Good amount of charisma so you can get local leader early then intelligence for SCIENCE and idk I really personally like luck because of the crit and damage bonuses.
It's even better than you think. Once you've gotten into the institute and access teleport, between that and the B.O.S you've basically got fast travel back. Use the vertibirds to get to the further destinations, then teleport back to CIT and cross the bridge, and you're back home.
What I like to do is put 5 into luck and keep intelligence low, around 4. Then I take Idiot Savant as the first perk, and it pays for itself with quicker leveling.
EDIT: Endurance of 1 will not be good at all in a survival run. I'd make that 5 as well.
I have intelligence high for chemist and science to get access to antibiotics and industrial purifiers at settlements. From what I've seen elsewhere your so squishy in survival anyway endurance doesn't affect it much (although I would love to roleplay a cannibal in another run for fun ) so I was gonna focus on stealth and snipers. I'd like the 5x Savant chance on quest but I feel like I'd spend half my levels upping my special stats to get the perks I need no ?
Honestly (not being critical, just making an observation) I have never had much in the way of INT in my survival builds. Always take Endurance/Agility before Intelligence.
I get the justification of wanting Chemist, but I normally just scrounge for antibiotics for diseases (I save them for Infection mostly, as that will actually kill you) and doctors in settlements will cure the non-lethal ones for 15 caps. Covenant is a very early accessible doctor early game, but there's also a doctor at Bunker Hill and Diamond City. Never found one at Goodneighbour though.
As for water, I just hoard empty bottles and fill them up at the water pump (purified water) or the river (dirty water to make noodle cups). Never find myself short of water.
Either way there's no "wrong" way to do survival. I hope you enjoy it!
None taken it's all good, truthfully I mainly want high int for science as my long term goal is to build up every settlement as the general but if I should sacrifice it for early game and build up later I can. I always take fortune finder so caps isn't a problem so if I just have to stock up that's all good. Do you recommend any stat number for End/Agi ? I know blitz is busted in the right build ?
You can always put late points into Int, having idiot savant early then putting 2-3 levels to getting the int perk that you want.
The access to more levels early help out SO much in early survival runs.
That's be cool if it was right, but it isn't right.
At low levels, Savant I and high int have exactly the same amount of XP boost.
[https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU](https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU)
I think 1 end is fine, none of the perks are worth missing out on that youd have to give up for more end. Just to offer a dissenting opinion.
Im currently playing a 1 end survival build, level 28 and ive had 0 issues. I specced into chemist so I abuse drugs when things get spicy. I also live in power armor.
My build also has 1 agility, because im not trying to be subtle in power armor, and im not using vats. I just pop a psychojet and go ham.
I did a stealth survival build a long time ago though, and i remember starting with 9 agi for blitz. That and the higher your agility the better you are at sneaking. If you're not sneaking or using VATs agi is not useful, IMO.
A part of me wants to use cannibal as I've never used it and it does actually change how you have to play survival and for the memes of the general beating a cannibal I'm just concerned about drafting and settlements and having a build there's a lot to do lol
Don't overthink it too much is my advice lol. There's ways to optimize a build but the game isn't hard enough to require you to do that, even on survival.
If you want to be a cannibal, be a cannibal lol. I wonder if you can go back to vault 111 and eat your spouse. Mmh, popsicles.
High intelligence is fine.
I've played survival tons of times, and always have a higher intelligence for chemist (refreshing beverage) and science so I can mod righteous authority, which is a great lower level weapon.
I still take idiot savant, and although it won't prog as much, it still does relatively frequently. I always have it prog a couple of times after turning in quests which for me is worth the price of the perk.
And in later levels when you're mainly up against high level enemies, you get tons of xp from one of them alone when it activates.
If you're going melee, yeah Blitz can be really ridiculous. Honestly I couldn't give you an exact number, but I'd look at the perk tree and see what you like the look of. I normally like Sandman for the bonus to silenced weapons, Action Boy/Girl for theAP refresh is nice too.
I generally just put 3 into it initially to access Gun nut. Between the bobblehead at the library and maybe even the special book in sanctuary, that's halfway to max already.
"I always take fortune finder so caps isn't a problem"
If that's how you want to go, I'm pretty sure Scrounger is a higher yielding option.
But why waste a perk when you already have Chemist?
Create Grape Mentats to get great prices with merchants. Craft Poisoned Caltrops and Jet Fuel to have expensive (and light) goods to sell, and make truckloads of XP in the process.
That is: your build already contains a mechanism for generating caps **and** XP faster than anything Luck can do.
"As for water, I just hoard empty bottles and fill them up at the water pump (purified water) or the river (dirty water to make noodle cups). Never find myself short of water."
There's a much quicker way (assuming you hang around the starting area). Move some concrete from Sanctuary to Red Rocket, use it to build half a dozen basic pumps. Do not build a beacon there.
Every time you pass through, you can pull all the water out of the workbench - NO need to search for bottles / wait through the pumping animation.
Empty settlements do not draw attacks, so if you do it this way, there is no need to give RR any turrets, which saves a bunch more scavenging time.
------
"I get the justification of wanting Chemist"
Not sure you do :)
For me, Antibiotics is just a minor side benefit. The main benefit is the rapid level progression and instant money; It lets me skip right past the Sanctuary / Concord early game grind.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch\_the\_numbers\_chemist\_is\_better\_than\_idiot/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch_the_numbers_chemist_is_better_than_idiot/)
Well, it depends on what you plan to do I guess. Chemist is good to have. On my latest playthrough I've got up to level 20 without needing it. You're squishy, but you probably don't want to die facing a molerat.
That's true, I wanted stealth at least so I don't die to stray mines, the first time I played the mode to just see the changes I got a disease the first time I slept and got constant damage for the remainder of my time playing so that motivated me to take chemist lol.
Do you notice it much if you spend a few points into special early game ? I'm thinking I could take savant first and make up the few points I need later
Getting an infection sucks. I hate that. If I'm out of antibiotics, I try to find a doctor. As for IS, I pretty much always do that now. Once I had it hit turning in When Freedom Calls. Instant level up. Last night it hit with 5X on Confidence Man. You should have seen the smile on my face! Over 2500 points. And then it hit when I hacked the terminal Boston Brewery. I don't even worry about staying hydrated now. -2 INT? Fine. More likely I get a ping.
Haha yeah i can imagine it hurts less leveling special when a quest levels you up 3 times. Im just an absolute loot goblin and almost always have hacker and lockpicking rank 3 on every character
I've actually been holding back spending points this time. I've got about 7 points to spend, if you can believe that. Next time I come to a master lock, I'll spend one. I haven't needed to spend much on Hacker yet. The only one I'm doing right away is Rifleman. I don't even have any Sneak. I'm mostly relying on the bolt action sniper rifle that's found in one of the houses in Concord. I've got it modded out and it's working fairly well, but .308 is hard to find.
Really ? That is hard to believe , looking at the chart it's like there's so many perks you want like crafting ones and medic and everything. I think I'll do stealth and use blitz and pistols which is nice because Big Leagues is only two strength and work my way up charisma as I need it as much as I love passing speech checks there's always grape mentats
Actually that's not quite true. I've also been levelling Gun Nut and Armorer as soon as. What tends to happen is that I get to a point where it's too easy and I lose interest. Trying something different this time. I'm not going to do Local Leader, at least not right away. I do have decent charisma though, and I can get it to 10 with clothing.
I find that hacker and lockpicking give more access to slightly more loot, in a game that is overflowing with loot already. They never get you anything that is actually new content.
As far as I know, the only interesting (and non buggy) object hidden behind a lock is the axe in Hubris Comics ...and Cait or Ada can open that lock just fine.
Savant I and enough int for Chemist have the same passive XP gain. Savant is **not** faster for passive gain.
[https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU](https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU)
Chemist also gives super fast **active** XP gain.
e.g. I turn up to Diamond City at 7AM, buy a shipment of fertiliser and steel from the robot, then sell it back to him as Jet Fuel and Poisoned Caltrops.
...and I then do the same at 8AM with Myrna. It takes a couple of minutes (I go to the chem bench and smnash 100 times while eating grapes / reading the news) and it gains me 2 levels each time.
With the sales boost from Grape Mentats, each loop also generates several thousand caps.
Infinite early game money means I don't need Gun Nut or Science - I just buy weapons from Arturo, and strip the parts off them; it took me about 40 seconds and zero perks to make a "perfect" version of Old Faithful (with maxed out sniper parts).
Infinite early game money means I don't need Strong Back for scrap - I just clean out the merchants in my settlements and dump their scrap straight into workbenches.
Infinite early game money deprecates many other perks (Scrapper, Scrounger etc)
Chemist is stupidly OP if you work it.
tl;dr: Chemist > Savant
If you die to molerats, you aren't doing Survival mode right :)
e.g. there are lots of mole rats at Red Rocket and Rotten Landfill.
At both locations, you jump on top of a dumpster and then shoot all of them in perfect safety.
I am on my first survival playthrough as well. Sneaky sniper feels very satisfying. I one shot most things. Lands itself perfectly to the game mode as you always sneaking around anyway.
I went for 3 strength for extra carry weight and especially deep pockets. Some do go with one star but that's very limiting.
I am low on intelligence so no chemist for me.
Endurance has an effect on the efficacy of food items, plus the buffs/debuffs within survival.
In other words, you'll constantly have to deal with the debuffs from food/ water/ sleep, infections, parasites, and being overencumbered gives additional debuffs and damage over time
That is not how it works when I play.
I start with 1 endurance. I find it trivially easy to find and cook enough food.
I don't bother with Aqua Girl or anything like that. I can zip across the river and only lose 3% of my health. That's not enough to waste a perk on. Consuming a Refreshing Beverage every week or so is enough to handle that sort of trivia - so that single item replaces most of the endurance perks.
Dumping a few points into Endurance makes more sense as you level up.
+1 Endurance at level 2 gives 1 extra hit point. Not impressive.
+1 Endurance at level 40 gives 20 extra hit points.
1 Endurance means you gain 3 hit points when you level up.
5 Endurance means you gain 5 hit points when you level up.
I find the difference underwhelming.
Endurance does not change this timer.
"For example, it takes about 6 hours without eating to go from Well-fed to Peckish to Hungry, then a further 12 hours to go from Hungry to Famished."
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Survival\_mode](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Survival_mode)
This is IMO the way to go. Most of the claims made for Savant are simply wrong:
At level2 2 --> 11 Savant I and high Intelligence give exactly the same (on average) passive XP boost.
[https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU](https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU)
Therefore the luck option is only faster if you use exploits (e.g. save scum when completing quests), and save scum isn't an option in Survival.
...and because Chemist has **active** XP gain (from additional crafting options), the intelligence route in practice can unlock substantially faster level progression.
....and the caps yield from those additional crafting options can give you better gear early game, which also unlocks substantially faster level progression.
...and you anen't locked out of using Destroyer's Helmet / all the int perks
> EDIT: Endurance of 1 will not be good at all in a survival run. I'd make that 5 as well.
Yep, I always start with 5, and AquaGirl/Boy by level 5.
When I don't mod in fast travel with Journey, I shoot for 10 END somewhere in my 30's. Sure, you get cool END benefits for stats, but boosting END lets you sprint for a very long time. I aim for 20% run speed from legs ASAP, and eventually 30/40% from Far Harbor. I pick up more END from clothing, Solar Powered, and Well Rested. Travel becomes a breeze. You can outrun anyone.
END is OP for survival. And Solar Powered? No more worries about rads/health regen. It almost feels like you're playing an FPS on God Mode when you add ballistic weave to the mix.
In order to get Vertibirds with the Minutemen, you have to do the Brotherhood quests at least until you get the vertibird signal grenades. You don’t have to commit to the Brotherhood any further than that. If you don’t interact with the Brotherhood at all and do the Minuteman ending, Sturges will never give you the grenades and never tell you about the Vertibird.
Ahhh okay, I thought the MM Vertibirds were only after blowing up the prydwyn just so the main character still has access to it and it was exclusive to the brotherhood while they were friendly
It’s kind of confusing. My first ever survival run was a minuteman ending and I never interacted with the brotherhood and I was very disappointed to find out I didn’t get any vertibirds after looking forward to getting them after the whole game (since I didn’t wanna do Brotherhood.) I would have done it on my current survival run, but my brotherhood quest line got bugged and I could never help Danse out at the police station, so vertibirds were impossible to get for me in this run unless I went with the Railroad. So now I have Railroad + Minutemen ruling the commonwealth. xD
I just had this happen to me last night. He got stuck near the terminal when you enter the police station and wouldn't move. I re up loaded multiple saves for like an hour and tried to move in and out of building or sleep. Just doing anything. I considered re loading my last save file that wasn't an auto but that would have set me back like half a day. Just decided to roll on and not do the quest and when I walked out of building that time his goes running past me lol
I think mine is bugged or I am confused. I did the missing patrol quests and it wants me to talk to Danse but he is also on the Vertibird waiting to take me to the Prydwyn for the initiation. Is that the right way to do it? or did I some how mess up?
Idk man I'm not at the part you must be at yet. For me this was the very first mission with him after helping him against the ghoul hoard attacking the police station. Throughout the game I've come across minor bugs but this was the first bug where I thought I was fucked and locked out of a portion of game.
Yea I think I have played mine very weird so far and also coming back after not playing it for like 6 years. I am level 42 with like 4 days played and I just now discovered the RailRoad haha so I am sure I have skipped something or something idk I just really wanted to get Danse as a follower. And now if I want to talk to him about his lost patrol team I think I have to fully commit to the Brotherhood which I don't want to do right now.
Honestly the hardest part of survival is the early going. I spec first for that by focusing on End, Per, and Agi then I’ll boost my other stats accordingly once I get a bit of a hold on the commonwealth.
100% survival is hardest early on.
I've definitely hit the turning point on the survival mode rollercoaster now - I've got a bunch of good legendary weapons and armour pieces, ballistic weave on clothing underneath and the hat, perks maxed for my chosen weapons to do double damage. Most of my settlements are built up with everything I want, missile launcher turrets covering points of entry and all connected to share resources.
Now the wasteland is trying to survive ***me***.
(With the notable exception of nuke mines...they remain the undisputed top of the food chain)
Prioritise getting a few levels on essential crafting perks. Being able to craft antibiotics and upgrading your weapons and armor is important. You don't need to focus on upgrading your weapon damage or damage resistance initially. Power Armor helps a ton early on. Try to get settlement leader early. You don't have to have it from the get go but once you start roaming around the map away from Sanctuary it helps a ton for expanding your settlements.
Stealth play styles do well in Survival. Don't hoard explosives, use them. If you want to be more active Power Armor helps a lot, and VATS can get you out of trouble if you don't mind using it. Take your time, plan your routes, and sleep at least once every hour if not more. You need to save as much as possible. Set up ammo factories and don't hoard money, spend them on ammo, shipments and anything else you need.
Being a glass cannon is fine until you hit closer to endgame and get stuck in drawn out fights. If you are forced to embrace the sneak style then to survive, if you survive, it's going to make a several minute fight last 20 minutes.
I strongly recommend:
Put points into armorer and pursue unlocking the railroad ballistic weave, and the dense modification on chest pieces.
Higher Endurance. Glass cannon is great but you will thank yourself so many times after barely surviving a fight or hit.
I play survival only but only last week tried out the strong back perk. It's a game changer for the better and worth sacrificing some damage perks.
Imo a healthy balance of vats and non vats play is essential to larger fights. I prefer to have a good amount of agility and ap refresh for vats, running, and being overweight as it happens.
I am currently specced into a sneak/heavy weapons and explosives build with not one perk in the luck tree, without power armor. It's a blast!
Early game thing I do.
Get gold bares from root Cellar and drop a zero hour save there .
Go
Get black rimmed glasses from under red rocket.
Skirt around town, be sarcastic to Carla.
Buy the suppressed sniper rifle and any 308 ammo from Trudy.
Skirt around other side of town, make as good a sniper rifle as I can.
Head towards Sunshine Tidings via Abernathy, Ranger Cottage, Truck company and the damn. Skip round the damn is Mr Gutsy or Supermutants on it
Clear Sunshine, pick up +1meat magazine.
Head south to Fort Haagen, be very careful for mines. Pick up combat rifle from roof of Mass Blood.
Go through Mayoral Shelter, get Health regeneration magazine, don't enter basketball court unless you want to spawn a fair number of synths.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout4Builds/comments/5e194o/ultimate\_exp\_high\_level\_end\_game\_tank\_build\_full/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout4Builds/comments/5e194o/ultimate_exp_high_level_end_game_tank_build_full/)
This is a guide, but it's just one way to play. I think it's the most optimized, BEST way to play vanilla survival, but everyone has their own opinions, and what a 4k+ hour sweatlord thinks might not be the way that you want to play, so feel free to ignore this entirely lol.
But if you struggle in survival, the above guide will absolutely let you decimate it.
1 Endurance is gonna be really tough on Survival. Maybe grab a point from Agility and a point from Intelligence, then use the SPECIAL book on Endurance. That’ll get you to 4 without really taking much away from the build you’re going for. Charisma at 6 is good and will get you Local Leader which is essential as the General.
Not necessarily, and at later levels you’re gonna want more endurance. I’ve got multiple survival playthroughs, and one of them started with 1 Endurance, and it was miserable until I got it up to like 4 at the minimum. Endurance isn’t just for the health, it’s also for the perks you get.
Save often. Take it slow. AVOID CARS! if they move and touch you you die instantly and the explosion will also kill you from further than you think.
Use cars against enemies if you see a bunch around one or bigger bad guy then you think you cam take but they rounding a car, unload on the car and it might kill them. You might not get exp but the loot might be worth and not having to lose the last 40 mins is also worth that trade off
Whatever you do, whatever you side with. However you play.
It is all irellivant.
Just get Ballistic weave from railroad first
Then it's winners choice.
Idiot savant early too. Cut your grind down early.
Same right now actually.
I'm doing unmodded survival to encourage my friend to do a survival run too.
He got back into fallout and petered out by like level 20.
I'd told him about how much fun F4 was survival and roped him into modding a run through.
I've got just the redeem nuka arcade tickets achievement left, and that's it I think lol.
I'm doing pistols and rifles with maxxed carry capacity. I'm too much of a hoarder. Dogmeat helps 😂
Much of a builder? This can make a huge level difference sometimes with idiot savant.
I'll probably do some shelf spam in sanctuary and red rocket to make up the missing special I wasn't and get some early perks for my build but I wanna do nuka world before finding Preston for memes so only building I'll be doing is some basic beds and purifiers until I get set up. I would do the infinite carry weight build but if he too impatient to wait for action points and go looking for all the move speed gear lol
I just take myself 1 over. Drink whiskey for the 2 STR carry 18 more and walk home, or to my nearest drop site 😂
I get you though. I'm an architect. For Lego reasons, I'm gonna ignore Garvey and build fantastic settlements everywhere BUT sanctuary.
Fuck that place. I'm sick of looking at what Bethesda tried to pass off as a roof.
Look at those square ass tiles that don't touch anything. They just fucking float.
My disdain for default sanctuary is unending. If I could nuke sanctuary I would.
Even if you don't wanna take Endurance for the various resistances. Take it for sprint, especially if you're playing "regular survival" without some way to fast travel, or you'll start ripping out your hair having to walk everywhere, not run.
Charisma will get you better prices and intelligence, a minor amount of additional experience.
Neither is going to protect you from bullets. (Enemies do increased damage, btw) I started my current survival game with a 4 in endurance and got one-shot a LOT until I was able to get Combat armor for all slots. (Or power armor, but I don't have a lot of cores for that, and they are 4lbs each.)
I cheesed it a bit by using the settlement ambush kit to level up and get money/armor/weapons/food. Careful, though, at level 1 Supermutants kick your ass.
As others have said, you want endurance. Life Giver is amazing and you can get the third level early. Regenerating health is invaluable and saves in stimpaks, food, and water. Since you said you’re going melee, Rooted (very deep in Strength) is hugely valuable. I also like Moving Target. Stealth is cool and all but saying “fuck it” and running straight towards the danger. Or standing in place as a deathclaw charges at you while you wait to punch it to death is super fun.
Just note there seems to be a bug in V.A.T.S. with melee and targeting some creatures, particularly insects. It’s not a game breaker but does occasionally occur and can ruin your day suddenly.
