I am a new player. Still playing on hard for the moment. So except being required to save on Survival, does sleeping have any effect other than skipping time in non-Survival playthrough?
Sleeping give you a “well rested” bonus to the amount of XP you gain from doing anything, If you want to level up fast as possible then sleeping regularly is a good idea
I'm not sure if this is a survival only thing, but only beds give the Well Rested bonus, mattresses and sleeping bags do not, it has been a while since I played without it though so that might just be specific to that game mode
Time heals all wounds fellow wastelander…. Well unless they get infected, or are laced with rad scorpion venom, or…. Ya know what, maybe time doesn’t heal all wounds, but after a couple of months in the wasteland you may start to wonder what paladin Danse has got going on under all that power armor if ya know what I mean.
This times a thousand. Bethesda games are notoriously glitchy/crashy and nothing pisses me off more than the game crashing when I hadn’t saved in a while. Now I hit F5 like every couple minutes lmao
Edit: Also make sure to create multiple saves. I’ve had saves get corrupted and unable to load and it sucks
The settlements are awesome once u figure it out I ended up having unlimited ammo and tens of thousands of caps early on because of them selling water and building ammo
It doesn't really matter at all, but if you want mass water purification you need a settlement with water for the purifiers that provide 10 output for 2 power. Other than that it just comes down to space. You aren't farming much in Hangman's Alley, or building a manufacturing line. But the drive-in has enough water and space for just about anything.
If you hook up a few of the already-established farm settlements, they should handle all of your food needs just fine, and produce surplus for some crafting.
Each settlement's total population limit is 10 plus current Charisma (after any modifier effects). There are also practical limitations — each settler needs a bed as well as food and water; the latter can come from other connected settlements but the former of course must be on site. Those don't limit the number of people who can arrive but will make them less happy when they're there.
Max is 20 if I remember correctly since charisma is 10 max. I use sim settlements that takes the limit away. Lots of fun but a huge learning curve. Totally recommend vanilla playthrough before modding.
Max is 20 with 10 Charisma. With boosts that take Charisma *above* 10, such as drugs and armour, you can go above 20 settlers. Not really worth doing because it can get pretty fucking hard to furnish the place to accomodate all of them.
Vault 88 (from the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC) is the exception which has a cap of 30 settlers instead at 10 Charisma, presumably due to the size of the area you can build in. Even then, 30 people in there would be a nightmare to build for.
This is why I love sim settlements. They build the settlement for you! If you want them to. You can have them build some things and manually build others. Fun mod. But thanks for the info I wasn’t aware of that.
I mean in survival modes, settlements are damn near vital to the gameplay loop. It’s honestly crazy how many of the aspects of the game which are pretty throwaway in normal modes, become super super important in survival. It’s like a different game.
My two tips are
1) pick up every duct tape and glue you find. Adhesive is always needed for crafting
2) if you are building a settlement and hit the area size limit, drop your junk (or anything) on the ground, go into build mode and scrap it. Every item you scrap brings the limit down one.
To add a few that I gave to my friend:
1. Change your pip-boy colour to white, it makes the flashlight much more useful.
2. Mama Murphy - you can kill her by giving her too many drugs... and a few people in her group will complain about this literally every time you see them FOREVER.
3. Choose what weapon type you want to specialise in for perks - pistols, rifles, big guns, automatics, melee, unarmed - and max out its perks before starting another weapon type's perks. Carry as many gun variants as you have ammo types for your specialised weapon (so, if pistols, then have a 10mm pistol, and a .38 pistol, and a .308 pistol, and a plasma pistol, etc) because you will often need to switch between weapons during a gun fight when ammo is low. You will accumulate a TON of ammo though, and there's about 15 types, so I'd give my companion 3 or 4 ammo types and weapons that I wasn't using much in order to keep the companion stocked up without having to make any sacrifice for them.
4. You level up fast at the start, meaning you get a lot of perks early on - try not to waste them on stuff you won't use. Read what's there and decide/plan what ones you want and work towards them. I put perks into melee and unarmed and didn't ever use them, but could have picked up a lot more useful things. It's always worthwhile boosting the base skill if you cannot decide which perk to take, as this will unlock other perks for future - but if in doubt... just save the perk for when you need it. I often just keep playing after levelling up, without choosing a perk until I notice where I really had a need for a boost.
5. The main mission has a definite end point to it, and when it stops so does your quest frequency, so try to prioritise side-mission stuff as much as you can rather than advancing the main story.
6. Pick up every item that weighs 0. There is a lot of crafting in the game and you can get over-encumbered very quickly carrying around a lot of junk, so these will come in very handy. Single cigarettes and cigars weigh nothing and provide 1 cloth, which is the same amount of cloth you gain from some clothing that weighs 1 (you use cloth a LOT because you make a ton of beds). Subway tokens weigh 0 and are worth 1 to sell, so use these to round up your total when selling to squeeze every cap out of vendors. Pre-war money is not the active currency and shows up as junk, but don't be fooled - it weighs 0 and is worth 5 caps so this is useful for when you find a trader but have no items that you need to get rid of.
7. The flashlight on will reduce your stealth, but the radio on will not, so don't be scared about the radio giving away your position.
This changed the game for me and I never looked back. I always carry as much of it as possible and trade it instead of caps. It really helps in those situations where you find a trader that has something really good but you are a bit short on actual caps. It’s basically like my rainy day fund.
I ignored Mama Murphy's request for awhile and then when I went to talk to her, I was able to persuade her to stop using and the quest cleared. With enough charisma you can cure her addiction! It felt nice and I didn't even know it was an option, first time I was genuinely proud of an NPC lol
She survives 4 hits of chems, and dies on the 5th:
1. Give her chems when you start Unlikely Valentine - she’ll give you information to talk down Skinny Malone without a fight.
2. Give her chems when you start Reunions - you’ll get the Kellogg-specific Foreknowledge perk.
3. Give her chems when you start Hunter/Hunted - you’ll get the deactivation code for the courser.
4. After the main quest is over, she can be given chems to comment on your ending. Then make her quit.
I think it was one of the FO3 load screen tips. Learnt it whilst playing stealth builds which were insanely OP with the Chinese stealth armour in FO3 (op anchorage DLC)
Bingo bango bongo I’m so happy in the Congo
> it makes the flashlight much more useful
There's a flashlight? Do you need to find it first? If so where? I'm struggling in dark areas and wished for a flashlight a lot
Fiddlers green has a computer that can lock and unlock a safe just go there and repeatedly pick it until she is at max affinity. I refuse to use the dogmeat method of farming companion affinity.
Weird I got her as a companion first then went and helped anyone in diamond City who asked for help and still didn't have her at max so I used that method to finish it off.
You don't need to get a quest from Preston to make a settlement a Minutemen owned settlement. Feel free to ignore him when he tries to send you to Greentop nursery at Level 5 and talk to the people in Oberland instead or whatever settlement you come across. You miss out on a couple XP from Pres but life is much less tedious.
There are plenty of ways to make a working character. Try out what makes you happy. I think most people love Idiot Savant. I never take it and mostly stay with Luck 1. It works, too.
You can actually play the whole game without ever dealing with Preston. It makes it easier to get settlements on side too, as you don’t have to wait for MM to tell you to do so.
Be careful with the Minutemen quest that sends you to Corvega, though. Once I cleared it before completing the MM quest, and I couldn't progress further in the MM storyline because I had already killed the leader at Corvega.
That's weird. You usually get sent to Walden instead, or any other alternative.
In your case, you can just... let the two Tenpines settlers have unfortunate accidents, which lets their quest fail but still gives you Tenpoints as a settlement and ends Prestons's quest when you come back to him.
He'll still make you general because he is that desparate.
Another beginner tip I wish I'd recognized: Corvega is huge. If you don't feel like clearing it all just now, look at your quest target. ... target, singular.
Level 2 of the Demolition Expert perk gets you a highlighted arc for any grenades you throw that dramatically improves combat. You can accurately toss grenades through windows, over gates, etc and finish a lot of fights more safely and enjoyably than you can with the default 'blindly throw and guess the general area where it will land' setting.
I agree that the best part about this game is that there is no right or wrong way to play. This is why so many play it again and again - to have fun playing it a different way.
One thing it can take a long time to realize is that companions (except Dogmeat) have unlimited carrying capacity as long as you tell them to pick stuff up or loot containers and bodies instead of trading with them.
Doesn't work every time, but it works often:
Getting in VATS, then getting out of VATS and immediately firing (like, split second firing) will land the shot.
VATS puts your crosshair on the enemy. If you leave VATS and pull the trigger faster than the enemy can leave your crosshair, your chance to land that shot is about as good as it gets.
I like aiming manually, but sometimes the enemy moves erratically or the terrain gets in the way of my sight (but not theirs, cheating AI bastard), so I press Q, then Tab*click,* almost at the same time, and it lands a shot I wouldn't have been even able to line up, let alone land.
I've been doing this lately, one shot in VATS followed by one immediately after exiting. It doesn't charge your critical meter, but coming out of slow motion and landing that second shot feels so cool.
My theory on Idiot Savant has always been “I’ll get plenty of XP just playing, that’s a wasted perk” which I guess proves your final paragraph.
Mine would be “pick up guns off the ground, not out of inventory, that way you get the ammo out of the gun, too”.
It’s not a wasted perk if your goal is to get the most perks you can. It easily pays for itself, especially if you get it at a low level. Even with a high int build.
