Advanced Needs 76
a Flashy(JoeR) mod

The next iteration of Advanced Needs comes to PC users and the Nexus with all of the same kinds of controls you are accustomed to, plus adding entirely new functions that elevate Advanced Needs to the next level!

Its very complicated to try to explain every single thing AN76 does, but I am going to try my best. Existing AN2 users will feel right at home though.

Please remember to use Control-F to search this page for any information that you may need prior to asking a question. It will save you time and save me frustration at answering the same questions, over and over again.

Thank you for voting AN76 as Mod of the Month for March 2022!

What is Advanced Needs 76?

An76 is a customizable survival mode that completely replaces and does SO much more than Fallout 4's base survival mode. It doesn't rely on a single aspect of Bethesda's HC_Manager script. It allows you to create your own survival mode within Very Easy through Very Hard game modes. An76 will NOT work in base game survival mode, unlike AN2 which allowed such.

An76 allows you to tailor your hunger, thirst and fatigue accumulation. It allows you to specify that the air under certain conditions is toxic, requiring the use of a gasmask. It allows you to fish, to chop trees, the scavenge cars for scrap. It allows you to require brushing your teeth, bathing and going to the bathroom. It makes eating dangerous and RADS even more deadly. Combat, as well as many other factor, like swimming, become a cautionary tale about the perils of diseases. And An76 allows you to place a CAMP anywhere, be it in the Commonwealth, Far Harbor, Nuka World or any mod added worldspaces, just like in Fallout76! All of this and so much more. It includes revamped Stealth Takedowns. It includes revamped Disguises. It includes the ability to craft your own ballistic ammo. It includes COFFEE!!!

Really, it does so many things that it would take a long time to write it all down, seriously. But the MCM as well as the holotape as VERY explanatory as to what each system does and how to use it. Please remember to ENDORSE and VOTE for the mod if you like it! Thanks in advance!

Note: Commonwealth Fishing was originally ripped from this mod. It is inferior in comparison and lacks DLC linking the way AN76 does. It is HIGHLY recommended that you remove Commonwealth Fishing and use the fishing system included in AN76 instead.



I'm an Advanced Needs 2 user. Can I just upgrade overtop of it?

No. AN76 is a top-down rewrite of AN2. Nothing is the same and it would brick your save. You will need to start a new game, unfortunately. But, on the upside, the hundreds of people already enjoying AN76 will tell you it is MORE than worth it.

How do I install and activate this mod?

Use your mod manager of choice to install it. Once installed and you load up your NON-survival mode game, every single aspect of this mod is disabled. You must use the MCM or the holotape (your choice which to use) in order to activate the various subsystems of the mod. Absolutely NOTHING is running by default.

It is best to start this on a new game, however, as this allows the mod to place items into the game world for your use without needing to jump around to refresh cells. Specifically, a gasmask is placed in the vault control room of Vault 111 right beside the pipboy, so you have a gasmask at game start.

NOTE: As an important note and to reiterate, AN76 will not run while in survival mode. You need to be in Very Easy -> Very Hard mode, whichever one you want. The mod itself, like Advanced Needs 2 before it, was tailored to be used while in Very Hard mode, but again, you don't have to necessarily do that.

Are you editing cells?

There is one cell edit, in order to place a new magazine into the game, at the junkie's shack just behind Sanctuary Hills. The gasmask, for example, is placed by scripting, so no edits exist for that interior cell. For POIRJ09, it is a simple AddItem to the cell and precombines and previs remain intact.

What about other form overrides?

There are some. I had to edit a few things in order to facilitate the feature-sets that I wanted to include in this mod. One such is body part data, as I incorporated a headshot system into the mod. Also, base game ammo projectiles were overridden to add ballistic drop and tracer rounds to them. Some misc items were altered to add LEAD as a scrapping component, to more align them to Fallout 76's setup for the same items.

Is this as resource intensive as Advanced Needs 2?

Not at all. In fact, this mod was initially made for my own personal use on Xbox Series X. Its a complete, top-down rewrite of Advanced Needs, specifically coded to be as light-weight as possible for use on a console.

