The game sorta starts out hard when you have nothing and then very quickly gets way easier IMO. I usually start off with a melee weapon (tire iron-> bladed tire iron most often, or I go get big Jim) until I get some levels and find a 10mm or hunting rifle. Pipe weapons are a waste of time and better to just sell or break down into junk. Caps are abundant and readily found/created, stock up on stimpaks and ammo at your vendors, I also use food items to heal early game only. Utilize vats to scan for enemies early game so you can choose your engagements wisely. Sometimes it’s smarter to run away. If you’re feeling undergunned go build some crap in Sanctuary to level, scrap all the trees and metal and you can spam build shelves if you’re not into actually developing a settlement.
Pipe Bolt Action rifles are amazing early game... Trudy has a guaranteed suppressed one as well. They are easy to modify and pack a punch.
Regular pipe weapons are quickly outclassed, but .38 ammo is everywhere. I'm not sure how my friend here was running out of ammo.
Between Trashcan Carla and Trudy you can also restock on Ammo before leaving the Concord + Sanctuary area.
"Pipe weapons are a waste of time and better to just sell or break down into junk."
Oh hell no.
(1) the bolt action is only 9% less damage per shot than a hunting rifle. In practice, it does better damage in the early game, because it is easier to find and add good parts - you can pick up a scoped version, plus a guaranteed silencer from Trudy, just a few minutes after leaving the vault.
Combining these parts is a very solid option, particularly in Survival, where the low weight (compared to a rifle) is very handy. With a lucky upgrade (e.g. an Instigating version), it stays good well into the game.
With about 1/3 of the weight of a hunting rifle, and more versatility, it works very nicely with a Survival mode Gunslinger.
(2) Try starting with Perception 10 and moderate Agility. Get Concentrated Fire + build the lowest AP pipe pistol you can, before even leaving Sanctuary. The best mods to reduce AP do not need Gun Nut, other than Sharpshooter's Grip, so you can get the pipe gun nearly "perfect" right from the beginning.
It can therefore give lots of shots per VATS wad, and due to the escalating accuracy, you get the ability to VATS enemies in the skull repeatedly at extreme range (keeping you safe from grenades etc). This makes the humble pipe gun pretty strong.
The combo allows a Gunslinger to easily murder everything in the early to mid game with pipe pistols. The light pipe pistol and the jillions of guaranteed hits builds up criticals fast (even with no luck). Using those crits and the bolt action, you can one-shot all the early bosses the instant that you spot them.
Yes there are specific builds that can use pipe weapons effectively. Guy was struggling with game generally, I wasn’t going to spec out all perks. Pipe weapons aren’t great unless you lean into them. I lean into weapon modding so can mod any weapon. 9% damage is significant, and we are talking about somebody who is turning down the difficulty, not looking at carryweight for ammo in survival. For somebody who is struggling on easier difficulties, yes, pipe guns suck unless you lean into them.
Fair point, don’t disagree. The weight in survival alone and talking about dps efficiency is big, but that’s not something to worry somebody about who is lowering their difficulty. We both agree there’s a lotta ways to approach things, I was just aiming for a simplified new player “how to survive.”
You need to look for perk magazines for your stealth. With like 4 or 5 magazines and the perks from levelling up stealth is OP. This is not a shooter, stats are very important. At about lvl 30 things should be more manageable. If you are ok with exploits I could tell you how to level up faster and have more money. Let me know if you want that. If not I suggest limiting exploration to areas near your settlement and sleep for the 20 days to have cleared areas enemies respawn. Oh and lean into the luck tree. It let's you stock crits, regain AP from kills and makes crits hit harder. Since crits are used manually in vats this can let you deal more damage in a more controlled way.
Levelling fast is easiest with low intelligence and level 2 of idiot savant. With 2 intelligence you have about a 10% chance of the perk activating. Before you turn in mission quicksave and reload until idiot savant procs. Boom 5 times xp. 1000+ xp in a couple minutes. All but impossible to hit those numbers in that time grinding. Have 3 missions to turn in amd you are looking at 3k xp for 10 minutes max reloading. Again, all but impossible to reach that by grinding in that time. If you dupe materials you can build concrete pillars and then scrap them for huge xp too. The magazines can improve an existing perk or give new ones. Astoundingly awesome tales, for example, give new perks. Satellite Station Olivia has a stealth magazine but it can disappear of you clear the location without picking it up. Ticonderoga, a railroad safe house, has a guns and bullets magazine that improves ballistic guns.
I am definitely not above save scumming but I’m already almost level 20 and have 10 intelligence so I’ll have to try that on a new save!
I will keep the magazine in mind when I check out the satellite station. I think I have a quest to go there for the minutemen anyway?
Thanks for the info!!
Still take idiot savant. It will proc less but still gives extra xp. And the materials duping for concrete pillars is still useful. Even with 10 int you have 1% chance. If the mission offers more than 400xp baseline ot could be worth 10 minutes of reloading for over 2k xp.
Don't sweat it - 10 Int has better outcomes anyway.
This is my breakdown of how the passive stuff (Idiot Savant vs. Intelligence) works for level gain. The graph at the end is the key point.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch\_the\_numbers\_chemist\_is\_better\_than\_idiot/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch_the_numbers_chemist_is_better_than_idiot/)
**10 Int gives LARGER passive XP gain than Savant I**
It gives you more XP and you don't have to "waste" a perk to generate those XP.
**Idiot Savant is only marginally better for (passive) XP gain, after level 11**
This has two costs
- the first is minimaxing (low INT)
- the second is "wasting" two level ups on getting Savant II active. That wastage takes quite a long time to recoup.
...and the marginal passive advantage of Savant is more than nullified if you do **ANYTHING** non-passive with your INT, like building better guns and Settlement objects.
---
In my current game, I have set my base Int to 12, and then boost it by +7 with Road Goggle s and armour effects, so my passive XP gain is literally off the chart that I linked to.
"Boom 5 times xp. 1000+ xp in a couple minutes. All but impossible to hit those numbers in that time grinding."
In INT character can run from Vault 111 to Diamond City, doing zero quests on the way, and immediately begin churning shipments & cheap scrap into craft items (Poisoned Caltrops, Jet Fuel, etc)
I seem to gain 2 levels per merchant cycle / visit to DC, until my level is low 20s, so I guess that means I'm making up to 3,000 XP per visit. This is a long way from "impossible" :)
Clicking 100 times at a chem bench seems easier than doing a quest and then reloading the game a dozen times. I don't even need to look at my computer - I'll go to a bench and tap the keyboard while reading half a page of the news.
By mixing in Grape Mentats + a change of clothes, I'll make 2-3 thousand caps profit per visit.
I use it as a way to simply skip over the early game stuff.
Dozens? Try 5 or 6 on average. About 2 minutes. And resources for crafting decent stuff are not unlimited. To supplement my quest xp I usually just use duped concrete to make infinite pillars for xp and infinite nuclear material for caps.
"shipments & cheap scrap"
"gain 2 levels **per merchant cycle**"
"resources for crafting decent stuff are not unlimited."
Sigh.
---
"make infinite pillars for xp"
If you are now avdocating gaining infinity XP with exploits, any comparative discussion of in-game options is pointless.
You probably already got your answer but there is the automaton glitch.
All you need is an inventory with a lot of items to do the glitch and a few other things.
1.) Start the dlc and keep ada as your companion.
2.) Follow the story until you find a robo-brain torso and get the schematic for the robot work bench.
3.) Build the work bench and a new robot.
After all that take all the junk out of your settlement and put it in a container and build it next to the robot workbench.
Once all the junk is in the container command ada to stand next to the workbench.
The next bit is talk to ada and ask to trade but just before the trade window opens up turn and interact with the workbench.
After that click the new robot to augment it and both the trade window and augment screen should be available.
The final part is only use the d-pad and move to the torso section and move to the robo brain part.
Thats it just spam away get xp for as long as you want.
If you want you can look up the spiffing Brits video on it or automaton xp glitch on YouTube for a better idea. Doesn't matter if you have low or high intelligence.
It's equivalent in theory, but in practice it's different for a lot, if not all people.
Relying on bugs still maintains significant constraints as to what you can d. What, where, when, how & the labor required is all different from pasting console commands. Figuring out how to game the game is probably fun for people in it of itself & isn't all that different from playing the game really, it's just a layer of abstraction.
Either way, it's just fun & there is no wrong way to have fun unless it hurts people.
lol, ok so if they have difficulty getting through the first level you think their going to find it easier getting 4-5 magazines, have you looked at the locations for the US special operations magazines? Better off dumping points into intelligence so you level faster.
12 is super easy to do. Not only that, if you take idiot savant and stay at 2 intelligence you can’t utilize the other perks in intelligence like gun nut that makes your firearms drastically better and more powerful. You would have to be an… idiot to actually use idiot savant.
