Their marketing department is definitely on their game. It really looks good.
I usually feel done with a character concept by around level 45 or so. After that, yeah, they start to become much alike because you're left needing to put point into stats and perks that didn't fit the character before. Not that 45 is "Hey! I've got everything I need!", but that's about where I start losing any specialized focus and start taking extra curricular stuff "to round them out." Eventually, yes, they're all nothing but well-rounded.
UNLESS Bethesda gives us Epic/Legendary levels of Perks somehow, like they did in Skyrim.
Really looking forward to Far Harbor, which too many people mispronounce. I like the locals' pronunciation best, that real Boston, MA dialect!
A true Mainer would not consider someone from Massoftwoshits to pronounce anything of theirs correctly. ;) ;) ;)
Mainers are even more non-rhotic than Bostonians (Bah Hahbah). Though as a Yankee descendant, I would prefer to hear someone just pronounce it the way they normally would than clumsily try to sound like a New Englander from any part of the region. (Caveat: not a New Englander, myself, and have a hideous Mid-Atlantic accent.)
I hear you. It just doesn't sound right to me to hear "FaR HaRboR" rather than "Fah Hahbah".
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On a different note: On console, my Survival mode doesn't seem to be calculating damage correctly. I'm doing less damage than in normal mode, and still taking considerable damage from foes. It's taking me 3-4 shots with a pipe rifle to take out simple Raiders. Sneak attacks are only reducing that to 2 shots for many of them.
It's like I got all the Survival mode mechanics (diseases, need to eat/drink/sleep, no saves without a bed) but still running on the old Survival damage scaling. ??
I've checked it out. If I keep my new character in Normal mode, I do my accustomed amount of damage: Raiders are killed in 1-2 shots. If I switch to Survival, they take 3-4.
I guess I'll wait for the CK to come out, &/or mods, and find one that lets me tweak it.
I'd report it to support.bethesda.net, Otherwhere. Maybe your save got corrupted or something.
What does a Mid-Atlantic accent sound like?
Weirdly I tried to look up an example and I found links related to old-timey movie stars, which was not what I meant. I meant this.
Maybe Boardwalk Empire for some Mid-Atlantic sounds?
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Waiting to hear from BGS about my 1.5 patch. Not gonna hold my breath, though.
I can't wait for mods! I'd love to be able to implement the Wellness aspect of the new mode and not have to deal with the HP imbalances.
Plus all the new armor combinations, etc.
DQ, I've read about that mid-atlantic accent that disappeared before. Really interesting stuff from a linguistics perspective.
Well, I finally got access to the survival mode on console, and it is happily quite brutal. I am avoiding the main quest so far, so it is just me and the dog wandering around. (For some reason I can not get Codsworth to open a dialogue after he tells me to go to Concord.)
I don't remember dying this much with my last character, but I am already seeing new areas I never found before, as I hesitantly explore the area around Red Rocket. In my head cannon, Natasha is a smart lawyer who figured out that there was no guarantee Shawn was taken any time recently, and that she would do no good to him dead, so she is being very careful and expanding her search pattern in slow circles.
Just because some robot says to head to Concord doesn't mean that is how you go about a methodical search!
Took me forever to get any decent armor, because of sketchy loot drops and being killed by raiders so easily. Finally found a dead body with some decent leather armor, and raider mix. Killed a lone couple of Gunners, and did some upgrading to my weapons, as well as getting laser pistols from the Gunners, so I am finally making some headway. Biggest find last night was the power armor frame with a chest and head piece of T-45. I feel like I might be ok now.
My one big complaint about Survival is how a one hour nap makes you tired, even if you were just rested up from 8 hours of sleep.
Diseases are brutal. I got something from drinking from the river, and at one point got an infection from molerat bites that did a hit to my HP every few minutes. It was part of what killed me. (Although in fairness, ambushing what I thought was a pair of supermutants that turned out to be part of a larger hunting party had more to do with it...
