There’s a save anyway mod that is worth getting rather than modding the difficulty. That way you’re still playing survival difficulty and having to plan, adapt and run like f*ck a lot, but you don’t have the rage quits from losing hours of play time. From what I remember, the mod gives you a drink bottle and every time you drink from it, the game saves, but it’s only a quick save, sleeping is still your main save method.
I got that, actually - the idea of playing a Bethesda game without manual saves is so stupid I didn’t even consider trying it, these things aren’t remotely stable enough for that. And yes, if running were an option that would work too, but scripted stuff is scripted stuff and apparently a death claw hit is instant death even in power armor.
It’s been a while, since I played the game at launch, but if your starting character had enough Endurance that he started with the perk to breathe underwater, there’s a few things you can find underwater near the opening town in the game. That made the game easier for me on Survival difficulty.
Soma
5224
IMO vanilla Fallout 4 survival is fine. It is supposed to be difficult starting out. Once you’ve started your own settlement and can grow enough food and purify enough water to more than survive, then it is time to explore and or do the main quest. The is still a risk of wandering too far from home and getting killed, but if you take it slow, and taking as much junk back to your settlement as possible for crafting, you will be fine.
That’s nice, but having been killed 3 times by the deathclaw in Concord it’s not fine for me.
It’s probably my own little psychosis, but from a roleplaying standpoint it makes too much sense to follow the main quest for a bit for me to just up and decide to ignore it. I’m assuming there will be a natural breakpoint somewhere.
Soma
5226
That probably will be the toughest fight in the next 20 hours. DeathClaw is melee only, so just kite it to death. Snipe from the rooftop and don’t jump down.
Wow, yeah, that Deathclaw fight is so hard. Being on the second floor didn’t help me much, the Deathclaw was tall enough to reach me and kill me constantly. It seemed impossible until I found a way to get on top of the tall townhall building, or whatever that is. But then I had the opposite problem in that roof is so high, it was hard for me to hit the deathclaw because the bullets had to travel so far, and he was constantly moving. But I got him eventually that way.
Edit: I don’t know what they were thinking putting a fight that hard so early in the game. They should have made it a weakened Deathclaw or something so it seemed less than impossible.
I mean, you do have power armor, but because of the spread on the minigun I can’t hit the deathclaw from the top of the building where I found it - I have no choice but to go down where it is and get clawed to death.
Well, that’s heartening. If I can just get past this maybe I’ll be fine, then.
Survival mode was patched in post-release, so they probably weren’t considering it at all.
Carto
5230
The Game Configuration Menu mod will let you change survival damage independent of the survival difficulty system.
There’s another mod, the author might be Flashy, that allows you to enable Survival options individually, regardless of difficulty level. I haven’t playtested that one, though, and the guys mods tend to do too much.
As for other mods, there’s the unofficial patch, Armor and Weapons Keywords, and Armorsmith. Rather than extra gun mods, I recommend a mod that integrates DLC weapon lists into the base game. If you think you’ll do a lot of settlement building or gun modding, there’s Immersive Scrapping and Less Resources series to make supplying your settlements easier. CVC Dead Wasteland offers lots of options for decorating settlements without the script overhead of Sim Settlements.
I’m on my phone now, but if you need help finding any of these I can post the links later.
Overall I feel like there are fewer critical mods for Fallout 4 than Skyrim.
Edit: there’s also a mod that lets you turn survival mode on and off, so you can disable it for the Deathclaw fight.
Eh, I played through that DLC many times in my runs through the game. It’s an acquired taste perhaps :).
Drugs. I used Psycho and Jet to just go full-on junkie on PCP mode.
@Carto Thank you for the list, that’s a big help! Would you recommend using the Nexus mod manager? I’d intended to keep this light (right now I just have the save-in-survival-mode mod and the pet-any-dog mod :)) but if I’m adding a few things I don’t want to end up with a load order problem.
I never think to use the drugs, you raise a great point.
Carto
5233
Honestly, I recommend the nexus mod manager (now vortex) or mod manager 2 just for ease of use.
There was a hardest difficulty setting in launch Fallout 4 called Survival. That’s the one I played. Later on it was patched to be a proper survival mode, not just Survival in name only. But on Survival difficulty at launch, that Deathclaw fight was way harder than anything else in the game I encountered in the 40 or so hours I played.
OK, I’ll have to spend a bit of time and get that rolling.
Probably wise to restart, too, isn’t it? Modding mid-game used to be a big no-no with these games.
Carto
5237
How badly do you want to re-fight that Deathclaw? ;) Removing mods mid-game is probably the bigger issue. I don’t think the unofficial patch or the other mods I mentioned here would require a new game. The ones to watch out for are mods that launch scripts at the start of the game or make changes to NPCs you’ve already encountered.
I should have said more with my initial mod manager recommendation. You can launch Vortex or MO2 from Nexus to download a mod, and then handle the installation, conflict detection, sorting, etc. all from the manager. So if you’re planning on installing more than a couple of mods or if you’ll need to mess with the order, it should save you time.
Here are links to my recommended mods:
Tweaks
Economy / Settlement
Quick note here: Wasteland Workshop & Contraptions add settlement items that need lots of scrap and/or caps, which you’ll have a hard time coming by in survival mode. These mods compensate by making settlement construction cheaper or scrap easier to come by.
Gameplay / Gear
Huge thanks for your effort in putting that list together. I’ll get modding!
Carto
5239
Happy to help! Let me know if you have any more questions.
Here’s a pro tip if you’re playing on survival mode. In the Game Configuration mod, there’s a menu called “NPCs” and a variable called “explosives cool down”, or something like that. Find that variable and double the cool down time. NPCs throw molotovs like crazy in survival.
Do any of these require the script extender or the like? I got them all through Vortex, installed, and enabled. Do I need to do anything else?
Carto
5241
Sorry, I forgot to mention the Mod Configuration Menu, which you need to configure mods like GCM. The MCM needs the script extender, but I’m not sure if anything else on your list does.
Once you’ve downloaded the script extender, you need to manually copy the files into your Fallout 4 folder and then add a shortcut for it to your mod manager.
