homepage Forums Land & Armor Combat Tactical Simulations - General Re: Fallout 4 (now with extra New Vegas!...and a dash of 76)

This is on Survival of course. In combat terms the mode is different than normal, with enemies hitting much harder (+50%), but I think I read they also are less spongy, so everything is both more mortal and lethal.

I tackled Corvega last night and just approached the plant very deliberately. I went through slowly and patiently and cleared it without dying. I entered through the street level sewer pipe and engaged and hid, engaged and hid through the whole facility until I reached Jared and completed the mission. Good to have this out of the way. It's a big difficulty spike for early game, and more so on Survival. Halfway through I was feeling the effects, especially from lack of sleep so I walked back to Sanctuary for the night, got some proper rest and returned to finish the rest of it.

Hit level 14

Level 13 -- Scrounger. In my first run I took one level of this and had gobs of ammo. I reasoned that I probably only need half of that so could get away without spending a point this time. But I clearly didn't realize how strong this is. Without it, I wasn't just finding less ammo in random containers, but none at all. Enemies and ammo boxes almost exclusively. So I really had to take it again, and it started paying off immediately with ammo in file cabinets, desks and toolboxes.

Level 14 -- Unspent. The opportunity cost of perks in Fallout is agonizing haha. So hard to choose when so many perks are attractive. At this point I want Action Boy, Armorer and Gun Nut for sure, but the last two really only pay off if you go deep so dropping a single point has little immediate return. By avoiding missions so far (just five completed) the XP should start rolling in as I do them and leveling should pick up pace and I'll be able to get all of these in short order. If Idiot Savant fires on quest turn in I could level up twice at once.

I don't really need Armorer until I can make ballistic weave and I have yet to venture past Lexington so that may still be a ways off.

I had lost Codsworth as mentioned but went and found him after leaving Corvega. Reached max affinity to get the Robot Sympathy perk, which only grants 10% DR against robot attacks. Meh, but better than not having it I reckon. I may spend that point on Lone Wanderer. I need to head in to the city soon, and that extra DR and carry weight will be nice. Codsworth loves armor and weapon crafting, and that's the best way to get his affinity up. He also hands out random purified water which was really nice while out in the wastes. But with the perk I dismissed him and got the dog again.

Codsworth is a good companion. His dialog is pretty good, he tells jokes and puns constantly. He calls me Mister Bond, which I love. The purified water is great and in combat he does OK, cutting enemies up and occasionally burning them. Because he hovers he's not vulnerable to things like radroaches and molerats. But he is also the worst from a stealth standpoint, easily spotted by enemies it seems.

His jokes are things like this

Alcohol actually IS a solution

A proton checks into a hotel, the bellhop asks, "Where are your bags?" The proton replies, "I don't have have any, I am traveling light"

I was wrong about the +50%. Actually it is this

Sole Survivor does 150% damage and takes 200% damage relative to "Very Hard" difficulty. Relative to normal mode, Sole Survivor does 75% damage and takes 400% damage.

400% damage! Good grief. That's like, way more than 50. It's brutal out there!

What are you currently running for weapons?

Hardened Sniper Rifle chambered in .308
10mm Pistol (renamed Snakebite, heavily modified)
Short Combat Rifle chambered in .45 (lightly modified)

These are the best I've found for my style in the early going, but I'm going to look in to getting Overseer's Guardian when I go to the city. I think it's heavy though so we'll see.

I'll probably use Deliverer once I get it, because of the VATS bonus, but does putting a reflex sight on my 10mm do the same thing (25% lower shot cost in VATS)?

Oh yeah, and that reminds me...earlier I said that the Sandman perk overcomes the damage reduction from mounting a suppressor. But I looked (I can't actually add suppressors yet, don't t have the perks) and from what I saw a suppressor has zero effect on damage, just range.

Its been so long that I can't even remember what I was using for my Corvega runs other than a combat knife and a very basic 10mm.

I don't think I'd even found a hunting rifle at that point, certainly not in my first playthrough.

I believe reflex sights only yield a 15% reduction in AP, and I never used them because of the cluttered sight picture.

I prefer the reflex sight over the iron sights on the combat rifle. Whatever mods I did to it changed the name to Tactical Combat Rifle. Maybe just because of the sight.

Last night I went to the city. Did Hangman's Alley, Vault 81 and Diamond City to open up all of these places and their quests. In order to get in to Vault 81 they demand three fusion cores. I actually knew this, had read about it a couple weeks ago. I had not found vault 81 in my first run, but looked for it this time. And of course forgot about the fusion cores. So after trekking across the map, I had to turn around and go all the way back to Sanctuary, and then all the way back to the Vault with the cores.