What if I try it out and don't like it and wish to remove it?

Start a new game then. You cannot rip a script mod out of a save without introducing corruption. Yes, yes, you can use ReSaver, but its still going to make a mess of your save in the end anyways, so best to just start a new game without the mod installed. But, my bet is, if you are a survival mode player and you install this, you aren't going to want to remove it anyways.

Okay. So I installed it and started the subsystems up. Now what?

Head to a settlement and enter Settlement Build Mode. You should see an AN76 menu there now, full of crafting items. The first thing you're going to want to do is build yourself an AN76 Crafting Station. In this, you will craft all of your tools and healing items, as well as all of the other things the mod gives you access to. From there, play as you normally do. Monitor and take care of your needs. Avoid disease. Find remedies for diseases if you catch them.

Aren't you going to tell us more about what to do?

Not really. You've obviously played a survival mode game before and know what to do. So long as you have that crafting station, you will be able to manage your needs and build the tools you need to survive. Go milk a cow and get some milk that will remove some Rads. Eat and drink items directly from the world without needing to pick them up and access your pipboy to consume them. Sleep on a couch if you want. There's so many things the mod allows you to do and again, the MCM and holotape are detailed enough that you wont feel like you're missing information.

Is this mod difficult? Like in a punishing kind of way?

It can be quite lethal, yes. But again, that depends on how you configure it too, on top of how reckless you are about playing. But if you think about it like a person fresh to a post-nuclear world and play it in that kind of thoughtful way, you will find it very manageable. But if you think you can just run around doing whatever you would normally do, no no, you will find it could bite you in the ass. Hard.

Does this mod interface with other mods?

Natively, it interfaces with Boston Natural Surroundings, if you have it installed, for the purposes of giving you MORE trees to chop down (inject its trees into the chopping system via the MCM's tools menu). There are patch mods for other tree systems that you can install. There is a patch for Immersive Animation Framework. The mod auto-detects CWSS' toilets and showers for the purposes of maintaining your hygiene (which is to say, no patching required).  It will also natively interface with Heather Casdin, so that her detoxifying tea will remove food poisoning. The menstrual cycle, if used, will also link to Family Planning Enhanced so that it is pregnancy state aware.

No, but really... can you at least list out the systems in this mod?

Okay... since you asked.

• Primary Needs System - eating, drinking, sleeping.
• Hygiene System - manage your dental, bathing and bathroom needs.
• Disease System - provides many many ways for you to get ill and the means to treat said illnesses.
• Health System - handles things like food poisoning, radiation poisoning, how you heal when you sleep, use stimpaks, etc.
• Menstrual Cycle - female characters can now have to deal with a 28 menstrual cycle if you choose to enable it.
• Wound System - you can suffer bleeding wounds that require bandaging or medical attention.
• Carry Weight System - handles how much you can carry, if ammo has weight, if it hurts your bones when you carry too much.
• Gasmask System - manages whether or not you need to wear protective gear in bad weather.
• Farming System - allows the player to plant and tend their own crops without needing settlers.
• Fishing System - a highly upgraded version of Commonwealth Fishing, allowing you to, well, catch fish for food.
• Spoilage System - provides the means to degrade and spoil your carried food items. Allows converting spoiled items to fertilizer.
• Water Bottle System - fill them at all water sources. One at a time or all in one shot. Decide if you get an empty bottle back when drinking.
• World Consumption - allow or disallow eating/drinking directly from the floor rather than picking things up first.
• Brahmin Milking - milk cows, for milk. Milk is good. Removes Rads.
• Tree Chopping - pretty self explanatory. Chop trees for wood.
• Couch Sleeping - again, self explanatory. Sleep on couches.
• Car Scavenging - take a wrench and gut old cars for scrap.
• Coffee Machine - brew coffee to help keep you awake.
• Stealth Takedowns - Sneak up and kill baddies from behind when you have Mr Sandman 1 and Sneak 1 perks.
• Disguises - craft disguises so you can walk among the enemy without aggroing them.
• Ammo Crafting - self explanatory.
• Settler Assistance - taken from Crime and Punishment, allows you to interact with random settler-type NPCs and offer assistance to them.
• Headshot System - hardcoded, cannot be altered - makes headshots LETHAL.
• Tracer System - makes ballistics have weight (bullet drop) and have tracers rounds. Hardcoded, cannot be altered.
• CAMP - two modes, simple camping and CAMP, ala Fallout76, where you build a camp as if it was a settlement.
• MREs - AN2's prepackaged meal system returns in AN76 so that you can convert meat and produce into craftable items to make MREs.
  

