Bateau
4258
Nice. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Vault-Tec would be omitted from the SP so this is welcome news.
Can I ask you and @barstein (or is it @Bateau that is playing Survival mode right now like you) a bunch of questions? I’m trying to read your stuff but some of it is a bit spoilerish at times as I have skipped and jumpe all over in my questing. Not here’s a lot here so I hope you two don’t mind answering but I want is to be a super duper awesome experience :)
- Do you feel you have fewer options at start bcause things are so much more difficult. Like if you deviate from a focused weaponry path you’re doomed…
- Are settlement battles more fun and more stressful now? Or do they become impossible and a pain to maintain? Right now I LOVE the settlement gameplay but it is way too easy defending.
- Supplies. Is scarcity fun because of how survival mode works, or does it feel like a chore or job that is not fun? I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to come across some food and be like “Yippee I found a steak, party time tonight!”
- In my current game my strength and weight stuff is maxed out because I was annoyed at having to make too many trips back and forth to buildings I was clearing out. One of the worst was that car? factory you do early in the game. Because of playing on normal difficulty it was affordable to move perks into that, but obvusly that will not work in Survival mode. That being said, can you help me figure out how I can enjoy this part of the game without being a hoarder and still play the settlement part of the game?
- I’ve read a few different things that confuse me. I thought I’d read that Survival mode does not just turn enemies into bullet sponges and you into a frail bunny. But then I read something somewhere where they complained about this. Which way is it?
- Without giving too much away, what stats and perks would you suggest I go for early on? Like the very beginning and the first several exp levels?
- If you have a primary home settlement in your survival game, which settlement did you choose?
Thank you so much for your time in answering all these questions on Survival mode. I really appreciate it, especially since I plan on spending HUNDREDS of hours playing this.
Not playing actual Survival mode, jpinard, sorry. But (1) I am forcing myself to reload only when there’s a super good reason to do so (in every Bethesda game before now, I was constantly reloading to min-max every situation outcome and this forces me to accept the consequences of my decisions regardless, which feels so refreshingly authentic that I regret not trying this years ago. And (2) I try to pretend the Journal doesn’t exist.
Regarding carry weight, I assume you already know that companions can carry stuff and act as pack mules. Been working great for me so far with no points invested for that.
Bateau
4261
Not quite. I didn’t really invest into any weapon perks until level 10-15. You’re gated by level anyway and because of higher outgoing damage on Survival it’s not as crucial to level up those perks as it was on the old Survival mode (or other difficulties). That said, I quickly learned that I should postpone the eastward expeditions until I’m higher level.
I’ve only had a few settlement defense missions. The ones that I actually bothered to do were managable though, nothing tough.
This is debatable. Imo there are still to many resources in the game but on the other hand you can start running out of purified water relatively fast if you don’t set up supply chains or just feel like shooting up on Stimpak a bit too often. Food is quite common, fwiw - you’ll usually kill a some of the local fauna on your way to quest objectives and cook its meat at the first bonfire you find.
This depends on your playstyle. If you want to develop your settlements (and by develop I mean build actual houses and other large structures, not just the basics) then you could build a utility robot that can carry your loot around (requires Automatron dlc). If not then you’ll quickly learn just how little materials you actually need to get by. I played solo but I had the Lone Survivor perk which raised my carrying capacity by a lot - it felt just right. I returned to settlements every so often to have a good night of rest and that seemed to align well with my need to empty the backpacks.
Both damage dealt and damage received are quite significant, especially early on. If you plan your character well you’ll never run into a bullet sponge scenario (at least I never did and I got to level 80 or so).
Early in the game Sanctuary, later on Hangman’s Alley.
I wanted to respond to DB67 and say that YES I have gotten the penetrator perk and abused it with welcome abandon!
Jpinard – let me look that over and answer --though my bet is Bat and I agree and I have seen he’s answered --I will study it.
Oh I saw your last question: Hangman’s Alley for sure --centrally located. And running time is a premium – sub-bases at Jamaica Plain and … hmm – Cross Creek? cross something.
I found the hunger and thirst rates on survival to be way too fast and completely unrealistic. Also the damage for being over-encumbered was a huge issue. Fortunately there is a mod on nexus that allows you to tweak every element of survival to your liking. Without that, no way was survival going to be anything but a masochistic exercise in frustration for me.
Ankle you should have seen it in the first part of the beta – I was gulping water ever 15 minutes. Yeah it is probably extreme – and managing food for hunger for food for buffs is a pain. Also – the day night cycle just seems too fast --especially since you have to sleep 1 hour when you save.
That said: It is a lotta fun.
Let me echo one complaint that Bat has laid out above – Materiels – for crafting etc – just end up being too common. Not “lying around everywhere” common but – too common. I’d yank 60 percent of em if not more in my version of survival. I get short of adhesive, screws, and aluminum --occasionally – but --hey --that’s one factory away. Post-mortem will have that complaint.
