Mods are attachments for your weapons and armor that boost stats and allow for a wide range of customization.
You craft mods by looking at the armor or weapon you’re trying to modify while on a workbench. While on the Workbench menu, look at the bottom of the screen and press the button marked “Modify” to get to the Mod Crafting menu.
Mods are broken down into categories, most of which have a slew of mods within them. If you want to know more about each of these categories, read further into this chapter to get a breakdown of each one. You can select a category, then look through each of the mods, read their descriptions, and see how each mod will change your current weapon or piece of armor.
Finding the proper menu isn’t enough to craft a mod, however; you also need to have the proper components, which are shown on the right side of the screen (for more information about components check out the “Crafting” chapter). Once you have the parts necessary you can create your mod of choice with the touch of a button.
A weapon can only have one mod from each mod category equipped at once. If you decide to equip a new mod in a category you already have a mod equipped from, the previous mod will be unequipped and destroyed as the new one takes its place. Be sure to consider your options when looking through your mod options so you don’t waste precious components.
More mods can be unlocked by obtaining Plans from Events, Daily Quests, and Workshop Defenses. You may also find them while scavenging bodies and containers across Appalachia.
Weapons Mods
Early on in the game you’ll find that just about any weapon in your inventory will suit your needs, but if you’re hoping to survive some of the challenges you’ll face in the game’s later stages you’re going to need mods. Mods offer you the ability to change and rework just about everything about a weapon (depending on the weapon), allowing you to turn basic melee weapons into tactical damage dealers, and most guns into wildly varied damage dealers.
Gun Mods
Guns in their base forms typically lack the punch and utility of a fully modded gun. From automatic Barrels to long-range sniper Sights, mods have the potential to completely rework the way you think about a weapon and how you use it.
Receivers
Receivers are the damage-enhancing part of any weapon (called a Capacitor on most Energy Guns and a Tank on a Flamer). There is a wide variety of Receiver Mods that offer small tweaks and benefits on top of a damage increase—though, some forego a damage increase for other benefits, like an increased critical hit chance. If you want your weapon to hit harder, this is where you should look first.
Barrels
Barrels (called a Rubber Ball on the Paddle Ball, a Canister on a Broadsider, and a Launcher on a Fat Man) offer some of the most dramatic changes a gun can have. You won’t have access to many automatic weapons without first attaching an Automatic Barrel; likewise, you won’t find a lot of sniper rifles without a Sniper Barrel. Barrels should be considered the foundation of your weapon and should be first on your list when you’re thinking about making a change to any gun in your inventory.
It should be noted that a Gamma Gun comes with Dishes instead of Barrels, but the basic usage is still the same.
Grips and Stocks
Grips and Stocks stabilize a weapon and help further determine if it’s a close-range or long-range weapon. Grips make for more accurate hipfiring, which is perfect for SMGs and Shotguns, while Stocks convert any weapon they’re on into a Rifle, perfect for mid- to long-range combat.
Magazines
Magazines affect everything related to reloading, from reload speed to the amount of bullets you can fire before having to switch mags. If you’ve got a powerhouse of a weapon with a small magazine and brutal reload time, try putting on a Magazine with more rounds. If you’ve got a weapon with plenty of rounds, but you could watch yourself age while waiting to reload, try adding a Magazine mod with a faster reload speed.
Sights
While Sights need very little in the way of explanation, they are the mods that offer some of the most flexibility in the way you build your weapons. From standard, snappy Reflex Sights for close- to mid-range engagements to vision-enhancing Holographic Sights, the way you tackle an encounter is largely going to be influenced by what Sight you have equipped. If you’re looking to turn a mid-range weapon into a sniper rifle, slap on a 4x or 8x Scope.
Muzzles
Bayonets, Suppressors, Compensators: if it goes on the end of a gun, it can rightly be called a Muzzle. Aside from that, you’ll find little in common with each Muzzle mod you find. Bayonets increase melee damage with the weapon it’s attached to, while Compensators, Muzzle Breaks, and Suppressors reduce recoil at the cost of firing range. Suppressors do, however, have the added benefit of quieting your shots, making it harder for enemies to detect you.
Paint Mods
These mods aren’t going to modify or improve your weapon stats in any way, but they offer a personal touch that can really make a weapon feel like yours and yours alone.
