The Midnight Ride

Safe Modding

IMPORTANT:
None of the lists that follow are aimed at discrediting the work of certain authors nor direct any hate towards them. The goal is to provide alternatives to mods/tools that have been superseded, and to warn against problematic or placebo ones.

Gaining Independence

Modding past what the guide might include can feel intimidating at first. The purpose of this page is to give you a jump start in that process by highlighting mods and tools you should avoid, along with recommended additions that require minimal work to integrate into most lists (including DBF).

As you install more mods, make sure to get comfortable with the following principles:

Read descriptions carefully and check requirements.
Do not go overboard with the amount of mods all at once. Doing so is a common recipe for early annoyance that might sour the whole experience going forward, take it slow while you learn!
If a mod claims performance improvements, benchmark it.
When installing mods with a plugin, use FO4Edit and The Method to check for conflicts between it and the rest of your list.
If something breaks, troubleshoot using a binary search: disable mods in groups to isolate the problematic section, then narrow it down by splitting that group into smaller parts.
Join modding related communities! Lots of information can be found in conversations that already took place.

All of this is meant to help you build the skills and confidence needed to manage and expand your setup independently.

Mods to Avoid

Bugfix & Optimization Mods

DXVK - On Windows, DXVK can often bring a massive improvement to older games. Most notably the ones that use a very old graphics API such as D3D9, which has a large CPU performance overhead. But in the case of more modern games such as Fallout 4, which utilizes D3D11, this is no longer the case, while possibly introducing bugs from the translation and limited compatibility.
ENBoost and ENB's ForceVideoMemorySize - Both are unnecessary and bring the possibility of more issues. ForceVideoMemorySize was made to fix an old bug with game's streaming system, which has been fixed for a long time (this is coming from Boris himself in the ENB Discord server).

Claims stating that this feature is required in order to use RAM as VRAM are false. RAM (and pagefile) have been part of the virtual memory pool used as VRAM since WDDM 2.0 in Windows 10. Crashing once VRAM runs out only occurs if strictly enforced by the program (not the case here).
FO4FI FPS Fix - Causes crashes in some locations.
FPSL - Lighting and Tweaks Performance - Contains many out of scope edits (such as water output from a pump and generator cost), does not improve performance in any relevant amount and makes light sources look considerably worse.
Mods from Qrsr - Many of their mods have been proven to be released untested with tone deaf changes masquerading as fixes. Fixer, specifically, contains many invalid fixes and subjective changes.
Configuration files for Buffout/HFPF etc... - Mods like this are unnecessary. TMR has all the changes that you need. In the case of High FPS Physics Fix, it is especially important that you set it up yourself, as its configuration can vary a lot based on your setup.

Visual Mods

Oversized textures - Based on the object size and how the texture is wrapped around it, you should pick textures with a reasonable resolution and avoid the very big ones also based on your display resolution. Keep in mind that the textures will not be displayed with their full resolution at all times, in fact they will be scaled down because of mipmaps based on distance and other factors, as shown with these sliders. Just for reference, a maximum of 2K at 1080p is a pretty safe bet in terms of balance.
AI-upscaled texture packs - Mods upscaled with AI or other automated techniques generally are not worth the higher VRAM usage.
ENB - Fallout 4 does not need ENB as much as older titles such as Skyrim (even though SSE has Community Shaders). Using ENB also brings a flat CPU performance reduction of about 25%, which is far from worth it especially if you use ENB for simple effects such as a LUT (consider Reshade).
Fallout 4 Official HD Texture Pack DLC - Almost twice the size of the base game on its own, not worth the extra VRAM usage (from around 3GB to 5.5GB on average) considered how minor its visual impact is.
Functional Displays - Causes crashes, you can fix this by deleting everything in the Meshes folder except for the Functional Displays folder.
Pip-Boy Flashlight - The mod itself is fine, but avoid enabling shadows during its installation, as they can severely affect performance.
NAC and NAC X - Bloated, riddled with bugs and performance intensive, as shown here (scroll down).

Content & Gameplay Mods

Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource (AWKCR) - Contains many of out-of-scope and undocumented changes.
Armorsmith Extended - Overpowered for what it tries to accomplish, and prone to issues.
VIS/VIS-G - Requires patches with mods that change/add any items, also makes out of scope changes to item names.
Scrap Everything/Settlement mleaning mods - Most of these mods will break precombination, which will reduce performance especially in denser areas. A notable exception to this is The Rebuild Collection - AIO, which rebuilds them.
Damage Threshold Framework - Occasionally causes crashes due to calculation errors.
Most mods that raise settlement happiness - Most are made incorrectly, while your happiness number will go up, it doesn't actually do anything. Please refer to Tenhats's comment for a more detailed explanation. Notable exceptions to this are Radios Give Happiness - Settlement Workshop Tweak and Simple Happiness Emitters - New Buildable Object for Settlement Workshops.