I did a number of missions and so the XP was coming a little faster and hit level 18. I kept that unspent point from before and didn't spend any points so had five to drop.

So at level 18 I took these perks all together

-- Rifleman 3. Even more damage and ignores more armor.

-- Locksmith 3. Can now pick all locks. I won't spend a fourth point here to make bobby pins unbreakable. Waste of a point.

-- Action Boy. 25% faster AP recovery. My high Agility build works great for VATS. And VATS is fantastic in the heaviest combat situations. This recovers AP faster, allowing me to use VATS more often and for longer.

-- Lone Wanderer 1 and 2. 30% damage reduction and +100 carry capacity. These are strong bonuses, especially in Survival. The companions are fine, but I prefer going solo with my dog.

Hangman's Alley is one of my favorite settlement locations, even though the layout obviously limits what you can build there.

It's conveniently located, easy to secure, compact and if you build upward enough you can access the building rooftops and perform a little parkour.

Yes I agree Crane. I hadn't been there in run one, despite how close it is to Diamond City. Its defense potential is what I like. Easy to set up a kill zone to protect against attack. Good location, easy to get to. I've made it my main base at this stage. Good call Crane.

Hit level 22.

Level 19 -- Armorer. Need to start getting these levels for ballistic weave (and other mods).

Level 20 -- Gun Nut. This isn't all that necessary, as there are gobs of great guns to be found. But if I want to customize and personalize the high end weapons, which I do, I need Gun Nut 4, so gotta start sometime.

Levels 21 + 22 -- Gunslinger 1 and 2. Damage and range boost to non-auto handguns, and gives me viable secondaries. Picked these up just before I got Deliverer, so it all dovetails nicely.

I decided to buy Overseer's Guardian from Vault 81 to see what all the fuss is about. And yeah, this is a serious firearm. In order to bring the price down I got a +1 CHR cap and then popped a Daytripper, which together boosted my charisma by 4 to 7, and the gun still cost me over 3000 caps. Overseer's Guardian is a combat rifle chambered in .45 that shoots two rounds at a time for the cost of one round. I had read that the displayed damage reflects the additional projectile, and yet it showed just 55. That didn't seem very good, just barely higher than the Tactical Combat Rifle I was using. But then I used it against some super mutants and realized it came with a armor-piercing automatic receiver.

As an automatic it did not benefit from my Rifleman perks, and of course both AP and auto affect damage too. So I took it back to Sanctuary, and after scouring the countryside for screws I modded it for Hardened receiver, which makes it semi-auto and now the damage is 118 (at Rifleman 3, and higher when Adrenaline is factored). It also came with a short night vision scope and I swapped that for a Reflex sight (Dot) and it is now my main carry rifle and it wrecks. A massive increase in lethality. I'll add a long barrel to it once I can. Later I can rechamber it to .308 (Gun Nut 4) and it will hit way harder than it does now. Add a suppressor and this is an end-game weapon. Sweet.

For Deliverer I also modded a hardened receiver and glow sights, and now have a great silenced secondary that is especially good in VATS.

Now I need to do a couple more quests for the Railroad and get that ballistic weave.

An anecdote about Survival mode.... So there I was in the northeast corner of Boston, near Old North Church. I got in to a firefight with some raiders, who had a walled off encampment in the streets. I took down a couple of them, all that ventured out of their compound, then shot up some ghouls attracted by the gunfire, and then waited for things to return to [Undetected]. A raider or two were still behind the walls, but could not see me. One of the ghouls was legendary, so once the coast was clear I went to see what cool gear he would drop.

Jackpot. He had a Lucky Hardened Sniper Rifle. Yes! What a great find, as Lucky imparts double crit damage, and since all sneak attacks are crits, here was a sniper rifle that could take me through the game. A fantastic find! So I snapped a screenshot of it to show off, and then hit tab to return to the game. At that instant a grenade icon flashed up and boom, dead. I had owned a Lucky Hardened Sniper Rifle for all of two seconds. Gutted

I didn't get Overseer's Guardian until very late into my second playthrough, wanting to see what the fuss was about, yeah I should have attained it much earlier!

Tough luck on the grenade incident, that reminds me of my early playthroughs where the AI was uncannily accurate with grenades until that was toned down with a subsequent patch.

It sounds like you're almost ready for a DLC run?

AI grenade tossing has been toned down?! Haha, they're like Vida Blue out there. Grenades and molotovs are responsible for probably 3/4 of my deaths.

So I played a bunch yesterday, determined to get the ballistic weave which I did. I also saw that Tinker Tom sells upgrades for Deliverer. Bought a powerful receiver from him which increased the pistol's damage significantly, even over the hardened receiver I had just installed.. It's beginning to look like maybe Gun Nut isn't so vital. I want to suppress all of my weapons, and that needs Gun Nut 4, unless I can find another weapon with the right mod, and then it become a matter of chance. Points are unlimited in FO4 so I will probably fill this out eventually, but its low priority at the mo.

