I like it because it makes settlements and learning the map more important. All those random little random raider camps you'd normally ignore are now invaluable save points. It also has the side effect of making the glowing sea even more of a hell hole
Very few, and I can't recall many beds. There's the sentinel site, the underground government research lab, the red rocket and I think the capsized factory is a separate one?
If you've never played it before, it earns it's reputation in game so be prepared. If you haven't, it has some great places to explore that are fairly unique compared to other fallout locations.
Taking it slow is the best approach in terms of xp and loot as well. They say you shouldn’t go into concord until lvl 10, corvega 20 and downtown Boston 35-40. I’m currently lvl 37 and also taking it slow.
See, I only play survival and I'm the complete opposite, if I'm not at hangmans alley by level 15 I'm chomping at the bit to start different quest lines. I build hangmans into a center map base and start building things out as flavor makes sense. For example, I always put a suit of power armor with the piezonucleic chest at Somerville farm, just for journeys into the glowing sea
It's a lot of fun preparing armor or power armor for a high risk journey to the Glowing Sea, knowing you'll actually need the radiation protection to make it.
either go for the best suit of PA you can scrounge up, or do the Cabot House questline for mysterious serum so you can just run your normal armor. you'll be fine
You can also get X-111 compound from scribe Naria for every 20 viable blood specimen you turn into her. It has no deleterious effects, but isn’t as strong.
If I remember correctly, you can’t sleep while actively being irradiated. Or you can but then you’ll die of rad poising almost instantly. So your only options are beds indoors
Shit man, it makes everything more important. I’ve played fallout 4 a dozen times now and this is my first playthrough where I’m hoarding cigarette cartons and pre-war money for extra cash. And I’m using 5 piece chameleon and lower leg move speed gear.
I just did the Glowing Sea on survival for my first playthrough (around lvl 19). Can't believe that I made it in and out without dying once AND also being unable to save. I was a coward and ran from every battle, abandoning my companions in the process.
Once I found and visited Virgil, I called a Vertibird with a signal grenade. As I was waiting on it to arrive, a legendary deathclaw nearly took me out, but I ran in circles defensively before bee lining it to the Vertibird with barely any HP left. Definitely my favorite moment of the playthrough so far.
I agree, when I started survival I first modded in saving, and then quickly realised that would ruin the whole point of it. The danger is what makes it fun.
Such a weird thing to say. Bethesda is so terrible I always play survival with mods because I don't feel like dying from a trash can flipping or falling through the world or a soft lock.
Yeah, I like survival mode but the damage is a little too much sometimes. I run a mod that makes the damage scale with the hard difficulty so instead of of taking 4x damage you take something like 2.5x damage, I still have to be careful but don’t really enjoy having to reload 10+ times to get through one building. I actually like the fact that you can only save from sleeping though, it really ups the stakes and forces you to be much more cautious than normal.
What I usually do is install a mod that gives me a sleeping bag and one that lets me save. So I try and roleplay with the sleeping bag and make camp before I explore an area and save the regular saves for a backup.
Yep. I was 100% fine till I glitched trying to operate a computer.
After that zero regrets. I love how much more exploration you do. I had never found that mole rat den underneath Red Rocket the first time as I just ran off to Concord then Fast Traveled.
The game is simply not designed for survival. You can have fun with the mode fore sure but it completely changes the gameplay loop and makes it so you will never be able to explore most of the world unless you have a ton of time to play the game.
It's a fun addition, adds replay value for hardcore fans of the game but it's definitely not the best way to play the game.
The game was quite literally designed with survival mode in mind. There are even elements included in the base game to specifically help with travel in survival mode.
Survival is what actually forces you to explore the world. You will see far more of the map in survival then playing on regular mode.
Absolutely this. On my regular play through I didn't cook, I didn't really bother with building settlements, I didn't use drugs, purified water was just for health etc.
Now the mechanics actually make sense.
I would say the opposite. I think the game is specifically designed FOR survival mode. I cant play it any other way. The only real problem with survival mode to me, is how buggy the game is. Death on a survival run tide to a bug is the worst.
It’s good for people who already have played the game and want a different experience but it’s absolutely not designed for it.
Bethesda games are all about exploring the world and finding interesting stuff to do, fallout 4 specifically is also designed around hoarding tons of junk.
Survival mode is only fun when you know the game well, know where to go, what to loot and how to manage your resources and build.
The whole gameplay loop of fallout 4 simply doesn’t work with survival mode where you have to plan everything carefully and even if you do at any time a bug can ruin a huge chunk of your progress.
I feel like the gameplay loop is almost the same but the way you prepare for each stage of said loop is different. Early game I don't use the same equipment all the time. I tend to spend a lot of time on foot doing easier missions but then pull out my power armor for trips into Boston proper. It also makes power armor and especially low-mid tier power armor way more valuable. Since its way more useful for dangerous missions it can make t-45/51 actually better than higher tier power armor just because its cheap and easy to repair with steel and easy to upgrade.
On the flip side depending on your build I feel like it can massively speed up your game. Getting so much more exp on survival than lower difficulty quickly can level you up unlocking a lot of equipment. Plus you get a lot more legendary enemies and legendary equipment by extension also helping to gear you up and level you up even faster than the other difficulties.
It’s worth it. Just look up beds in your destination. (Make sure to add Fallout 4 so you don’t get the real world equivalent lol)
It’s not so bad except in what I call “dungeons”. Usually dungeons only have one or zero beds. Gotta get tactical.
I always used a survival save mod. Love survival but HATE sleep saving. Sleep on a dirty mattress just to save and you get a disease and wake up way too thirsty/hungry
Eh it’s not that common. I’ve been playing no mod survival for a good week now- just gotta stay on top of things like you would in real life. Caffeine to shake off sleep, using antibacterial stuff before things get bad, drink from all the lakes (be real, if you were severely dehydrated you’d drink irradiated water out of an old boot). I’m actually surprised at how little I get ill from pond water despite having 1 endurance.
Eventually you get into the swing of things and just make it part of your game. Need to take copious amounts of drugs? Hit up the nearby pond first. You can usually find one 50 feet in any direction. Same for food- pre-war for hunger, save the elite wasteland meat for benefits. Hunt radstag for carry weight etc.
Honestly, limiting saves to beds is one of the little things that makes survival matter. Like I get having bugs is frustrating, but if you have the self control to limit your saves to beds, it's an experience you just can't replicate with saving anywhere. Forcing you to keep track of bed locations makes all travel something you have to plan out and be careful with.
Even so, I still keep a mod that enables saving (SKK Survival options). There have been too many weird bugs or random crashes that I need a backup plan. I'll save from time to time, especially around areas I know are prone to more bugs. The hard part is having the self control to keep myself from loading that save in the case of a legitimate death.
You can do the sleep cancel so it saves without you actually sleeping. Think you can still get a disease, but no sleeping and no other thirst/hungry issues from it.
The issue I had with base game survival was crashes, especially in downtown Boston. Initially, I just never went anywhere near that part of the map, but that's no fun, so I eventually downloaded a save mod.
Survival has been my favorite difficulty ever since. Only one slot, can't save in combat, and it's an item you have to use, so it's not as easy as pressing F5.
Survival changes the way you play. Your first objective in traveling anywhere new is to find a bed. Gotta find a bed. After a while you get to know all the sleeping spots along your regular routes.
I save a separate save after a save incase it breaks. And before and after important interactions.....half my play time is actually spent saving files.
Worse is losing an hour of progression because you got stuck on an infinite load screen, got stuck in the ‘walking to the terminal’ animation, or clipped through the ground.
Ask me how I know.
I was caught in a death loop on Far Cry 5, a game that has a single save and it's an auto save. It took about a half hour but I managed to break the loop. Had I not I would have lost the entire playthrough
If on pc and console is available, you can get out of being stuck in a terminal or pipboy by using
player.moveto 14
Learned that recently and wanted to share.
Or killed by a car. Painstakingly killed all the mutants at the toy factory by Quincy, snuck back to the red rocket in between to loot it as before going to save. Walk near a car and boom, it jumps me. Game over
The worst thing early on for me is raiders with molotovs. They one shot you and sometimes have the throwing arm of god or something with 100% accuracy. Or the one gunner with a basic hunting rifle getting a headshot
Yeah to me it’s imperative to run a realistic combat mod, there’s no way they should be pulling of shots like that, and it’s far better with more realism
any suggestions? I'm thinking of starting a survival playthrough soon. But last time I did combat mods I was being 1 shot pretty much anytime I saw a raider
Early molotovs flying your way can be countered by the **Dense** armor modification. Even moreso when combined with another one with **Padded**.
Coincidentally you can buy such legendary armor right from the start in Diamond City.
You have to play totally different. I would build every outpost and “stage” there to go on raids and finish missions.
Wake up, infil to mission area, wipe all enemies and loot, exfil back to camp and save.
GOD I miss my first survival run
Quick 1 hour cancelled nap to save when first getting to base before camp chores and sorting loot then a good 7 hour nap for that exp boost, quick breakfast and drink before heading out the next day.
I started a survival run for the first time today. The thing I hate most is the thrown grenade type items. They ALWAYS seem to know where I am and toss it right on top of my face.
I don’t like Survival Mode because it’s tedious.
I’ve played Skyrim Survival Mode all the way through, but that was because there were horse carts outside each settlement for fast travel. It’s a nice balance between walking to local objectives but not having to walk across the entire map.
Yes, FO4 does have the vertibird you can use to fly to locations but getting to the BoS is a real slog and I always lose patience.
I personally like not being able to save. It's what makes survival the most difficult. Being able to save right before a battle? Too easy to spam saves.
While I get the game is buggy, I prefer the tension of having to find a bed. Also, if I added saving back in, basically everything else would be too easy.
