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Fallout 4 modders are doing a fine job without the the official Creation Kit, but without them ambitious overhauls and clever scripting are in short supply. Luckily, elusive details of the modkit's progress have escaped: it's set to arrive in April.

"Our goal [for full mod support] is between the first two DLCs," Todd Howard said in an interview with Game Informer. "It ll go up at that time on PC. In April. All of that stuff will go up on PC. People are beta testing it."

The DLCs in question are the Automatron and Wasteland Workshop packs announced last week. Howard let fly a few details around the overhauled Survival mode Bethesda has been teasing too, and it's not to be taken lightly. The game only saves when you sleep, there is no fast travel, and all sorts of diseases have survived the radiation. Though he's vague on this point, the combat is due an overhaul too, to make enemies—and presumably yourself—"less bullet-spongey".

J3PYaFF2ZsHJ.878x0.Z-Z96KYq.jpg A lone screen from Wasteland Workshop.

Given the extent of the changes, the mode will get a thorough public beta test. If it doesn't go over well, Howard suggests it could stay in beta for about a month, though Bethesda doesn't want to drag it out unnecessarily.

Normally, these immersive environmental changes are the province of modders, so I'm excited to see how they toy with Bethesda's own take on survival.