• Published November 17, 2015

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So you’ve played a little Fallout 4 and you reckon you’re a regular badass, you’ve played some of the previous games and you have a good idea what’s going on but need some tips about some things you cannot dare admit in public.

Or you’ve never heard of Fallout, bought into the hype and now you have Fallout 4 and you’re not doing too well. Well let’s take a look at some tips shall we?

May I present the Wasteland 101 with your host, me! You know? That guy from the podcast? That guy from Twitter? No? Well okay.

Tip 1: Exploring

The worst possible thing you can do as soon as you leave the vault is run off into a random direction with no idea what’s going on. You’ll be running into a group of Raiders or a pack of Molerats and that will be the story of how you died like an idiot while trying to run away screaming like a girl.

Go to the town first, meet Codsworth, do a few starter quests and work your way exploring around Sanctuary and eventually explore further out as you gain a few levels. Trust me even if you’re level 30 and your best weapon is a pipe pistol – asses will be handed to you, and not someone else’s either.

As an example – there are legendary Deathclaws that turn invisible in the South.

The further south you go, the tougher the monsters and raiders you will encounter. If you really have to go explore early on, stick to the northern regions working your way to the east where most of your early missions will be taking place anyway. Enter a few buildings as you explore, strategically use cover when in trouble and in no time you’ll be a top notch explorer!

Tip 2: Junker Dave & Friends

On your travels you’ll need to pick up every piece of sh*t you find if you intend to do any sort of armor upgrading, base building or weapon upgrading. As a result your inventory will get full pretty regularly and you might have to make frequent trips to Sanctuary to offload.

If you’re having trouble you can do 1 of 2 things.

One – In the area where you loot, find a container like a trashcan or a box where you can dump your junk until you can go back for it later. Don’t worry, nobody will take it!

Two – Modify your armor pieces with the ‘pocketed’ modification. This increases the amount of items you can carry. You can also work on your strength stat and follow the appropriate skill tree for increasing carry capacity.

Tip 3: The unwritten

Nobody really explains anything to you so here follows some not so obvious details;

• Modifying Power Armor – Move your suit of armor into the yellow station for it, get out. Now select the yellow station and hit ‘Craft’ to access your armor menu for repairs and modifications.

• Linking Supply Lines – For this you need the Local Leader perks, once done you can link all your settlements by selecting a random settler and checking your on screen prompts. You should see a button mentioning ‘supply line’ select the appropriate settlement and viola, now you have access to all your junk wherever you are.

• Pip Boy Light – Your pip boy has a light, to access it hold in the button you use to access your pip boy and the light should go on. Beware, it makes you more visible when sneaking!

• Power Armor Fusion Cores – At first you might be tempted to just wear your armor all the time but you quickly discover you need Fusion Cores to do that and that running your armor without one has some distinct drawbacks. You can find a few early on but until you locate enough caps and a vendor that regularly sells them don’t bother too much with your armor. Fetch it when you need it on special occasions when you meet an enemy that forces you to run off and come back (Mirelurk Queen! Aaah!).

• Settler Assignments – A settler has to be assigned to an object to actually do something, this goes for guard posts, shops and crops. Enter build mode, select your settler and then go click on the thing you want him to focus on. In this case it’s best to equip them properly as well…a guard typically needs a good gun, armor and some ammo.

• Settlement Population – You’re able to send a settler from one settlement to another if you require the manpower. To do this enter build mode and select the settler, tell them to move!

Tip 4: Enemies everywhere

Don’t get too brave, ever. You will encounter enemies you aren’t able to defeat easily even if you do play on ‘Very Easy’. You might often be inclined to run in face first with guns blazing…and that’s pretty much your game strategy for everything.

Sneak a little, survey the situation, for instance here’s what I did to take down a bunch of super mutants.

I snuck into an entrance, placed landmines everywhere leading outside and then I stood in the bushes like an @sshole and shot at them through a scope until I attracted enough attention. They all came running right to me and through my mine field. I offed 14 super mutants, their boss and their guard dogs and I was level 8. See what I mean?

Sometimes though a fight is just not worth the effort or ammo and it might be best to circle around an enemy outpost and remain unseen. The last thing you want to do is use your valuable ammo for your laser rifle on mosquitos and low level Raiders. If you really have to kill everything you see, try use a weapon with regular ammo drops.