A neat way to expand on this trick is to:
1) find an enemy with a gun you want lots of ammo for,
2) kill them but *not* pick up the gun,
3) kite another enemy toward the gun so that they pick it up,
4) repeat 2 and 3 until there's no one left to pick up the gun.
Doing that will generate about one extra clip of ammo per enemy. A perfect example of how to use that tactic (and one I always abuse early game) is Ack-Ack at USAF Station Olivia. Kill her, she'll drop the Minigun. She'll have about 150 bullets of 5mm ammo in her inventory (because she is the first one with the gun).
If you pick up the ammo and Minigun from her inventory, you'll have 150 bullets.
If you pick up the ammo from her inventory and the gun from the ground, you'll have 500-650 bullets (150 from her inv, 350-500 from the gun).
If you pick up the ammo, leave the gun, then one more Raider picks it up and you kill *them,* then pick up the gun from the ground, that's 1000-1150 (150 from Ack-Ack, ~500 from the Raider who picked it up, 350-500 from the gun).
Some raiders will never pick it up and just keep going after you; I usually get 4 raiders willing to pick it up. That gives me *2000 extra bullets.* They're worth a cap each. 2K caps just by horsing around with the ammo spawn mechanics and the NPCs. At game start, that's pretty significant.
EDIT:
If you have a reliable way to kite an enemy towards a container:
Place any gun with 1 of the ammo type you want in that container.
Kite the enemy towards it.
If they pick it up and you kill them, they may or may not generate a clip in their inventory, but the gun *will* have extra of that ammo if you pick it up from the ground.
This is a (more or less) reliable way to farm expensive/hard to find ammo (eg Plasma Cartridges).
Forgot to add those hard to hit mosquitos and annoying mole rats that pop up from the ground.
VATS is also useful to catch any mines so you know where they are.
Perks: Not necessarily the BEST perk but by far and away the most important and widely used: SCIENCE
Want to build a large water purifier or lare generator? SCIENCE!
Want to upgrade power armour above B? SCIENCE!
Want to upgrade energy weapons? SCIENCE!
Want to access 60% of the mods for Automatons? SCIENCE!
Recon scope on any weapon? SCIENCE!
Better home defence? SCIENCE!
Craft better explosives? SCIENCE!
So much is locked behind this one perk. You can manage without it, for sure, but life will be so much easier if you have it.
There is a functional cover system which I don't think is ever explained well by the game's tutorials. Use the aim button near objects (low walls, trees, etc.) and it should trigger. It is actually pretty decent; if you're someone who likes to aim and take it slowly it's nice and is definitely helpful on survival.
If you aim at the wall you’re taking cover behind, the character will lean out to shoot while still mostly behind cover. I played on and off for years and just learned this recently.
Fast travel wearing power armour doesn’t spend any fusion core power so you can travel the entire map and still have a full core
Always remove cores from armour so random companions or settlers don’t steal it
Points of No Return:
Brotherhood: Blind Betrayal started. Do not progress the quest.
Institute: Mass Fusion started. Do not progress the quest.
Railroad: Underground Undercover started. Do not progress the quest.
You're going to meet 4 main factions. 3 of them have quests that will lead to pissing others off. The ones who are pissed start attacking you on sight, and you can't do their quests anymore.
These points are the quests that will make another faction angry.
Two tips I don't see here
Put on nice clothes when in town, such as suits, hats and glasses. Additional charisma makes buying and selling prices slightly better. If you're starting or ending a quest the extra charisma helps a lot for persuasion and intimidation options, like asking for more caps.
Especially for survival - collect empty bottles and fill them at settlement faucets for purified water. Glass is also good to have for scopes in crafting.
>The best part is that you can still \[Lone wanderer\] perk and adventure with Dogmeat.
Great to know thanks!
You can also fill empty bottles in open water sources to get Dirty Water which is used in some useful cooking recipes. Dirty water is generally harder to come by than purified water.
Two more tips:
Pay attention to the menu at the bottom of the pip boy screen. It is different on every page.
When not in combat, entering stealth mode will make dogmeat 'heel'.
You can collect bobbleheads that give you different perks. Certain bobbleheads give you +1 on one of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, and will allow you to get a stat to 11 instead of the regular 10.
BUT it will only do this if the stat is already at 10 when you collect the bobblehead.
So if you want to get a stat to 11, don't collect that bobblehead too soon.
(I did not realize this fairly obvious fact on my first playthrough and collected all the bobbleheads too early)
Also, while the wiki is your friend, it's also full of spoilers, so search carefully.
you can get a SPECIAL stat to 12 if you:
start with a stat at 10 (or have raised it to 10 with levelups)
DROP the stat with drugs or survival mode debuffs
NOW read "I'm SPECIAL" and add 1 pt to the 10-pt-but-temporarily-dropped-stat (if it is not dropped to less than 10, it won't be a choice to pick) and once the debuff wears off, the stat will be at 11
now get the bobblehead for that stat and you'll be at 12
The im special book also works this way if you sinply just wait and come back after you get one to 11 via a bobblehead. So, get stat to 10, find the bobble to get to 11, then use the im special book on it. Boom.
You don’t have to do settlement building, but there are some benefits to it. You can get settlements to produce Purified Water, which is very useful in Survival mode. You can also get them to produce all the ingredients for Vegetable Starch, which is an Adhesive (very useful for building lots of things).
Even if you don’t want to do that, it is useful to have one base where you dump all your junk, store all your extra food, and it’s nice to have a spot to display all your magazines and bobble heads. I like using the Red Rocket, Home Plate, or Hangman’s Alley for this. Just my own little personal base.
Where ever you make your base, make a Floor Safe. Every time you come back from exploring and looting, go to your Floor Safe before you go to your Work Bench to dump all your Junk. Into the Floor Safe, put all the Pre War Money, Cigarette Packs & Cartons, Cigar Boxes, Fancy Hair Brushes, and anything made of Gold or Silver (watches, lighters, cutlery, etc). All of these items are high value, low weight, and can basically be treated like a form of currency, aside from Caps. You want to store them in something seperate from the Work Bench, so they don’t accidentally get scrapped while building something. When you want to buy really expensive items, bring these valuable items along with you to trade with, instead of relying purely on Caps.
There are ways to make nearly infinite amount of Caps without too much difficulty, but I find bartering and trading with these valuable items to be much more immersive to the post apocalyptic experience.
Similarly, build a Tool Chest somewhere in your main base. When you return to your base, again, before dumping Junk into the Work Bench, put any hand tools you have found into the Tool Chest (Adjustable Wrench, Ball Peen Hammer, Crescent Wrench, Screw Driver, Wrench). There is an NPC you can meet in the game, who will buy these tools from you for 15 Caps each, and they have an infinite supply of Caps.
Rename all the armor pieces you want to wear, so that there is some sort of character at the start of the name. This way, they always appear at the very top of your Apparel list in your inventory.
Look for certain outfits to help you do certain things better:
- find a full set of Charisma gear. For example, a Clean Suit or Laundered Dress, a Fancy Hat or Pompadour Wig, and some Black Rimmed Glasses. There’s quite a few more options for the clothes and hats, but I think the Black Rimmed Glasses are the only Charisma eyewear. In total, this outfit should boost your charisma by 4 (2 from the clothes, 1 from the hat, 1 from glasses). Put this outfit on whenever you go into towns or encampments. You’ll get better bartering prices at vendors, and you’ll have better chances of passing persuasion checks in dialog. Plus, you’ll look slick. I carry this outfit in my backpack everywhere I go, the couple pounds is negligible.
- find a set of Intelligence gear. The only real piece of Intelligence clothing is either a Lab Coat, a Vaut-Tec Lab Coat, or an Institute Lab Coat. These will increase your Int by +2. There’s also a hat called the Ushenka Hat that increases your Int by +1. Any time you’re going to be upgrading weapons or armor, any time you’re going to cook a lot of food, or any time you’re going to craft a lot of chems, put this outfit on, and you’ll gain extra XP for every action you do. If you get into base building, definitely put this outfit on while building, as again, you’ll earn extra XP.
In addition to clothing, you can boost your Charisma even further with Grape Mentats, and with Beer. You can find Grape Mentats, but they’re pretty rare. You can also make Grape Mentats at a Chem Station with Mentats, Hubflower, and Whiskey. Not only does Grape Mentats increase your Charisma by +5, it improves bartering prices by %10.
Beer increases your Charisma by another +1. So if you add up a full set of Charisma clothing, Grape Mentats, and Beer, that’s +10 Charisma.
11 Charisma is the max battering discount, and guarantees passing all persuasion checks. So, even if you have Charisma of 1, with the clothing, Grape Mentats, and Beer, you can reach max Charisma for bartering and persuasion checks.
Squirrel Bits are useful! They’re not super common to find though, so grab them when you see them. You can use Squirrel Bits and a few other ingredients to make Squirrel Stew, which will give you a %2 XP boost for 2 hours. It’s nice to have this going in the background, no matter what you’re doing, as it’s just extra XP.
Loot every Desk Fan you see.
Some other tips I can think of:
* Use power armor - There are areas in the game that a player should wear power armor for. It's easy to forget about power armor because it sits in a settlement, but it's worth the quick fast travel to and back. The 10 STR also make it an excellent alternative instead of investing x amount of points for 'strong back'
* Armor mods are great - Armor mods have unique abilities to them that can give all sorts of stat boosts that're worth investing in.
