In other news, all the Fallout games are on deep discount on Steam right now. I think I read the sale goes until Tuesday the 26th, but not positive. I’m debating picking up Fallout 4 for $5. Never played any, but the earlier ones are so old I worry that I’ll find the graphics off-putting. Between the two newer ones (Fallout 4 from 2015, Fallout 76 from 2020) general consensus online seems to be that Fallout 4 is better than 76 unless you want to play coop. I’m looking for single player.
I think NV is a better RPG but also feel like it gets over-hyped. FO4 has more interesting environments than desert, more desert and the Strip, for example. And a color palette extending beyond “tan & brown”. But it’s definitely worth playing on its own merits.
I just purchased Fallout 4 for $5 on @EllisDee’s recommendation. I’m not a hardcore gamer but I’ve done a bit of gaming in the past and I just bought a new computer (as at least half of you here know from my other thread), so I’ve been trying out some games.
I’ve been enjoying Fallout 4 so far-- I got out of the vault and I’m exploring the ruined neighborhoods (got all the way to Concord and got killed by raiders last night).
I have some questions about general Fallout gameplay if that’s ok (I don’t want to hijack this thread into the equivalent of “help grandpa figure out how to work his new mobile phone” so please tell me if I’m hijacking or feel free to just ignore my questions).
I did some googling on “tips for playing Fallout 4” but what I’ve been finding is more advice for v4 for those who already understand the gameplay. I need some real newbie advice. Like, there’s all kinds of stuff I can pick up. Some of it is obviously needed, but coffee cup? Beer bottle? And why would I want to take ‘radroach’ meat? Maybe for food I guess, but it’s radioactive. The bottles of pop in the old refrigerators are good I guess because bottle caps are currency in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, I understand. Are some things that are able to be picked up just ‘red herrings’ that are ultimately useless and just weigh you down, or can everything have some eventual purpose?
I did eventually find a bobby pin in one of the houses so now I guess I should try to get back into the vault and get that rail gun, unless I was supposed to find a bobby pin while I was still in the vault and now I lost my opportunity to get it.
To be fair, I didn’t recommend it, I asked if it was worth buying. I did end up buying it last night but I haven’t started playing it yet. I mean, come on, $5? What the heck, right?
I have also never played any Fallout games so any tips for a true beginner starting with Fallout 4 would be appreciated.
Everything has eventual purpose. Fairly soon you will gain the ability to craft, and almost every single item in the game can be broken down for crafting components. As you play more you’ll get an idea of what you do and don’t need.
There’s also a perk that will let you tag certain components, and any item or container that contains that component will automatically highlight.
On the other hand, nothing laying around is going to be critical for later. You can safely leave stuff behind. The only stuff I’d strongly recommend you hold onto for now is any kind of glue or duct tape. The ‘adhesive’ component can be hard to come by.
Fallout 4 gets a lot of hate, but keep playing for as long as you’re enjoying it!
Fallout 4 actually has a nominal purpose to all the junk, as noted above, in that you can break it down and make things out of the components.
But some RPG type games just have stuff for “realism” or for the nominal pennies you can get for selling fifty pounds of looted brooms to the local merchant. Skyrim, I’m looking you you here.
While Fallout 4 does give a use to any item by being able to turn it into materials, I don’t know if that stops stuff from being junk. And it may amplify brain goblin habits, from hoarding to obsessively gathering up every item, depending on the player.
It’s good to keep in mind that containers have no weight or size restrictions, so dumping stuff off is good to do and only keeping vital gear as you explore
FO4’s crafting is a real expansion and improvement on what New Vegas has, since you could easily ignore it without downsides. So some of the confusion is from some expectation that the player has a familiarity with the general crafting of FO.
The reason, especially early for meats and food items is to cook them at a campfire and get more health when eaten and also just to heal when Stimpaks are few and expensive. Cooked items can also give buffs as I recall, beyond just regenerating some health. And unless your gorging on radiator foods, you shouldn’t have any real problems to get rid of it pretty simply.
