A PLEBS GUIDE TO MODDING FALLOUT 4 ON STEAM DECK
By Marshal Amim Kagori (Lucian04)
Revision 18/01/2024
Note: The downloadable PDF has images that are not present here.
MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS
•A Windows PC
•A Copy of Fallout 4 purchased through STEAM or added via STEAM key.
•A Valve Steam Deck
•A USB-C Flash Drive or External Storage Drive (If you lack this, I have you covered later in the guide)
•The ability to comprehend layman’s English
Note: I use an Asus Rog Strix Aluminum M.2 External Enclosure & 1TB Samsung Evo 970 Pro M.2 SSD
SOFT REQUIREMENTS
•Your preferred Mod Manager
•A dock for your Steam Deck
Note: I use the Jsaux Upgraded Dock for Steam Deck, though I recommend using the Official Dock by Valve
BEFORE YOU CONTINUE
Even though I am familiar with managers like NMM Community Edition, Vortex and Mod Organizer 2, I’m old fashioned and prefer to do things manually. As such, do not expect me to offer any guidance regarding the installation and use of mod managers on PC or Steam Deck. I strongly recommend that you are familiar with the basic process of modifying a Bethesda game before continuing to read any further into this guide. I’ve linked some recommended material below:
•Modding Dogmas
•Basics of xEdit
•The Method
•Fallout 4 Load Order Framework | Simple Load Order Guide
•Tips Before You Mod Any Game
•Mod Organizer 2 || Installation, Setup, Updates & Settings
PC PREPARATION
First and foremost, we need to make sure that we have a fresh installation of Fallout 4 to work with. Make sure to manually delete everything related to Fallout 4 in the following locations:
•C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\Fallout4
•C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Fallout4
•X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4
Secondly, you are going to want to reinstall Fallout 4, without installing the HD DLC. In order to do this:
Click on Fallout 4 in your Steam Library > Click on “Properties” in the Drop-Down Menu > Click on “DLC” in the new window > Uncheck the tick box for “Fallout 4 – High Resolution Texture Pack”
PC PREPARATION
Note: Make sure to uncheck “Fallout 4 – High Resolution Texture Pack” before reinstalling Fallout 4
Once you have Fallout 4 installed, make sure to do the following:
1.Run Fallout 4 once and set your graphical options at the launcher
2.Begin a new game, then save and exit right after the initial character creation screen
3.Go to “C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\Fallout4”
4.Click on an empty spot and from the Drop-Down Menu, Click on “New Text Document”
5.Name the text document “Fallout4Custom.ini”
6.Open “Fallout4Custom.ini” in “Notepad” and then type the following entry exactly as you see it, and make sure to leave no spaces:
[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=
7.Save and exit “Notepad”. Now your mods should load properly once you’ve installed them
STEAM DECK PREPARATION
STEAM DECK “How To” by Wagner’s Tech Talk is a good resource for quickly learning how to apply updates, set up microSD storage, enter Desktop mode and learning about the Discover Software Center. I recommend reading those sections before moving forward with this guide as I am going to assume that you are familiar with all of these things, you wouldn’t be here otherwise, now, would you?
1.Make sure that your Steam Deck is up to date
2.Make sure that you have enough room on either your main drive or microSD card to store Fallout 4 and your mod list/pack
3.Navigate to your Library, search for and download “Fallout 4”, making sure to disable to HD DLC as you did on your PC
4.Once your download has finished, launch the game, set your desired graphical settings, start a new game and then save and exit once you’ve gotten past the character creation section
STEAM DECK UTILITIES by CryoByte33
I strongly recommend that all Steam Deck owners setup Steam Deck Utilities before moving forward. I’m going to leave you with a direct link and video, I’m sure that you can figure out the rest on your own.
•GitHub | Video
STEAM DECK OPTIMIZATION by denis-g
You can ignore most of this guide unless you really want to deep dive into optimizing your Steam Deck. What we are most concerned about here is improving performance by altering the base amount of VRAM your Steam Deck has access to. By default, it’s 1GB, but we are going to change it to 4GB. Follow the instructions to do this by clicking on “Direct Link” below to go to the “VRAM” section of the guide and follow the steps as presented. Do not deviate or do anything else, especially if this is your first time tinkering with your Steam Deck.