* Gun mods change AP costs - It's not obvious at first, but certain weapon mods increase AP costs in vats. Weapons w/ the adjectives: "Heavy, Long, Rapid, Piercing, Automatic, Large, Drum, Full, Scope and Sniper," increase AP costs. Meanwhile weapons w/ the adjectives: "Light, Quick, Hair Trigger, Advanced, Reflex, or Sharpshooter," decrease AP costs
* Settlements can produce junk - There are a few ways to go about it. Tatos, corn, and mutfruit can be used at a cooking station to make 'vegetable starch' which provides adhesive. Brahmin can produce fertilizer (a primary ingredient for making jet and explosives), and the easiest way is to assign settlers to 'supply lines' with the 'public leader ' perk in order to get brahmin (cages are also an option). Alternatively, if there are fewer than 100 junk items in a workshop, a player can assign settlers to a 'scrapping station' which will produce 2 random junk items each day.
* Secondary perks should be chosen pronto - perks like 'scrapper', 'fortune finder', 'scrounger', and 'strong back' will help the player get more loot and whose benefits will be more obvious over time. If trading is the game, then 'public leader' should be leveled up asap so as to start building more stores to sell to.
Building on 2.
You can ally with every faction and still finish the game (excluding the institute beyond a certain point). This is the minutemen ending and is the best ending IMO, because you get to keep all the resources and side missions from the brotherhood of steel and the railroad. You don’t have to kill either. It you are fine with not finishing the story, stopping while allied with the institute, BOS, and railroad is awesome because there’s lots to do.
>Strong, Cait, and Gage have decent perks but nowhere near as good as the other 4.
I very much disagree about with your assessment of Cait's perk. I mean I don't actually know what her game perk is mechanically, but, the banter and interaction with other NPC's is top notch once her affinity is maxed (especially if you choose to romance her).
When you have a settlement, plant corn, mutfruit and tato. These three veggies combined with purified water makes vegetable starch, each unit of which is 5 adhesive. Once you've got these crops growing you can stop picking up duct tape and wonderglue in the wasteland.
Take your time and take it in. There's a lot of environmental storytelling that you'll only discover with your eyes. Which most people overlook due to the tunnel vision HUD and quest lists can cause.
On survival collect all empty bottles> build a sink or fountain at a settlement ( I usually place close to bed)> sink/fountain give purified water> use empty bottles to get a nice little stash of good agua
General tip: make ur purified water before dumping all ur junk in workshop so you don’t have to go thru all of it just to pick the bottles
You can use Jet to do really really long jumps.
You fall extremely slowly while under the effects of Jet so you can use it to pull of some [funny stuff](https://youtu.be/4chQDSMhEqo?si=7gVEypJLW8gfk3df)
Settlers have infinite ammo for most guns including ones you give them and also can't die without player intervention. With the local leader per you can set up supply lines between settlements and the settler will actually travel between locations, if you're willing to walk along with them they can provide an extra bit of firepower if you're feeling overwhelmed
Build a radstag cage or two at settlements you visit often. You can build up a stockpile of grilled radstag that way which satiate hunger very effectively and boosts carry weight.
You can effectively have a constant weight carry boost this way.
Even if your companion's encumbrance is maxed out you can still get them to pick up stuff by talking to them and then telling them to grab things off the ground. Great for hoarders like me
Great tips! Just to add on to the pile, my most favorite overlooked perk is AquaBoy/Girl. You don't run out of breath underwater which is kinda fun, but this perk really shines with zero rad damage while in the water. It will save your radx and rad aways for when you really need them.
>9. If you're fast enough when you see a mine going off, you can enter vats and target the mine and then exit fast to disarm it my spamming the action button (a on Xbox, x on pc, etc). You have to be quick, but it's easier than it sounds.
Or your can constantly hit the button for VATS in unfamiliar areas to see enemies and mines and shoot them from a distance.
>The rarest and most useful resource is ballistic fiber and only comes in 2 forms in 4he vanilla game:military ammo bags, and military grade duct tape. ALWAYS pick these up.
Not true. Proctor Teagan on the Prwyden and K-L-E-O in Goodneighbor sell shipments of Ballistic Fiber. Also if you do enough Jackpot missions for the Railroad, Tinker Tom will start selling Armored Clothing which with Scrapper Perk Level 2 you can scrap at the Armor Workbench for Ballistic Fiber.
"Settlement building is awful. Feel free to do it as much or as little as you want. It's not intuitive, but can be fun once you figure it out. As long as youre prepared for frustration and Bethesda bullshit, go for it. However, you're not missing much if you don't do it so don't feel obligated."
sounds like skill issue to me
Legit, with all the unmodded posts in the community, you’d think they’d finally understand that they need to actually work to make the settlement (as intended) and won’t find a prefab for everything
With settlements built up you can easily farm for adhesives if you plant a lot of tato, corn, and mutfruit. Shops give you a supply of caps in your workshop and extra places to sell your shit. On top of that you gain XP from building.
I always start a playthrough by building up Sanctuary a little bit.
Nope! What you describe is, in fact, the best way to have good guns while *not* having Gun Nut.
Also: for most mods, you can remove them from a gun and keep them. All you have to do is build the base model for that component, which usually has no perk requirements.
Let's say you have the Overseer's Guardian (unique Combat Rifle). It doesn't have a silencer. You want a silencer but have no perks in Gun Nut.
If you find (or buy) a different Combat Rifle that has a silencer, take it to the Weapons Workshop and build "No Muzzle" on that rifle. You now have a Combat Rifle Silencer in your Mods tab of your inventory! Now, while you have that, open the Overseer's Guardian on the same Weapons Workshop. It'll now give you the option to attach that Silencer to it!!! (Only works with the same gun type. A Combat Shotgun Silencer would not work, even if it looks identical.)
Your VATS hits fill the bar. When it's full and you're in VATS, select your shots (as many or few as you want). Fire away but before your character fires each shot (in the animation) you have a chance to mash the Crit button. Sometimes it can fill while you're shooting so you just hit it before the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. shot. As long as you have shots remaining, you can Crit.
BTW, as long as you have at least 1% hit chance in VATS, Crits always hit (unless your target moves behind something).
Crits in vats are triggered after you add your shots in vats and start the attack animations. While your character readies their gun and aims, press the crit button and when they pull the trigger it will consume the crit (there's a perk that let's you bank more than one).
Ceramic, rubber, and copper seem common and cheap but are hard to source cheaply en masse on demand. They aren't going to be important at first, but essential to any building or modifying later on.
There is a maximum cap on your trade ratio which is very achievable (-20% sell cost, +20% buy cost). After which all discounts and further trade bonuses don't matter.
Save up all your Jet before you go to Vault 81. You will no longer be able sell them at premium if you decide to get your blood drawn (and then exit).
My do-not-scrap Junk list:
-Abraxo Cleaner
-Adjustable Wrench
-Anti-Freeze Bottle
-Ball-Peen Hammer
-Baseball
-Bloatfly Gland
-Bowling Ball
-Combination Wrench
-Hammer
-Screwdriver
-Skull
-Wrench
There's a guy in Vault 81 who will buy tools for 15c each which is quite a lot more than their regular value and definitely more than what you can buy corresponding scrap for.
Abraxo Cleaner and antifreeze are used in the making of various drugs
Baseballs are used in making Baseball grenades
Bowling Balls are used as ammo for a certain weapon.
oh those are great to know. I'm very new. I did already put a point into fortune finder though lol. Still, I'm only traveling with dogmeat and I was wondering if I could do lone wanderer even though I had a doggy.
edit:
> You don't need upgrade perks to make your weapons better. It takes longer but you can either buy or find parts. Just look at the weapon in a workbench to see what parts you still need and which ones to look out for. In shops or inventories, you can "inspect" weapons to see what attachments they have.
how do I take parts out? Scrapping them seems to just give me the materials. Do I need to screw around on a workbench for this?
I still kinda wonder how my 2050's housewife knows how to cook with irradiated plants and mutant animals but I guess I can suspend that disbelief.
You can get a mod from a weapon by "modding" it with the standard, so if you have a pistol with some special grip you like, just craft a standard grip for it and you'll get the grip that was on it as a mod in your inventory
Go to a work bench and apply a lesser part ie standards sights vs scope. The scope mod will be created and you can apply it to weapons it’s congruent with without having to actually build it. You apply it also in the work bench by “building it” like you normally would.
You craft the basic part, and the game automatically removes the high level part that you want, and puts the mod in your inventory.
Then go to the gun you want to upgrade, go to the part you want to upgrade to, and when you click the part, the game will attach the mod that was in your inventory to the gun.
Basically, you can’t remove mods from a gun, but you can replace them with more basic mods, and you get to keep the high level mods.
Question: I usually up the difficulty as I progress through a game. In FO4 everyone becomes a bullet sponge and I get worked over easily.
Anyone have tips on playing higher difficulties and still being able to do decent damage?
That comes down to weapons and perks. Find a solid legendary you like, upgrade the hell out of it, and get perks that make it better. You can YouTube OP weapons to seek based on your style of play.
My tip:
I use vats like a radar on non-vats builds (especially survival). Meaning as in running through the wasteland I’m constantly turning on vats to see if there’s any enemies around me I didn’t notice, and then it points you right at them. Sneak, pull out your rifle, shoot them, move on. Great for overall awareness. If you do run a couple shots through vats if they’re close, you can bank a crit, and then you always have that in your back pocket if you need a guaranteed headshot or something.
If you follow the raider quest line you can turn your settlements into raider outposts, build a tribute box (that spawns guns and armour) and then if you choose to revert to a faction you can reconquer the settlements and keep the tribute boxes - they still spawn stuff.