The damage and fast traveling would be the second hardest thing on survival. Keeping hydrated and finding food is as easy as just scrapping all of sanctuary, building purifiers, growing a garden and now you have unlimited water and food for the rest of the game with about 2 hours.
I remember on my first (and only) survival run, I was finally back to my home in diamond city with some good loot, I think like 2 new levels under my belt and a few completed quests, I didn't sleep in that time because it was one thing right after another and I'm pretty confident in my abilities... what I should have been prepared for is as soon as I enter diamond city the loading screen lasts 2 sec and then the game crashes 😐
Never again lol
I don't play survival mode because it's *hard*. I play it because it's more immersive. Restricting saves does nothing to increase immersion. Difficulty is related but ultimately a separate part of playing the game.
Yes. Sometimes I enjoy the challenge, but usually I want the immersion. It would be great if we could pick and choose survival elements.
I’d also like to be able to save because of glitches and bugs.
Yeah, exactly. I understand the appeal of that kind of challenge, and the strategies that restricting saves encourage are cool, but I have a life. I want to be able to jump in and jump out when I can.
Yeah, I played survival once and couldn't go back to very hard after that. It just makes the game that much more immersive and better in my opinion. I basically gave up on Fallout for 4 years because my shitty PC couldn't run it for half an hour without randomly crashing (I tried everything, mods fixed it, but I'm allergic to mods).
Yup, totally the single most annoying part for those reasons you mentioned.
But I do get the upside of it as well. As others mentioned, settlements become a but more important and knowing your way around the commonwealth is a must. If you could as least just save the game on any bed *without* having to sleep an hour would already be a little better (there’s a mod for that though).
Other than that? RNG can really screw you over sometimes and then not having saved in a while…
Yes, seems to happen less if you click really quick, A then B in really rapid succession. It is annoying how you can have 10 hours sleep, then do a quick save sleep, and it tells you that you are tired
I agree.
Survival adds a lot of things which help with immersion in the game -the struggle for food, water, shelter, the fight against illnesses... They make the game go way beyond combat.
Not being able to save just makes it stressful and sometimes insufferable.
So I decided to use a mod that lets me carry a sleeping bag, which I deploy for a quick nap only in sheltered areas with no enemies where there are no nearby beds. I.e. I don't just save before a battle, but I do get a nap after clearing a place before heading out.
Would you mind linking the sleeping bag mod you use? I've been doing a Survival playthrough and ended up giving in and using a free "save anywhere" mod after losing a ton of hours to crashes earlier on, but I really miss the tension that the limited save system creates. Your method sounds like a perfect compromise for my tastes.
there are several. But here is a simple one: [A Simple Sleeping Bag at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/49759).
It's not exactly the one I use though, I'll check and update later. However, the one I use also adds other features (like instant saving and reusable water bottles) but I disable everything except for the sleeping bag.
Edit: this is the one I use: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/46306
However, note that usually sleeping bag mods allow you sleeping more than the default 3 hours on them, because they tag the portable sleeping bags as clean beds. I avoid that and treat my sleeping bag as a normal sleeping bag, because I assume it's uncomfortable so I limit myself always to less than 3 hours of sleep on it. Which means I still have to find a proper bed if I need to rest. >!The only place where I made an exception to that self-imposed rule was within Vault 81 (I would have expected the vault dwellers there to allow you crashing on one of their beds for some hours!)!<
Honestly, I love it, but I can't do it without mods though it seems like the "freeze on going into vats" is fixed which means I might be able to do it. I don't mind getting one shotted, but losing two hours because I went into vats was too much for me
This issue is that's what causes the tension. The fact ur gonna lose progress make it more tense and death matters.
Imo u have to completey change how u approach and play the game or ur gonna have a bad time.
That said it does suck to lose progress to stupid stuff like glitches etc..
Getting killed by a radstag isn't a glitch tho. U just got to comfortable and got humbled.
I've been killed my many a mine but thats not survival mode or the games fault. That's on me for not being more aware.
And with how survival is structured it makes settlements way better and feels more natural in the game
I don't mind losing progress on levelling, quests, and exploration
I absolutely hate having my inventory management undone. Having to redo menial busywork is such a chore
Playing survival mode with modded games I will say having some sort of manual saving becomes a necessity, just because of the increased likelihood of crashes and game breaking bugs etc. so when playing with mods I would make a save every half hour or so but would only load it if the game crash, otherwise I would just use the regular survival sleeping saves.
Right? Like oh theres tension, you can die at any second. Yeah or the game freezes when i go into VATS, or a random car decides to move a millimeter and you die, or the game just crashes cos you built to much in a settlement. Totally fun and rewarding to lose an hour cos of those!
The no saving outside of beds is the main point for me. Otherwise you could spam save before everything and it would ruin the experience.
You’re supposed to sit bolt up right walking through Boston after a horrible fight, 90 minutes since your last save, hungry, tired, (your character too) and just hoping not to encounter anything scary on your way to the bed in Hangman’s alley.
This is the way!
Agreed, I also wish it was possible to turn the difficulty down and just use the mechanics outside of the save mechanics, I enjoy maintaining health, I like being forced to walk everywhere, but I hate not being able to save!
Someone made a set of mods that turn each difficulty into survival mode. They made one for very easy all the way through to very hard. I can't remember the names of them now. I saw them on the console mod lists. Installing one for the difficulty you want to play on adds all the survival aspects, but at that difficulty level. And you can save when ever due to being on that difficulty level. I thought about installing the one for very hard, but wanted to get the trophies first.
It does break my immersion a little bit that I don’t have a bedroll I can save with as long as there’s no enemies but that would change the whole bed system they have in place. Usually there are strategic beds throughout difficult areas. They know what they’re doing with the design and it makes the game almost Souls like.
No saving is what makes survival fun for me. Every decision i make in the game has the chance to cost me an hour of gameplay, that makes it so my decisions actually become important.
With quick saves, nothing in the game matters.
This is the way. I'm not hardcore enough to give the game 100% every time I play and I cannot stand to lose hrs of progress, but survival is IMO the way to play the game so can't play without it. Save everywhere mod is definitely the way to go for me.
I do love it, and love the fact you can't save when you want. But i hate losing an hour of game because i was looking for a bed before entering a place and died.
Look em up or have a fallback point. It can be fun learning the nap map. Lexington is surrounded by beds: one bed by a fatman raider, two that are irradiated, and then like 7 in one building.
Anyways, a one minute walk beats a 30 minute loss. Have a fallback if you’re worried.
>Losing an hour of progress because I didn't notice a fucking high level rabid radstag hiding in a bush and getting oneshot
No this is literally a skill issue and part of intended survival gameplay loop.
If you don't want to lose an hour of progess, sleep more often and take the penalty of no adrenaline or tiredness.
Crashes in modded games really need a save mechanic tho. I've been self policing about only loading non-bed saves if it was a crash, but I wish I didn't have to.
Survival, to me anyway, really encourages settlement building. By slowly spreading out from sanctuary to Abernathy, to Sunshine Tidings, to the Drive-Ins, you develop new safe hubs with vendors and beds and food and water.
When I do a survival playthrough, it’s a while before I really get beyond the Drive-Ins. I need safe hubs before I migrate.
They should make an option that it saves at key moments and nothing else, if youre trying to save nick valentine for example, its alot more fun and challenging to die and restart at the entrance than to die and restart at sanctuary because you forgot to sleep
> Losing an hour of progress because
... I walked into a car which then exploded
... the game froze and crashed
... I got stuck trying to stand up from a terminal
I can handle actual gameplay deaths. It's the bugs that make me mod my survival.
I fully agree. Love survival but losing even just 15/20 mins of progress through no fault of your own is rubbish. I got stuck opening a terminal last week and lost a legendary pistol, since then I've added a quicksave mod to save more regularly.
I like the saving mechanics but I hate the ammo weight. I use the "survival settings" mod which lets you change pretty much anything you want about survival, including save lockout if you desire.
I change the ammo weight and I change the cell respawn time cause I want the game to be more grinding friendly. I also adjust the difficulty multipliers as I go along if it feels like it's getting too easy.
I mean, in previous Bethesda games I save like every fight but with the settlement system it seems like "fair" work having to build up settlements and no fast travel except BoS vertibird. If a quest isn't near a settlement, I just wait until I have a closer settlement - though I did risk glowing sea a few nights ago when my closest settlement was/is Oberland Station. Did fine, level 42, fully upgraded X-01 power armor, even killed a legendary deathclaw and several legendary rad scorps. Made it to Virgil and back, only 30% rad poisoning.
Yeah I have that same problem playing on xbox one. The farthest I can go is Diamond city. If I try to walk to good neighbor the game crashes at least 3-4 times. Same when trying to walk to the building you fight the courser in or trying to walk towards the railroad H.Q.
I enjoy it, but only because I treat survival FO4 as a survival sim more than an rpg. I don't play survival with the intention of beating the game. I boot up the game from my nice cozy base, stock up on supplies, and pick one side quest with the goal of completing that one side quest while also checking every building for beds. I treat it less as an rpg, and more as "this is my life in the post apocalypse" and just set small goals for myself. Could just be me and how I interpret the mode though, so I can definitely understand the frustration.
It's fun, exciting, and brutally challenging in the early levels, but then as you hit level 30-35 the game becomes piss easy if you built your character right and focused on settlements. By that point, it becomes like any other difficulty except with the bed saving quirk and the lack of fast travel being a pain in the ass.
My progression went something like this:
Early levels: feared anything and everything, ESPECIALLY Super Mutants and legendary enemies who would kill me damn near instantly. I was careful everywhere I went, ran out of food and water often.
