SO, notes from the first few hours of modded Fallout 4:
Better Locational Damage has proved to be a bit of a mixed bag, though still overall quite enjoyable. One the one hand, it makes combat against even just a handful of raiders feel tense, since you can die really easily if they catch you off guard (particularly since BLD makes headshots an instant kill if you don't have a helmet, and I don't have a helmet), and the same applies in reverse. But I am a bit worried about how this will work in the long run, as it seems like it could very easily force you into a single combat style by making more aggressive tactics too dangerous. I've got a full suit of light combat armor that I stumbled into, and even with that it feels really, really dangerous trying to play aggressively. Maybe I should get some flashbangs....
As a side note, BLD gives miniguns a substantial buff, so the fight in concord against the deathclaw is hilarious one sided. I'm not sure precisely how one sided, since it was dark at the time (and I use the darker nights mod, so dark is really dark), and between that and the smoke from the minigun I couldn't exactly see what I shootings at all that well, but the 'claw certainly seemed to die pretty fast.
The Misriah armory mod has been working out very well. I can't say their attempt to provide a justification for halo weapons in fallout is all that great, but it's nice that they tried (particularly given several creation clubs mods are just "some dude out in the glowing sea has a BFG, go get it"). Right now all I've found is an M6D and...some kinda battle rifle/DRM hybrid thing )not sure which one it's supposed to be because fallout 4's scheme where weapon modifications update the gun's name makes it a bit hard to tell), and they look great. Not that's "look" and not "shoot", because right now I can't afford to use them, since the M6 is .50 cal handgun (which it seems to live up to based on the damage values listed) and I only have about 3 rounds of that, and the rifle is in .308 and locked to a 3 round burst, so it would burn through all my .308 in 4 burst. I also like that Misriah guns have a slot in the mod station that lets you increase or decrease their damage, since I can adjust them to be balanced with other fallout 4 guns without having to open up the game files and tinker with damage values that way.
The Useful Crank mod for laser muskets has also been really handy. It reworks the laser musket to no longer use ammo, and instead it's actually crank powered and you have effectively unlimited ammo. Which is nice, it gives the musket a niche and makes it much more useful early game, since it's accurate enough to headshot people (hm....I don't know how BLD handles laser weapon headshots on tough things, I'll have to check that).
The various texture, lighting, etc mods are working great, no performance issues of any kind, which was the one thing I was really worried about.
The wasteland codex is a fun little mod if you're a fan of the storyteller series, and it provides a bit of setting info that the game doesn't. The storyteller himself is actually a recruitable companion, though I don't know where he is.
I also ran the anime character mod. It's a bit hard on the immersion, but since there's every chance I spend a fair bit of this playthrough in space marine armor shooting people with an MA5, I think that ship has long since sailed. So far, my only real issue with it is that one of it's required submods, 512 hair colors (or something like that) is a massive pain to use, because scrolling through hundreds of hair colors looking for the shade you want (they're not organized in any apparent order, presumably due to some mod conflict I don't care to sort out) is a massive pain in the neck. I ask you, what's wrong with some simple R/G/B sliders?
This actually covers most of the mods I've been using, the only ones left are power armor mods (which I can't test quite yet, I just don't have the resources to tinker armor with power armor), sim settlements (haven't unlocked those yet, though it's my #1 priority), and a few weapons I haven't found yet. I'm really interested in getting my hands on a Plasrail, I've always hated fallout plasma weapons but this one seems like it fixes most of the issues I have with them. I'm somewhat pumped about getting my hands on an R91, though as that mod apparently has some sound bugs, that excitement is slightly dampened.
It doesn't help that, as a genre, city-building is kind of dead.