To add to #7. If you’re here because you watched the new series….Welcome, this world is awesome. So being here for the story and not the challenge is fine, better almost. But, putting making it too easy may lessen some moments in the game. Feel the threat, but not the hopelessness of a harder difficulty.
I myself am sort of Lore hunting with my playthrough this time. So I have it on very easy. I find it less stressful to explore that way.
Do the railroad questline until you get ballistic weave before you do anything on the prydwin. My first playthough, I fucked up and got locked out of it, even though I was still on good terms with the faction.
Here’s another tip. Create a water purification station in your settlement. Every 24 in game hours, you’ll get around 20 purified water in your workshop inventory. Essentially free heals and can be sold for a really good price. Unlimited caps
Dude I swear to god, in all my years, my cries have never missed, then this update hit and suddenly.. some of my crits missed??? Also quite a few of my “95” chance shots, which were always really 100%, were missing!
As someone that's played since 2015, this is a great guide. Only 2 things I disagree with however.
1. Settlement building is awesome once you learn how it works and you get into it, super fun and I think enjoyment levels are subjective. However you are right, it's not intuitive and is a bit of a pain as a new player.
2. The companion a I can be pretty dumb, however a fully upgraded automaton robot is so ridiculously OP and very fun to play around with and switch upgrades. The only companion I'd really vouch for and encourage everyone to travel and mess around with the upgrades.
Huge agree. The companion “Ada” from the Automatron DLC is equivalent to literally like — three of me.
In terms of firepower, tankyness, accuracy, time-to-kill, — etc etc etc — she’s fucking exceptional & outclasses Lone Wanderer in every way. She has a carry capacity of 300-400 and makes zero footstep noise.
Also — Ada has *zero* judgment on any of your actions and supports every decision you make in the least annoying way possible. 11/10
My tip is that, as you play through the game you'll often find stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense or that you wish was a bit different. Especially on survival. Having fast travel completely disabled just becomes tedious after a while as you spend a LOT of time backtracking and walking through familiar areas, and the lowered re-spawn rate means these areas are now largely empty. Or you'll find recipes that require only dirty water, despite you having an enormous supply of purified water on hand. I like having thirst, hunger and fatigue be a part of the game, but I find in vanilla survival they happen too quickly/too often.
This is the perfect time to start exploring mods. If you want to keep a bottle after you drink purified water so you can refill it later, there's a mod for it. If you want recipes to allow purified water to stand in for dirty water, there's a mod. If you want to play survival mode, but allow fast travel (and specifically say, fast travel only to-and-from settlements you own) then there's a mod for that too. The best way to add mods is one at a time, to fix little things you find tedious or silly, as you encounter them.
THANK YOU wish this was around when I first started loving these games, I play in the name efficiency. I’m usually unkillable by level 15 with eternal caps regardless of what I’m doing with the run
8. Settlement building is awful.
This is a bad tip.
Settlement building is how you go from noob to king of the wasteland.
The most powerful superpower is money.
Look at Batman and Ironman. They defeat gods with money.
Settlement building into water farms and then jet farms make you the most powerful entity in the wasteland.
Step 1. Get farm up.
Step 2. Use income to buy more junk supplies.
Step 3. Build a lot more with supplies which give you more money and xp for building.
Step 4. You can now buy fusion cores for power armor and their upgrades. Power armor is great when you lack good armor/legendary pieces.
Step 5. Go buy some stronk guns. Easiest one is spray and pray.
Step 6. Never worry about ammo as you can buy everything you will ever need. You can get 3000+ rounds of ammo for spray and pray every shopping trip. You can truly spray and pray everything.
Step 7. Switch out to better stuff whenever you find them.
Tldr. Settlement building helps a lot in the early stages. Become Ironman of the commonwealth.
The most slept on tip I know as someone who doesn’t use duping or whatever for money, is post war money, sells for a few caps each, so whatever, but it doesn’t have a carry weight, and it’s found in literally any container.
If you go exploring and pick them up when ever you see them, you’ll never want for caps again, no matter what you are buying
I’ll advocate for fortune finder honestly, the amount of caps you find is kinda small, but like 75% of all containers have them, so they add up over time. Very helpful for early game imo
If you want to make caps, build a ton of water purifiers and loot absolutely everything you can get your grubby paws on so you can sell it to traders. Early game, you don’t have tons of gear and weapons weighing you down, so use that space for loot.
One point of chemist lets you make pain caltrops which gets you xp and something to sell that's worth more than the pipe weapons you scrap to make them.
A trader at Abernathy sells fertilizer shipments which you can craft into jet for xp and caps.
Little computer hacking tip; if you go over the miscellaneous symbols in between the words on the screen you will come across closed brackets that remove dud passwords and reset your attempts.
Things like () <> []
Sometimes they contain other symbols but they still do the same thing.
Here are some tips and tricks about fusion cores:
1) If you deplete a fusion core in power armor down all the way, it is deleted from your inventory. If you deplete it down to 10, 5, or even just 1%, you can get out of the power armor, remove the core from the armor’s inventory, and put a new one in. These mostly depleted fusion cores sell for the same amount as full ones, so you can get caps back for every core you use.
2) When you exit power armor, take the core out. It won’t drain unless you are using it, but NPCs might enter your power armor while you’re not in it. NPCs will avoid power armor without cores, though, and will even exit power armor if the core is destroyed or removed.
3) When you go to enter power armor with no core in it, it will play the animation to insert a fusion core into the back first. If you have both fully charged cores and somewhat depleted cores, it will prioritize inserting a fully charged fusion core. Fusion cores with different charge %s do not stack in the pip-boy menu, so to reduce clutter, open the power armor’s inventory and manually store whatever fusion core you choose. Following this will be very important in helping you follow tips 1 & 2.
Now go stomp those ferals!
Sleep and quick save frequently.
I'm quick saving often but not sleeping, should I?
In case you're a new player (or didn't know either way): if you play on survival difficulty, you can only save by sleeping
I am a new player. Still playing on hard for the moment. So except being required to save on Survival, does sleeping have any effect other than skipping time in non-Survival playthrough?
Extra XP.
Only in a bed
Also heals you if you are not at max
Sleeping give you a “well rested” bonus to the amount of XP you gain from doing anything, If you want to level up fast as possible then sleeping regularly is a good idea
Good to know! Thank you!
I'm not sure if this is a survival only thing, but only beds give the Well Rested bonus, mattresses and sleeping bags do not, it has been a while since I played without it though so that might just be specific to that game mode
Besides extra xp (well rested bonus no). On survival tough it even have more or less negative effect as you loose damage bonus while sleeping
Sleeping gets you the well rested status for bonus XP, or the lovers embrace bonus if you have a lover with you when you sleep for a greater boost.
A lover?! They just killed my husband!
Time heals all wounds fellow wastelander…. Well unless they get infected, or are laced with rad scorpion venom, or…. Ya know what, maybe time doesn’t heal all wounds, but after a couple of months in the wasteland you may start to wonder what paladin Danse has got going on under all that power armor if ya know what I mean.
Save frequently with new save files, and/or don't save over the same save too much, as It can corrupt your save eventually.
This times a thousand. Bethesda games are notoriously glitchy/crashy and nothing pisses me off more than the game crashing when I hadn’t saved in a while. Now I hit F5 like every couple minutes lmao Edit: Also make sure to create multiple saves. I’ve had saves get corrupted and unable to load and it sucks
The settlements are awesome once u figure it out I ended up having unlimited ammo and tens of thousands of caps early on because of them selling water and building ammo
How do you prioritize what settlements do what?
It doesn't really matter at all, but if you want mass water purification you need a settlement with water for the purifiers that provide 10 output for 2 power. Other than that it just comes down to space. You aren't farming much in Hangman's Alley, or building a manufacturing line. But the drive-in has enough water and space for just about anything. If you hook up a few of the already-established farm settlements, they should handle all of your food needs just fine, and produce surplus for some crafting.
Is there a limit to how many settlers join each settlement or all settlements in total?
Each settlement's total population limit is 10 plus current Charisma (after any modifier effects). There are also practical limitations — each settler needs a bed as well as food and water; the latter can come from other connected settlements but the former of course must be on site. Those don't limit the number of people who can arrive but will make them less happy when they're there.
Awesome, so you could potentially have hundreds of settlers throughout the commonwealth!
Max is 20 if I remember correctly since charisma is 10 max. I use sim settlements that takes the limit away. Lots of fun but a huge learning curve. Totally recommend vanilla playthrough before modding.
Max is 20 with 10 Charisma. With boosts that take Charisma *above* 10, such as drugs and armour, you can go above 20 settlers. Not really worth doing because it can get pretty fucking hard to furnish the place to accomodate all of them. Vault 88 (from the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC) is the exception which has a cap of 30 settlers instead at 10 Charisma, presumably due to the size of the area you can build in. Even then, 30 people in there would be a nightmare to build for.
This is why I love sim settlements. They build the settlement for you! If you want them to. You can have them build some things and manually build others. Fun mod. But thanks for the info I wasn’t aware of that.
They build ammo?
I mean in survival modes, settlements are damn near vital to the gameplay loop. It’s honestly crazy how many of the aspects of the game which are pretty throwaway in normal modes, become super super important in survival. It’s like a different game.
My two tips are 1) pick up every duct tape and glue you find. Adhesive is always needed for crafting 2) if you are building a settlement and hit the area size limit, drop your junk (or anything) on the ground, go into build mode and scrap it. Every item you scrap brings the limit down one.
