Fallout 4 – Beginners Guide with Tips and Tricks

Ultimate Guide for New Players with a Munchkin Streak

All credit goes to fext!

Build

Special

Fast levelling int based build (assuming you get the PER Bobblehead in Concord asap to get Lockpicking):

• STR 3
• PER 3
• END 1
• CHA 6
• INT 10
• AGI 3
• LCK 1

Most important perks

Locksmith, Sneak, Caps Collector, Rifleman, Local leader, Nuclear physicist, Commando, Science, Armorer, Gun nut, Mr. Sandman, Ninja, Medic, Hacker.

Gun nut: It’s enough to pick up lvl 1 in Gun nut early and leave it be for later. This way you can build Heave turrets and these are about the best choice to protect settlements. The ballistic mods can be removed from bought or looted weapons, there is a steady supply and often you get the mod before you are at the minimum level for the Gun nut to make it.

Rifleman: level it up only until you get Splattercannon (try to get it ASAP), you need it only as long as you are using OG as your primary weapon. Using OG with full auto receiver is a pain, but if you are perk hungry, you can go Commando only from the beginning.

Local leader: if you are into settlements, the supply routes can be helpful. But the ability to build crafting settlement objects is more important.

Nuclear physicist: very important for a power armor user. And power armor is the munchkin’s choice.

Science: power armor upgrades, recon scopes, and useful settlement objects.

Armorer: power armor and ballistic weave upgrades.

Caps Collector: you will be buying enough equipment (all of the best guns and most armor are shop bought) and ammo to profit from this one. It’s also important if you want top tier shops in your settlements.

Commando: all of the best guns (OG excluded) work best with automatic receivers.

Medic: clinic for your settlements and more effective stimpacks.

Equipment

Weapons

Firearms

Overseer’s Guardian and Spray & Pray if you only have the base game.

Splattercannon and Kiloton Radium Rifle if you have expansions.

Backup melee

Pickman’s blade (base game). If you have strong sneak attack and want to spare ammo, it’s great for ghouls, radroaches and such.

The Harvester (expansions). Stunlocks your target.

Armor

Power armor

…is obviously THE choice. T45 and T51 are the best because of the upgradability and low maintenance costs. The armor rating itself is less important that the other bonuses, namely rad resistance, carry weight, immunity to fall damage, and most importantly the upgrades. My choice is the Targeting HUD for head, Motion assist or Stealth for body, Calibrated shocks for legs. I was pretty happy in fully upgraded Nuka T51 armor from Nuka World. If you want to buy upgrades, become friends with The Atom Cats.

Silver Shroud armor

…is a nice starting armor and it will last you at least to the point where you get combat armor drops regularly. When you finish the related quest, you can have it upgraded by Kent several times, as you level up. Level 45 is the final upgrade.

Ballistic weave

Once you get ballistic weave from the Railroad, level Armorer and make yourself overpowered under armor clothing. My choice was Army fatigues or Green Shirt and Combat Boots. Check wiki on ballistic weave to see what can be upgraded. Headgear is a problem because the best hats cannot be upgraded, but Newsboy’s cap and Trilby hat both have CHA bonus.

Ultralight vs. Deep pocketed armor mods

Deep posketed will get you slightly higher carry weight bonus, but unlike deep pocketed, ultralight works under power armor and gives you sneak and AP boni.

Legendaries

If you are lucky, cheat or farm, you want:

• Explosive pipe gun to replace S&P/Kiloton – it’s light, has a long range and a high rate of fire, and you can scope it
• Kneecapper or frezing 10mm or pipe gun makes a nice defensive full auto secondary
• Furious combat knife is the best sneak attack backup
• Staggering security batton (add a stun mod) trash cleaning/sneak attack backup
• Sentinels melee weapon, anything light enough to carry, if you aready have full set of sentinels armor
• Sentinels armor (full set plus a weapon)
• Sharp armor, but you do not need a full set, as CHA is capped at 14 for best prices if you have maxed Caps collector, and 8, if you get all Junky vendors – you prefer something light since its main purpose is to wear it under power armor. When you want to shop or make a speech check, just get out of your armor.