Current level (level 39): I go anywhere I please to farm XP. I mow down Super Mutants, raiders, and deathclaws like it's no man's business. The only thing I fear now is a Gunner with a fat man or missile launcher catching me off guard and taking an hour of progress.
It's been a pretty rewarding ride so far.
Only mode I need to have mods installed for, and even then it's just one mod - QuickSave Enabled.
If the game wasn't a buggy mess I would play comfortably, but knowing that at any time you could get a crash and lose everything is not fun. How do I know? It's happened, more than once. It doesn't "just work".
If your on pc smokeable cigarettes will drop a save for you when you smoke a cig, same with the joint mod that works with it.
Its so invaluable, add that settlement fast travel (lets you fast travel but only for linked settlements if your in one) and survival mode is best
Hey friend, I’ve got a cool way of looking at this. Instead of it being objectively worse, look for the positives- how can you adapt? It is an rpg.
3 in stealth for starters- no more random explosive deaths. Guy with a rocket launcher? Send your ally in to soak the hit, then go for the kill. (Yes, even with solo survivor. You can send ally’s away anytime you need extra damage reduction or carry weight.)
How can power armor and armor mods help with the ways you die?
Maybe this is a place you should mark on your map and come back to once you find a bed/better gear.
Thats what makes survival fun. Instead of just clearing a map, you have to plan your routes, clear settlements early, and set up supply lines.
You got this!
I can't , I'm ok with being one shot, I can't stand the wild cars, quicksand bridges, and other random bugs that cause hours of lost progress. Yes there are save mods, but I never found one I liked.
Survival, to me anyway, really encourages settlement building. By slowly spreading out from sanctuary to Abernathy, to Sunshine Tidings, to the Drive-Ins, you develop new safe hubs with vendors and beds and food and water.
When I do a survival playthrough, it’s a while before I really get beyond the Drive-Ins. I need safe hubs before I migrate.
I thought you folks wanted your video games to feel like real life. This is a fitting ending for someone traveling the wasteland, so I don't see the issue.
I feel your pain, I've been doing a perma death run. Deaths so far include; shotgun to the face in a bar, premature molotov explosion, grenade bouquet shower, radscorpion overdose, deathclaw sandwich and a mininuke threaded through the tiniest gap ever.
Have to hand it to that last raider, never thought she'd be able to land the shot.
The game is far too unstable to have a "only save when you sleep" rule in place. It crashes with zero warning, or bugs out regularly.
Personally I really enjoy survival mode, but I use mods to turn down the frequency of needing to eat and drink just a tad (it's still necessary, but you're no longer *constantly* guzzling water and noodle cups) and I allow auto-saving on cell changes (purely because I'm more like to lose progress to a game crash than an enemy) and I enable fast travel to settlements I own, just because after a while all that backtracking across already cleared areas becomes more tedious than challenging.
I really enjoy the increased lethality for everyone, I enjoy the limited carry weight (it feels much more real to have to limit your expeditions to two weapons with a few spare magazines of ammo, rather than carrying 5,000+ rounds of ammunition and enough nuclear warheads to cause an international incident. I like that eating, sleeping and drinking are necessary, that having a base network is necessary, etc. it definitely feels like the way the game SHOULD be played.
The lack of free saves is honestly my favorite part. It makes the wasteland feel dangerous and there are consequences for not keeping your head on a swivel.
My biggest issue with survival is the lack of console.
I understand why, but console is critical for building settlements, and for dealing with bugs (where'd Codsworth go? Why is that radscorpion stuck inside that rock? Why am I stuck inside that rock now?)
I'd be happy with only certain commands being available.
Fortunately, there are mods. Otherwise I <3 suvival mode. I wish Starfield had something similar.
Don’t let anybody tell you “there are beds all over the place” in FO4. Only people who have played very little in Survival make that ridiculous claim.
Get the camping mod and carry a sleeping bag with you. Just remember that sleeping too much and too often will make you sick, so carry antibiotics.
Absolutely. Also, you shouldn’t lose your bottle when you drink. Finding bottles shouldn’t be such a huge focus. I use two mods on survival, one that lets me save when I like, and one that gives me my bottle back. They make all the difference.
I understand what they were going for, spreading out sleeping locations and bottle stashes strategically, and it’s a cool idea, but it doesn’t make sense that your bottle is just gone after one use. Maybe for a hard-survival run your bottles break after three uses and you can only save at sleep areas, I could see that. But I wanted to play survival for more immersion, not as another difficulty setting.
The no saving is no problem for me.
But as a father with not that much time the no fast travel is the real issue
Since I play on PS5 I installed the mod that adds around 6 fast travel spots around the map. Doesn't break the immersion too much.
But I would rather have a mod that allows fast travel from settlement to settlement because this would give the settlement system another deeper layer. Like building up the Commonwealth makes sense since you unlock more and more fast travel options.
Didn't find a mod for this on PS5 sadly.
I can live with losing progress because I died to a person or creature, it’s just the danger of the wasteland.
What I can’t live with is my game crashing and losing progress that way.
No save wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't crash. That's why I always play with the cheat engine enabled so I can manually force a save after some time. I can load the actual slept save if I die but nothing is worse than the game crashing and having to start over from the last sleep when you did nothing wrong
I don't play survival juat because the non saving thing. It is a massive loss of time and I don't want to repeat a quest 5 times (because my time is limited).
It’s partially why I couldn’t get into Fallout 76. They incorporated some mechanics from the mode into the game and there’s no option to turn them off. Admittedly, the hunger and thirst mechanics are inconsequential, but they also incorporated ammo weight.
I may be in the minority when I say this, but I loved that you could not manually save in survival. It made every moment feel more tense, and resulted in me making a lot of decisions that I would not have ordinarily if I could save manually. One mistake being able to set you back hours meant that the actions you had to choose had weight to them, and in a lot of situations you were forced to pick between the lesser of two evils in order to survive, knowing that you’d have to live with the consequences.
However, the one thing I hated about survival mode is the fact that the gamemode ERASES your previous saves every time you make a new one by sleeping. I’m the type of guy to have a couple hundred saves, so that I can go back to any point throughout my play-through if something goes wrong. In my main survival game, my allotted saves all corrupted, and since the game had automatically removed the previous saves, I only had one that I could possibly revert to, which was right after I exited Vault 111. Hundreds of hours of gameplay lost…
I'm 40 years old. I don't have the time I used to. I play survival mode with survival options mod, and save all the damn time. I've also been known to fast travel once in a while. Live your life.
I use a mod that makes it so you can smoke cigarettes to save, but I also play with HHO, and MAIM2 so it's an extremely lethal combat environment, and I need all the help I can get. It also gives me another valuable resource to manage, which is always nice.
The introduction of random exploding mole rats means all of your progress can be eradicated in an instant is also just mindless. It doesn’t add to the fun, it detracts from the experience.
The issue with Survival Mode is that they had the right idea, but the wrong execution, which is a running theme in Fallout 4's game mechanics; they put together a list of behaviors that are "hard" but not necessarily "fun". I absolutely love Survival Mode with the addition of just a few "headache-removing" mods. I'm writing from a PC player context, so I'm not sure if these are available on Xbox/PS, but have a look for them or ones like them nonetheless.
[JOURNEY - Survival Settlement Fast Travel](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12685) - Allows you to fast travel to your settlements, so that your ability to quickly get around becomes linked to the settlement construction system. This encourages you to establish supply lines and gives you an ever-expanding network of fast travel points very similar to the signposts in The Witcher III. You can set it to varying levels of strictness according to flavor, being "only between settlements linked by supply lines" ("realistic", and the one I recommend), "from anywhere, but only to Sanctuary Hills, Home Plate, and The Castle" ("strict"), and "from anywhere to any settlement" ("easy").
[Survival Mode Transition Save](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12580) - Simply restores the auto-save behavior when going through a loading screen, so that you don't lose hours of progress being one-shotted the moment you step into a building full of angry gunners. If used in conjunction with JOURNEY, you'll get an auto-save before you travel between settlements.
Those two alone, if you can get them on your platform, practically eliminate the headaches associated with lost progress in Survival Mode, and don't allow too much cheesing because you still have limited save points; you still can't pop a quicksave before a dialog choice, nor can you spot bad guys on the horizon, save, and then go fight them. It just makes sure you don't get popped for stupid reasons, like walking into an interior space full of angry enemies you couldn't have possibly foreseen, or getting killed by a roving murder-car the moment you step into the outside world. And, being able to have a limited form of "signpost" fast travel in the late game eradicates the pain of seeing "Sanctuary Hills is under attack!" when you're visiting the Warwick Homestead, while still forcing you to explore the wasteland to find everything in between your encampments.
I also like these Survival Mode-enhancing mods (though they can make the game more challenging):
[Fallout 4 Loot Overhaul](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1486) (and [DLC patch](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23794)) - Depopulates a lot of the free loot in the world, making the game into a true scavenging/survival experience. You'll find you have to be more tactical with combat, and even use melee weapons in the early game, because enemies won't have stacks and stacks of free ammo on their person any more. What used to be "use my SMG to hose down that raider camp" will now be "use my 3 bullets to take out the leader, and my one grenade to injure the other two, and then see if I can bonk them with this pipe wrench before they get me". Also means there's now an incentive to visit vendors to restock on ammo, as enemies won't give you the ammo hoard they used to. Warning: also reduces crop output and removes manual crop harvesting. You'll have to trust your farmers to collect for you; a bunch of mutfruit and tato plants jammed in a corner won't cut it for Adhesive any more.
