I see now that eliminating fast travel is the key to the survival experience. Everything in survival revolves around that long, slow trudge to wherever… and whether or not wherever has a bed handy.
The survival changes demonstrate that Bethesda can actually design interesting systems in their kiddie-pool open worlds. Who’da thunk?
Trinity Tower run – holy crap – got a BETTER pistol (10 mm pistol with explosive rounds and --wow – does it work)
That is one of the best set pieces in my opinion – super mutants everywhere, and lordy – if you are at all afraid of heights just forget it – that place is seriously stomach churning. I hit it during a night/rain storm – the whole place was wobbling.
4 tries and done – elevator on the way down was the worst part. Got that great pistol and now I’m blasting everyone – I found Kellogs .44 to be too slow. Sure it kills --but – too much is coming at you to use it effectively in many cases.
Working the railroad but secretly eyeing the BoS. Russian Queen wants her son back!
Downtown Boston is a masterpiece btw I agree Bat – and a complete finger biter – the place is a war zone --and when the BoS, and then the Rust devils get in? C’mon who can’t think that’s not amazing. (double negative intentional)
I should say that true to form: I WAITED till survival mode to play Fallout 4 --lucky me --I never played vanilla at all. (a small lie I played till the elevator popped me up). I was waiting for mods and patches when they announced it, so I just waited for that mode, and we now see, the true game comes out.
One last thing: I saw that post above about fast travel – yes --it is KEY to the survival experience – you understand the lay of the land so much better --and traveling is important – building “channels” of safe zones and exploring new places that you’d never see otherwise. No Fast travel --because of the way I timed Fallout 4 I never experienced fast travel in the game --and now I am glad I didn’t. Nothing is really all that far --and the slow, careful approach is most oftentimes the better approach anyways.
Exploding weapons are great - and did you know that the Demolition Expert perk also increases their damage? So you can double buff the weapon with that and Commando or Gunslinger!
I found Kellogs .44 to be too slow. Sure it kills --but – too much is coming at you to use it effectively in many cases.
Kellog’s pistol is a sniper weapon for those going the pistol route. Using it against crowds is like using a sniper rifle - not very effective. On the other hand, it is also a VATS weapon as it refills your AP with each critical hit. It’s not meant to be used against crowds outside of VATS. It’s a good weapon, you just have to know when to use it.
My Kellogg’s currently sits at 117 damage and is used for shooting things in the face. Especially radscorpions.
It really does sound like Survival mode pretty much address all the issues Tom pointed out in his review of Fallout 4. About how fast travel makes the game lose the sense of place, and all the related things he detailed in his review about how that design decision had consequences in so many aspects of the game.
I loved the core gameplay when I last played the game. The shooting, the VATS, the desperation inspired by the difficulty, and having to use all your resources to win every fight. It was fantastic. But I also agreed with Tom’s criticisms. This new Survival mode sounds perfect for me when I return to the game after all the DLC has been released at a discounted rate in a future sale.
I just recently got Fallout 4 and after playing for a few hours and finding it somewhat boring, I restarted on survival mode, which I’m enjoying a whole lot more. I agree that it really opens up the game and highlights the cohesion of the different game elements. I did however add a couple of mods. One of the typical difficulty enhancing decisions developers make that drives me crazy is to make everything in the game more lethal while simultaneously making you impotent. Nothing kills my interest faster than unloading a couple of shotgun blasts into an enemy’s head only to see them still at 3/4 health. Fallout’s survival mode gives enemies a x2.0 modifier to damage while hitting you with a x.5.
I prefer the route of games like the Metro series or STALKER that make everything, you included, more deadly on higher difficulty levels. So I found a mod by a like-minded gamer that simply changes you from having the x.5 modifier to x2.0 like everything else in the game. But I am worried that as the game progresses, I may become too powerful. Right now at about level 14, I die a ton and still have to carefully consider every encounter. From what I’m reading here, it sounds like it due time you become powerful enough that if you were effectively 4x more powerful it might unhinge things in the other direction? You’re still going to be just as brittle, but do those of you that are much further along think it would be game killing to change the default modifiers?
