Nightsolo's Fallout 4 Notes

Installation

Other Mods

Mods to Avoid: Recommended Mods:

Gameplay Notes

Vanilla Playthrough Order

  1. Go through finding Shaun before doing anything else.
    1. Stop by Goodneighbor early. Talk to Irma in the Memory Den, as there is one quest that is only available before you finish "Jewel of the Commonwealth."
    2. The choice of which faction to use to get into the Institute is not important.
    3. Finish "Institutionalized."
    4. Then ignore the vanilla plot for a long time.
  2. Do Commonwealth DLC and Side Quests.
    1. If you're not doing SS2, install Sim Settlements 1 and autobuild city plans as you claim settlements. Note that you CAN'T replace this with SS2 later, as the mods are incompatible, and even having a save where SS1 was active makes SS2 not work.
    2. If you are doing Sim Settlements 2, don't install it yet. Skip building any settlements, and hold off until you're ready to start the mod's questline.
    3. Pick up companions one at a time. Rush through their conversations: use console commands to raise their affinity in stages (see above), advancing only after each conversation. When you get their perk and finish their quest, dismiss them and move on to the next. Ada has no perk, and Dogmeat's perk is in your skilltree. The mod No Negative Affinity or Cooldown can be helpful with this. DLC companions can be maxxed out within their own DLC.
    4. Only go to places that quests take you to. The rest will be unlocked as you go.
  3. Do Nuka World
    1. Do all side quests before "Open Season," otherwise they can disappear when you wipe out a faction.
    2. Nuka World quest mods suck. Avoid them.
    3. Porter Gage is available as a companion after "An Ambitious Plan." His affinity can be maxxed out easily just in this DLC.
    4. Complete The Grand Tour and its sub-quests, assigning gangs as you go. There are three gangs, and only five flagpoles, so the gang that gets only one territory will later betray you.
    5. Complete "Amoral Combat." It can be difficult to repeatedly trigger this quest. The Rogue Knight is the 6th and final challenger, but new random challengers will continue to appear every two in-game days anyway.
    6. "Home Sweet Home" is a very long and involved quest that involves claiming and building up Commonwealth settlments for raider gangs. If SS2 is already installed, its starting quest may be triggered when building a settlement for raiders. Regardless, you may wish to use the mod Skip Raiding Your Own Settlements.
    7. Complete "Power Play." The gang with only one territory will betray you, and the other two gangs will help you take them out.
    8. Become the good guy again by doing "Open Season." Start this by talking to MacKenzie in the market area, or just kill any gang member. If you did the above quests, you'll only have two remaining gangs to wipe out. The quest says you only need to kill the leaders, but any remaining gang members will be hostile towards you henceforth.
    9. The Red Rocket settlement here can only be claimed for yourself after "Open Season." Before then, you can assign a gang to it.
  4. Do Far Harbor
    1. Nick Valentine has extra dialog options in this DLC, but Old Longfellow is the companion here. His affinity can be maxxed out easily just in this DLC.
    2. Do all side quests before the main quests, otherwise they can disappear when you wipe out a faction. There is one side-quest that only opens up after the main quest "Walk in the Park."
    3. It is possible to make peace between all 3 factions, but you have to agree to keep DIMA's secrets.
    4. Some things can't be done "until the fog is lifted." This refers to the plot-fog. The weather-fog never goes away.
  5. Advance each of the Main Faction questlines up to a point.
    1. Minutemen through "Old Guns" (don't advance "Inside Job")
    2. Railroad through "Tradecraft" (don't advance "Underground Undercover")
      • To get some side quests to trigger, you need to leave for awhile and return. You may have to pick up one of P.A.M.'s radiants to get things to advance.
      • You can safely kill institute synths while on a quest, and not piss off the institute -- as long as you kill them all.
    3. Institute:
      • Warn Desdemona at the Railroad before meeting your contact during "The Battle of Bunker Hill."
      • During "Mankind Redefined", tell Father that you were ambushed. (don't advance "Mass Fusion")
      • Optionally, with the Father Companion mod, after Father reveals he has cancer and names you the new leader, find Dr. Dean Volkert; work with him to cure Father. (You'll need Mysterious Serum from Dr. Cabot, or Valkyrie, or the console, and the Vault 81 Medical Research. Or you can turn him into a super mutant with the FEV.) This should trigger some dialog options to save him later. If you forget, a messenger will approach you a few days after the ending, directing you to Vault 111. Don't actually visit him until you're ready to end your playthrough, as the conversation leads to ending slides.
    4. Brotherhood of Steel through "Blind Betrayal." (don't advance "Tactical Thinking")
      • The Danse Dilema mod can be useful here.
      • "Outside the Wire" needs to be completed, but unlike for the other factions, giving the Institute Data Holotape to the BoS won't make the other factions hostile
  6. Now is the time to decide on and install a quest mod (see below) and play through that. Once you have a quest mod installed, do not remove it, do not change it, just live with it.
  7. If your chosen quest mod doesn't take you through the rest of the vanilla game:
    1. Pick a faction to side with, and use them to blow up the other three.
    2. If you have the Father Companion mod, head to Vault 111 to see your ending slides, or craft the proper one from a Chemistry Station.