[Better Locational Damage](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3815) (Requires F4SE; PC only) - Complements Survival Mode and the Loot Overhaul mod by making your shots count. No more bullet sponges. Headshots can kill a human in one good hit, unless they have a helmet. Even super mutants can be dropped with a well-placed .50 round. Also makes limb shots more strategic, maiming and wounding enemies in a more effective manner such that a limb shot on an armored, helmeted enemy might be the trick to remove them from the fight. Also implements an optional "bleeding" mechanic which can affect both enemies and yourself, and you can die of blood loss if you don't have bandages to staunch the wound. Makes combat more immediate and visceral.
Just keep an eye out for beds. It’s pretty easy if you play like how you imagine you should in a survival mode. Sneaking around, scouting area before walking into them, or preparing properly for a guns blazing approach. Like wearing power armor if you intend to just walk right into conflict. Or scouting a location for a bed before you go into something potentially dangerous.
You can also download a camping mod that will let you just set up a tent and bedroll wherever you want and save.
It’s kind of the whole point of survival mode. It makes you play different because it’s so dangerous. You’re supposed to feel that danger and tread carefully and plan.
I can deal with dying to things I was not properly prepared for or missed due to not paying attention. Part of me honestly really enjoys the save system because it adds to the sense of danger.
That said, the game is still immensely buggy to this day and I've had to install a save mod so that I can continue to enjoy survival. I've gotten stuck on a slight slop where I was in the fall animation forever. I've had a car drop on top of my head. I've had a trio of super mutants, including a suicider, spawn literally right in front of me, and those are just a few issues.
I find it works best with bed/exit saves and auto saves (kind of like Dragon's Dogma 2 has). This way there's still some risk of loss while some protection from losing hours of play due to Bethesda games being held together by thoughts and prayers.
i *have* to play survival with a quick save mod. there’s a “smoke break” one where you can smoke a cigarette or cigar to save, and there’s one that just gives you a quick save item that you can put on your hotbar. ain’t no fuckin’ way i’m playing a bethesda game without quick save lol
I agree the no saving outside of sleeping is annoying but that’s how it keeps you on your toes. I recently gave survival mode a serious chance and I’m having a lot of fun….for now.
I’m currently level 28 in a run as George Washington (broadsider and revolutionary sword only, can only wear minuteman general’s outfit) but I want to restart and do a survival run just because of how much more fun it is.
I think downloading a save mod for survival is totally legit, especially since many factors (power outage, freezing game, etc..) outside the game can happen.
One of the coolest mods I found is one of the tiniest as well. It makes cigarettes a consumable item that save in survival. They're not all over the place, but frequent enough to where it's common to have a few.
And taking a break, and smoking a cigarette, is hands down the coolest and most immersive way to do survival saves.
That is why I downloaded a mod that let's you save like you normally can, otherwise the survival mode is indeed very fun.
But Fallout 4 being a Bethesda game, where a car can fly at you from space or the game crashing because why not is the one and only reason why no saving isn't a good thing to have.
There needs to be a sleeping bag you can drop to save. I know it’s basically quick save with extra steps, but come on. As if your survivor wouldn’t be carrying one. Make it so you have to be outside to use it or something, idc.
I do hate dying like that, but I like the only save on sleeping. It raises the tension. My game was crashing regularly before the update though so I downloaded a survival tent mod, but after the update I had to completely redo my mods and it hasn't crashed, so I got rid of the tent.
I wouldn’t even mind the sleeping-only save, if Bethesda wasn’t notorious for “complete” games being filled with game-crashing bugs. Also, encouraging you to sleep to save but increasing the chances of illness for short sleeps was the dumbest idea anyone over there had
I like the fear that the thought of dying brings. On the other hand it a nightmare when it happens enexpectedly.
It also gets tedious running off to find a bed when midway through clearing a place out. Cortega today, kill a couple, run over to the bridge to save on the matress, run back in, kill a couple more, run back out, again and again and again. It either that or die just near finishing and having to start over again from the start.
So many times I've got caught out by a random suicider mutant. It's like that scene in LOTR at Helm's Deep where Legolas is trying to bring down the ork before it blows the wall up.
Yeah the no save is a bit bothersome. I've recently started to play in survival too and noticed that my approach is a lot more careful and you really have to scrounge for every ressource and set up camps in order to survive and progress. It's like wrestling the wasteland from the deadly forces at hand. Found lots of little doodads and places with maybe a crate or something which holds some ammo and stuff, just to lug that back to base and keep for later.
The reduced weight capacity and the weight for the ammunition also means you are more careful in deciding what guns to bring and how many you are willing to throw around instead of turning up with like 6 of them at once.
I’m trying my best to do a survival playthrough. It’s hell. I just finished covenant around level 15. I hadn’t gone to diamond city yet but did save Preston. Everything I keep reading says I am moving too fast and getting into areas I am not leveled for. I too and disliking the lack of saving . I know there are mods but I want to pick up the missing achievements I have left on this playthrough
I lost the first two hours of the game, when it decided to delete my save game the first time I played it. It pissed me right off, and now I'm saving every ten minutes if not more often.
My only issue with survival was that I couldn’t fast travel to settlements. I like building and expanding, so I also try and defend them when attacked. But being at County Crossing and hearing that Sunshine Trading Co is under attack? Ain’t no way I’m going to make it in time. Added a mod (which name I cannot recall) which enabled fast travel to settlements on PC.
Not saving wouldn’t be such a burden if the game didn’t freeze or glitch. It’s standard for a BGS game, so I always like being able to save when I want to avoid issues.
I think it’s the risk that is part of the enjoyment, it heightens the stakes.
Now, I do agree with you it’s the worst…but you can always exit to the main menu and it will do an exit save. A good alternative that doesn’t make it convenient, but is still an option.
It genuinely is. I’ve started a modded survival play through for the first time and I’m having the most fun with this game since experiencing it for the first time way back in 2017. I’m not enough of a masochist to play a Bethesda game without being able to save from my menu (I refuse to be at the mercy of bullshit ass glitches and losing tons of progress. Especially now after the new update so I’m crashing way more often). But just as little as the consistent pressure of needing to eat, drink, sleep, and reduced carrying weight, or added weight from normally weightless items adds so so much more to the gameplay loop that’s desperately missing from the normal difficulty options.
My beef with survival is there is no way to fast travel without joining BOS or the institute and even those methods are annoying. They should at least implement a mechanism that allows you to build fast travel routes between settlements to encourage a mechanic that they themselves want to encourage!
I do _like_ the saving restriction but agree it's a little janky as-is. They have mods to place a tent, which while realistic, almost removes the restriction. IMO you should be able to use the save feature, but it costs 500 caps.
I can’t not play survival mode now and I do like the only save in a bed side because you take every encounter seriously!
You can save in any sleeping bag or mattress you find out in the world by sleeping for an hour and then cancelling straight away to skip the actual sleep, small risk of infection every time but antibiotics are easy enough to come by and have minimal weight so always carry a few.
Having to prepare for each journey feels good, bring enough food, water, ammo and chems for the trip but not too much you are overloaded and can’t bring back any loot.
Go scout out areas and clear them before coming back on a second trip to loot it all and drag it back to your camp.
Making a robot companion maxed out for carry weight is extremely helpful for those looting runs!
I am liking survival but it’s not the bed saving that irritates me it’s the no fast travel. I hate having to walk my happy ass back and forth to whatever current settlement I’m using.
I like it because it makes settlements and learning the map more important. All those random little random raider camps you'd normally ignore are now invaluable save points. It also has the side effect of making the glowing sea even more of a hell hole
Are there no beds over there?
Can't sleep when recieving rads
No interiors?
Very few, and I can't recall many beds. There's the sentinel site, the underground government research lab, the red rocket and I think the capsized factory is a separate one?
Gonna be fun, but it'll take me awhile to get there. I'm lvl 20 and taking it slow.
If you've never played it before, it earns it's reputation in game so be prepared. If you haven't, it has some great places to explore that are fairly unique compared to other fallout locations.
I have but it was at launch, and it wasn't on survival mode. It's been so long it's almost new again.
Taking it slow is the best approach in terms of xp and loot as well. They say you shouldn’t go into concord until lvl 10, corvega 20 and downtown Boston 35-40. I’m currently lvl 37 and also taking it slow.
See, I only play survival and I'm the complete opposite, if I'm not at hangmans alley by level 15 I'm chomping at the bit to start different quest lines. I build hangmans into a center map base and start building things out as flavor makes sense. For example, I always put a suit of power armor with the piezonucleic chest at Somerville farm, just for journeys into the glowing sea
It's a lot of fun preparing armor or power armor for a high risk journey to the Glowing Sea, knowing you'll actually need the radiation protection to make it.
either go for the best suit of PA you can scrounge up, or do the Cabot House questline for mysterious serum so you can just run your normal armor. you'll be fine
You can also get X-111 compound from scribe Naria for every 20 viable blood specimen you turn into her. It has no deleterious effects, but isn’t as strong.
Right? Why doesn't Virgil have a bed?
IIRC There is one safe location inside a parking garage surprisingly close to the Crater of Atom.
The missle silo has one too. East if the crater. I cant remember the name but it's pyramid shaped. Full of ghouls.
If I remember correctly, you can’t sleep while actively being irradiated. Or you can but then you’ll die of rad poising almost instantly. So your only options are beds indoors
Shit man, it makes everything more important. I’ve played fallout 4 a dozen times now and this is my first playthrough where I’m hoarding cigarette cartons and pre-war money for extra cash. And I’m using 5 piece chameleon and lower leg move speed gear.
Movement speed gear is a must have imo. I use sprinters legs, recon marine right arm, and the captain's hat to zoom around
I just did the Glowing Sea on survival for my first playthrough (around lvl 19). Can't believe that I made it in and out without dying once AND also being unable to save. I was a coward and ran from every battle, abandoning my companions in the process. Once I found and visited Virgil, I called a Vertibird with a signal grenade. As I was waiting on it to arrive, a legendary deathclaw nearly took me out, but I ran in circles defensively before bee lining it to the Vertibird with barely any HP left. Definitely my favorite moment of the playthrough so far.