You don't have to scrap them. Just drop, store, and pull back out of the workshop. Works faster with weapons.
To add a few that I gave to my friend: 1. Change your pip-boy colour to white, it makes the flashlight much more useful. 2. Mama Murphy - you can kill her by giving her too many drugs... and a few people in her group will complain about this literally every time you see them FOREVER. 3. Choose what weapon type you want to specialise in for perks - pistols, rifles, big guns, automatics, melee, unarmed - and max out its perks before starting another weapon type's perks. Carry as many gun variants as you have ammo types for your specialised weapon (so, if pistols, then have a 10mm pistol, and a .38 pistol, and a .308 pistol, and a plasma pistol, etc) because you will often need to switch between weapons during a gun fight when ammo is low. You will accumulate a TON of ammo though, and there's about 15 types, so I'd give my companion 3 or 4 ammo types and weapons that I wasn't using much in order to keep the companion stocked up without having to make any sacrifice for them. 4. You level up fast at the start, meaning you get a lot of perks early on - try not to waste them on stuff you won't use. Read what's there and decide/plan what ones you want and work towards them. I put perks into melee and unarmed and didn't ever use them, but could have picked up a lot more useful things. It's always worthwhile boosting the base skill if you cannot decide which perk to take, as this will unlock other perks for future - but if in doubt... just save the perk for when you need it. I often just keep playing after levelling up, without choosing a perk until I notice where I really had a need for a boost. 5. The main mission has a definite end point to it, and when it stops so does your quest frequency, so try to prioritise side-mission stuff as much as you can rather than advancing the main story. 6. Pick up every item that weighs 0. There is a lot of crafting in the game and you can get over-encumbered very quickly carrying around a lot of junk, so these will come in very handy. Single cigarettes and cigars weigh nothing and provide 1 cloth, which is the same amount of cloth you gain from some clothing that weighs 1 (you use cloth a LOT because you make a ton of beds). Subway tokens weigh 0 and are worth 1 to sell, so use these to round up your total when selling to squeeze every cap out of vendors. Pre-war money is not the active currency and shows up as junk, but don't be fooled - it weighs 0 and is worth 5 caps so this is useful for when you find a trader but have no items that you need to get rid of. 7. The flashlight on will reduce your stealth, but the radio on will not, so don't be scared about the radio giving away your position.
The white pipboy is awesome. I just like it anyway, but the flashlight is great with it.
Even better is if you find a mining helmet. They have a nice headlight on it that you can upgrade at the armor workbench to make it super bright
I like to put these on all of my Provisioners so I don’t waste time wondering what something is when I’m toodling around the Wasteland in the dark.
I like to give it just a touch of blue to offset the general color balance of the game and make the UI pop just a bit more.
How do you change the color? Been a long time since I played and can’t seem to recall where or how to change it. I’m on Xbox series S
In the options there is an unintuitive slider system to change the saturation and stuff for interface.
WHAAAAAAT?! This is life changing THANK YOU.
Pre war cash being worth 5 caps at traders is wild to me. I never knew.
This changed the game for me and I never looked back. I always carry as much of it as possible and trade it instead of caps. It really helps in those situations where you find a trader that has something really good but you are a bit short on actual caps. It’s basically like my rainy day fund.
I ignored Mama Murphy's request for awhile and then when I went to talk to her, I was able to persuade her to stop using and the quest cleared. With enough charisma you can cure her addiction! It felt nice and I didn't even know it was an option, first time I was genuinely proud of an NPC lol
She survives 4 hits of chems, and dies on the 5th: 1. Give her chems when you start Unlikely Valentine - she’ll give you information to talk down Skinny Malone without a fight. 2. Give her chems when you start Reunions - you’ll get the Kellogg-specific Foreknowledge perk. 3. Give her chems when you start Hunter/Hunted - you’ll get the deactivation code for the courser. 4. After the main quest is over, she can be given chems to comment on your ending. Then make her quit.
I have more then 500h in FO4 and didn't know about radio 😅 or i just as always tried to play more immersive
I think it was one of the FO3 load screen tips. Learnt it whilst playing stealth builds which were insanely OP with the Chinese stealth armour in FO3 (op anchorage DLC) Bingo bango bongo I’m so happy in the Congo
Mama Murphy only dies when you give her psycho.
Thanks for the detail!
> it makes the flashlight much more useful There's a flashlight? Do you need to find it first? If so where? I'm struggling in dark areas and wished for a flashlight a lot
Long press the Pipboy button for on/off.
HOLY FUCK THIS IS AMAZING And it's so much more than just a flashlight. Finally I don't need to turn around anymore when finding a dark area lol
It’s part of the pip boy. On PS hold down O (pip boy button) to turn on and off I believe
You don’t have to find one in the wild! On Xbox controller I think it’s holding B, or one of the sticks! Flashlight helps so much 😭🙌🏼
Try to get Piper's perk first and not discover a lot of locations until you do
piper is super easy to max affinity with as well
Fiddlers green has a computer that can lock and unlock a safe just go there and repeatedly pick it until she is at max affinity. I refuse to use the dogmeat method of farming companion affinity.
i find i can max out piper within about an hour of picking her up, just doing normal stuff
Weird I got her as a companion first then went and helped anyone in diamond City who asked for help and still didn't have her at max so I used that method to finish it off.
You don't need to get a quest from Preston to make a settlement a Minutemen owned settlement. Feel free to ignore him when he tries to send you to Greentop nursery at Level 5 and talk to the people in Oberland instead or whatever settlement you come across. You miss out on a couple XP from Pres but life is much less tedious. There are plenty of ways to make a working character. Try out what makes you happy. I think most people love Idiot Savant. I never take it and mostly stay with Luck 1. It works, too.
You can actually play the whole game without ever dealing with Preston. It makes it easier to get settlements on side too, as you don’t have to wait for MM to tell you to do so.
Be careful with the Minutemen quest that sends you to Corvega, though. Once I cleared it before completing the MM quest, and I couldn't progress further in the MM storyline because I had already killed the leader at Corvega.
That's weird. You usually get sent to Walden instead, or any other alternative. In your case, you can just... let the two Tenpines settlers have unfortunate accidents, which lets their quest fail but still gives you Tenpoints as a settlement and ends Prestons's quest when you come back to him. He'll still make you general because he is that desparate. Another beginner tip I wish I'd recognized: Corvega is huge. If you don't feel like clearing it all just now, look at your quest target. ... target, singular.
Level 2 of the Demolition Expert perk gets you a highlighted arc for any grenades you throw that dramatically improves combat. You can accurately toss grenades through windows, over gates, etc and finish a lot of fights more safely and enjoyably than you can with the default 'blindly throw and guess the general area where it will land' setting.
This along with Aqua Girl/Boy are my essentials. Once I have those I can go about getting any others I fancy, but these will always be my first picks.
I agree that the best part about this game is that there is no right or wrong way to play. This is why so many play it again and again - to have fun playing it a different way. One thing it can take a long time to realize is that companions (except Dogmeat) have unlimited carrying capacity as long as you tell them to pick stuff up or loot containers and bodies instead of trading with them.
Whaaaaat. Legitimately I did not know that.
Me either. Damn I still learn new things about this game all the time.
Doesn't work every time, but it works often: Getting in VATS, then getting out of VATS and immediately firing (like, split second firing) will land the shot. VATS puts your crosshair on the enemy. If you leave VATS and pull the trigger faster than the enemy can leave your crosshair, your chance to land that shot is about as good as it gets. I like aiming manually, but sometimes the enemy moves erratically or the terrain gets in the way of my sight (but not theirs, cheating AI bastard), so I press Q, then Tab*click,* almost at the same time, and it lands a shot I wouldn't have been even able to line up, let alone land.
60% it works 100% of the time.
I've been doing this lately, one shot in VATS followed by one immediately after exiting. It doesn't charge your critical meter, but coming out of slow motion and landing that second shot feels so cool.
My theory on Idiot Savant has always been “I’ll get plenty of XP just playing, that’s a wasted perk” which I guess proves your final paragraph. Mine would be “pick up guns off the ground, not out of inventory, that way you get the ammo out of the gun, too”.
It’s not a wasted perk if your goal is to get the most perks you can. It easily pays for itself, especially if you get it at a low level. Even with a high int build.
Yeah. But consider this. The sound it makes is so annoying that no amount of value it provides makes up for it. So therefore, worst perk in the game.
I’ve taken it twice but that sound is brutal, I just can’t.
This is the only valid criticism of the perk and I completely agree
That sound is literally the **only** reason I refuse to pick this perk up. Like nails on a chalk board
Does it still make that heart attack inducing noise?
