As I read these forums, and I see more and more people not liking Nexus Mod Manager poorly handling mods, I thought to my self why not present an alternative to Nexus Mod Manager, and a guide to use it. This guide will only cover, at the moment, Mod Organizer 2 alpha 3, made by Tannin. A great man, and an awesome tool to use. I will, also, with a small list, add some mods to use with it. Know that this won't be the be all, end all, guide to what will be the full release, it is enough to get you going, and enjoying mods, again.
There are a few things you need to know about this release. It is only for Fallout 4, as both are 64-bit programs. Do not try to use it for Fallout 3, TES IV Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, or TES V Skyrim. Trust me, they won't work properly. You will need some time, patience, and even a little computer knowledge. But since most users of the nexus mods are all of that, let's get started.
First things first, locate where your download folder of Nexus Mod Manager, for Fallout 4. Just keep the window open, we will come back to it later. Second, locate where you have installed Fallout 4. Those who have it in their c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam, you will need to reinstall the game elsewhere, I will walk you through that in a bit. Those that do not have it there, already, you are one step ahead, but don't go patting yourself on the back, yet. Your instructions will follow after I get people to move Fallout 4 from the Program Files area. Those who are scratching their heads, wondering why this is not a good place to put a game that you want to modify, well, it's not a good place. You have to jump through so many hoops it's not funny. Anyway, let's get Fallout 4 moved, and up and running. Those with SSD's, please bear with me, I will help you out as well.
Some of these steps I have done since Fallout 3, and it does help, a lot, with all games that Bethesda has put out, and especially with Fallout 4. I will, at the end of each step, if you have more than one drive, indicate how to proceed, and cover SSD's. If you have the game installed elsewhere, please bear with me, I'll indicate where you all come in.
1) Open My Computer, or Computer, or what have you. Locate C: Open that up.
2) Those with only the one hard drive, create a new folder. Call it, simple enough, Fallout 4. Those with more than one drive, on the other internal drive, if not already there, do the same thing.
3) Open Steam. Go to settings, under Steam, in the upper left hand corner. Go to Downloads on the left hand side. Click Steam Library Folders.
4) When the next window opens, add new folder. If you have one drive, then it you want to go up to c: Multiple drives, the drive you want to install it on. Locate the Fallout 4 folder.
5) Click Select, then once back at the Steam Library Folders, make the Fallout 4 folder active.
6) Close that, then click okay on the settings, then go to your library.
7) You can't install multiple places, so here's what's going to happen. You are going to leave this open, while you are going to do something else, which follows.
8 ) If your Nexus Mod Manager has placed your downloads inside of the Fallout 4 folder, you need to move that folder elsewhere. I recommend the desktop, for the moment. If not, you are good to go with the next step.
9) Right click on Fallout 4, then delete local content. It shouldn't take too long. Go grab a drink, go do what you need to, it will take a little while, but not all that long.
10) Once it's done, you want to reinstall the game. While doing so, you want to grab a few things. The links are the next line, but you should grab Mod Organizer 2 alpha 3, FO4Edit, and at least the latest version of F4SE. This is also for those who have their game on a different hard drive, or ahead of the game.
http://github.com/TanninOne/modorganizer/releases , http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2737/? , and http://f4se.silverlock.org/
11) If the game isn't done installing in it's new place, then you may have to wait a bit longer. Unzip, in the mean time, Mod Organizer 2 to it's own separate folder. The same for FO4Edit, and F4SE. I like keeping things nice and tidy.
12) Once the game is installed, you want to move Mod Organizer and Fo4Edit into where you have the game installed. We will get to using it here in a moment, but there are couple more steps to follow, yet.
Here's where the ones who have the game installed elsewhere already come in.
13) Open the F4SE folder, copy the text files, the .dll's, and the .exe into where you have Fallout 4, right in the main directory.
14) Run the game through the launcher, waiting for Steam do it's thing, then the launcher to do it's thing. At the moment, you are just making sure everything is working. Not actually playing the game. Hit play.
15) While waiting for the main menu, just relax a little. This is setting up, again, your ini files.
16) Quit the game. The F4se in the main folder of Fallout 4, copy that, and paste a short cut to your desktop. (This way you can play the game, still, vanilla.) Then run F4SE.
17) Quit, then here's where the work begins.
18 ) Open the folder with Mod Organizer. You will need to either move a file out of there, or rename it, your choice. Look for bsa_extractor.dll and either rename it, or move it.
19) Those with mods installed to the game, on the separate hard drive, or already in a different location, sorry for this, but you will need to clean out your data folder. Leave the Strings Folder, and the Video folder, as well as the Fallout4 files only. All the other .esp's, the .esm's, and even text files, need to go.
20) While that is going on, make a new folder off of the drive, or outside of Fallout 4, called Fallout 4 downloads, or whatever you want to call it. Those with SSD's, you can leave that folder on your C: drive, and only have what I have, so far, on your SSD. This should save you some space.
21) Remember the download folder I told you move a while ago? Open that up, copy all the 7 zip's, .rar's, and .zips, and paste them in your new Fallout 4 download folder.
22) Run Mod Organizer 2.
23) While setting it up, you can have you downloads where you already have them. the profiles you need to copy that in, but that isn't too hard. Just open that up in one of the other lines, and copy from there. Mods can go right in the Mod Organizer folder, under Mods, the cache, you can place that anywhere. While that window is open, go to the Nexus tab, and enter in your log in information. This is so you can download to MO2, rather than NMM.
24) Click ok to exit.
25) You want to drop down the Profile bar, and click <Manage>. Create a new profile. Use this new profile to load all your mods to, and play from.
26) You will need to redo your .ini files, so do that real quick. The Fallout 4 custom is where it should be. The rest, though, you can access right from Mod Organizer 2. It's the button on the left hand side that looks like a puzzle with a red piece trying to fit in. Modify your Fallout4i and your fallut4prefs.
27) In the right hand drop down list, just to help things out, rerun the Fallout 4 launcher, and F4SE. You can add short cuts to your bar with the shortcut drop down menu under run. You may also see Fo4Edit in there, and you want to also create a short cut.
28 ) Quarry info on all your mods, and then start installing them once they have the information.
29) There are a few mods that will crash Mod Organizer, as you try to install them. If you have this happen, please let me know which one, and I will try to find mods that will help.
One last thing, in Mod Organizer, you can rename it to Fallout 4 Mod Organizer. I have done this myself. It's not a necessary step, just one you can choose to do.
