Learn about merging plugins. Don't go crazy though. You can typically merge most equipment/weapon mods with little to no troubles. But others may have conflicting script and/or variable names which requires a little more knowledge to solve.

Otherwise, I'd recommend doing a trial and error of adding mods until you get the perfect mix under the limit.

@onowrouzi Oh I know about merging but as of right now Both fallout 4 and TTW refuse to work be it a driver issue because windows updated or because I have merged them incorrectly and a whole host of other things it just gets taxing. And more often then not I dont install that many mods its just When I do they come with to many plugins. Some of which cant be merged then on top of that the program for merging will crash forcing me to redo all of the merges just.....ugh.

@OSOK That is the point it just becomes...a problem some times haha.

@Gunnermod266 This....this just happened to me. Got a new rig only for the games to not work

@Lucianhector You are not alone my friend let us all suffer together

@LuckyFatCat Hhahahaha....I did that the other day...."I can just merge these together 1 more wont matter. *2Hours later* Okay so now i have 200 more then I thought....welp time to start over again.

@vahn65

I just played over 14 hours straight of "Modout 4" it's about an old man sitting at his computer finding custom files to install that are created by some amazing people who are fans of this game called...fallout? Not sure what it's about but...I must say this game is fun...I just leveled up my patience to 8 so I'm able to multi-task downloading mods while installing other mods...I just put in some custom music...haven't heard it yet and I'm sure by the time I actually start this game...I'll have forgotten about it and I'll wonder why the music is different.

I'm currently at that point with Fallout 4. I'm at the plugin limit and yes I know how to merge plugins but I am actually really happy with how my game looks and plays. Occasional crashes are fine with me as long as the game itself is enjoyable. I've never had the luxury to have a fully modded working game for this long. All the others games and playthroughs I've attempted ended up fine for a while but crashing and burning somewhere along the line and I just got frustrated and deleted it all and started from square one with another game. But yes finally this playthrough of Fallout 4 I can enjoy. It might take some time but you can get to that happy medium!

I certainly did when I first got Skyrim for PC and discovered this "modding" malarkey!
Weeks spent just looking up mods, breaking the game, fixing the game, playing for 5 minutes then more modding, apart from all the Gopher video's I was overdosing on.
Still do spend ages looking through and seeing what's out there but I know more about what I want first and have my "base" mods all dealt with

Well, i mod my Beths games a lot, they were made to be modded, after all hehe
BUT i never had any big problems with this. Search for mods, select a lot to take a closer look, spend the day reading descriptions and looking at pictures to decide if i want it or not.
Mostly, doing this just saves me the problem. Reading. If i see that the mod have any chance of breaking another mod i want, then NO.

My Skyrim had more than 1100 mods in NMM, about 800+- installed. Now less than 700 in Mod Organizer, running as i want it to (graphics plus gameplay and lots of equips).
In Fallout 4, i do not have that many mods, and even less plugins, and the game is just perfect.

Take your time to learn to use FO4Edit. I already discarded maybe 10 plugins, maybe more, just by adding their changes to another plugin. And even did some other changes myself, based in other mods i saw. Like, if i want to change the amount of exp i gain, i download a mod that does this so i can know which line i must change, and do the magic :p

Having lots of stuff that you won't use is the worst part. With Skyrim i already lost weeks of downloading mods and then trying to fix the game, instead of playing. Now i am even a little tired of the game. (maybe it is my addiction to FO4)

Even using so many mods in my Skyrim, i only 'started from 0' three times. Every time i found i problem, i went to internet to read and read so i could find the solution. Had only one save that i needed to stop playing because of bloated and bugged save file, and it was my first long gameplay save file with mods.

But relax. If you still keep searching for mods, it is because your game is not as you would like it yet. Back then i visited nexus EVERY DAY to see the new mods. Now, i just take a quick look when i remember, to see if any jewel popped out, but this is because i am enjoyng a lot my gameplay and roleplay of the game :p

I think I've reached a level of modding competency where there is now no way to over-mod. I have had a pretty good run with Fallout 4 so far, with roughly 500 mods installed, and I've hit the plugin cap a few times and had to tone down my list, and always keeping backups of mods, backups of saves, backups of load orders, etc, without yet having to reinstall my game since the launch day.

This is compared to my days modding FO3, which included highlights such as 'completely breaking the game', 'breaking the game again', and the always popular 'breaking the game all over again'.

I no longer binge on mods, downloading and installing 50 in one run, and I usually now add around 1-2 new mods a day, and always test them out for a few hours, before adding more.

I think modding is like eating - We love to eat, we always need more food, and as long as it is done sensibly, and we don't just eat any old garbage, we can eat as much, and as often as we want - until we explode.