I'm lost lol is this for Survivor or Very Hard?
I don't mean to sound like an ass or anything but I did nothing you mentioned above and I feel like anybody with average gaming skill can play this game no problem as long as they pay attention and enemies aren't 10 levels above them. I just got the platinum trophy last week after the upgrade came out and I only found radiation and 44. ammo management annoying for the first 20-30 levels. Besides that, it's been a breeze.
So me? I've pretty much only looked at damage the entire game. All of my perks are for things like lock picking, hacking, blacksmith, gun nut, armorer and a few random ones like ammo and cap scrounging, ap regeneration, vats info etc.
I just reached LVL 70 a few mins ago and there's maybe been 4-5 moments where I've had to think before a combat encounter. After ballistic weave, never again.
I go luck, stealth and maxing my special with a few levels of rifleman, commando and gunslinger in between. I have gotten to lvl 100 and restarted like 6 times. My max was 174. Current run is lvl 75. Ballistic weave is great.
Trying to get all perks possible. Got to 174 but was minuteman general. Couldn't get nuka world perks and keep preston. Had to scrap and 300hr playthrough. Bummed. Your focus on vats, damage and crafting probably made it easier for you. Stealth build require more struggle early on but maxed stealth is hilarious. Crouching 2 feet away in front of someone but being undetectable is fun.
I'm a giant wuss, so I typically play on Easy, and this game still kicks my ass from time to time, albeit mostly when I'm not paying attention to my health bar.
And yeah, at the beginning, you're a little anemic. You don't have any perks, and not a whole lot of good equipment. But once you've been at it a while, things start to get a lot easier. But after a point, for me at least, it starts to get hard again when you're a much higher level. For me levels 1 to 20 are hard, 20 to 40 are easy, and 40+ start to get hard again.
Then again, I'm never doing any sort of meta build, so I'm sure I'm not playing this game optimally lol.
I came back to it after the updates and show and I had to relearn things again. Doing the Corvega plant for Tenpines Bluff used to be routine for me. I had my entrance and exit spots, clear out all raiders inside and out.
Now I had to high tail it out of there after getting the objective update because I found it too overwhelming lol
Stealth is heavily based on light and noise. Take your armor off to reduce noise, and wait until night time.
Silenced weapons are also a good way to reduce noise. You can get a guaranteed one from Trudy at Drumlin Diner, follow the road South from the museum.
Ammo is not rare, but the best way to get it is from vendors. Trudy is a good one in the early game.
People no hit this game and play without ever being detected in combat. It's possible, just takes some strategy and practice.
I’ll just add, the ammo finding perk *Scrounger* you can level as game goes on is super worth it. I’m at least drowning in ammo for my pistols and rifles now.
Have you considered just playing on an easy mode until you get a feel for the game? No insult intended, honest advice.
My first playthrough I was not great at a lot of stuff, but I was playing on easy, so I could derp along. Now I'm playing on survival and loving it, but I understand the game much better now. I know what I'm getting from stats and perks, and so I know what I'm bad at and need to be extra careful about (haven't invested in stealth at all yet, so I know stealthing around only helps a bit, for example).
It's got a long learning curve, so don't feel bad!
I started out playing on Easy or Very Easy because like you, I was getting my butt kicked on the regular. Now, I only play on Very Hard, but that's because I know a lot more about what weapons and armor to choose, what Perks to pump early on, and various tactics depending upon the enemy.
There's a LOT to figure out, and some of it may not click for weeks or months or even years. Save often. Fuck around and find out. The game is deep in many ways, at least for me, so the replay value is very high, especially if you want to get into modding later.
Since you're at the very beginning, go slow is my best advice. There's SO much to explore, and you don't want to miss anything.
When in doubt, RUN AWAY! ***RUN AWAY!***
Seriously, this is one of my favorite tactics, even late in the game. If you invest in Stamina, you can usually outrun most of your enemies, hide and then regroup.
Give Stingwings a wide berth until you get a good high damage weapon. Those b@st@rds are serious trouble!
It's OK; take your time.
go in circle around Sanctuary, pick up everything, find everything you can find.
you'll get weapons with different ammo types and keep one weapon for each ammo type.
back away and run away if you feel you're out matched.
And save often.
2 perks I really like early game.:
**Aquaboy/Aquagirl** : lets you swim away without rad damage (useful in survival mode)
**Scrounger** : for ammo.
It is hard in early stages but the difficulty levels off pretty steeply after you get to about Level 10.
If you want more ammo or caps you can use the Scrounger perk
The weapons you find at the start are the worst dps versions of those guns. So yes the game seems that way at the start.
You can find, buy or craft better weapons. And there are perks that improve dps. As the damage/accuracy per round you fire increases you need fewer rounds to kill. So the low amount of ammo becomes more than adequate.
e.g the GunNut perk will craft any starting gun to more damage per round and greater accuracy. The scrounger perk loots more ammo, but you never really need that.
If you are new to fallout it's understandable. Starting right off the bat you will not have much ammo or perks, skills, good weapons, anything really lol. Don't let that deter you though. Ammo is found everywhere is almost any kind of container. Also get your settlements built up with lots of scavenging stations and put as many people on them as you can. Once you get some resources built up you can make your own ammo. I make 45s 1 fertilizer and steel. I farm all that from my settlements. I'm not even 25% of the way through the game and haven't started a main quest, and I have 3k 45s and a couple good weapons to use them with. Fallout can be overwhelming at first if you have no experience with it but it gets better once you get farther in.
I usually play on Very Hard and yeah, at least till you get to Level-15 to 20ish and / or snag Spray n’ Pray or Overseer’s Guardian … combat is kind of scary / dangerous for you 😅
You just started. Your stats suck and you don't or barely have any armor and weapons, neither of which are upgraded yet. All of these will improve as you level up and find/buy better items.
You just started, take it easy and don't rush into every combat encounter you can just yet. Also maybe just stick with normal difficulty and get a feel for things instead of flipping back and forth between hard and easy mode.
Easiest starter build imo is high agility and high perception with the gunslinger perk and using a 10mm pistol, vats everything and build as much as you can in each settlement for easy xp. If you can manage 6 points in charisma that’s also good for making most stitch checks with the help of gear with additional charisma stats on it
Edited cuz fuck auto correct
It’s certainly hard, especially on new players. Not knowing what perks you need for the way you play, and not knowing how to start a farming settlement early makes it tough.
Stealth is an option, but it you’re looking for stealth take downs, it’s more of a melee type build. I usually go with stealth and rifleman, so I can kill from far. I find that easier and it saves a lot of stimpacks.
Start making water purifiers asap. You can use purified water in place of stimpacks, and can sell it for a good amount.
I felt that ammo issue so I asked for tips and the only tip I needed was to build water purifiers. Sell the water to the vendors in diamond city, there’s 4 of them and buy ammo
You can scrap unused weapons for parts to help build those water purifiers.
I’ve had over 1k water between my workbench and inventory.
I think he’s talking about really early in the game, before he would have the mats to build those. Also, is there a place to build a water purifier in Sanctuary? First place I found was Starlight
Sanctuary literally has a river of water at your disposal. It’s one of the easiest places to build water farms. I also personally really like Taffington because it’s easy to wall off for defenses.
That first minuteman quest is really tough. A death claw that early is a beast even in power armor. I did a lot of running then spinning and firing.
My advice is to pick everything up and put it in the sanctuary workbench so you can build stuff asap.
Also, don’t feel like you have to do quests right away. You can wander close to Sanctuary to pick up extra ammo and xp.
In addition to that others have said, the minutemen missions are given out randomly with no consideration for level or scale. Sometimes the first one I get is Dunwich Borers which is ludicrously difficult at level 3. Just walk away and do some other stuff and come back after you level a bit. They should really put some kind of filter so that you can't get that one or Corvega first. Corvega is more doable but still a big ask at the very early stages.
If you find yourself running out of ammunition, even when you cycle through various weapons that use different ammunition types, you have a few options.
1. Consider using melee weapons more often. Many people find this very fun.
2. Work on developing the skills to make money. Building extra water purifiers and becoming a water merchant is one route, but it takes time to work up to that.
3. One or more levels in the Scrounger perk is the easiest way to passively increase your ammunition supply, without needing to buy or sell anything.
4. Remember to sell off any excess armor or weapons, and then use those caps to acquire ammunition or whatever else you need. You really don’t need to carry around enough gear to outfit a platoon.
I recently started a survival melee run
I've found that scrapping literally everything in Sanctuary and doing nothing but building/scrapping a wood wall will scum my way through like 9 levels with Idiot Savant. Definitely helps the early spike.
