I lost my original backup file of Fallout New Vegas and now I'm wanting to get rid of my mods and go back to vanilla but unsure as to how. I've tried deleting local content from Steam and re downloading but it downloads with all the mods again. Any suggestions?

Really odd question, perhaps I am missing something. Did you delete your data folder after you uninstalled fallout? Because it doesnt hunt down and delete files you put into it.

That's what I was going to say....but you beat me to it.

Steam isn't downloading the mods ... you have to manually delete them (or uncheck them in the data options of the launcher) yourself. You don't even have to uninstall/reinstall the game, actually, altho if you had tons of complicated mods, a new game isn't a bad idea.

problem is i don't remember which BSAs and files in the folders(i.e. just mesh, texture, menu, sounds file folders) were part of the mods and which were vanilla

but yeah i think i herped a derped when you delete local content from steam it still doesn't delete the files in the common/fallout New Vegas and assosiated folders. still have to delete that manually

Just delete them all and reinstall is the quickest way.

That's why you should always use a mod manager.

Delete the folders and all ESP files, THEN redownload content. And then - ta-dah, it's vanilla again!

You can remove meshes and Texture folders because the game dose not come with those. Also remove menu folder. Remove ESP files and becarefull with ESM files. Fallout.NV ESM is the one you keep. Do you have a mod manager? If not why? If you want a fresh install uninstall the game, warning when removing it will say 'keep save games' something like that. If you want to keep save game yes it not no. If you save your game and resume from your save game a warning will pop up. Don't worry about.

Option 1) Manually delete DATA folder and do an integrity check for F:NV. It should re-download the missing original files (takes quite some time).

Option 2) Delete all the folders in the DATA folder. Remove all ESP's and keep the BSA's with Fallout-[meshes, texture, etc...] names. An integrity check fixes missing files, but should be considerably faster than in option 1.

If you install a fresh vanilla game, then try to play saved games that were played with all the mods, that sounds like trouble.

the better question is: WHY would you want to play vanilla?