Mojave Express Guide 2: Nuclear Boogaloo

This modlist is an addition to Viva New Vegas, and assumes you've already installed all of the mods from it.
The main purpose of this list is balance, polish, and immersion. It's meant to create an improved version of the base game, trying to get New Vegas as close as possible to my vision of what it was supposed to be from the very beginning, and doing my best to add mods that ameliorate some of the game's biggest flaws. I was very careful to make sure there are no gimmicky features or anything that feels out of place and doesn't fit the overall design philosophy of the game, and only chose to include highly polished mods that seamlessly integrate into the vanilla game and will ensure a fun, challenging, modernized, and stable experience.

Keep in mind this is just a simple modlist and not a proper guide with instructions like VNV.
You will have to make your own patches and properly sort your load order at the end:
https://moddinglinked.com/xedit.html
https://moddinglinked.com/themethod.html

Setup & Utilities:
--
Enable NVTF - Texture Modding Preset
SUP NVSE
AnhNVSE
HIPControl - Weapon Idle Position Adjuster
Weapon Based Hands Clip Distance

Gameplay:
--
Perfected INI Settings (only the "All-in-One" file)
Swap Vigor for JSawyer Ultimate Edition (plus Push's Tweaks)
PerkSawyer - A JSawyer Addon
JIP Localized Damage Fix
Helmet Armor Rebalance JIP
Simple Headshots (check ALL "Headshot Immunity" options during installation)
Food Effect Tweaks
Water Overhaul (plus Vanilla Plugins)
Harder Barter Faster Stronger (already included in VNV, but download the "Sicko Mode" version for some extra challenge)
Economy Overhaul (Default INI)
Mojave Arsenal
Mojave Wildlife (Vanilla No Chanced)
RAD - Radiation (is) Actually Dangerous - Overhaul
RAD - Radiation (is) Actually Dangerous - Overhaul - Injection Fix
Ghouls Inflict Radiation Damage
Better Ghouls - No Roar Animation
Weapon Requirements System
Weapon Jamming Tweaks
Reload Reloaded
Player Combat Priority
NPCs Sprint kNVSE
Walking Inertia
Killable Children NVSE
Killable Children NVSE ESP Max Stacey Forecaster Patch
Point That Somewhere Else - NPCs React to You Pointing a Gun at Them
Better Weapon Restrictions and Fixes
Freeside Facelift LITE
Landscape Overhaul Re-Remastered
The N.V. Interiors Project
NV Interiors Remastered
A World of (Less) Pain

User Interface:
--
Simplified FO4 HUD
MAPMO - Main and Pause Menus Overhaul (plus Hi-Res Logos)
yUI - User Ynterface
ySI - Sorting Ycons
ySI - Pick Up Prompts
ySI - Assorted Fixes
ySI - Colorful Icons Fix (plus Categories LITE)
Colorful Inventory Ycons (Faded)
Pip-Boy UI Tweaks
Recent Loot Log
AidUI
Show Water Source H2O
3D Grenade Indicator
Consistent Pip-Boy Icons v4
Vanilla HD Missing Icon for Consistent Pip Boy Icons
Pop-Up Message Icons
Map Marker Icons
New World Map Texture
Pip-Boy 2000
Working Clock For Pip-Boy 2000 and MK VI ESPless
Instant and Faster Pipboy (x2 Speed)
Truly HD Main Menu and Loadscreens

Visuals:
--
Morinn's Upscaled Vanilla Armor Textures - MUVAT
Another Weapon Retexture Project - aWRP (plus Hotfix, YUP Patch, Wooden Service Rifle, and Remove Cowboy Repeater Peep Sight)
Bullet Tracers New Vegas (w/ Shotguns)
IMPACT (The Gaming Rig)
IMPACT - Compatibility Edition
EXE - Effect teXtures Enhanced (delete the "water" and "sky" folders, otherwise you'll have issues)
Bullet Impact LOD Increased ESPless
Enhanced Bullet Impacts (Enhanced Blood Impact only)
Brutal Splatter - Blood Enhancement
FO4 Enhanced Blood Textures (Subtle Screen Blood only)
Gore Overhaul in 1K
Better Head Bits
Dismemberment Tweaks
Ripper No Dust Cloud
No More Explosions Blindness
Micro Clutter (1K Textures, plus Optimized Joshua Trees v1.2)
Vurt's Improved Plants (plus Desaturated Textures)
Simply Upscaled Grass
Smoke on the Desert

NPCs and Animations:
--
Character Expansions Revised
Vanilla Hair - No Shine
Natural Eyes by zzjay (Shadow)
Vanilla Underwear Replacer (Non-Stubby Feet Edition only)
Improved Vanilla Male Body (select "Less Muscular" Body Normalmap and "Legacy" Underwear when installing, default for everything else)
Diagonal Movement (make sure to load it above NV Compatibility Skeleton)
Realistic Movement
Modern Stagger Animations
New Vegas Animation Overhaul - Guns (reinstall Iron Sights Aligned with the appropriate settings)
Butcher Pete Complete - A Melee Animation Overhaul (No Locomotion)
Wasteland Warrior - A Melee Animation Overhaul (No Locomotion)
Assume the Position - An Unarmed Animation Overhaul - Part 1
Hit - VATS Restored
B42 Interact
B42 Loot
Vanilla Animations Weapon Scale Fix
Titans of the New West 2.0
Pipboy Holo Panel ESPless
Menace of the New West
Super Mutants HD 4K (2K Low)
Strip Gamblers
Casino Crowds
Simple Populated Freeside
The Living Desert - JSUE Patch

Audio:
--
All Weapon Sound Overhaul Modern Edition Redone - AWSOMER
No Cocking Sound on Rifle Equip
Some UI Sounds SUS (Vanilla Blend)
Some Additional Sounds SAS
HQ Main Menu Music
High-Quality Classic Music
Military Music Remover
Platinum Radio
Cowboy Radio
Conelrad Radio
Mojave Music Radio eXpanded
M.R.E. - Mysterious Radio Extended



"Why do you not use texture packs for landscapes and architecture and such?"
I choose to limit my visual mods to only a handful of things in the game that I felt really stood out as being a particular eye-sore and desperately needed a touch up, stuff like the extremely ugly vegetation (looking at you Mojave Yucca), and also the Pip-Boy and weapon/armor textures since you're constantly gonna have these things in front of your face (and even then, I still made sure to pick mods that don't stand out too much from the rest of the game). I truly feel like you quickly get used to most vanilla textures and all you really need to make this game look pleasant is a good combination of weather and lighting mods, and maybe some VFX mods to make combat feel more satisfying. The reason I avoid most retexture mods, apart from the fact that most modded texture packs tend to have inferior art direction compared to vanilla (old packs like NMC and Ojo Bueno are ESPECIALLY bad), is that there are no texture packs made by a single author with a consistent vision that cover most of everything in the game, which means you'll have all of these clashing artstyles from different modders, and you'll always have some low poly models and bad textures with no good replacers standing out against your newly modded high res landscape textures or whatever, which ultimately compounds into this problem of having to mod every other texture and mesh in the game to try to create a consistent visual presentation, which I think is just not really attainable in this game. And that's before you even get into the potential instability and performance problems that you'll usually get from trying to cram too many visual mods into this old ass engine. Basically, trying to make this game look "modern" is a herculean task that creates more problems than it's worth.