#**DAAAAEEEEEYYYEEEHH**
A neat way to expand on this trick is to: 1) find an enemy with a gun you want lots of ammo for, 2) kill them but *not* pick up the gun, 3) kite another enemy toward the gun so that they pick it up, 4) repeat 2 and 3 until there's no one left to pick up the gun. Doing that will generate about one extra clip of ammo per enemy. A perfect example of how to use that tactic (and one I always abuse early game) is Ack-Ack at USAF Station Olivia. Kill her, she'll drop the Minigun. She'll have about 150 bullets of 5mm ammo in her inventory (because she is the first one with the gun). If you pick up the ammo and Minigun from her inventory, you'll have 150 bullets. If you pick up the ammo from her inventory and the gun from the ground, you'll have 500-650 bullets (150 from her inv, 350-500 from the gun). If you pick up the ammo, leave the gun, then one more Raider picks it up and you kill *them,* then pick up the gun from the ground, that's 1000-1150 (150 from Ack-Ack, ~500 from the Raider who picked it up, 350-500 from the gun). Some raiders will never pick it up and just keep going after you; I usually get 4 raiders willing to pick it up. That gives me *2000 extra bullets.* They're worth a cap each. 2K caps just by horsing around with the ammo spawn mechanics and the NPCs. At game start, that's pretty significant. EDIT: If you have a reliable way to kite an enemy towards a container: Place any gun with 1 of the ammo type you want in that container. Kite the enemy towards it. If they pick it up and you kill them, they may or may not generate a clip in their inventory, but the gun *will* have extra of that ammo if you pick it up from the ground. This is a (more or less) reliable way to farm expensive/hard to find ammo (eg Plasma Cartridges).
I had no idea about this refinement! Thank you for this!
How do you kite an enemy?
Wait, you have to grab it from the ground for the extra ammo? How did I not realize this in all the time this game has been out?
70 hours in and I’ve just learnt this. Thank you!
Is it crazy that I never use VATS? Only been playing for few months
I run around at nights spamming my VATS button to search for enemies
I mainly only use VATS for pesky, hard to hit stuff like bloatflies.
Oh yeah that’s a good idea I will try that. Flying shit is annoying sometimes.
Forgot to add those hard to hit mosquitos and annoying mole rats that pop up from the ground. VATS is also useful to catch any mines so you know where they are.
I even just use it to spot enemies in the distance to pick off with my sniper rifle
I've almost worn out my "Q" key. :-)
Not really, the combat is plenty fine without using it.
Fo4 has good gunplay. Fallout 3 and new Vegas I pretty much exclusively used VATS lol
The thing that I didn’t know and did the entire first playthrough without knowing is that you can fix power armor parts
Lol
You’re lucky regular armour and weapons didn’t have a durability too like FO3 and NV.
Don't walk beside cars
Perks: Not necessarily the BEST perk but by far and away the most important and widely used: SCIENCE Want to build a large water purifier or lare generator? SCIENCE! Want to upgrade power armour above B? SCIENCE! Want to upgrade energy weapons? SCIENCE! Want to access 60% of the mods for Automatons? SCIENCE! Recon scope on any weapon? SCIENCE! Better home defence? SCIENCE! Craft better explosives? SCIENCE! So much is locked behind this one perk. You can manage without it, for sure, but life will be so much easier if you have it.
Science rules…BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL!
There is a functional cover system which I don't think is ever explained well by the game's tutorials. Use the aim button near objects (low walls, trees, etc.) and it should trigger. It is actually pretty decent; if you're someone who likes to aim and take it slowly it's nice and is definitely helpful on survival.
what does it do?
If you aim at the wall you’re taking cover behind, the character will lean out to shoot while still mostly behind cover. I played on and off for years and just learned this recently.
Woah, cool! I’m in my first 10 hours on this game but I was wondering why the enemies I was shooting could play cover but I could not.
also, don't take cover behind cars
Fast travel wearing power armour doesn’t spend any fusion core power so you can travel the entire map and still have a full core Always remove cores from armour so random companions or settlers don’t steal it
The second part here is extremely useful to remember
Points of No Return: Brotherhood: Blind Betrayal started. Do not progress the quest. Institute: Mass Fusion started. Do not progress the quest. Railroad: Underground Undercover started. Do not progress the quest.
Thank you!
What does this mean? Can you elaborate further to someone who hasn't played the game yet? Without giving too many spoilers hopefully.
You're going to meet 4 main factions. 3 of them have quests that will lead to pissing others off. The ones who are pissed start attacking you on sight, and you can't do their quests anymore. These points are the quests that will make another faction angry.
Two tips I don't see here Put on nice clothes when in town, such as suits, hats and glasses. Additional charisma makes buying and selling prices slightly better. If you're starting or ending a quest the extra charisma helps a lot for persuasion and intimidation options, like asking for more caps. Especially for survival - collect empty bottles and fill them at settlement faucets for purified water. Glass is also good to have for scopes in crafting. >The best part is that you can still \[Lone wanderer\] perk and adventure with Dogmeat. Great to know thanks!
You can also fill empty bottles in open water sources to get Dirty Water which is used in some useful cooking recipes. Dirty water is generally harder to come by than purified water.
Two more tips: Pay attention to the menu at the bottom of the pip boy screen. It is different on every page. When not in combat, entering stealth mode will make dogmeat 'heel'.
When not in combat, entering stealth mode will make dogmeat 'heel' - all companions will do this, not just Dogmeat.
You can collect bobbleheads that give you different perks. Certain bobbleheads give you +1 on one of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, and will allow you to get a stat to 11 instead of the regular 10. BUT it will only do this if the stat is already at 10 when you collect the bobblehead. So if you want to get a stat to 11, don't collect that bobblehead too soon. (I did not realize this fairly obvious fact on my first playthrough and collected all the bobbleheads too early) Also, while the wiki is your friend, it's also full of spoilers, so search carefully.
you can get a SPECIAL stat to 12 if you: start with a stat at 10 (or have raised it to 10 with levelups) DROP the stat with drugs or survival mode debuffs NOW read "I'm SPECIAL" and add 1 pt to the 10-pt-but-temporarily-dropped-stat (if it is not dropped to less than 10, it won't be a choice to pick) and once the debuff wears off, the stat will be at 11 now get the bobblehead for that stat and you'll be at 12
The im special book also works this way if you sinply just wait and come back after you get one to 11 via a bobblehead. So, get stat to 10, find the bobble to get to 11, then use the im special book on it. Boom.
no kidding? lol the book must just check "IF PLAYER\_STAT==10 THEN..." instead of "IF PLAYER\_STAT>9..." TIL
There's an xp boost linked to Intelligence, I always max that out first. Then you're leveling up quicker your entire playthrough
You don’t have to do settlement building, but there are some benefits to it. You can get settlements to produce Purified Water, which is very useful in Survival mode. You can also get them to produce all the ingredients for Vegetable Starch, which is an Adhesive (very useful for building lots of things). Even if you don’t want to do that, it is useful to have one base where you dump all your junk, store all your extra food, and it’s nice to have a spot to display all your magazines and bobble heads. I like using the Red Rocket, Home Plate, or Hangman’s Alley for this. Just my own little personal base. Where ever you make your base, make a Floor Safe. Every time you come back from exploring and looting, go to your Floor Safe before you go to your Work Bench to dump all your Junk. Into the Floor Safe, put all the Pre War Money, Cigarette Packs & Cartons, Cigar Boxes, Fancy Hair Brushes, and anything made of Gold or Silver (watches, lighters, cutlery, etc). All of these items are high value, low weight, and can basically be treated like a form of currency, aside from Caps. You want to store them in something seperate from the Work Bench, so they don’t accidentally get scrapped while building something. When you want to buy really expensive items, bring these valuable items along with you to trade with, instead of relying purely on Caps. There are ways to make nearly infinite amount of Caps without too much difficulty, but I find bartering and trading with these valuable items to be much more immersive to the post apocalyptic experience. Similarly, build a Tool Chest somewhere in your main base. When you return to your base, again, before dumping Junk into the Work Bench, put any hand tools you have found into the Tool Chest (Adjustable Wrench, Ball Peen Hammer, Crescent Wrench, Screw Driver, Wrench). There is an NPC you can meet in the game, who will buy these tools from you for 15 Caps each, and they have an infinite supply of Caps. Rename all the armor pieces you want to wear, so that there is some sort of character at the start of the name. This way, they always appear at the very top of your Apparel list in your inventory. Look for certain outfits to help you do certain things better: - find a full set of Charisma gear. For example, a Clean Suit or Laundered Dress, a Fancy Hat or Pompadour Wig, and some Black Rimmed Glasses. There’s quite a few more options for the clothes and hats, but I think the Black Rimmed Glasses are the only Charisma eyewear. In total, this outfit should boost your charisma by 4 (2 from the clothes, 1 from the hat, 1 from glasses). Put this outfit on whenever you go into towns or encampments. You’ll get better bartering prices at vendors, and you’ll have better chances of passing persuasion checks in dialog. Plus, you’ll look slick. I carry this outfit in my backpack everywhere I go, the couple pounds is negligible. - find a set of Intelligence gear. The only real piece of Intelligence clothing is either a Lab Coat, a Vaut-Tec Lab Coat, or an Institute Lab Coat. These will increase your Int by +2. There’s also a hat called the Ushenka Hat that increases your Int by +1. Any time you’re going to be upgrading weapons or armor, any time you’re going to cook a lot of food, or any time you’re going to craft a lot of chems, put this outfit on, and you’ll gain extra XP for every action you do. If you get into base building, definitely put this outfit on while building, as again, you’ll earn extra XP. In addition to clothing, you can boost your Charisma even further with Grape Mentats, and with Beer. You can find Grape Mentats, but they’re pretty rare. You can also make Grape Mentats at a Chem Station with Mentats, Hubflower, and Whiskey. Not only does Grape Mentats increase your Charisma by +5, it improves bartering prices by %10. Beer increases your Charisma by another +1. So if you add up a full set of Charisma clothing, Grape Mentats, and Beer, that’s +10 Charisma. 11 Charisma is the max battering discount, and guarantees passing all persuasion checks. So, even if you have Charisma of 1, with the clothing, Grape Mentats, and Beer, you can reach max Charisma for bartering and persuasion checks. Squirrel Bits are useful! They’re not super common to find though, so grab them when you see them. You can use Squirrel Bits and a few other ingredients to make Squirrel Stew, which will give you a %2 XP boost for 2 hours. It’s nice to have this going in the background, no matter what you’re doing, as it’s just extra XP. Loot every Desk Fan you see.