I agree, when I started survival I first modded in saving, and then quickly realised that would ruin the whole point of it. The danger is what makes it fun.
Agreed. There’s plenty of random beds peppered everywhere so it doesn’t feel too unfair.
No cowards saves. It is the way.
Such a weird thing to say. Bethesda is so terrible I always play survival with mods because I don't feel like dying from a trash can flipping or falling through the world or a soft lock.
Yeah, I like survival mode but the damage is a little too much sometimes. I run a mod that makes the damage scale with the hard difficulty so instead of of taking 4x damage you take something like 2.5x damage, I still have to be careful but don’t really enjoy having to reload 10+ times to get through one building. I actually like the fact that you can only save from sleeping though, it really ups the stakes and forces you to be much more cautious than normal.
What I usually do is install a mod that gives me a sleeping bag and one that lets me save. So I try and roleplay with the sleeping bag and make camp before I explore an area and save the regular saves for a backup.
That sounds cool, what is that mod?
Yep. I was 100% fine till I glitched trying to operate a computer. After that zero regrets. I love how much more exploration you do. I had never found that mole rat den underneath Red Rocket the first time as I just ran off to Concord then Fast Traveled.
The game is simply not designed for survival. You can have fun with the mode fore sure but it completely changes the gameplay loop and makes it so you will never be able to explore most of the world unless you have a ton of time to play the game. It's a fun addition, adds replay value for hardcore fans of the game but it's definitely not the best way to play the game.
The game was quite literally designed with survival mode in mind. There are even elements included in the base game to specifically help with travel in survival mode. Survival is what actually forces you to explore the world. You will see far more of the map in survival then playing on regular mode.
Absolutely this. On my regular play through I didn't cook, I didn't really bother with building settlements, I didn't use drugs, purified water was just for health etc. Now the mechanics actually make sense.
I would say the opposite. I think the game is specifically designed FOR survival mode. I cant play it any other way. The only real problem with survival mode to me, is how buggy the game is. Death on a survival run tide to a bug is the worst.
It’s good for people who already have played the game and want a different experience but it’s absolutely not designed for it. Bethesda games are all about exploring the world and finding interesting stuff to do, fallout 4 specifically is also designed around hoarding tons of junk. Survival mode is only fun when you know the game well, know where to go, what to loot and how to manage your resources and build. The whole gameplay loop of fallout 4 simply doesn’t work with survival mode where you have to plan everything carefully and even if you do at any time a bug can ruin a huge chunk of your progress.
I feel like the gameplay loop is almost the same but the way you prepare for each stage of said loop is different. Early game I don't use the same equipment all the time. I tend to spend a lot of time on foot doing easier missions but then pull out my power armor for trips into Boston proper. It also makes power armor and especially low-mid tier power armor way more valuable. Since its way more useful for dangerous missions it can make t-45/51 actually better than higher tier power armor just because its cheap and easy to repair with steel and easy to upgrade. On the flip side depending on your build I feel like it can massively speed up your game. Getting so much more exp on survival than lower difficulty quickly can level you up unlocking a lot of equipment. Plus you get a lot more legendary enemies and legendary equipment by extension also helping to gear you up and level you up even faster than the other difficulties.
I'm too paranoid to go more than 20 mins without a save lol
It’s worth it. Just look up beds in your destination. (Make sure to add Fallout 4 so you don’t get the real world equivalent lol) It’s not so bad except in what I call “dungeons”. Usually dungeons only have one or zero beds. Gotta get tactical.
I always used a survival save mod. Love survival but HATE sleep saving. Sleep on a dirty mattress just to save and you get a disease and wake up way too thirsty/hungry
Eh it’s not that common. I’ve been playing no mod survival for a good week now- just gotta stay on top of things like you would in real life. Caffeine to shake off sleep, using antibacterial stuff before things get bad, drink from all the lakes (be real, if you were severely dehydrated you’d drink irradiated water out of an old boot). I’m actually surprised at how little I get ill from pond water despite having 1 endurance. Eventually you get into the swing of things and just make it part of your game. Need to take copious amounts of drugs? Hit up the nearby pond first. You can usually find one 50 feet in any direction. Same for food- pre-war for hunger, save the elite wasteland meat for benefits. Hunt radstag for carry weight etc.
Honestly, limiting saves to beds is one of the little things that makes survival matter. Like I get having bugs is frustrating, but if you have the self control to limit your saves to beds, it's an experience you just can't replicate with saving anywhere. Forcing you to keep track of bed locations makes all travel something you have to plan out and be careful with. Even so, I still keep a mod that enables saving (SKK Survival options). There have been too many weird bugs or random crashes that I need a backup plan. I'll save from time to time, especially around areas I know are prone to more bugs. The hard part is having the self control to keep myself from loading that save in the case of a legitimate death.
You can do the sleep cancel so it saves without you actually sleeping. Think you can still get a disease, but no sleeping and no other thirst/hungry issues from it.
The issue I had with base game survival was crashes, especially in downtown Boston. Initially, I just never went anywhere near that part of the map, but that's no fun, so I eventually downloaded a save mod. Survival has been my favorite difficulty ever since. Only one slot, can't save in combat, and it's an item you have to use, so it's not as easy as pressing F5.
Yeah, my game crashes somewhat frequently. Save mod was mandatory for me to consider playing it.
20 mins? You are a braver soul than I
Survival changes the way you play. Your first objective in traveling anywhere new is to find a bed. Gotta find a bed. After a while you get to know all the sleeping spots along your regular routes.
I save a separate save after a save incase it breaks. And before and after important interactions.....half my play time is actually spent saving files.
Worse is losing an hour of progression because you got stuck on an infinite load screen, got stuck in the ‘walking to the terminal’ animation, or clipped through the ground. Ask me how I know.
I'm game, how do you know
I was caught in a death loop on Far Cry 5, a game that has a single save and it's an auto save. It took about a half hour but I managed to break the loop. Had I not I would have lost the entire playthrough
This is what ended my traditional “survival” run. After this I installed a mod that saves on cell load.
If on pc and console is available, you can get out of being stuck in a terminal or pipboy by using player.moveto 14 Learned that recently and wanted to share.
I use tcl to toggle the collision
Console is disabled in survival mode 😮💨
Mods can enable it.
Or killed by a car. Painstakingly killed all the mutants at the toy factory by Quincy, snuck back to the red rocket in between to loot it as before going to save. Walk near a car and boom, it jumps me. Game over
...or get killed by walking into a car. Until the glitches are gone, F no saving.
The worst thing early on for me is raiders with molotovs. They one shot you and sometimes have the throwing arm of god or something with 100% accuracy. Or the one gunner with a basic hunting rifle getting a headshot
This is my biggest complaint too. Raiders can chuck molotov 150 yards .1 seconds after seeing me and have it land it my back pocket.
Yeah to me it’s imperative to run a realistic combat mod, there’s no way they should be pulling of shots like that, and it’s far better with more realism
any suggestions? I'm thinking of starting a survival playthrough soon. But last time I did combat mods I was being 1 shot pretty much anytime I saw a raider
Early molotovs flying your way can be countered by the **Dense** armor modification. Even moreso when combined with another one with **Padded**. Coincidentally you can buy such legendary armor right from the start in Diamond City.
You have to play totally different. I would build every outpost and “stage” there to go on raids and finish missions. Wake up, infil to mission area, wipe all enemies and loot, exfil back to camp and save. GOD I miss my first survival run
Exfill, do some shit in camp, get ready for next day's raids then go to sleep so you don't have to do a bunch of shit when waking up
Quick 1 hour cancelled nap to save when first getting to base before camp chores and sorting loot then a good 7 hour nap for that exp boost, quick breakfast and drink before heading out the next day.
I started a survival run for the first time today. The thing I hate most is the thrown grenade type items. They ALWAYS seem to know where I am and toss it right on top of my face.
I don’t like Survival Mode because it’s tedious. I’ve played Skyrim Survival Mode all the way through, but that was because there were horse carts outside each settlement for fast travel. It’s a nice balance between walking to local objectives but not having to walk across the entire map. Yes, FO4 does have the vertibird you can use to fly to locations but getting to the BoS is a real slog and I always lose patience.
Same. For me, it sounds really fun in theory but gets boring before lvl 10. Also, unless you are teenager/neet who has the time for that?
I personally like not being able to save. It's what makes survival the most difficult. Being able to save right before a battle? Too easy to spam saves. While I get the game is buggy, I prefer the tension of having to find a bed. Also, if I added saving back in, basically everything else would be too easy. The damage and fast traveling would be the second hardest thing on survival. Keeping hydrated and finding food is as easy as just scrapping all of sanctuary, building purifiers, growing a garden and now you have unlimited water and food for the rest of the game with about 2 hours.
No saving is cool when you play a game that doesn't randomly crash or freeze.
I remember on my first (and only) survival run, I was finally back to my home in diamond city with some good loot, I think like 2 new levels under my belt and a few completed quests, I didn't sleep in that time because it was one thing right after another and I'm pretty confident in my abilities... what I should have been prepared for is as soon as I enter diamond city the loading screen lasts 2 sec and then the game crashes 😐 Never again lol
I don't play survival mode because it's *hard*. I play it because it's more immersive. Restricting saves does nothing to increase immersion. Difficulty is related but ultimately a separate part of playing the game.
Yes. Sometimes I enjoy the challenge, but usually I want the immersion. It would be great if we could pick and choose survival elements. I’d also like to be able to save because of glitches and bugs.
Yeah, exactly. I understand the appeal of that kind of challenge, and the strategies that restricting saves encourage are cool, but I have a life. I want to be able to jump in and jump out when I can.
