The only essentials that I would pretty much blanket recommend are:
Legacy Reborn Texture Pack
Atmospheres - Weather and Lighting
And pretty much anything Balebandr0 has released as part of his "physically based" collection
https://next.nexusmods.com/profile/Balebandr0/mods
You can get New Vegas Reloaded (requires joining their discord but it's easy to find) if you feel like dealing with it and only using a couple of the shaders like volumetric fog and tonemapping in the settings menu. Most of the others will look iffy depending on location and sucker fuck your framerate.
Classic Fallout Weapons Remastered & Hit - Classic Fallout Weapon Animations - Part 1
Tammer's NIF-Bashed Armor Mega-Pack
https://fallout.firedrakecreative.com/doku.php?id=armor
Anything else is going to again depend on personal preference.
No clue what you mean by this.
Don't think anyone has but frankly being an annoying cunt voiced by felicia day is the bigger issue imo