It’s been just over a month since Bethesda finally put an end to our torment and released the much awaited Fallout 4. 7 years of pent up excitement for the continuation of the series pretty much resulted in a fair few individuals downright disappearing off the face of the planet for 2 to 3 days after leaving just one note for their friends to see: an inconspicuous screenshot of the freshly bought Fallout 4 in their Steam Library.
However, not everyone managed to get their hands on the game as soon as it came out and we’re here to help the late gamers who’re just about preparing to take their turn with disappearing into the Wastelands by providing them with our very own Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks list. The Fallout 4 world is ridiculously large, easy to get lost into, especially when you’re the kind of player who really likes to inspect every single corner of every little building, collecting everything and even taking the time to go back to the settlement to get rid of all the 1 cap value trash you picked up and refused to throw away until you became overencumbered.
The level design is even more complicated than the one we’ve seen in Fallout 3 – and that’s saying something. If you’re just preparing to start off and you don’t want to find yourself having to start over few hours into your gameplay because you’re unhappy with one thing or another, here’s our very own list of Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks. And don’t worry, we’ll keep the spoilers to a minimum.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Leveling & Perks
When I Level Up I Want to Be an Astronaut!
The entire leveling and Perks system in Fallout 4 feels familiar and yet very much different. Your base stats are still decided by the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute system but the entire perk system is very much changed from the bland and unexciting list of upgrades you granted yourself when leveling up in Fallout 3.
Firstly, there’s no level cap and thank god for that. Unlike Fallout 3’s case, where you stopped your in-game self-improvement when you hit level 20, there’s no limit to how amazing and powerful you can get in its mighty successor. I expect that the game can get particularly dull when you’ve run out of story, things to do AND enemies to slay since they don’t scale with your level. There’s only so many times you can throw yourself off of cliffs for a laugh.
As a last mention before we dive in, be wise and make a save game file right before you ride the elevator up from Vault 111 – this marks the last chance you get to respec your character and skip the tutorial, were you to start a new game. You can’t reset the way you distribute your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes nor your perks unless you resort to console-related tricks and downright cheats.
The Perks of Being a Fall…outflower
Yeah, I can’t make that title better. Instead of the very unexciting interface Fallout 3 gave us when leveling up our characters, you get an extensive perk tree screen where all of the available upgrades in the game are listed under their respective stat of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. variety.
Before I move onto talking about perks in detail, please make note of this very important note: do not make the same mistake as I did and not realize that you can actually skill up any of your stats (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility or luck) by actually clicking on their respective icons at the top of the list. Every level allows you to either level up a perk or a stat. Anyway, moving on.
Each existent perk in the list can have anywhere between 2 and 5 ranks – each rank further increasing its focus or even providing some extra bonuses on top of the original one. There is a total of 10 levels of perks for each attribute in particular.
So whether you want to be an amazingly sturdy and aggressive ogre-like warrior that uses his arms and harsh language to defeat its enemies or a highly intuitive, downright ninja-like tactical analyst, it’s all up to you. Maybe you don’t want to be good at anything in particular and just have a little of each attribute perk.
It’s Not All About Perk Charts and Difficult Decisions
There are other ways for you to get access to various perks and extra S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute points. Though in case of the former, they’re not the same as the ones you get in the perk chart and often not as impactful.
- Magazine Perks. These are perks that provide a smaller amount of bonuses to various aspects of the gameplay, but come with many more ranks than the ones in your perk chart. Reading an issue from each particular magazine will grant you a different effect in some cases, while in others you’ll just keep increasing in a particular trait.
For example, Issue 13 of Astoundingly Awesome Tales magazine will grant you 5% extra damage against ghouls and issue 12 allows your canine companion to permanently take 10% less damage. Meanwhile, the entire collection of the U.S. Covert Operations Manual will make it more difficult for enemies to detect you while you sneak with every issue that you read.
- Companion Perks. If you choose to not be a misanthrope and actually opt for a companion on your trek, any of the choices you make can ripe into a perk once you max out your relationship level with them. For example, one may give you +20% weapon damage when you’re below 25% health, while another will offer you x2 XP for conversations and location discovery.
- Bobbleheads. There is a total of 20 collectible Bobbleheads that can either increase a particular S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute or improve one of the following skills to some degree: Barter, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lock Picking, Medicine, Melee, Repair, Science, Small Guns, Sneak, Speech or Unarmed.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Inventory
The Winds of Change Blew in Another Direction
If you recall Fallout 3’s inventory being an absolute drag to navigate through as you got lost in the midst of small gun ammo, tins, Radroach meats and other radioactive goodies that you had no idea when you were going to use but looked important and useful (mostly because they were valued at 10 caps and not 1, be honest), Fallout 4 will be much more of a blessing for you. Or at least that’s how it would be on paper, considering all of the inventory changes.
Sadly, I can’t say that with a hand on my heart because you’ll be spending more time in the game trying to figure out what else to throw away to stop being overburdened and actually be able to fast travel back to a vendor (you can’t fast travel when you’re exceeding your carrying limit).