Hit level 26

Level 23 -- Sneak 4. Even harder to detect and running no longer affects stealth. This is key and if you can find some of the covert ops magazines then this is highly effective in FO4.

Levels 24 + 25 -- Armorer 2 and 3. Timed this for when I unlocked ballistic weave. You know how many games make you build the first level of something in order to build the next level, when you're thinking why couldn't I just build the better thing straight away? Like how you have to build a blacksmith before you can build a foundry and you just want to build a foundry? Haha, well in Fallout 4 you can build the highest level of armor modification you have unlocked straight away.

Level 26 -- Fortune Finder. There are a lot of very cool pieces of kit at vendors, and they have a very high cap cost. Took this perk in order to get my income up so I can start to buy and try some of these good weapons and armors.

So getting these two perks (Armorer 3 unlocks at level 25) allowed me to go straight to the fourth level of ballistic weave which means I could give my army fatigues 90/90 protection. That more than doubles my armor rating. By doing it this way I saved a lot of mats making lower level versions of the mod earlier. Ballistic fiber is precious. I got a newsboy cap, and it looks like I can do the same mod to this hat, but I need more fiber. If so that would be another 90/90 and I'll have excellent survivability considering you still put armor over the fatigues and Lone Wanderer gives 30% DR. Maybe I'll even be able to survive Vida Blue

So really, at level 25 my character has taken a big shift forward. Much better protection and both Deliverer and OG have made me more lethal. The hobo phase is over. Now I should concentrate on putting together a really good armor set to wear over the fatigues. I want something that is light, stealthy and has good DR, especially ballistic. At the moment I'm wearing a mismash of synth, combat and leather.

Enemies will throw grenades and molotovs at you quite often as well in Fallout 76. The super mutants tend to use grenades most frequently against you.

Those suiciders are no joke either.

The flying insects too can give me a rough time.

Especially with that +400% damage in this mode.

So many ways to die in Fallout

VATS works great against those since it does a good job of tracking small fast moving enemies.

Very true and I have a VATS build, and Deliverer is great against them. The infected bloodbugs are the nasty ones.

VATS is fun to use, and very effective, especially against mobs. I want Mysterious Stranger to spice it up, I always took it in the previous games.

I remember back when FO3 was in development and how much of a kerfuffle the VATS feature was. Many wanted a shooter and not this thing. At first I was one, and then once I began using it I saw it was pretty cool and effective. With FO4 indeed being more of a shooter VATS is less necessary perhaps, but for me, and especially in Survival mode its really good to have. I forget too often to pop off criticals, and should be more mindful of that.

I have my settlement autoturrets either elevated or positioned behind a chain link fence whenever possible, in part because it keeps the AI from knocking them out easily with grenades, even though you no longer see the kind of uncannily precise grenade spam that was common in the early 2016 build state of the game.

I like a staggering or wounding shotgun for dealing with enemies who rush you.

Yes, a good shotgun is a must-have. It always cracks me up seeing how the enemies (especially the ghouls) will do those ridiculous long range lunges at you to try and melee you.

Have you encountered one of these yet DBond?

Is that a courser? Have not encountered one, aside from a reference from a companion. He said to run, so I assume they are bad ass.

Hit level 30

Level 27 -- Mysterious Stranger. To spice up VATS, and maybe now and then he will make a decisive contribution in a fight I might have lost.

Level 28 -- Gunslinger 3. More damage, more range.

Levels 29 and 30 -- Demolition Expert 1 and 2. Explosives have been much more useful to me in survival, especially mines. Before a hard looking fight I will lay a few out on the path an enemy might have to take to reach my position. So if I don't take them out and reach [Danger], then the mines will slow or kill them as they close in. With the Sneak perks I don't have to worry about setting any off and so can just pick them up as I move around the map, so always in supply. Demo Expert makes them have a bigger boom as well as adds a targeting arc for thrown grenades. Since you can't throw in VATS any more, having this arc is necessary I think to be effective with them. At least it's a big help to me.

You guys were talking about shotguns and I really like them in fallout, the combat shotgun is good fun in this game. This run though I've not carried one because of the weight. Hard to support more than three weapons really, so the shotgun misses out. I'm going with sniper rifle, OG and Deliverer.

You're gonna have to find out...

I don't know if Fallout 76 has the same perk cards as Fallout 4 but there's a perk card specifically for shotguns which reduces their weight. I guess you have not seen that one in your current playthrough? If not then it must be a new perk card introduced with F76.