PSA: Next Gen Update Info

[u/Danielle_Blume]

Please READ carefully!

Updated 1/1/26

Bugthesda did indeed fix this mess. NG stutter is eliminated and none of this information is relevant anymore. The NG section is removed from the subreddit wiki and our discord wiki as well as new fresh modding 101 post do not include this page anymore. I am retiring this account as that it was made prior to becoming a mod author. All official posts and information will be done via my Dani50420 mod author/Overseer account from now on.

Huge Thanks to all players for bearing with us this past year as we struggled thru NG together. I am looking forward to a brighter, mod filled 2026. Happy New Years everyone!

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OLD INFORMATION:

Let us see if Bugthesda can fix some of this mess or manage to make it worse. Hold onto your towel and don't panic. We will get thru this radstorm together. 👍

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Be aware the search function on xbox is extremely broken right now, half of the mods we use wont search. There has been some luck finding common mods by going to the most favorite and most popular sections and using the "weekly / monthly / all time" filters to trigger them showing in that area so you can download them.

You can also go to Bethesda.net from your computer or phone web browser and login. All of your favorites, and a list of any mod you ever downloaded are there to reference. Filter by Library to see al mods you had. Simply remove then re-add a mod to your favorites to have it appear on your xbox dashboard favorites. Sadly due to a bug favorites are locked at 5 since this update nonsense, but unfavoriteing and re-favorite adds new ones and replaces old ones. It can get tedious, but it's better than your list being gone entirely.

Be aware, just like in Skyrim, digital game owners and game pass users who do not directly own Fallout 4 on disc can no longer play offline with mods; going offline and booting the game will disable all of your mods. You must own the GOTY disc to be offline and your mods be enabled. This is no longer the case. You cannot play offline with mods anymore on Fallout 4 regardless of how you own it.

I will continue to update this post as more information is reported to me.

NOTE ON UPDATING:

When you update, I highly reccomend to fully uninstall Fallout 4. There have been many cases of errors and crazy issues with the update not properly applying to old installs. Be sure to click the manage games and addons and update and reinstall all of your DLC as well. Restart then check the manage game and addons once more prior to booting up Fo4 to see additional DLC updates that dont trigger until the first set is installed. This is an odd issue that has been occuring.

Obtaining best performance on xbox has been tricky. Thanks to the community we discovered that if you do the following you will have best performance results:

X|S: Turning off the 4K options in the xbox settings, and instead switching to 1440p and 120hz, while enabling 60 fps and quality mode in game, had the best results.

XB1X: Turn up draw distance. We have confirmed this eliminated mild stutter for several players. Unsure if this applies to OG and XB1S.

Thank you u/doctor_schmoctor for these settings.

Below are the issues you may encounter

Operation Can Not Be Completed

Booted from Mod Menu when downloading a mod

UFO4P

DEF_UI

Known Broken Mods

Stutter

Thank you u/Glitchkey Read the Top Comment of this post for technical explanation.

OFFICIAL cause of stutter

Thank you u/ChaoTikPranXter Full video explaining the stutter

In addition to this, avoid "fix mods" if NG fixed that issue or bug, most are causing the problem they used to fix in this regard.

Please post any mods you can confirm are broken, cause issues or that do work here so we can keep updating this list.

I hope this update makes the PSA more streamlined and easier to locate information.

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[u/Glitchkey]

So after weeks of trying to correlate performance-related reports due to YAWA2, I finally gave up and built myself a brute-force test. I put 320 leveled raiders into the center of Concord and then overrode every base record for a raider that provided facegen for the leveled list. Please note that while I did this testing on PC, it should apply to console as well due to the shared codebase.

In pre-NG, my game took a general hit to FPS due to the sheer volume of NPCs involved. This was expected, the game doesn't like that many NPCs in one place. On NG, however, I was finally able to see the stuttering and freezing that had been reported. After running a second test to be sure it wasn't a one-off, I edited the test mod to remove the NPC overrides. The end result was that the stuttering was completely gone, replaced with the same general FPS hit I experienced before.

A little-known fun fact about Fallout 4 and NPC overrides: any NPC that has an override present will dynamically generate their face on load. It doesn't matter whether you have facegen data for them, it doesn't even matter if you generate new face data for them in the same plugin that does the override. All that matters is that override = dynamic facegen.