Regardless, your Pip-Boy has now decided to add 2 different categories of items to the default 5: Mods – the add-on thingamajigs you can use for your guns and armor – and Junk (basically everything that is junk enough to not fit in any other category because it can be stripped down into crafting materials and nothing more but not junk enough to not make it into a collectible part of the world). Considering that you’ll be carrying a lot of junk with you at all times because everything you find in the game is useful in some way, browsing through your inventory is still a relative pain; maybe a little less so considering you can at least scroll through your never-ending lists faster.
Because things end up getting so messy and clogged with all the absolute trash (absolutely useful trash I mean!) you’ll be carrying, the system allows you to rename items or set them as favorites so you don’t accidentally sell or drop them. If you want to move a particular item to list at the beginning of your list, you don’t necessarily need to scour your imagination to come up with cleverer names that are not A, AA or AAA. Instead, you just need type a dash before the name you want to give them and they’ll show up at the beginning automatically.
Hoarding Is Hurting… Or Is It?
Am I the only one who – when first playing Fallout 3 – made about 3 trips between Megaton and the Super Duper Mart just to make sure no cup, tin or empty milk bottle was left behind in the store? Caps, dude! While the hoarding attitude is fun and not worrying at all as long as it’s in a video game, I obviously soon began to give up simply because it was taking too long and really not worth it.
Well, come Fallout 4 and you kind of find yourself in the position where you have to be a hoarder. Everything in useful one way or another. Most scrubby weapons and pieces of armor can be stripped down to a wide variety of crafting materials, icky meats thriving on RADs can be made into less icky non-radioactive foods, and I’m sure that bent fork could play a major role in becoming my next blade-ended shotgun to shoo away the visitors from my settlement’s porch.
While that’s an obvious exaggeration of it, that’s how things really end up being. I hope you’re good at weighing the pros and cons of keeping an item or can quickly calculate whether you end up with an advantage if you’re to keep one item over another. On the go. As you loot that one ghoul. Out of the other 20 dead ghouls scattered around. Good luck!
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – V.A.T.S.
The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System is Fallout’s trademark combat system that allows you to be a lot less worse at… targeting, obviously, as well as aiming and landing critical strikes. Sure, you can try and play Fallout 4 like it was Call of Duty or like you got lost on a Knife-only Counter Strike server, but you’ll most likely end up disliking the game soon enough.
V.A.T.S is great for a number of reasons – starting with cracking skulls and cracking them good and up to avoiding your imminent grenade-induced death. Here’s a rough list of reasons to use it:
- You’re really bad at aiming and shooter games in general. Well, that’s a bit of a shame as action points usage felt a little higher so you will probably not get to enter V.A.T.S for 5 shots in a row. Plus, you wouldn’t have to enter V.A.T.S. in the first place as you can take all of the AP-available shots with one accessing of the feature. You can still use it to aim well placed critical shots at the stronger enemies out of the lot, while the rest of the time you’ll want to do your best with regular controls. Or go for a melee build and be done with it; you’ll end up 1-shooting enemies with a critical strike half-way through the game.
- You’re not particularly good at making decisions. Thus, you require a slowing down of time in order to select your next course of action. And you get a helping hand in form of chance to hit percentages as well as the damage you’d do if the hit landed. However, do keep in mind you may not use V.A.T.S. as your designated pause button as time doesn’t stop. Just moves past a lot slower.
- Dodge things like you’re Neo. If someone throws some potentially disastrous, dedicated, face melting device at you, you can enter V.A.T.S. to take a good shot at it and destroy it before impact. Same goes for taking out mines from a good, safe distance.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Crafting
Prepare Your Hammers and Pans
The crafting system in Fallout 4 goes beyond extensive. There’s so much stuff you can make and so many respective materials in the game that I actually nearly ended up not even bothering with it. Starting with an entire post-apocalyptic, futuristic cuisine set of skills that you can master that will allow you to turn any strange radioactive animal body part into a wide selection of buff-providing food, and ending with building – *gasp* – towns.
You can craft a huge number of things – starting with the very basic weapons and armor, up to the more Iron Man-reminiscent Power Armor, various drugs (good type of drugs), health-restoring dishes and settlements. Kind of like your very own In-Fallout Sim City… Simulator. Sadly, however, you don’t get to craft ammo out of any tin can rings.