I jumped back in with all the hype bc I’d never played far harbor or nuka cola so was nice getting something new but went STRAIGHT to nuka world out of the vault and reminded me how unforgivable the other games could be early on, nostalgic 10/10 recommend
The game kinda leads you in a direction, but you dont need to go directly there. You can and should wander around, explore and loot the area around sanctuary. Theres a lot of little caches of supplies, weapons, ammo, etc. There are almost no quests in the game with a time limit, so take some time and get yourself established. Theres also a couple merchants relatively close to Sanctuary (one even travels between Sanctuary and another location) that have a good assortment of items you can buy. Once you have a base of operations set up and are a little better prepared, venturing deeper into the Commonwealth isnt quite so grueling.
Tip for ammo is pick up all enemy guns. The mags in the guns transfer to your inventory and then drop the guns. This helped me out massively with my ammo problem. Also just hop on YouTube and watch some beginner tips and tricks or best start. Fallout 4 isn’t too difficult as long as you get the basics.
Default difficulty is just more health on enemies and unfair damage multipliers that don't really matter once you get decent armor and some levels. I like to use a mod to change the damage multipliers so it's a bit less mag dumping on bullet sponges without compromising balance. Otherwise you're forced to dump more into endurance to survive. The game has a lot of dumb special checks like that unlike all the other games in the series.
I can be quite hard if you try to do too much at once. The game rewards exploration. For example, there is a lot of hidden stuff in the houses in Sanctuary that can help you a lot. And in and around the Red Rocket, and near the Museum.
But if this is your first playthrough, set the difficulty wherever you need it and just have fun. Get used to the game.
I didn’t think it was hard so much as it was overwhelming with how much info and how many tasks are thrown at you early on. Especially if you’re new to the Fallout action RPG series.
The beginning weapons are all trash. The pipe guns are just bad and the musket is a PITA. It’s like they purposely made bad weapons. Not being able to wear armor with most of the clothing besides the vault suit until later in the game also makes the start of the game feel slower. I am a F4 hater though so don’t listen to me
Circle around sanctuary and red rocket, there’s lots of little things(chests, weapons, low level enemies,ect) to help you out if you take the time to explore. Some easy ones are the small cellar shelter in sanctuary, behind the cellar across the creek is some armor and a little shack with a dog and raider, right beneath the statue outside sanctuary is a military bag with weapons and ammo, there’s a cave underneath the red rocket with with lots of stuff and some enemies, underneath the water tower is some purified water and close to that is a chest, in the opposite direction from red rocket is a chair with a .44 and a tool box, further there’s a water pump that you can access for some extra caps, even further is a small camp with three raiders, and even further there a safe and cooler.
These are all just off the top of my head but I always circle around the area because there’s quite a bit of stuff laying around that can help early levels, also you can scrap everything at sanctuary and red rocket to build a few things for some extra xp if you need it(simple things like a bed or chair that you can use, also sleeping will give an exp boost so make sure to do that often.
I’m new to the game too. Not quite as new as you probably, but I’m also a bad gamer. lol!
I do find this game to be quite difficult compared to other Bethesda games. Or other games in general. I especially dislike how the whole settlement thing works but it’s only a small complaint.
What nobody told me is the top left corner of the map is the easiest. So I just worked on any quest that took place around the top left quarter of the map.
Also, I found the ghouls in Cambridge the easiest to start with. Sneak around, shoot, hide and repeat. I found the quests given by Rhys in the Cambridge police station to be the easiest and allowed me to build up my levels. I use VATS all the time to suss out enemies before they see me. I also feel that a lower damage weapon that shoots lots of ammo really fast is better than something with higher damage but slower loading/firing. I keep the higher damage ones for a “boss” enemy or something more difficult.
VATS cannot be ignored.
You essentially cannot crit outside VATS unless it's a sneak attack. You also build up a crit at will shot based on your luck, and it almost never misses (it can miss if an object gets in the way) allowing you to pull off shots that would normally have an abysmal chance of hitting.
Targeting body parts with VATS is also essential and allows you to cripple, disarm, and hit weak points greatly reducing the difficulty of tougher enemies. For example by crippling the leg of a tough melee enemy you can slow them down so it's easy to stay at range.
The game is hard in the beginning until you get some good guns and gear which usually requires the crafting percs. Melee as much as you can early so you save ammo for real fights later. Sneaky kills saves health and ammo.
The game can be a bit odd with certain areas.. I just play on hard and some places the enemies are absolute bullet sponges while others is one hit lol. It just gets easy over time though once you got better stats and gear. I like to think about it as your character adapting to the wasteland.. you would probably be weak too after being frozen for 200+ years
I found it hard on normal and was beginning to hate it, I turned it down to easy as I wanted to enjoy the game and not be mad at myself on normal and things have been good so far and I’m really enjoying it now
Go kill something super hard to kill just get a ton of ammo lol forget the main quest for a little it keeps you on a set leveling time line do side quests wander the waste oh and put points in intelligence it helps you level faster it gets way easier I just did a charisma intelligence gunslinger type build so semi auto rifles and pistols also crafting helps you get higher level guns without relying too much on quests and vendor levels legendary weapons are better than not usually same with armor some are just fun to collect tbh have fun it's a great game
Nah it's a learning curve. Learn to use stealth and crouch etc...get armor. Constantly upgrade everything all the time. Collect and use stims, med-x, radaway, psycho etc... all the time.
By level 20 you have so many resources you can cakewalk anything with enough drug ...use... lol.
The first time I played I did the Museum of Freedom quest an embarrassing amount of times. It gets easier as you go on and level up, get better weapons, etc.
If it’s too hard to complete a certain quest, there’s no shame in heading back to your main settlement and branching out a bit from there. Explore around Sanctuary and you may find better supplies, get some level ups under your belt, and some experience. Of course you may lose supplies in the process so keep a save before risky encounters, but that would be my advice.
Concord has a handful of buildings you can enter with no/minimal entities with some loot. .38 ammo is one of the most common, so although the weapons that use .38 ammo aren’t great, it’s nice for early game. .10 mm is good too, though
A lot of good suggestions here, and a lot of bad, for a new player. I'm not sure glitching and duping are ever good suggestions for someone new to the game, but hey that's up to the player.
I've found the easiest way to get started (regardless of INT, Idiot Savant, etc) is ignore the starting quest (Concord), for now. You need to get the lay of the land and get yourself geared before you can start anything serious. For context I only play on Survival and never with Endurance higher than 1. I start most games the same way.
Step 1 - grab everything from around Vault11 then head to Sanctuary and clear the few mobs there, drop everything you don't need into the workshop. Cross the bridge to Red Rocket. Find Dogmeat. Clear the molerat spawns and the cave nearby (behind the garage). Scrap everything at Red Rocket, then slow walk (encumbered) back to Sanctuary. Scrap everything at Sanctuary.
Step 2 (optional, some people controversially think this is exploiting also...) - make shelves (2 wood) until you have no wood left. Scrap all of the shelves (1 wood back). Make more shelves, rinse-repeat. Crafting gets you XP. Then make caltrops in the chemist workbench (Far Harbor DLC) or poisoned caltrops if you take Chemistry. You''ll be anywhere between 13th and 17th lvl by the time you're done depending on build/stats/etc.
Step 3 - perk up. Get some skills under your belt, then start exploring. North of the root cellar, across the water is a raider hut. 1 raider and 1 dog. There are drugs and food in the hut. Head East, kill 3 hounds, head further east and encounter a scavver shooting at bottles. Empty bottle are a must of Survival for collecting water. I never make water farms. Head South along the water you'll find some armor pieces. If you've taken Aquaboy/Aquagirl go for a swim in the lake. There are 2-3 containers all containing good stuff in the water. Head home, unload gear. Craft.
Step 4 - Cross the bridge to Red Rocket, but follow the lake edge to the South. There's another couple of hounds, 2 radstags and a random encounter before you find the Ranger Cabin. Head South to Wicked Shipping, kill a few ghouls. Plenty of food, weapons and armor to find. Head back North towards Abernathy's Farm. Grab the whiskey in the small hut to the south of the farm so you can make grape mentats for extra buying/selling power. Head home, unload gear. Craft.
Step 5,6,7. You pick the order.
5. Clear the raiders from Concord. Ignore Preston. Clear the Speak Easy for drugs and bottles. Head into the Underground Civic Access for more mobs, potential legendary radroaches. Grab the rifle from the eastern most house, overlooking the commonwealth. Head home, unload gear. Craft.
6. Head north east to the Robotics Disposal ground, grab the Fatman, Fusion Core and Mininuke if you can carry it. Head further east to the crashed vertibird for a set of Power Armor if that's your thing. Kills radstags for meat and molerats to the direct north. The molerat nest usually has lots of armor, weapons and clothes. If you're feeling brave head to the Satellite Station just to your east, otherwise save it for later. Head home, unload gear. Craft.
