Combat Mods That Make It More Challenging

For some players, the combat in Fallout 4 just isn’t quite up to snuff. It could be due to the skill or experience of the player or that they’ve reached such an absurd level in-game that nothing can hurt them. In this state, it’s easy for the game to start to get boring.

Fortunately, there are a number of combat-based mods that can shake things up. Everything from improving enemy damage to making combat realistic is achievable with some of the mods fans have created. Here are some of the best for making Fallout 4 just a little more challenging.

Updated May 2, 2024, by Ritwik Mitra: Fallout 4 is a game with an inverted difficulty curve, very much like most Bethesda games in the modern era. The world is incredibly unforgiving in the early stages, until players gain a few levels and wear better equipment. By the mid-game, players can take on most threats without too many issues. Even the toughest encounters in the game can become a cakewalk by the time players reach the upper echelon of levels. So, it’s only a given why some people may be disappointed by this and opt for mods that make the combat of this title more challenging and thoughtful. Keep in mind that the next-gen update breaks most mods, so it’s advised to use these tweaks on earlier versions of the game instead.

21 Commonwealth Encounter Pack

Downloads: 96,848

A simple way to enhance the difficulty of the game is to add more monsters that can obliterate the player. That is precisely what this mod achieves. It adds a whopping 290 new random encounters to the game, effectively doubling the total number of enemies players fight in their adventure.

Combining this mod with other difficulty adjustments will ensure that players will never have a boring moment as they explore the Commonwealth. Something or the other will be out for blood, and it’s up to the Sole Survivor to ensure that it’s not theirs.

20 Forced Evolution – Super Mutant Addons

Downloads: 27,538

Super Mutants are some of the most interesting characters in every Fallout game, and some really tough enemies that players can fight if they want to challenge themselves. In the early going, most Super Mutants will destroy the player if they so much as put a foot in the wrong place, but these enemies become rather predictable later on.

Players who want to constantly have fun with the Super Mutants in combat can download a mod that increases the variety of enemies from this class. The most amusing one of the lot is a Suicider, who flies using the bomb that’s strapped to its back, making it an aerial threat that players must be wary of at all times.

19 Mojave Cazadores

Downloads: 87,683

The Cazadores are one of the most iconic enemies from Fallout: New Vegas. Taking the wrong path to reach Goodsprings ends up being a painful experience for many Couriers who end up realizing that the short way to New Vegas isn’t necessarily the best approach.

This mod adds the Cazadores from New Vegas into Fallout 4, which makes for a harrowing experience whenever players encounter these monstrosities. To add to this nightmare fuel, there’s a jumbo version of the Cazadores that players can download if they hate themselves.

18 MAIM – Wounds Bleeding Pain Meds And Headshots

Downloads: 286,079

The gunplay in Fallout 4 is pretty fun, but it’s not as visceral as most people would’ve hoped. So, players who want a more hardcore experience with the combat system should definitely download the MAIM mod.

As stated in the mod’s heading, it adds wounds, a bleeding system, the capacity to feel pain, the addition of headshots, and a bunch of new medicines to account for all these new stats. Players who want to take a more tactical approach to combat will be well-serviced by this mod.

17 NPC Accuracy Revised

Downloads: 166,199

The accuracy of enemies and other NPCs in Fallout 4 is quite odd at times. Bloatflies and other ranged monsters can hit the Sole Survivor with pinpoint accuracy, while raiders and gun-wielding foes can miss shots even when they have all the time in the world to aim.

The NPC Accuracy Revised mod ensures that any weird occurrences of high and low accuracy are balanced out. While this leads to a few enemies missing more shots at long range, the vast majority of foes — especially the ones wielding guns — can absolutely wreck house and snipe the Sole Survivor at long ranges.

16 FGEP – Feral Ghouls Expansion Pack

Downloads: 580,805

Feral Ghouls are some of the most horrifying enemies in Fallout 4, but they lose their luster after being recycled over and over again. This is where mods like the Feral Ghouls Expansion Pack come into the picture.

Not only does this mod add several new ghouls to make this enemy type more diverse, but the majority of them hit like a truck and can cause the Sole Survivor their fair share of problems. Players will love these new ghoul models… when they’re not being scared out of their wits, that is.

15 The Deadly Commonwealth Expansion

Downloads: 158,356

The Deadly Commonwealth Expansion by Dark Claw Raven is a major combat overhaul for enemy factions. Raiders, Gunners, Super Mutants, Ghouls, and the Children of Atom are now stronger with new variants, weapons, and bosses.

This mod has also tweaked the AI mechanics to make these enemies more capable and unpredictable in combat. The result is a more hostile, aggressive world, where smarter enemies work in tandem with each other. There are also new encounters, as factions will fight with each other and whoever the player is allied with.

14 Mornedil’s Combat Rework

Downloads: 6,039

The Mornedil’s Combat Rework mod by Mornedil serves to make the game more difficult and provide faster-paced combat. The health of the player and enemies will no longer scale; instead, the damage has seen a bump, and combat is now more tactical. To take down enemies, players must consider crippling them instead by taking out limbs or disarming them.

Of course, this Fallout 4 combat mod also applies these changes to the player. Enemies can severely injure arms, making it impossible to use weapons or take out the legs making it impossible to run. As a result, players must operate carefully and strike decisively to come out of combat intact.

13 Search And Destroy

Downloads: 70,356

The Search And Destroy mod by mm137 does only two things: increase how long enemies will hunt for the player and the range in which they’ll search. These seemingly simple changes make stealth a much more perilous affair and retreating from battle a more complicated tactic.

Where enemies would once get up after a few seconds they’ll now exert every effort to find the player. This also means players can’t simply duck into a side room — those enemies will now search the entire floor, if not the entire building. This also means that if the player starts a fight in one area, nearby enemies are more likely to join in.

12 Better Locational Damage And Optional Gameplay Overhauls

Downloads: 1,378,339

The Better Locational Damage And Optional Gameplay Overhauls mod by Zzyxzz looks to make Fallout 4 combat more realistic. A big change is that headshots are more complicated to achieve. The caliber of the weapon needs to be high enough to penetrate the skull of a Super Mutant. Helmets will also block bullets.

Health no longer scales for anyone, so players will need to make sure to wear armor and play cautiously. Otherwise, they risk suffering a headshot, bleeding, stagger, and more. There have also been adjustments to VATS to provide more targets based on the creature being faced.

11 War Never Changes

Downloads: 45,504

The War Never Changes mod by Nokhal claims to be a complete overhaul of combat and gameplay in Fallout 4. The basis of the mod is to make the endgame more enjoyable by removing bullet sponges and making combat more tactical affairs. The end result is a game that feels more like a traditional FPS than an RPG with FPS elements.

The perks have been tweaked, guns are rebalanced, and enemies are a lot more dangerous. Combat happens quickly and only through strategy, skills, and good gear can a player hope to survive. There have even been tweaks to AI to match in-game lore. For instance, Gunners will fight tactically and use cover while Raiders are brash and more aggressive in this Fallout 4 combat mod.

10 Weapons Of Fate

Downloads: 652,371

Weapons Of Fate is all about bullets. This mod is designed to make bullet trajectory more realistic. Normally, bullets will travel in a straight line and reach their intended target instantaneously. This mod makes it so that bullets have a slight travel time and are affected by weight, diameter, and speed when traveling.

Bullets over long distances will start to dip, and some bullets are slightly slower than others. It’s a subtle difference that makes combat more difficult as players have to account for bullet drop when using sniper rifles or firing, say, a shotgun at a midrange target.

9 Arbitration

Downloads: 486,424

The Arbitration mod makes two important tweaks to the game to make combat more interesting and dangerous. Fall damage has been nudged up so players can no longer hop off of buildings or high places for a quick getaway.

The AI has also seen an overhaul, so enemies behave smarter in combat. They’ll utilize cover more, multiple enemies will try to flank the player, use items like Molotov’s more often, and they’ve seen an uptick in the damage they deal. Players must now approach each fight with a little more tact and planning than they normally would.

8 Plunder

Downloads: 22,268

Plunder was designed with the survival difficulty in mind. Enemy damage values have been adjusted to be more realistic, which means it doesn’t take many shots to kill the player.

Explosions will now produce fire that can burn anything that enters their radius. The mod has also made significant tweaks to hitboxes, so headshots against any human, including the player, will do significant damage if not outright kill them (unless they have a helmet).

7 Deadlier Deathclaws

Downloads: 230,285

Deathclaws are the apex predator of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and Deadlier Deathclaws looks to make that true again. The mod introduces a number of Deathclaw variants that have their own abilities and advantages in combat.

Every Deathclaw has also seen a significant boost in stats. The level cap has also been removed meaning Deathclaws will scale right alongside the player’s level to absurd heights. Perhaps the most brutal change is that some Deathclaws have damage that can now bypass armor, including Power Armor.

6 Immersive Gameplay

Downloads: 194,672

Immersive Gameplay is an ambitious mod that makes various aspects of the game more realistic. Damage is more punishing, with unprotected headshots bringing instant death.

The AI has also been overhauled so that enemies utilize more tactics in combat. Players will find themselves getting ambushed and flanked. Enemies will also utilize cover and will have greater accuracy when shooting at the player.

5 Immersive Fallout Combat

Downloads: 26,239

The Immersive Fallout Combat mod does what many other combat mods do in improving AI behavior in gunfights. But it makes two distinct changes that set it apart from other combat mods; ragdoll physics and knockback explosions.

More specifically, the player is victim to ragdoll physics when hit with a knockback blow or critical hit. This can leave the player incapacitated and unable to respond. Explosions now include knockback damage that can propel the player away from the source of the blast. This can lead to falling off heights or striking objects which results in damage.

4 SKK Combat Stalkers

Downloads: 89,734

The SKK Combat Stalkers mod creates a new spawning rule that can leave players feeling paranoid. This mod will result in the game randomly spawning enemies near the player. This can result in random dangerous encounters.

But while that would already be an issue for survival, the mod takes it one step further. Those enemies will now hide, stalk, and ambush the player. At any given moment, the player could have a group of raiders tracking them from a distance, waiting to ambush them whenever they feel like it. It increases the difficulty of the game significantly, as this can happen at any point, even during brutal boss battles.

3 No Combat Boundaries

Downloads: 123,354

With the No Combat Boundaries mod, players can no longer hide from enemies. In the vanilla game, if the player was losing a battle, they could quickly retreat to a nearby building or door, duck through into another cell, recover, and then go back to fight the enemy.

With this mod, the enemy will now follow the player into the new location. Players can still run away, but ducking indoors or outdoors will no longer give them the respite they’re looking for.

2 True Frags

Downloads: 135,412

The True Frags mod is all about making explosions more realistic and, therefore, more deadly. Explosions resulting from items like Frag Grenades or Mines will also throw shrapnel. This shrapnel can deal incredible damage to the player if they’re too close to the blast.

Explosions will also have a knockback effect that can toss the player and other characters if they’re too close to the blast. This has the potential to launch people off of cliffs or into objects to suffer damage. The game also includes the Impactful mod to weapons that deal knockback-style damage; something enemies can also get ahold of.