•GitHUB | Direct Link
In order to use F4SE, we will need to install Proton Tricks so that we can download and install the required Visual C++ Redistributable package for Fallout 4 so that the game doesn’t immediately crash on load. This section will be continued on the next page.
PROTON TRICKS
Please watch this video first:
•Proton Tricks for Steam Deck EXPLAINED
1.Switch your Steam Deck to “Desktop Mode”
2.Open up “Discover”, search for “Proton Tricks” and download.
3.Open “Proton Tricks” and select “Fallout 4” from the app list, making sure you select the appropriate directory, as per the video
4.In the next window, make sure “Select the default wineprefix” is checked and then click on “OK”
5.In the next window, make sure “Install a Windows DLL or component” is checked and then click on “OK”
6.In the next window, navigate down until you see a list of Visual C++ Redistributables. You want to select the one that says “Visual C++ 2015-2019 libraries” and then click on “OK”
7.If everything works okay, you’ll have a window come up, click on “OK”, then you should see the installer for the x86 version of VCRedist 2015-2019 come up. Follow the prompts to install
8.You should then see another window, click “OK” and then you should see the installer for the x64 version of VCRedist 2015-2019 come up. Follow the prompts to install
9.That’s it! You are all setup to have a problem free experience with F4SE and any script extender mods that rely on VCRedist 2015-2019
Note: On my personal Steam Deck, I could not get VCRedist 2015-2022 to take, so you may have luck where I did not. If you can get VCRedist 2015-2022 to work, that’ll open up any F4SE mod to you, otherwise you can only use F4SE mods that do not require VCRedist 2022, in my case, that was pretty much only the Long Save Bugfix mod.
You are now done with preparation for both your PC and Steam Deck. Now we can get into the meat and potatoes of the guide and as such, you’re going to want to return to your PC for this next part.
F4SE
Your Steam Deck will not be able to launch F4SE as you normally would on PC, so we’re going to have to engage in a little bit of tomfoolery. On your PC, make sure to do the following:
1.Download F4SE for “Fallout 4 runtime 1.10.163” from Silverlock.org and extract the contents into your root game directory, located at:
•X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4
2.Rename “Fallout4Launcher.exe” to “Fallout4Launcher.exe.old”
3.Rename “f4se_loader.exe” to “Fallout4Launcher.exe”
4.Go to Steam and attempt to launch Fallout 4. If you followed the steps correctly, you should see a command prompt box open briefly and Fallout 4 should load. If you make it to the title screen and can load into your save game, everything is working as intended. Please note that this will prevent you from using the launcher until you’ve reversed what you’ve done, so make sure to setup your desired graphical settings ahead of time.
MODDING FALLOUT 4
REMEMBER, THIS GUIDE ASSUMES THAT YOU HAVE INSTALLED MODS INTO YOUR FALLOUT 4 DIRECTORY MANUALLY OR THROUGH NMM COMMUNITY EDITION. I WILL NOT BE PROVIDING SUPPORT FOR MODS OR THE USE OF MOD MANAGERS.
There are plenty of Discord servers and YouTube videos available for that sort of help. Now, if you are new to modding and are not sure as to what kind of mods you should be going for, I’m going to recommend checking out the “Midnight Ride” by VishVadeva. I can whole heartedly recommend every mod listed in the Utilities, Bug Fixes, Tweaks and User Interface sections for nearly any load order. For the experienced modders reading this, you know exactly what you want and what you need to do.