Well, I finally got access to the survival mode on console, and it is happily quite brutal. I am avoiding the main quest so far, so it is just me and the dog wandering around. (For some reason I can not get Codsworth to open a dialogue after he tells me to go to Concord.)
He won't until after you come back from saving Preston & co., I believe.
Yeah - diseases are brutal. Way too easy to contract imho. And something like parasites, while not as lethal, are still too OP in terms of impact for what it is. (I needed to eat twice as much to satisfy my hunger when I had parasites. A 50% increase would have been a big enough hit. Doubling it was just insane.)
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Holy crap, survival is hard and/or I suck way way way more than I thought. I wanted to give it a spin, so I flipped the switch on my 20th level back up character, and suddenly black bloatflies were giving me trouble. It probably doesn't help that my standard playstyle is "meh, I don't want to pay too much attention to combat, I'll just put it on Easy and go guns blazing." I've started a new character in survival mode to try and make a more combat-oriented build, and I'm still getting my ass handed to me.
Still, good times - very much changes the way the game plays. I feel like I have a little tiny safe zone, and everything outside of that is scary death.
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So I have started a couple games and after hitting level 4 or so decided that I wanted to go to someplace far away, like in one I ran cross-country for The Castle. Another one I headed straight down to the edge of the Big Bang Radiation Wasteland. Usually this involves me conserving energy and then sprinting from trouble anytime it shows up, unlocking locations as I run. Fighting at such low levels in such areas is usually suicide but once I get to where I want I now have access to it and can work on minor excursions in those areas to increase my safety zone. I had The Castle as a location by 6th level and cleared it by 7th so it was now a base.
Could someone do similar in survival mode or does it really negate that?
Well, I finally got access to the survival mode on console, and it is happily quite brutal. I am avoiding the main quest so far, so it is just me and the dog wandering around. (For some reason I can not get Codsworth to open a dialogue after he tells me to go to Concord.)He won't until after you come back from saving Preston & co., I believe.
To unlock Codsworth, you either need to bring the Concord Five back to Sanctuary, or complete the Main Quest up through the end of Hunter/Hunted. (You will also unlock Dogmeat at the beginning of Hunter/Hunted if you never otherwise ran into him.)
Yeah - diseases are brutal. Way too easy to contract imho. And something like parasites, while not as lethal, are still too OP in terms of impact for what it is. (I needed to eat twice as much to satisfy my hunger when I had parasites. A 50% increase would have been a big enough hit. Doubling it was just insane.)
I was wondering how the disease gameplay worked/felt. It's one of the things that actually intrigues me about the idea of survival mode, especially since of course the base game doesn't do anything about your eating 30 day old deathclaw meat or whathaveyou. Sounds like they went from "more immersive/survivey" to overboard-hard though. I'm sure YMMV though.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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So I have started a couple games and after hitting level 4 or so decided that I wanted to go to someplace far away, like in one I ran cross-country for The Castle. Another one I headed straight down to the edge of the Big Bang Radiation Wasteland. Usually this involves me conserving energy and then sprinting from trouble anytime it shows up, unlocking locations as I run. Fighting at such low levels in such areas is usually suicide but once I get to where I want I now have access to it and can work on minor excursions in those areas to increase my safety zone. I had The Castle as a location by 6th level and cleared it by 7th so it was now a base.
Could someone do similar in survival mode or does it really negate that?
I think you could do it in theory, it's just a lot harder - you'd need to bring enough food and water not to become hungry/dehydrated and then have a bed set up (or be able to easily set up a bed) at your destination location. The other big challenge is that you can't save on that cross-commonwealth trek unless you can find a bed along the way (and those tend to be guarded) - if you mess up, you'll find yourself all the way back at the beginning of the journey.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Also, a big thumbs up to the fact that you can now fill up empty bottles with water to make purified water (or, I suppose, fill them up in a river or other water source to make dirty water - I haven't tried). I'm not sure if this feature also exists in non-survival, but I was really happy to see it in survival (though I do wonder what happens to the bottle on the other end - I don't think you get an empty bottle when you use a purified water).