You also have access to controls governing cell reset, legendary spawn rate, incoming and outgoing damage multipliers, and so forth, same as in AN2. As a note, all diseases and afflictions can be cured with items craftable in the AN76 Crafting Station OR by visiting a doctor. Seriously, you don't want to die from dysentery. This isn't the Oregon Trail.

Here's a 20 minute demo I shot of vault exit and starting to use the mod. Its got no voiceover, but I think it highlights a few items from the list above well enough that you will get the idea on how to do things.


And here is a small 7 minute video highlighting the purposes of the composting bin as well as the Camp STASH receiver module.


Thanks for the list. I see some function overlap with CaP and GFH. Anything I should know?

Yes. Stealth Takedowns have been completely recoded from the top-down and are quicker to respond and play out. I would recommend you disable that function within Crime and Punishment and use this one instead. This mod also adds disguises, which are another recode, completely replacing the versions that have come before. Unlike in CAP and GFH where having your cover blown would stop you from using ANY disguise for 24 hours, this version will only block the faction that discovered you. So if your raider cover is blown, you can still use Gunners and CoA. So it's recommended to not use the older disguise lockers. The disguises from AN76 will work with Gun For Hire's jobs that require a disguise, so you will be all good.

I see some features from Advanced Needs 2 didn't make the cut. Are any of them coming back?

Yep. I'm currently working on re-adding the menstrual cycle for female characters and am also top-down redoing Ghoulification, using xVaSynth to voice all of the lines. No timeframe for when this will be completed, but these two features alone will be coming back sooner than later.

Anything else?

Nope. I'm done now. Really though, its not so complicated to use, only to explain. Its VERY intuitive and easy to use once you dig into it.

Umm... why is the mod name not AdvancedNeeds76.esp or something?

Because it was originally made by me, for me, on Xbox. And I called it PersonalEssentials, because for me, it was personal AND essential, for my enjoyment of the game. And once deciding to make it the next Advanced Needs, I didn't want to backtrack into all of the code and everything else, on top of not wanting to mess with people's save games, and decided to leave the ESP name as it was. PIE, as it was known, is still AN76, rest assured, though you will never see it called PIE by me any more.

Wait! Can I use my favorite survival mode mods with this?

Well, aside from the fact that I mentioned this mod cannot be used in Survival Mode AND it doesn't use HC_Manager at all, the answer is kind of self-answering at this point. Which is to say, no, you cannot. An76 will not see them and they will not see An76. And yes, that means no widgets. An76 relies upon the usual icons and auditory cues instead. So pay attention to yourself. Listen to your stomach, feel the dryness in your throat or the yawn escaping your lungs. Be at one with yourself.

And above all, enjoy the best iteration of Advanced Needs available for the game. :)

FAQ Section:

1) Can I use 'x' weather mod with your gasmask system?

The gasmask system only supports the base game weathers. That said, I know there were folks who made patches to accommodate weather mods and other gasmask models, so it is possible. I don't use other weather mods though, so won't be making such patches myself.

2) When I try to chop trees, none are found or the ones that are don't give me any wood.