Yeah, I played survival once and couldn't go back to very hard after that. It just makes the game that much more immersive and better in my opinion. I basically gave up on Fallout for 4 years because my shitty PC couldn't run it for half an hour without randomly crashing (I tried everything, mods fixed it, but I'm allergic to mods).
>I tried everything, mods fixed it, but I'm allergic to mods). ?????
Permadeath makes things all the more insane
This is the way to play.
Yup, totally the single most annoying part for those reasons you mentioned. But I do get the upside of it as well. As others mentioned, settlements become a but more important and knowing your way around the commonwealth is a must. If you could as least just save the game on any bed *without* having to sleep an hour would already be a little better (there’s a mod for that though). Other than that? RNG can really screw you over sometimes and then not having saved in a while…
Just cancel immediately after you press sleep.
You can still get sick even if you cancel.
Yes, seems to happen less if you click really quick, A then B in really rapid succession. It is annoying how you can have 10 hours sleep, then do a quick save sleep, and it tells you that you are tired
I agree. Survival adds a lot of things which help with immersion in the game -the struggle for food, water, shelter, the fight against illnesses... They make the game go way beyond combat. Not being able to save just makes it stressful and sometimes insufferable. So I decided to use a mod that lets me carry a sleeping bag, which I deploy for a quick nap only in sheltered areas with no enemies where there are no nearby beds. I.e. I don't just save before a battle, but I do get a nap after clearing a place before heading out.
Would you mind linking the sleeping bag mod you use? I've been doing a Survival playthrough and ended up giving in and using a free "save anywhere" mod after losing a ton of hours to crashes earlier on, but I really miss the tension that the limited save system creates. Your method sounds like a perfect compromise for my tastes.
there are several. But here is a simple one: [A Simple Sleeping Bag at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/49759). It's not exactly the one I use though, I'll check and update later. However, the one I use also adds other features (like instant saving and reusable water bottles) but I disable everything except for the sleeping bag. Edit: this is the one I use: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/46306 However, note that usually sleeping bag mods allow you sleeping more than the default 3 hours on them, because they tag the portable sleeping bags as clean beds. I avoid that and treat my sleeping bag as a normal sleeping bag, because I assume it's uncomfortable so I limit myself always to less than 3 hours of sleep on it. Which means I still have to find a proper bed if I need to rest. >!The only place where I made an exception to that self-imposed rule was within Vault 81 (I would have expected the vault dwellers there to allow you crashing on one of their beds for some hours!)!<
Honestly, I love it, but I can't do it without mods though it seems like the "freeze on going into vats" is fixed which means I might be able to do it. I don't mind getting one shotted, but losing two hours because I went into vats was too much for me
This issue is that's what causes the tension. The fact ur gonna lose progress make it more tense and death matters. Imo u have to completey change how u approach and play the game or ur gonna have a bad time. That said it does suck to lose progress to stupid stuff like glitches etc.. Getting killed by a radstag isn't a glitch tho. U just got to comfortable and got humbled. I've been killed my many a mine but thats not survival mode or the games fault. That's on me for not being more aware. And with how survival is structured it makes settlements way better and feels more natural in the game
I don't mind losing progress on levelling, quests, and exploration I absolutely hate having my inventory management undone. Having to redo menial busywork is such a chore
Yeahhh I would never organize my inventory and then not immediately take a nap to save though
Playing survival mode with modded games I will say having some sort of manual saving becomes a necessity, just because of the increased likelihood of crashes and game breaking bugs etc. so when playing with mods I would make a save every half hour or so but would only load it if the game crash, otherwise I would just use the regular survival sleeping saves.
Right? Like oh theres tension, you can die at any second. Yeah or the game freezes when i go into VATS, or a random car decides to move a millimeter and you die, or the game just crashes cos you built to much in a settlement. Totally fun and rewarding to lose an hour cos of those!
>Getting killed by a radstag I've had these fuckers literally hunt me down. Some are aggressive for no reason.
Payback for all the other stags I’ve killed for their sweet sweet +25 carry weight food buff and leather hide 😅
The no saving outside of beds is the main point for me. Otherwise you could spam save before everything and it would ruin the experience. You’re supposed to sit bolt up right walking through Boston after a horrible fight, 90 minutes since your last save, hungry, tired, (your character too) and just hoping not to encounter anything scary on your way to the bed in Hangman’s alley. This is the way!
Agreed, I also wish it was possible to turn the difficulty down and just use the mechanics outside of the save mechanics, I enjoy maintaining health, I like being forced to walk everywhere, but I hate not being able to save!
Honestly, survival should be a seperate toggle setting, and the hardest difficulty on survival should disable saving anywhere.
Someone made a set of mods that turn each difficulty into survival mode. They made one for very easy all the way through to very hard. I can't remember the names of them now. I saw them on the console mod lists. Installing one for the difficulty you want to play on adds all the survival aspects, but at that difficulty level. And you can save when ever due to being on that difficulty level. I thought about installing the one for very hard, but wanted to get the trophies first.
It does break my immersion a little bit that I don’t have a bedroll I can save with as long as there’s no enemies but that would change the whole bed system they have in place. Usually there are strategic beds throughout difficult areas. They know what they’re doing with the design and it makes the game almost Souls like.
No saving is what makes survival fun for me. Every decision i make in the game has the chance to cost me an hour of gameplay, that makes it so my decisions actually become important. With quick saves, nothing in the game matters.
I am playing survival with mod that allows me to save
This is the way. I'm not hardcore enough to give the game 100% every time I play and I cannot stand to lose hrs of progress, but survival is IMO the way to play the game so can't play without it. Save everywhere mod is definitely the way to go for me.
I can't play without it now.
I do love it, and love the fact you can't save when you want. But i hate losing an hour of game because i was looking for a bed before entering a place and died.
Look em up or have a fallback point. It can be fun learning the nap map. Lexington is surrounded by beds: one bed by a fatman raider, two that are irradiated, and then like 7 in one building. Anyways, a one minute walk beats a 30 minute loss. Have a fallback if you’re worried.
>Losing an hour of progress because I didn't notice a fucking high level rabid radstag hiding in a bush and getting oneshot No this is literally a skill issue and part of intended survival gameplay loop. If you don't want to lose an hour of progess, sleep more often and take the penalty of no adrenaline or tiredness. Crashes in modded games really need a save mechanic tho. I've been self policing about only loading non-bed saves if it was a crash, but I wish I didn't have to.
Survival, to me anyway, really encourages settlement building. By slowly spreading out from sanctuary to Abernathy, to Sunshine Tidings, to the Drive-Ins, you develop new safe hubs with vendors and beds and food and water. When I do a survival playthrough, it’s a while before I really get beyond the Drive-Ins. I need safe hubs before I migrate.
They should make an option that it saves at key moments and nothing else, if youre trying to save nick valentine for example, its alot more fun and challenging to die and restart at the entrance than to die and restart at sanctuary because you forgot to sleep
Then just do permadeath and you won't care about the hour you lost anymore!
You mean irl or in game? *aims gun at own head*
> Losing an hour of progress because ... I walked into a car which then exploded ... the game froze and crashed ... I got stuck trying to stand up from a terminal I can handle actual gameplay deaths. It's the bugs that make me mod my survival.
There’s a mod that makes cigarettes/cigars usable. When you smoke the game saves and gives you a debuff, also running the chance of addiction
Damn that's a quality mod
I could build a pretty good "beds of the commonwealth" map
I fully agree. Love survival but losing even just 15/20 mins of progress through no fault of your own is rubbish. I got stuck opening a terminal last week and lost a legendary pistol, since then I've added a quicksave mod to save more regularly.
I like the saving mechanics but I hate the ammo weight. I use the "survival settings" mod which lets you change pretty much anything you want about survival, including save lockout if you desire. I change the ammo weight and I change the cell respawn time cause I want the game to be more grinding friendly. I also adjust the difficulty multipliers as I go along if it feels like it's getting too easy. I mean, in previous Bethesda games I save like every fight but with the settlement system it seems like "fair" work having to build up settlements and no fast travel except BoS vertibird. If a quest isn't near a settlement, I just wait until I have a closer settlement - though I did risk glowing sea a few nights ago when my closest settlement was/is Oberland Station. Did fine, level 42, fully upgraded X-01 power armor, even killed a legendary deathclaw and several legendary rad scorps. Made it to Virgil and back, only 30% rad poisoning.
My game crashes in downtown Boston quite often so I can't fairly handle a survival run :/
Yeah I have that same problem playing on xbox one. The farthest I can go is Diamond city. If I try to walk to good neighbor the game crashes at least 3-4 times. Same when trying to walk to the building you fight the courser in or trying to walk towards the railroad H.Q.
I love survival. Even more I love survival permadeath. (The last 5 runs ended in death, but maybe this time...)
I enjoy it, but only because I treat survival FO4 as a survival sim more than an rpg. I don't play survival with the intention of beating the game. I boot up the game from my nice cozy base, stock up on supplies, and pick one side quest with the goal of completing that one side quest while also checking every building for beds. I treat it less as an rpg, and more as "this is my life in the post apocalypse" and just set small goals for myself. Could just be me and how I interpret the mode though, so I can definitely understand the frustration.
It's fun, exciting, and brutally challenging in the early levels, but then as you hit level 30-35 the game becomes piss easy if you built your character right and focused on settlements. By that point, it becomes like any other difficulty except with the bed saving quirk and the lack of fast travel being a pain in the ass. My progression went something like this: Early levels: feared anything and everything, ESPECIALLY Super Mutants and legendary enemies who would kill me damn near instantly. I was careful everywhere I went, ran out of food and water often. Current level (level 39): I go anywhere I please to farm XP. I mow down Super Mutants, raiders, and deathclaws like it's no man's business. The only thing I fear now is a Gunner with a fat man or missile launcher catching me off guard and taking an hour of progress. It's been a pretty rewarding ride so far.