If you wish to install and use Vortex on your Steam Deck, please refer to the following video:
•VORTEX Mod Manager Steam Deck Tutorial
If you wish to install and use Mod Organizer 2 on your Steam Deck, please refer to the following video:
•Mod Organizer 2 Native
1.Download and install the mod(s) that you wish to use
2.Organize your mods into an appropriate load order. Refer to the load order framework guide for guidance. If you have a light load order and want something a little more, to the point, refer to my simple guide instead
3.Run Fallout 4. If everything was done correctly, you should load up to the main title screen
4.I strongly recommend starting a new game to ensure that you can get through the prologue without issue before continuing. You can also use a fast start mod like SKK Fast Start to skip the prologue and get into the game asap to make sure everything is working as intended
That’s it! Now that you’re done, we can move onto transferring your Fallout 4 data to your Steam Deck!
TRANSFERRING YOUR DATA TO YOUR STEAM DECK – PC SIDE
Make sure you have “View Hidden Files” enabled
1.Connect your external storage device to your PC.
2.In Explorer, navigate to “X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\”
3.Right-Click on your Fallout 4 folder where all your game and mods are stored click “Copy”
4.In Explorer, navigate to your external storage device, right click an empty space and click “Paste”
5.Wait for the contents to finish transferring to your external storage device.
Your modded instance of Fallout 4 is now on your external drive, ready to be transferred to your Steam Deck, however, we are not finished quite yet. For this next part, I recommend making a separate folder called “CUSTOM” on your external drive for some necessary files.
1.In Explorer, navigate to “Documents\My Games”, right click on the “Fallout 4” folder and click “Copy”
2.In Explorer, navigate back to your external storage drive, to the new folder you made. In this folder, right click on an empty space and click “Paste”
3.In Explorer, navigate into the “Fallout 4” folder you just pasted and delete everything except for “Fallout4Custom.ini” as we will need this later.
Now we just need to make sure that our load order remains intact. For this next part, I recommend making a separate folder called “ORDER” on your external drive for some necessary files.
1.In Explorer, navigate to “AppData\Local\Fallout4”, copy and paste the “plugins.txt” file onto your storage drive in the “ORDER” folder.
2.Rename the file from “plugins.txt” to “Plugins.txt” and set it to be “Read Only”You are in the home stretch. Now all we need to do is transfer everything to our Steam Deck!
TRANSFERRING YOUR DATA TO YOUR STEAM DECK – DECK SIDE
If you lack an external drive, do not despair as there are other ways to transfer data from your PC to your Steam Deck, such as with KDE Connect. Please note that this guide assumes that you have an external storage device and does not cover this software, so you are on your own. I will throw you a bone though:
KDE Connect - Video | Article
1.Enter “Desktop Mode” on your Steam Deck
2.Connect your external storage device to the Steam Deck via USB-C cable or via a USB-C Dock or HUB
3.“Mount” the external drive, Steam OS should open an Explorer window (Dolphin) showing the contents of the drive
4.Open up the Steam Application, navigate to Fallout 4 and with a long press touch, you’ll bring up a context menu
5.In this context menu, select “Manage” and then select “Browse Local Files”. This will bring up a new tab in your Dolphin instance showing the root Fallout 4 installation directory where you should see “Fallout 4.exe”
6.Short tap onto the Dolphin tab for your external drive and navigate into your “Fallout 4” folder
7.Long press on an empty area of the window and drag to select the entire contents of the folder
8.Then long press on one of the selected folders and let go to bring up the context menu
9.In the context menu select “COPY”, then navigate to the Fallout 4 tab, find an empty space on the window and long press to bring up the context menu again
10.In the context menu, select “Paste X Items” (X being the number of items you selected) and overwrite if asked to do so. Depending on how much data you’re transferring (My Data folder is about 60GB), this can take a few minutes
FINALIZING
1.Short tap onto the Dolphin tab for your external drive tab, copy the “Plugins.txt” file then, in your Fallout 4 tab, you’re going to navigate to the following directory:
•“Steam > steamapps > compatdata > 377160 > pfx > drive_c > users > steamuser > AppData > Fallout 4”
2.Paste the “Plugin.txt” file to this directory. Overwrite if asked to do so
3.Short tap onto the Dolphin tab for your external drive tab, copy the “Fallout4Custom.ini” then, in your Fallout 4 tab, you’re going to navigate to the following directory:
•“Steam > steamapps > compatdata > 377160 > pfx > drive_c > users > steamuser > Documents > My Games > Fallout 4”
1.Paste the “Plugin.txt” file to this directory. Overwrite if asked to do so
2.Close Dolphin
3.Double tap the desktop icon to enter “Game Mode”
In “Game Mode”, start Fallout 4, it should take a minute or two to load and then your screen will turn black. Eventually Fallout 4 will load up to the title screen and you should be good to go. The last thing you need to do is go into the Mods menu and check your “Load Order”. Your mods should be automatically enabled and in the same order as you left it in your Plugins.txt file.
