Hey all,

I have started playing Fallout 4 again after playing the first hour or so and putting the game down (as I did not enjoy it at the time, but I had a craving to try it again and feel I am enjoying it a lot more now). I have a few questions:

1). When I want to build items for the sanctuary/home area, do I need to have all the junk in my inventory? I want to build beds but keep finding I have not got anywhere near enough materials to make the items. I have stored all my junk in the machine/tool bench used to make furniture but it still says I have not got enough.

2). Is there any point carrying multiple of the same guns? I basically loot everything I can bar armour as its heavy to carry. Is there any way I can strip the guns down for parts or is this a waste of my time having all of the guns stored? Can I give them to the town people in the home area so they can defend themselves?

3). I have been dumping all my level up points into specific levels (so charisma as I wanted to be able to do all speech checks as soon as possible, but now, I am dumping what I get into the health level up stats). Is there something different I should be doing here as the chart is pretty massive and I am unclear on whether I need to start going down a level to upgrade my ability to pick locks etc? This may seem obvious but I am used to the Fallout 3 method of putting points into skills and then having a perk unlock every level or so that upgrades a specific skill. This new way has thrown me off somewhat.

If you have any tips please let me know.

Thank you.

1) materials can either be in your inventory or in the workbench. Workbenches can be linked with supply lines after you get the first level of the local leader perk and will allow all settlements to share resources once linked.

2) weapons can be given to settlers just by trading with them and pressing Y while it's highlighted in their inventory. Weapons can also be broken down in build mode, with better resources extractable with one of the ranks of the Scrapper perk.

3) the perk system is weird. Putting points into your SPECIAL stats unlocks what perks you can acquire relating to that stat, so for example, level 5 luck would let you get any of the first five perks relating to luck, with additional level requirements to rank up those specific perks.

In terms of how to build your character, just pick perks you like the sound of, rank up your SPECIAL if necessary and buy them. Fallout 4 in my opinion is not built in such a way that there's a wrong way to play it; it's fairly straightforward unless you get into the harder difficulties or survival mode.

I think you're where I was with Fallout 3, I could not get into that game at all. All I suggest is that you play the game how you want to play it. There aren't many restrictions, in a gameplay sense, so just do what you feel is the most fun.

1) No. Store all your junk in the station that you want to build in, no need to hold onto it. If you build in a new area, you will need to store your stuff in that station.

2) There's no point in keeping more than one of the same gun, unless you mod them to suit different situations. For example, you could have one combat rifle with a night vision scope and silencer, and another with iron sighs and a bayonet. Any weapons you don't want can be disassembled for parts at the weapons station in Sanctuary.

3) This is very much down to how you want to play. Essentially, there are two ways of doing this. The first way is to spread your points out across a load of different skills and have a variety perks - this means that you won't master any skill until you're at a very high level. The second way, and the way I do it, is to choose a few skills that very much suit your play style and put all of your points into these until you've mastered them. This second method also gives you a chance to learn how you like to play as you level your favourite skills, so once you've maxed them and move onto new skills, you'll have a good idea of which new skills you want to learn.

Basically, no one can really tell you how to play a game like this. It's about exploration, discovery and taste. You might get 20 hours in and decide you don't like the character you've created, you might get hooked on an aspect of the game that you didn't care about to begin with.

You do you.

As someone who gave up on Fallout 4, if I were to go back, I’d not help build out a single damned settlement.

They’re huge distractions that take from the main mission. I feel like they should have either been post-campaign content or a totally seperate game.

@nutter: There is no benefit to building a settlement. All you need is the workbench and somewhere to store your stuff.

I only started building when I'd finished the story and was bored of the repetitive side missions.

@the_greg: Agreed. It just appealed to me from an immersion perspective and proved to be the reason I moved on to something else.

I think making camps more easily protected and sustainable would help tremendously. As far as I played, all the defenses in the workd wouldn’t stop attacks entirely. I’d have stuck with it if having a dozen settlements didn’t mean a dozen places to routinely protect.

