Heads up, Fallout 4 and Skyrim players: New updates are incoming, so it’s time to tend to your mods

Bethesda Game Studios is warning owners of Fallout 4 to either log into a save or manually save their mod load order, because a new patch “focusing on general Creations improvements” is incoming.

Bethesda’s got a bit of interesting history when it comes to Fallout 4 patches. 2024’s “next gen” update didn’t really improve anything but did manage to break quite a lot, and the best solution to come out of that whole thing was simply to roll it all back with a “Downgrader Tool.” A year after that, Bethesda did it again, although on a somewhat smaller scale, except that ended up causing a surprise new round of headaches, resulting in much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and of course another update.

All of which is to say that if you’re a Fallout 4 fan, you should probably pay heed to Bethesda’s latest heads-up.

“As a precaution, prior to these updates we encourage players to log into your game save if you haven’t done so in a while or manually save your load order,” the studio wrote (via Polygon). “Once your load order is saved, you’ll be able to re-download your entire Creations list at once when the update is live.”

The response to the post is an interesting mix of gratitude that an 11-year-old game is still being actively supported, concern about the damage that ongoing support might cause, and bemusement/outrage that Bethesda is dicking around with Fallout 4 instead of working on Elder Scrolls 6. My guess is that the studio is capable of doing both, but sometimes you just have to get this stuff off your chest.

In any event, this will hopefully not cause any major headaches, but it’s still good advice. And speaking of The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda also said that it’s working on a new Skyrim update, details of which will be revealed later. You might as well take that as a warning to back up your Skyrim saves too: Bethesda’s recording on breaking mods in its fantasy RPG series is pretty much in line with its post-nuclear one.