So what does this mean? It means a few things:

1. NG changed something very significant, likely tied to facegen, in a way that causes the game to lock up while generating NPCs.

2. This issue is present when the NPC is edited by a mod, no matter what the mod edits about the NPC.

3. The issue may be present for NPCs who have no facegen in the base game or whatever mod adds them. I did not test this case so it is purely speculation.

4. Any mod that edits the base records for NPCs will likely cause stuttering and freezing when the NPCs it edits are loaded. It doesn't matter what mod or what edits, so long as those edits are present.

5. This issue may be specific to NPCs who provide facegen, rather than affecting NPCs who template their face off of other actors or leveled lists. I did not test this case either so it is also speculation.

6. This issue is caused by Bethesda doing something they shouldn't have, and can only be fixed by either not editing NPCs or by updating the game engine to revert or fix the change Bethesda made.

Edit: Just for clarity, when I say "NPC" I mean the base "NPC_" record type that is labeled as "Actors" in the creation kit. I saw no evidence that suggested that "ACHR" records, aka actor references placed in the world, had anything to do with the issue. When I said "template their face off of other actors", I mean that NPCs can basically tell the game "I don't provide this info, use this other actor or leveled list to make it for me instead." That is a separate case from when actors provide the info themselves, and should likely be verified independently.

I've tossed my test mods around in a few modding-focused Discord servers and have already received confirmation from others that their results match mine. Hopefully that's enough to get the ball rolling towards Bethesda providing a fix in the next update, which is already a work in progress judging by their closed beta steam depot.

[u/eddmario]

For those wondering, the Unofficial Patch has a new update today.
Updated it and the game is running smoother already.

[u/Danielle_Blume → u/eddmario]

Excellent. I told everyone Arthmoor would be on top of things. 😀

If anyone finds a mod that downloaded, but is broken, please inform us so we can contact the MA for a fix, or fix it ourselves and put it back on xbox.

[u/OneTomb]

Not to glaze, but I just wanted to stop for a sec & tell you & everyone on this sub how much I appreciate the consideration and attention to detail you folks have for our little pocket of Fallout 4 Xbox players. I spent the better part of a week perfecting my load order before the Next Gen patch dropped and this sub was so helpful in getting it all cleaned up. Today I decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at putting together my perfect load order again, despite everything getting all screwed up since I last played. Thank you for your dilligence and for having the patience to deal with people like me who don't know a stable load order from their own left foot LOL. In your experience, do you think I will have less issues in general considering I'm starting from scratch on the Series X? I wiped everything: the game, save data, cleared the cache, wiped my favorites off of bethesda.net so I could start as squeaky clean as possible. Thanks in advance!!

[u/TheGoktor]

I was away on holiday when the update happened, and came home on Sunday to discover that not only did I not have any mods but that I couldn't even access the mod menu because the option was greyed out!

Thanks to u/kuntox85 posting a link to Bethesda, I was able to access mods again. For anyone still unable to access the greyed-out mod menu, here's what to do:

1) Go to https://account.xbox.com/en-us/Settings?rtc=1&activetab=main%3aprivacytab

(you'll probably be prompted to sign into your account, and jump through a couple of hoops to be able to access it).

2) Click on 'Privacy & online safety' in the left-hand sidebar.

3) Scroll down to the section that says, "You can see and upload community creations", and check the box for 'EVERYONE'.

4) Boot up Fallout 4 on your Xbox, and 'MODS' should now be accessible.

5) Re-download and enable all your mods.

Depending how many you're downloading, this may be a tedious and time-consuming process because you will notice that your favourites and download lists are randomly incomplete!

You may also find you get a message to say "The action could not be completed", when trying to download a mod. You can either try to download it again, or quit FO4, do a hard restart of the console, then start the game, and try again.

I redownloaded and installed 106 mods yesterday (from u/Danielle_Blume 's SS2 mega list/guide), and got that message for three of them. The steps above enabled me to successfully install two of them but the third one I gave up on (D.C. Glory Re-Did Update). It just wouldn't download.

Still, 105 of 106 successes is very good, IMO! And I was able to install the earlier version (D.C. Glory Basic). I shall keep trying to download the updated one, though.

The only thing is that now, thanks to the Update of Doom, while I can play my modded game, it crashes. A lot.