Miscellaneous

Sinitar's Modlists - This document goes into detail on why Sintar's lists should be avoided.
Achievements/Achievements Mods Enabler - Achievements are already enabled by Buffout 4.
HUDCaps - Breaks the save system, a fix is available in the comment section.
The MOFAM modlist - Misinformed in places and gives some questionable recommendations, such as running a pre-NG version of the game and leaving the user with many outdated fixes.
The BiRaitBec modlist - Heavily outdated and misinformed.
The Beantown Interiors Project - Breaks precombines, reducing performance.
South of the Sea - Very buggy and will cause crashes due to deleted nav-meshes. Use South of the Sea - Atoms Storm instead.
Live Action Mr. Handy - Includes outdated F4SE script files, possibly breaking random features in other mods. This can be fixed by doing the following:
1. Download the mod, then extract the Live Action Handy Pre-War - Main.BA2 archive using Cathedral Assets Optimizer.
2. From the extracted contents, delete the SCRIPTS folder.
3. Use CAO again to repack the files.

Tools to Avoid

Nexus Mod Manager and Mod Organizer 1 - No reason to use them over Mod Organizer 2.
LOOT - LOOT doesn't really have any idea about your mods and their inner structure - it just orders them based on tags in a masterlist managed by volunteers, meaning that it's impossible to account for every single mod and combination of them.
The main issue regarding LOOT in most Bethesda games is that its masterlists are often outdated or incomplete, leading to broken load orders that will cause mods to misbehave. Oblivion is an exception where LOOT tends to work more reliably.
Crash log readers - Crash logs require a plethora of knowledge to read, and in a lot of cases, the ability to confirm findings by reverse engineering the game's code. Automated solutions work through assumptions and by turning this further into a game of guessing. If the crash log contains enough named information (not always the case), a tool of this kind can turn useful as a way to narrow down possible causes, but at that point it just becomes a way to sort lines by frequency.

As large language models (AI) become more common, it might be tempting to use one to demystify a crash. In practice, though, their scarce knowledge of modding and engine-specific behavior often leads to incorrect conclusions, making them a big source of misinformation.

What then? Well, ideally, you never want to end up dealing with a crash log that offers no clear direction to begin with. The best prevention is to vet the mods you install and stay informed about any known issues. But if you do find yourself needing to interpret a crash, take the time to understand the game systems it references; that alone can often give an idea of the type of mod responsible.

If all else fails, many modding communities include people experienced in reverse engineering and, by extension, skilled at reading crash logs. Reaching out to them is often the most reliable way to get an accurate diagnosis. Keep in mind that crash logs are a tool; they merely take a snapshot of what happened during the crash, not why. Keep expectations in check, as in some cases they might not help to find a solution.
Bashed Patches - These patches have their use cases and in skilled hands can save a tremendous amount of time. It's not that they should be completely avoided period.
However, as it is often the case, automation without careful supervision can lead to errors. For this reason, it's only recommended to use them if you are both capable and willing to comb over the resulting patch.
LOOT and Bash tags are unused by majority of the SSE modding community, leading to complete breakage of the automated behavior of these mods.
Mator Smash - Outdated and produces broken patches. The only viable method of automated patching (keeping in mind what was said above) available is through a properly utilized Bashed Patch thanks to its sophisticated tagging system, which allows the user to customize how the generated patch handles individual records.
zEdit/zClean - Neither have any real advantages over SSEEdit and lack some essential features due to their outdated codebase. Support for zEdit/zClean is also limited.
Merge Plugins Standalone/zMerge - Automated merging can potentially cause major breakage in mods, especially complex ones that require careful handling of their internal references.
FallrimTools Cleaning - This should be used only for debugging and in very specific situations, such as when dealing with scripting. Using it on active saves is a band-aid fix at best, and a source of future breakage at worst.
Ordenador/DDSopt - Breaks textures by needlessly converting/adding/resizing alpha channels, cubemaps and mipmaps. Use BSArch Pro or CAO instead.

Recommendations

Animation Mods

Visual Mods

Content Mods

Gameplay Mods

Melee And Throw