Startup Playthrough a.k.a The Rivet City Run for Fallout 4

Once you get in Sanctuary, scrap everything you can and build everything you want and can. Your goal is to have at least 6 sheltered beds, 2 water pumps (6 units of water), 6 units of food, and 10 defence. You will need it later for a quest, and building it now will get you few levels up. If you have lab coat or anything else that adds to INT (ushanka hat), wear it. Also make yourself all food you can. Get Gun nut 1 to build heavy turrets and upgrade your gun.

Having Dogmeat as an active companion in Concord names it, if you don’t have it, it will be only labelled Dog.

During Concord fight you don’t have to jump down immediatelly and fight the raiders toe to toe, stay on the roof and use the laser musket as long as you can. You will have to get down to fight the deadclaw, and the best tactics is to back away from it and aim for it’s legs.

Once you are done with Garvey and his crew, recruit Codsworth, jump again in your power armor, grab the minigun and run to Hangman’s Alley in Diamond City. Clean it, leave your armor and minigun here, and go to Vault 88 to buy Overseer’s Guardian. Use any drug and piece of clothing that increases charisma and shopping prices to be able to buy it, plus all of the .45 ammo you can afford.

Return to Hangman’s and craft yourself the best selfloader receiver for OG you can, together with a long barrel. Go to Diamond City, and recruit Piper to max her affinity and get her perk ASAP. Consider buying Syringer (the doctor sells it) and make few rounds of yellow belly or similarly disabling ammo to cope with too strong adversaries (saving Kent is a breeze once you put a Yellow belly syringe in Sinjin’s ugly mug). Syringer, pipe gun and laser musket also have the lowest requirements to build a recon scope, which is good if you want to scan targets first to prevent collateral damage. Send Condworth back to Hangman’s.

Go to Goodneighbor via Boston Library, Trinity Plaza and Hubris Comics.

Cleaning Boston library gets you an INT bobblehead and a quest in Goodneighbor, together with a number of kills you will need for farming in Trinity Plaza church if you want to. It’s one of the best farming places. If you are lucky, there will be two mutans, one legendary mutant, and a mutant dog, which usualy drops to basement through a large hole in the floor. Do not kill the dog if you want faster respawn (if you clear a location, it respawns in 20 game days, if not, in 7), it is too stupid to be able to climb back and attack you.

Hubris Comics is full of ghouls and you can use them to get more kills if you have problems to spawn the legendary in Trinity Plaza, only make sure you do not kill a legendaries they spawn here as well. You certainly want the Grognak’s axe and costume here, pick numerous locks to impress Piper, and get the Silver Shroud memorabilia and costume for a quest in Goodneighbor.

In Goodneighbor, get both of the Live and Love issues here, and start Silver Shroud quest to get the armor, a very good early armor. Do not use the Silver tommygun, it’s a crap but the 100 rounds of .45 ammo you get with it is nice.

At this point, you have a good weapon, good armor, and Piper (Gift of Gab is arguably the second best companion perk in the game and better taken early) as your companion, which means you are more or less set.

If you were lucky at Trinity Plaza, chances are you also have an explosive pipe gun (which is the best artillery support grade mass murder weapon in the game, after you add a full auto receiver, a long barrel, and a drum mag) or another early legendary to your liking. Two shot laser musket is not a bad choice either, but in general, energy weapons are worse than ballistic.

Companions

Deacon, Piper, McCreedy and Cait are easier to impress, since you will lockpick and hack pretty often. Cait and McCreedy however are selfish so you want to park them in an empty settlement (both comment positively on Sunshine Coops) if you do not want to risk decreasing their affinity by accepting a settlement quest.

Codsworth loves ugrading weapons and armor, thus the best way is to park him in your base, where you are going to craft a lot.

Preston is one of the worst companions to go with, since his default musket stucks him in stuff very often and he also breaks sneak a lot. However it is good to have him parked in the main settlement as he likes weapon upgrades. He is also a no brainer choice for running Minutemen quests, since these are the easiest way to raise his affinity. It’s enough to have him around when you accept the quests, though.

