It’s a harsh wasteland out there, fellow vault dwellers. Horrors can be found in every corner of the Commonwealth. Making it through Fallout 4 in one piece can be tough — especially at first. Thankfully, we’re here to help.
A few of us here at Kotaku have been playing the game non-stop for the last week, and we’ve compiled a list of tips and hints that we think will help you out on your journey to find your son. So put away that copy of Grognak, and let’s talk shop.
Don’t Worry Too Much About Your SPECIAL Build
There’s no level cap in Fallout 4. If you play for long enough, you’ll be able to max out, or nearly max out, pretty much everything on your Perk chart. So, sure — take a moment and peruse the chart; imagine what type of playthrough you’ll want to take; choose a SPECIAL build that opens up the types of Perks you’re interested in. Just don’t overthink it. You’ll be fine.
Some Builds Are Better Than Others, Though
If you’re still struggling with picking a build, here are some specifics you might want to make note of:
- Some basic lockpicking and hacking skills are useful to get inside of locked areas.
- The Scrounger perk is good because ammo is relatively scarce compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
- The Luck SPECIAL attribute is more obviously useful this time around, in general. Bloody Mess is as fun as it is handy. Mysterious Stranger can save your skin. Better yet, companions like Valentine react to the Mysterious Stranger’s appearance, and it’s the best.
- Action Boy makes regenerating Action Points ridiculously fast.
- Winning speech checks is nice, but a charisma build can feel unsatisfying thanks to Fallout 4’s thin dialogue.
- The lead belly perk might seem enticing given how much food you can find in the wasteland, but healing via Stimpaks is better. Food heals you a certain amount, whereas Stimpaks heal a certain percentage.
Grab The Gun At The End of the First Vault
There’s a container near the Overseer’s office in Vault 111. It requires a master lockpick — which there’s no way to have at the start of the game. But shortly after you leave the vault, you’ll find Dogmeat, your trusty canine companion. If you go back into the vault and tell Dogmeat to fetch near the locked case, he will grab the powerful gun for you. Here’s a video walkthrough, if you’re a visual learner:
Explore Your Old Stomping Grounds
Once you leave Vault 111, there’s plenty to see and loot back in the ruins of your old neighbourhood. You can find Codsworth, your former robot butler, roaming the nearby streets. You can pick up bobby pins, which are necessary for lockpicking. And you can find goodies at your old house, too: the room in the back-right of the hallway has a “You’re SPECIAL” book on the floor. Picking it up grants you one SPECIAL point of your choosing.
Stick To The Story Missions (At First)
While it may be tempting to go wandering into the wasteland, you’re probably not prepared for most Commonwealth encounters just yet. I suggest doing some story missions to start out. Within a few hours, the main quests will give you decent equipment (including Power Armour), as well as lead you to Diamond City — where you can find a couple of companions, a variety of quests, and many, many shops.
Collect The Right Junk
You can pick up and make use of nearly everything in Fallout — but you still shouldn’t lug around every single piece of garbage lying around. That packrat mentality is just a quick way of becoming over-encumbered, which will lead to you spending way too much time in menus, sorting through crap, instead of adventuring.
You should check out the “junk” tab in your inventory, where you can switch to “component view.” There, you can tag various components that you may want to keep an eye out for in the wild. It’s a good idea to tag screws, adhesive, aluminium, fibreglass, antiseptic, ballistic fibre, circuitry, crystal, oil, as well as whatever you’re interested in scavenging.
Save Often
Seriously: Fallout 4 is harder than both Fallout 3 and New Vegas. You will die often. I’ve lost a ton of progress because I didn’t save enough; don’t let the same thing happen to you. Save every 15-20 minutes or so. Save when you enter a new area. Save when you make good progress. You can even save in the middle of conversations! Change up your quicksaves and “hard saves,” as well. Kirk tells me his rule of thumb is: “Quicksave in combat, hard save before combat.”
Take Notes
Along the way, you’ll find plenty of locked doors, caches, and difficult terminals that you can’t investigate yet. Write down their locations, and come back later, when you have the right specs. There’s a ton of awesome treasure hidden behind locks and terminals!
Read The Signs
Survivors have scribbled all sorts of things on the walls and streets of the Commonwealth. These always means something. A “KEEP OUT” sign might mean the difference between walking into a super mutant hideout, and living. And a “traders welcome” sign might actually be a Raider trap, hilariously enough.
Occasionally, you’ll also find symbols scattered about. These mean signal specific things, too:
Look Out For Collectibles
Bobbleheads can increase your SPECIAL stats. Magazines can give you special abilities, or stat boosts. And unique weapons can grant you a combat advantage. If you want to know where all these items are hiding, make sure to check out the the (unofficial) Fallout Tracker website — it will tell you where every single one of these objects is tucked away. If you want to discover them on your own, that’s cool too. Just make sure to check every nook and cranny for collectibles!
Use VATS To Scope Stuff Out
Even when you don’t see enemies, it’s a good idea to tap the VATs button every so often. This is a good way to catch mines, and to identify faraway enemies. More than once, tapping VATs outside of combat alerted me to dormant ghouls. Thanks to this trick, I’m not ambushed by those sneaky bastards nearly as much as Bethesda planned.
