I have been using
Vandr's HD Creatures for a little while now. It is a simple texture replacer that adds HD textures for most of the monsters in the wasteland. I have not seen any real performance impact, but your mileage may vary depending on your system.
One thing I really like is that it does not truly change the appearance of the monsters. It just improves the quality. I have recently tried out a few other HD texture replacers like NMC's Texture pack, which dramatically altered how some things looked, changing their colors, the materials they are made of (like desks going from being metal to wood), and so on. I didn't like that one bit, so I deleted them.
The one other high def texture replacer I did keep is
UHQ Terrain Overhaul. It replaces the ground textures and meshes, improving things like rocks, streets, and so on, as well as the dirt itself. So far I am liking it, though I am not completely sold yet.
It comes one different levels of quality, so you can use a lower definition version if you have a slower system. I have not seen any reduction in framerate using the highest version on my machine. However, the load times when I change from indoor to outdoor cells, or when I fast travel, are about three times longer. But that is not a deal-breaker for me.
Finally, I have also been using
Traits Project, which has been outstanding. It brings back the old traits from the earlier Fallout games, and New Vegas. You can pick two of them during the tutorial, just like the other games. What I really like is that if you have an already established character long out of the vault, the first time you start them you will get the prompt to add the traits. So it works for brand new characters and for old, pre-existing ones. That was very thoughtful.
I have seen some other Trait mods that simply add the traits as regular perks you pick when you level up. But I don't like those. It does not make much sense taking them, since the traits are balanced so that while they give you one bonus, you also receive a penalty to make up for it. This is because they are meant to be freebies you can take when you make your character, not rewards for experience. For example, why take Four Eyes as a regular perk, when you could just take the Intense Training perk and get a +1 to Perception with no drawbacks?
This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jul 13 2015, 02:37 AM