Fallout 4 Hints & Tip
As you know if you’ve listened to this week’s Geektown Radio, here at Geektown HQ, we were EXTREMELY excited for the release of Bethesda’s epic 4th instalment of the Fallout franchise. A lot of it is familiar, but a lot has also been tweaked and changed. Here’s a few hints and tips to help you out early on in Fallout 4.
Strength is handy, not only for punching, but also for carrying… and you’ll want to pick up everything!
The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system returns, and early in the game you gain a limited number of points to build up your strength, perception, endurance etc… Personally I tend to pump up Strength as it helps you carry stuff. And with the new crafting system, you’ll find yourself wanting to pick up and carry a lot of stuff. It also helps when punching things in the face. :D I also find Charisma handy, as it opens up additional dialogue options, and Endurance as it helps make you less dead… Really though, you should balance the stats how you want to play. Charisma’s not a whole lot of use if you’re more a ‘shoot in the face, ask questions later’ type of guy.
Perks have changed slightly, in that it’s now merged with skills. So whenever you level, you now pick up a Perk OR an Attribute Point – I didn’t notice this till a few levels in, so i’d just been picking Attribute Points (yes, i’m an idiot). The Lone Wanderer perk is really useful, as it improves your damage and carrying capacity when you’re adventuring on your own (or with only your dog for company). There’s no level cap in the game this time around, so you should have plenty of opportunities to gain XP points and grab whatever perks and stats you want.
Feel the POWER (Armor)
Power Armor
Unlike a lot of the earlier games, Fallout 4 gives you a set of Power Armor pretty early on, but works a little differently to previous versions. You acquire it through a quest, and it’s really easy to get into, but the game does a fairly sucky job of explaining how to get OUT of the power armour! For reference, you hold down the ‘Action’ key (A on XBox, X on PS4, E on PC).
Power Armor in Fallout 4 is not really designed to be something you stay in all the time. It’s rather more like a vehicle you use for specific missions. The armor requires a Fusion Core to operate, and they run out, so you might want to pick and choose what you use it for. If you’re not using it all the time, you need somewhere to store it. The most sensible thing is to store it near a Power Armor station in your Settlement (we’ll get to those…) These stations allow you to upgrade and repair the suit. Just make sure you remove the Fusion Core when you leave it to stop anyone else walking off with it!
Crafting & Settling Settlements
The crafting system and ‘housing’ has been revamped for Fallout 4, in that you can now build your own home, rather than just be given the key to some shack somewhere in someone’s town.
You’ll unlock a couple of ‘Settlements’ (i.e. areas you can build houses on) pretty quickly in the game, and numerous others throughout your time in the wasteland. Whilst it’s tempting to start building multiple palatial homes and cityscapes, it’s best to pick one, and focus on building that up.
Settlements take a ton of resources, but can be built from single huts into large trading posts. Anywhere you find a Workshop, you can build up a Settlement. Your old village of Sanctuary and the Red Rocket Truck Stop just down the road are both good places to start.
First click on the workbench, then walk away from it. You’ll see that various objects in the local area can now be hi-lighted and scrapped. You can dump any trash items you find into the workbench to breakdown into parts. This gives you raw material to build up things like beds, walls, doors, even water pumps, generators and turrets to defend your new home. Once you’ve got things up and running, you can recruit additional people to your settlement, and have folk guard and farm the area whilst your away adventuring.
Hopefully those few little tips will help ease your way through the nuclear wasteland… See you in… Ohh… (if my previous Fallout Steam stats are anything to go by) about 200hrs… ;)