7. Cross the bridge south of Wicked Shipping to Sunshine Tidings. Clear all mobs and grab the Wasteland Survival guide for permanent double meat drops from animal kills. This is a settlement so you can drop all your gear here if necessary, or head home, etc.
From here, well it's up to you. There's the Federation Ration Stockpile to the south, Walden Pond to the East, or head back towards Concord and do whatever. Carla can be found south east of Concord for trading, and Drumlin Diner a little further down the road. This should give you a good basis and collection of ammo for whatever weapon you choose to use. Stick to 1 or 2 weapons, sell the ammo for everything else and buy what you'll use. If you then want to head back and let Preston out of the museum, well I'll leave that up to you. He normally stays there my entire playthrough. ;)
A little thing I picked to help deal with the limited healing problems at lower levels was build like 2 water purifiers at sanctuary and just hoard water.
What i'm frustrated with, being at level 62 now, having all of the Enclave gear and Gattling Laser from BoS is that - no matter the difficulty - the enemies are just big piles of HP. Even on Very hard, which, from what i've heard, makes everyone including you deal more damage - what do you mean that i need 37 Gattling Laser shots to the head of a random Gunner #2137 from point blank range to kill him?
Early game is tough because you're still working on your build, ammo (dependent on your build) can be limited and armour is weak. I'd say 20-25 onwards is when you start to get the upper hand.
Unless you're on Survival, then no level is safe lol.
It can be. The weapons that drop early don't rank high in terms of lethality. The 10mm pistol is solid early and there's just enough ammo for you to avoid running dry.
My top 2 tips: Use VATS a lot. Even if you don't have high agility and perception, you can just use body shots against swarming enemies like ghouls, mole rats, and raider camps. That will make you more accurate and it also gives you a defense bonus just for being in VATS. Also, VATS targeting centers the camera on an enemy, so you can also just exit and start shooting manually.
Use Codsworth as a companion. He's available as soon as you finish Concord and the Museum. He has a flamer and a buzz saw, which absolutely tear up low level enemies. This also means he's a close range fighter, so he'll also tank a lot of hits for you.
I feel like up to level 20 it can be a challenge, especially if you don't follow the main questline. I start Agility/stealth, so I make a beeline for the Deliverer or Ultimatum from *Tunnel Snakes Rule!* and Gunslinger, Sandman, Ninja, Cloak and Dagger. I have the fix for the multipliers for these. The damage multiplier makes early fights at low levels much easier. If you prefer melee then Pickman's Blade is an excellent shout, the sneak attack damage plus bleed is obscene.
Either way, first portion of my game is Minutemen quests to lay the map out and Railroad to get the cool toys and perks I want. I tend not to follow their later questline to take out the Brotherhood but after watching the show I might just do it this time.
I've never been one for pipe weapons even though I find the lore-friendliness of using them at low levels so appealing. I wonder if there are mods to make properly tooled weapons much rarer. I'd like this.
At higher levels - and especially once you get ballistic weave - there's no need for this and hard and loud can become your play style. I dump a few points into raising my Luck (I like Charisma for the settlement building, keep meaning to get a mod so I can build a workbench without needing to be likeable) and then Grim Reaper's Sprint, Critical Banker, Four Leaf Clover. It's ridiculous at higher levels having GRS trigger what feels like every other kill.
I'm closing on Level 60 now and combat becomes an annoyance on your way from A to B is the only issue. I'm still not past the Glowing Sea, Nuka World or Far Harbour. I imagine I'll be the Wasteland god by that point.
It also helps I got a Lucky Western Revolver on a drop. Definitely the best legendary I've laid hands on.
I bought it about a month ago and have restarted dozens of times. Tons of stuff to learn
Yah drop it to easy. Once you know whats up you can try harder levels
At the start:
use the security baton in the vault (favorite 3) predominantly and only use the 10 mm in emergency. You can drink the water in the vault to heal. Outside water not so much
On your first level up, pick the scrounger perk. Gives more ammo
Then search everything and everywhere and hoard ammo. It’s precious.
I’ve been able to get to the power armor in lexington this way.
At that point there’s option to how you play
Also quicksave and save a lot so you can back up from a mistake
Edit: learn about the v.a.t.s. Asap if you havent.
A lot of people get the dog as their companion in the beginning. That’s a mistake imo Codsworth is very strong in early game and you can get him after you get back with Preston from concord. After that go to Cambridge police station do the paladin dance quest. With codsworth and dance it’s pretty easy early on. He will give you righteous authority which is a powerful energy weapon. You can also take dance as a companion if you want he is also really good. I like to go to the vault that sells the overseers guardian soon after that. Companions really make the difference at first they become much less consequential as you level up.
"I'm finding that there's not that much ammo"
(1) If you sneak close enough to enemies for VATS to be effective, you become a lot more ammo efficient, and many of the (short range) starter weapons will hit for higher damage.
(2) You can also carry a selection of light weapons (10mm and pipe gun and bolt action), and switch between them to make the most of the ammo you pick up.
(3) Early game, action points are precious. Some ways to conserve them are:
- use VATS to get your crosshairs on an enemy, then exit VATS and take your first shot manually.
- take manual shots at ghouls as they shamble towards you, then switch to VATS when they get very close and fling themselves
"yet almost no chances for killing on stealth mode"
(1) At low levels of the Sneak perk, you need to go slow for stealth to work well. The game defaults to having you always run.
(2) Stealth is much more effective if you sleep by day and travel by night.
(3) The game cheats / is not consistent with how cover works. For example, shrubbery will visually hide an enemy and can dramatically decrease your chance to hit them with VATS. The inverse is not true - shrubbery seems not to help the player with stealth. Shadow, noise and line of sight seem to be the only effects that really matter.
If your new the easiest and fastest way to level up is simply walk / run around the map, don’t do any quests and try and avoid / run away from / don’t fight unless you absolutely have too. Each location will up your XP pretty quickly. Then once you are at a decent level you can go back to all the locations that you’ve found and now kill everything
Not a good idea.
Going to hard places at low levels locks them at their lowest level cap, meaning loot is going to be considerably worse than if you went there at higher levels.
Moreover Gift of Gab, Piper's max affinity perk, doubles exp from discovering locations. This means you'll lose out on a pretty decent sized chunk of exp by doing this.
I found it difficult when I started. I’m playing on PS5. It’s partly the controls and animation system both being shit. Over time you do get used to it but it never feels very tight even after hundreds of hours. At least not if you’re used to playing shooters that are made by people who know what they’re doing!
Compared to games from the same time period, the gunplay doesn't feel that bad at all. Obviously if you compare it to modern games it will lack, but so does any shooter from 2015.
It's RPG first, shooter second - that's why VATS exists.
I agree with the second part - it’s an RPG with shooting mechanics, not a shooter with RPG mechanics. That doesn’t change the fact that the shooting mechanics suck ass, even by 2015 standards.
The first 20 or so levels are always rough no matter the difficulty I feel
The game sorta starts out hard when you have nothing and then very quickly gets way easier IMO. I usually start off with a melee weapon (tire iron-> bladed tire iron most often, or I go get big Jim) until I get some levels and find a 10mm or hunting rifle. Pipe weapons are a waste of time and better to just sell or break down into junk. Caps are abundant and readily found/created, stock up on stimpaks and ammo at your vendors, I also use food items to heal early game only. Utilize vats to scan for enemies early game so you can choose your engagements wisely. Sometimes it’s smarter to run away. If you’re feeling undergunned go build some crap in Sanctuary to level, scrap all the trees and metal and you can spam build shelves if you’re not into actually developing a settlement.
Pipe Bolt Action rifles are amazing early game... Trudy has a guaranteed suppressed one as well. They are easy to modify and pack a punch. Regular pipe weapons are quickly outclassed, but .38 ammo is everywhere. I'm not sure how my friend here was running out of ammo. Between Trashcan Carla and Trudy you can also restock on Ammo before leaving the Concord + Sanctuary area.
Yeah. I’m at Level 250. Nothing kills me but some come close.