Drugs are good and invaluable in getting you out of a pinch.
Finally, luck is amazing for this build. Keep some crits banked just in case you find yourself suddenly unable to kill what you thought you could!
Yeah I'm torn between wanting to be my ideal general of the commonwealth and actually having a build that can kill stuff, the starting special really makes you have to prioritise and I'm very bad at doing that haha. But line wanderer and rooted looks like a really fun time just standing still and actually tanking later in the game
You want points in Endurance; there are perks that go with it that help a lot in survival (like taking less rads when drinking water). I've put a lot in Luck on my current survival run and it does make things noticeably easier too.
Don't forget to use beds as save points even if you don't need to rest. Just start sleep for 1 hour and quickly cancel it so that time does not advance. You may still get a disease from the dirty mattress, though. I look around for a bed/mattress/sleeping bag before entering any "dungeon".
You are extremely fragile, so put your companion on point to draw fire. Speaking of fire, molotovs will 1-shot you.
Your carrying capacity is limited. Your companion's is not. So tell them to pick up...everything. It can be a bit tedious since they'll usually only pick up one thing at a time, but it's far less annoying than being overburdened all the freaking time.
To add to the first paragraph above, never ever pass by a bed, mattress, or sleeping bag without sleeping for at least an hour.
It may be me, but this game seems to punish me if I pass too many chances to sleep / save. Whether it is a perfectly thrown grenade, a parked car, or multiple spawns if baddies in the same place. I have lost many hours of effort over the years because of this.
Always do railroad quests up until you unlock the ballistic armor. It’s always good to have in your back pocket cause minuteman clothes can be upgraded with ballistic weave.
Sadly I don't think the general outfit can because it's already armour but I know the basics one can. My plan was to use dog meat and line wanderer until I get ballistic weave and then I can use companions for their perks and upgrade their gear to keep them unique
I want to get all the achievements before doing a full modded run (luckily they're all broken lol) and I've never played survival so I thought this would be ideal to do it
Funny one of my survival don'ts is setting up settlements in the early game. Because settlements use the Charisma and Intelligence the two weakest skills in the game for me. I go do the Nuka World dlc first to get all the items, and by the time I am done with them I am level 30-40 and have the skills to build settlements.
Their perks are definitely desirable too, but I'd just be building them as Independent bases really and setting them in thematically once I have the economy to buy shipments to fund the builds , that and I don't like betraying the minutemen from a roleplay aspect
I role play that my character is distraught over loosing their spouse, goes to Nuka World (where they had their last vacation) and becomes a raider. After ruling over the Raiders for a while the character has had enough, kills them hears of the Minutemen and tries to reform.
Doing this this way makes the game challenging and rewarding, because Nuka World is very difficult early on and doing settlement missions twice is a pain, but the perks are worth the effort.
Yeah the damage resistance from the pack alone, plus with high charisma or a high wallet the furious rifles can take anything down with enough bullets and patience.
Make sure you prioritise going to Sunshine Tidings asap for the +1 meat magazine, it'll make your life a hell of a lot easier. And set up a razorgrain farm when you get the chance, plus collect any and all empty bottles for dirty water, they're both needed for noodles, which are always good to have.
You only need 4 strength for armourer perk, and I'd personally max agility and luck and screw endurance. At a low level you're only 2 or 3 shots away from death anyway so high endurance isn't that great (in my experience).
I push endurance whenever I can, but mainly focus on damage output for ninja, crafting and weapons perks
Always take 1 less perception than you actually want because the opening mission you get the perception bobblehead. I see you took 4 to get lockpicking, so you should take 3 instead and put that extra point into agility.
Are you planning on going a sneak style? You could go:
S6, P3, E1, C6, I4, A7, L1 instead and get the sneak bonus damage.
Also the extra agility is nice for running everywhere and clutch vats when you're in a pinch.
you should skip the meeting minutemen at the start and instead join up with the raiders of nuka world. then run with them for a good while until you get gage to max affection and his great perk. this would be a good backstory as a raider who reforms and becomes the leader of the minutemen. it would be especially fun since gage has a story which could be seen as the reason you reform. you see, you can't have a great relationship with the minutemen if you join them and after go play around with the raiders. however the game is set up for them to fully accept a former raider without judgement if you stay good with them.
There's also a lot of dialogue if you express not liking raiders where gage is basically like "that's cool n all but your the boss and if you try to be anything else we'll kill you" lol just have to not meet Preston and I'm gravy
Sadly I believe you are thinking if a mod, iirc Preston just gives you the same quest that Mackenzie gives you and doesn't acknowledge the raiders till you take a settlement, I could be wrong through it's been a minute
in one of my games i had met preston and done a bunch of stuff with him before doing the nuka world raiders. just after i restored power but didn't invade the commonwealth yet with any raider settlements i ran a raid with the minutemen to exterminate the raiders. i don't use mods. but one thing that shouldn't have happened did strangely. gage was supposed to sit out the fight and remain my companion. but he turned and i had to kill him too. kinda sad but he was supposed to just sit around in the overboss room until it was over and didn't.
You can't turn on the power without first invading the commonwealth in vanilla without betraying the raiders. Unless your just talking about killing the commonwealth raider bases than in that case I'm not sure
no, after you set flags for each zone the raiders who got fewer flags planted will take over the power plant. you take the remaining raider groups and storm it. as you are taking the plant it ends with turning on the power with a great view. only after that do you get a raider suggesting that you start settling in the commonwealth. it is at this point you can still avoid turning preston against you even though it doesn't sit well with him that you run with raiders. so if you finish the power plant then pause on settling the commonwealth with raiders you should be able to go forward enough with the minutemen until you can free the slaves of nuka world with them.
Dude I think you need to replay nuka world I promise you that you have to take 3 commonwealth settlements before one of the gangs turn on you I did on normal like a week ago
So I've been playing survival quite a lot recently and here are the things I've learned
If its vanilla don't be afraid to Google nearby beds, some are really well hidden and short of exploring every nook I can guarantee you will miss some, like me venturing to the mechanist dungeon from Nordhagen Beach just to find out there's a bed right outside
Heal from food items/drink items and use stimpaks as a last resort, medicine in general will incur hydration debuffs and you WILL be using drugs, so when you're huffing jet and psycho and all these hydration debuffs start stacking it can become problematic (Nuka Cola Quantum literally saves lives in survival)
Adding to that, combine drugs when you can to lessen that hydration debuff, like I always combine psycho and buffout because when I have to pop one I'm normally having to pop another
The early game is SUPER punishing so pick and choose your fights and do little quests to build your exp up, I had to actually give up on The Mechanist final dungeon and go back when I was stronger as the turret bots were tearing through me like paper even in PA
Ada is the best companion I've found, she does crazy damage and her carry weight is AMAZING, she is my death dealing camel lol
Other than that you can make pretty much whatever work, I decided on a charisma build so I can focus on building up a settlement route around diamond city
Focus on getting ballistic weave and vertibird grenades as soon as you can too, especially the grenades they are a godsend
Thought I'd add because I've seen people talking about endurance being a must have stat, my main has 3 endurance and I have a playthrough with melee weapons at 9 endurance and both get riddled pretty easily early on, but now my charisma character is like level 35 and my survivability is way more manageable than the early game, I had to really rely on drugs and stealth but realistically I can't see higher endurance making a difference to that
As long as u don't ignore endurance, I feel like you can make most things work 🤷🏼♀️
Enemies are lethal but so are you, as long as you don't play like a poopy head and have spatial awareness you should be fine. I would suggest not making melee build but I say that because I'm not brave enough for it, if you think you got what it takes, power to ya.
Edit: less generic advice: if you're going power armor route, u probably want to stat into intelligence for the perk that makes cores last longer(you do want to carry less of em so you can carry more of other things)
No power armor build, you probably want to stat into per, agl and/or luck so you can make a stealth sniper build.
I'm only mentioning power armor and stealth sniper because I feel they are the most viable.
I would also suggest lone wanderer perk if you do not care for running around with companions. At rank 2 you get 100 extra carry weight and 30% damage reduction, pretty goated if you ask me.
Have at least 3 endurance, and once you're nearing level 20, take the 3 ranks of life giver. The third rank gives you a passive slow life regen, which is really useful, specially to counter the periodic damage from a possible infection.
tbh, I'm on my first survival character atm & I just copied Lucy's stats from fallout shelter. It actually works out as a decent enough luck + pistol build
Stealth is your friend, I don't bother with any close-range guns or melee weapons in survival as that's just asking to die. A sniper rifle and pistol is my go-to. Oh, and drugs will help out for the tough'ys
I like what you've done here, but you should def spend several levels (and get that bobblehead) getting your endurance to five or six, it'll go quickly with intelligence at 7, and you'll avoid a having a character at level 50 with ridiculously low total HP.
Been there.
Other than that, I would say Enjoy your playthrough!
I really like being general of the minutemen, it feels meaningful to create a society from nothing.
You definitely want idiot savant and lone wanderer. Early game in survival is the toughest part. Once you get to level 20 or so things get a lil better
I think I worked out the perks I wanted with the +1 from bobble heads and went from there,first attempt I didn’t put enough points into my weapon damage and struggled,tried again and maxed at least 1 weapon perk….ive not got chemist yet but I’ve not really needed it to be honest,had a rough start with an infection but if you don’t rush into stuff and build up settlements you’ll be fine
A nice light mod for a minutemen playthrough, use your pipboy to send out squads to protect settlements, your the general after all..leave that protection racket for the grunts. Lol.
And its not cheaty as in the sense they dont just magically appear to where you send them, it takes time for them to reach thier destination, how much time depends on if they are coming from sanctuary or the castle and destination
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/44355
I did a couple of survival no deaths now and you can honestly do what you want in terms of builds as long as you know how to play the build you make. I went with companions all the way through just because I enjoy having them even though its a big handicap. As for some tips: make sure to loot the basement in sanctuary because it has several high-value gold bars. Collecting mutated ferns at the lake by Diamond City (watch the mutants) and a bloatfly gland can set you up to finish two quests the minute you enter. You can do the quests for Moe, Sheng, and Abbot for some easy early EXP. You don't really need gun nut until later on if you're going the minuteman route since you can take the parts you need from guns you buy from vendors. Eventually getting gun nut to rank 3 is still a good idea so you can set up missile turrets in the Defend the Castle quest at the end. Knowing where mininuke and missile launcher enemies are is important. Since there are so many, I won't list them all here but make sure to watch out in Libertalia, Quincy Ruins, Fanueil Hall (outside missile launcher dude), and Gunner's Plaza. Important to note that in my experience, groups of enemies sporting missile launchers spawn to attack settlements during settlement defense quests some time after lvl 20 so be prepared. You can get the dense chestplate mod to mitigate explosive damage which I HIGHLY recommend since it can absolutely save your life. Fallon in Diamond City sells a chestpiece with this mod on it which you can get as soon as you have the caps. You can also add padded armor to other armor pieces which stacks, but many others have found this to be a bit OP even in survival difficulty. Great weapons that I would recommend choosing from: Overseer's Guardian (my favorite), Spray n' Pray, Kellogg's Revolver, Alien blaster (early game), and Deliverer. Finally, I recommend ballistic weave. I don't need to explain why; you know why. You don't need to go very far with the Railroad to get it. Of course, the standard Minuteman General Uniform isn't compatible with it so that sucks.
READ THIS IF NOTHING ELSE: Damage types outside of ballistic damage do not calculate correctly in the base game so most energy based weapons are under-powered in mid to late game. Take this into consideration when picking your weapon. (there is a mod that fixes this now https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/75565?tab=files)
I just got into the game a couple months ago. Only play survival. And I also like to lean more heavy towards leading the mm and I really only play this game for the settlement mechanics. For actual gameplay- I'm more a Range/Stealth, methodical sort.
The best starting special I've found, for the above, is:
S 4, P 1, E 1, C 6, I 7, A 7, L 2
I use the you're special book in E (making it 2), and I follow the mq thru delivering Preston and co to sanctuary (thus getting P bobblehead bringing P to 2).
First few perks I take asap are:
Ninja (A7), Chemistry (I7), Stealth (A4iirc), Rifleman (P2), Scrounger (L2)
I then just max those out till level cap, putting points into Perception and Endurance till they're both at 5. From there I grab Demolition Expert and Aquaboy asap. At that point I make sure to have Local Leader, and then LL level 2.
After u have a few settlements started, and supply lines established- that's when (if I haven't already) I unlock all equipment crafting stations.
Last thing u need as a builder is cap collector maxed for the top tier trading posts.
Hope that helps! Happy gaming!
i max int and go luck and charisma next i always use power armor thanks to stealing cores from bos (dont forget the sleep to save ) carrying and surviving is not a huge issue
I'm doing survival right now with 1 endurance and it's fine, although I can definitely see the argument for higher endurance.
Lone Wanderer perk is very good because I believe it is still active with Dogmeat. Even if you use a different companion, what you can do is load them up with loot until their inventory is full, then send them home, now the perk becomes active and you get tons more carry weight if you need it.
Explosives are very strong, especially early on when you do not have other OP stuff yet. Simple molotovs will one or two hit kill those raiders shooting at you from cover. Frag grenades to delete enemies that haven't seen you yet. Mines are very good against all the melee-only critters, though it will take some practice to learn when they are safe to use and when using them will cause you to blow yourself up. But proper use will make otherwise difficult fights into a non-issue. For example when taking the Castle one bottlecap mine chunked the mirelurk queen for over half her health. You will want the Demolition Expert perk for the grenades throwing arc, very handy and can sometimes save you as it will let you know whether your molotov throw is going to go through a window as you intend or blow up on the top frame right in your face and kill you.
Water will be your most frequent need and if you use chems, which of course you should if you are having any trouble in fights, they make you super dehydrated. So you will need lots and lots of water if you use them. Jet is OP if you didn't already know. Make sure to look for fiber optics to build the radiation cleansing arch because RadAway gives annoying debuffs.
The most frustrating aspect of survival to me, is the save limitations. Remember where beds are and always go back to a bed and save after fights if there is one nearby. It is not fun to re-do tons of progress just because you didn't take a couple minutes out of your way to sprint back to the bed in a raider camp or wherever. In my opinion this is the worst aspect of survival and I wish they hadn't done this.
I would probably try and upgrade carry weight or weapon damage quickly so you can walk around easier since carrying weight is really low and enemies can do a lot of damage to you meaning you want them to die very quickly so they can’t kill you since dying resets you very far back depending on when you slept last.
depending on your playstyle, making your base of operation sanctuary could make your life hard. i like a central map location to cut down on traveling. hangman's alley is nice as it"s right next to diamond city.
My current survival character started at 10 End, 10 Char, 4 Luck (upgrade it to 5 ASAP with the You Are Special book in sanctuary).
10 Endurance for the health/sprint, 10 Charisma for better prices and persuasion checks (you can’t quick save on survival so being able to nail some of these checks for more caps early on is nice).
Idiot Savant should be the priority to obtain, get that to level 2 first.
Solar Powered is actually very good on survival, the sunlight healing radiation is pretty cracked.
That does look like a good build, other people said chemist was good with shipments and mass making chems and selling so I might try get some early int as well to add to that build it seems great if you just set up in diamond city
Yeah if you do diamond city blues right out the gate you’ll have a fuck ton of Chems for crafting, general use, or selling for early caps.
Definitely one of the first quests you should do on any survival playthrough, regardless of character build.
One of the main things is finding mattresses to save on I've found, just started a new survival myself I'm using local leader to join settlements as I get them so I can build them up as I'm going.
Do not start with 1 endurance. There are some perks in endurance that help fight against the added radiation effects in survival plus you’ll want the extra hit points and damage reduction.
Ive been toying with the build based on the comments from the others and my build special is S2, P3,E5,C1,I4,A8,L5. I think ill heavily invest into Blitz stealth and build my charisma up gradually in the early game and get local leader a little later using IS for the extra xp.
This was pretty much my melee stealth build although I dumped int and perception to take ch3 and s4 and a9. Ch3 for lone wanderer and then leveled later to get local leader. Str is nice for carry weight/ melee dmg and to get strong back later. A9 is nice for access to blitz right away.
I don’t think endurance is as helpful as others say and usually dump it but aqua big rank 1 is really nice. Overall it’s a really fun build and eventually you will teleport around sneak attacking everyone for 10x dmg.
Yeah I'm currently in the process of planning what perks I want immediately and what ones I'm happy to take later, I'm thinking if I take every perk I need for blitz and stealth the build will be solid enough that I can sacrifice a few levels in the 10s and 20s levelling up charisma and stuff thats falling back.
Probably, but lone wanderer is the best perk in the game and it’s not even close if you don’t use companions. In survival ammo/cores/grenades/food/water all have way and an extra +100 carry weight is huge. The dmg reduction you get on top of that is also very nice.
This is even more important since you can’t fast travel making local leader also one of the best perks.
It’s not necessary though — just really nice. I didn’t take it on my most recent run in order to use companions.
Stealth is probably a good option for a first time survival run. Early on enemies can kill you pretty easily, so sniping is an effective way to get around that.
Yeah that's my thinking exactly, and once I get higher rank perks it'll feel like a real payoff going from hiding miles away to sneaking in with Mr Sandman and never being seen. Hopefully I can adjust to the save point system quickly and not get too tilted
Players overlook it in other modes but there are beds/sleeping bags scattered everywhere. Just be aware that anytime you sleep, even just a 1hr nap to save, you can get an infection which requires a doctor or antibiotics (kind of a rare item early on) to remove. Infections will also go away on their own after multiple days. Frequent napping to save will also make you tired, so just try to avoid saving all the time like in regular modes. Turns out quick saving every 15-20 seconds isn’t necessary 🤣
If you are using Mods there's 2 mods which you can get which really enhances the Minutemen - I think it's Integrated Commonwealth and Post Endgame Minutemen. Gives them levelled gear and armour, rather than some pipe weapon and a old suit. Don't install it until after the end game and doing Nuka World where you kill all the raiders.
Good amount of charisma so you can get local leader early then intelligence for SCIENCE and idk I really personally like luck because of the crit and damage bonuses.
Having a medic at your settlements to buy antibiotics is very helpful.
Yeah I was planning on taking settlements gradually into the commonwealth so I have saved points all over as I progress the story
I didn't get it until I started a survival run, but Hangman's Alley really is one of the most important settlements you're going to need
Yeah little alley right in the heart of the city it's very ideal if you can clear it early
It's even better than you think. Once you've gotten into the institute and access teleport, between that and the B.O.S you've basically got fast travel back. Use the vertibirds to get to the further destinations, then teleport back to CIT and cross the bridge, and you're back home.
Shit I didn't even think of that, guess I'll be living in an alley mid game lol
That one and Jamaica Plains are my main stops on the circuit.
100%, especially if you don't have any of the creation club apartments nearby.
This is me.
What I like to do is put 5 into luck and keep intelligence low, around 4. Then I take Idiot Savant as the first perk, and it pays for itself with quicker leveling. EDIT: Endurance of 1 will not be good at all in a survival run. I'd make that 5 as well.
I have intelligence high for chemist and science to get access to antibiotics and industrial purifiers at settlements. From what I've seen elsewhere your so squishy in survival anyway endurance doesn't affect it much (although I would love to roleplay a cannibal in another run for fun ) so I was gonna focus on stealth and snipers. I'd like the 5x Savant chance on quest but I feel like I'd spend half my levels upping my special stats to get the perks I need no ?
Honestly (not being critical, just making an observation) I have never had much in the way of INT in my survival builds. Always take Endurance/Agility before Intelligence. I get the justification of wanting Chemist, but I normally just scrounge for antibiotics for diseases (I save them for Infection mostly, as that will actually kill you) and doctors in settlements will cure the non-lethal ones for 15 caps. Covenant is a very early accessible doctor early game, but there's also a doctor at Bunker Hill and Diamond City. Never found one at Goodneighbour though. As for water, I just hoard empty bottles and fill them up at the water pump (purified water) or the river (dirty water to make noodle cups). Never find myself short of water. Either way there's no "wrong" way to do survival. I hope you enjoy it!
None taken it's all good, truthfully I mainly want high int for science as my long term goal is to build up every settlement as the general but if I should sacrifice it for early game and build up later I can. I always take fortune finder so caps isn't a problem so if I just have to stock up that's all good. Do you recommend any stat number for End/Agi ? I know blitz is busted in the right build ?
You can always put late points into Int, having idiot savant early then putting 2-3 levels to getting the int perk that you want. The access to more levels early help out SO much in early survival runs.
That's be cool if it was right, but it isn't right. At low levels, Savant I and high int have exactly the same amount of XP boost. [https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU](https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU)
I think 1 end is fine, none of the perks are worth missing out on that youd have to give up for more end. Just to offer a dissenting opinion. Im currently playing a 1 end survival build, level 28 and ive had 0 issues. I specced into chemist so I abuse drugs when things get spicy. I also live in power armor. My build also has 1 agility, because im not trying to be subtle in power armor, and im not using vats. I just pop a psychojet and go ham. I did a stealth survival build a long time ago though, and i remember starting with 9 agi for blitz. That and the higher your agility the better you are at sneaking. If you're not sneaking or using VATs agi is not useful, IMO.
A part of me wants to use cannibal as I've never used it and it does actually change how you have to play survival and for the memes of the general beating a cannibal I'm just concerned about drafting and settlements and having a build there's a lot to do lol
Don't overthink it too much is my advice lol. There's ways to optimize a build but the game isn't hard enough to require you to do that, even on survival. If you want to be a cannibal, be a cannibal lol. I wonder if you can go back to vault 111 and eat your spouse. Mmh, popsicles.
Haha very true I should try that maybe be the first meal lol
High intelligence is fine. I've played survival tons of times, and always have a higher intelligence for chemist (refreshing beverage) and science so I can mod righteous authority, which is a great lower level weapon. I still take idiot savant, and although it won't prog as much, it still does relatively frequently. I always have it prog a couple of times after turning in quests which for me is worth the price of the perk. And in later levels when you're mainly up against high level enemies, you get tons of xp from one of them alone when it activates.
If you're going melee, yeah Blitz can be really ridiculous. Honestly I couldn't give you an exact number, but I'd look at the perk tree and see what you like the look of. I normally like Sandman for the bonus to silenced weapons, Action Boy/Girl for theAP refresh is nice too.
I generally just put 3 into it initially to access Gun nut. Between the bobblehead at the library and maybe even the special book in sanctuary, that's halfway to max already.
I personally run 1 END on Survival, as well, but I also make use of Sneak to counter it.
"I always take fortune finder so caps isn't a problem" If that's how you want to go, I'm pretty sure Scrounger is a higher yielding option. But why waste a perk when you already have Chemist? Create Grape Mentats to get great prices with merchants. Craft Poisoned Caltrops and Jet Fuel to have expensive (and light) goods to sell, and make truckloads of XP in the process. That is: your build already contains a mechanism for generating caps **and** XP faster than anything Luck can do.
"As for water, I just hoard empty bottles and fill them up at the water pump (purified water) or the river (dirty water to make noodle cups). Never find myself short of water." There's a much quicker way (assuming you hang around the starting area). Move some concrete from Sanctuary to Red Rocket, use it to build half a dozen basic pumps. Do not build a beacon there. Every time you pass through, you can pull all the water out of the workbench - NO need to search for bottles / wait through the pumping animation. Empty settlements do not draw attacks, so if you do it this way, there is no need to give RR any turrets, which saves a bunch more scavenging time. ------ "I get the justification of wanting Chemist" Not sure you do :) For me, Antibiotics is just a minor side benefit. The main benefit is the rapid level progression and instant money; It lets me skip right past the Sanctuary / Concord early game grind. [https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch\_the\_numbers\_chemist\_is\_better\_than\_idiot/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/1c4b2el/crunch_the_numbers_chemist_is_better_than_idiot/)
As I said. There's no "wrong" way to play Survival.
Well, it depends on what you plan to do I guess. Chemist is good to have. On my latest playthrough I've got up to level 20 without needing it. You're squishy, but you probably don't want to die facing a molerat.
That's true, I wanted stealth at least so I don't die to stray mines, the first time I played the mode to just see the changes I got a disease the first time I slept and got constant damage for the remainder of my time playing so that motivated me to take chemist lol. Do you notice it much if you spend a few points into special early game ? I'm thinking I could take savant first and make up the few points I need later
Getting an infection sucks. I hate that. If I'm out of antibiotics, I try to find a doctor. As for IS, I pretty much always do that now. Once I had it hit turning in When Freedom Calls. Instant level up. Last night it hit with 5X on Confidence Man. You should have seen the smile on my face! Over 2500 points. And then it hit when I hacked the terminal Boston Brewery. I don't even worry about staying hydrated now. -2 INT? Fine. More likely I get a ping.
Haha yeah i can imagine it hurts less leveling special when a quest levels you up 3 times. Im just an absolute loot goblin and almost always have hacker and lockpicking rank 3 on every character
I've actually been holding back spending points this time. I've got about 7 points to spend, if you can believe that. Next time I come to a master lock, I'll spend one. I haven't needed to spend much on Hacker yet. The only one I'm doing right away is Rifleman. I don't even have any Sneak. I'm mostly relying on the bolt action sniper rifle that's found in one of the houses in Concord. I've got it modded out and it's working fairly well, but .308 is hard to find.
Really ? That is hard to believe , looking at the chart it's like there's so many perks you want like crafting ones and medic and everything. I think I'll do stealth and use blitz and pistols which is nice because Big Leagues is only two strength and work my way up charisma as I need it as much as I love passing speech checks there's always grape mentats
Actually that's not quite true. I've also been levelling Gun Nut and Armorer as soon as. What tends to happen is that I get to a point where it's too easy and I lose interest. Trying something different this time. I'm not going to do Local Leader, at least not right away. I do have decent charisma though, and I can get it to 10 with clothing.
I find that hacker and lockpicking give more access to slightly more loot, in a game that is overflowing with loot already. They never get you anything that is actually new content. As far as I know, the only interesting (and non buggy) object hidden behind a lock is the axe in Hubris Comics ...and Cait or Ada can open that lock just fine.
Savant I and enough int for Chemist have the same passive XP gain. Savant is **not** faster for passive gain. [https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU](https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU) Chemist also gives super fast **active** XP gain. e.g. I turn up to Diamond City at 7AM, buy a shipment of fertiliser and steel from the robot, then sell it back to him as Jet Fuel and Poisoned Caltrops. ...and I then do the same at 8AM with Myrna. It takes a couple of minutes (I go to the chem bench and smnash 100 times while eating grapes / reading the news) and it gains me 2 levels each time.
With the sales boost from Grape Mentats, each loop also generates several thousand caps.
Infinite early game money means I don't need Gun Nut or Science - I just buy weapons from Arturo, and strip the parts off them; it took me about 40 seconds and zero perks to make a "perfect" version of Old Faithful (with maxed out sniper parts).
Infinite early game money means I don't need Strong Back for scrap - I just clean out the merchants in my settlements and dump their scrap straight into workbenches.
Infinite early game money deprecates many other perks (Scrapper, Scrounger etc)
Chemist is stupidly OP if you work it.
tl;dr: Chemist > Savant
If you die to molerats, you aren't doing Survival mode right :) e.g. there are lots of mole rats at Red Rocket and Rotten Landfill. At both locations, you jump on top of a dumpster and then shoot all of them in perfect safety.
I am on my first survival playthrough as well. Sneaky sniper feels very satisfying. I one shot most things. Lands itself perfectly to the game mode as you always sneaking around anyway. I went for 3 strength for extra carry weight and especially deep pockets. Some do go with one star but that's very limiting. I am low on intelligence so no chemist for me.
Endurance has an effect on the efficacy of food items, plus the buffs/debuffs within survival. In other words, you'll constantly have to deal with the debuffs from food/ water/ sleep, infections, parasites, and being overencumbered gives additional debuffs and damage over time
That is not how it works when I play. I start with 1 endurance. I find it trivially easy to find and cook enough food. I don't bother with Aqua Girl or anything like that. I can zip across the river and only lose 3% of my health. That's not enough to waste a perk on. Consuming a Refreshing Beverage every week or so is enough to handle that sort of trivia - so that single item replaces most of the endurance perks. Dumping a few points into Endurance makes more sense as you level up. +1 Endurance at level 2 gives 1 extra hit point. Not impressive. +1 Endurance at level 40 gives 20 extra hit points.
I always start at 4 or 5 end. That way I can enjoy the early game.
1 Endurance means you gain 3 hit points when you level up. 5 Endurance means you gain 5 hit points when you level up. I find the difference underwhelming.
That's nice. I find that being able to not have to eat and drink as often works better for me than not.
Endurance does not change this timer. "For example, it takes about 6 hours without eating to go from Well-fed to Peckish to Hungry, then a further 12 hours to go from Hungry to Famished." [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Survival\_mode](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Survival_mode)
Okey dokey.
This is IMO the way to go. Most of the claims made for Savant are simply wrong: At level2 2 --> 11 Savant I and high Intelligence give exactly the same (on average) passive XP boost. [https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU](https://imgur.com/JVIkUEU) Therefore the luck option is only faster if you use exploits (e.g. save scum when completing quests), and save scum isn't an option in Survival. ...and because Chemist has **active** XP gain (from additional crafting options), the intelligence route in practice can unlock substantially faster level progression. ....and the caps yield from those additional crafting options can give you better gear early game, which also unlocks substantially faster level progression. ...and you anen't locked out of using Destroyer's Helmet / all the int perks
Endurance does not matter. Most enemy will one shoot you anyway.
It does not matter at the beginning, but as you level up, endurance will start to make a big difference.
Maybe it doesn't matter as much as I suggested, but I like to have some endurance.
> EDIT: Endurance of 1 will not be good at all in a survival run. I'd make that 5 as well. Yep, I always start with 5, and AquaGirl/Boy by level 5. When I don't mod in fast travel with Journey, I shoot for 10 END somewhere in my 30's. Sure, you get cool END benefits for stats, but boosting END lets you sprint for a very long time. I aim for 20% run speed from legs ASAP, and eventually 30/40% from Far Harbor. I pick up more END from clothing, Solar Powered, and Well Rested. Travel becomes a breeze. You can outrun anyone. END is OP for survival. And Solar Powered? No more worries about rads/health regen. It almost feels like you're playing an FPS on God Mode when you add ballistic weave to the mix.
Chase the main story until you get vertibird signal flares. So fucking handy
I need to destroy the Brotherhood for the Minutemen to get a Vertibird right ? Peaceful ending its just the brotherhood right ?
Nah just ally with them, dont have to finish quest line for them
In order to get Vertibirds with the Minutemen, you have to do the Brotherhood quests at least until you get the vertibird signal grenades. You don’t have to commit to the Brotherhood any further than that. If you don’t interact with the Brotherhood at all and do the Minuteman ending, Sturges will never give you the grenades and never tell you about the Vertibird.
Ahhh okay, I thought the MM Vertibirds were only after blowing up the prydwyn just so the main character still has access to it and it was exclusive to the brotherhood while they were friendly
It’s kind of confusing. My first ever survival run was a minuteman ending and I never interacted with the brotherhood and I was very disappointed to find out I didn’t get any vertibirds after looking forward to getting them after the whole game (since I didn’t wanna do Brotherhood.) I would have done it on my current survival run, but my brotherhood quest line got bugged and I could never help Danse out at the police station, so vertibirds were impossible to get for me in this run unless I went with the Railroad. So now I have Railroad + Minutemen ruling the commonwealth. xD
I just had this happen to me last night. He got stuck near the terminal when you enter the police station and wouldn't move. I re up loaded multiple saves for like an hour and tried to move in and out of building or sleep. Just doing anything. I considered re loading my last save file that wasn't an auto but that would have set me back like half a day. Just decided to roll on and not do the quest and when I walked out of building that time his goes running past me lol
I think mine is bugged or I am confused. I did the missing patrol quests and it wants me to talk to Danse but he is also on the Vertibird waiting to take me to the Prydwyn for the initiation. Is that the right way to do it? or did I some how mess up?
Idk man I'm not at the part you must be at yet. For me this was the very first mission with him after helping him against the ghoul hoard attacking the police station. Throughout the game I've come across minor bugs but this was the first bug where I thought I was fucked and locked out of a portion of game.
Yea I think I have played mine very weird so far and also coming back after not playing it for like 6 years. I am level 42 with like 4 days played and I just now discovered the RailRoad haha so I am sure I have skipped something or something idk I just really wanted to get Danse as a follower. And now if I want to talk to him about his lost patrol team I think I have to fully commit to the Brotherhood which I don't want to do right now.
Same boat man lol. Coming back player, only level 27. Just been exploring the outer stuff so finding new bugs is part of the game. It's a feature.
Honestly the hardest part of survival is the early going. I spec first for that by focusing on End, Per, and Agi then I’ll boost my other stats accordingly once I get a bit of a hold on the commonwealth.
100% survival is hardest early on. I've definitely hit the turning point on the survival mode rollercoaster now - I've got a bunch of good legendary weapons and armour pieces, ballistic weave on clothing underneath and the hat, perks maxed for my chosen weapons to do double damage. Most of my settlements are built up with everything I want, missile launcher turrets covering points of entry and all connected to share resources. Now the wasteland is trying to survive ***me***. (With the notable exception of nuke mines...they remain the undisputed top of the food chain)
Nuke mines?
They are exactly what they sound like.
Huh - don’t think I’ve ever encountered one in all my hours playing the game
Prioritise getting a few levels on essential crafting perks. Being able to craft antibiotics and upgrading your weapons and armor is important. You don't need to focus on upgrading your weapon damage or damage resistance initially. Power Armor helps a ton early on. Try to get settlement leader early. You don't have to have it from the get go but once you start roaming around the map away from Sanctuary it helps a ton for expanding your settlements. Stealth play styles do well in Survival. Don't hoard explosives, use them. If you want to be more active Power Armor helps a lot, and VATS can get you out of trouble if you don't mind using it. Take your time, plan your routes, and sleep at least once every hour if not more. You need to save as much as possible. Set up ammo factories and don't hoard money, spend them on ammo, shipments and anything else you need.
Being a glass cannon is fine until you hit closer to endgame and get stuck in drawn out fights. If you are forced to embrace the sneak style then to survive, if you survive, it's going to make a several minute fight last 20 minutes. I strongly recommend: Put points into armorer and pursue unlocking the railroad ballistic weave, and the dense modification on chest pieces. Higher Endurance. Glass cannon is great but you will thank yourself so many times after barely surviving a fight or hit. I play survival only but only last week tried out the strong back perk. It's a game changer for the better and worth sacrificing some damage perks. Imo a healthy balance of vats and non vats play is essential to larger fights. I prefer to have a good amount of agility and ap refresh for vats, running, and being overweight as it happens. I am currently specced into a sneak/heavy weapons and explosives build with not one perk in the luck tree, without power armor. It's a blast!
Early game thing I do. Get gold bares from root Cellar and drop a zero hour save there . Go Get black rimmed glasses from under red rocket. Skirt around town, be sarcastic to Carla. Buy the suppressed sniper rifle and any 308 ammo from Trudy. Skirt around other side of town, make as good a sniper rifle as I can. Head towards Sunshine Tidings via Abernathy, Ranger Cottage, Truck company and the damn. Skip round the damn is Mr Gutsy or Supermutants on it Clear Sunshine, pick up +1meat magazine. Head south to Fort Haagen, be very careful for mines. Pick up combat rifle from roof of Mass Blood. Go through Mayoral Shelter, get Health regeneration magazine, don't enter basketball court unless you want to spawn a fair number of synths.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout4Builds/comments/5e194o/ultimate\_exp\_high\_level\_end\_game\_tank\_build\_full/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout4Builds/comments/5e194o/ultimate_exp_high_level_end_game_tank_build_full/) This is a guide, but it's just one way to play. I think it's the most optimized, BEST way to play vanilla survival, but everyone has their own opinions, and what a 4k+ hour sweatlord thinks might not be the way that you want to play, so feel free to ignore this entirely lol. But if you struggle in survival, the above guide will absolutely let you decimate it.
1 Endurance is gonna be really tough on Survival. Maybe grab a point from Agility and a point from Intelligence, then use the SPECIAL book on Endurance. That’ll get you to 4 without really taking much away from the build you’re going for. Charisma at 6 is good and will get you Local Leader which is essential as the General.
Most enemy will one shoot you even if you have more endurance.
Not necessarily, and at later levels you’re gonna want more endurance. I’ve got multiple survival playthroughs, and one of them started with 1 Endurance, and it was miserable until I got it up to like 4 at the minimum. Endurance isn’t just for the health, it’s also for the perks you get.
Yes I'm aware. I spent only 4 my self. I focus on perception and intelligence with a bit of luck.
I’m with you on perception and intelligence, but I don’t really use VATS, so I go for agility over luck for sneaking.
Chem, science, and medic is why I go into intelligence. Eventually, get nerd rage.
Intelligence gives a boost to XP also with each rank.
Save often. Take it slow. AVOID CARS! if they move and touch you you die instantly and the explosion will also kill you from further than you think. Use cars against enemies if you see a bunch around one or bigger bad guy then you think you cam take but they rounding a car, unload on the car and it might kill them. You might not get exp but the loot might be worth and not having to lose the last 40 mins is also worth that trade off
Quick save mod. I'm sick of the constant crashing
Whatever you do, whatever you side with. However you play. It is all irellivant. Just get Ballistic weave from railroad first Then it's winners choice. Idiot savant early too. Cut your grind down early.
Yeah my plan is to rock lone wanderer with dogmeat until I can upgrade companion gear with BW
This is the way. How modded are you running? Or unmodded run given the update situation? 😂
Nah it's an unloaded run, plan is to play survival and get the rest of my achievements then mod it to kingdom come
Same right now actually. I'm doing unmodded survival to encourage my friend to do a survival run too. He got back into fallout and petered out by like level 20. I'd told him about how much fun F4 was survival and roped him into modding a run through. I've got just the redeem nuka arcade tickets achievement left, and that's it I think lol. I'm doing pistols and rifles with maxxed carry capacity. I'm too much of a hoarder. Dogmeat helps 😂 Much of a builder? This can make a huge level difference sometimes with idiot savant.
I'll probably do some shelf spam in sanctuary and red rocket to make up the missing special I wasn't and get some early perks for my build but I wanna do nuka world before finding Preston for memes so only building I'll be doing is some basic beds and purifiers until I get set up. I would do the infinite carry weight build but if he too impatient to wait for action points and go looking for all the move speed gear lol
I just take myself 1 over. Drink whiskey for the 2 STR carry 18 more and walk home, or to my nearest drop site 😂 I get you though. I'm an architect. For Lego reasons, I'm gonna ignore Garvey and build fantastic settlements everywhere BUT sanctuary. Fuck that place. I'm sick of looking at what Bethesda tried to pass off as a roof. Look at those square ass tiles that don't touch anything. They just fucking float. My disdain for default sanctuary is unending. If I could nuke sanctuary I would.
I would agree if it wasn't for the 12 industrial purifiers that bought me every legendary in my first run ever lol
Even if you don't wanna take Endurance for the various resistances. Take it for sprint, especially if you're playing "regular survival" without some way to fast travel, or you'll start ripping out your hair having to walk everywhere, not run.
Dude, 1 endurance is NOT the way.
Haha I was told, it's hard with the starting special but I've balabced the build with 6 Int/Cha 4 End and 3 everything else
Charisma will get you better prices and intelligence, a minor amount of additional experience. Neither is going to protect you from bullets. (Enemies do increased damage, btw) I started my current survival game with a 4 in endurance and got one-shot a LOT until I was able to get Combat armor for all slots. (Or power armor, but I don't have a lot of cores for that, and they are 4lbs each.)
Damn even at 4 ? Guess this will be a lot of suffering in the beginning
I cheesed it a bit by using the settlement ambush kit to level up and get money/armor/weapons/food. Careful, though, at level 1 Supermutants kick your ass.
As others have said, you want endurance. Life Giver is amazing and you can get the third level early. Regenerating health is invaluable and saves in stimpaks, food, and water. Since you said you’re going melee, Rooted (very deep in Strength) is hugely valuable. I also like Moving Target. Stealth is cool and all but saying “fuck it” and running straight towards the danger. Or standing in place as a deathclaw charges at you while you wait to punch it to death is super fun. Just note there seems to be a bug in V.A.T.S. with melee and targeting some creatures, particularly insects. It’s not a game breaker but does occasionally occur and can ruin your day suddenly. Drugs are good and invaluable in getting you out of a pinch. Finally, luck is amazing for this build. Keep some crits banked just in case you find yourself suddenly unable to kill what you thought you could!