Do The Cambridge Police Station Quest Early
[Image source: Fallout Wikia]
Not only will you get a great weapon for completing this quest, you’ll also gain access to the Brotherhood of Steel questline. I’m still using the gun I got from this location after beating the game, and the Brotherhood itself is a good resource to have, even if you don’t agree with their goals.
Use The Junk Gun
If you really can’t help yourself from collecting every single piece of crap from the wasteland, good news! Doing the initial Brotherhood of Steel quest gives you access to the “Junk Jet” gun, which uses random junk as ammo.
Hack Like A Pro
The animation at the start of a terminal session is pretty long, but you can skip it by tapping the action button. Once the potential passwords are in front of you, look out for any letters or patterns that repeat themselves a few times: these are a good way to make an initial educated guess. Here’s the key thing the game doesn’t explain very well: The number of “matched” letters aren’t just in the word, they’re in that place in the word. After picking a potential password, pay attention to how many letters you got right. Picking a word with zero matches is actually very valuable — you can rule out a bunch of possibilities that way.
If it comes down to the wire, look out for any <>, (), and [] entries hidden in the code. Selecting these will get rid of duds, as well as replenish your tries. If that still doesn’t work, remember that you can always back out and start a new session.
And if you really can’t be bothered with this stuff, use the Fallout Hack Tool. There, you can input your word choices from the hacking mini-game, and it will tell you what your most optimal choice for success is. Awesome.
Use Enemy Weaknesses To Your Advantage
Every enemy has a weakness. Make use of them. Off the top of my head…shoot ghouls in the leg; they break easily and can stop these enemies from rushing you down. Deathclaws have fragile bellies. Robots go down faster with Pulse and Plasma weapons. Shoot humans in the head for massive damage, or aim for their weapon hand, to stop them from attacking. And if you ever, ever see a Super Mutant Suicider, IMMEDIATELY SHOOT THEIR RIGHT ARM. They’re carrying mini-nukes and will try to tackle you while holding them. This is instant death.
If you’re curious about more weaknesses, take the Awareness perk, which tells you more about what enemies are susceptible to.
Know Your Enemy
When you see a skull next to an enemy’s name, that means they are higher level than you — and can thus be tough to kill. If you see a star next to an enemy’s name, that means they’re legendary. Legendaries are tough to kill, because they can “mutate” mid-fight — an ability which heals them. It’s super-annoying. While running away from tough battles is a viable strategy, if you can swing it, it’s definitely worth killing these enemies. They will drop randomly-generated gear with all sorts of cool and unusual abilities that you can’t get any other way. Some examples…
Don’t Forget About Sidequests
While the main quests are pretty awesome, Fallout 4’s sidequests is where the game really shines. Once you’ve got decent gear, peruse some of your optional quests — including the ones under the “Miscellaneous” tab in the Quests menu. Read through them, and do the ones that sound interesting to you.
Don’t Wait Too Long For Certain Quests
Some sidequests operate on a timer, and can be failed if you don’t do them quickly enough. Unfortunately the game doesn’t let you know about this until you actually fail the quests.
Without going into spoilers, a good rule of thumb is this: if it seems time-sensitive, it very well might be. For example: if a friend gets kidnapped and the assailants tell you you need to hurry to save him, if you wait too long, that friend might actually die.
Use Your Companions To Your Advantage
Companions are useful outside of combat! Certain characters can do things like lockpicking or hacking, which is great if your character didn’t spec for that stuff. To get you started: Nick Valentine (from Diamond City) is good at hacking, and Cait (from Combat Zone) is great at lockpicking.
Talk To Your Companions
Getting closer to your buddies means unlocking special quests, and eventually, companion-specific perks. You can only gain a companion’s trust by making decisions they like, though — so you’ll want to talk to them to get a feel for what each companion “stands” for. Quick tip: Nick Valentine and Piper like it when you help people. If you’re the ‘steal everything’ or ‘only look out for yourself’ type, you’ll want to avoid having those companions around — they will hate everything you do.
Should you romance a partner, you’ll even gain a special bonus after sleeping in a bed with those characters nearby.
Keep Your Companions Stocked Up
And remember: your companions are only as good as the gear they’re equipped with. Don’t hog all the best items; give some great gear to your followers, too. Make sure that they actually equip that stuff; you can control this via their inventory menu. Note that the weapons companions come with never run out of ammo, but any weapons you give them will.
…But Don’t Give Companions Explosives
Grenades, molotovs, missiles, and mini-nuke weapons should not be given to companions. Your friends will use these weapons at the worst time, and you’ll be caught in the blast radius.
Dress Dogmeat Up
He can’t wear normal armour, but he CAN wear bandanas, collars, dog armour, and certain goggles. Good boy!
Remember, Dogmeat Can Fetch
You never know what the pup will find lying around. Dogmeat is known to retrieve everything from ammo to Fat Mans. Every so often, tell Dogmeat to fetch, just for kicks: maybe he’ll bring back something killer.
OMG DOGMEAT
HE CAN PLAY WITH TEDDY BEARS IF YOU EQUIP THEM ON HIM.
Don’t Forget His Doghouse
If you build a doghouse at your settlement, he’ll hang out there. If you should ever swap him out with another follower and send him back to your settlement at Sanctuary, he’ll automatically go to one of the doghouses in town. If you’re worried you’ve lost him, check those.