These are two separate issues, but let me address them because they are important to know. The game uses precombines, as we all know. What this does is reduce the amount of memory needed to display models in the gameworld. The downside to this is that it removes their world refs as well, so for example, when trying to find trees to cut down, the quest can't fill an alias with certain trees in the precombine as they have no actual world reference to grab on to. As for the issue of having trees that do get selected but give no wood, this is a function of what is called a STATIC COLLECTION or SCOL. Its the means by which a mod author (or BGS themselves) can cluster certain static items together and then drag that reference into the cell editor. The problem with SCOLs is two-fold. One, there is no way to separate between a singular tree static mesh and a clustered SCOL when running the tree-finder. It will find them all, since technically, they are both considered Statics. More importantly, two, when you make an SCOL, you alter the "hitbox" for the mesh and in this case, for trees, that hitbox no longer is able to respond to the hatchet hitting it. Best identifier I personally found was if there highlighted tree is clustered right next, and I mean almost touching, another tree, odds are its an SCOL and wont give wood, so I will find LONE trees. Also of note... you cannot chop trees in settlements, since you know, you can scrap them already.

3) Some cars don't allow me to scavenge them for parts.

Same as above. This can be related to precombines or SCOLs. But it could also be the kind of vehicle you are trying to scrap too. If the car is blown up or has been gutted out already, you can't scrap it. If you look in the interior of the car and see no seats, no steering wheel, nothing, this is a gutted car and it can't be scrapped. For others, precombine or SCOL issue for sure. Limitation of the game engine, nothing I can do about it. Also, you can't scrap cars in settlements since you can already do so via Workshop Mode.

Of note, in order to scrap cars, for those looking for help there, you need to have the first Scrapper perk AND craft a Scavver's Wrench at the AN76 Crafting Station before you will be able to scavenge from vehicles.

4) I can't stealth kill anyone. I don't see the option.

Make sure you have Mister Sandman perk and Sneak perk, both level 1 are required. Then crouch, sneak up behind a human, non-feral ghoul or a synth and you will be able to execute them. The perks are key to being able to do this. Distance to the NPC can also be a factor, as can your own detection meter.

5) I can't cure immunodeficiency! Help!

That's right, you can't cure it. It is a timed function based on various factors like your hygiene or the chemicals you are putting into your body. Be careful of what you do and ease off the radaway ~ go see a doctor instead, it will go away on it's own in due time.

6) But I really enjoyed 'x' feature from AN2. Will it ever come back?

Odds are likely not. I removed a LOT of the bloat when I coded this for Xbox, and I removed a lot of F4SE dependant things, as well as anything that allowed it to work alongside survival mode, which really caused a LOT of script bloat, having that in AN2. Once I trimmed the fat, so to speak, I found the mod to be more responsive and lightweight. And to be honest, the things that didn't carry over were hardly ever used (at least to my knowledge), so not that big of a priority to re-add to this new iteration. I might take consideration on a case by case basis, but I wouldn't hold out for me to over complicate this mod again, like An2 was.

7) I can't find the MRE perk magazine in the shack mentioned. Help!

It was found via discord users, that sometimes Havok would settle the magazine not in the placed location (on a mattress), but that it would fall through the shack and land on the ground underneath it. Try looking under the shack, directly below the mattress the dead junkie is laying on.

8) I can't find the Food Poisoning cure. Help!

You don't find it. You have to find the person who has it and is willing to sell it to you. I hear someone close to your vault exit location might possibly be willing to let you have it. For a price. (Im tired of telling people the same thing over and over again in the support thread - talk to Connie Abernathy).

9) Any widgets for the needs stuff?

No, sadly. I don't code C++ nor AS3 so don't know how to make widgets for the needs stuff. Instead, as noted elsewhere, I fall back on the icons in the bottom right of the screen and also have auditory cues for when a need kicks in, like coughing when weather turns bad and you need a gasmask, or a growling tummy when hungry, clearing a dry throat when thirsty or yawning when tired. Those kinds of things. And those sounds play even when you are in Workshop Mode, so you can stop building and take care of your need without it building too high. But if someone with the skills wanted to make widgets like the survival mode widgets mod has, linked to my survival scripting instead of HC_Manager (I don't use that at all here), I'd happily work with that person to make it happen.