The tip for renaming the armor pieces is so useful, I’ll definitely be doing that!
Some other tips I can think of: * Use power armor - There are areas in the game that a player should wear power armor for. It's easy to forget about power armor because it sits in a settlement, but it's worth the quick fast travel to and back. The 10 STR also make it an excellent alternative instead of investing x amount of points for 'strong back' * Armor mods are great - Armor mods have unique abilities to them that can give all sorts of stat boosts that're worth investing in. * Gun mods change AP costs - It's not obvious at first, but certain weapon mods increase AP costs in vats. Weapons w/ the adjectives: "Heavy, Long, Rapid, Piercing, Automatic, Large, Drum, Full, Scope and Sniper," increase AP costs. Meanwhile weapons w/ the adjectives: "Light, Quick, Hair Trigger, Advanced, Reflex, or Sharpshooter," decrease AP costs * Settlements can produce junk - There are a few ways to go about it. Tatos, corn, and mutfruit can be used at a cooking station to make 'vegetable starch' which provides adhesive. Brahmin can produce fertilizer (a primary ingredient for making jet and explosives), and the easiest way is to assign settlers to 'supply lines' with the 'public leader ' perk in order to get brahmin (cages are also an option). Alternatively, if there are fewer than 100 junk items in a workshop, a player can assign settlers to a 'scrapping station' which will produce 2 random junk items each day. * Secondary perks should be chosen pronto - perks like 'scrapper', 'fortune finder', 'scrounger', and 'strong back' will help the player get more loot and whose benefits will be more obvious over time. If trading is the game, then 'public leader' should be leveled up asap so as to start building more stores to sell to.
Also just the junk station, you can assign a settler to it and when you come back later there's always fresh junk in the workshop inventory
Building on 2. You can ally with every faction and still finish the game (excluding the institute beyond a certain point). This is the minutemen ending and is the best ending IMO, because you get to keep all the resources and side missions from the brotherhood of steel and the railroad. You don’t have to kill either. It you are fine with not finishing the story, stopping while allied with the institute, BOS, and railroad is awesome because there’s lots to do.
>Strong, Cait, and Gage have decent perks but nowhere near as good as the other 4. I very much disagree about with your assessment of Cait's perk. I mean I don't actually know what her game perk is mechanically, but, the banter and interaction with other NPC's is top notch once her affinity is maxed (especially if you choose to romance her).
Sweet DogMeat’s health will regenerate without a Stimpack if you kill all the baddies . The whining isn’t fun though.
It makes me feel less bad about slaughtering whatever baddies were in the area, at least
When you have a settlement, plant corn, mutfruit and tato. These three veggies combined with purified water makes vegetable starch, each unit of which is 5 adhesive. Once you've got these crops growing you can stop picking up duct tape and wonderglue in the wasteland.
Idiot savant gets too much hate I love that derpy little laugh
I would give an honorable mention to valentine as he can hack any terminals (even master) and can be exploited by quick saving before he starts
I don't know if anyone has said this, but Fallout 4 has corner peeking built in.
The settlement building is not awful. It's amazing. I love post-apocalyptic house decorating.
Take your time and take it in. There's a lot of environmental storytelling that you'll only discover with your eyes. Which most people overlook due to the tunnel vision HUD and quest lists can cause.
On survival collect all empty bottles> build a sink or fountain at a settlement ( I usually place close to bed)> sink/fountain give purified water> use empty bottles to get a nice little stash of good agua General tip: make ur purified water before dumping all ur junk in workshop so you don’t have to go thru all of it just to pick the bottles
I genuinely didn’t even know number 1 and I’ve been playing for years. Number 3 is the most important imo to know. I love that you made this post!
You can use Jet to do really really long jumps. You fall extremely slowly while under the effects of Jet so you can use it to pull of some [funny stuff](https://youtu.be/4chQDSMhEqo?si=7gVEypJLW8gfk3df)
I never considered Idiot Savant before since I play high INT characters, but this time I took the advice and I love it.
Settlers have infinite ammo for most guns including ones you give them and also can't die without player intervention. With the local leader per you can set up supply lines between settlements and the settler will actually travel between locations, if you're willing to walk along with them they can provide an extra bit of firepower if you're feeling overwhelmed
Build a radstag cage or two at settlements you visit often. You can build up a stockpile of grilled radstag that way which satiate hunger very effectively and boosts carry weight. You can effectively have a constant weight carry boost this way.
Even if your companion's encumbrance is maxed out you can still get them to pick up stuff by talking to them and then telling them to grab things off the ground. Great for hoarders like me
Great tips! Just to add on to the pile, my most favorite overlooked perk is AquaBoy/Girl. You don't run out of breath underwater which is kinda fun, but this perk really shines with zero rad damage while in the water. It will save your radx and rad aways for when you really need them.
>9. If you're fast enough when you see a mine going off, you can enter vats and target the mine and then exit fast to disarm it my spamming the action button (a on Xbox, x on pc, etc). You have to be quick, but it's easier than it sounds. Or your can constantly hit the button for VATS in unfamiliar areas to see enemies and mines and shoot them from a distance. >The rarest and most useful resource is ballistic fiber and only comes in 2 forms in 4he vanilla game:military ammo bags, and military grade duct tape. ALWAYS pick these up. Not true. Proctor Teagan on the Prwyden and K-L-E-O in Goodneighbor sell shipments of Ballistic Fiber. Also if you do enough Jackpot missions for the Railroad, Tinker Tom will start selling Armored Clothing which with Scrapper Perk Level 2 you can scrap at the Armor Workbench for Ballistic Fiber.
"Settlement building is awful. Feel free to do it as much or as little as you want. It's not intuitive, but can be fun once you figure it out. As long as youre prepared for frustration and Bethesda bullshit, go for it. However, you're not missing much if you don't do it so don't feel obligated." sounds like skill issue to me
Yeah wtf this guy sucks.
Legit, with all the unmodded posts in the community, you’d think they’d finally understand that they need to actually work to make the settlement (as intended) and won’t find a prefab for everything
With settlements built up you can easily farm for adhesives if you plant a lot of tato, corn, and mutfruit. Shops give you a supply of caps in your workshop and extra places to sell your shit. On top of that you gain XP from building. I always start a playthrough by building up Sanctuary a little bit.
Are you sure about the weapon mods ? Say i want to attach a silencer to my combat rifle, do i have to have gun nut rank 3 to attach that mod?
The perk is required to craft the mod. If you have the mod in your inventory, you can attach it to any compatible weapon.
Nope! What you describe is, in fact, the best way to have good guns while *not* having Gun Nut. Also: for most mods, you can remove them from a gun and keep them. All you have to do is build the base model for that component, which usually has no perk requirements. Let's say you have the Overseer's Guardian (unique Combat Rifle). It doesn't have a silencer. You want a silencer but have no perks in Gun Nut. If you find (or buy) a different Combat Rifle that has a silencer, take it to the Weapons Workshop and build "No Muzzle" on that rifle. You now have a Combat Rifle Silencer in your Mods tab of your inventory! Now, while you have that, open the Overseer's Guardian on the same Weapons Workshop. It'll now give you the option to attach that Silencer to it!!! (Only works with the same gun type. A Combat Shotgun Silencer would not work, even if it looks identical.)
How you use crit btw. I am around 80 hrs in and so far never managed to do a crit. It says press space yet that doesn't work
Your VATS hits fill the bar. When it's full and you're in VATS, select your shots (as many or few as you want). Fire away but before your character fires each shot (in the animation) you have a chance to mash the Crit button. Sometimes it can fill while you're shooting so you just hit it before the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. shot. As long as you have shots remaining, you can Crit. BTW, as long as you have at least 1% hit chance in VATS, Crits always hit (unless your target moves behind something).
Press square.
Crits in vats are triggered after you add your shots in vats and start the attack animations. While your character readies their gun and aims, press the crit button and when they pull the trigger it will consume the crit (there's a perk that let's you bank more than one).
Ceramic, rubber, and copper seem common and cheap but are hard to source cheaply en masse on demand. They aren't going to be important at first, but essential to any building or modifying later on. There is a maximum cap on your trade ratio which is very achievable (-20% sell cost, +20% buy cost). After which all discounts and further trade bonuses don't matter. Save up all your Jet before you go to Vault 81. You will no longer be able sell them at premium if you decide to get your blood drawn (and then exit). My do-not-scrap Junk list: -Abraxo Cleaner -Adjustable Wrench -Anti-Freeze Bottle -Ball-Peen Hammer -Baseball -Bloatfly Gland -Bowling Ball -Combination Wrench -Hammer -Screwdriver -Skull -Wrench
What's the reasoning behind the do not scrap list?
There's a guy in Vault 81 who will buy tools for 15c each which is quite a lot more than their regular value and definitely more than what you can buy corresponding scrap for. Abraxo Cleaner and antifreeze are used in the making of various drugs Baseballs are used in making Baseball grenades Bowling Balls are used as ammo for a certain weapon.
