The Midnight Ride

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IMPORTANT:
Everything in this guide is written down for a reason! It is vital to read everything!
You can NOT skip any paragraphs/instructions and expect your game to function as it should.

Introduction

Overview

The Midnight Ride is a modding guide for Fallout 4 that will carefully walk you through how to install all the mods you will need for a perfectly stable, smooth and enjoyable experience.

The guide is highly accessible for everyone, no matter your modding experience. It is still incredibly important that you read all the instructions very carefully, even if you believe you are experienced enough to skip them. There are many small instructions that are vital for your game to function, and could be easily missed if you aren't careful. Although you don't need any modding experience to use this guide, it is expected for you to be relatively experienced with operating a computer in general.

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Features

  • Stability: The guide includes all essential stability enhancements and no placebo/dangerous mods.
  • Performance: Every tool, setting and mod in the guide has been carefully selected and play-tested to ensure maximum possible performance. With the recommended specs listed below, you can expect ~60 FPS in the heavier areas of Boston.
  • Customizability: The guide is split into 2 sections; all the mods required for the game to work and perform better are contained in the first section. The mods that can be considered subjective and that alter or add game content are in the TMR Extended section.
  • Better Gameplay: As part of the TMR Extended section, the guide includes many mods that greatly improve the gameplay without drastically overhauling the core experience or straying away from the game's original intent.

Requirements

  • An English copy of the game with all DLCs except the HD Texture Pack (the reason is explained in the mods to avoid section: Mods to Avoid), from Steam.
    • Only the English version of the game is supported for maximum compatibility; translations can conflict with mods and cause issues. The Bethesda.net and Xbox Game Pass versions of the game are also unsupported, as they do not work with F4SE, which is essential for many mods.
    • Only the Creation Club content that ships with the game is supported. Most of the CC content will need patching (a common exception to this are workshop additions, you can keep those ), which is beyond the scope of this guide. You will have to remove them as instructed later in the guide when uninstalling the game.

    • You can buy a cheap activation key for the GOTY edition on Instant Gaming (affiliate link).

  • At least 52GB of free drive space, game included (45GB if you delete all the downloads).
  • Windows 10 or higher (64-bit).
    • Mod Organizer 2 does NOT support ARM64 Windows.
  • The latest VC++ Redistributables:
    • 2015-2022 X64
    • 2015-2022 X86
    • VC++ AIO (not always up to date, making the 2 files above a requirement):
      1. Extract the archive and run the included install_all.bat as an administrator.
    • Restart your PC.
  • A text editor (Notepad++ is recommended, but the default Windows notepad will work).
  • An archiving tool (NanaZip is recommended).
  • The latest GPU drivers (either NVIDIA, AMD or Intel).
  • A Nexus Mods account (a Premium subscription will allow uncapped speeds).

Recommended Specs

The guide will make the game run better than vanilla, here are the recommended minimum specifications to run it at 60 FPS 1080p with the High preset:
  • CPU: Matching or surpassing the single-thread performance of a Ryzen 5 1600.
  • RAM: 8GB or more.
  • GPU: Matching or surpassing the performance of a GTX 960 or R9 290. 4GB or more of VRAM.
  • Storage: Solid state (SSD).