Listen To The Diamond City Radio
The DJ is hilarious.
Pick A Base of Operations
You have two options at the start of the game: Red Rocket truck stop, and Sanctuary. Both have a variety of useful stations: storage chests for extra junk, armour workbenches, cooking pits, a Power Armour dock, a chemistry station, and even a bed. Sanctuary provides more space for you to build your settlement, but it also requires more work to put together. Red Rocket is smaller, but it has a nicer, more signature look starting out. Neither is a bad choice, but you should still focus on only one, at least to start out.
Build Your Settlements
If you play your cards right, you can build your settlement to be so self-sufficient and resourceful, it will have more amenities and shops than Diamond City itself. For that, you’ll want to invest in the Charisma tree most of all, especially the Perk that lets you share resources between settlements.
Break Down What You Don’t Need
Everything you see in your settlement can be moved around and broken down into scrap. Here’s a quick guide to get you started on that.
Grow Your Own Stuff
On a very basic level, you can use your settlements to provide some useful materials that can aid you on your adventure. Under the “resources” tab, you can find options to build water pumps and water purifiers — which can provide you with a free way to heal yourself. You can also use the resources tab to plant food, which you can then use in recipes to cook your own food. Squirrel Stew in particular boosts your XP gain by 2% for two hours, and it requires bloodleaf, carrot, tato, and squirrel bits to make it. You can read more about cooking here.
Make Adhesives
Crops are good for cooking, but they’re also great for crafting. Most notably, you’ll want to use the Cooking Station to build Vegetable Starch. Vegetable starch breaks down into 5 adhesive, which is one of the most useful crafting items around:
The recipe calls for 3 corn, 3 muttfruit, 1 purified water, and 3 tatos. All of these items are easy to find out in the land, and many storeowners carry at least a couple of these. You can provide your own purified water, provided you build a purifier on your settlement, too. Once you have everything, I’d suggest going into your workshop and planting these items, like so:
It will take a bit of time for these crops to grow, but once they do, you’ll multiply the number of components you initially had, and you’ll be able to count on more of those items in the future, when you need more adhesive. Hooray, farming!
Build Defences
It doesn’t happen often, but your settlements can get attacked by Raiders and Super Mutants. These attackers can even steal your items, which is especially troubling if they get a hold of any of your docked Power Armour. To avoid this, you should at least invest in some basic turrets on the settlements you care about, if not give your settlers some basic weapons. They might help your settlement from getting wrecked.
Customise Your Power Armour
It will take a lot of resources, but if you keep an eye out for some of the junk listed earlier in this article, tweaking your Power Armour should be a zinch. You’ll want to do it, too: customisation allows you to tailor your Power Suit to your specific playstyle.
Here’s my suit:
I’ve built it so that it grants me extra damage and energy resistance, extra strength, it boosts my action point refresh, and even increases my VATs hit chance. If you find a Hot Rodder magazine in the wasteland, you’ll even be able to unlock custom paint jobs for your rig. Neat.
Invest In The Jetpack Mod
Some high locations/special items can only be reached with this mod installed on your Power Armour — hence why you’ve probably encountered enemies on roofs while adventuring. You can find the Jetpack mod option in the Power Armour customisation menu, which is accessed in the Power Armour rack. You’ll need rank four of Science! to build it.
Customise Your Weapons
Every weapon can be modified to add a variety of effects, including better damage, range, and recoil. Naturally, you’ll want to make your weapons as good as they can be, so make sure to stop by your weapons station and peruse your available modification options for your favourite weapons. Don’t bother upgrading weapons you don’t use. Make sure to tag any components you’re missing, so you can find them out in the wild.
It helps to have the right perks here, too. Otherwise, your customisation options will be pretty limited. For those of you that like shooting bullets, you’ll want the Gun Nut perk for your weapon customisation needs. If you plan on using energy weapons, get the Science! perk, instead.
Name Your Guns
Chances are you’ll wind up with a few main guns that you like to use. Take the time to name them while at the weapon crafting table. It will help you tell them apart from other guns you may pick up, and it’s always fun to come up with good weapon names. Kirk sent me this screenshot of his:
Reserve Your Fusion Cores
Don’t take out your Power Armour on a whim. Fusion cores are scarce at the start of the game, so save Power Armour for tough dungeons, or boss fights. Worth keeping in mind that walking around and standing still use less Fusion Core energy than sprinting or using VATS, and fast travelling uses none of your core. When you leave a suit behind at your base, make sure to take the Fusion Core with you — else settlers or attackers might get in the suit and use up your fuel.
Steal Fusion Cores From The Brotherhood of Steel
This one guy, to be specific. For whatever reason, this specific soldier at the Brotherhood of Steel base regenerates Fusion Cores indefinitely, as you can see in this video by Gametastik:
Obviously, you’ll want to save before attempting, and it helps to actually have some pickpocketing/sneaking perks on your character.
Sell Your Fusion Cores Before They Run Out
You can get full price for a Fusion Core at a vendor if you swap it out before the gauge reaches zero.
Understand sneaking
When you’re hidden, there’ll be brackets around the word “hidden” on your screen. The closer those brackets get to the word, the closer you are to being detected.
