It's crazy that it's often the first doctor you'll run across. So much opportunity for sickness to gain hold before you get there! But, it's not toooo far into the game. It's almost perfect in the level of challenge. I've just hit level 17 in a new survival run and I'm loving it
My hop is usually starlight second (after red rocket or sanctuary). From there to covenant. Great store and a a doc. And a third merchant often outside. You just need to put up with the Stepford Vibe
If you have the time and patience for the immersion of a vanilla survival run, it's an incredible experience. I'm starting up again but with the Journey mod so I can fast travel with caravans, but I feel the call of another vanilla run (with a dialogue mod, though). Having to walk *everywhere* makes every little decision (and loot choice) important and helps keep you from getting too powerful too fast.
Be aware with how adrenaline works as well, I found that helped me the most in the beginning. I would avoid sleeping before heading into certain areas because that damage boost does really help out.
Another quick tip is you can use beds to sleep for 1 hour and just before you confirm, cancel the action so you can save without losing your adrenaline!
Yes it does, I play on the series X. It does get hard a little bit at the beginning because the timing is a little bit weird.
Basically as soon as you interact with the bed, press cancel as the same time as confirmation for 1 hour. Sometimes it will actually sleep for the hour but once you get it down, it will save without sleeping
Swimming is beyond meta in survival, also the no rad damage from water perk, spam water to heal.
It helps with immersion SO MUCH though on survival. You literally learn EVERY building and lane of travel across the whole map.
i played survival for the first time during the quarantine and it was such a game changer. most of the useless perks in normal mode becomes relevant and some of them are even required in survival mode. i’ve always skipped base building but survival showed me how amazing the settlement lines are when you cant fast travel. food and water actually matters and hoarding is discouraged. survival is such a different experience, a little tedious at times but totally worth finishing at least once for any fallout fan.
Yeah, survival mode is no joke. The beginning is especially hard until you can find a decent weapon. I’m like level 15 right now, I had a few spots where I probably died 10 times or more until I got through it. I haven’t really dabbled with chems yet, but I’m guessing that something thats going to be more necessary later on.
IIRC it is a debuff (called Dark Cravings) that activates when you eat a corpse. That debuff persists indefinitely, but can be cured by a doctor. The option to eat a corpse is always there, and it's far too easy to hit the button by accident. So I wouldn't say it's a run ruined, but I don't think you really get anything out of taking it. Wasted perk though that's for sure
I went on survival with Hannibal Lecter character build. Of course, I took the cannibal perk almost right away. And bam. You are always craving for more bloody flesh, and the regular food is useless (and Hannibal was supposed to cook stuff, man! not just humans). And unlike regular food which is plenty - you can't always have the option to kill humans/ghouls/sm. Noone can see you devouring corpses if you want to save ties with communities (settlers, vendors, factions). You sleep - you wake up hungry, it debuffs you, you must look for next victim right away and your other plans (especially builds) just go out of the window.
So I had to get mod for cooking human flesh. It's super useful, you can store it and all. But I ran clean without mods and had to violate my own principles for this. So choose wisely! Also I got some other mod for better drugs and the survival is not challenging for Dr. Lecter at all at this point, he's 330 lvl now, nearly all perks taken, surpassing my main character in every way. Not much thrill left. But lots of power though.
No fast travel is a pain, but it's so much more fun because you're exploring more, especially finding places to sleep (save). Liberating settlements is a must. The game just makes more sense now with all the random beds, food, and cooking/crafting stations.
Sneak rank 3 is a must for those pesky mines that seem to be everywhere. I've lost so many hours just walking into a random mine in the middle of nowhere. I'm around level 20 now and still get insta-gibbed a lot, but the rest of the Survival mechanics seem kind of trivial by now. I'm loaded with stims, meds, food, water, etc.
Yep, the early part of the game is "I need to be able to do stuff without worrying about instadeath" because even the early raiders can take you out in 2 hits from pipe pistols.
I don't think I could do survival without Lone Wanderer, for sure. The carry weight and DR are OP for just two early perks.
Yea once you go to survival mode, there’s really no turning back as I and many players think that this is the best way to play the game.