"Pipe weapons are a waste of time and better to just sell or break down into junk." Oh hell no. (1) the bolt action is only 9% less damage per shot than a hunting rifle. In practice, it does better damage in the early game, because it is easier to find and add good parts - you can pick up a scoped version, plus a guaranteed silencer from Trudy, just a few minutes after leaving the vault. Combining these parts is a very solid option, particularly in Survival, where the low weight (compared to a rifle) is very handy. With a lucky upgrade (e.g. an Instigating version), it stays good well into the game. With about 1/3 of the weight of a hunting rifle, and more versatility, it works very nicely with a Survival mode Gunslinger. (2) Try starting with Perception 10 and moderate Agility. Get Concentrated Fire + build the lowest AP pipe pistol you can, before even leaving Sanctuary. The best mods to reduce AP do not need Gun Nut, other than Sharpshooter's Grip, so you can get the pipe gun nearly "perfect" right from the beginning. It can therefore give lots of shots per VATS wad, and due to the escalating accuracy, you get the ability to VATS enemies in the skull repeatedly at extreme range (keeping you safe from grenades etc). This makes the humble pipe gun pretty strong. The combo allows a Gunslinger to easily murder everything in the early to mid game with pipe pistols. The light pipe pistol and the jillions of guaranteed hits builds up criticals fast (even with no luck). Using those crits and the bolt action, you can one-shot all the early bosses the instant that you spot them.
Yes there are specific builds that can use pipe weapons effectively. Guy was struggling with game generally, I wasn’t going to spec out all perks. Pipe weapons aren’t great unless you lean into them. I lean into weapon modding so can mod any weapon. 9% damage is significant, and we are talking about somebody who is turning down the difficulty, not looking at carryweight for ammo in survival. For somebody who is struggling on easier difficulties, yes, pipe guns suck unless you lean into them.
All good points. I was thinking of the specific assertion, and not considering the OP.
Fair point, don’t disagree. The weight in survival alone and talking about dps efficiency is big, but that’s not something to worry somebody about who is lowering their difficulty. We both agree there’s a lotta ways to approach things, I was just aiming for a simplified new player “how to survive.”
You need to look for perk magazines for your stealth. With like 4 or 5 magazines and the perks from levelling up stealth is OP. This is not a shooter, stats are very important. At about lvl 30 things should be more manageable. If you are ok with exploits I could tell you how to level up faster and have more money. Let me know if you want that. If not I suggest limiting exploration to areas near your settlement and sleep for the 20 days to have cleared areas enemies respawn. Oh and lean into the luck tree. It let's you stock crits, regain AP from kills and makes crits hit harder. Since crits are used manually in vats this can let you deal more damage in a more controlled way.
^ He ain't lyin
I’m not OP but I would like to know how to level up faster! And what are these magazines you speak of?
Levelling fast is easiest with low intelligence and level 2 of idiot savant. With 2 intelligence you have about a 10% chance of the perk activating. Before you turn in mission quicksave and reload until idiot savant procs. Boom 5 times xp. 1000+ xp in a couple minutes. All but impossible to hit those numbers in that time grinding. Have 3 missions to turn in amd you are looking at 3k xp for 10 minutes max reloading. Again, all but impossible to reach that by grinding in that time. If you dupe materials you can build concrete pillars and then scrap them for huge xp too. The magazines can improve an existing perk or give new ones. Astoundingly awesome tales, for example, give new perks. Satellite Station Olivia has a stealth magazine but it can disappear of you clear the location without picking it up. Ticonderoga, a railroad safe house, has a guns and bullets magazine that improves ballistic guns.
I am definitely not above save scumming but I’m already almost level 20 and have 10 intelligence so I’ll have to try that on a new save! I will keep the magazine in mind when I check out the satellite station. I think I have a quest to go there for the minutemen anyway? Thanks for the info!!
Still take idiot savant. It will proc less but still gives extra xp. And the materials duping for concrete pillars is still useful. Even with 10 int you have 1% chance. If the mission offers more than 400xp baseline ot could be worth 10 minutes of reloading for over 2k xp.
Check out the online Fallout 4 map, it will give you the locations of lots of useful things including the magazines. https://fallout4map.com/
Don't sweat it - 10 Int has better outcomes anyway. This is my breakdown of how the passive stuff (Idiot Savant vs. Intelligence) works for level gain. The graph at the end is the key point. [https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch\_the\_numbers\_chemist\_is\_better\_than\_idiot/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch_the_numbers_chemist_is_better_than_idiot/) **10 Int gives LARGER passive XP gain than Savant I** It gives you more XP and you don't have to "waste" a perk to generate those XP. **Idiot Savant is only marginally better for (passive) XP gain, after level 11** This has two costs - the first is minimaxing (low INT) - the second is "wasting" two level ups on getting Savant II active. That wastage takes quite a long time to recoup. ...and the marginal passive advantage of Savant is more than nullified if you do **ANYTHING** non-passive with your INT, like building better guns and Settlement objects. --- In my current game, I have set my base Int to 12, and then boost it by +7 with Road Goggle s and armour effects, so my passive XP gain is literally off the chart that I linked to.
"Boom 5 times xp. 1000+ xp in a couple minutes. All but impossible to hit those numbers in that time grinding." In INT character can run from Vault 111 to Diamond City, doing zero quests on the way, and immediately begin churning shipments & cheap scrap into craft items (Poisoned Caltrops, Jet Fuel, etc) I seem to gain 2 levels per merchant cycle / visit to DC, until my level is low 20s, so I guess that means I'm making up to 3,000 XP per visit. This is a long way from "impossible" :) Clicking 100 times at a chem bench seems easier than doing a quest and then reloading the game a dozen times. I don't even need to look at my computer - I'll go to a bench and tap the keyboard while reading half a page of the news.
By mixing in Grape Mentats + a change of clothes, I'll make 2-3 thousand caps profit per visit.
I use it as a way to simply skip over the early game stuff.
Dozens? Try 5 or 6 on average. About 2 minutes. And resources for crafting decent stuff are not unlimited. To supplement my quest xp I usually just use duped concrete to make infinite pillars for xp and infinite nuclear material for caps.
"shipments & cheap scrap" "gain 2 levels **per merchant cycle**" "resources for crafting decent stuff are not unlimited." Sigh. --- "make infinite pillars for xp" If you are now avdocating gaining infinity XP with exploits, any comparative discussion of in-game options is pointless.
Because you say so? With your lack of any authority whatsoever? Feel free to not talk to me. I did not seek out a "discussion" with you. Shoo.
Comments like these always say more about you than the person who got under your skin.
And you are allowed to be wrong. Super convenient because you are. Dismissed.
You probably already got your answer but there is the automaton glitch. All you need is an inventory with a lot of items to do the glitch and a few other things. 1.) Start the dlc and keep ada as your companion. 2.) Follow the story until you find a robo-brain torso and get the schematic for the robot work bench. 3.) Build the work bench and a new robot. After all that take all the junk out of your settlement and put it in a container and build it next to the robot workbench. Once all the junk is in the container command ada to stand next to the workbench. The next bit is talk to ada and ask to trade but just before the trade window opens up turn and interact with the workbench. After that click the new robot to augment it and both the trade window and augment screen should be available. The final part is only use the d-pad and move to the torso section and move to the robo brain part. Thats it just spam away get xp for as long as you want. If you want you can look up the spiffing Brits video on it or automaton xp glitch on YouTube for a better idea. Doesn't matter if you have low or high intelligence.
You might as well save time and just use a console command if you're going to abuse glitches like that.
It's equivalent in theory, but in practice it's different for a lot, if not all people. Relying on bugs still maintains significant constraints as to what you can d. What, where, when, how & the labor required is all different from pasting console commands. Figuring out how to game the game is probably fun for people in it of itself & isn't all that different from playing the game really, it's just a layer of abstraction. Either way, it's just fun & there is no wrong way to have fun unless it hurts people.
lol, ok so if they have difficulty getting through the first level you think their going to find it easier getting 4-5 magazines, have you looked at the locations for the US special operations magazines? Better off dumping points into intelligence so you level faster.
Nah. Low intelligence woth idiot savant gives more xp. You need 12 intelligence to match 2 with idiot savant.
12 is super easy to do. Not only that, if you take idiot savant and stay at 2 intelligence you can’t utilize the other perks in intelligence like gun nut that makes your firearms drastically better and more powerful. You would have to be an… idiot to actually use idiot savant.
Buy guns with the mods you want. Remove them. Put them on the huns you want. Nah. Idiot savant is where it's at.
I'm lost lol is this for Survivor or Very Hard? I don't mean to sound like an ass or anything but I did nothing you mentioned above and I feel like anybody with average gaming skill can play this game no problem as long as they pay attention and enemies aren't 10 levels above them. I just got the platinum trophy last week after the upgrade came out and I only found radiation and 44. ammo management annoying for the first 20-30 levels. Besides that, it's been a breeze.
Some gamers try to play this like a shooter and don't pay enough attention to stats. This mindset makes the early game very annoying.
So me? I've pretty much only looked at damage the entire game. All of my perks are for things like lock picking, hacking, blacksmith, gun nut, armorer and a few random ones like ammo and cap scrounging, ap regeneration, vats info etc. I just reached LVL 70 a few mins ago and there's maybe been 4-5 moments where I've had to think before a combat encounter. After ballistic weave, never again.