For me, the added fun turned out to be taking away fast travel, and most of all, the modified damage values both received and given.
Unfortunately, although the rest to save mechanic seemed good on paper, it completely fell flat for me. I suppose the reason for this is that I like to push the edge in combat. I enjoy most overcoming extreme obstacles through tactical planning and using every resource available… Unfortunately, this also leads to a lot of trial and error and deaths until I get things right.
Taking away fast travel on the other hand led me to stick my nose into places I normally would not have, leading to those extreme encounters. Good stuff there! I think that Fallout 4 in general is just fun. My favorite genre is FPS with rpg elements like Deus Ex, System Shock, Bioshock et all, where you have multiple avenues to proceed. Fallout 4 takes that to an entire new level and is a huge achievement.
</meta>Having a bit of trouble exploding the core on the Dunwich Borers veteran raider’s power armor. Every VATS shot appears to be doing damage to the raider rather than to the core I’m targeting. What gives?
Oh and oddly, the Mysterious Stranger has also appeared twice during this fight and failed both times to score a hit. The first time he materialized inside the raider in a tangle of clipped bodies, so I just figured it was a rare bug until he failed again without any clipping.<meta>
db67
4267
@KristiGaines - Okay good. I completed my first play through in roughly 175 hours and after approx 355 hours of survival I’m level 81. I couldn’t remember which play through you’re on and there’s enough complexity that it’s almost impossible to judge the depth of someone’s experience with the game.
@jpinard - Here are the strategies I know of for being a hoarder in survival in the early part of the game:
- Lone Wanderer 1 or 2 with Dogmeat as your companion.
- Craft and wear multiple pieces of Pocketed or Deep Pocketed (Armorer level 1) armor.
- Get Piper and put her in a suit of power armor.
- Start building bots after starting the Automatron quest at level 15.
I started with a glass cannon sniper build and followed that progression to haul tons of junk back to Sanctuary as well as water and supplies for trading. Going for a Strength and Strong Back build didn’t fit with my sniping scientist build, but would with a melee build and could be added to that list if you don’t mind making the large skill point investment to get there.
I stopped using bots for the most part and swapped out companions to gain affinity with them to get their perks, but kept a ‘mule’ bot that I would use to clear out a location after my companion and I cleared it and brought our first load of stuff back to a settlement.
I’m not a fan of settlements given that there are enemy spawn points inside some of the settlement boundaries and without fast travel, it can be very difficult to get back in time when they come under attack.
So, while I have claimed almost all of the settlements, I am only focusing on Sanctuary, Hangman’s Alley, and the Castle while keeping the others as de-populated as possible.
Question about my “avoid quests” play approach: will I likely produce a weird, out-of-phase experience when later coming across and interacting with various characters? Specifically concerned about clearing the the Dunwich Borers area, which currently has no real context for me in the game since I simply wandered onto the scene.
Bateau
4269
Not in my experience. In fact I was able to complete quite a few radiant quests simply by telling the npc that I’ve already cleared the area before I met them. If the location has a non-radiant quest attached to it then you’ll likely trigger it no matter which party you speak to once you arrive there. And the location you talk about has no specific quests associated with it afaik.
This is one of the areas of the game where the script guy(s) really stayed on top of things imo.
Great, appreciated. That helps me feel secure in knowing that I’m mostly avoiding and minimizing awkwardly broken character- and quest-related issues.
Neglected to mention, I also also have to wonder about interacting with various features I find inside (for lack of a better description) “dungeons” such as circuit breakers, which in this case I’ve conservatively been avoiding contact with since (a) I don’t know anything about where this…er…cavern leads and (b) the choice of name for the area did not completely escape me. Guess I’ll just have to find out!
Yes, T-51 PBA. Well, 4 pieces of it at least. But a nice upgrade over the T-45 stuff. Still no mods to any armor though, not even paint jobs. But I’m only 15th level and I’ve been sticking around Diamond City for the most part.
I’ve been trying to run companion affinities before Fog Island – Just did Mcready – I am still going, have no fear.
Argggg! Sony and Bethesda need to get their crap sorted out so those of us playing on PS4 can have some mods!
To all - thank you so much for all your answers and advice! Now the final question is… To wait for the final DLC, Nuka World, which comes out in a month I think? Not sure I can wait that long…
Oghier
4274
The penultimate quest in this game: always missing the crafting components you need and having to go hunting for them. My settlements for more aluminum!!
That sounds cool but for those of us who don’t want to play as raiders, I’m left wondering what’s in it for us?
This is Fallout 4 we’re talking about. Being a raider is going to have as much meaningful roleplaying as being in the Minutemen, The Brotherhood, or The Church of Atom.