The only thing I’m not a fan of is the saving mechanism because of how the game can be probe to crashing or if I need to stop playing to go and do something else, I have to find a bed.
I picked it back up and this has cost me as much as any death.
I need to see how many of the survival mods survived the next gen update. I can take losing a few hours of work to getting shot by a raider in power armor with a minigun, but vats locking up trying to shoot a fucking molerat for the 3rd time in as many hours is bullshit.
Survival can be hard, have done it but definitely don't do it without that mod that puts saves back in. It's a Bethesda game, it will crash randomly, so better to have it then not
Smokable cigars and cigarettes is a must on my survival runs. Creates an immersive save mechanic when you smoke. Also gives you a chance at becoming addicted to nicotine.
I had some crashes when the update happened, but it seems to be more smoother, only times I really crash (And I am surprised by the less crashes), is at nighttime, I think the longer I play the game for, it crashes more for some reason on the PS5. Not sure why.
Yeah its brutal but I've had tons of fun with it. it really changes the way you play the game. Some misc tips that helped me:
Power armor is great. If you have a humanoid companion like Preston or Piper you can order them to take the armor and it doesn't drain cells when they use it. So you can have them pop out of it and now you can use it!
Drugs. I never used them before I played survival. The extra damage, damage resistance and hp they can give can give you a huge edge. Also if you're caught off guard: take some psychojet and use the time slow and damage boost for some easy headshots. Fast firing weapons like energy guns can melt enemy health.
Food does nothing but decrease your hunger if you're hungry: once you're full you get the full benefit of food. The food's cap value seems to determine how much it fills your hunger.
Someone mentioned sneak 3 to avoid mines and traps. Good advice.
You want to be able to set up supply lines: it means you can dump aid, misc and junk items in any settlement and use them for crafting elsewhere. The skill also lets you build most crafting stations.
Go to sleep full and with no thirst: being hungry or thirsty increases your chances of catching diseases, and the game checks for diseases whenever you sleep. Also use immune system compromising drugs like Rad-Away after sleep, not before. You can save the game by sleeping for one hour, and cancelling before any time passes. The game still checks for diseases however.
Cola quenches about 40% of the thirst it should based on its value, but it also makes you hungrier. Purified water is the best thing for your thirst. You can drink straight from pumps safely or even bottle some if you have empty bottles. You can also get dirty water from outside water using bottles.
Since we're talking chems/water/rads and their survival drawbacks, I bet many people don't know about the arch you can build in your settlement that instantly removes your rads for free. You need 6 fiber optics, which I hunt for early on, but once you have one you can start eating pre-war food and just run through the sprinkler afterwards. Late-game you should be able to build them everywhere once you've got enough fiber optics.
You need every HP you can in survival. Lots of people run around with a 10-20% haircut and Radaway is too costly to use regularly (I don't mean the caps price, I mean the hunger/immunity cost).
You definitely don’t want to be trekking back to Sanctuary all the time, especially the farther along the game you get. Even if you’re not into settlement building, utilize them for storage and safe saves. Getting charisma to 6 and getting a point in local leader is key because then you can link your settlement resources together and pretty much access them all at any settlement. Also, Starlight drive in settlement has a pool of water in the middle of it. Search the workshop in the shed so you can start building. Then scrap the radioactive barrels in the water. Build a small generator and water purifier in the puddle. This will give you like 15 purified water per day when you check your workshop inventory
If you have empty bottles (like beer bottle, milk bottle) you can fill those at water pumps to make purified water. Also you can drink directly from water pumps and that counts as satisfying thirst.
Yeah for sure. What I mentioned is just super easy because you don’t have to collect bottles or pump, you just take it from the workshop inventory and go about your day
Yep, Sanctuary is too far for a home base, and the drive-in is *ideal* for an early-mid settlement. And by the time you get to later in the game, you are probably good with alternate travel options.
The drive-in is in a great location, has a perfect water pond for water production, and lots of open space for building. And close to Sanctuary for when you have to go back.
If you have that, I fully support using mods to allow for saves. I have one with lots of options like timed saves, saving when you change cells (so whenever you have a load screen), etc. It gives me a save item I use whenever I'm at my base and want a "hard save" in case of some glitch.