@nutter: on PC I got a mod that shows settlement attack spawn points and just built a buttload of turrets pointed at them. Doesn't resolve the notifications that say your settlements are under attack but it does make it way less time consuming dealing with attackers.

One of my favorite games, probably put in 400 hours into vanilla goty version. I agree with most of the stuff posters above wrote! Here's some tips:

In the workshop or in your pip-boy you can mark specific materials and then in the world during looting a little magnifying glass icon will show up next to an item if it has the material you want. (e.g you marked adhesive so a duct tape item will have that icon) Makes it easier to only pick up and find junk items that have the materials you want for crafting weapons for example.

Everything in your settlement is safe storage so it won;t despawn and you can safely put everything in the workshop it has nearly unlimited capacity.

You mentioned speech checks, you can quicksave even in the middle of the conversation so you can easily save-scum and reload if you fail one.

Settlements were a fun part of the game for me, but if you don't care about them then you can absolutely skip them, it's just an optional part of the game. There is a small quest in the main story with settlements but luckily the game will give you everything you need. There's a couple of settlement spots near rivers or sea that can be used as an insane money maker but that's more for end-game. The trick is to basically put as many water purifiers as you can, some turrets to defend them and empty the workshop. This will produce a ton of purified water which sells for some nice amount of caps. I had tens of thousands of caps every few hours with this method. Money isn't so hard to come by in this game but It was nice not having to worry about caps. I don't know if this was patched or not, it shouldn't since it's not a glitch, it's just using game systems to your advantage but it's probably the best method for money farming.

One of the best perks that can make the game a lot easier the further you're in are those that increase weapon damage, there's like 3 or 4 different ones that add 20,40,60% and so on to base dmg of a weapon type depending on the perk. There's one for pistols, non-automatic, automatics and something else.

The other essential perks are those for hacking and lockpicking since they will give you access to more resources and make exploration easier. Also there's no level cap so you can get every skill and perk there is but that takes a ton of time, likely hundreds of hours but there's no real way of making bad decisions so don't worry to much when picking perks.

F4 has a layer armour system. There are certain pieces of clothing, like your vault suit for example, that you can put other pieces of armor over. I pretty much often played through the game with my vault suit as the base and switched to different armor pieces as the game progresses so vault suit + leather armor set/metal and so on.

Other than that, just play however you want, there's no right or wrong way to play. The game has both fixed lvls for creatures and scaling. The further south you go on the map the stronger the enemies and every 9-10 or so levels the enemy type will change in order to scale a bit to your level (so on lvl 1 you might meet a raider newbie let's call him and on lvl 20 you might meet raider veteran and so on)

And final note, you can change the difficulty at any time, even in the middle of combat. Difficulty however affects the spawn chances of so-called "legendary enemies" with a star next to their name that drop random special loot, for example a weapon that needs no reloading, armor piece that adds to your stats and plenty other random useful or just silly modifiers. On the easiest they can still spawn but the higher the difficulty the more chances such creature variants will spawn.

Play the game! And use the console command for adding screws not worth hoarding for those buggers.

@soulcake: my bugbear was ceramic but this is solid advice.

2. If your settlement comes under attack the settlers will equip the weapons you've placed in the workshop.

3. You don't have to start at level 1 on the perk chart and work your way down to the perk you actually want. You can spend your perk points on any perk on any level as long as you have the right SPECIAL.

@dekkadekkadekka: I’m impressed the game accurately simulates attacks. I figured it was much more soup-to-nuts RNG sort of stuff.

The combat is night and day, when compared to Fallout 3.

@dudeglove: There is no weapon degradation in Fallout 4.

OP: I feel like people have pretty adequately answered your question and given you solid advice. If you haven't started (or are not very far) you might want to consider looking at the perks list and figuring out which perks you are going to want and then build your character so that you can get those perks. Also I highly recommend turning up the difficulty as the base difficulty of the game is really easy. Either way I hope you enjoy the game. It is really good.

@nutter: oh it absolutely is pseudo-rng stuff....if you don't go there to deal with it. If you go there the turrets will typically deal with the threat in seconds and you can get on with your life.