@OSOK Sad to say I know that story all to well between college and work I have played modout4 for a bit to long I finally got things to work only to find new mods just came out for the game by some new amazing modders tis a tell as old as me bones.

@RafftheSweetling Hahaha Ithats me too around 500+ honestly I feel we wouldn't have to do this if Bethesda just added more content to some of there games. Most of mod mods are overhauls armors and weapons especially for FO4 because the latter is servery lacking.

@Di3sIrae Yeah I get where you are coming from. Especially the part about using a bunch of crap I end up not using.

i often found that i added a lot of mods that looked cool then and there, but i never really used most of them. So since there are already a lot of advice concerning merging mods then i wont say anything on that. But look over the mods you have and see if there is any you dont really use

Totally agree with that, @Havoc. When I need to do some culling, outfit mods are usually the first to go. Followed by little gimmicky additions that I rarely find myself using.

@Havoc I have found no luck in merging mods for fallout4; everything i have read/watched doesnt work...would you mind sharing with me the secret to merging success?

I may not be Havoc, but OSOK, this video from Elianora can get you covered: https://youtu.be/kh3Msli07Ug

Just put the esps with little modifications together in the load order, then open FO4Edit and select ONLY them.
Open the mod in the left panel and select the line you want to copy, then right click it and "Deep copy as override into". Select the esp you want to copy to and it is done, just save the plugin and later check for errors.
I don't know if this works with armors and weapons, never did it here myself, but you can test, just copying all records of the mod into another. They will just merge.

And with FO4Edit, if you open any line that have conflicts, all mods that edit the same record will show in the right panel, so you can find where they differs and just click and drag the line to add to the other esp. (if the record does not need anything special, just simple things like game stats, you can copy it and disble the esp after).

Well, if it helps:

Spoiler:

Sorry for maybe not being so helpful, but i do it this way and it works. I even added the climates from Nuclear Weather to NAC without problems (need just a little more tweaking but works perfect)

Totally know how you feel. After a long break from Skyrim, I started looking at what was new in the modding scene. I literally spent the next three months getting my mod install perfect, until it was taking up nearly half of my drive (some of which was backing up my current modset in case new ones broke it).

When it gets to the point that in-game, you can't even tell which feature came from which mod, that's probably when you've gone too far. But I keep downloading new ones anyway, and I don't think I'll ever learn to stop myself

I have like 237 esp, the limit keeps creeping up onto me all the time I try to merge as much as possible, but I know how to merge only simple mods, elinoras tutorial on Ytube is pretty good but as I said only covers simple mods, the merging software is still being made to work with FO4 same as it works for Skyrim and previous Fallout titles, just have to wait I guess, I tried to merge simple armor mods using Creation Kit but its so much more complicated than previous one for FO3 and NV, it took me good year or two to learn how it works, so eventually I'll be able to do what I did for FO3 and merge the F out of all the mods I use at least the armor and weapons mods.

@OSOK
sorry for not answering sooner, but i would follow the link that @Di3sIrae posted. Work your way trough that and see what you get

@"Dead Man" Merging with FO4Edit doesn't work, then?
What is the catch with itens? Just adding the records into another plugin does not add everything to game as it should? Did not know it was more complicated :s

@Di3sIrae

Thanks for this...I have seen this video before and followed along...but what i want to merge are simple tweaks...and when i do merge them...FO4edit wants to keep the originals as masters so i know im missing something.

anyway sorry to get off topic...i dont want to hijack this thread


update on my overmodding...251 esps...a precious few slots remain

@"OSOK" Hey if you need any help, you can PM me, or maybe we can open another post to discuss this :p
After all, i think that merging plugins actually is part of the overmodding problem hehe
Almost everyone that start modding reach this point one time

*it will only ask for a master if the record was added by another mod, i think. Anyway, as i said, if you want help i can see what i can do (:

I feel your pain man. My fallout new vegas is so modded that now I see are red boxes . I then refuse to reinstall because I have mods that I changed the esp and other stuff along with some of the mods not linked to Nexus mods anymore as one of my external hard drive crap out on me. But at least I recommend that you use wyre bash or flash to minimize extra mods. It allows you to merge mods such as armor, patches, weapons, etc. And reduce clutter in one simple esp and you can keep doing it for future mods as much as you like (i think idk).

I have over 100 mods installed in New Vegas and knock on wood i havent run into any problems.Im nearing the end and i almost feel like theres a ton of mods out there that i missed.Maybe on a second playthrough.
But modding the heck out of these Bethesda games is half the fun of playing them i think.