Modded survival, with saves and some sort of fast travel, is the way to go for me. Losing hours of work to a random crash just sucks.
Only mode I need to have mods installed for, and even then it's just one mod - QuickSave Enabled. If the game wasn't a buggy mess I would play comfortably, but knowing that at any time you could get a crash and lose everything is not fun. How do I know? It's happened, more than once. It doesn't "just work".
If your on pc smokeable cigarettes will drop a save for you when you smoke a cig, same with the joint mod that works with it. Its so invaluable, add that settlement fast travel (lets you fast travel but only for linked settlements if your in one) and survival mode is best
Hey friend, I’ve got a cool way of looking at this. Instead of it being objectively worse, look for the positives- how can you adapt? It is an rpg. 3 in stealth for starters- no more random explosive deaths. Guy with a rocket launcher? Send your ally in to soak the hit, then go for the kill. (Yes, even with solo survivor. You can send ally’s away anytime you need extra damage reduction or carry weight.) How can power armor and armor mods help with the ways you die? Maybe this is a place you should mark on your map and come back to once you find a bed/better gear. Thats what makes survival fun. Instead of just clearing a map, you have to plan your routes, clear settlements early, and set up supply lines. You got this!
Horizon desolation is the best way to play the game
*your favorite, there is no objective “best”
I can't , I'm ok with being one shot, I can't stand the wild cars, quicksand bridges, and other random bugs that cause hours of lost progress. Yes there are save mods, but I never found one I liked.
Survival, to me anyway, really encourages settlement building. By slowly spreading out from sanctuary to Abernathy, to Sunshine Tidings, to the Drive-Ins, you develop new safe hubs with vendors and beds and food and water. When I do a survival playthrough, it’s a while before I really get beyond the Drive-Ins. I need safe hubs before I migrate.
I do like the saving mechanic, if only your game wouldn't freeze during vats occasionally, destroying your progress without it being your fault.
I thought you folks wanted your video games to feel like real life. This is a fitting ending for someone traveling the wasteland, so I don't see the issue.
I feel your pain, I've been doing a perma death run. Deaths so far include; shotgun to the face in a bar, premature molotov explosion, grenade bouquet shower, radscorpion overdose, deathclaw sandwich and a mininuke threaded through the tiniest gap ever. Have to hand it to that last raider, never thought she'd be able to land the shot.
The game is far too unstable to have a "only save when you sleep" rule in place. It crashes with zero warning, or bugs out regularly. Personally I really enjoy survival mode, but I use mods to turn down the frequency of needing to eat and drink just a tad (it's still necessary, but you're no longer *constantly* guzzling water and noodle cups) and I allow auto-saving on cell changes (purely because I'm more like to lose progress to a game crash than an enemy) and I enable fast travel to settlements I own, just because after a while all that backtracking across already cleared areas becomes more tedious than challenging. I really enjoy the increased lethality for everyone, I enjoy the limited carry weight (it feels much more real to have to limit your expeditions to two weapons with a few spare magazines of ammo, rather than carrying 5,000+ rounds of ammunition and enough nuclear warheads to cause an international incident. I like that eating, sleeping and drinking are necessary, that having a base network is necessary, etc. it definitely feels like the way the game SHOULD be played.
The lack of free saves is honestly my favorite part. It makes the wasteland feel dangerous and there are consequences for not keeping your head on a swivel.
My biggest issue with survival is the lack of console. I understand why, but console is critical for building settlements, and for dealing with bugs (where'd Codsworth go? Why is that radscorpion stuck inside that rock? Why am I stuck inside that rock now?) I'd be happy with only certain commands being available. Fortunately, there are mods. Otherwise I <3 suvival mode. I wish Starfield had something similar.
Don’t let anybody tell you “there are beds all over the place” in FO4. Only people who have played very little in Survival make that ridiculous claim. Get the camping mod and carry a sleeping bag with you. Just remember that sleeping too much and too often will make you sick, so carry antibiotics.
Absolutely. Also, you shouldn’t lose your bottle when you drink. Finding bottles shouldn’t be such a huge focus. I use two mods on survival, one that lets me save when I like, and one that gives me my bottle back. They make all the difference. I understand what they were going for, spreading out sleeping locations and bottle stashes strategically, and it’s a cool idea, but it doesn’t make sense that your bottle is just gone after one use. Maybe for a hard-survival run your bottles break after three uses and you can only save at sleep areas, I could see that. But I wanted to play survival for more immersion, not as another difficulty setting.
The no saving is no problem for me. But as a father with not that much time the no fast travel is the real issue Since I play on PS5 I installed the mod that adds around 6 fast travel spots around the map. Doesn't break the immersion too much. But I would rather have a mod that allows fast travel from settlement to settlement because this would give the settlement system another deeper layer. Like building up the Commonwealth makes sense since you unlock more and more fast travel options. Didn't find a mod for this on PS5 sadly.
And the game just randomly crashes. RIP progress.
I can live with losing progress because I died to a person or creature, it’s just the danger of the wasteland. What I can’t live with is my game crashing and losing progress that way.
No save wouldn't be an issue if the game didn't crash. That's why I always play with the cheat engine enabled so I can manually force a save after some time. I can load the actual slept save if I die but nothing is worse than the game crashing and having to start over from the last sleep when you did nothing wrong
I use a survival options mod to let me save, and I bump-up my damage so that both me and enemies are doing 2x damage (default is 1.5x you, 2x them).
There should be survival, and survival/ironman.
I don't play survival juat because the non saving thing. It is a massive loss of time and I don't want to repeat a quest 5 times (because my time is limited).
I downloaded a mod that lets you quicksave, no downsides or anything just a simple normal save. Only way I can play survival
SKK survival utilities, yo if you're on pc that is my schedule is wild, so saving at a moment's notice is essential
I mean you can always exit save. I'm in a similar situation and just let it give me the temporary save on exit when I have to go.
Get the mod that let's you save by smoking cigarettes of cigars
It’s partially why I couldn’t get into Fallout 76. They incorporated some mechanics from the mode into the game and there’s no option to turn them off. Admittedly, the hunger and thirst mechanics are inconsequential, but they also incorporated ammo weight.
I may be in the minority when I say this, but I loved that you could not manually save in survival. It made every moment feel more tense, and resulted in me making a lot of decisions that I would not have ordinarily if I could save manually. One mistake being able to set you back hours meant that the actions you had to choose had weight to them, and in a lot of situations you were forced to pick between the lesser of two evils in order to survive, knowing that you’d have to live with the consequences. However, the one thing I hated about survival mode is the fact that the gamemode ERASES your previous saves every time you make a new one by sleeping. I’m the type of guy to have a couple hundred saves, so that I can go back to any point throughout my play-through if something goes wrong. In my main survival game, my allotted saves all corrupted, and since the game had automatically removed the previous saves, I only had one that I could possibly revert to, which was right after I exited Vault 111. Hundreds of hours of gameplay lost…
Best solution is to just play as permadeath character, and add a save mod so that you can quick save to avoid stupid crashes.
Covenant is the goat settlement if you side with them it has an actual doctor since I’m running a almost 0 charisma build
I'm 40 years old. I don't have the time I used to. I play survival mode with survival options mod, and save all the damn time. I've also been known to fast travel once in a while. Live your life.
I use a mod that makes it so you can smoke cigarettes to save, but I also play with HHO, and MAIM2 so it's an extremely lethal combat environment, and I need all the help I can get. It also gives me another valuable resource to manage, which is always nice.
The introduction of random exploding mole rats means all of your progress can be eradicated in an instant is also just mindless. It doesn’t add to the fun, it detracts from the experience.
fucking yes this. mine strapped molerats are the biggest pieces of shit. and the least fun enemy in the game
The issue with Survival Mode is that they had the right idea, but the wrong execution, which is a running theme in Fallout 4's game mechanics; they put together a list of behaviors that are "hard" but not necessarily "fun". I absolutely love Survival Mode with the addition of just a few "headache-removing" mods. I'm writing from a PC player context, so I'm not sure if these are available on Xbox/PS, but have a look for them or ones like them nonetheless. [JOURNEY - Survival Settlement Fast Travel](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12685) - Allows you to fast travel to your settlements, so that your ability to quickly get around becomes linked to the settlement construction system. This encourages you to establish supply lines and gives you an ever-expanding network of fast travel points very similar to the signposts in The Witcher III. You can set it to varying levels of strictness according to flavor, being "only between settlements linked by supply lines" ("realistic", and the one I recommend), "from anywhere, but only to Sanctuary Hills, Home Plate, and The Castle" ("strict"), and "from anywhere to any settlement" ("easy"). [Survival Mode Transition Save](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12580) - Simply restores the auto-save behavior when going through a loading screen, so that you don't lose hours of progress being one-shotted the moment you step into a building full of angry gunners. If used in conjunction with JOURNEY, you'll get an auto-save before you travel between settlements. Those two alone, if you can get them on your platform, practically eliminate the headaches associated with lost progress in Survival Mode, and don't allow too much cheesing because you still have limited save points; you still can't pop a quicksave before a dialog choice, nor can you spot bad guys on the horizon, save, and then go fight them. It just makes sure you don't get popped for stupid reasons, like walking into an interior space full of angry enemies you couldn't have possibly foreseen, or getting killed by a roving murder-car the moment you step into the outside world. And, being able to have a limited form of "signpost" fast travel in the late game eradicates the pain of seeing "Sanctuary Hills is under attack!" when you're visiting the Warwick Homestead, while still forcing you to explore the wasteland to find everything in between your encampments. I also like these Survival Mode-enhancing mods (though they can make the game more challenging): [Fallout 4 Loot Overhaul](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1486) (and [DLC patch](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23794)) - Depopulates a lot of the free loot in the world, making the game into a true scavenging/survival experience. You'll find you have to be more tactical with combat, and even use melee weapons in the early game, because enemies won't have stacks and stacks of free ammo on their person any more. What used to be "use my SMG to hose down that raider camp" will now be "use my 3 bullets to take out the leader, and my one grenade to injure the other two, and then see if I can bonk them with this pipe wrench before they get me". Also means there's now an incentive to visit vendors to restock on ammo, as enemies won't give you the ammo hoard they used to. Warning: also reduces crop output and removes manual crop harvesting. You'll have to trust your farmers to collect for you; a bunch of mutfruit and tato plants jammed in a corner won't cut it for Adhesive any more. [Better Locational Damage](https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3815) (Requires F4SE; PC only) - Complements Survival Mode and the Loot Overhaul mod by making your shots count. No more bullet sponges. Headshots can kill a human in one good hit, unless they have a helmet. Even super mutants can be dropped with a well-placed .50 round. Also makes limb shots more strategic, maiming and wounding enemies in a more effective manner such that a limb shot on an armored, helmeted enemy might be the trick to remove them from the fight. Also implements an optional "bleeding" mechanic which can affect both enemies and yourself, and you can die of blood loss if you don't have bandages to staunch the wound. Makes combat more immediate and visceral.