Also, a big thumbs up to the fact that you can now fill up empty bottles with water to make purified water (or, I suppose, fill them up in a river or other water source to make dirty water - I haven't tried). I'm not sure if this feature also exists in non-survival, but I was really happy to see it in survival (though I do wonder what happens to the bottle on the other end - I don't think you get an empty bottle when you use a purified water).
You can fill bottles in a river or other water source to create dirty water. Useful for various soup recipes.
These features are NOT available in any other mode, unfortunately.
I don't understand BGS going to all the trouble to create them only to lock them behind a mode a small percentage of their fan base will play.
Mods, please!
I think the reasoning water, soda, and booze don't leave behind bottles--even though such empty bottles exist in the game--is so the player doesn't get unwittingly burdened by all the bottles. Which I imagine would especially be a problem in Survival where your carry weight is so light anyway.
In vanilla Fallout, because you don't consume as much water to begin with, you can get more than an ample supply from surplus made by your settlement so being able to make more isn't a big deal.
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A primary settlement with access to water (Starlight Drive-In or Taffington Boathouse are both fairly centralized spots) and a couple of water purifiers will provide all the purified water you'll need for crafting.
That leaves you free to drink up the ones you make from random bottles, or find/buy in the wastes.
In addition, the Wasteland Survival Guide in Sunshine Tidings Co-Op yields 2x meat from animals killed. Should settle those hunger pangs right quick, tbh.
I HAVE WORMS!
LOL
Yeah - that happened to me. More an inconvenience than anything else. There are far deadlier diseases out there.
I have to wait until I can tweak Survival Mode. I got killed by a mere Raider armed with a pool cue. He took out half my health with a single hit! And my 10mm pistol was only taking about 1/4 of his health per shot. A%$*#!# got to me and killed me while I (the player) sat in stunned frustration over how ineffective my weapon was in the new mode.
Arrgghhhh! grumble, grumble...
In vanilla Fallout, because you don't consume as much water to begin with, you can get more than an ample supply from surplus made by your settlement so being able to make more isn't a big deal.
It's nice to be able to produce either purified water or dirty water as your crafting requires without relying on set drops of dirty water cartons. Purified water becomes really easy to acquire very early on.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I have to wait until I can tweak Survival Mode. I got killed by a mere Raider armed with a pool cue. He took out half my health with a single hit! And my 10mm pistol was only taking about 1/4 of his health per shot. A%+$&+@ got to me and killed me while I (the player) sat in stunned frustration over how ineffective my weapon was in the new mode.
Arrgghhhh! grumble, grumble...
I feel your pain. I learned that I couldn't possibly help out in Concord (Preston waives me into the building, I see a raider, the raider kills me in two shots) so I took a page from MeanDM up thread and started looking for bandits in the woods around Sanctuary to beef up my armor. I found two bandits, with their dog, and thought, okay, cool, I can handle this...
I'm taking cover behind a tree, and suddenly, I'm down to half health. I cap the raider who is hitting me and then duck and weave to get into better position to hit the other one. I'm close enough for my shotgun, so I pop out and lock in 3 shots in VATS.
No big deal. 3 shots. In VATS. I'm golden.
Except...I need to reload after the second shot...and I'm not behind cover anymore...and the raider isn't polite enough to give me a second to reload...and then I'm dead.
To top it all off, I am so paranoid about dying that I keep resting after every encounter, which means I never get the benefits of adrenaline.
It sounds like Survival mode might call for a "craft everything you can to grind XP before leaving Sanctuary" build, but I've already done that...
It does get better. I was down at the Subshine Co-Op, which is pretty easy to passify, and after resting up, headed over to Walden Pond. I took some Jet and Medex as I entered the tunnels, and even being spotted I got enough of a drop on the raiders in there to take all 4 out. And there were antibiotics in the safe, so I can proudly say I am now worm-free!!
