The Walking Ghoul (TWG) is a mod that expands upon and increases the usefulness of the Ghoulish perk. When having this perk, getting irradiated will now come with various advantages and disadvantages for the player.


Description

Notice that all new mechanics added by this mod only will affect you when you have the Ghoulish perk. Starting from rank 1, the following areas will be affected:

• Health regeneration from radiation
• Strength and Endurance
• Radiation Resistance
• Speech checks
• Charisma in certain places
  

Ghoulish

Rank 1 - Sure, you're still human - on the outside! Radiation now regenerates your lost Health, and increases your Strength, Endurance and Radiation Resistance.
Rank 2 - Radiation now regenerates more of your lost Health. If you are irradiated enough, you take less damage from ballistic weapons, but also gain less XP.
Rank 3 - Radiation now regenerates even more of your lost Health, and some Feral Ghouls will randomly become friendly.
Rank 4 - Radiation damage will now begin to slowly heal, restoring Health in the process.

First and foremost, being exposed to radiation now regenerates twice as much of your lost Health compared to how it worked in the vanilla game, making this core feature of the perk more worth it to have. This effect will of course still become gradually more powerful, the higher your rank in Ghoulish, up until rank 3.

Your Strength and Endurance will progressively increase, the more radiation you're exposed to. In other words, although your effective Health still will be reduced from radiation, the bonus to Endurance will partially negate this issue. Especially if you are a melee user, exposing yourself to radiation becomes a very tactical choice. Being irradiated and having a red bar obstructing your Health is no longer just a disadvantage – now it can also make you a lot stronger.

The more radiation you are exposed to, the higher your Radiation Resistance will be. This means that the more of a Ghoul you become, you'll crave stronger and stronger sources of radiation to take full advantage of its healing benefits. Of course, this also means that you're able to survive for much longer in irradiated environments.

When you are irradiated to at least 40%, it will be slightly easier to persuade other Ghouls in dialogue. In addition to that, being irradiated to at least 40% also means that you receive a bonus to Charisma when in Goodneighbor, and you have reduced Charisma when in Diamond City – unless you are wearing a mask to hide your face. This effect becomes more accentuated the higher your rank in Ghoulish.

From rank 2 and onward, while severely irradiated, you will take reduced damage from ballistic weapons, but also earn less Experience Points. Rank 3 does not introduce any new mechanics, aside from the improved healing, and rank 4 has not received any gameplay changes, aside from affecting how strong the location-based Charisma effect will be. Both rank 3 and rank 4 will of course retain the special mechanics they introduced in the vanilla game.

Notice that all features discussed above will take effect whenever you are irradiated enough. If you have the radiation removed, you will need to get yourself irradiated again for the effects to return.


Balancing

This mod is open to feedback and ideas for additional modifications and improvements to be made.

This mod is not trying to make the Ghoulish perk overpowered, but rather just more interesting and nuanced, which is why things like total immunity to radiation has not been implemented. For example, when you get heavily irradiated and your Strength and Endurance increases a lot, you're essentially turning "feral".

As of version 1.1, the location-based Charisma effects and speech checks with Ghouls will become active after a threshold of 40% radiation, instead of the previous threshold of 60% in version 1.0.


Installation

Using Vortex is the recommended method.

Due to user requests, any new update for any mod in this series, uploaded to the Nexus from August 14, 2021 and onward, should no longer follow the system where the same ESP file would be given a new name for each new version. Instead, new version names should be given to the ZIP file in which the other files are contained. For mods in the collection where one or more ESP files have a name that ends with a version number, they will be renamed back to their original names in their next update, and the plan is to not rename published ESP files after that point.


Requirements

This mod requires the Nuka-World DLC.


Compatibility

TWG should be compatible with most mods, unless they affect the Ghoulish perk.


Mod Collection

This mod is part of a larger collection of mods aiming to make Survival Mode more difficult and immersive. They come packaged as separate mods in order to allow the player to choose which they want or not, but using them all together should hopefully bring out the best and the most immersive survival experience possible. The mods come in three main categories:

Survival

The mods in this category are aiming to make the game significantly more difficult and immersive in every way they can.