Melee Mods
While not categorized in the same fashion as Gun Mods, Melee Mods do offer dramatic changes to the weapons they are attached to. Want an extra claw on your Deathclaw Gauntlet? An electrified Security Baton? What about a Pitchfork with fire jets? While you won’t find the level of customization here that you’ll find in Gun Mods, you’ll still get more options for radically reworking your melee weapons in ways that Gun Mods can’t hope to achieve.
Material Mods
Found as a Paint Mod, these mods will change the material a melee weapon is made up of to increase its damage. Unfortunately, the only melee weapons that allow for this kind of modification are the Rolling Pin and the Baseball Bat, both of which can be changed to an aluminum material. If you’re planning on using either of those weapons, be sure not to leave without coating them in an aluminum Material Mod first.
Upgrade Mods
As we mentioned earlier, you’re not going to get the same level of customization with a melee weapon as you would a gun, but you also won’t find singular mods that dramatically change a weapon’s appearance and damage output like you will with Upgrade Mods. Some Upgrade Mods merely boost a melee weapon’s damage output, but others change the damage type entirely. It’s not uncommon to add Energy damage, a bleeding debuff, or armor penetration to a melee weapon with certain mods, though the amount of options you have varies from weapon to weapon.
Armor Mods
Armor Mods don’t necessarily offer the same level of customization as Weapon Mods, but they are perfect complements to any play style. You can up your resistances to different types of damage, increase your encumbrance capacity, or even increase your sneaking ability. While Weapon Mods affect how you take on each encounter, Armor Mods reinforce those tactics in beneficial ways that simply can’t be ignored.
Individual pieces of armor tend to have far fewer modding options than full sets (Leather or Metal Armor, for example). You’ll want to keep that in mind before sinking precious components into pieces of armor that don’t have a set. That’s not to say that modding non-set armor is a mistake, but it’s something you should do after first considering your options.
Material Mods
The vast majority of Material Mods improve your resistances to different types of damage, though some offer other buffs, like the improved stealth buff found in Shadowed Mods.
Ballistic Weave Mods
Lightweight armor doesn’t have the same defense potential as most other sets you’ll find, which is why Ballistic Weave Mods should always be considered. They are your main method of improving defense on otherwise low-defense armor. That’s not to say every piece of thin armor should have a Ballistic Weave Mod on it. But if you’re not planning on doing a lot of evading, you should make a point to bulk up your defenses a little bit—you’ll be glad you did.
Miscellaneous Mods
For everything that isn’t a Material Mod or Ballistic Weave Mod, Miscellaneous Mods offer a wide array buffs and bonuses not found in their contemporaries. Increased carrying capacity, faster sprinting, longer chem durations: if you’re looking to make a truly specialized set of armor, Miscellaneous Mods are going to be your number one go-to.
Headlamps
Mining helmets can have a Headlamp attached to them as a replacement for the normal Pip-Boy flashlight. These lights have a more focused beam, which is brighter than the Pip-Boy, but lights up less of the environment.
Power Armor Mods
Power Armor Mods aren’t dramatically different from Armor Mods, but where you create them is. While Armor Workbenches can be found with relative ease, if you don’t have the Plans necessary to build a Power Armor Station in your C.A.M.P., you can go a long time without ever finding one.
Be sure to use the Atlas section of this guide to find Power Armor Stations around West Virginia with ease.
Base Mods
Base Mods provide the bulk of the defensive improvements you’ll find in Power Armor Mods. If you’re hoping to take on the hardest challenges the game has to offer, you’re going to need to wear Power Armor. Even with a full set of the best armor available to you, you’ll still find plenty of challenges that require more defense than your Power Armor’s base stats can provide. Base Mods will allow you to up that defense beyond base values to give you armor that can handle whatever Appalachia throws at you.
Miscellaneous Mods
In a similar fashion to Armor Mods, Miscellaneous Mods provide a slew of benefits beyond improvements to defense. Adding a Miscellaneous Mod to your arms, for instance, can potentially provide increased melee damage, while adding a mod to your Power Armor’s legs can increase sprint speed or carrying capacity.
Headlamps
Like mining helmets, you can strap a Headlamp onto any Power Armor helmet in the game. Like Headlamps on a mining helmet, the light shines brighter but is much more focused, which causes it to brighten less of the room than your Pip-Boy would.