Sebastian, you might head to the Co-Op. I think it's right outside of there I found the dead body with the armor.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Sebastian, you might head to the Co-Op. I think it's right outside of there I found the dead body with the armor.
Thanks - I'll head on down that way. I managed to scavenge a set of leather armor from the two bandits I killed (and a few other bodies along the way), but I could still use some better equipment before saving Preston & co.
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So...death claw after the Museum of Freedom is really nasty.
I can make it through the museum no sweat - sneak attacks with the laser musket and Dogmeat take care of those raiders.
But then Mr. I'm Gonna Eat Ya shows up and demolishes me even in my new power armor.
Time to keep hiding and sniping, I guess...
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So...death claw after the Museum of Freedom is really nasty.
I can make it through the museum no sweat - sneak attacks with the laser musket and Dogmeat take care of those raiders.
But then Mr. I'm Gonna Eat Ya shows up and demolishes me even in my new power armor.
Time to keep hiding and sniping, I guess...
IIRC, the power armor there has a minigun. Use it. Also what difficulty you playing on? Its ok to lower the difficulty, none of the trophies/ achevments are affected by difficulty if you are worried about that.
I tried a new approach in Concord. From the roof of the museum, enter the PA, grab the minigun, and head to the right over the roof of the museum. Drop down and run down the street to the right all the way to the end, trigger the Deathclaw, throw a molotov at it, then run back the way you came.
The Deathclaw will set on the raiders, who will take down at least some of its health. (In my run, they took out about 1/3 of its health.)
Wait down near the hardware store. Move forward only enough to shoot the Deathclaw a bit and have it run at you. Burst fire as you back up. Enter the hardware store and be sure you're far enough in that it can't get you with its claws. (I had 1 run where it got me because I wasn't far enough inside. Sucked. I lost 45 mins. of play to that. )
Between you and Preston, you should be able to finish it off.
It is a hard fight in Survival Mode to be sure. Wicked hard.
So...death claw after the Museum of Freedom is really nasty.
I can make it through the museum no sweat - sneak attacks with the laser musket and Dogmeat take care of those raiders.
But then Mr. I'm Gonna Eat Ya shows up and demolishes me even in my new power armor.
Time to keep hiding and sniping, I guess...
One very important thing to note, that a lot of people don't realize:
You do not immediately have to fight that Deathclaw. The game pushes you in that direction as a "tutorial" to show you everything you can do in the game early on, but it is also a Fallout game like any other where you can go in any direction you please.
The Concord Five will wait in the Museum of Freedom indefinitely for your return (in my second playthrough I didn't even rescue them until I'd finished with the Main Quest).
If you WANT that early challenge, take it on.
But you can also run away, level up and maybe find a missile launcher or a fat man, and then come back to deal with it if the minigun's just too unwieldy for you.
I'm taking DQ's approach. I also wanted to point out there's a downed vertibird with a partial set of power armor near the satilite array just east of the red rocket.
I have been doing a run through where I have avoided all power armor locations until after level 30 with the idea to get as many full sets of the X01 possible.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I'm taking DQ's approach. I also wanted to point out there's a downed vertibird with a partial set of power armor near the satilite array just east of the red rocket.
I found that last night, but of course didn't have a fusion core. I lugged it all the way back to the Red Rocket, put it in the Power Armor Station, and went to my water pump to quench my thirst prior to resting/saving...
And that's when the two raiders ambushed me and I had to do it all over again.
I'm taking DQ's approach. I also wanted to point out there's a downed vertibird with a partial set of power armor near the satilite array just east of the red rocket.I found that last night, but of course didn't have a fusion core. I lugged it all the way back to the Red Rocket, put it in the Power Armor Station, and went to my water pump to quench my thirst prior to resting/saving...
And that's when the two raiders ambushed me and I had to do it all over again.
There's a cave underneath the Red Rocket that has a power core. Just circle the hill and you'll see the entrance.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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There's a cave underneath the Red Rocket that has a power core. Just circle the hill and you'll see the entrance.I'm taking DQ's approach. I also wanted to point out there's a downed vertibird with a partial set of power armor near the satilite array just east of the red rocket.I found that last night, but of course didn't have a fusion core. I lugged it all the way back to the Red Rocket, put it in the Power Armor Station, and went to my water pump to quench my thirst prior to resting/saving...