Bateau
4125
The new multiplier on Suvival is 2x, 0.5x was the old version. And yeah, I think default modifiers are fine, especially if you plan on going stealth. I’m oneshotting deathclaws, mirelurk queens, behemots, sentry bots, etc. Including legendary versions. And that is with a very fast melee weapon that has a pretty low damage per hit (Pickman’s Blade) but you just can’t beat that sweet 10x multiplier from maxed out Ninja Perk. I think the damage for ranged weapons would also be pretty good since they have a relatively high damage per hit so even a 4x multiplier should do tons of damage.
Oh, I didn’t realize they had altered it. Ok, so the mod is effectively irrelevant. Thanks for the clarification Bateau. One other mod I also added for pragmatic reasons is one that simply saves on transitions. I nearly cried the first time I had spent 30 minutes stealthily moving down to one of the plot warehouses only to die almost instantly upon entering. I just don’t have the time any more to constantly repeat such large chunks. I was worried it would destroy some of the great tension, but you still have a lot’s of overland non-transition sequences, plus in reality once you find beds you are constantly doing the 1 hour nap thing anyway. So ultimately it hasn’t really made as much difference as I had thought either good or bad.
Survival mode hint. Don’t interrupt your kill streaks by sleeping unnecessarily. That interrupts your kill streaks and starts to lose you your adrenaline bonus. Use Nuka Cola and other stims to keep going. Then sleep when you are finished with an area/location. If you so sleep to save (because you don’t want to lose all of your progress before a boss/tough fight), sleep only one hour as you only lose about 10% or your adrenaline rush bonus.
I believe that there is a mod that does just that.
Talk about skewing numbers to fit a narrative…
Xbox traffic was 50x the initial #Fallout4 PC mod launch. It’s a new world & just the beginning. New features & PS4 support in the works.
Yeah… Because the in-game Beth.net system sucks for the PC.
Bateau
4130
Well in their defense, console players are going kinda crazy over mods. FO4 subreddit is full of thank you posts from people who get to experience the enhanced version of Bethesda games for the first time.
That I’m certain of. But still, PC traffic is not much of a comparison. Beth.net is worthless compared to the Nexus. I really thought Bethesda would look at the Nexus mod manager, take the best from it, and add things to it, to give the best PC experience possible, and give the Nexus a run for their money. But instead they forced PC mods into a system built for consoles, which never works well.
I’m also wondering what is going to happen when console kiddies install mods that conflict with each other. There are methods using FO4 edit to resolve those, which aren’t too difficult but I don’t think consoles have anything like that. I can see a console person loading up a bunch of weapon mods and then wondering why they only see one of those weapons in game.
Or crash due to one mod editing an object that another mod deleted (though this many years into Bethesda engine modding, most know not to actually delete things).
So I stopped playing a while ago and just reinstalled. What is this monstrosity of a mod menu? Can I still use the nexus? I am a bit confused.
On PC, you can just use Nexus like always.
Bateau
4135
Fuck Tinker Tom and his MILA quests.
I didn’t play Fallout 4 until Survival Mode was released. On top of the normal changes I removed the compass entirely, made nights darker, and added more frequent and occasionally more dangerous storms. Its the same way I played Fallout New Vegas.
Its frightening and stressful and as realistic as a game with mutants and laser rifles can be. Early on I rounded the corner in an abandoned suburban house and met my robot butler, and mistook him for some sort of metallic assassin droid, and I screamed out loud in real life.
I got an early quest to clear a building, so I dumped extra junk in a toolbox, ate and drank until I was in perfect shape, then slept for one hour on a dirty bed near the quest entrance to save.
I cleared the building but was then funneled into a set piece - anyone who played the game will know what happens next. I didn’t have a chance to sleep, and the night outside was now swarming with enemies as part of the set piece … and then something big appeared and killed me. I sat there staring at the monitor in disbelief. 45 minutes of progress was gone.
In real life I mulled it over all day then took another crack at it. I scouted the exterior and found a good place to set up a defensive fight. I slept long enough so that I started the quest much earlier in the morning, and the set piece outside ran in the daylight. I slowly triggered the big finale, pulled back to my defenses, and managed to kill the “boss” and finish the quest.
I ran my ass back to the nearest shelter and slept immediately, saving my progress. It was a real sense of accomplishment. I highly recommend Survival Mode.
milspec
PS: My character is Toast from Mad Max:
