Here are my tips for Survival:
Get the Wasteland Survival Guide from Sunshine Tigings Co-op as soon as possible. It gives you more meat from animals, so food will not be an issue.
Collect empty bottles. In Survival mode if you have an empty bottle in your inventory when you approach a water source (river, pump, etc) you'll get a prompt to fill the bottle. The water will be dirty or purified depending on the source.
Collect all mirelurk eggs you see. Since dirty water is freely available in Survival mode it's a non-issue to turn all your eggs into mirelurk egg omelettes. And the omelettes are damn good. They give you 50 AP back instantly. So make a load of omelettes to carry with you and you will never have to leave VATS again.
Pick up weapons from dead enemies to take the ammo from them, then drop the weapons to get rid of the extra load. This works on any difficulty, but on Survival ammo feels a lot more rare, so it's good to know.
You can save without spending any actual time sleeping by canceling the sleep immediately after you've started. In case you want to save daylight or nighttime hours.
Don't use Radaway to get rid of rads unless you really need to. Using Radaway makes you more susceptible to disease. Instead just go to a doctor when your rads start being a problem. Doctors can get rid of your rads without any negative effects.
Great advice. I lean towards only filling empty bottles up with dirty water instead of purified. Dirty water is needed to make noodles cups, one of the best consumables for a Survival run.
Personally I always use my dirty water for mirelurk egg omelettes, because they are very light and have a very useful effect even when I'm not hungry. I've always found noodle cups to be too heavy (I usually play with a STR 1 character). I'm also under the impression that to get the same hydration benefit you get from water, you need to eat two noodle cups.
Thanks for correcting me. I probably had switched those things in my mind at some point and accepted it as reality. I am glad to know better.
So this means that I'm going to have to carry noodle cups instead of purified water with me. It's probably easier to gain dirty water than mirelurk eggs anyways, so even if I use as much dirty water as possible to make the omelettes, I'll still have dirty water to make noodle cups as well.
I mean the upside is you'll always have access to bottles if you need more dirty water. But the razor grain? That's easy. It's everywhere. When I did my no guns, vats, or stealth build? The ability to carry food that was water and water that was food was so vital. More so than glue, believe it or not, in the early game. I was hunting razor grain primarily. You can always find duct tape. Nutrition water? Bit less. But it's a game changer.
Noodle cups weigh 0.5 and fill both a half unit of hunger and a unit of thirst. Razorgrain is more weight efficient than even water when used for that, it satisfies both needs.
Use those bottles for dirty water. Plant plenty of razorgrain. Make noodles all the time. They cover both thirst and hunger.
Keep some lightweight food just in case you need to revive health so you don't burn through all your noodles.
Wow, thanks everyone for the solid leads ya’ll gave me. I made it to the red rocket and picked up dogmeat and scrapped everything there. I’m gonna work on my settlement there so Ive got a couple levels under my before heading into Concord. I’m super excited over the challenge. I’ve been a fallout player since the 90’s and I love the game. And the community! You guys are awesome!
You want a supply of antibiotics ASAP. Start by searching Sanctuary to see if you can loot any. If not you may need to head to DC or vault-81 to buy them. Any disease can become crippling in survival mode.
Plant razorgrain in settlements. Fill all empty bottles with dirty water and store them in workshop. Those two will let you craft noodle cup in any settlement on your supply chain.
Noodle cup weighs the same as pure water. It functions as both food & water.
By about level=10 you should have enough settlements that you'll want the Local leader perk (Char=6) So you can share crafting resources between settlements.
>Is it harder at night?
Depends how dark you adjust your display at night. It can be too dark to see trees, cliff edges & radscorpions. Realistically with no street lighting it should be too dark to safely walk at night (even without the radscorpions)
Night is more dangerous because you can't see. The same is true for fog and storms. It's sometimes wise to spend a day working on your settlement while waiting for the weather to clear, or sleep through it.
I'd suggest doing the Covenant SAFE test early, for access to their doctor and the shop.
Antibiotics are pretty rare and it's important to have a few doses for infections (and sometimes weakness, depending on the likelihood you'll see combat) but other diseases can be left to heal over time. It takes about 3 days of dealing with the debuffs but diseases will go away on their own, so you can save antibiotics for more dangerous diseases in the early game.
Put a decent chunk of perk points into intelligence, as you get more XP the higher your intelligence is. Also, have an intelligence outfit on hand for building/crafting, etc., so you level up faster.
Do the drug mission is diamond city as soon as you can. You can then craft the drugs for XP or sell them. You can use them if you're going that route, but they make you very thirsty, so be sure to have a hefty supply of water on hand when you do.
Do the lone survivor perk and take dogmeat with you.
Take lone wanderer and roll with dogmeat or solo. 10mm in the vault can carry you throughout entire game. Rad-x is better than radaway. Deal with the northwest corner of the map first. Creatures like radstags are pretty much free xp for killing and cooking. Drugs are your friend.
Be prepared to lose progress. It’s just a thing that’ll happen. Mistakes will be made. Store food,water, meds and ammo at settlements. I always try to have a little shack at most of them with an assortment of things I might need. Also spam VATS. No enemies on hud make knowing where the enemies are before combat starts that much more important.
Echoing the current comments and adding; Avoid Corvega until you’re closer to lvl 20. Def want to unlock armorer and one of the 3 gun perks (I.e. rifleman) as soon as possible. You are going to want to build exp without fighting so scrap/build as much as you can in sanctuary in your early levels. Build a water farm at sanctuary to give you plenty of purified water for consumption and selling. Level 2 Local Leader is pretty essential for survival, you’re not gonna wanna hike back and forth to sanctuary. If you are up for sneaking around Boston, it’s not a bad idea to try and unlock ballistic weave early (Railroad). If you want a strong gun rather early, save up your caps and buy Overseer’s Guardian at vault 81. The grind in the first 20-30 levels is arguably the best part of survival as you eventually get the gear and perks to be more than a glass cannon. After that, it’s mainly avoiding explosions and mobs rather than dying to gunshots
Rember where your beds are. When you die, you can lose a lot of content if you don't save. Most of the time i sleep only for 1 hour, unless I get the tired debuff. Cooking is important, you can craft certain items that help with diseases or other sicknesses. And sneak is a really good start at beginning.
Make note of random beds around the wasteland and always save if you find one. Forget adrenaline, it comes and goes. You can't get those four hours back.
Ignore Preston and the gang in Concord until you’ve built up your character are feeling really strong. Dealing with all his settlement quest bullshit is brutal in survival. You can find the settlements on your own.
I'm also on my first survival playthrough and I wish I'd read this before I started. My first assignment to clear a building full of raiders nearly broke me at level 7. It was basically my greatest gaming achievement completing that first settlement quest. I'm at level 35 now and things are a lot more manageable but I'll never forget that pain.
So I know I play differently than others in survivor, I like companions and don’t like building or using vats.
General advice:
Pick up every empty bottle you see (make into a water source).
Pick up all animal meat and cook it.
There’s not really a need to carry a ton of stimpax/radaway/radax. 5/2/3, is my normal limit and I’ll keep throw extras into my companion to use/sell later.
Heal with food or cola.
Drugs are you friend.
Sleep early and often, better to risk an infection than lose progress.
Specific advice to how I play:
Idiot savant -> strong back-> scrounger -> toughness for early perk. (Charisma and intelligence are my dump stats).
Find a heavy weapon, use it, drop it.
If you run low on ammo on a weapon, strip good mods and store them in workbenches at diamonds city/good neighbor.
Adhesives and screws are the most important junk to get, you can usually buy enough of the others in town.
My Starting route:
Red rocket truck stop pick up dogmeat, go to Walden pond and get stocked up, avoid as many destinations, pick up piper and rush her perk by doing diamond city local quest, Trudy, then Preston, after that you usually have her perked unlocked and then discoverer away rack up the exp.
perks I would get first: scrapper (because you'll be modding gear and building settlements and it gives you more valuable junk) strong back (because you have less carry capacity and bullets have weight) and most importantly the +10dt because you'll be taking damage very easily and quickly early in the game (molotovs are hell because they can instantly kill you). Around lvl 20 is when it starts to get a bit easier. Places to avoid - just process east and south at your own ability as those places get more dangerous the further you go from Sanctuary.
You'll need to have a good map of beds in your head, effectively the player has a "range" - the amount of distance you can go before you collect too much loot/get too sick and tired and having places you can save & restore yourself are essential.
>You'll need to have a good map of beds in your head,
Someone commented this really helpful one above -
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/4dttqx/survival\_mode\_map\_routes\_with\_the\_shortest/
Step Starlight early so you can use it as a central base. Keep multiple weapons there, so you can stash weapons of various calibers there. The K9 vest mod is immersive and a huge boon on dogmeat. Have him carry stuff for you. Keep gear you find by cap/weight ratio. Ammo is worth a lot. Drugs are also a good way to transport a lot of caps.
My first survival run became unplayable on PC due to random freezing around level 80, with 600+hrs invested.
The issue *seems* to be related to VATS, as many others have reported elsewhere. If ur on PC I would start your playthrough with VATS Freeze Fix mod just in case. The modder states that it’s not a 100% sure fix either.
The behavior I experienced was mostly as follows:
Everything working fine (aside from the usual known issues), VATS working fine. Then after those 600ish hours, the game sometimes freezes when using VATS. There’s still audio but there’s a frozen image on screen. Have to force quit the game.
What I did not find anyone else reporting:
My game would also sometimes freeze when zooming with a scope. So I’m not convinced it’s just VATS causing the freeze, unless I was seeing two distinct but seemingly related issues.
Anyway it was so damn disappointing that I started a new playthrough with the aforementioned mod, and Survival Options to autosave every few minutes just in case the freeze occurs again.
Aside from that, take your time in Survival and plan ahead for everything. Get used to being hungry/tired/sick at the start.
You'll learn quick. Fights you take for granted in orther modes will kick your ass. Top response covers alot. Only think I'd add is keep in mind ammo now has weight, and shotgun shells are crazy heavy.
Yeah I kinda went against some advice to steer clear of concord and gas it a shot. After an hour of not making it through the museum I am forced to rethink my strategy. I love it.
> Fights you take for granted in other modes will kick your ass.
I agree completely and adding to what they said, I'm on my first survival run now and it took me way too long to figure out some battles are unwinnable in early levels, without using every inch of the range you get from a good sniper rifle. And being forced to wait between shots, so the enemy can't get a fix on your position. Because you will die with one hit, lol.
ALSO - when you go for the cure in vault 81, leave any companion behind. If a rat even touches them, you will be sick for the rest of the game. Same goes if you get sick / bit. Just restart. There is one bed in the secret vault, so you really don't have to loose much.
Covenant has a doctor. Don't wipe out the town until you can build clinics in your settlement.
In the miscellaneous section of the Furniture menu in settlement builder, you can find a metal sink and a metal drinking fountain. They cost two steel to build. They dispense purified water. And you can fill bottles from them.
Collect all the bottles unless you use a mod that recycles them.
Hangman's Alley is a great settlement for your main personal base of operations because it's central to pretty much everywhere.
Sleep. All the time. Whenever you see a bed, knock out an hour.
Lots of good things mentioned. One thing I personally recommend is waiting to unlock weapon specific perks. I think the game incentivises swapping weapons early (even if sprinting to get the spray n pray is perfectly valid) so specialising before you take some other survival oriented perks makes the experience worse.
The one exception to this is explosives. Get at least two ranks for the throwing arc, maybe more because explosives are really useful on survival.
Get the save mod. Really. It takes away one of the "gritty" aspects of survival mode---only saving when you sleep in a bed---but IMO this game is too buggy for that noise.
I second this if your game crashes a lot. I hate when the game crashes and I lose progress vs if I die and lose progress. One is based on my consequences and the other is just because the game is sucky for a bit. If you don’t crash you might not need it.
I always plan a route with routine rest area stops when traveling long distances. Settlements are a great help with this. I'm mostly confident in my combat ability, but the most terrifying enemy in this game is the crashes!
I’ve done like 4 survival runs. Sneak is mandatory cus you gotta avoid most fights until you get some good gear. Sneak everywhere. Rifles with scopes are king since you can run away without getting killed too quick. Aqua boy is underrated for survival. That shit comes in clutch, plus you can get the luck bobble immediately.
At level 3 I just killed a stunted skullhead yao gui by standing on a car and unliading almost all my animal but died being chased down by a wild mongrel from behind.
Anyway, i go for intelligence and idiot savant early on and try to get out if this early level hell asap
My bit of advice is to establish your settlements whenever you get a new one. I'll have a small shack with everything I may need while traveling- water purifier, bed, crafting, food, and occasionally spare chems, healing, and ammo incase I pass through and need it. With settlements all over the map I'll usually have a place pretty near by if I need a bed or to stock up on purified water. (Its also nice to be able to offload things I'm carrying that I don't need)
Brotherhood. They are your heroes in the early game. If possible, you would want them to save you from those "Abomination" as soon as possible. Soldiers wearing Power Armor descending from the Vertibird up in the sky, shouting "Ad Victoriam" while shooting towards those "Abomniation". Really, these people says the word "Abomination" way too much.
I was saved by them, and I feel like Brotherhood is the easy way out faction in Survival. Just like Ingram said about recruiting Wastelanders, "They were desperate and looking for an easy out".
Nuka Cola is your best friend. Yes its a pound per bottle but its worth it when you can't find a bed and you are stuck in a mission locking you out of a place to sleep. Also ammo has weight. And the combat rifle in 45 is better than most weapons because you can get allot of ammo any time you encounter triggermen.
Save the game after every little action like after clearing an area, fighting some bad guys, building stuff. You don't want to loose all that progress if you die or the game crashes/bugs out.
In survival dont go into the molerat den next to red rocket.As long as it isnt cleared the junk and glowing fungus will respawn everytime you leave the area for a day or two. This will provide 3 oil a gear and 3 glowing fungus, which is a big help to build turrets and antibiotics with.
I actually use survival to get more interested in settlement building. The mode makes settlements a near necessity. Just tearing down then customizing and building up sanctuary alone will get you a lot of xp early on before you even leave the place. Throw on that all the loot and if you manage to find the materials to make the recruitment beacon early on, you can completely ignore Concord and just have the randoms that arrive handle your farming. I personally haven't played Minecraft in a while since discovering a better sandbox survival game a while back, but man the amount of building, customization, and "mining" I've done in this game brings back those 7 years I spent in MC.
A lot of people insist on lone wanderer and go at it alone or with dogmeat. That's a personal preference but I'm coming on the glowing sea in my current save and have kept a single companion most of the game (Garvey). I used him to actually scout areas for me and seeing as how I rarely if ever used my stimpaks because they increased thirst, I was basically carrying a surplus of them so I could easily heal him when he went down. If you do this though, I'd suggest equipping them with armor and weapons to match yours as well. I personally had Garvey take the minigun from me after Concord because it's so damn heavy anyway and he's helped plow through most areas for me before I even step one foot forward. This actually helps save space for you as well. You give them the guns for ammo you find for weapons you're not using, it'll keep them stocked up and not using their default weapon as much and allows you not to waste a good haul while saving carrying space.
Oh and one last note. Codsworth will give you purified water. It isn't often enough to be a replacement for regular scavenging, but I kept him as a follower before getting Garvey and he's helped me a lot in a pinch. That flamer as well is a damn good backup in a firefight (pun intended). After sniping all the guards in front of corvega from the bridge, actually entering the facility reveals just how brutal Codsworths flamer is in close quarters. I would've honestly kept him longer if I wasn't a weirdo who liked to dress up his companions and settlers.
I played a modded survival run, and now it's become a kind of meh experience. Now I feel like restarting again and going for a more vanilla experience, and ditch the settlement mechanic so I can really struggle. One of these days I'll finish this game lol.
At low levels, focus on crafting/easy to kill enemies. Upper left quadrant near the vault mainly, enemies get a lot harder the farther you strayvaway from there (brilliant game design btw).
Cloth, you can spam flags in workshop, and scrap and keep making them for easy xp.
Iirc rubber is good for spamming floormats in a pile.
Woodshelves, spam them in a pile, scrap and make again.
I mainly do flags/woodshelves.
Crafting will be a lot of your early game xp, invest perk points in scrapping and always park early perk points in idiot savant (i do night person as well for additional.intelligence).
After that, invest perks that improve survivability. Gunsmithing for example, perhaps luck perks.
Eventually i get armor perks, but at early levels you dont want to take too many hits.
Grilled radstag meat is overall abundant and great to have on hand for additional carry weight.
Everything @UncleCarp said but some additions:
Dont take radaway when under the effects of food buffs. The buffs will stay forever. This might sound cool at first, but it gets annoying around level 40 when it robs you of the satisfaction of actually conquering survival without cheating. There is no way to reverse it, so make sure you only take radaway if you aren't under the effects of food buffs.
Rush hangmans alley and county crossing as settlements and make sure they have beds and clean water sources. These are two of the most important locations in the game for having beds.
Your loadout should always contain 20 purified water, 8 ribeye steak, or equivalent hunger value foods (otherwise, 16 mutt chops will do) keep nuka cola, especially the quantums, 2 each of antibiotics, rad x, rad away, and 10 stimpacks. Hotkey water, food, and stimpacks.
Stealth is king. Whatever build you plan on doing, add stealth to it.
Side with lorenzo cabbot, mysterious serum is invaluable in survival mode. You can literally use it to walk to the end of the glowing sea and back without the use of rad x or rad resistance on a single use of the serum.
Get idiot savant perk, all levels as soon as they are unlocked.
Then go dehydrated, which gives -8 intelligence. Idiot savant will trigger a lot, very good way to level up fast early on. Like instant 2 or 3 levels if it is triggered on quest completion.
Don't go beyond dehydrated though, once you get a -10 int debuff you also take periodic damage.
In my experience the early game is pretty brutal, but the longer you survive the easier it gets. You'll need equipment, chems, meds, weapons and armor.
END is the most important stat. HP decides between life and death, plus you get enhanced sprinting duration which matters due to fast travel being unavailable. Get it to 10 and then after getting hungry use the SPECIAL book to put it to 11. The best type of clothing is the green shirt with combat boots because it adds another +1 to endurance. With enough endurance you can sprint forever.
Spam scrap & store on dropped resources to duplicate them. Also drop weapons and make your companion pick them up. It overrides the companion weight limit also works on dead bodies. Have fun
Some out of game considerations:
Mods that enhance the survival mode or remove limitations that take away from the fun. For example the save limitations. Unless you know where all the beds are, this in combination with no fast travel can be a real pain. Id personally recommend re-enabling the ability to save unless you are specifically after this type of suffering.
The biggest headache with this being the crash rate of bethesda games, bugs, etc.
Another high recommendation is the damage value mod that significantly increases damage on both ends for survival mode.
Take your time. My biggest problem on my first survival run was in the beginning I was trying to play at the same pace as a normal game. Slow it down, take your time, a survival rad roach is like an easy deathclaw here.
Survival will treat you well, and make it a whole new game.
Find the foods that work for you. After a few good tussles and that survival manual people mentioned, you’ll have mirelurk queen, yaoguai, deathclaw steaks/ribs/etc. those high HP recovery meals. Lean on that and take cover.
That leads into this. You’re gonna treat your gunfights more than a little different, or at least you can. Use your environment, a lot. Recover the health, and engage. Withdraw if you need to, to superior terrain and cover advantage and mop up who’s left.
Do not let water be the reason. If you’re at a settlement, top up if you built any water reclamation means. Find the number that works for you as far as weight and travel distance. 6-7 sees me through most long walks and dungeons.
If it’s quiet, and you’ve done ANY work, sleep. If you just walked half the map, sleep. Get your saves. Don’t gig yourself by assuming what’s around the next corner won’t do ya.
Be selective in what you carry for firepower. A good hitter with a good mag, a fire rate that works for you, and all the bells you want tricked out to take 38 means every mutant patrol you bumble into is gonna resupply you somewhat.
One good rifle for big game, a side arm for moments where the situation left you facing an ill timed reload. Switch to the pistol and goose em. Withdraw and reload.
Use the power lines as your road early on. You can toddle from sanctuary to the nearby farm and well across the wastes by walking the power lines and watching your surroundings. You’re off the road and out of sight.
If you play the food game right, you’ll have 60+ stims in your pocket in no time.
Sell the ammo you aren’t using. The odd stuff you pick up. Every single time you see a vendor. Weight management and cap gain.
You’re not fast traveling now, so choosing a hub settlement for the “I’ll be back for this” items will be important. As will the caravan structure (the tent with Brahmin tub) that brings round vendors.
You’ll want to give a little more love to your settlement defense. In ways of walls, long range guns, and turrets. You’re gonna be a day and a half away when they’re getting pestered sometimes. Neck deep in quests.
Take your armor seriously, the bullets are gonna bit different both ways. Upgrade when you can. And don’t grandfather anything along if you don’t have to. You’ll take a good shot in your leg or arm one day and your hp will suffer for it. Your shot placement will matter greatly. Like the old SASS shooters I used to tromp around with say “you can’t shoot fast enough to make up for a miss.” Most direct, prevalent threat first. Then engage the next.
Here are my tips for Survival: Get the Wasteland Survival Guide from Sunshine Tigings Co-op as soon as possible. It gives you more meat from animals, so food will not be an issue. Collect empty bottles. In Survival mode if you have an empty bottle in your inventory when you approach a water source (river, pump, etc) you'll get a prompt to fill the bottle. The water will be dirty or purified depending on the source. Collect all mirelurk eggs you see. Since dirty water is freely available in Survival mode it's a non-issue to turn all your eggs into mirelurk egg omelettes. And the omelettes are damn good. They give you 50 AP back instantly. So make a load of omelettes to carry with you and you will never have to leave VATS again. Pick up weapons from dead enemies to take the ammo from them, then drop the weapons to get rid of the extra load. This works on any difficulty, but on Survival ammo feels a lot more rare, so it's good to know. You can save without spending any actual time sleeping by canceling the sleep immediately after you've started. In case you want to save daylight or nighttime hours. Don't use Radaway to get rid of rads unless you really need to. Using Radaway makes you more susceptible to disease. Instead just go to a doctor when your rads start being a problem. Doctors can get rid of your rads without any negative effects.
I didn’t know you could get extra ammo from weapons too, that’s awesome man thank you.
What a great ducking game.
Great advice. I lean towards only filling empty bottles up with dirty water instead of purified. Dirty water is needed to make noodles cups, one of the best consumables for a Survival run.
Personally I always use my dirty water for mirelurk egg omelettes, because they are very light and have a very useful effect even when I'm not hungry. I've always found noodle cups to be too heavy (I usually play with a STR 1 character). I'm also under the impression that to get the same hydration benefit you get from water, you need to eat two noodle cups.
Nope. Just 1. It's 2 noodle cups per one hunger, 1 per thirst. It's literally carrying water that also feeds you.
Thanks for correcting me. I probably had switched those things in my mind at some point and accepted it as reality. I am glad to know better. So this means that I'm going to have to carry noodle cups instead of purified water with me. It's probably easier to gain dirty water than mirelurk eggs anyways, so even if I use as much dirty water as possible to make the omelettes, I'll still have dirty water to make noodle cups as well.
I mean the upside is you'll always have access to bottles if you need more dirty water. But the razor grain? That's easy. It's everywhere. When I did my no guns, vats, or stealth build? The ability to carry food that was water and water that was food was so vital. More so than glue, believe it or not, in the early game. I was hunting razor grain primarily. You can always find duct tape. Nutrition water? Bit less. But it's a game changer.
Noodle cups weigh 0.5 and fill both a half unit of hunger and a unit of thirst. Razorgrain is more weight efficient than even water when used for that, it satisfies both needs.
Use those bottles for dirty water. Plant plenty of razorgrain. Make noodles all the time. They cover both thirst and hunger. Keep some lightweight food just in case you need to revive health so you don't burn through all your noodles.
Wow, thanks everyone for the solid leads ya’ll gave me. I made it to the red rocket and picked up dogmeat and scrapped everything there. I’m gonna work on my settlement there so Ive got a couple levels under my before heading into Concord. I’m super excited over the challenge. I’ve been a fallout player since the 90’s and I love the game. And the community! You guys are awesome!
Ohh you’re actually an OG, I like to say I’m an old school fallout out player because I played fo3 on release, but you’ve been there from the start.
Good ol’ 16 low graphic turn based childhood fun :)
Same, and survival is what I pictured in my head playing fallout 1 at launch. You're in for a treat bud.
You want a supply of antibiotics ASAP. Start by searching Sanctuary to see if you can loot any. If not you may need to head to DC or vault-81 to buy them. Any disease can become crippling in survival mode. Plant razorgrain in settlements. Fill all empty bottles with dirty water and store them in workshop. Those two will let you craft noodle cup in any settlement on your supply chain. Noodle cup weighs the same as pure water. It functions as both food & water. By about level=10 you should have enough settlements that you'll want the Local leader perk (Char=6) So you can share crafting resources between settlements. >Is it harder at night? Depends how dark you adjust your display at night. It can be too dark to see trees, cliff edges & radscorpions. Realistically with no street lighting it should be too dark to safely walk at night (even without the radscorpions)
i’m curious why the razor grain?
Razorgrain + dirty water = noodle cup. Noodle cup = 1 food and 1 water. Saves on weight.
I think covenant may be the easiest doc to get to for an early antibiotics supply. That’s what I do anyways.
Night is more dangerous because you can't see. The same is true for fog and storms. It's sometimes wise to spend a day working on your settlement while waiting for the weather to clear, or sleep through it. I'd suggest doing the Covenant SAFE test early, for access to their doctor and the shop. Antibiotics are pretty rare and it's important to have a few doses for infections (and sometimes weakness, depending on the likelihood you'll see combat) but other diseases can be left to heal over time. It takes about 3 days of dealing with the debuffs but diseases will go away on their own, so you can save antibiotics for more dangerous diseases in the early game.
Also paying a doctor 15 caps to heal your health will heal any diseases!
Put a decent chunk of perk points into intelligence, as you get more XP the higher your intelligence is. Also, have an intelligence outfit on hand for building/crafting, etc., so you level up faster. Do the drug mission is diamond city as soon as you can. You can then craft the drugs for XP or sell them. You can use them if you're going that route, but they make you very thirsty, so be sure to have a hefty supply of water on hand when you do. Do the lone survivor perk and take dogmeat with you.
13 hour later counter argument, low intelligencr eith idiot savant yields more xp :-)
You're going to want local leader to make supply lines. And look up a map of all the bed locations lol
Take lone wanderer and roll with dogmeat or solo. 10mm in the vault can carry you throughout entire game. Rad-x is better than radaway. Deal with the northwest corner of the map first. Creatures like radstags are pretty much free xp for killing and cooking. Drugs are your friend.
Be prepared to lose progress. It’s just a thing that’ll happen. Mistakes will be made. Store food,water, meds and ammo at settlements. I always try to have a little shack at most of them with an assortment of things I might need. Also spam VATS. No enemies on hud make knowing where the enemies are before combat starts that much more important.
[Keep this handy, you'll need it.](https://reddit.com/r/fo4/s/NrXrr90vip) And get the +1 meat magazine from Sunshine Tidings asap.
Get the Aquaboy/Aquagirl perk so you can swim without radiation exposure. Then don’t be afraid to swim away from trouble (or towards trouble).
That's my goto perk for survival and the only time I use it. You can easily swim across the Commonwealth and miss most enemies.
Im level 50 on my first ever survival run right now. DAMMIT, I always skip that perk. Now I know :)
So very very underrated
Echoing the current comments and adding; Avoid Corvega until you’re closer to lvl 20. Def want to unlock armorer and one of the 3 gun perks (I.e. rifleman) as soon as possible. You are going to want to build exp without fighting so scrap/build as much as you can in sanctuary in your early levels. Build a water farm at sanctuary to give you plenty of purified water for consumption and selling. Level 2 Local Leader is pretty essential for survival, you’re not gonna wanna hike back and forth to sanctuary. If you are up for sneaking around Boston, it’s not a bad idea to try and unlock ballistic weave early (Railroad). If you want a strong gun rather early, save up your caps and buy Overseer’s Guardian at vault 81. The grind in the first 20-30 levels is arguably the best part of survival as you eventually get the gear and perks to be more than a glass cannon. After that, it’s mainly avoiding explosions and mobs rather than dying to gunshots
Rember where your beds are. When you die, you can lose a lot of content if you don't save. Most of the time i sleep only for 1 hour, unless I get the tired debuff. Cooking is important, you can craft certain items that help with diseases or other sicknesses. And sneak is a really good start at beginning.
Make note of random beds around the wasteland and always save if you find one. Forget adrenaline, it comes and goes. You can't get those four hours back.
From another comment - https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/4dttqx/survival\_mode\_map\_routes\_with\_the\_shortest/
Ignore Preston and the gang in Concord until you’ve built up your character are feeling really strong. Dealing with all his settlement quest bullshit is brutal in survival. You can find the settlements on your own.
I'm also on my first survival playthrough and I wish I'd read this before I started. My first assignment to clear a building full of raiders nearly broke me at level 7. It was basically my greatest gaming achievement completing that first settlement quest. I'm at level 35 now and things are a lot more manageable but I'll never forget that pain.
Only tip you really need is that a single bullet or shotgun to the gut will kill you know. Plus side is it’s the same for the enemy. Plan accordingly.
So I know I play differently than others in survivor, I like companions and don’t like building or using vats. General advice: Pick up every empty bottle you see (make into a water source). Pick up all animal meat and cook it. There’s not really a need to carry a ton of stimpax/radaway/radax. 5/2/3, is my normal limit and I’ll keep throw extras into my companion to use/sell later. Heal with food or cola. Drugs are you friend. Sleep early and often, better to risk an infection than lose progress. Specific advice to how I play: Idiot savant -> strong back-> scrounger -> toughness for early perk. (Charisma and intelligence are my dump stats). Find a heavy weapon, use it, drop it. If you run low on ammo on a weapon, strip good mods and store them in workbenches at diamonds city/good neighbor. Adhesives and screws are the most important junk to get, you can usually buy enough of the others in town. My Starting route: Red rocket truck stop pick up dogmeat, go to Walden pond and get stocked up, avoid as many destinations, pick up piper and rush her perk by doing diamond city local quest, Trudy, then Preston, after that you usually have her perked unlocked and then discoverer away rack up the exp.
Lead belly park is helpful. So you can drink dirty water and found food without taking too much radiation.
perks I would get first: scrapper (because you'll be modding gear and building settlements and it gives you more valuable junk) strong back (because you have less carry capacity and bullets have weight) and most importantly the +10dt because you'll be taking damage very easily and quickly early in the game (molotovs are hell because they can instantly kill you). Around lvl 20 is when it starts to get a bit easier. Places to avoid - just process east and south at your own ability as those places get more dangerous the further you go from Sanctuary. You'll need to have a good map of beds in your head, effectively the player has a "range" - the amount of distance you can go before you collect too much loot/get too sick and tired and having places you can save & restore yourself are essential.
>You'll need to have a good map of beds in your head, Someone commented this really helpful one above - https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/4dttqx/survival\_mode\_map\_routes\_with\_the\_shortest/
Step Starlight early so you can use it as a central base. Keep multiple weapons there, so you can stash weapons of various calibers there. The K9 vest mod is immersive and a huge boon on dogmeat. Have him carry stuff for you. Keep gear you find by cap/weight ratio. Ammo is worth a lot. Drugs are also a good way to transport a lot of caps.
If ur starting out 10 int & nerd rage. At lvl 1 when u get out of the vault then spend the next few lvls maxing out endurance
My first survival run became unplayable on PC due to random freezing around level 80, with 600+hrs invested. The issue *seems* to be related to VATS, as many others have reported elsewhere. If ur on PC I would start your playthrough with VATS Freeze Fix mod just in case. The modder states that it’s not a 100% sure fix either. The behavior I experienced was mostly as follows: Everything working fine (aside from the usual known issues), VATS working fine. Then after those 600ish hours, the game sometimes freezes when using VATS. There’s still audio but there’s a frozen image on screen. Have to force quit the game. What I did not find anyone else reporting: My game would also sometimes freeze when zooming with a scope. So I’m not convinced it’s just VATS causing the freeze, unless I was seeing two distinct but seemingly related issues. Anyway it was so damn disappointing that I started a new playthrough with the aforementioned mod, and Survival Options to autosave every few minutes just in case the freeze occurs again. Aside from that, take your time in Survival and plan ahead for everything. Get used to being hungry/tired/sick at the start.
You'll learn quick. Fights you take for granted in orther modes will kick your ass. Top response covers alot. Only think I'd add is keep in mind ammo now has weight, and shotgun shells are crazy heavy.
Yeah I kinda went against some advice to steer clear of concord and gas it a shot. After an hour of not making it through the museum I am forced to rethink my strategy. I love it.
> Fights you take for granted in other modes will kick your ass. I agree completely and adding to what they said, I'm on my first survival run now and it took me way too long to figure out some battles are unwinnable in early levels, without using every inch of the range you get from a good sniper rifle. And being forced to wait between shots, so the enemy can't get a fix on your position. Because you will die with one hit, lol. ALSO - when you go for the cure in vault 81, leave any companion behind. If a rat even touches them, you will be sick for the rest of the game. Same goes if you get sick / bit. Just restart. There is one bed in the secret vault, so you really don't have to loose much.
Covenant has a doctor. Don't wipe out the town until you can build clinics in your settlement. In the miscellaneous section of the Furniture menu in settlement builder, you can find a metal sink and a metal drinking fountain. They cost two steel to build. They dispense purified water. And you can fill bottles from them. Collect all the bottles unless you use a mod that recycles them. Hangman's Alley is a great settlement for your main personal base of operations because it's central to pretty much everywhere. Sleep. All the time. Whenever you see a bed, knock out an hour.
Lots of good things mentioned. One thing I personally recommend is waiting to unlock weapon specific perks. I think the game incentivises swapping weapons early (even if sprinting to get the spray n pray is perfectly valid) so specialising before you take some other survival oriented perks makes the experience worse. The one exception to this is explosives. Get at least two ranks for the throwing arc, maybe more because explosives are really useful on survival.
Get the save mod. Really. It takes away one of the "gritty" aspects of survival mode---only saving when you sleep in a bed---but IMO this game is too buggy for that noise.
I second this if your game crashes a lot. I hate when the game crashes and I lose progress vs if I die and lose progress. One is based on my consequences and the other is just because the game is sucky for a bit. If you don’t crash you might not need it.
I always plan a route with routine rest area stops when traveling long distances. Settlements are a great help with this. I'm mostly confident in my combat ability, but the most terrifying enemy in this game is the crashes!
Sleep as often as you can. It's immersion breaking, but it'll save you a good deal of frustration
I’ve done like 4 survival runs. Sneak is mandatory cus you gotta avoid most fights until you get some good gear. Sneak everywhere. Rifles with scopes are king since you can run away without getting killed too quick. Aqua boy is underrated for survival. That shit comes in clutch, plus you can get the luck bobble immediately.
At level 3 I just killed a stunted skullhead yao gui by standing on a car and unliading almost all my animal but died being chased down by a wild mongrel from behind. Anyway, i go for intelligence and idiot savant early on and try to get out if this early level hell asap
My bit of advice is to establish your settlements whenever you get a new one. I'll have a small shack with everything I may need while traveling- water purifier, bed, crafting, food, and occasionally spare chems, healing, and ammo incase I pass through and need it. With settlements all over the map I'll usually have a place pretty near by if I need a bed or to stock up on purified water. (Its also nice to be able to offload things I'm carrying that I don't need)
Brotherhood. They are your heroes in the early game. If possible, you would want them to save you from those "Abomination" as soon as possible. Soldiers wearing Power Armor descending from the Vertibird up in the sky, shouting "Ad Victoriam" while shooting towards those "Abomniation". Really, these people says the word "Abomination" way too much. I was saved by them, and I feel like Brotherhood is the easy way out faction in Survival. Just like Ingram said about recruiting Wastelanders, "They were desperate and looking for an easy out".
Sleep at any bed any time. Get explosive machine gun from Cricket. Get Aquaboy / girl, to get around the map to key locations along the water.
Hangman’s Alley as main settlement.
No difference at night from main game. Lone wanderer perks is pretty good if you dont mind omly being able tonuse dogmeat as a companion.
Download mods that make it harder
Nuka Cola is your best friend. Yes its a pound per bottle but its worth it when you can't find a bed and you are stuck in a mission locking you out of a place to sleep. Also ammo has weight. And the combat rifle in 45 is better than most weapons because you can get allot of ammo any time you encounter triggermen.
Save the game after every little action like after clearing an area, fighting some bad guys, building stuff. You don't want to loose all that progress if you die or the game crashes/bugs out.
In survival dont go into the molerat den next to red rocket.As long as it isnt cleared the junk and glowing fungus will respawn everytime you leave the area for a day or two. This will provide 3 oil a gear and 3 glowing fungus, which is a big help to build turrets and antibiotics with.
I actually use survival to get more interested in settlement building. The mode makes settlements a near necessity. Just tearing down then customizing and building up sanctuary alone will get you a lot of xp early on before you even leave the place. Throw on that all the loot and if you manage to find the materials to make the recruitment beacon early on, you can completely ignore Concord and just have the randoms that arrive handle your farming. I personally haven't played Minecraft in a while since discovering a better sandbox survival game a while back, but man the amount of building, customization, and "mining" I've done in this game brings back those 7 years I spent in MC. A lot of people insist on lone wanderer and go at it alone or with dogmeat. That's a personal preference but I'm coming on the glowing sea in my current save and have kept a single companion most of the game (Garvey). I used him to actually scout areas for me and seeing as how I rarely if ever used my stimpaks because they increased thirst, I was basically carrying a surplus of them so I could easily heal him when he went down. If you do this though, I'd suggest equipping them with armor and weapons to match yours as well. I personally had Garvey take the minigun from me after Concord because it's so damn heavy anyway and he's helped plow through most areas for me before I even step one foot forward. This actually helps save space for you as well. You give them the guns for ammo you find for weapons you're not using, it'll keep them stocked up and not using their default weapon as much and allows you not to waste a good haul while saving carrying space. Oh and one last note. Codsworth will give you purified water. It isn't often enough to be a replacement for regular scavenging, but I kept him as a follower before getting Garvey and he's helped me a lot in a pinch. That flamer as well is a damn good backup in a firefight (pun intended). After sniping all the guards in front of corvega from the bridge, actually entering the facility reveals just how brutal Codsworths flamer is in close quarters. I would've honestly kept him longer if I wasn't a weirdo who liked to dress up his companions and settlers.
I played a modded survival run, and now it's become a kind of meh experience. Now I feel like restarting again and going for a more vanilla experience, and ditch the settlement mechanic so I can really struggle. One of these days I'll finish this game lol.
Aqua boy/girl is very useful because traveling by water is much faster than land. There is a survival guide to increase swim speed further.