Be Stealthy
Even if you didn’t build your character for stealth, you can still use stealth to your advantage. For instance: if you ever see an enemy that hasn’t noticed you yet, crouch down before shooting them. Not only will this steady your aim on certain weapons, you’ll also gain a sneak attack bonus critical, regardless of what you specced for.
Snipe In Real Time
Take your first stealthy shot in real time, too, not VATs. Your real-time accuracy will likely be better, particularly when sniping, than VATS. Save VATS for actual combat.
Use Your Critical Attacks
In VATS, your hits will slowly charge up your critical meter. It’s very easy to forget you have that, but if you’re fighting an enemy and need them to take a ton of damage right effing now, trigger your critical before your shot lands.
Use Cover
You can aim from around cover in first-person. Walk up to a corner or other piece of cover and try aiming — your character should pop around the cover and aim at what’s beyond it.
Look Up (And Down)
Fallout 4‘s environments have a lot of verticality. If you can’t tell where the shots are coming from, look up — there might be an enemy on the roof, or on the next floor. Sometimes, the enemy might even be underneath you.
Don’t Start Firefights Near Cars
Cars that take damage will eventually explode. Definitely don’t take cover behind cars, or stand near them in the middle of a battle. Cars in Fallout were powered by mini nuclear bombs, so you don’t want to be nearby when one explodes.
Beware of Radiation
Radiation eats up your health, so you’ll want to avoid it. Make sure to keep a stockpile of Radaway, and don’t eat random food from the wasteland unless you absolutely have to. Every so often, the Commonwealth will be hit with radiation storms that can pile on radiation damage, too. You’ll want to go indoors for those, or better yet, keep a radiation-resistant outfit (like a Hazmat suit) or a gas mask at the ready for when these hit. These items will protect you. If you’re exploring and wind up in a radiation storm, you can always just fast-travel away, too.
Take A Swim
There’s a lot of water in Fallout 4. Some of it covers areas of interest, like special locations of stashes of items. Provided you’re equipped to deal with radiation, don’t be afraid to dip into the water and see what it stores. Just know that while Power Armour shields you from radiation, it also makes you sink to the bottom of any water sources, which can make navigating a pain in the arse.
Take A Snooze
Sleeping not only heals you, it gives you a short 10% experience bonus. Worth doing every once in a while, even if you’re fully healed.
Listen To The Game’s Built-In Soundtrack
Yes, the radio is great. But the game’s original soundtrack is fantastic, and can especially set the mood in more desolate/creepier areas.
Use Outfits To Your Advantage
Outfits aren’t just about high damage resistance. Clothes can be useful in other situations, especially if they boot your SPECIAL up. It’s worth keeping outfits that boost your bartering and speech skills, and to swap into those threads before doing those activities. Most of the time, said outfits don’t weigh much, either, so you can carry them around with you.
Listen to NPCs
When you get to a new area — even hostile areas like raider bases — stop and listen to the NPC chatter. Sometimes, it’s funny. Sometimes, you’ll learn about new locations, or be given quests. And sometimes they just react to stuff you’ve done around the world.
Synths Are Closer Than You Realise
Not to make you paranoid or anything…but your settlers can and will be replaced by synths from time to time. These doppelgangers will turn on your settlement, after which you’ll find synth parts on their body — revealing the betrayal. Yeah: this game is wild.
When All Else Fails, Cheat
You may not want to deal with Fallout 4’s difficulty. Maybe you’re just here to have some fun. I don’t judge, man. If this describes you, know that Fallout 4 has an infinite caps glitch that lets you buy pretty much anything you want, and that players have discovered an item duplication glitch that be used to give yourself max SPECIAL points, too. Here’s YouTuber Genie, walking you through the process:
Other assorted tips
- If you’ve never played a Fallout game before, don’t sweat it. It’s not necessary to enjoy Fallout 4 (though it can certainly help. There are some returning characters/plot points!)
- You should customise the colour of your Pipboy/UI in the options menu.
- Press down the B/O button for a while to turn on your flashlight. You can customise the colour of your flashlight in your Power Armour.
- You can pick up objects and move them around by holding down the interact button.
- You can swap mods from one gun to another, provided they both use it.
- You can eject an enemy from its Power Armour by shooting at its Fusion Core
- Build a bell in your settlement to have an easy way to summon all your settlers in one place.
- Stop and look/listen to your companions every one in a while. They have rad idle animations, and will sometimes interact with other characters or objects in the world.
- Do not get rid of overdue books. Certain locations will take them and give you rewards in exchange for collecting them.
- Holster your weapon while you’re not using it. Having it out slows you down!
- “Quiet reflection” – gain 5% extra XP for a limited amount of time after sitting in a pew in the Diamond City chapel.
Comments
107 responses to “Tips For Playing Fallout 4”
The lead belly perk might seem enticing given how much food you can find in the wasteland, but healing via Stimpaks is better. Food heals you a certain amount, whereas Stimpaks heal a certain percentage.
It’s honestly useless; go cook up some of the meat/crap you find – they improve HP regen by heaps and often have +stats or +radresist +damresist etc and removes the rads.
Yeap. Invest on Medic perk is better investment. There is really just no point spending points on lead belly.
Understand that Stealthboys seem to do SFA at this point in time…
o.O i use them to steal fusion cores from power suited raiders all the time!
Maybe they were OP in the previous games, they just dont seem to work as well now.
sound still gets picked up – if u have heavy armor on u’ll get pinched. I just go nekid pop it, steal the core then shotgun to their face. Works all the time.
I barely wear the armour, and I’m crouching when I walk around, just seems you get seen at a thousand yards when I’m using it. *shrug* Oh well.
Are you crouch running? Because walking is otherwise bloody useless, I often forget to turn off autorun when in stealth. If you turn it off (capslock on PC usually), your sneak is painfully slow, but they will find you far less often.
You can also mod armour to improve stealth. I think you need Armourer 2 and then you can make “Shadowed” armour pieces.
Upgrade the Sneak Perk to level 4 and you can run while you sneak!
Stealth Boy’s were never a 100% guarantee to stay Hidden, there was always ways to get detected, even in Sneaking mode.
Make a save before picking a faction in The Molecular Level quest so you can do 1 playthrough of the game.
Thank you for this. I’ve been wondering where the lockout is, but I don’t want to watch any videos on it. They always have spoilers actually showing the quest dialogue and stuff.
Hmm… It says companions use ammo for weapons you give them. Can anyone confirm if settlers use ammo? Pretty sure I equipped a minigun and 300 rounds of 5mm ammo on a settler, and after a raid (which he fired the gun) he still had 300 left…???
Also has anyone successfully defended from an attack without being there? My sanctuary is nearly impenetrable but I always fast travel when it is attacked as I’m worried I need to be there physically (if if I don’t fire a shot) to prevent failure??
i started out giving my farmers a short pipe rifle and 50 .38 rounds, which they never seemed to use
from what i’ve read on Reddit…as long as you provide enough ammo for a single clip of that weapon, the settlers will use that and never use the ammo – unlike your companions who only have this magic ammo idea for their primary weapon
the idea of a bunch of power armor clad Sanctuary guards with miniguns and enough ammo to make this work….how can that NOT be a future goal 🙂
I set all of mine up with pipe sniper rifles or shotguns upgraded to the highest level I can do without Gun Nut. They seem pretty well able to take care of themselves so far.
Although, I wandered over to a settlement I hadn’t worked on yet (It only two people and no defence) and there were nine super mutants and two dogs attacking. Even with power armour and the mini gun I died 3 times and barely made it on the fourth.
I’ve been upgrading their pipe guns and giving them ammo but wasn’t sure if they used them. Also, anyone noticed them using other items like armour? I had one change out of his armour into the shirt and jeans he had but not put on the raider set I gave him. I’ve given him a set of farmer overalls but he hasn’t changed into them yet. Hmmm.
You have to make them equip the things you give them in the trade menu. On controller it’s Y/triangle, not sure what the key is on the keyboard. It says it down the bottom of the trade menu.
Doh, why didn’t I see that? I assumed they’d auto equip like followers in Skyrim. Thanks!
Thank you! I couldn’t get my settlers to equip armour!
This game has so much it just doesn’t tell you. Not even in a “it’s fun to figure out the world” kind of way. It just doesn’t explain the various systems at all.
Yeah it’s suffering from the same thing that a lot of R* games do. They put all these tips in a tiny dialogue box in the top left and never show it again, and if you missed the one about camp travel in Red Dead Redemption that game just added several hours in late game travel. Im fallout 4 it should be part of a tutorial when you first get a follower.
I noticed a loading screen last night had a “give your settlers armour and weapons in the trade menu” tip. I’m gonna have to start reading them more closely now.
Give settlers 1 round n it never runs out. But it can crap out n make the settler revert to pipe pistol if not equiped properly. Give em the gun of choice, hit equip THEN give em 1 bullet and hit equip for it. I found if i didnt do it in that order the ammo wouldnt equip n they went back to pipe guns.
well you gave your settler 299 rounds to many, they only need one single round and have infinite ammo with that weapon then
Am I the only one who can’t stand the Diamond City Radio DJ?
Yeah it was kinda funny at first, but man the whole “whiney awkward” schtick really grates after about 15 minutes – give me three dog any day.
There’s no way to respond to this without spoilers.. just keep playing the game.
I feel like that’s not a spoiler in, the awkward radio guy makes it so obvious there’s someone better. I havent heard or done anything to find someone else but it is obvious
You are right, it does seem obvious. That being said, you are also wrong.
Keep playing the game =)
In settlements do you need to assign one person for each crop, or will they look after more than one automatically?
Yes, I think they can deal with up to 4 and seem to do so automatically once you assign them to one plant. Check the plants in workshop mode and you should be able to see if there are any unassigned. They usually highlight as a group with the assigned settler.
6 crops per settler 🙂 They seem to do it automatically, but I still assign them to it just in case they wander off and decide to do something different lol
Ah, thank you! I guess I should’ve counted at some point but am currently at … that other place I go during the day.
Me too 🙁 that place that isn’t fallout 🙁 lol
Its 6 food units per settler, if a crop only provides 0.5 then a settler can farm 12 of them.
The Mysterious Stranger perk will help out in a tight spot! More than once he’s stepped in to save me when my HP is low.