ADDING NEW CREATION CLUB OR BETH.NET MODS TO YOUR LOAD ORDER IN-GAME CAN SCREW UP YOUR PLUGINS.TXT FOLDER, CAUSING MODS TO DEACTIVATE OR YOUR LOAD ORDER TO BECOME JUMBLED. IF YOU WANT TO ADD NEW MODS, EITHER REPEAT THE STEPS IN THIS GUIDE OR USE A MOD MANAGER LIKE VORTEX.
Notifications
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JumpI tested the build on PC before moving it to Steamdeck and it worked fine there
Just search online for 'Mod Organizer for Steam Deck'. It should be the github link at the top.
Make sure you launch the game once before you install MO for it, otherwise it won't recognize the install location.
Once install is finished, when you launch FO4, it will now launch Mod Organizer instead.
Then you download F4SE and copy it to your main install directory. (if for some reason anybody reading this can't find their install directory, open steam library, right-click Fallout 4, click Manage, then click browse local files)
Once that's done, launch Mod Organizer by launching FO4.
In order to use your mouse inside MO, you have to hold down the Steam button while moving your finger on the mouse pad. Also, when you launch MO for the first time, it will prompt you to select what type of instance to create, select global. On the next page, check the box next to 'Use Profile specific INI's.
Once you're at the main menu, open the dropdown menu at the top-right of the screen, next to the 'Run' button. You should see F4SE. (If you don't, then click 'Edit' at the top of that dropdown. In the new window, click the plus icon at the top, and navigate to your FO4 game directory and select the F4SE launcher. That will add it to the dropdown menu so you can launch through F4SE.)
A few notes about MO on Steam Deck. It won't download files right to the mod organizer. You'll have to download them manually and install them by clicking the disc looking icon in the top-left of the MO main menu and selecting the file you just downloaded. Also, if you hover your mouse over something, MO will tell you what it is.
Once you're done installing mods, click the plugins tab on the right side of the main MO menu, then click the Sort button right under it (If you have manually installed mods, then make sure that they are checked in the plugins tab before you sort).
Once your mods are sorted, then you just make sure F4SE is selected in the MO dropdown menu, and click the 'Run' button.
I have MO2 installed and the same suite of approximately 60 mods i have on my pc, so i know the group works together, and i copied my same load order too. I launch F4SE, and everything goes great, the settings menu shows it is running and the version number, but when I load into my save, FOV Slider claims through MCM that it cannot find F4SE or that I didn't launch using F4SE. Despite this, I don't notice any immediate issues with mods except for the CZ Scorpion Evo 3 S2 Micro, which has no visible model. Even MCM properly populates the escape menu and has all mod options visible, save for two at the bottom that are having issues populating their names and are instead displaying $MCM_SETTINGS and $MCM_HOTKEY_MANAGER.
The popup from MCM alone is enough to make me wary and not want to continue my save as it could muck up my progress in the file on pc...
I thought the issue might have been the lack of a Fallout4Custom.ini, so I created one in the filepath other comments show, and gave it another shot with the same issue presenting as above. Admittedly, I do not have access to my pc right now, so I wasn't able to copy the entire data folder. Additionally, I went ahead and pasted fallout4custom.ini's in the root fo4 folder and the data folder for good measure.
Additionally, I get a couple of strange errors when i try to install the c++ distros through proton tricks, but after a few "ok"s the installers come up and say they installed successfully, so I'm not sure if the errors are a contributing factor, or just weirdness with proton. I cant seem to recreate the errors as proton tricks doesn't seem to allow me to reinstall the vcrun2019 package.
any assistance would be GREATLY appreciated!