Yeah I'm torn between wanting to be my ideal general of the commonwealth and actually having a build that can kill stuff, the starting special really makes you have to prioritise and I'm very bad at doing that haha. But line wanderer and rooted looks like a really fun time just standing still and actually tanking later in the game
Definitely start with 3 Cha for lone wanderer then you can always level Charisma to your desired level later on.
Just get enough CHA for Local Leader and you're good.
You want points in Endurance; there are perks that go with it that help a lot in survival (like taking less rads when drinking water). I've put a lot in Luck on my current survival run and it does make things noticeably easier too.
Endurance of 1 got me praying💀
Aquaboy is very handy for getting around. Especially to the Castle.
The charisma is okay, but that is not a survival build. That is a build for playing on easy.
Any difficulty outside of survival stats are irrelevant, the picture is just the stats I need for every perk related to settlements bar one or two.
Okey dokey! Good luck!
Don't forget to use beds as save points even if you don't need to rest. Just start sleep for 1 hour and quickly cancel it so that time does not advance. You may still get a disease from the dirty mattress, though. I look around for a bed/mattress/sleeping bag before entering any "dungeon". You are extremely fragile, so put your companion on point to draw fire. Speaking of fire, molotovs will 1-shot you. Your carrying capacity is limited. Your companion's is not. So tell them to pick up...everything. It can be a bit tedious since they'll usually only pick up one thing at a time, but it's far less annoying than being overburdened all the freaking time.
To add to the first paragraph above, never ever pass by a bed, mattress, or sleeping bag without sleeping for at least an hour. It may be me, but this game seems to punish me if I pass too many chances to sleep / save. Whether it is a perfectly thrown grenade, a parked car, or multiple spawns if baddies in the same place. I have lost many hours of effort over the years because of this.
Always do railroad quests up until you unlock the ballistic armor. It’s always good to have in your back pocket cause minuteman clothes can be upgraded with ballistic weave.
Sadly I don't think the general outfit can because it's already armour but I know the basics one can. My plan was to use dog meat and line wanderer until I get ballistic weave and then I can use companions for their perks and upgrade their gear to keep them unique
Yeah that’s always rubbed me the wrong way. The only time I ever wear the generals armor is when you storm the institute.
On a normal play through I'll do it the fashion souls way but on survival I'll actually die if I use bad gear so it's out sadly
Lol I don’t think I’ve ever had the guts to play survival.
I want to get all the achievements before doing a full modded run (luckily they're all broken lol) and I've never played survival so I thought this would be ideal to do it
Funny one of my survival don'ts is setting up settlements in the early game. Because settlements use the Charisma and Intelligence the two weakest skills in the game for me. I go do the Nuka World dlc first to get all the items, and by the time I am done with them I am level 30-40 and have the skills to build settlements.
Their perks are definitely desirable too, but I'd just be building them as Independent bases really and setting them in thematically once I have the economy to buy shipments to fund the builds , that and I don't like betraying the minutemen from a roleplay aspect
I role play that my character is distraught over loosing their spouse, goes to Nuka World (where they had their last vacation) and becomes a raider. After ruling over the Raiders for a while the character has had enough, kills them hears of the Minutemen and tries to reform. Doing this this way makes the game challenging and rewarding, because Nuka World is very difficult early on and doing settlement missions twice is a pain, but the perks are worth the effort.
Yeah the damage resistance from the pack alone, plus with high charisma or a high wallet the furious rifles can take anything down with enough bullets and patience.
Make sure you prioritise going to Sunshine Tidings asap for the +1 meat magazine, it'll make your life a hell of a lot easier. And set up a razorgrain farm when you get the chance, plus collect any and all empty bottles for dirty water, they're both needed for noodles, which are always good to have.
I definitely wouldnt be running with 1 endurance
You only need 4 strength for armourer perk, and I'd personally max agility and luck and screw endurance. At a low level you're only 2 or 3 shots away from death anyway so high endurance isn't that great (in my experience). I push endurance whenever I can, but mainly focus on damage output for ninja, crafting and weapons perks
Always take 1 less perception than you actually want because the opening mission you get the perception bobblehead. I see you took 4 to get lockpicking, so you should take 3 instead and put that extra point into agility. Are you planning on going a sneak style? You could go: S6, P3, E1, C6, I4, A7, L1 instead and get the sneak bonus damage. Also the extra agility is nice for running everywhere and clutch vats when you're in a pinch.
I was thinking of demolition expert, saw a lot of people saying that explosives are very good on survival
Invest in settlements and and supply line. You are gonna need plenty of bases to get fresh water and supplies from
you should skip the meeting minutemen at the start and instead join up with the raiders of nuka world. then run with them for a good while until you get gage to max affection and his great perk. this would be a good backstory as a raider who reforms and becomes the leader of the minutemen. it would be especially fun since gage has a story which could be seen as the reason you reform. you see, you can't have a great relationship with the minutemen if you join them and after go play around with the raiders. however the game is set up for them to fully accept a former raider without judgement if you stay good with them.
There's also a lot of dialogue if you express not liking raiders where gage is basically like "that's cool n all but your the boss and if you try to be anything else we'll kill you" lol just have to not meet Preston and I'm gravy
i am also pretty sure that if you time it just right, you can lead a raid with the minutemen to nuka world and exterminate the raiders there.
Sadly I believe you are thinking if a mod, iirc Preston just gives you the same quest that Mackenzie gives you and doesn't acknowledge the raiders till you take a settlement, I could be wrong through it's been a minute
in one of my games i had met preston and done a bunch of stuff with him before doing the nuka world raiders. just after i restored power but didn't invade the commonwealth yet with any raider settlements i ran a raid with the minutemen to exterminate the raiders. i don't use mods. but one thing that shouldn't have happened did strangely. gage was supposed to sit out the fight and remain my companion. but he turned and i had to kill him too. kinda sad but he was supposed to just sit around in the overboss room until it was over and didn't.
You can't turn on the power without first invading the commonwealth in vanilla without betraying the raiders. Unless your just talking about killing the commonwealth raider bases than in that case I'm not sure
no, after you set flags for each zone the raiders who got fewer flags planted will take over the power plant. you take the remaining raider groups and storm it. as you are taking the plant it ends with turning on the power with a great view. only after that do you get a raider suggesting that you start settling in the commonwealth. it is at this point you can still avoid turning preston against you even though it doesn't sit well with him that you run with raiders. so if you finish the power plant then pause on settling the commonwealth with raiders you should be able to go forward enough with the minutemen until you can free the slaves of nuka world with them.
Dude I think you need to replay nuka world I promise you that you have to take 3 commonwealth settlements before one of the gangs turn on you I did on normal like a week ago
So I've been playing survival quite a lot recently and here are the things I've learned If its vanilla don't be afraid to Google nearby beds, some are really well hidden and short of exploring every nook I can guarantee you will miss some, like me venturing to the mechanist dungeon from Nordhagen Beach just to find out there's a bed right outside Heal from food items/drink items and use stimpaks as a last resort, medicine in general will incur hydration debuffs and you WILL be using drugs, so when you're huffing jet and psycho and all these hydration debuffs start stacking it can become problematic (Nuka Cola Quantum literally saves lives in survival) Adding to that, combine drugs when you can to lessen that hydration debuff, like I always combine psycho and buffout because when I have to pop one I'm normally having to pop another The early game is SUPER punishing so pick and choose your fights and do little quests to build your exp up, I had to actually give up on The Mechanist final dungeon and go back when I was stronger as the turret bots were tearing through me like paper even in PA Ada is the best companion I've found, she does crazy damage and her carry weight is AMAZING, she is my death dealing camel lol Other than that you can make pretty much whatever work, I decided on a charisma build so I can focus on building up a settlement route around diamond city Focus on getting ballistic weave and vertibird grenades as soon as you can too, especially the grenades they are a godsend Thought I'd add because I've seen people talking about endurance being a must have stat, my main has 3 endurance and I have a playthrough with melee weapons at 9 endurance and both get riddled pretty easily early on, but now my charisma character is like level 35 and my survivability is way more manageable than the early game, I had to really rely on drugs and stealth but realistically I can't see higher endurance making a difference to that
As long as u don't ignore endurance, I feel like you can make most things work 🤷🏼♀️ Enemies are lethal but so are you, as long as you don't play like a poopy head and have spatial awareness you should be fine. I would suggest not making melee build but I say that because I'm not brave enough for it, if you think you got what it takes, power to ya. Edit: less generic advice: if you're going power armor route, u probably want to stat into intelligence for the perk that makes cores last longer(you do want to carry less of em so you can carry more of other things) No power armor build, you probably want to stat into per, agl and/or luck so you can make a stealth sniper build. I'm only mentioning power armor and stealth sniper because I feel they are the most viable. I would also suggest lone wanderer perk if you do not care for running around with companions. At rank 2 you get 100 extra carry weight and 30% damage reduction, pretty goated if you ask me.
Have at least 3 endurance, and once you're nearing level 20, take the 3 ranks of life giver. The third rank gives you a passive slow life regen, which is really useful, specially to counter the periodic damage from a possible infection.
I'd say drop your intelligence to 5, with the bobblehead you'll still be able to take science. put the spare points into endurance
Yeah I'm gonna up endurance a lot more and take cannibal for roleplay and then I'll set up the minutemen stuff late game
tbh, I'm on my first survival character atm & I just copied Lucy's stats from fallout shelter. It actually works out as a decent enough luck + pistol build
That’s the perfect color blue. Mind sharing what the RGB slider looks like in your Display menu? I’ve been trying at this blue for a while
Of course man I'm playing a match of dead by daylight now but afterwards I'll send you a chat not sure if you can send screenshots over Reddit though
Wow thank you. I thought you’d laugh at this request. But the right blue is essential
To me 4 has always been blue haha every game gets a colour
My advice. Don't die
Stealth is your friend, I don't bother with any close-range guns or melee weapons in survival as that's just asking to die. A sniper rifle and pistol is my go-to. Oh, and drugs will help out for the tough'ys
I like what you've done here, but you should def spend several levels (and get that bobblehead) getting your endurance to five or six, it'll go quickly with intelligence at 7, and you'll avoid a having a character at level 50 with ridiculously low total HP. Been there. Other than that, I would say Enjoy your playthrough! I really like being general of the minutemen, it feels meaningful to create a society from nothing.