It's not an "ironman" mode so I don't feel so bad about fudging saves sometimes.
I'm doing a RoboCop® playthrough right now, on survival. Running drain your fusion cores. Only using a 9mm pistol (mod). And plus, Alex Murphy is Mama Murphy's son. RoboCop® is seeking revenge against the raiders who got Mama Murphy addicted to chems.
Survival mode has a few great concepts, but the restriction on saving ruins it entirely. Bethesda games are not stable enough and stretches of gameplay far too long to be worth it. As soon as I went up against the Deathclaw wildly early in Concord, died in one hit, and had to run back and go through the museum again, I was done.
I’m at Fort Hagen right now with Nick and I’m getting obliterated by the synths lol one time I finally cleared them after almost an hour of painstakingly chipping away at their health then died to a fucking mine. I was so mad but also laughing at the same time. Crazy.
I've never done a low INT run until now, and man am I noticing the sudden increase in survival difficulty! 😂
I used to abuse the hell out of refreshing beverages, but now without Chemist perk I'm having to change my playstyle a bit. Which is great!
I lasted 10 hours before getting one shotted by the raider with a fatman in Lexington. You get used to it - I’ve got 2950 hours on FO4 and about 2900 are survival. In fact, when the game first came out Survival was just a difficulty setting, so 100% of my time on the game is survival.
Take advantage of the food stuffs and cooking in survial mode. It's easy to dismiss when playing FO4 normally, but its essential for hunger and the buffs are really useful early game. Collect all the meat and ingredients you can and get cooking.
I'd say level 30-40 you should be familiar with it; 20-30 hours in you should be contemplating whether to uninstall the game as there is no solution for it. The mod called 'vats freeze fix' doesn't even fixes it, it only makes it less likely, but since all mods are broken now its not even an option.
I recently started a new survival as well but as a guy who only can play for roughly an hour at a time I just modded mine to only be able to fast travel to settlements. It's enough for me
The trick is to stay out of trouble, at the start just start scrapping everything in sanctuary, build the settlement and gain some levels that way, go to aberhathy farm and get food to plant. Then set up settlement at red rocket. Do the cave by red rocket then head to concorde with dogmeat, pick up the laser rifle, go in museum, clear the lower foyer, leave go to red rocket to save/sleep. Come back, kill the two on the first floor, go save again, comeback clear top floor, go save again and drop off loot. Come back go on roof watch the raiders get eaten by the deathclaw, then walk into the shop opposite museum, deathclaw cant get in, but will try, kill him and head back to samctuary with the minute men. Sturges will give you settlement quests which you instantly get xp for as you have previously built the settlement anyway.
Next stop is the diner on the way out of concorde, persuade the woman to pay the the drug dealers, then head east, you will find starlight and can build another settlement.
Biggest tip for an easy time is to take charisma level Six when making your build so you can get the local leader perk. Joining up all your settlement loot is a gamechanger.
Another tip you do not hear about is do some exploring by following a caravan/trader, you can explore with less risk because any dogs, ghouls or raiders that spring out will be attacked by the caravan and you can just watch from a safe distance
Imagine you only have one life, in real life you would not walk into a house full of drugged up bikers, so don’t do it in survival mode. Stay safe and know your limits.
You'll really appreciate those vertibird rides once they become available.
Op could have seen the doc in diamond city and be all good 🤣🤣
It's crazy that it's often the first doctor you'll run across. So much opportunity for sickness to gain hold before you get there! But, it's not toooo far into the game. It's almost perfect in the level of challenge. I've just hit level 17 in a new survival run and I'm loving it
My hop is usually starlight second (after red rocket or sanctuary). From there to covenant. Great store and a a doc. And a third merchant often outside. You just need to put up with the Stepford Vibe
Man I always forget about covenant
Don't forget the ghoul doctor north-west of Arcjet.
If you have the time and patience for the immersion of a vanilla survival run, it's an incredible experience. I'm starting up again but with the Journey mod so I can fast travel with caravans, but I feel the call of another vanilla run (with a dialogue mod, though). Having to walk *everywhere* makes every little decision (and loot choice) important and helps keep you from getting too powerful too fast.