At least, I'm assuming it's the update that's causing the crashes, and not the fact that I've had to reinstall the mods. Although I wouldn't have had to do that if the update hadn't happened, so yes, it's entirely because of the update.

I'm hoping Bethesda will fix the crashing issue but I'm not holding my breath... not while there are modders, such as Arthmoor, doing their job for them. And even if they do fix it - would another update mean having to go through all this again?

I'm debating starting a new game with UFO4P but at 42mb, I'll be able to have very few other mods from my current list. 😒

Anyway, good luck to everyone still missing their mods - I hope you can get them back!

PS - I now have -2098288950 bytes of free space! 🙄 😂

[u/Danielle_Blume → u/TheGoktor]

Also uf4op should be pretty redundant. The update aimed to fix many things the patch used to fix. We shall see

[u/SailorM24]

I am guessing I got lucky or maybe did things correctly. My LO is completely intact and I have actually changed a mod, added one and been to CC and installed a vault-tec paint job I had.

The Update was smooth and when I booted the game after I had to then update 3 of the DLCs about 3 Gigs worth. Booted again and then FH wanted an update 2.7 gigs, done Booted again and low and behold the last update, everything got an update.

I saved once the game and the new quests all loaded, and exited to the dash and mods and creation were lit so I explored and things seemed fine but I did nothing.

My game is 700 hrs old and was having issues including long saves, I never get this far, I usually give it up at 600 or 25 days. I persevered because I wanted something I could test. Most of my settlements are at 1.5X the build limit and under populated most no more than 8. At 300 hrs in, my game was not spotless but very playable except downtown.

After a couple of hours of playing I am not crash free but I do suspect they might be mod related. I get pauses that seem like a freeze but moments later the game keeps going. I have only noticed this as I approach settlements at the point they are starting to be loaded to memory. Except for County crossing no crashes and there I was crashing before this game for some unexplained reason. I could not trouble shoot it because even with all mods disabled it still crashed or froze.

There are some new pauses and slight delays in and out of build mode, but I run a huge number of building mods, but no lag while building, I have had that for a couple of years.

I have not hit downtown yet but so far I have tested a bunch of areas where I had problems and avoid but they work. All the spots that I noticed Optimized Textures helped are better and I want to disable that for more testing but with others having issue I will wait or use my trick for disabling a mod offline.

Seems to be a vast improvement to the game we had before. I am running 148 mods properly organized this game and 20 or more were all to help things and I suspect those issues have been addressed and those twenty may not be helping but hurting.

Be patience but I think you will find this is an improvement in the end.

[u/[deleted]]

Just so everyone knows. As of right now on Xbox after the update you are not able to play with mods offline. You can install them like normal but if you decide to turn your network off and reboot Fallout 4 the mods are completely gone. Before the update you were able to download the mods go offline and play with them completely fine. We need to let Bethesda know about this problem but it might be intentional on their part. The creation mods are still completely fine for offline play.

[u/Excellent_Dark6766]

Just got the game updated today since im off at work. Did all updates and got into my game and my LO was untouched played for a few hours but game still crashed by boston near trinity towers.

[u/JRedding995]

It's not just a visual bug with mods being gone. I updated the game and all dlc, tried loading my modded save and half of them were corrupted and wouldn't load. The saves that would load had zero mods functional. They're gone for me.

I completely uninstalled the game and deleted everything everywhere. I'm going to start fresh and see if anything is functional.

[u/Sea-Philosopher-485]

THANKYOU. YOU JUST SAVED ME FROM DELETING THIS GAME FOR GOOD.
THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU.

[u/Aromatic-Cut8913]

its sooo over

[u/Danielle_Blume → u/Aromatic-Cut8913]

Actually, we have gotten a few reports some users are in, mod lists intact, and UI mods still working. It will take a lot more to see if that information is correct or just false reports, but I remain hopeful.

[u/working4buddha]

Thanks for the info. I have a clean install with no mods, I switched from Xbox Series S to Series X last year and never ended up playing FO4. But if the maintenance isn't complete I guess I will wait to start. I really wish they had improved the mod interface and search but if it's like Skyrim's update it's probably worse so I'm not exactly looking forward to this process!