For example, mutant hound chops (i.e.: cooked mutant hound meat) regenerates health and reduces radiation. Although the health boost is larger than the radaway boost.
Ha, great. Hoarding runs in my family and I have a tendency toward it. I guess virtual hoarding is better than the real version. I did start grabbing everything i saw- food trays, empty milk bottle, fans, typewriters, etc. just to sort of see what would happen. I kept expecting to try to run, not being able to move, and the game telling me “you’re carrying too much crap, dumbass. Get rid of 90% of it”. But it didn’t seem to make a diff. I assume though, that’s why a chest of drawers and things like it give an option to ‘transfer’, so you can stash stuff for later and travel light.
I’m still not quite sure what to do with all the stuff. Some of it appears when I need it, like when I encounter a safe and my screwdriver and Bobby pins appear. But when I get to a crafting station none of the stuff I’ve collected comes up in inventory- only my pistol and options to modify it. Maybe I just hadn’t collected the ‘right’ stuff for crafting yet.
And is there a way to put clothing on? I’ve gathered several items of clothing but my female avatar is still walking around in bra and panties. Seems sub-optimal for wandering outdoors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
@Skywatcher , thanks for the monkey tip, and I started reading that F4 thread last night- I’m sure that will have many invaluable tips.
Yes, press “TAB” on your keyboard to bring up the little wearable computer your character has. On that device, press INV(inventory) at the top. Choose “apparel” and you can pick the various clothing items in your possession to wear.
I think there is a shortcut to go right to the Inventory of your computer. Perhaps “I” or one of the function keys.
I think the biggest penalty is when you’re overburdened, you can’t fast travel. It takes quite a lot before the game says, “No, that’s too much” and stops all movement.
As Mahaloth mentioned, your Pip-Boy has tabs you can change through, for stats, a map, inventory. notes, and radio. Your inventory also has different sections for weapons, armor, aid (medicine/food/chemicals) and misc. When you open up a container/corpse you’re automatically shown your inventory.
While tools like screwdrivers, wrenches, and hammers are around, I don’t think you need them to do anything. Your lock picking screwdriver is magic and only exists for that and you just need to keep bobby pins on you.
Thanks @Mahaloth and @omenran. I did poke around with the pip-boy controls but I didn’t notice the apparel setting. I did find a mecha-suit so I’m not walking around practically naked anymore. Re: the video, I’m such a newbie at this game and the Fallout world in general I didn’t even know you could play as a guy. The game just seemed to default to the wife character without giving me a choice, so I figured it was like Tomb Raider or another game called Control I’ve been playing that features a female protagonist. Not that it matters much I guess.
Fallout 76 is user-hostile garbage and I strongly recommend against making your start into Fallout there.
As general PC gaming advice, if you’ve got windows 10, I’d suggest looking into gamepass which is $10/mo for access to a few hundred games, sort of like a netflix for gaming. All Microsoft games are on there, including all Bethesda games, so you can try all the fallout games that way rather than buying them individually if you were so inclined. If you felt the need to try Fallout 76, that’s definitely the route I’d go as you can get $10 value out of the other stuff on gamepass when it disappoints you.
On the other hand, I’m not sure what the modding situation is for gamepass - some of them use some bullshit obscure microsoft/windows 10 file system that makes it hard to mod games. So it may not be suitable specifically for games that are pretty shitty without extensive modding like pretty much all Bethesda games.
I have like 1500 games and I still use gamepass a lot - if you’ve got a small collection then gamepass is an even more amazing value. They’re adding games all the time, they often have day 1 big titles (for example, no one should be spending $60 on back4blood but it’s fine to play with a gamepass subscription). Lots of good stuff there, easy to get $10 worth of entertainment a month out of it.
Male is the default so you must’ve switched at some point during character creation and didn’t notice.
The entire intro is basically him practicing for a speech at a nearby veterans’ hall. You’ll eventually stumble across this hall; clearing out its occupants will allow you to activate the microphone and say, “War never changes.”