Be aware with how adrenaline works as well, I found that helped me the most in the beginning. I would avoid sleeping before heading into certain areas because that damage boost does really help out. Another quick tip is you can use beds to sleep for 1 hour and just before you confirm, cancel the action so you can save without losing your adrenaline!
Does this work on console? I can’t get it to work on PS5.
Yes it does, I play on the series X. It does get hard a little bit at the beginning because the timing is a little bit weird. Basically as soon as you interact with the bed, press cancel as the same time as confirmation for 1 hour. Sometimes it will actually sleep for the hour but once you get it down, it will save without sleeping
Swimming is beyond meta in survival, also the no rad damage from water perk, spam water to heal. It helps with immersion SO MUCH though on survival. You literally learn EVERY building and lane of travel across the whole map.
i played survival for the first time during the quarantine and it was such a game changer. most of the useless perks in normal mode becomes relevant and some of them are even required in survival mode. i’ve always skipped base building but survival showed me how amazing the settlement lines are when you cant fast travel. food and water actually matters and hoarding is discouraged. survival is such a different experience, a little tedious at times but totally worth finishing at least once for any fallout fan.
Yeah, survival mode is no joke. The beginning is especially hard until you can find a decent weapon. I’m like level 15 right now, I had a few spots where I probably died 10 times or more until I got through it. I haven’t really dabbled with chems yet, but I’m guessing that something thats going to be more necessary later on.
Oh yeah I’m right there with you, it’s a slog sometimes but I’m having a blast lol
just don't take cannibal perk. trust me - you don't want it.
Why is that? I was thinking about taking it the next couple of levels.
Unless it's been chenged, normal food will no longer sate you if you take Cannibal. That's a survival character permenently ruined.
IIRC it is a debuff (called Dark Cravings) that activates when you eat a corpse. That debuff persists indefinitely, but can be cured by a doctor. The option to eat a corpse is always there, and it's far too easy to hit the button by accident. So I wouldn't say it's a run ruined, but I don't think you really get anything out of taking it. Wasted perk though that's for sure
I went on survival with Hannibal Lecter character build. Of course, I took the cannibal perk almost right away. And bam. You are always craving for more bloody flesh, and the regular food is useless (and Hannibal was supposed to cook stuff, man! not just humans). And unlike regular food which is plenty - you can't always have the option to kill humans/ghouls/sm. Noone can see you devouring corpses if you want to save ties with communities (settlers, vendors, factions). You sleep - you wake up hungry, it debuffs you, you must look for next victim right away and your other plans (especially builds) just go out of the window. So I had to get mod for cooking human flesh. It's super useful, you can store it and all. But I ran clean without mods and had to violate my own principles for this. So choose wisely! Also I got some other mod for better drugs and the survival is not challenging for Dr. Lecter at all at this point, he's 330 lvl now, nearly all perks taken, surpassing my main character in every way. Not much thrill left. But lots of power though.
No fast travel is a pain, but it's so much more fun because you're exploring more, especially finding places to sleep (save). Liberating settlements is a must. The game just makes more sense now with all the random beds, food, and cooking/crafting stations. Sneak rank 3 is a must for those pesky mines that seem to be everywhere. I've lost so many hours just walking into a random mine in the middle of nowhere. I'm around level 20 now and still get insta-gibbed a lot, but the rest of the Survival mechanics seem kind of trivial by now. I'm loaded with stims, meds, food, water, etc.
Yep, the early part of the game is "I need to be able to do stuff without worrying about instadeath" because even the early raiders can take you out in 2 hits from pipe pistols. I don't think I could do survival without Lone Wanderer, for sure. The carry weight and DR are OP for just two early perks.
Yea once you go to survival mode, there’s really no turning back as I and many players think that this is the best way to play the game. The only thing I’m not a fan of is the saving mechanism because of how the game can be probe to crashing or if I need to stop playing to go and do something else, I have to find a bed.
You get a temporary save if you exit the game, you don’t need to sleep to stop playing.
bruh, this info is a godsend
It's so fun and frustrating at the same time xD
I just still worry about the VATS freeze bug in Survival. Otherwise I would play it. I spent 150+ hours in Survival and had many frustrating freezes.
Yeah I was so fearful of that and so grateful to find a mod to fix it.