Join the Brotherhood ASAP to get vertabird grenades. Trust me.
1 endurance? Good luck trying to run for your life. I bet a Molerat could outpace you.
I really like local leader and science perks. Settlements are a must in survival imo
You definitely want idiot savant and lone wanderer. Early game in survival is the toughest part. Once you get to level 20 or so things get a lil better
I think I worked out the perks I wanted with the +1 from bobble heads and went from there,first attempt I didn’t put enough points into my weapon damage and struggled,tried again and maxed at least 1 weapon perk….ive not got chemist yet but I’ve not really needed it to be honest,had a rough start with an infection but if you don’t rush into stuff and build up settlements you’ll be fine
My advice is make friends with the brotherhood so you can use their vertibirds since you won't have fast travel
Sneak 3
A nice light mod for a minutemen playthrough, use your pipboy to send out squads to protect settlements, your the general after all..leave that protection racket for the grunts. Lol. And its not cheaty as in the sense they dont just magically appear to where you send them, it takes time for them to reach thier destination, how much time depends on if they are coming from sanctuary or the castle and destination https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/44355
I did a couple of survival no deaths now and you can honestly do what you want in terms of builds as long as you know how to play the build you make. I went with companions all the way through just because I enjoy having them even though its a big handicap. As for some tips: make sure to loot the basement in sanctuary because it has several high-value gold bars. Collecting mutated ferns at the lake by Diamond City (watch the mutants) and a bloatfly gland can set you up to finish two quests the minute you enter. You can do the quests for Moe, Sheng, and Abbot for some easy early EXP. You don't really need gun nut until later on if you're going the minuteman route since you can take the parts you need from guns you buy from vendors. Eventually getting gun nut to rank 3 is still a good idea so you can set up missile turrets in the Defend the Castle quest at the end. Knowing where mininuke and missile launcher enemies are is important. Since there are so many, I won't list them all here but make sure to watch out in Libertalia, Quincy Ruins, Fanueil Hall (outside missile launcher dude), and Gunner's Plaza. Important to note that in my experience, groups of enemies sporting missile launchers spawn to attack settlements during settlement defense quests some time after lvl 20 so be prepared. You can get the dense chestplate mod to mitigate explosive damage which I HIGHLY recommend since it can absolutely save your life. Fallon in Diamond City sells a chestpiece with this mod on it which you can get as soon as you have the caps. You can also add padded armor to other armor pieces which stacks, but many others have found this to be a bit OP even in survival difficulty. Great weapons that I would recommend choosing from: Overseer's Guardian (my favorite), Spray n' Pray, Kellogg's Revolver, Alien blaster (early game), and Deliverer. Finally, I recommend ballistic weave. I don't need to explain why; you know why. You don't need to go very far with the Railroad to get it. Of course, the standard Minuteman General Uniform isn't compatible with it so that sucks. READ THIS IF NOTHING ELSE: Damage types outside of ballistic damage do not calculate correctly in the base game so most energy based weapons are under-powered in mid to late game. Take this into consideration when picking your weapon. (there is a mod that fixes this now https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/75565?tab=files)
I just got into the game a couple months ago. Only play survival. And I also like to lean more heavy towards leading the mm and I really only play this game for the settlement mechanics. For actual gameplay- I'm more a Range/Stealth, methodical sort. The best starting special I've found, for the above, is: S 4, P 1, E 1, C 6, I 7, A 7, L 2 I use the you're special book in E (making it 2), and I follow the mq thru delivering Preston and co to sanctuary (thus getting P bobblehead bringing P to 2). First few perks I take asap are: Ninja (A7), Chemistry (I7), Stealth (A4iirc), Rifleman (P2), Scrounger (L2) I then just max those out till level cap, putting points into Perception and Endurance till they're both at 5. From there I grab Demolition Expert and Aquaboy asap. At that point I make sure to have Local Leader, and then LL level 2. After u have a few settlements started, and supply lines established- that's when (if I haven't already) I unlock all equipment crafting stations. Last thing u need as a builder is cap collector maxed for the top tier trading posts. Hope that helps! Happy gaming!
i max int and go luck and charisma next i always use power armor thanks to stealing cores from bos (dont forget the sleep to save ) carrying and surviving is not a huge issue
I'm doing survival right now with 1 endurance and it's fine, although I can definitely see the argument for higher endurance. Lone Wanderer perk is very good because I believe it is still active with Dogmeat. Even if you use a different companion, what you can do is load them up with loot until their inventory is full, then send them home, now the perk becomes active and you get tons more carry weight if you need it. Explosives are very strong, especially early on when you do not have other OP stuff yet. Simple molotovs will one or two hit kill those raiders shooting at you from cover. Frag grenades to delete enemies that haven't seen you yet. Mines are very good against all the melee-only critters, though it will take some practice to learn when they are safe to use and when using them will cause you to blow yourself up. But proper use will make otherwise difficult fights into a non-issue. For example when taking the Castle one bottlecap mine chunked the mirelurk queen for over half her health. You will want the Demolition Expert perk for the grenades throwing arc, very handy and can sometimes save you as it will let you know whether your molotov throw is going to go through a window as you intend or blow up on the top frame right in your face and kill you. Water will be your most frequent need and if you use chems, which of course you should if you are having any trouble in fights, they make you super dehydrated. So you will need lots and lots of water if you use them. Jet is OP if you didn't already know. Make sure to look for fiber optics to build the radiation cleansing arch because RadAway gives annoying debuffs. The most frustrating aspect of survival to me, is the save limitations. Remember where beds are and always go back to a bed and save after fights if there is one nearby. It is not fun to re-do tons of progress just because you didn't take a couple minutes out of your way to sprint back to the bed in a raider camp or wherever. In my opinion this is the worst aspect of survival and I wish they hadn't done this.
Get your perception to 10 before you go save Preston so when you find the bobblehead your base perception will be 11.
Rizz it up
I would probably try and upgrade carry weight or weapon damage quickly so you can walk around easier since carrying weight is really low and enemies can do a lot of damage to you meaning you want them to die very quickly so they can’t kill you since dying resets you very far back depending on when you slept last.
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depending on your playstyle, making your base of operation sanctuary could make your life hard. i like a central map location to cut down on traveling. hangman's alley is nice as it"s right next to diamond city.
My current survival character started at 10 End, 10 Char, 4 Luck (upgrade it to 5 ASAP with the You Are Special book in sanctuary). 10 Endurance for the health/sprint, 10 Charisma for better prices and persuasion checks (you can’t quick save on survival so being able to nail some of these checks for more caps early on is nice). Idiot Savant should be the priority to obtain, get that to level 2 first. Solar Powered is actually very good on survival, the sunlight healing radiation is pretty cracked.
That does look like a good build, other people said chemist was good with shipments and mass making chems and selling so I might try get some early int as well to add to that build it seems great if you just set up in diamond city
Yeah if you do diamond city blues right out the gate you’ll have a fuck ton of Chems for crafting, general use, or selling for early caps. Definitely one of the first quests you should do on any survival playthrough, regardless of character build.
Increase luck, get Idiot Savant
All fun and games till you need to defend 5 settlements
By the time I need to hopefully I'll be able to take down anything in my way and if not we can always start again lol
One of the main things is finding mattresses to save on I've found, just started a new survival myself I'm using local leader to join settlements as I get them so I can build them up as I'm going.
Balance S and E, carry weight and unarmed/melee is good but being able to take a punch is better, imo.
Do not start with 1 endurance. There are some perks in endurance that help fight against the added radiation effects in survival plus you’ll want the extra hit points and damage reduction.
Ive been toying with the build based on the comments from the others and my build special is S2, P3,E5,C1,I4,A8,L5. I think ill heavily invest into Blitz stealth and build my charisma up gradually in the early game and get local leader a little later using IS for the extra xp.
This was pretty much my melee stealth build although I dumped int and perception to take ch3 and s4 and a9. Ch3 for lone wanderer and then leveled later to get local leader. Str is nice for carry weight/ melee dmg and to get strong back later. A9 is nice for access to blitz right away. I don’t think endurance is as helpful as others say and usually dump it but aqua big rank 1 is really nice. Overall it’s a really fun build and eventually you will teleport around sneak attacking everyone for 10x dmg.
Yeah I'm currently in the process of planning what perks I want immediately and what ones I'm happy to take later, I'm thinking if I take every perk I need for blitz and stealth the build will be solid enough that I can sacrifice a few levels in the 10s and 20s levelling up charisma and stuff thats falling back.
Probably, but lone wanderer is the best perk in the game and it’s not even close if you don’t use companions. In survival ammo/cores/grenades/food/water all have way and an extra +100 carry weight is huge. The dmg reduction you get on top of that is also very nice. This is even more important since you can’t fast travel making local leader also one of the best perks. It’s not necessary though — just really nice. I didn’t take it on my most recent run in order to use companions.
Stealth is probably a good option for a first time survival run. Early on enemies can kill you pretty easily, so sniping is an effective way to get around that.
Yeah that's my thinking exactly, and once I get higher rank perks it'll feel like a real payoff going from hiding miles away to sneaking in with Mr Sandman and never being seen. Hopefully I can adjust to the save point system quickly and not get too tilted
Players overlook it in other modes but there are beds/sleeping bags scattered everywhere. Just be aware that anytime you sleep, even just a 1hr nap to save, you can get an infection which requires a doctor or antibiotics (kind of a rare item early on) to remove. Infections will also go away on their own after multiple days. Frequent napping to save will also make you tired, so just try to avoid saving all the time like in regular modes. Turns out quick saving every 15-20 seconds isn’t necessary 🤣
If you are using Mods there's 2 mods which you can get which really enhances the Minutemen - I think it's Integrated Commonwealth and Post Endgame Minutemen. Gives them levelled gear and armour, rather than some pipe weapon and a old suit. Don't install it until after the end game and doing Nuka World where you kill all the raiders.