I got to level 32 before calling it quits and I saw him 3 times all game.
I also proc’d ricochet twice in 30 levels.
Calling it quits? You gave up playing Fallout?
Does anyone know what the small generator does?
I built it and it doesn’t seem to work with anything. So i built the medium one and it works just fine.
No biggie, just curious. Maybe I put it in the wrong place?
Did you attach it to something with wire? It should output 3 power units as well as provide a small radius of power for nearby lights. You can switch them off too, maybe check it is on?
heh .. Yeah it was on and tried to attach wire – it might have been too far away from the pylon. I’ll mess with it some more tonight.
Didn’t know about the radius for lights, that’s a handy tip 🙂
I used it for the water purification unit I put in the river near Sanctuary. I put a medium generator closer to the town centre. But I’m just making it up as I go along and hoping for the best!
Aren’t we all!
It’s good fun regardless. I have to say I thought the whole settlement building thing would be something I ignored…. I’d play as I always play Fallout.
Been surprised how much I’ve gotten into it.
I think it helps that when you visit the settlements you can start to see changes. More settlers arrive. Mercs turn up. Things look like they get repaired. Magic tyre fairies leave junk.
One of the coolest things I’ve noticed is that the settlers in sanctuary hitting things with hammers aren’t just doing idle animations. The house with the weapon/armour/building tables has all of these new panels on it now. I want to see them fix the whole town up now!
I put my generator on the ground in the middle, but then have put my power pilons on the tops of the houses. That way you can run the wire a lot further without it hitting the ground 🙂
Does anyone have a vague clue based off the past when we might see the next patch?
That gun glitch for the gun in Vault 111 doesn’t work on Xbox. Tried it multiple times (as have a few others) and dogmeat just doesn’t want to get it 🙁
I couldn’t get it to work on pc but my son did on PS4.
Must be a trick to it, like getting it early on. I didn’t go back to i was a few missions in, so that could be why
I got it at the end of the game using Dogmeat. You have to get the dog into the cage area before telling him to go and fetch items.
Ahhhh that makes sense 🙂 thankyou, will try tonight
I got it to work on Xbone – it took four attempts to get Dogmeat to meet me at the bottom of the list, but then standing next to the cryolator got him to get it straight away – and when I cleared out his inventory back at base he had the ammo on him as well.
I had the same problem getting Dogmeat in the lift but then worked out it was probably because I was carefully telling him to stay … just go in the lift yourself and he’ll follow. Still can’t get him to retrieve the Cryolator though, no matter where I stand.
I’ve done it 2 times on xbox. Ask dogmeat to look for items (not containers) while standing in the bedroom. Be sure to trade with him after for the ammo for the gun.
My tip is this:
Do the Silver Shroud quest line coz the outfit looks awesome.
I’m at the final part now but the traveling is so far lol. I accidentally found Cricket in Bunker Hill and bought the Spray n’ Pray gun. Godly weapon and matches the outfit!
Ive pick up his outfit and went back to sanctuary to drop it off, and the game said I couldnt remove quest items… instantly my interest was piqued! Then I check my misc quests tab and saw the quest marker for it!
BTW have you got Grognak’s sword?
Grognak’s sword or Grognak’s axe?
Axe, my bad
Yea I got the full costume and axe. Grognak bash!
Word of warning. Do the Silver Shroud quest line pretty much as soon as you get to goodneighbor. I did a mission called The Big Dig, with Bobbi, before doing the Silver Shroud quest-line. Upon doing that it completely screwed with the silver shroud missions. I pissed of the Mayor of Goodneighbor and he would refuse to talk to me, plenty of warnings about combination of those two quests.
tl;dr – Do the Silver Shroud missions before The Big Dig, otherwise you may get permanently stuck with the Silver Shroud gear unable to be removed from your inventory, and an unfinishable quest-line.
I have it at home, still sealed, and I’m considering getting my money back. It seems like the game is just too big and I won’t have the time to devote to it (family, work etc).
Sometimes I hate being an adult.
Forgo sleep. Consumer more caffeine. Make a decoy.
Its a game you can pick up and put down for an hour at a time. Or 12 hours at a time. There is no frantic pace to progressing the game to a conclusion, so play it when you can, and it’ll be enough.
If all you have is 30 minutes gametime, theres no shame in wandering into a settlement and just tinkering with stuff, crafting (once you figure it out) is quite entertaining for some strange reason. Or you can go for a wander in a random direction, and see what you come across. The main quest wont go anywhere, it’ll be there for when you can spend a few hours moving forward.
I’ve been getting up at 4am to play before work….
I’m finding it better than staying up incredibly late … but not by much…
Roll on the weekend.
Been running on 3hrs sleep over here. No regrets 😛
Also, its one of those games you can put down and pick up later. Yeah its massive, but its also a slow paced game that you can play at your lesuire 🙂
you can run the main quest “fairly” quickly, standard bethesda main quest time but yeah its so easy to distracted and find you have spent hundreds of hours doing nothing much
Don’t just pick stuff off bodies in real time. Open the transfer button so you can see what you have and what components each item contains. Comes in handy when you’re overburdened from picking up an inexplicable number of wrenches.