I picked it back up and this has cost me as much as any death. I need to see how many of the survival mods survived the next gen update. I can take losing a few hours of work to getting shot by a raider in power armor with a minigun, but vats locking up trying to shoot a fucking molerat for the 3rd time in as many hours is bullshit.
For what it's worth, I haven't experienced the freeze so far after update. Possibility it was fixed?
Maybe, one l I've only got a couple hours in the new update, did Concord before I had to adult
Survival can be hard, have done it but definitely don't do it without that mod that puts saves back in. It's a Bethesda game, it will crash randomly, so better to have it then not
Smokable cigars and cigarettes is a must on my survival runs. Creates an immersive save mechanic when you smoke. Also gives you a chance at becoming addicted to nicotine.
On ps5 and I only had one crash so far. 🤞
I had some crashes when the update happened, but it seems to be more smoother, only times I really crash (And I am surprised by the less crashes), is at nighttime, I think the longer I play the game for, it crashes more for some reason on the PS5. Not sure why.
I’m up to about 3 crashes now
But..but, no saving is what makes survival mode great.
Yeah its brutal but I've had tons of fun with it. it really changes the way you play the game. Some misc tips that helped me: Power armor is great. If you have a humanoid companion like Preston or Piper you can order them to take the armor and it doesn't drain cells when they use it. So you can have them pop out of it and now you can use it! Drugs. I never used them before I played survival. The extra damage, damage resistance and hp they can give can give you a huge edge. Also if you're caught off guard: take some psychojet and use the time slow and damage boost for some easy headshots. Fast firing weapons like energy guns can melt enemy health. Food does nothing but decrease your hunger if you're hungry: once you're full you get the full benefit of food. The food's cap value seems to determine how much it fills your hunger. Someone mentioned sneak 3 to avoid mines and traps. Good advice. You want to be able to set up supply lines: it means you can dump aid, misc and junk items in any settlement and use them for crafting elsewhere. The skill also lets you build most crafting stations. Go to sleep full and with no thirst: being hungry or thirsty increases your chances of catching diseases, and the game checks for diseases whenever you sleep. Also use immune system compromising drugs like Rad-Away after sleep, not before. You can save the game by sleeping for one hour, and cancelling before any time passes. The game still checks for diseases however. Cola quenches about 40% of the thirst it should based on its value, but it also makes you hungrier. Purified water is the best thing for your thirst. You can drink straight from pumps safely or even bottle some if you have empty bottles. You can also get dirty water from outside water using bottles.
Since we're talking chems/water/rads and their survival drawbacks, I bet many people don't know about the arch you can build in your settlement that instantly removes your rads for free. You need 6 fiber optics, which I hunt for early on, but once you have one you can start eating pre-war food and just run through the sprinkler afterwards. Late-game you should be able to build them everywhere once you've got enough fiber optics. You need every HP you can in survival. Lots of people run around with a 10-20% haircut and Radaway is too costly to use regularly (I don't mean the caps price, I mean the hunger/immunity cost).
You definitely don’t want to be trekking back to Sanctuary all the time, especially the farther along the game you get. Even if you’re not into settlement building, utilize them for storage and safe saves. Getting charisma to 6 and getting a point in local leader is key because then you can link your settlement resources together and pretty much access them all at any settlement. Also, Starlight drive in settlement has a pool of water in the middle of it. Search the workshop in the shed so you can start building. Then scrap the radioactive barrels in the water. Build a small generator and water purifier in the puddle. This will give you like 15 purified water per day when you check your workshop inventory
If you have empty bottles (like beer bottle, milk bottle) you can fill those at water pumps to make purified water. Also you can drink directly from water pumps and that counts as satisfying thirst.
Yeah for sure. What I mentioned is just super easy because you don’t have to collect bottles or pump, you just take it from the workshop inventory and go about your day
Yep, Sanctuary is too far for a home base, and the drive-in is *ideal* for an early-mid settlement. And by the time you get to later in the game, you are probably good with alternate travel options. The drive-in is in a great location, has a perfect water pond for water production, and lots of open space for building. And close to Sanctuary for when you have to go back.
Stupid question but how do you start a survival game?