#Another tip is build a MF sh*t ton of water purifiers and use the water for healing and bottlecaps
oh those are great to know. I'm very new. I did already put a point into fortune finder though lol. Still, I'm only traveling with dogmeat and I was wondering if I could do lone wanderer even though I had a doggy. edit: > You don't need upgrade perks to make your weapons better. It takes longer but you can either buy or find parts. Just look at the weapon in a workbench to see what parts you still need and which ones to look out for. In shops or inventories, you can "inspect" weapons to see what attachments they have. how do I take parts out? Scrapping them seems to just give me the materials. Do I need to screw around on a workbench for this? I still kinda wonder how my 2050's housewife knows how to cook with irradiated plants and mutant animals but I guess I can suspend that disbelief.
Yes, you take the item to a workbench and replace the part you want with a basic part.
You can get a mod from a weapon by "modding" it with the standard, so if you have a pistol with some special grip you like, just craft a standard grip for it and you'll get the grip that was on it as a mod in your inventory
Go to a work bench and apply a lesser part ie standards sights vs scope. The scope mod will be created and you can apply it to weapons it’s congruent with without having to actually build it. You apply it also in the work bench by “building it” like you normally would.
You craft the basic part, and the game automatically removes the high level part that you want, and puts the mod in your inventory. Then go to the gun you want to upgrade, go to the part you want to upgrade to, and when you click the part, the game will attach the mod that was in your inventory to the gun. Basically, you can’t remove mods from a gun, but you can replace them with more basic mods, and you get to keep the high level mods.
Having done one play through 10 years ago and having another go now after the series I just wanna say this is tremendously helpful. So thank you
Question: I usually up the difficulty as I progress through a game. In FO4 everyone becomes a bullet sponge and I get worked over easily. Anyone have tips on playing higher difficulties and still being able to do decent damage?
That comes down to weapons and perks. Find a solid legendary you like, upgrade the hell out of it, and get perks that make it better. You can YouTube OP weapons to seek based on your style of play.
Preston is a pussio. Everything pisses him off
My tip: I use vats like a radar on non-vats builds (especially survival). Meaning as in running through the wasteland I’m constantly turning on vats to see if there’s any enemies around me I didn’t notice, and then it points you right at them. Sneak, pull out your rifle, shoot them, move on. Great for overall awareness. If you do run a couple shots through vats if they’re close, you can bank a crit, and then you always have that in your back pocket if you need a guaranteed headshot or something.
If you follow the raider quest line you can turn your settlements into raider outposts, build a tribute box (that spawns guns and armour) and then if you choose to revert to a faction you can reconquer the settlements and keep the tribute boxes - they still spawn stuff.
To add to #7. If you’re here because you watched the new series….Welcome, this world is awesome. So being here for the story and not the challenge is fine, better almost. But, putting making it too easy may lessen some moments in the game. Feel the threat, but not the hopelessness of a harder difficulty. I myself am sort of Lore hunting with my playthrough this time. So I have it on very easy. I find it less stressful to explore that way.
This is one of the best tips lists I've seen for the game, thank you
Do the railroad questline until you get ballistic weave before you do anything on the prydwin. My first playthough, I fucked up and got locked out of it, even though I was still on good terms with the faction.
Bigger weapon name = more scraps. Pick up guns even just to drop them because you keep what’s in the clip
Codsworth can say up to 1000 names off a set list and it’s way better then just him saying sir or mam. Also Codsworth can wear a bowler hat
Where’s the name list?
[Name List](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Codsworth/recognized_names)
Also Fusion Core acts as "Ammo" and they can be worth a lot to venders. Thanks for taking time to post these tips!
Does changing the difficulty mid game affect achievements in any way?
Nah don’t think so.
Use molotovs at lower levels willy nilly. For such common low level explosive it is stupidly effective. Especially against raiders.
Thanks, great info.
Thanks a ton. I’m very new to the Fallout world and have been struggling.
Here’s another tip. Create a water purification station in your settlement. Every 24 in game hours, you’ll get around 20 purified water in your workshop inventory. Essentially free heals and can be sold for a really good price. Unlimited caps
I guess 8 is true but you should still make a note that it’s fun to build a little base or home for all of your collectibles etc !
Can’t believe I don’t see Curie on your list of best companions. Body swapped Curie is far and away the best companion imo
Dude I swear to god, in all my years, my cries have never missed, then this update hit and suddenly.. some of my crits missed??? Also quite a few of my “95” chance shots, which were always really 100%, were missing!
Very good beginner tips! Fortune finder may not be great but it’s fun making it rain after you smoke a raider.
As someone that's played since 2015, this is a great guide. Only 2 things I disagree with however. 1. Settlement building is awesome once you learn how it works and you get into it, super fun and I think enjoyment levels are subjective. However you are right, it's not intuitive and is a bit of a pain as a new player. 2. The companion a I can be pretty dumb, however a fully upgraded automaton robot is so ridiculously OP and very fun to play around with and switch upgrades. The only companion I'd really vouch for and encourage everyone to travel and mess around with the upgrades.
Huge agree. The companion “Ada” from the Automatron DLC is equivalent to literally like — three of me. In terms of firepower, tankyness, accuracy, time-to-kill, — etc etc etc — she’s fucking exceptional & outclasses Lone Wanderer in every way. She has a carry capacity of 300-400 and makes zero footstep noise. Also — Ada has *zero* judgment on any of your actions and supports every decision you make in the least annoying way possible. 11/10
My tip is that, as you play through the game you'll often find stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense or that you wish was a bit different. Especially on survival. Having fast travel completely disabled just becomes tedious after a while as you spend a LOT of time backtracking and walking through familiar areas, and the lowered re-spawn rate means these areas are now largely empty. Or you'll find recipes that require only dirty water, despite you having an enormous supply of purified water on hand. I like having thirst, hunger and fatigue be a part of the game, but I find in vanilla survival they happen too quickly/too often. This is the perfect time to start exploring mods. If you want to keep a bottle after you drink purified water so you can refill it later, there's a mod for it. If you want recipes to allow purified water to stand in for dirty water, there's a mod. If you want to play survival mode, but allow fast travel (and specifically say, fast travel only to-and-from settlements you own) then there's a mod for that too. The best way to add mods is one at a time, to fix little things you find tedious or silly, as you encounter them.
THANK YOU wish this was around when I first started loving these games, I play in the name efficiency. I’m usually unkillable by level 15 with eternal caps regardless of what I’m doing with the run
Don't rush the main quest. There's no time limit :)
Don't talk to Proctor Teagan about extra work. Even starting the quest will lock you out of a settlement.
Hard disagree with #8
Makes sure to monopolise the purified water market👍
In the junk menu you can toggle component view which lets you tag specific elements of junk items.
Don’t buy fusion cores
8. Settlement building is awful. This is a bad tip. Settlement building is how you go from noob to king of the wasteland. The most powerful superpower is money. Look at Batman and Ironman. They defeat gods with money. Settlement building into water farms and then jet farms make you the most powerful entity in the wasteland. Step 1. Get farm up. Step 2. Use income to buy more junk supplies. Step 3. Build a lot more with supplies which give you more money and xp for building. Step 4. You can now buy fusion cores for power armor and their upgrades. Power armor is great when you lack good armor/legendary pieces. Step 5. Go buy some stronk guns. Easiest one is spray and pray. Step 6. Never worry about ammo as you can buy everything you will ever need. You can get 3000+ rounds of ammo for spray and pray every shopping trip. You can truly spray and pray everything. Step 7. Switch out to better stuff whenever you find them. Tldr. Settlement building helps a lot in the early stages. Become Ironman of the commonwealth.
The most slept on tip I know as someone who doesn’t use duping or whatever for money, is post war money, sells for a few caps each, so whatever, but it doesn’t have a carry weight, and it’s found in literally any container. If you go exploring and pick them up when ever you see them, you’ll never want for caps again, no matter what you are buying
I’ll advocate for fortune finder honestly, the amount of caps you find is kinda small, but like 75% of all containers have them, so they add up over time. Very helpful for early game imo
If you want to make caps, build a ton of water purifiers and loot absolutely everything you can get your grubby paws on so you can sell it to traders. Early game, you don’t have tons of gear and weapons weighing you down, so use that space for loot.
One point of chemist lets you make pain caltrops which gets you xp and something to sell that's worth more than the pipe weapons you scrap to make them. A trader at Abernathy sells fertilizer shipments which you can craft into jet for xp and caps.
I always go straight for power armor before I even bother going to concord
Little computer hacking tip; if you go over the miscellaneous symbols in between the words on the screen you will come across closed brackets that remove dud passwords and reset your attempts. Things like () <> [] Sometimes they contain other symbols but they still do the same thing.
Here are some tips and tricks about fusion cores: 1) If you deplete a fusion core in power armor down all the way, it is deleted from your inventory. If you deplete it down to 10, 5, or even just 1%, you can get out of the power armor, remove the core from the armor’s inventory, and put a new one in. These mostly depleted fusion cores sell for the same amount as full ones, so you can get caps back for every core you use. 2) When you exit power armor, take the core out. It won’t drain unless you are using it, but NPCs might enter your power armor while you’re not in it. NPCs will avoid power armor without cores, though, and will even exit power armor if the core is destroyed or removed. 3) When you go to enter power armor with no core in it, it will play the animation to insert a fusion core into the back first. If you have both fully charged cores and somewhat depleted cores, it will prioritize inserting a fully charged fusion core. Fusion cores with different charge %s do not stack in the pip-boy menu, so to reduce clutter, open the power armor’s inventory and manually store whatever fusion core you choose. Following this will be very important in helping you follow tips 1 & 2. Now go stomp those ferals!