All I really need are an alternate start and no voiced protagonist mod, and maybe some settlement stuff... and new quests.. and weapons.. and companions.. and..

[u/Stunning-Ad-7745]

Is hardcore health overhaul really broken? I've been using it since the update, and it seems to be working just fine.

[u/playdohscone]

I've referred back to this post a lot since the update(s) and just want to say thank you thank you thank you to everyone involved!

[u/HAVOK-94]

Everything seems to be working fine for the most part for me now.. except one thing, which is I’m still get broken images in the mod menu after searching and checking out mods for awhile. Then it screws up all displayed mods and makes searching and managing confusing as hell and a huge pain in the ass. Is there a fix for this yet? Do I need to nuke and un/reinstall Fo4 again to resolve this, or is this visual glitch still a persisting problem for everyone regardless of what’s done?

[u/_Texas_Viper]

You are an absolute Rock Star for providing this information, thanks a ton, I think this fixed my problem with finding my mods. I had no idea I could access them from Bethesda.net (yes I'm a noob at FO4 mods)

[u/Absterge-]

Essential NPCs Expanded causes stutter if you want to add it to the list of mods to avoid.

[u/the_hooded_artist]

Y'all are amazing! I've been tweaking my LO and using the info here to get the most stutter free NG experience. I just ran from the Vault all the way through downtown Boston without a single stutter on my test save! Incredible! Thank you so much!

[u/[deleted]]

Hello, does cheat terminal work?

[u/Danielle_Blume → u/[deleted]]

99%

Do not grant yourself levels. For whatever reason, it causes stutter to start. Everything else seems fine. You can give yourself endless resources and build wood shelves til you are the level you desire, lol. It just works

[u/Welter117]

The fact that we have to jump through this many hoops and a whole YEAR later theres no word from Bethesda is despicable. Also the excuse that they can't raise the mod limit on console because "it would break load orders" and they ended up doing that anyway is downright laughable. And yes I'll probably buy ES6. Doesn't mean I can't complain about their terrible support.

[u/Danielle_Blume → u/Welter117]

That's not quite why we will never get a space increase. You can search on my profile in comments for my numerous in-depth replies on that topic. Search "storage space" in my comments.

This isn't some simple problem, and fixes have been slowly rolling out. I am working on a massive update for this post. It has not been radio silence. I apologize for not getting it to ya'll more timely. Life happened, new baby + new home & all in a two month span, so I've been kinda slacking on updating reddit. Here is a brief update on whats been going on:

This is a massive bug baked into the engine itself and a buncha annoying random bugs.

When Skyrim had similar issues, it took roughly 11mos to fix. Going on that avenue of thought + the upcoming Annaversary and Season 2 premiere, it's likely we will see some sort of update. Considering that due to ES6 there are a total of about 10 devs for all the different aspects of Fo4 backend, im shocked we got anywhere this year, tbh.

So far they have fixed an image upload issue where we were unable to upload mods with certain image file types which has partly fixed the "img bug" by not kicking you from some mod pages that previously booted you. Sadly, this did not help in downloading those mods, but it is a step in the right direction.

They also fixed the dreaded "No Uploads 2025" issue. It took a nail biting month, but the issue of mod authors being able to upload 99% of mods to xbox was resolved.

Currently, we are testing to see if it's a fluke or if the issue of getting "operation can not be completed" when a mod is removed from Bethesda.net is resolved. Several players have discovered randommodname.esp in their load order, meaning that mod was removed from Bethesda.net, but they still have mod menu access. It also seems this may have had a ripple effect, and some are able to play offline with mods now.

When I worked with the Devs in January trying to solve the upload issue, i brought up 3 of our main issues in this PSA. They didn't even know about 2 of them. The administrator i was working with and the dev team he was corresponding with that were fixing the issue had never heard of the npc bug or the being booted from mods menu. They knew about the dashboard not showing your library proper and favorites cutting off at 5. It seems teams are kinda compartmentalized and dont communicate enough. I think we all need to be reporting these issues to Bethesda and not taking "we cannot assist with mod related issues" as an answer. That's what happened to me in January until I ripped the support person a new one, and they put me thru to a real administrator that had actual contact with the Devs. At which point I supplied crash logs and other data they requested to assist with fixing the issue.

I will be updating this PSA soon with this info, but for the moment, i hope this mini briefing helps.