Thank you all for the tips and advice, it's appreciated. One more question, does ammo come about easier the longer you play? I lack .308 ammo and have not found any on enemies or ammo boxes in over an hour of play in the outskirts of the city. Thanks.

Yes, definitely, .308 is one of those types that's more common a bit further into the game. There are merchants in some towns that also sell it of course. Generally though, the higher your level and the further into the game you are you're definitely gonna find more different ammo both on enemies and while looting.

@johnlocke: Also make sure to pick the Scrounger perk as that will increase the amount of ammo you find.

Most people have chimed in with good advice, but I've been playing the game at the moment (still love it) and thought I'd chip in some extra advice:

• If you want to maximise profit, you need to understand value-per-pound (pound just being 1 point of encumbrance), which is a simple formula of (item value)/(item weight). It's tempting to carry around tons of looted guns, but in the early game the guns you find on bodies are worth very little and weigh quite a lot. There are, however, tons of places that are full of very good VPP items right from the going. For example, a vanilla Double-Barrel Shotgun, a Raider favourite, has a value of 39 caps and weighs 9, so it has a VPP of 4.33. A pack of cigarettes, on the other hand, has a value of 12 and weighs 0.1, a VPP of 120 caps! So if inventory is a problem, ditch the guns, save the duct tape, cigarettes, cigar boxes, Nuka-Cola (especially Quantum), drugs, etc. If you're having a problem with ammo, having plenty of caps in your pocket is a great help, especially when you get to Diamond City and can buy from Arturo.
• Weapon and armour mods are very powerful and useful. If you find a weapon with a good mod on it, you can extract the mod from the weapon by using a workbench - just go into the slot with the good mod and replace it with the cheapest option in that slot. The useful mod will now be in your inventory, and can either be stored or applied to a weapon you're using. If you're not going to put points into Intelligence or perks into crafting, it's a good way of making sure you get the best out of your equipment.
• Getting the most out of settlements does require an investment in perks, especially Local Leader. You can create supply lines at lv. 1, which means you don't have to lug useful materials around until you get back to base. Supply lines also means that settlements will share food and water, meaning you don't have to fill every settlement you want to build up with crops and pumps. Lv. 2 gives the ability to make workstations, which is very important as many settlements don't have all of them, and the ability to build stores, which gives you more places to sell scrap and loot. Be mindful of one thing, though: for some reason, if you sell goods at stores in one settlement, then travel to another without much time passing, the stores at the second settlement won't have any money, and you can see the items you sold at the last settlement in their inventory. It's persistent, basically.
• Try to generate more food and water than you need across your settlements. Corn, mutfruit, tato, and purified water can be combined at a cooking station to create vegetable starch, which produces adhesive x5. Any extra resources a settlement generates is added to the workshop at regular intervals, so it doesn't go to waste. A supply of purified water can also be used as a healing item if you're short on stimpaks.
• Dogmeat can be equipped with welding goggles. I don't think he gets much use from the extra perception, but it makes him look like a dork and is hilarious. More useful equippables include dog armour and bandanas.
• Putting perks into lockpicking is more useful than putting perks into hacking. Somebody ran the numbers on the total number of locks versus terminals in the game, and locks outstrip terminals by a fair way.

Funny thing about the crafting system in Fallout 4: Being just charismatic enough to have the two levels of Local Leader will make building settlements significant;y less of a pain in the ass by making some of your settlers as supply lines from one area to another. Not usually my style to play as a merchant since I prefer the stealthy sniper approach I took in Fallout 3 since I eventually learned about some alternate dialogue options that were as effective as being charismatic. But I like playing with my legos in 4 and have been doing so for over 800 hours on PC, so the game forces me to get the crafting oriented perks for ballistic weapons, melee weapons, and armor crafting/modding under strength, and energy weapon crafting/modding under inelegance.

Also, fuck Dogmeat for life. He got me killed by trapping me next to a landmine I couldn't deactivate in time. So if companions are your thing, get yourself a human or Codsworth ASAP.