You remember how I said you should probably hold onto your seemingly useless junk? I hope you did if you’re planning to get well-versed into the intricate arts of crafting. Nearly anything can be scrapped down into crafting materials as long as you’re in “Workshop Mode”, which you can then use in the respective crafting stations. The bright side of the crafting and workshops is that you can alleviate some of that inventory pressure by dumping all of your scrapable junk into the workshop storage every time you’re around.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Weapon Crafting
This may be a little different than you expect when you first hear of it as you don’t get to craft weapons per se, but instead you get to craft upgrades and customizations for them. You can modify guns in no less than 6 ways: the receiver, the barrel, the grip, the magazine, the sights and the muzzle. Do keep in mind however, that you won’t be able to use the Weapon Workbench until you’ve completed a quest called “When Freedom Calls”.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Armor and Power Armor Crafting
By combining different parts of armor as you progress through the game you can ultimately construct your very own power armor – with its very own level of customization such as protection, weight, stats and various resistances. Modding works the same way as it would do for regular armor – same goes for repairing.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Building your own fortress of more or less solitude
Settlement building can be as easy or as complicated as you expect – depends on your level of involvement in it. I guess you can start with planting some walls and pillars with a threatening-looking turret at the far end of it, then decide you’re playing Fallout 4 to slay enemies, not play house. Afterwards, you may hear about that thing where you can completely furnish any building you put in, as well as even decorate it, get a constant supply of those much needed resources and even hire traders and make them work for you.
So the hype begins again and you get back to work on your little personal haven. While even some of the developers admitted that they had Minecraft as their main inspiration for the entire crafting system in Fallout 4, there’s not so much you can do to terrain limitations as some of the locations where you want to build are difficult to work around in.
As soon as you gain a decent enough level – by that I simply mean don’t go there when you’re level 2 – you can venture to the south-east corner of the map where you’ll find Spectacle Island. It’s a mainly plain piece of land where you can go wild with your settlement building simulator. The only downside of this perfect building spot is that in order to build anything in it, you’ll pretty much have to bring in the crafting materials for it; at least until you get the very basics down.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Everything else crafting
The last things left in the list now are the kitchen and your chem lab. This part of the entire crafting system is pretty much self-explanatory: you make food to keep your health bar in the green when you’re out frolicking in the wastelands. You make chems to also keep your health bar in the green while you’re out on the field, but also keep down your RADs and give yourself a great number of buffs and other time or perception altering changes.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Companions
Dogmeat & Other Buddies
Some of our older friends from Fallout 3 not only make an appearance in Fallout 4, but also get to come with you on your untimely adventures out in the Wastelands. You only get one companion to act as your bodyguard, pack mule, meat shield, conversational therapist, comic relief, potential love interest, scapegoat, punching bag, story teller or muse at a given moment. However, you can easily switch through them as well as develop romantic interests for some.
What Are Companions Good For?
Well, I just listed an entire selection of things they are good for, but here goes:
- They can carry a fair amount of junk. Considering you can find a use for everything in the game, you can ask your buddies to hold some for you instead. However, it would seem that you’re not the only hoarder in this game because they tend to collect a lot of useless bulk as you go. So if you ever stop to transfer some of your items to your companion and they don’t have any room, you may want to check how many dozens of .30mm level 2 guns they may have picked up when you were looking somewhere else.
- They can be fearsome combatants or someone to hide behind when things get tricky. Pretty self-explanatory: while some are more proficient in bashing your enemies’ heads in such as Strong, others can provide other types of combat help.
- They allow you to get involved in the plot more to some degree. If you don’t care about that, might as well pick the Lone Wanderer selection of perks and be done with it.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Other Tricks You May Want to Know
While everything so far was a basic overview of things to watch out for when you actually get to playing Fallout 4, there are a few more odd mentions that we couldn’t just leave behind. Some of them will improve the quality of in-game life while others are… interesting to mention at least.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – The Pip-Boy Flash Light
For all the times when things get dark and you’re busy navigating the labyrinth of dimly lit caves, the game gives you access to a handy flash light that you can bring out to light your path. With default controls, you can have your Pip-Boy serve as a flash light if you hold down on the TAB key.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Saving: Is that still a thing?
It should, because you never know when things will take a wrong turn – especially when playing on Survival Mode. You should make a habit of saving your game whenever a major decision is to be taken; in addition, it’s good to know that you can save your game while you’re in a conversation with an NPC too.
Another very useful thing you can do to improve the quality of your life in this game is to set your auto saving frequency to 5 minutes if you’re slow to develop a hand twitch to your save button every time you achieve anything.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – Rare Ammo and Rare Resources are called “Rare” for a reason
While I’m sure you’ll feel an unspeakable urge to use your Fusion Cores on your newly acquired Power Armor to kick some rear with style, you may want to think twice before you blow it on some trivial area that you have no power passing through. Same goes for ammo – it’s not as easily found like in regular shooter games, so you may want to use it wisely.
Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks – In-game Plastic Surgery and… Gaming
If you’re unhappy with the result of the two hours you put into your character’s appearance and think you’ve got some more spare time to make a good representation of who your in-game avatar truly is, you can always visit the barber for a new hairdo or the plastic surgeon for a new facedo. Both can be found in Diamond City.
You can actually play mini games ON your Pip-Boy while you’re in-game if you get the respective items that allow it. Gameception! You get to choose between several games such as Red Menace or Atomic Command by placing their holotapes into your Pip-Boy.
That’s about all of the basic Fallout 4 Tips and Tricks we could think would give you a helping hand if you’re just starting to play the game or haven’t started long ago. If there’s anything else you would like to see in this article or anything we haven’t mentioned, feel free to leave us a comment below!
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Roxanne Briean
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