Specific Quest Mod Notes

In order from least involved to most.
Pick only one.
Read through all the notes and pick your path, being sure that all subordinate mods are installed.

Sim Settlements 1 :

  1. Install Settlement Menu Manager and possibly some city plans with Transfer Settlements
  2. Get the City Manager holotape from Concord Museum (near Preston Garvey); use console command if it goes missing
      help "city manager" 4 , then player.additem itemid
      same with help "settlement menu" 4 if that isn't already in Inventory under MISC
  3. Set the settings all to Auto and Low Involvement
  4. At a new settlement, use the console to scrapall (even without the mod), then build only a City Planner's Desk, located under Crafting
  5. Select City Plan (the blueprints image), and then "Take" the plan you want. Click yes to the first prompt, then TAB to exit. Click "Yes, tear it all down" for the last prompt.
  6. Use the "simpler" plans to avoid issues with excessive scripts.

Diary of a Madman :
  1. Go to Pickman Gallery, and loot a holotape from a safe on the top floor.
  2. Initiate the quests by reading the entries on the holotape. They can be done in any order. You can do all of the quests, some, or none.
  3. "Retaking Independence" can be done any time after taking back The Castle.
  4. "Your Settlement Does Not Need My Help" can be done after blowing up The Castle.
  5. "The Little Engine That Couldn't" can be done after accessing The Railroad HQ.
  6. "Prydwenburg" can be done after accessing the Institute and meeting all the BoS division heads on the Prydwen. You may want to bring backup.
  7. "Can't We All Just Get Along?" is available after accessing the Institue. If you don't want to blow up the city, you can also just let the riots get out of hand.

Subversion :
  1. Preparation
    1. Meet Elder Maxson during the Prydwen introductory quest "Shadow of Steel."
    2. Do not make the Railroad hostile. Bringing the companion X6-88 to the Railroad HQ will cause a fight.
    3. Do not become enemies of the Institute.
    4. Don't use the setstage console command for any mod quests, as there is no list of what the stages are.
    5. If you want Z1-14 as a companion, either
      1. join the Railroad and follow their questline until you meet him inside the Institute
      2. avoid the railroad as long as possible, then pass some speech checks with Desdemona to learn about Z1-14
    6. If you want Virgil as a companion, avoid giving him the serum until after the mod quest "Not My Director."
    7. If you want Danse's Perk, get it before starting the quest "Mass Fusion."
    8. If you want Glory as a companion, remain on good terms with the Railroad, and don't let the BoS attack the Railroad. Work with Father up to the point where he asks you to destroy the Railroad.
  2. Complete the Institute quest "Mass Fusion." Doing so will temporarily make you hostile towards the Brotherhood. Continue through the Institute main questline. During "End fo the Line," warn Desdemona, causing the quest to fail. Talk to Desdemona again an convince her that you being director is a good thing. The mod quest "The Long March Through The Institute" will start, but ignore it for now. Return to Father and lie to him that the Institute is destroyed. You may need to talk to him again to start the mod quest "Airship Down." and you have some options:
  3. Reforming the Institute
    1. Complete the quest "Nuclear Family." With the Father Companion mod, you can cure him through the mod quest "Second Chance," otherwise he dies. The vanilla ending cinematic will play, and you'll find yourself still in the Institute, and Shaun's bed is empty. Find him later in Vault 111.
    2. Complete the mod quest "The Long March through the Institute" by convincing Ally Filmore to confess that she supports synths.
    3. The mod quest "Not My Director" starts, where a meeting of all the department heads is called.
    4. You need some blackmail evidence.
      1. Complete the Warwick Homestead questline.
      2. Get the Brian Virgil Personal Log 0176 Holotape from the FEV Lab, through the BioScience division.
      3. From Father's Room, get Father's Holotapes #32 and #47.
    5. You need some backup to keep all your options open. Find and get help from Z1-14 and X6-88. They'll both teleport to the Board Room and will be ready for anything. Next, talk to Preston to pick up and complete the Minuteman quest "Instant Karma," which causes an army of Minutemen to take over the Institute.
    6. You now have four options to conclude this. Any of these is considered succcess. Be sure to save beore sitting down, as the dialog options aren't all that obvious.
      1. Kill everyone, and rule alone.
      2. Allan and Allie already agree with you, so you can spare them and kill everyone else.
      3. Use the Minutemen to threaten everyone into submission. Preston will be angry with you, but will still go along with it.
      4. Cleverly convince each scientist through speech checks, and indirectly using the evidence gathered in step d. above.
    7. Complete the mod quest "Humanity's Best Hope" to finish off the peace processs.
    8. Follow-up mod quests
      • "Stop the Presses" - If Piper is still alive, speak to her about the outcome.
      • "Homecoming" - Convince Virgil to return to the Institute. If you cure him, he meekly returns. You can only get him as a companion if you don't cure him, and you can take him to meet Strong for some bonus dialog.
      • "Welcome to the New Age" - If you're still friendly with the Railroad, convince Desdemona that this is the right way forward. If you're enemies, kill everyone at the Railroad.
      • Unmarked - talk to Nick Valentine, Dr. Amari, and Irma.