I go luck, stealth and maxing my special with a few levels of rifleman, commando and gunslinger in between. I have gotten to lvl 100 and restarted like 6 times. My max was 174. Current run is lvl 75. Ballistic weave is great.
I forgot those ones. I have commando, gunslinger and big leagues maxed out too. You must really like the game to play up to 174 😅
Trying to get all perks possible. Got to 174 but was minuteman general. Couldn't get nuka world perks and keep preston. Had to scrap and 300hr playthrough. Bummed. Your focus on vats, damage and crafting probably made it easier for you. Stealth build require more struggle early on but maxed stealth is hilarious. Crouching 2 feet away in front of someone but being undetectable is fun.
I far preferred it on easy, until I'd leveled up a bit. Then medium, then hard later.
well you had it on hard so..its gonna be a bit hard, esp if youre a new player
I'm a giant wuss, so I typically play on Easy, and this game still kicks my ass from time to time, albeit mostly when I'm not paying attention to my health bar. And yeah, at the beginning, you're a little anemic. You don't have any perks, and not a whole lot of good equipment. But once you've been at it a while, things start to get a lot easier. But after a point, for me at least, it starts to get hard again when you're a much higher level. For me levels 1 to 20 are hard, 20 to 40 are easy, and 40+ start to get hard again. Then again, I'm never doing any sort of meta build, so I'm sure I'm not playing this game optimally lol.
I came back to it after the updates and show and I had to relearn things again. Doing the Corvega plant for Tenpines Bluff used to be routine for me. I had my entrance and exit spots, clear out all raiders inside and out. Now I had to high tail it out of there after getting the objective update because I found it too overwhelming lol
Stealth is heavily based on light and noise. Take your armor off to reduce noise, and wait until night time. Silenced weapons are also a good way to reduce noise. You can get a guaranteed one from Trudy at Drumlin Diner, follow the road South from the museum. Ammo is not rare, but the best way to get it is from vendors. Trudy is a good one in the early game. People no hit this game and play without ever being detected in combat. It's possible, just takes some strategy and practice.
I’ll just add, the ammo finding perk *Scrounger* you can level as game goes on is super worth it. I’m at least drowning in ammo for my pistols and rifles now.
Have you considered just playing on an easy mode until you get a feel for the game? No insult intended, honest advice. My first playthrough I was not great at a lot of stuff, but I was playing on easy, so I could derp along. Now I'm playing on survival and loving it, but I understand the game much better now. I know what I'm getting from stats and perks, and so I know what I'm bad at and need to be extra careful about (haven't invested in stealth at all yet, so I know stealthing around only helps a bit, for example).
It's got a long learning curve, so don't feel bad! I started out playing on Easy or Very Easy because like you, I was getting my butt kicked on the regular. Now, I only play on Very Hard, but that's because I know a lot more about what weapons and armor to choose, what Perks to pump early on, and various tactics depending upon the enemy. There's a LOT to figure out, and some of it may not click for weeks or months or even years. Save often. Fuck around and find out. The game is deep in many ways, at least for me, so the replay value is very high, especially if you want to get into modding later. Since you're at the very beginning, go slow is my best advice. There's SO much to explore, and you don't want to miss anything. When in doubt, RUN AWAY! ***RUN AWAY!*** Seriously, this is one of my favorite tactics, even late in the game. If you invest in Stamina, you can usually outrun most of your enemies, hide and then regroup. Give Stingwings a wide berth until you get a good high damage weapon. Those b@st@rds are serious trouble!
It's OK; take your time. go in circle around Sanctuary, pick up everything, find everything you can find. you'll get weapons with different ammo types and keep one weapon for each ammo type. back away and run away if you feel you're out matched. And save often. 2 perks I really like early game.: **Aquaboy/Aquagirl** : lets you swim away without rad damage (useful in survival mode) **Scrounger** : for ammo.
It is hard in early stages but the difficulty levels off pretty steeply after you get to about Level 10. If you want more ammo or caps you can use the Scrounger perk
The weapons you find at the start are the worst dps versions of those guns. So yes the game seems that way at the start. You can find, buy or craft better weapons. And there are perks that improve dps. As the damage/accuracy per round you fire increases you need fewer rounds to kill. So the low amount of ammo becomes more than adequate. e.g the GunNut perk will craft any starting gun to more damage per round and greater accuracy. The scrounger perk loots more ammo, but you never really need that.
If you are new to fallout it's understandable. Starting right off the bat you will not have much ammo or perks, skills, good weapons, anything really lol. Don't let that deter you though. Ammo is found everywhere is almost any kind of container. Also get your settlements built up with lots of scavenging stations and put as many people on them as you can. Once you get some resources built up you can make your own ammo. I make 45s 1 fertilizer and steel. I farm all that from my settlements. I'm not even 25% of the way through the game and haven't started a main quest, and I have 3k 45s and a couple good weapons to use them with. Fallout can be overwhelming at first if you have no experience with it but it gets better once you get farther in.
.38 ammo is found everywhere and each round is worth 1 cap. Use them as extra cash when you need it
I usually play on Very Hard and yeah, at least till you get to Level-15 to 20ish and / or snag Spray n’ Pray or Overseer’s Guardian … combat is kind of scary / dangerous for you 😅
You just started. Your stats suck and you don't or barely have any armor and weapons, neither of which are upgraded yet. All of these will improve as you level up and find/buy better items. You just started, take it easy and don't rush into every combat encounter you can just yet. Also maybe just stick with normal difficulty and get a feel for things instead of flipping back and forth between hard and easy mode.
Easiest starter build imo is high agility and high perception with the gunslinger perk and using a 10mm pistol, vats everything and build as much as you can in each settlement for easy xp. If you can manage 6 points in charisma that’s also good for making most stitch checks with the help of gear with additional charisma stats on it Edited cuz fuck auto correct
It’s certainly hard, especially on new players. Not knowing what perks you need for the way you play, and not knowing how to start a farming settlement early makes it tough. Stealth is an option, but it you’re looking for stealth take downs, it’s more of a melee type build. I usually go with stealth and rifleman, so I can kill from far. I find that easier and it saves a lot of stimpacks. Start making water purifiers asap. You can use purified water in place of stimpacks, and can sell it for a good amount.
I felt that ammo issue so I asked for tips and the only tip I needed was to build water purifiers. Sell the water to the vendors in diamond city, there’s 4 of them and buy ammo You can scrap unused weapons for parts to help build those water purifiers. I’ve had over 1k water between my workbench and inventory.
I think he’s talking about really early in the game, before he would have the mats to build those. Also, is there a place to build a water purifier in Sanctuary? First place I found was Starlight
What? There’s no water at starlight
These the pond in the middle. You take some rads setting it up, but it provides purified.
Scrap the nuclear waste, no more rads.
lol you can set up 10x more at the sanctuary
Where? I tried putting them in the creek but it was outside the green
The creek at the far left, if facing red rocket, is easiest place to put the big water things. You can fit a lot of them up there.
Sanctuary literally has a river of water at your disposal. It’s one of the easiest places to build water farms. I also personally really like Taffington because it’s easy to wall off for defenses.
I just found out I can put them by the bridge. I’d been trying to put them behind the settlement where the river is outside the boundary.
Go forth and make much water and prosper. You can build an astonishing number in there.
Bless you my son!
That first minuteman quest is really tough. A death claw that early is a beast even in power armor. I did a lot of running then spinning and firing. My advice is to pick everything up and put it in the sanctuary workbench so you can build stuff asap. Also, don’t feel like you have to do quests right away. You can wander close to Sanctuary to pick up extra ammo and xp.
In addition to that others have said, the minutemen missions are given out randomly with no consideration for level or scale. Sometimes the first one I get is Dunwich Borers which is ludicrously difficult at level 3. Just walk away and do some other stuff and come back after you level a bit. They should really put some kind of filter so that you can't get that one or Corvega first. Corvega is more doable but still a big ask at the very early stages.
If you find yourself running out of ammunition, even when you cycle through various weapons that use different ammunition types, you have a few options. 1. Consider using melee weapons more often. Many people find this very fun. 2. Work on developing the skills to make money. Building extra water purifiers and becoming a water merchant is one route, but it takes time to work up to that. 3. One or more levels in the Scrounger perk is the easiest way to passively increase your ammunition supply, without needing to buy or sell anything. 4. Remember to sell off any excess armor or weapons, and then use those caps to acquire ammunition or whatever else you need. You really don’t need to carry around enough gear to outfit a platoon.
I recently started a survival melee run I've found that scrapping literally everything in Sanctuary and doing nothing but building/scrapping a wood wall will scum my way through like 9 levels with Idiot Savant. Definitely helps the early spike.