Tip 5: Foods

Pick up food, store it, eat it.

Stimpaks are in short supply until you find a regular vendor and food can be your saviour and at the same time your downfall. Most animals drop food when you kill them and in turn the food can be consumed raw or for greater effect be prepared into a hearty meal at a cooking station.

Most food gives you radiation…so it heals you but adds to your overall radiation, it’s a catch 22 so the best strategy to use is to build up your radiation meter about half way and then eat a bunch of healing foods and pop a rad away right after. This should bring you back to full health with no stimpacks used.

It’s also a good strategy to quickly switch to your pip boy when in trouble and chow down on a few sweet rolls!

Tip 6: Fallout Shelter

Google is your best friend when building your settlement. I’ve often found myself expending resources to build a generator or something only to discover it wasn’t needed at all and you’ll soon discover this wastes your materials quite a lot with successive mistakes.

Materials in short supply are adhesives and copper in particular, especially if you want to pimp out your settlement with some of that good old fashioned electricity. I’ve heard you can make adhesives from crops that you grow by using a cooking station, see? And here I was stumbling through ghoul infested tunnels in the dark looking for glue. This is why you need the Googles.

Also what nobody tells you is your Power Armor can be stolen by Raiders if you just randomly leave it places and that you don’t have to really bother with turrets and defences until you at least have a few trade routes set up and some decent resources. One guard post at the start is actually more than enough for defence!

Tip 7: Legen-wait for it-hope you aren’t lactose intolerant because the next part is-DARY

There are certain instances where you’ll be busy fighting some regular old enemies when suddenly this huge bastard comes running with a star next to it’s name. This is a legendary monster and if you piss him off enough he can mutate on the spot into a super saiyan version of himself.

Beware of this. When discovering a legendary it’s likely he’ll spawn in that same spot for quite awhile. If you died once fighting him go fetch your power armor, a companion and use some strategy (like the mines).

This really helps to get at those cool items they carry!

Tip 8: Companionship (Fallout Tinder)

A companion can make you or break you. Find the right companion for your playstyle. If you’re a sneaker it’s not gonna help if you run around with Strong The Super Mutant who sounds like a Mammoth Tank when he walks. In fact your companion will often get you killed.

Like when you’re in full stealth sneak in an area filled with enemies, poke your companion and go ‘psst’ and they go “WAHEY WHADDAYA WANT? I USED TO BE AN ADVENTURER LIKE YOU BUT THEN I GOT SHOT IN THE FACE FOR TALKING TOO LOUD AND ATTRACTING THE ENTIRE PLANET’S GHOULS!”

Pick the right companion for you and equip them with enough armor and ammo to actually be useful to you, also use them to carry stuff for you and do stuff for you! Your companion can be ordered to do various things for you all over the wasteland, like unlock safes and flank enemies. Not to mention they’ll pick up stuff they want on their own too.

Dogmeat Side Note – Dogmeat has a set of perks linked to him that influences his battle behaviour. These are called Attack Dog, in addition Dogmeat can wear outfits and play with a teddy bear!

Various companions can be found all over the wasteland, often in places you don’t think to look. Early on you can find Preston in Concord, Piper in Diamond City and Nick Valentine in Vault 114 but later on you can find unexpected ones such as Strong in Trinity Tower.

IMPORTANT – Side note on companion outfitting & Power Armor – Your human/humanoid companions can wear your Power Armor without depleting your Fusion Cores. Which is pretty cool – a little useless since companions don’t die and the armor also breaks quickly while a companion wears it which makes it a pain in the ass to repair the whole time.

BEWARE – You can tell your companion to get into your Power Armor but cannot tell them to get out. Effectively they’ll stay in there until they themselves decide they maybe want to get out. When a companion is using your armor there is no way to easily get them out.

Confirmed fix – You can remove the Fusion Core from the armor and this will force your companion to get out of the armor.

Pro Tip – The same method can be used while Sneaking to jack entire sets of Power Armor off the Brotherhood Of Steel.

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And that concludes my Wasteland 101. Is there something I missed? Something you wish to add to it? Let me know in the comments!

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