this weekend, even if it’s just to load the ghillie suit mod and go all bear on some ghouls. 
-XT
Please go on. It’s useful to me and I’m sure it will be to people who find this thread.
How do you install mods? I downloaded FNV from Steam.
Also, how do I know the order in which I’m supposed to install them? Can there be problems if I install one mod before another?
Well, you can use a mod loader to change the load order…I don’t, I just use the loader that comes with FoNV. The only mod I haven’t been able to run so far is Area 51…it might be that changing the load order would fix this, but I haven’t been all that ambitious to play it. Still setting up my under ground lair. 
As far as loading mods, basically you download the things off the site and (what I do) unzip them in a temp directory, after scanning them with my AV program. Look at any of the readme files that comes with the zip…sometimes you have to make text file settings modifications or they have subdirectories that have to be copied. Usually though you just copy the the .esp file(s) to your C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas\Data (if you are using Windows 7) and then simply select the mods you want loaded either in your mod loader or in Data Files from the main load menu for FoNV.
So far I’ve tried out the underground lair, the sniper mod, and a power armor mod for experimental power armor (mostly just got this one so I could equip the cool looking armor on my mannequins in the lair). Planning to try the Russian ghillie suit mod tonight or tomorrow, depending on what time my flight gets in.
-XT
The ghillie suit is pretty cool btw…you can actually wear it while wearing your favorite stealth suit and stealth helmet (I’m using the enhanced stealth suit from Old World Blues and Salt’s helm from Honest Hearts…my stealth is pretty much off the charts when I add the ghillie suit…plus 50 to stealth right there).
Also, the power armor mod is pretty cool as well…it LOOKS really cool anyway. I have it displayed proudly next to my other power armor sets in my display are of the lair. Now I’m hunting for some decent mods to do some new killing while I wait for the last DLC installment.
Might have to start a new character and play through again now that I have all this cool stuff.
-XT
Loaded up the 5th Cohort Division mod this weekend. Basically it’s in a valley south of Jacobstown and it’s a battle between the Legion and the NCR. You have to choose sides and then there are a series of quests for which ever side you pick. It’s not a very good mod as a lot of the way point mapping doesn’t work (so you end up flailing around trying to figure out what you are supposed to do or where you are supposed to go to complete the quests). I ended up helping the NCR with put me over the top, rep wise with them (as a nice bonus)…so I could use their safehouse now if I wanted too.
With the sniper mod and the new ghillie suit I was pretty much invincible in this mod…most of the times the Legion guys couldn’t even see me even without using a stealthboy. Was like shooting fish in a barrel. 
-XT
I found a mod on that website that puts the M1 Garand in the game. (I bought mine at the Gun Runners vendor shack.)
It even “chings” when the clip is empty! With the reload perk, this gun reloads in no time flat, and has a good damage output.
Can I start a game and then install a mod? Will I be able to keep playing or have to start from the beginning?