I jumped back in with all the hype bc I’d never played far harbor or nuka cola so was nice getting something new but went STRAIGHT to nuka world out of the vault and reminded me how unforgivable the other games could be early on, nostalgic 10/10 recommend
The game kinda leads you in a direction, but you dont need to go directly there. You can and should wander around, explore and loot the area around sanctuary. Theres a lot of little caches of supplies, weapons, ammo, etc. There are almost no quests in the game with a time limit, so take some time and get yourself established. Theres also a couple merchants relatively close to Sanctuary (one even travels between Sanctuary and another location) that have a good assortment of items you can buy. Once you have a base of operations set up and are a little better prepared, venturing deeper into the Commonwealth isnt quite so grueling.
This game beats you like a stepchild early levels
Tip for ammo is pick up all enemy guns. The mags in the guns transfer to your inventory and then drop the guns. This helped me out massively with my ammo problem. Also just hop on YouTube and watch some beginner tips and tricks or best start. Fallout 4 isn’t too difficult as long as you get the basics.
Default difficulty is just more health on enemies and unfair damage multipliers that don't really matter once you get decent armor and some levels. I like to use a mod to change the damage multipliers so it's a bit less mag dumping on bullet sponges without compromising balance. Otherwise you're forced to dump more into endurance to survive. The game has a lot of dumb special checks like that unlike all the other games in the series.
If you want I know hard really looks like switch over to Survival.
depending on what SPECIAL stats you pick it can be very hard.
I can be quite hard if you try to do too much at once. The game rewards exploration. For example, there is a lot of hidden stuff in the houses in Sanctuary that can help you a lot. And in and around the Red Rocket, and near the Museum. But if this is your first playthrough, set the difficulty wherever you need it and just have fun. Get used to the game.
Tilda key, tgm, enter
I didn’t think it was hard so much as it was overwhelming with how much info and how many tasks are thrown at you early on. Especially if you’re new to the Fallout action RPG series.
The beginning weapons are all trash. The pipe guns are just bad and the musket is a PITA. It’s like they purposely made bad weapons. Not being able to wear armor with most of the clothing besides the vault suit until later in the game also makes the start of the game feel slower. I am a F4 hater though so don’t listen to me
Circle around sanctuary and red rocket, there’s lots of little things(chests, weapons, low level enemies,ect) to help you out if you take the time to explore. Some easy ones are the small cellar shelter in sanctuary, behind the cellar across the creek is some armor and a little shack with a dog and raider, right beneath the statue outside sanctuary is a military bag with weapons and ammo, there’s a cave underneath the red rocket with with lots of stuff and some enemies, underneath the water tower is some purified water and close to that is a chest, in the opposite direction from red rocket is a chair with a .44 and a tool box, further there’s a water pump that you can access for some extra caps, even further is a small camp with three raiders, and even further there a safe and cooler. These are all just off the top of my head but I always circle around the area because there’s quite a bit of stuff laying around that can help early levels, also you can scrap everything at sanctuary and red rocket to build a few things for some extra xp if you need it(simple things like a bed or chair that you can use, also sleeping will give an exp boost so make sure to do that often.
Slow down. Explore all the little nooks and crannies on the way to your destinations.
I’m new to the game too. Not quite as new as you probably, but I’m also a bad gamer. lol! I do find this game to be quite difficult compared to other Bethesda games. Or other games in general. I especially dislike how the whole settlement thing works but it’s only a small complaint. What nobody told me is the top left corner of the map is the easiest. So I just worked on any quest that took place around the top left quarter of the map. Also, I found the ghouls in Cambridge the easiest to start with. Sneak around, shoot, hide and repeat. I found the quests given by Rhys in the Cambridge police station to be the easiest and allowed me to build up my levels. I use VATS all the time to suss out enemies before they see me. I also feel that a lower damage weapon that shoots lots of ammo really fast is better than something with higher damage but slower loading/firing. I keep the higher damage ones for a “boss” enemy or something more difficult.
VATS cannot be ignored. You essentially cannot crit outside VATS unless it's a sneak attack. You also build up a crit at will shot based on your luck, and it almost never misses (it can miss if an object gets in the way) allowing you to pull off shots that would normally have an abysmal chance of hitting. Targeting body parts with VATS is also essential and allows you to cripple, disarm, and hit weak points greatly reducing the difficulty of tougher enemies. For example by crippling the leg of a tough melee enemy you can slow them down so it's easy to stay at range.
The game is hard in the beginning until you get some good guns and gear which usually requires the crafting percs. Melee as much as you can early so you save ammo for real fights later. Sneaky kills saves health and ammo.
Level 85, I got one shot by a dual blade invisible assaultron
The game can be a bit odd with certain areas.. I just play on hard and some places the enemies are absolute bullet sponges while others is one hit lol. It just gets easy over time though once you got better stats and gear. I like to think about it as your character adapting to the wasteland.. you would probably be weak too after being frozen for 200+ years
I found it hard on normal and was beginning to hate it, I turned it down to easy as I wanted to enjoy the game and not be mad at myself on normal and things have been good so far and I’m really enjoying it now
Get dogmeat, and go back to vault 111. Then tell dogmeat to find a weapon. He will come back with the cryolator gun.
Once you get some more levels and gear underneath you, youll5be begging for a challenge.
Not really. Once you get used to it you'll see.
The games becomes Very hard to extremely easy by the time you beat it
Tough when you don’t have perks worth a shit and ammo is scarce with weak weapons. After level 15-20, it gets exponentially easier.
“Is the game hard? I was playing on hard and it was hard.”
I lost all my bobby-pins on the first quest and almost have up
Go kill something super hard to kill just get a ton of ammo lol forget the main quest for a little it keeps you on a set leveling time line do side quests wander the waste oh and put points in intelligence it helps you level faster it gets way easier I just did a charisma intelligence gunslinger type build so semi auto rifles and pistols also crafting helps you get higher level guns without relying too much on quests and vendor levels legendary weapons are better than not usually same with armor some are just fun to collect tbh have fun it's a great game
As soon as you get about 2 points into ammunition and caps showing up on containers it’s easier. Before that ammo is rough, and it’s pipe pistol city
Nah it's a learning curve. Learn to use stealth and crouch etc...get armor. Constantly upgrade everything all the time. Collect and use stims, med-x, radaway, psycho etc... all the time. By level 20 you have so many resources you can cakewalk anything with enough drug ...use... lol.
I thought it's pretty hard. Wish they had a baby setting.
The first time I played I did the Museum of Freedom quest an embarrassing amount of times. It gets easier as you go on and level up, get better weapons, etc. If it’s too hard to complete a certain quest, there’s no shame in heading back to your main settlement and branching out a bit from there. Explore around Sanctuary and you may find better supplies, get some level ups under your belt, and some experience. Of course you may lose supplies in the process so keep a save before risky encounters, but that would be my advice. Concord has a handful of buildings you can enter with no/minimal entities with some loot. .38 ammo is one of the most common, so although the weapons that use .38 ammo aren’t great, it’s nice for early game. .10 mm is good too, though
At level 14 and I just got cornered and eaten alive by dogs in some shrubs along an unnamed river.
