Pack your bags, mods. We have climbed to the peak, to the summit, to the outer limits. The mods so far have only been the prelude to this, the culmination of an art form: Sweet6Shooter's Auto Drop for Fallout: New Vegas (opens in a new tab) weighs in at about 4 kilobytes, which I think will save me enough time to write the next great American novel.

You've probably spent hours and hours on Gamebryo, the weird and unstable engine Bethesda has been making since The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Specifically, it's incredibly easy to swing a crosshair over burned books, rusted iron swords, and other ephemeral junk.

It's not much of a problem until you somehow find yourself accumulating 20 kilogram Ellenmeyer flasks and cheese wheels. It's boring, disturbing, and makes you feel more like the wandering Collier brothers (open in new tab) than the protagonists of a sprawling RPG. But the auto-drop solves that (at least in New Vegas). As if the spirit suddenly became brilliant, it forces you to drop anything your character has marked as junk the moment you pick it up.

It's easy to install and set up, but for it to work properly you need to install New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE) (opens in new tab), JIP LN NVSE Plugin (opens in new tab), JohnnyGuitar (opens in new tab) There is a lot to do. This all sounds like a lot of work, but it is simply a matter of dumping the relevant files into the appropriate directories in your New Vegas installation (or even simpler if you install using Mod Organizer 2 (opens in new tab), etc.). Once that is done, toss the Auto Drop .esp and the accompanying configuration folder into New Vegas' Data Files directory and you are ready to go.

This configuration folder contains a single .ini file that allows you to choose which items are considered "junk" or not. There are 78 objects preloaded, including a fire book, a dog bowl, an ashtray, a chess board, etc., and you can change them as you wish. Personally, I would suggest adding a caravan card to the mix. I have played New Vegas for over 500 hours and I still have no idea what the hell is going on in that card game.

Now all we need is an Auto Drop for all Bethesda games from Oblivion to Skyrim (and let's be honest, Starfield too) and we can close Nexus Mods. Now our work is done.