• HSC
  The primary mod of the entire series, HSC is the foundation for an extremely challenging survival experience. This mod focuses on making food, water and sleep management much more essential, as well as making sure things such as carry weight, healing, medical services and damage scaling are far more realistic and challenging than ever before. All the other mods in this series are designed or updated according to the standards set by HSC. For anyone looking to make their survival experience harder and only were to download a single mod in this collection, this should be it.

• HSC-SB
  Where the main HSC mod made sure to make food, water and sleep more important, HSC-SB makes these things more difficult to obtain. Introducing massive challenges in what you are able to build, along with a system for using tools in the construction of more or less everything, settlement building should be far less of a convenient safe zone than it was before.

• Falltoxin
  This mod significantly increases the danger and potency of most types of poison in the game, both from wild creatures as well as the syringes you are able to use. Falltoxin also comes with an optional secondary set of mods known as the Food Add-on, which increases radiation in food, and introduces simple mechanics related to food poisoning and nutrition. These mechanics add a third layer to the food aspect, and are of course designed with HSC and HSC-SB in mind.

• FallMisc
  Enabling the player to craft a bunch of tools and other useful items, this mod adds a lot of convenience. Aside from essential items, many other mods in the series will be referencing FallMisc, rather than having each mod introducing its own set of craftable tools. Both HSC-SB and Falltoxin rely a lot on FallMisc for this purpose.

• WDI
  This mod increases the damage for a variety of weapons from the vanilla game. It also introduces a few new special mechanics for a few weapons, making them more unique than before. Additionally, WDI increases the durability of most turrets. All in all, most of the changes made by this mod will be useful both to you, your allies, and your enemies.

• PADI
  This mod increases the defensive capabilities of Power Armor, a few other types of armor, and gas masks. It also introduces a variety of new features related to Power Armor, making it more detailed and functional. All in all, most of the changes made by this mod will be useful both to you, your allies, and your enemies.

Environmental

The mods in this category are focusing on making various obstacles in the world more difficult to overcome.

• Fallfall
  This mod increases falling damage to a much more realistic level. This should encourage the player to navigate the world in a more careful manner. Not only does it make the world feel bigger, but it also adds a lot to the immersion when you actually have a reason to properly navigate the environments, rather than carelessly performing super dangerous jumps and stunts without as much as a scratch.

• Swimout
  This mod significantly increases the amount of radiation in the various bodies of water across the game. This should encourage the player to actually stay on land, use bridges to cross rivers, and avoid falling into the water.

• FallExD
  This mod increases incoming and outgoing damage for the player in Survival Mode. This makes the game's combat far more dangerous.

• Fallock
  This mod makes lockpicking significantly more difficult, and gives lockpicks some weight. All in all, this should encourage the player to be more careful when picking locks.

Perks

The mods in this category are focusing on improving the variety of features some perks can have, but they also exist as a way to prevent certain perks from completely undermining gameplay mechanics intended to make the game more challenging.

• SPI
  A mod that improves a bunch of perks that had too little or too weak usage throughout the game. This mod comes in three editions, where the two others could be considered for everyone, but the HSC Edition is particularly designed for being used alongside HSC.

• Night Stalker
  A mod that adds new functionality to the Night Person and Cannibal perks. Aside from being fun and allowing for a new playstyle, this mod introduces a small new penalty to cannibalism.

• TWG
  A mod that adds new functionality to the Ghoulish perk. Aside from being fun and allowing for a new playstyle, this mod introduces small penalties depending on where you are.

• RTT
  A mod that adds a few small mechanics to the Solar Powered and Rooted perks. Aside from adding a few new fun and convenient mechanics, the main point of this mod is to reduce the ability to heal radiation damage when in the sun. Being able to get rid of radiation that easily undermined a huge part of the mods with features related to radiation, such as HSC and Falltoxin.