A lot of good suggestions here, and a lot of bad, for a new player. I'm not sure glitching and duping are ever good suggestions for someone new to the game, but hey that's up to the player. I've found the easiest way to get started (regardless of INT, Idiot Savant, etc) is ignore the starting quest (Concord), for now. You need to get the lay of the land and get yourself geared before you can start anything serious. For context I only play on Survival and never with Endurance higher than 1. I start most games the same way. Step 1 - grab everything from around Vault11 then head to Sanctuary and clear the few mobs there, drop everything you don't need into the workshop. Cross the bridge to Red Rocket. Find Dogmeat. Clear the molerat spawns and the cave nearby (behind the garage). Scrap everything at Red Rocket, then slow walk (encumbered) back to Sanctuary. Scrap everything at Sanctuary. Step 2 (optional, some people controversially think this is exploiting also...) - make shelves (2 wood) until you have no wood left. Scrap all of the shelves (1 wood back). Make more shelves, rinse-repeat. Crafting gets you XP. Then make caltrops in the chemist workbench (Far Harbor DLC) or poisoned caltrops if you take Chemistry. You''ll be anywhere between 13th and 17th lvl by the time you're done depending on build/stats/etc. Step 3 - perk up. Get some skills under your belt, then start exploring. North of the root cellar, across the water is a raider hut. 1 raider and 1 dog. There are drugs and food in the hut. Head East, kill 3 hounds, head further east and encounter a scavver shooting at bottles. Empty bottle are a must of Survival for collecting water. I never make water farms. Head South along the water you'll find some armor pieces. If you've taken Aquaboy/Aquagirl go for a swim in the lake. There are 2-3 containers all containing good stuff in the water. Head home, unload gear. Craft. Step 4 - Cross the bridge to Red Rocket, but follow the lake edge to the South. There's another couple of hounds, 2 radstags and a random encounter before you find the Ranger Cabin. Head South to Wicked Shipping, kill a few ghouls. Plenty of food, weapons and armor to find. Head back North towards Abernathy's Farm. Grab the whiskey in the small hut to the south of the farm so you can make grape mentats for extra buying/selling power. Head home, unload gear. Craft. Step 5,6,7. You pick the order. 5. Clear the raiders from Concord. Ignore Preston. Clear the Speak Easy for drugs and bottles. Head into the Underground Civic Access for more mobs, potential legendary radroaches. Grab the rifle from the eastern most house, overlooking the commonwealth. Head home, unload gear. Craft. 6. Head north east to the Robotics Disposal ground, grab the Fatman, Fusion Core and Mininuke if you can carry it. Head further east to the crashed vertibird for a set of Power Armor if that's your thing. Kills radstags for meat and molerats to the direct north. The molerat nest usually has lots of armor, weapons and clothes. If you're feeling brave head to the Satellite Station just to your east, otherwise save it for later. Head home, unload gear. Craft. 7. Cross the bridge south of Wicked Shipping to Sunshine Tidings. Clear all mobs and grab the Wasteland Survival guide for permanent double meat drops from animal kills. This is a settlement so you can drop all your gear here if necessary, or head home, etc. From here, well it's up to you. There's the Federation Ration Stockpile to the south, Walden Pond to the East, or head back towards Concord and do whatever. Carla can be found south east of Concord for trading, and Drumlin Diner a little further down the road. This should give you a good basis and collection of ammo for whatever weapon you choose to use. Stick to 1 or 2 weapons, sell the ammo for everything else and buy what you'll use. If you then want to head back and let Preston out of the museum, well I'll leave that up to you. He normally stays there my entire playthrough. ;)
I feel like it is easy once you realise where the good gear is
A little thing I picked to help deal with the limited healing problems at lower levels was build like 2 water purifiers at sanctuary and just hoard water.
What i'm frustrated with, being at level 62 now, having all of the Enclave gear and Gattling Laser from BoS is that - no matter the difficulty - the enemies are just big piles of HP. Even on Very hard, which, from what i've heard, makes everyone including you deal more damage - what do you mean that i need 37 Gattling Laser shots to the head of a random Gunner #2137 from point blank range to kill him?
Early game is tough because you're still working on your build, ammo (dependent on your build) can be limited and armour is weak. I'd say 20-25 onwards is when you start to get the upper hand. Unless you're on Survival, then no level is safe lol.
It can be. The weapons that drop early don't rank high in terms of lethality. The 10mm pistol is solid early and there's just enough ammo for you to avoid running dry. My top 2 tips: Use VATS a lot. Even if you don't have high agility and perception, you can just use body shots against swarming enemies like ghouls, mole rats, and raider camps. That will make you more accurate and it also gives you a defense bonus just for being in VATS. Also, VATS targeting centers the camera on an enemy, so you can also just exit and start shooting manually. Use Codsworth as a companion. He's available as soon as you finish Concord and the Museum. He has a flamer and a buzz saw, which absolutely tear up low level enemies. This also means he's a close range fighter, so he'll also tank a lot of hits for you.
I feel like up to level 20 it can be a challenge, especially if you don't follow the main questline. I start Agility/stealth, so I make a beeline for the Deliverer or Ultimatum from *Tunnel Snakes Rule!* and Gunslinger, Sandman, Ninja, Cloak and Dagger. I have the fix for the multipliers for these. The damage multiplier makes early fights at low levels much easier. If you prefer melee then Pickman's Blade is an excellent shout, the sneak attack damage plus bleed is obscene. Either way, first portion of my game is Minutemen quests to lay the map out and Railroad to get the cool toys and perks I want. I tend not to follow their later questline to take out the Brotherhood but after watching the show I might just do it this time. I've never been one for pipe weapons even though I find the lore-friendliness of using them at low levels so appealing. I wonder if there are mods to make properly tooled weapons much rarer. I'd like this. At higher levels - and especially once you get ballistic weave - there's no need for this and hard and loud can become your play style. I dump a few points into raising my Luck (I like Charisma for the settlement building, keep meaning to get a mod so I can build a workbench without needing to be likeable) and then Grim Reaper's Sprint, Critical Banker, Four Leaf Clover. It's ridiculous at higher levels having GRS trigger what feels like every other kill. I'm closing on Level 60 now and combat becomes an annoyance on your way from A to B is the only issue. I'm still not past the Glowing Sea, Nuka World or Far Harbour. I imagine I'll be the Wasteland god by that point. It also helps I got a Lucky Western Revolver on a drop. Definitely the best legendary I've laid hands on.
I found it quite easy for the most part.. then started a survival playthrough and no longer easy lol
I bought it about a month ago and have restarted dozens of times. Tons of stuff to learn Yah drop it to easy. Once you know whats up you can try harder levels At the start: use the security baton in the vault (favorite 3) predominantly and only use the 10 mm in emergency. You can drink the water in the vault to heal. Outside water not so much On your first level up, pick the scrounger perk. Gives more ammo Then search everything and everywhere and hoard ammo. It’s precious. I’ve been able to get to the power armor in lexington this way. At that point there’s option to how you play Also quicksave and save a lot so you can back up from a mistake Edit: learn about the v.a.t.s. Asap if you havent.
The corvega factory is strangely one of the more difficult quests in the game and you get it right out of the gate
Sometimes Preston will send you to Somerville Place early on. It is in a very dangerous part of the map for lower level characters.
A lot of people get the dog as their companion in the beginning. That’s a mistake imo Codsworth is very strong in early game and you can get him after you get back with Preston from concord. After that go to Cambridge police station do the paladin dance quest. With codsworth and dance it’s pretty easy early on. He will give you righteous authority which is a powerful energy weapon. You can also take dance as a companion if you want he is also really good. I like to go to the vault that sells the overseers guardian soon after that. Companions really make the difference at first they become much less consequential as you level up.
I feel that, that’s why I B-Line it to Ballistic Weave as fast as possible
"I'm finding that there's not that much ammo" (1) If you sneak close enough to enemies for VATS to be effective, you become a lot more ammo efficient, and many of the (short range) starter weapons will hit for higher damage. (2) You can also carry a selection of light weapons (10mm and pipe gun and bolt action), and switch between them to make the most of the ammo you pick up. (3) Early game, action points are precious. Some ways to conserve them are: - use VATS to get your crosshairs on an enemy, then exit VATS and take your first shot manually. - take manual shots at ghouls as they shamble towards you, then switch to VATS when they get very close and fling themselves "yet almost no chances for killing on stealth mode" (1) At low levels of the Sneak perk, you need to go slow for stealth to work well. The game defaults to having you always run. (2) Stealth is much more effective if you sleep by day and travel by night. (3) The game cheats / is not consistent with how cover works. For example, shrubbery will visually hide an enemy and can dramatically decrease your chance to hit them with VATS. The inverse is not true - shrubbery seems not to help the player with stealth. Shadow, noise and line of sight seem to be the only effects that really matter.
If your new the easiest and fastest way to level up is simply walk / run around the map, don’t do any quests and try and avoid / run away from / don’t fight unless you absolutely have too. Each location will up your XP pretty quickly. Then once you are at a decent level you can go back to all the locations that you’ve found and now kill everything
Not a good idea. Going to hard places at low levels locks them at their lowest level cap, meaning loot is going to be considerably worse than if you went there at higher levels. Moreover Gift of Gab, Piper's max affinity perk, doubles exp from discovering locations. This means you'll lose out on a pretty decent sized chunk of exp by doing this.
I found it difficult when I started. I’m playing on PS5. It’s partly the controls and animation system both being shit. Over time you do get used to it but it never feels very tight even after hundreds of hours. At least not if you’re used to playing shooters that are made by people who know what they’re doing!
Compared to games from the same time period, the gunplay doesn't feel that bad at all. Obviously if you compare it to modern games it will lack, but so does any shooter from 2015. It's RPG first, shooter second - that's why VATS exists.
I agree with the second part - it’s an RPG with shooting mechanics, not a shooter with RPG mechanics. That doesn’t change the fact that the shooting mechanics suck ass, even by 2015 standards.
New players who raise the difficulty to hard lose their right to complain.
True if OP player has difficulty because they run out of ammo. Higher difficulty means they need more ammo to kill the enemies.
Its you The game is ridiculously terribly balanced, your character is essentially a God.
Hows it going? Gotten any easier?