Deacon is my next choice once I max Piper’s affinity and I already have high enough Hacking. I also like to have his perk before I start getting Sandman and Ninja, to prevent the bug.

Curie is a mixed bag. She is unbearably positive and you need to behave to impress her. She is very tanky, but cannot sneak.

So is Danse. His perk is not bad, but once you get it it does not make much difference. However since he is a power armor freak and likes weapon and armor upgrades, you can have him at your home base and level him there.

Most of the companions have a bad habit to protect you with their own bodies, which translates into them jumping in front of you and taking a bullet (or a burst) for that incoming strong melee mob you wanted to stop fast. Even better if you happen to use your explosive full auto gun as you also eath the splash damage and likely cripple yourself on top of that. Therefore the most effective approach up to Very Hard difficulty (cannot speak for Survival since I never played it) is just to get their perk, send them home, and happily play solo with Lone traveller perk. Or you can have Dogmeat with you since he does not go underway that much, and the perk still works.

If you romanced a peaceful companion (like Piper or Curie) and want to have her or him around for the Lover’s embrace perk, the best way is to have her or him Stay in a safe location before a fight, as they are OK with that.

Settlements

Stealing

Settlers will steal your stuff. No matter where it is, once it is in a settlement and the settlers have an access to ammo the weapon uses, they will steal it if the settlement is attacked. There is no way you can prevent it. Walls, doors, containers in the settler free part of Hangman’s, nothing works.

If they steal something, just check inventory of every one of them to reclaim the stolen item back. If it was a Provisioner, good luck chasing him or her.

The only proven way how to prevent theft is to store your stuff in an empty settlement, and The Home Plate works best, as it cannot be raided. On the other hand, unless you are a collector, there is only a few weapons that you really need – and as long as it is not explosive, you can pretty much give it to your companions or settlers right on. Automatic ballistic guns with a long range work best.

My priority were usualy Assault rifles, .44 revolvers or handmade rifles.

Happiness

Settlers must have sheltered (use getav 334 console command to check any questionable bed) beds explicitly assigned to each, and an unit of food and water per day. Bar, clothing shop, trader (junk) shop, and clinic increase happines, together with decorations like barber shop, fitness machines etc. A good way how to make them happy is to catch cats, dogs and eventually gorilas, so make sure you collect every piece of softshel mirelurk meat, canned dog food and wild mutfruit to build the cages. Dogs and gorillas add to defense rating and namely gorillas are effective close range fighters, but they can also make a small settlement rather cramped. You can move both dogs and gorillas to other settlements, so it is enough to make one set of cages in your main base and then redistribute the animals to other settlements as needed. The same goes for the recruitment beacon, by the way.

Interesting locations

Sanctuary

The first settlement you get. Scrap everything to get loads of resources and build anything you want and/or will need for the first Minutemen quest immediatelly, as it gets you enogh experience to get few levels before you leave the place.

It’s pretty large and full of annoying half wrecked houses, and if you park Dogmeat here, you better scrap or store all doghouses but one which you place on some easily accessible spot, otherwise the dog is hard to find.

Red rocket

More compact than Sanctuary. It was possibly intended as your personal space for early game. Ready for all your crafting needs. Hangman’s Alley serves as a better main base, though.

Starlight Drive In

Large empty space with a convenient water poodle that can host a water purifier. A good spot to build large installations. It is way too north for my tastes, though, and it has only a cooking station.

Hangman’s Alley

The vanilla main base in the middle of the map. Settlers will not enter the northern part that opens to the river, they will stay roughly in the area that was previously inhabited by raiders. Note that settlers will still steal your stuff even if you place it in containers in the northern part. It has a cooking station and weapon workbench which is better than nothing but not as convenient as Sanctuary or Red rocket.

The Home Plate

A house in Diamond City you can buy for 2000 caps. Can serve as a safe storage for your legendaries. Everything you need for crafting is close, together with all shops and services. If you don’t care for settlements and settlers, buy it as soon as you can and live happily ever after.