Marking stuff for search helps a lot with this. You get the little magnifying glass if loot contains any materials you need.
Totally true.
I can’t leave anything… think its a bit of OCD or something lol Have more coffee cups then I can poke a stick at lol
Lol. At some point there’ll be a crafting item that requires 10,000 plastic and 25,000 steel, and you’ll be like “I got this!”
For people that want to focus on building settler bases. Get local leader ASAP and create supply line between all your workshops then you can build anything since your junks are now shared across all of them. Not accessible directly from workshop but crafting will use up junk from all settler base.
Also if you want more early EXP. Learn Idiot Savant ASAP. Chance to 3x exp when you receive EXP at level 1 and 5x exp at level 2.
Say i send someone from sanctuary to the castle, is a 2 way share? Or do I need to send someone from the castle to sanctuary to get supplies both ways?
It is a 2 way. As long as a Settlement is SOMEHOW connected to another that has a connection to lets Say Sanctuary, you’ll get supplies both ways.
Dont send a provisioner from sanctuary all the way to castle. Link em as u go (sanctuary to red rocket, red rocket to starlight etc.) and it makes quick easy runs for each of em (and a pretty web on the map ;D). Dont just send every provisioner on a scary marathon of doom from one map corner to another. And put a hazmat suit on the one going to spectacle island or they will just sit on the ocean floor overwhelmed by endless rads. So funny watching them and their brahmin treking underwater to get there! Yes i play this waaaayyyy to much on my holidays…
Thanks, have set up supply lines but wasn’t sure what that really meant in practice.
OR you could just sink points into intelligence, get more xp for anything you do the higher you int is and get access to cool modding perks like science n gun nut. Just saying.
Adhesive oil and screws are items I’m always running out of. Currently playing as a nice guy who uses single shot weapons preferably at range. Next play through a sarcastic jet junkie who’s all about closed range pain.
The scrapper perk lets you break down weapons into uncommon component, like screws and such. Also the above recipe for adhesive is invaluable.
If you need Oil, you can craft cutting fluid for 2 acid (Abraxo) 8 bone (Mole rat teeth, hit up junk yards), 2 purified water (Settlements gradually build up stock) and 3 steel (Almost everywhere). Provides 3 oil and refunds 1 steel. Not great, but better than nothing in a pinch.
A better option are flip lighters, which can be found almost everywhere. For their weight, they’re the most efficient method of stockpiling a good amount of oil quickly (And you can recycle the steel from them into cutting fluid, if you need a top up)
Screws can be found from handcuffs (Police stations) and hot plates (Almost anywhere, with the added benefit of precious copper and 2 circuitry). Hot plates weigh 6x as much as handcuffs, but copper and circuitry are worth hauling a few around for.
Finally. Adhesive is best made from vegetable starch, but duct tape is just as efficient and fairly common. Considering all iterations of duct tape weigh only 0.1, if you hit up military installations, you can find yourself hauling around a whopping 40 adhesive for 1 weight if you grab military grade.
Once you get the perk that lets you get uncommons from scrap, a lot of the low level weapons give you screws and springs. from memory 10mm and pipe rifles (but not pipe pistols) give screws.
Adhesive is definitely an issue early game. I haven’t made the vegetable goop yet, but if it gives me adhesive, I’m all over it.
If you’re going to ignore Charisma totally you will pay a lot more for items…
Picking up the cap collector perk (requires 1 Charisma) reduces the max charisma needed to get the best prices. With two ranks of the cap collector perk all 8 Jerky Vendor issues (reduces costs further) and the barter bobble head only 8 cha is needed to get the best prices, halving the required charisma needed.
At base (no cap collector talent and no Jerky Vendor issues or bobble head) the follow modifiers are used…
1 Cha – 3.35 buying price i.e if an item is worth 100 caps you will pay 335.
5 Cha – 2.75 buying price
10 Cha – 2.0 buying price
16+ Cha – 1.2 buying price.
As you can see your best bet to get the best prices is taking the two points of Cap collector, two because the first rank only offers 10% better prices for buying and selling while the second offers 28%… The 3rd rank allows you to invest 500 caps into a store.
Also making sure you keep an eye out for magazines. with 2 ranks, all the magazines and bobble head only 8 charisma is needed, and wearing Charisma gear before buying can easily net you 4+ Charisma if I am not mistaken. So I see little point going higher then whatever the amount you need for a given perk i.e 1 if you want nothing from the tree, you are still able to get cap collector, and with the proper gear you can easily get 4 charisma effectively halving buying costs…. 3 if you want lone wanderer or 6 for local dealer (allows trading between settlements).
There is a female trader who appears in the the sanctuary settlement, forgot her name but she always has a smoke. If you choose the sarcastic option when first speaking to her she’ll offer discounts from there on.
Trashcan Carla?
Yup. Make her laugh and she’ll discount you forever.
Sorrrrt of a tip, more of a heads up – digital and disc-based saves are NOT cross-compatible. for Fallout 4.
We bought the digital version, but while it was still installing, my partner played the disc version. My brother then offered to buy the disc from us (since we had the digital version installed), but when he started the the digital game, the only option was new game. I called Sony and they confirmed that the digital version is region 1, whereas the discs are region 4, obviously. Hopefully Bethesda releases a patch for this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t. It was a surprise because other games (such as TLOU) have not had this issue.
