Fly the Union Jack, put some beans on toast, and boil some water for a nice drink – Fallout: London is finally here. The ambitious, long-awaited Fallout 4 mod is now available to download for free for PC players. However, diving into the British wasteland isn’t as uncomplicated as booting up a recent video game. Depending on your platform, Fallout 4 may require a bit of tinkering before it’s ready for Fallout London. Fear not, though, as this guide will aid you keep placid, carry on, and install Fallout: London on your PC.
What you need to play Fallout: London
To play Fallout: London, you must own Fallout 4 and all DLC packs. This is easily obtained by purchasing Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition, which is the complete package. If you already own Fallout 4 and one or two DLC packs, you will need to purchase what you are missing. Here is a list of everything you need to own:
- Fallout 4
- Machine
- Far Port
- Nuka’s World
- Wasteland Workshop
- Equipment Workshop
- Vault-Tec Workshop
If you want, you can utilize a high-resolution texture pack (available for free), but it is not required.
You will also need downgrade Fallout 4 to make it compatible with Fallout: London (more on that later in the guide). In addition to all that, you’ll need the Fallout: London mod itself. It’s available for download from GOG, via the GOG Galaxy launcher. Create a GOG account if you don’t already have one, and add the free mod to your account using the green button on Fallout: London Store PageThen download GOG Galaxy, find Fallout: London in your library and download it.
Steam vs GOG
Fallout 4 on PC is available on both Couple AND GOGFallout: London can be played using both versions (unfortunately, the Epic Games Store version is incompatible), but if you’re buying Fallout 4 on PC for the first time specifically to play Fallout: London, we recommend purchasing from GOG.
Why? Because the installation process is much, much easier. The FOLON team, the creators of Fallout: London, have a partnership with GOG. Using GOG Galaxy platform, you will be able to simply download Fallout 4: GOTY Edition and then install Fallout: London. Then you can simply launch the game and play.
If you own Fallout 4 on Steam, things are a bit more complicated. You may have read about how Fallout 4’s recent “next-gen” update caused compatibility issues with a number of mods. Fallout: London was affected by this (hence the delayed release date), so it requires a previous “last-gen” version of the game to work. While GOG Galaxy only lets you download this older version to ensure compatibility with mods, Steam automatically downloads the “next-gen” version of Fallout 4. As such, you’ll need to force Steam to download the older version of Fallout 4 in order to play Fallout: London.
How to Install Fallout: London on Steam
To install Fallout: London using the Steam version of Fallout 4, you will need to access the elderly version 1.10.163.0 of Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition. The easiest way is to utilize Team FOLON’s downgrading tool, which is available on Nexus ModsIf this is your first time modding a PC game, this will probably be your best option.
Once downloaded, run the Fallout London Downgrader .exe application. This will open a window that will ask you to select an installation path. Click the folder icon on the right side of the window and browse to where Fallout 4 is installed (by default it is “C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonFallout 4”).
The next window will ask you to log in to your Steam account. This will allow the downgrading tool to access the older Fallout 4 files and install them on your system. Enter your username and password, then follow the instructions to authorize your login through Steam Guard. If you are not comfortable logging into your Steam account with the tool, you can manually downgrade Fallout 4. You can find instructions on how to do this below in this section.
Once you have logged into your Steam account, the downgrading tool will begin the process of installing the correct version of Fallout 4. This will take a long time, so be patient. Once the process is complete, press “finish” to exit the tool.
With your freshly demoted Fallout 4 ready to go, you now need to install Fallout: London. Launch GOG Galaxy, find Fallout: London in your library, and download the mod. (Yes, even if you have Fallout 4 on Steam, you’ll need to utilize GOG to play Fallout: London.) Once downloaded, you can hit “play” to launch the installer. Your system should automatically detect your Steam install folder, but double-check it before hitting the install button (again, the default is “C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonFallout 4”).
Once the installation process is complete, you will be able to launch Fallout: London from GOG Galaxy. The game will launch directly to the special Fallout: London main menu and will function as a standalone game.
Two final things to note: you can’t change the graphics settings from the Fallout: London main menu, and the game will likely launch at a low resolution. To adjust your settings, launch Fallout 4 on Steam and utilize the “Options” menu in the pre-game launcher.
You should also disable Cloud Saves for Fallout 4 in Steam to avoid any issues. On the Fallout 4 Library page, click the gear button and go to the Properties menu. On the General tab, disable Steam Cloud.
How to Manually Downgrade Fallout 4 on Steam
If for some reason you don’t want to utilize the downgrader, you can manually download an older version of Fallout 4 using the Steam command console. To start, we recommend deleting everything from the Fallout 4 installation folder (which is located by default in “C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonFallout 4”), and then following these steps:
Type steam://open/console into your web browser’s address bar. This will open the Steam console tab.
Now you need to download each part of the “last generation” version of Fallout 4 separately. There are 15 sections in total. Entering the following codes will initiate the download of each section:
download_depot 377160 377161 7497069378349273908
download_depot 377160 377163 5819088023757897745
- For executable file utilize:
download_depot 377160 377162 5847529232406005096
- For the English version utilize:
download_depot 377160 377164 2178106366609958945
download_depot 377160 540810 1558929737289295473
download_depot 377160 435870 1691678129192680960
- For Automatron English language pack utilize:
download_depot 377160 435871 5106118861901111234
- For utilize in Wasteland Workshop:
download_depot 377160 435880 1255562923187931216
download_depot 377160 435881 1207717296920736193
- Applying the English Language Pack to Far Harbor:
download_depot 377160 435882 8482181819175811242
- For utilize in the Contraptions Workshop:
download_depot 377160 480630 5527412439359349504
- For utilize in the Vault-Tec workshop:
download_depot 377160 480631 6588493486198824788
- For the Vault-Tec Workshop English Language Pack utilize:
download_depot 377160 393885 5000262035721758737
download_depot 377160 490650 4873048792354485093
- For the Nuka World English language pack utilize:
download_depot 377160 393895 7677765994120765493
The files will be downloaded to your Steam Library folder (which by default is located at “C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappscontentapp_377160”). You should now be able to find them in that folder, with each section in its own “depot” folder.
Create a recent ephemeral folder and move the contents of all downloaded folders into this recent folder. If you are asked to delete or replace files, always choose “replace”. The goal is to create one folder full of files, not a collection of depot folders. This will create a “downgraded” version of Fallout 4.
Move the entire contents of this recent folder to your Fallout 4 installation folder (which by default is located at “C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonFallout 4”). Make sure this folder is completely empty before adding recent files.
To prevent Fallout 4 from automatically updating via Steam, you need to deactivate the application manifest file. In the steamapps folder (by default “C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamapps”) you will find a file called “appmanifest_377160”. Right-click on the file and select properties, then check the “Read only” box at the bottom of the window. Press Apply, then close the window.
Download Fallout: London using GOG (this will require a GOG account and the GOG Galaxy launcher). If you don’t want to utilize GOG, you can also manually install Fallout: London. This is only recommended for advanced users, and full instructions can be found on the Fallout: London Website.
Launch Fallout: London in GOG Galaxy and follow the instructions to start playing.
After following these instructions, you should be able to play Fallout: London via Steam or GOG. And if this is your first experience with modding, we hope we helped make the process easier for you. Enjoy Fallout: London and remember to take a break.
Matt Purslow is a senior features editor at IGN.