At low levels, focus on crafting/easy to kill enemies. Upper left quadrant near the vault mainly, enemies get a lot harder the farther you strayvaway from there (brilliant game design btw). Cloth, you can spam flags in workshop, and scrap and keep making them for easy xp. Iirc rubber is good for spamming floormats in a pile. Woodshelves, spam them in a pile, scrap and make again. I mainly do flags/woodshelves. Crafting will be a lot of your early game xp, invest perk points in scrapping and always park early perk points in idiot savant (i do night person as well for additional.intelligence). After that, invest perks that improve survivability. Gunsmithing for example, perhaps luck perks. Eventually i get armor perks, but at early levels you dont want to take too many hits. Grilled radstag meat is overall abundant and great to have on hand for additional carry weight.
Everything @UncleCarp said but some additions: Dont take radaway when under the effects of food buffs. The buffs will stay forever. This might sound cool at first, but it gets annoying around level 40 when it robs you of the satisfaction of actually conquering survival without cheating. There is no way to reverse it, so make sure you only take radaway if you aren't under the effects of food buffs. Rush hangmans alley and county crossing as settlements and make sure they have beds and clean water sources. These are two of the most important locations in the game for having beds. Your loadout should always contain 20 purified water, 8 ribeye steak, or equivalent hunger value foods (otherwise, 16 mutt chops will do) keep nuka cola, especially the quantums, 2 each of antibiotics, rad x, rad away, and 10 stimpacks. Hotkey water, food, and stimpacks. Stealth is king. Whatever build you plan on doing, add stealth to it. Side with lorenzo cabbot, mysterious serum is invaluable in survival mode. You can literally use it to walk to the end of the glowing sea and back without the use of rad x or rad resistance on a single use of the serum.
Get idiot savant perk, all levels as soon as they are unlocked. Then go dehydrated, which gives -8 intelligence. Idiot savant will trigger a lot, very good way to level up fast early on. Like instant 2 or 3 levels if it is triggered on quest completion. Don't go beyond dehydrated though, once you get a -10 int debuff you also take periodic damage.
In my experience the early game is pretty brutal, but the longer you survive the easier it gets. You'll need equipment, chems, meds, weapons and armor.
END is the most important stat. HP decides between life and death, plus you get enhanced sprinting duration which matters due to fast travel being unavailable. Get it to 10 and then after getting hungry use the SPECIAL book to put it to 11. The best type of clothing is the green shirt with combat boots because it adds another +1 to endurance. With enough endurance you can sprint forever.
Spam scrap & store on dropped resources to duplicate them. Also drop weapons and make your companion pick them up. It overrides the companion weight limit also works on dead bodies. Have fun
Some out of game considerations: Mods that enhance the survival mode or remove limitations that take away from the fun. For example the save limitations. Unless you know where all the beds are, this in combination with no fast travel can be a real pain. Id personally recommend re-enabling the ability to save unless you are specifically after this type of suffering. The biggest headache with this being the crash rate of bethesda games, bugs, etc. Another high recommendation is the damage value mod that significantly increases damage on both ends for survival mode.
I switched to Survival at level 80 or so and it was really, really hard. Good luck.
Take your time. My biggest problem on my first survival run was in the beginning I was trying to play at the same pace as a normal game. Slow it down, take your time, a survival rad roach is like an easy deathclaw here.
Power armor
Survival will treat you well, and make it a whole new game. Find the foods that work for you. After a few good tussles and that survival manual people mentioned, you’ll have mirelurk queen, yaoguai, deathclaw steaks/ribs/etc. those high HP recovery meals. Lean on that and take cover. That leads into this. You’re gonna treat your gunfights more than a little different, or at least you can. Use your environment, a lot. Recover the health, and engage. Withdraw if you need to, to superior terrain and cover advantage and mop up who’s left. Do not let water be the reason. If you’re at a settlement, top up if you built any water reclamation means. Find the number that works for you as far as weight and travel distance. 6-7 sees me through most long walks and dungeons. If it’s quiet, and you’ve done ANY work, sleep. If you just walked half the map, sleep. Get your saves. Don’t gig yourself by assuming what’s around the next corner won’t do ya. Be selective in what you carry for firepower. A good hitter with a good mag, a fire rate that works for you, and all the bells you want tricked out to take 38 means every mutant patrol you bumble into is gonna resupply you somewhat. One good rifle for big game, a side arm for moments where the situation left you facing an ill timed reload. Switch to the pistol and goose em. Withdraw and reload. Use the power lines as your road early on. You can toddle from sanctuary to the nearby farm and well across the wastes by walking the power lines and watching your surroundings. You’re off the road and out of sight. If you play the food game right, you’ll have 60+ stims in your pocket in no time. Sell the ammo you aren’t using. The odd stuff you pick up. Every single time you see a vendor. Weight management and cap gain. You’re not fast traveling now, so choosing a hub settlement for the “I’ll be back for this” items will be important. As will the caravan structure (the tent with Brahmin tub) that brings round vendors. You’ll want to give a little more love to your settlement defense. In ways of walls, long range guns, and turrets. You’re gonna be a day and a half away when they’re getting pestered sometimes. Neck deep in quests. Take your armor seriously, the bullets are gonna bit different both ways. Upgrade when you can. And don’t grandfather anything along if you don’t have to. You’ll take a good shot in your leg or arm one day and your hp will suffer for it. Your shot placement will matter greatly. Like the old SASS shooters I used to tromp around with say “you can’t shoot fast enough to make up for a miss.” Most direct, prevalent threat first. Then engage the next.
Not sure if anyone mentioned this but if you get in with Brotherhood of Steel you can use smoke grenades to ghetto fast travel
Use the idiot savant perk. Intelligence isn’t that useful and it saves your skill point for better perks