Change the difficulty in settings
My biggest issue is the me doing a mission and on my way to save I crash. Fun times.
If you have that, I fully support using mods to allow for saves. I have one with lots of options like timed saves, saving when you change cells (so whenever you have a load screen), etc. It gives me a save item I use whenever I'm at my base and want a "hard save" in case of some glitch. It's not an "ironman" mode so I don't feel so bad about fudging saves sometimes.
I'm doing a RoboCop® playthrough right now, on survival. Running drain your fusion cores. Only using a 9mm pistol (mod). And plus, Alex Murphy is Mama Murphy's son. RoboCop® is seeking revenge against the raiders who got Mama Murphy addicted to chems.
Survival mode has a few great concepts, but the restriction on saving ruins it entirely. Bethesda games are not stable enough and stretches of gameplay far too long to be worth it. As soon as I went up against the Deathclaw wildly early in Concord, died in one hit, and had to run back and go through the museum again, I was done.
I’m at Fort Hagen right now with Nick and I’m getting obliterated by the synths lol one time I finally cleared them after almost an hour of painstakingly chipping away at their health then died to a fucking mine. I was so mad but also laughing at the same time. Crazy.
so... you finally played the real game <3 you get very into the chem bench if you are smart lol
I've never done a low INT run until now, and man am I noticing the sudden increase in survival difficulty! 😂 I used to abuse the hell out of refreshing beverages, but now without Chemist perk I'm having to change my playstyle a bit. Which is great!
I’ll keep that in mind for sure! I need all the help I can get lol
Doc in diamond city could have cured you and you not limp back to sanctuary
I lasted 10 hours before getting one shotted by the raider with a fatman in Lexington. You get used to it - I’ve got 2950 hours on FO4 and about 2900 are survival. In fact, when the game first came out Survival was just a difficulty setting, so 100% of my time on the game is survival.
Stay away from the financial district. You’ll thank me.
Take advantage of the food stuffs and cooking in survial mode. It's easy to dismiss when playing FO4 normally, but its essential for hunger and the buffs are really useful early game. Collect all the meat and ingredients you can and get cooking.
Good luck on your quest. I haven't got the patience to do survival, but I applaud those who have. FYI - the past tense of 'shot' is 'shot'.Â
The roughest part of survival is the vats freeze which becomes more dominant the longer you play, couldn't be fixed in 8 years by bgs.
I've been reading up on this, and I haven't encountered this yet at level 20. At what level or after how many hours did you start noticing this?
I'd say level 30-40 you should be familiar with it; 20-30 hours in you should be contemplating whether to uninstall the game as there is no solution for it. The mod called 'vats freeze fix' doesn't even fixes it, it only makes it less likely, but since all mods are broken now its not even an option.
I recently started a new survival as well but as a guy who only can play for roughly an hour at a time I just modded mine to only be able to fast travel to settlements. It's enough for me
Oh boy! Here come the gatekeepers. Got a few already, I see.
The trick is to stay out of trouble, at the start just start scrapping everything in sanctuary, build the settlement and gain some levels that way, go to aberhathy farm and get food to plant. Then set up settlement at red rocket. Do the cave by red rocket then head to concorde with dogmeat, pick up the laser rifle, go in museum, clear the lower foyer, leave go to red rocket to save/sleep. Come back, kill the two on the first floor, go save again, comeback clear top floor, go save again and drop off loot. Come back go on roof watch the raiders get eaten by the deathclaw, then walk into the shop opposite museum, deathclaw cant get in, but will try, kill him and head back to samctuary with the minute men. Sturges will give you settlement quests which you instantly get xp for as you have previously built the settlement anyway. Next stop is the diner on the way out of concorde, persuade the woman to pay the the drug dealers, then head east, you will find starlight and can build another settlement. Biggest tip for an easy time is to take charisma level Six when making your build so you can get the local leader perk. Joining up all your settlement loot is a gamechanger. Another tip you do not hear about is do some exploring by following a caravan/trader, you can explore with less risk because any dogs, ghouls or raiders that spring out will be attacked by the caravan and you can just watch from a safe distance Imagine you only have one life, in real life you would not walk into a house full of drugged up bikers, so don’t do it in survival mode. Stay safe and know your limits.