Fourteen symptoms, what causes each, and the exact setting that fixes it. Most of them are one line in a config file.
The game crashes on startup
CauseAlmost always New Vegas — Enhanced Camera with first person shadows switched on.
FixOpen Enhanced Camera's INI and set bFirstPersonShadows=0. Then confirm bModifyDirectXBehavior = 1 in NVTF.ini. If it still crashes, launch once with the preset disabled to confirm NVR is the cause and not something else in the list.
A black diagonal seam runs across the sky in shadowed areas
CauseA DXVK floating point precision bug, not a preset bug.
FixAdd d3d9.floatEmulation = strict to dxvk.conf in the game root. This is the single most common complaint and the fix is one line.
Water is glassy and see-through
CauseReflections and refractions are off in the INI. The water shader needs both.
FixSet bUseWaterReflections=1 and bUseWaterRefractions=1. If your INI came from Viva New Vegas or the Performance Guide, you already have them.
The main menu is black
CauseNVR's intro replacement.
FixSet [_Main.Main.Misc] ReplaceIntro = false. It already is false in this preset, so if you are seeing this, something overwrote the config — check that no other mod is winning the nvse/Plugins conflict in MO2.
Black squares appear around trees and tumbleweeds
CauseMSAA is off, so transparency multisampling has nothing to resolve against.
FixForceMSAA is true in this preset. If you turned it off for ReShade or ENB, enable MSAA in the game launcher instead.
The depth buffer looks like the wrong size — effects are offset or doubled
CauseBad resolution or aspect values in Fallout.ini.
FixReplace the INI with the Viva New Vegas one and set your resolution through the launcher once. Also confirm Depth Resolve and its three requirements are installed and enabled.
The player shadow has no head
CauseEnhanced Camera's headless first person body is what casts the shadow.
FixSet bEnableHeadFirstPerson=1 in the Enhanced Camera INI.
Nights are still too dark
CauseThree separate things stack here: the night auto-exposure, the grading stages, and whatever night values your weather mod ships.
FixIn this order: raise [_Shaders.Exposure.Night] MaxBrightness (ceiling 1.0), then MinBrightness toward 0.25, then [_Shaders.Tonemapping.Night] Exposure. All three are live in the O menu, so sit somewhere dark and dial them with Numpad + until it reads right, then press Enter to save. Rule out your in-game brightness slider and Nevada Skies first.
Nights are washed out and too bright
CauseThe night exposure correction is over-applied for your weather mod.
FixLower [_Shaders.Exposure.Night] MaxBrightness toward 0.35.
Interiors are dark
CauseInterior exposure and tonemapping are separate from the night ones.
FixRaise [_Shaders.Exposure.Interiors] MaxBrightness (0.42 here) and [_Shaders.Tonemapping.Interiors] Exposure (1.4 here).
Rain falls but the ground never gets wet
CauseWetWorld ships effectively dead in stock NVR — Amount, Increase and Decrease are all 0.0, and the puddle specular is driven by two develop variables that also default to zero.
FixThis preset already sets WetWorld.Main Amount 0.45, Increase 0.6, Decrease 3.0, and [_Main.Develop.Main] DebugVar1 1.0, DebugVar2 0.7. If you have no puddles, your config was overwritten. Reinstall or copy a preset from Docs/UngodlyNVR/Presets/.
The O menu does not open
CauseNVR is not loaded, which usually means the game was not launched through the script extender.
FixLaunch nvse_loader.exe from the MO2 executables dropdown, not the vanilla launcher and not FalloutNV.exe. If it still does not open, check that UngodlyNVR is ticked in the left pane and that NewVegasReloaded.dll is winning the nvse/Plugins conflict.
No numpad on your keyboard
CauseThe menu's increment and decrement keys are numpad by default.
FixReplace the [_Main.Menu.Keys] block in the TOML with the alternate set from the NVR wiki FAQ, which maps E and X to increment and decrement.
Framerate collapses in lit towns at night
CauseNight point light shadows. Every ELECTRO-CITY lamp in range becomes a shadow caster.
FixSet [_Shaders.ShadowsExteriors.Main] UsePointShadowsNight = false, or switch to the Balanced preset, which already does exactly that along with 25 other reductions.
If none of that helped
Narrowing it down
Get a crash log
Install Yvile's Crash Logger. It writes a log naming the module that
faulted, which turns "it crashes" into an answerable question. A crash inside
NewVegasReloaded.dll is a preset or NVR problem; a crash anywhere else is not.
Confirm what actually loaded
The ML Utilities Checker reports which script extender plugins initialised, at the main menu. If Shader Loader, LOD Flicker Fix, Depth of Field Fix or Depth Resolve are missing, several NVR passes will misbehave in ways that look like preset bugs.
Rule out the mod manager
In MO2, open the Data tab and filter to nvse/Plugins. If
NewVegasReloaded.dll.toml is attributed to any mod other than UngodlyNVR, something
is overwriting the configuration and every setting on this site is being ignored.
Where to ask
- TES Reloaded Discord — for New Vegas Reloaded itself.
- The NVR wiki FAQ — including the alternate menu keybinds for keyboards without a numpad.
- The FNV Performance Guide — for anything framerate, DXVK, alt-tab or display mode related.
When you ask, say which preset variant you are running, whether DXVK is in use, and what your
Exposure.Night values are. Those three answers resolve most of it.