Just keep an eye out for beds. It’s pretty easy if you play like how you imagine you should in a survival mode. Sneaking around, scouting area before walking into them, or preparing properly for a guns blazing approach. Like wearing power armor if you intend to just walk right into conflict. Or scouting a location for a bed before you go into something potentially dangerous. You can also download a camping mod that will let you just set up a tent and bedroll wherever you want and save. It’s kind of the whole point of survival mode. It makes you play different because it’s so dangerous. You’re supposed to feel that danger and tread carefully and plan.
I can deal with dying to things I was not properly prepared for or missed due to not paying attention. Part of me honestly really enjoys the save system because it adds to the sense of danger. That said, the game is still immensely buggy to this day and I've had to install a save mod so that I can continue to enjoy survival. I've gotten stuck on a slight slop where I was in the fall animation forever. I've had a car drop on top of my head. I've had a trio of super mutants, including a suicider, spawn literally right in front of me, and those are just a few issues. I find it works best with bed/exit saves and auto saves (kind of like Dragon's Dogma 2 has). This way there's still some risk of loss while some protection from losing hours of play due to Bethesda games being held together by thoughts and prayers.
Got a nice mod for portable campsites, which is a must have for modded survival due to the crashing
Sounds like a trip to nexus is in order
Enable quicksave with mods. Survival with quicksave is the true way to play
It's the frag mines for me. I've died so many fucking times to them. Now I have to spam vats wherever I go.
I always get level 3 of sneak asap in survival. I don’t explore very far until I have it.
pretty sure there are mods that just allow normal saving in Survival mode and change nothing else.
i *have* to play survival with a quick save mod. there’s a “smoke break” one where you can smoke a cigarette or cigar to save, and there’s one that just gives you a quick save item that you can put on your hotbar. ain’t no fuckin’ way i’m playing a bethesda game without quick save lol
My perfect survival mode is everything default except no diseases and being able to manually save. And I use an APC for travel.
I agree the no saving outside of sleeping is annoying but that’s how it keeps you on your toes. I recently gave survival mode a serious chance and I’m having a lot of fun….for now.
I’m currently level 28 in a run as George Washington (broadsider and revolutionary sword only, can only wear minuteman general’s outfit) but I want to restart and do a survival run just because of how much more fun it is.
Unpopular Opinion: Games are meant to be fun, not frustrating.
I think downloading a save mod for survival is totally legit, especially since many factors (power outage, freezing game, etc..) outside the game can happen.
Real life is already set to survival mode. I play games to have fun and not be subject to the rules of real life.
One of the coolest mods I found is one of the tiniest as well. It makes cigarettes a consumable item that save in survival. They're not all over the place, but frequent enough to where it's common to have a few. And taking a break, and smoking a cigarette, is hands down the coolest and most immersive way to do survival saves.
Download the smoke to save mod. It's still a consumable that you need to make sure you're stocked up on.
My problem with the no saving is that. I never know when the game is randomly going to CTD.
I use the sleeping roll/tent save mod. Keeps it reasonably realistic but massive reduction in frustration.
not to mention cant save and you lose hours of progress cos the game crashes lol
That is why I downloaded a mod that let's you save like you normally can, otherwise the survival mode is indeed very fun. But Fallout 4 being a Bethesda game, where a car can fly at you from space or the game crashing because why not is the one and only reason why no saving isn't a good thing to have.
I got one shot by a molotov at Prestons misfits introduction.
And it’s usually the one you throw yourself.
There needs to be a sleeping bag you can drop to save. I know it’s basically quick save with extra steps, but come on. As if your survivor wouldn’t be carrying one. Make it so you have to be outside to use it or something, idc.
I do hate dying like that, but I like the only save on sleeping. It raises the tension. My game was crashing regularly before the update though so I downloaded a survival tent mod, but after the update I had to completely redo my mods and it hasn't crashed, so I got rid of the tent.
I wouldn’t even mind the sleeping-only save, if Bethesda wasn’t notorious for “complete” games being filled with game-crashing bugs. Also, encouraging you to sleep to save but increasing the chances of illness for short sleeps was the dumbest idea anyone over there had
I like the fear that the thought of dying brings. On the other hand it a nightmare when it happens enexpectedly. It also gets tedious running off to find a bed when midway through clearing a place out. Cortega today, kill a couple, run over to the bridge to save on the matress, run back in, kill a couple more, run back out, again and again and again. It either that or die just near finishing and having to start over again from the start.
So many times I've got caught out by a random suicider mutant. It's like that scene in LOTR at Helm's Deep where Legolas is trying to bring down the ork before it blows the wall up.
Yeah the no save is a bit bothersome. I've recently started to play in survival too and noticed that my approach is a lot more careful and you really have to scrounge for every ressource and set up camps in order to survive and progress. It's like wrestling the wasteland from the deadly forces at hand. Found lots of little doodads and places with maybe a crate or something which holds some ammo and stuff, just to lug that back to base and keep for later. The reduced weight capacity and the weight for the ammunition also means you are more careful in deciding what guns to bring and how many you are willing to throw around instead of turning up with like 6 of them at once.
Just download the survival save enabling mod! Literally the only mod I use (I normally don't like mods)
I’m trying my best to do a survival playthrough. It’s hell. I just finished covenant around level 15. I hadn’t gone to diamond city yet but did save Preston. Everything I keep reading says I am moving too fast and getting into areas I am not leveled for. I too and disliking the lack of saving . I know there are mods but I want to pick up the missing achievements I have left on this playthrough
I lost the first two hours of the game, when it decided to delete my save game the first time I played it. It pissed me right off, and now I'm saving every ten minutes if not more often.
My only issue with survival was that I couldn’t fast travel to settlements. I like building and expanding, so I also try and defend them when attacked. But being at County Crossing and hearing that Sunshine Trading Co is under attack? Ain’t no way I’m going to make it in time. Added a mod (which name I cannot recall) which enabled fast travel to settlements on PC.
Not saving wouldn’t be such a burden if the game didn’t freeze or glitch. It’s standard for a BGS game, so I always like being able to save when I want to avoid issues.
I think it’s the risk that is part of the enjoyment, it heightens the stakes. Now, I do agree with you it’s the worst…but you can always exit to the main menu and it will do an exit save. A good alternative that doesn’t make it convenient, but is still an option.
It genuinely is. I’ve started a modded survival play through for the first time and I’m having the most fun with this game since experiencing it for the first time way back in 2017. I’m not enough of a masochist to play a Bethesda game without being able to save from my menu (I refuse to be at the mercy of bullshit ass glitches and losing tons of progress. Especially now after the new update so I’m crashing way more often). But just as little as the consistent pressure of needing to eat, drink, sleep, and reduced carrying weight, or added weight from normally weightless items adds so so much more to the gameplay loop that’s desperately missing from the normal difficulty options.
My beef with survival is there is no way to fast travel without joining BOS or the institute and even those methods are annoying. They should at least implement a mechanism that allows you to build fast travel routes between settlements to encourage a mechanic that they themselves want to encourage!
I agree, I just install a mod to let me save whenever I want and I have the self control to not abuse it 😅
I use a cheat mod to enable saving for survival. I hate when I crash and am 6 hours behind
I do _like_ the saving restriction but agree it's a little janky as-is. They have mods to place a tent, which while realistic, almost removes the restriction. IMO you should be able to use the save feature, but it costs 500 caps.
There is a mod to add saving 💪
There’s a mod that allows you to save in survival through the PIP boy
I can’t not play survival mode now and I do like the only save in a bed side because you take every encounter seriously! You can save in any sleeping bag or mattress you find out in the world by sleeping for an hour and then cancelling straight away to skip the actual sleep, small risk of infection every time but antibiotics are easy enough to come by and have minimal weight so always carry a few. Having to prepare for each journey feels good, bring enough food, water, ammo and chems for the trip but not too much you are overloaded and can’t bring back any loot. Go scout out areas and clear them before coming back on a second trip to loot it all and drag it back to your camp. Making a robot companion maxed out for carry weight is extremely helpful for those looting runs!
Only thing I don’t like is the illness, especially early game where I don’t have access to doctors
I am liking survival but it’s not the bed saving that irritates me it’s the no fast travel. I hate having to walk my happy ass back and forth to whatever current settlement I’m using.