Simple Fallout 4 Downgrader at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)
To locate where my plugins.txt file goes...it doesn't exist. 377160, pfx, drive c, users, steamuser, appdata. In appdata I only see local, locallow and roaming. In local, I see a Fallout4 folder that has a DLCList.txt in it. That is all.
Is this where I place the plugins.txt folder?
Or should I create a new folder "Fallout4" in the AppData folder (then place the plugins.txt in that folder)?
Also, I delete the autoswitchdll as it caused an issue.
Now, when I load a game, it crashes.
Yes, everything was cleared out and I am using a new save as well. When I start a new game, the mods etc show up and load. Then I realize I cannot use CBBE or the associated sliders.
I can load a save but I guess something is off.....I don't see the body. Just a head floating. Haha.
Most mods seem to not be working but I did follow all of these directions. Did the same for skyrim and it worked fine. This is not working for me.
Is it my load order? Plugins? Appdata?
There's your problem. Stop using degenerate mods.
There were two issues that I ran into and solved that I will list below, and will hopefully help somebody else reading this down the line:
1) After I installed everything, ran the Fallout4Launcher.exe (really the F4se_loader.exe) it gave me a black screen startup with the last line being "Autoswitch enabled", and then never got farther. I waited several hours thinking it took some time to load, but it turns out, it's dead in the water when it hits that point. Luckily Kodyack figured out that deleting the Autoswitch.DLL got rid of this issue. The file is located in X:\steamapps\common\Fallout 4\Data\F4SE\Plugins\Autoswitch.dll. If you get rid of that file, the black screen command line will display different text and will do so MUCH quicker. The game will load within a minute.
2) Depending on the mods you have and how you installed them on your PC, in my case via Vortex, you will also need to transfer over the fallout4.ini, fallout4custom.ini, etc from your PC to your VSD. These files go into the \steamapps\compatdata\377160\pfx\drive_c\users\steamuser\Documents\My Games\Fallout4\ folder. If you've previously played using keyboard and mouse, and now are using the controller layout for your VSD, you MUST leave the VSD's Fallout4Prefs.ini file untouched, don't transfer that file over from your PC to the VSD or the controls will not work. It's also the file that detects your graphics card so by leaving it as is, it'll successfully detect your VSD graphics card and not the one on your PC.
3) Finally, if you DID use Vortex to install the mods, created a new profile, and then chose the option of "this profile has separate save games" (or something along those lines), you'll notice that your PC saves won't appear on your steam deck. Unchecking the "separate saves" setting and running the game did NOT fix this for me. Instead, what I did was on my PC, change the name of the Fallout4Launcher.exe to Fallout4Launcher.exe.old, then renamed the f4se_loader.exe to Fallout4Launcher.exe and ran the game, made a save, and exited. When you select the "separate saves" option, it stores your save game in a local folder but then it doesn't seem to move them to the cloud if you uncheck the setting. But by doing this workaround and running the game from your steam folder, not from vortex, that save will upload to the cloud and be available on your VSD.
No matter what I do, I eventually hit a point where the game and mods load perfectly and I can create a save, but whenever I try to load that save up it crashes.
I can start a new game, have access to all my mods and plugins in character creation, be notified of all of the mods enabling when I confirm my character, and then save the game.
I then try to load that game, and after what seems like a normal amount of loading time the game will crash to desktop. Does anybody have any knowledge of why this would be happening specifically on the deck? I have the exact same mod setup on my PC and it works absolutely fine
No matter what I do, I eventually hit a point where the game and mods load perfectly and I can create a save, but whenever I try to load that save up it crashes.
I can start a new game, have access to all my mods and plugins in character creation, be notified of all of the mods enabling when I confirm my character, and then save the game.
I then try to load that game, and after what seems like a normal amount of loading time the game will crash to desktop. Does anybody have any knowledge of why this would be happening specifically on the deck? I have the exact same mod setup on my PC and it works absolutely fine
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Jump