10) I use 'x' mod that adds new food and drink items. Will it work with AN76?

Absolutely, provided the mod author of said mod(s) set up the consumables with the proper keywords. If said mod(s) worked with survival mode, it(they) will work here. And yes, that includes the most excellent Wasteland Imports.

11) Can I add my own favorite gasmask to the particulate intake system?

Of course. All you need to do is create a patch mod between your gasmask mod and AN76 and then copy the ARMOR form for the gasmask into that new patch file. In that new ARMOR override form, apply a new keyword to it of "Flashy_Keyword_IsGasmaskArmor". Once added, save your new patch mod and activate it in your load order.

12) How do I milk Brahmins?

Crouch down next one and you will see the option to milk it, provided you have enabled the option. This will not work on caravan or provisioner cows, only on settlement ones. I hear the Abernathy's cow gives some good early game rad-reducing milk.

13) I've turned on ammo weight, but my ammo still shows as weighing nothing and my carried weight doesn't change. Whats up?

Ammo's weight, the value each round weighs, is disabled by the game engine when you aren't in survival mode and there is no way to turn it on otherwise. So when you enable ammo weight in this mod, it will still look as though it weighs nothing; except it does. The mod can't make ammo have weight and use your carry weight limit. What it does instead is poll your carried base game and DLC ammo and tally up their actual weights as shown in the Creation Kit and then subtract from your Max Carry Weight Limit instead. So while it may not seem like it has any weight when looking in the pipboy, it actually does, just because the more you carry, the less stuff you can actually carry and that change in carry weight limit is dynamic. As a note, I looked into adding Combined Arms ammo to the system, but Nova made his ammo all have a 0.00 weight, so they wouldn't affect the system anyways, so no need to worry about it.

14) How do I heal afflictions and diseases?

Well, radiation sickness can be cured ONLY by taking Radaway or visiting a doctor and using the CURE RADS option. Going to a doctor and using the HEAL ME option will cure everything else, food poisoning included, though you can also take its dedicated cure item to resolve it. Antibiotics will cure every disease aside from Bleeding Wounds which require Sterile Bandages. But again, ALL of these can be cured at a doctor too, be it a named doctor or a settler doctor in one of your settlements. So long as you have the CURE RADS or HEAL ME option available, you can resolve your ailments.

15) Consuming from the world is crashing my game.

Some people have noted this and I have never been able to replicate it. The function in the mod has been compared to Consume Without Pickup and there is no function difference between the two. Those same folks report that mod works without crashing, so perhaps disable the feature in AN76 and use that mod instead. Again, I have compared the scripting in the two and they are identical, so the only thing I can assume is that AN76 is just too feature rich for some people's rigs, as again, Ive never been able to replicate the issue, therefore there is nothing that needs to be fixed.

16) Food Healing Blocker doesn't work.

Food healing blocker will ONLY block healing when you are hungry. Like survival mode, if you are sated (full), food items will heal AND their additional effects will affect you. This was intentional, to allow users to be able to use food for buffs, like removing rads or allowing for extra carry weight. But again, ONLY when you are not currently suffering hunger debuffs.

17) Fast Travel Blocking Stops Vertibirds From Working.

This is sadly a limitation of the papyrus commands for blocking fast travel. Survival Mode, using the actual game engine itself and being coded to do so, will allow Vertibird fast travel. Unfortunately, the papyrus variant of this is an all or nothing affair. Be aware of this limitation, as it is not a bug in the mod but more a thing that cannot be altered or put into a piece-meal kind of way. If you need Vertibirds for a quest or for fast travel, you will need to disable the blocker in AN76 first.

CREDITS:

Everything about the mod itself all done by Flashy(JoeR), with the exceptions of:

Woodcutter's Hatchet, kindly provided by Mike Moore.
Fishing casting/reeling animation by Mixamo and converted to FO4 Rig by Seebo and Kinggath, re-done for AnimObjects by Flashy(JoeR).
The various patches and addons credited to: Nosimo, 77Wanderer, FreakUK, MrZombieBrain and Lucas.