Anywho these are hot tips, and I’m totally gonna use a bunch of them 😀
Pffft, every 15-20 minutes? I mash my F5 key more than I actually press W 😛
So true. I mash f5 every 5-10 seconds maybe. I wanted to key bind quick save to my mouse since pressing f5 is awkward but they won’t let me rebind to it.
Haha – I do it so much I’ve begun to press f5 in games that don’t have a quicksave button / MMOs >.
Has anyone been unlucky like myself, in that I’m 13 hrs in and am yet to see a legendary foe? I’ve just upped the difficulty to hard in the hopes of coming across one….fingers crossed
I’m playing on normal, and I think from around the 5th hour onward, I’ve probably encountered one every 30-40 minutes on average.
That is strange! Are you exploring much? I come across one probably every couple of hours
Found a legendary dog and a legendary roach in the same time. They’re out there. Maybe do more side missions?
Oops new here just noticed I had replies. Yeh basically all I’m doing is side missions atm ha. Is it possible I beat them without knowing and just didn’t like the loot so junked it maybe? With those cool perks I’m sure I woulda held onto it tho. Nuts.
I’ve found 2 and I’m about 13 hours in on hard. I’ve been doing a lot of building and not too much exploring, though.
There’s a mine near the Corvega factory that had a legendary molerat for me. That’s a nice easy place to find. I’m not sure if they are random or not, though.
I put the difficulty up to hard and have already come across 2 legendary foes already, so that’s definitely helped, thanks for the help guys
too many spoilers.
“give some great gear to your followers, too.” But remember that if you do a “take all” from them at any point, it can take equipped gear too. It’s kinda annoying with Piper at least, I had to keep re-equipping her Press Hat every time we went home until I gave up and left it off.
Also, a tip from Reddit about clothes is to use the clothing as a way to keep track of assigned settlers. You can dress your farmers in farming clothing, security people in armour etc or you can just simplify it by giving hats to anyone that is assigned a job. Then you can easily see who is just wandering around doing nothing by checking if they are wearing a hat or not.
That’s actually a really awesome idea. Thanks!
Ive been giving them all the armor outfits, but i give different workers different single suit armor sets like the cage armor for defenders, etc.
Thats a really good idea. Most my settlements look like fancy dress parties. Except for outpost zimonja – which is a refuge for persecuted, cross dressing sailors. They all have pretty dresses n coast guard caps (except the captain, of course. And their chef. Who wears a sexy red number, a chef hat and a fully tricked minigun. No-one fucks with chef.) Every time i enter this camp i weep tears of hysterics n joy.
The infinite caps glitch doesn’t actually work – it looks as though you’re getting free caps, but when you exit the transaction you’ll find out that you’ve sold your original stock of ammo. E.g. if you go into the transaction with 100x .308 rounds, and do the infinite caps glitch it looks as though you’re selling back the rounds that you originally bought from the trader, but after you’ve accepted and exited yoou find yourself with only 70x .308 rounds.
For outfits: Don’t wear your power armor everywhere. Later in the game it might seem like the best idea… An abundance of cores, added carry weight, jetpack and sheer protection. What’s not to like?
…It can cause certain quest-relative NPCs to attack you on sight, making peaceful resolution to some quests absolutely impossible (And thus forgoing the best outcome). Quicksave often. If someone starts attacking you, consider reloading and getting out to see if they’re friendly otherwise.
Just suffered through the toughest (randomly generated) encounter so far
The Castle got attacked by 2 (maybe 3?) Super Mutant Butchers plus 1 skirmisher and 3 (maybe 2?) normal super mutants.So, of the six enemies, two (or 3) were marked with skulls, and therefore several levels higher than me. After a few attempts, the issue was solved with power armour, a minigun, 2 mini nukes and
Artillery, on their approach to the castle.Unfortunately, my use of explosives agro’d half the settlers, so now the Castle has a lovely excess of food, water and beds.Here’s a tip : there’s a quest triggered by a radio station, u go to a place called
plaza tower I believe. If you’re level 13 to 14 or lower for GODS SAKE bring a companion, lots of stims, and power armour or a heavy weapon with plenty of ammo. It’s like the motherf*cking movie The Raid in thereHaving put in dozens of hours into this I’d say I agree with basically all the article’s advice (tho never tried the scrounger perk) but I’d add that having the pack mule perk is GREAT as well as also using you companions as pack mules. And get as many varieties of shops in your settlement (starting with the general trader) of as high level as possible as soon as possible. The higher level shops you make have more caps in reserve and sell more kinds of more useful stuff
My top of that if you don’t want your settlements to get attacked then your defence is meant to be equal or greater than your food and water.
Is that food + water? Because a few of mine still get attacked even with that
Another tip. Just to add to ‘OMG DOGMEAT’ section. Lone wanderer perk works with him as a companion. Also the
Chameleon chest piece you can pick up early on used in conjunction with a silenced sniper and pistol gives you mostly one shot kills. So pump some points into the Sandman perk I think it’s called and you can go invisible and get more than times 3 damage on sneak shots. Can’t remember the sniper I’m using but it does 50% extra damage on a enemy with full health