Sim Settlements 2 :

  1. To start Sim Settlements 2:
    1. If you already have settlements, use the settings (MCM or holotape or City Planner Desk) to pick a primary settlement.
    2. Pick up the magazine from on the workshop in Sanctuary. If for some reason you did a scrapall after installing this mod, you'll find the magazine in the Workshop storage - transfer it to your own inventory.
    3. In your primary (or first) settlement, build a radio recruiting beacon and power it with a Small Generator. Be sure to hook up a power line between the two.
    4. Talk to the stranger that arrives. You may have to wait 24 hrs. He may also appear and then start walking away from you - just walk towards his back to initiate conversation.
  2. Don't establish any other settlements until you have to for questing purposes.
  3. After your first meeting with The Ron, he'll start offering his people finding services. Be sure to make a hard save before asking for one, as they sometimes get stuck.
  5. Once you gain the GNN HQ, claim and build up all settlements. You'll need them later.
  6. When building stuff in the HQ, open the console and turn on god mode with tgm. This makes it so you have infinite resources to build stuff. Don't forget to turn it off when the task is complete.
  7. When you do start building settlements, if you run into a build limit, use the "Manage" option on the Workshop to adjust the Build Limit - just don't go too big, or the script memory becomes an issue.
  8. In Chapter 3, during "Resurgence," before building your Artillery Outpost, go into the mod settings and turn off "Allow Leveled Plots" and "Starting Plot Levels." Failing to do so makes the quest get stuck after construction. After the quest completes, feel free to turn those back on.
  9. To create an Outpost, first autobuild a Settlement, then build the Outpost Management Desk. Exit workshop mode, and answer "Yes, convert this to an Outpost."
  10. There is only one path to take in the NLTC questline. You can be mean to the female characters, but you still have to side with them.
  11. During "State of War," if the binoculars won't work, you can plan assaults from the HQ menu. This may not work, so be prepared to use console commands to step through the quest.
  12. "Under One Banner" stays open until near the end, on the off chance that you want to recruit more factions. You really don't need to, but the possible factions are: Brotherhood, Institute, Minutemen, Nightingales, CPD, The NLTC, NLTC Mercs, Berman, Sickle, Wise. You cannnot recruit all of them, as the vanilla ones are mutually exclusive.

Project Valkyrie :

  1. Outcasts and Remants's main quest "Initiation" starts after the vanilla main quest "Reunions." Don't go to the BOG bunker until Valkyrie sends you there, later.
  2. Project Valkyrie starts either A) at a Cabot House terminal, or B) in Parson's Insane Asylum, by speaking to Valkyrie herself, with the mod quest "In a Darkened Room." Don't do this quest until you've done everything else.
  3. When everything is complete and collected, start the Project Valkyrie questline. Complete all the mod's side quests before advancing the main quests.
  4. Reform the Institute, then do all of those side quests.
  5. The Father Companion Mod has the ending cinematics, so don't visit him until you're done.

last modified 6 October 2023