And that's when the two raiders ambushed me and I had to do it all over again.
Is it in the radioactive part of the cave? I avoided that area. I ended up finding a power core in the nearby satellite array after recovering the power armor (though that was prior to dying at the end of the dungeon and giving up for the night).
I have been doing a run through where I have avoided all power armor locations until after level 30 with the idea to get as many full sets of the X01 possible.
I have awful luck with level based power armour spawns.
I just went to the national guard training ground armour storage, at level 42. Got t-60.
I've gone to 38 court at 46 and gotten t-60.
I'm taking DQ's approach. I also wanted to point out there's a downed vertibird with a partial set of power armor near the satilite array just east of the red rocket.I found that last night, but of course didn't have a fusion core. I lugged it all the way back to the Red Rocket, put it in the Power Armor Station, and went to my water pump to quench my thirst prior to resting/saving...
And that's when the two raiders ambushed me and I had to do it all over again.
This is why I won't play survival mode. I'm really interested in the food, disease, fatigue, etc. gameplay but if I can't save whenever, then I do not have TIME to replay the same thing four times before I can get to a bed.
The cave by Red Rocket is not dangerously radioactive... well, unless it is in Survival mode.
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And, the Deathclaw falls.
It took most of my fusion cells, and a good chunk of .308 ammo, not to mention poor Dogmeat got sliced like 5 times before I could down it.
In the end, I did just like Otherwhere suggested - except I also dropped a Frag Mine next to one of the cars as I hoofed it back to the store.
Combine that with some selective sniping from on the roof, and the big baddie goes down with some time.
Like I said, I like the challenge of Survival, its just quite the change of pace and play style from my previous playthrough.
Knowing things like how to set up Adhesive farms and making sure to grab all the empty bottles you can find and filling them up at the settlements for free means its not as bad as it could be. I can only imagine someone starting FO4 for the first time on Survival would be horribly overwhelmed.
I do really enjoy the immersion and threat involved - while out exploring just west of Sanctuary, I see a raider across the river - pop him with the .308 no problem. His dog comes running over - no problem, Dogmeat's got him. That's when his other buddy starts shooting; take him out and I'm still in [Danger]. Turns out there were 4 total raiders. Luckily, the .308 does quite a job on lightly armored humans.
That kind of danger just doesn't crop up in the vanilla setup, and it's great!
I think it was. Yeah, there is one inside the array where the bandits are, but that was a pretty tough fight for me.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I'm taking DQ's approach. I also wanted to point out there's a downed vertibird with a partial set of power armor near the satilite array just east of the red rocket.I found that last night, but of course didn't have a fusion core. I lugged it all the way back to the Red Rocket, put it in the Power Armor Station, and went to my water pump to quench my thirst prior to resting/saving...
And that's when the two raiders ambushed me and I had to do it all over again.
This is why I won't play survival mode. I'm really interested in the food, disease, fatigue, etc. gameplay but if I can't save whenever, then I do not have TIME to replay the same thing four times before I can get to a bed.
The cave by Red Rocket is not dangerously radioactive... well, unless it is in Survival mode.
I hear ya. On the one hand, the lack of the safety net really intensifies combat. When the consequences of failure are so awful, you really feel great when you rack up a win. But, on the other hand, when you lose, especially when it's unexpected (e.g., when at your base of operations where you thought you were safe), really, really sucks. Also, a lot of my saves in non-survival mode were done after I had done something mundane - like reorganizing loot or swapping out my armor - and not being able to save after those administrative tasks is very annoying.
Oh sure--to me it's about only having so much time in a given sitting, and whether that's lost due to chardeath, a game crash, or realizing you screwed up inventory management doesn't really matter. Not being able to save before or after a major settlement upgrade is a big issue for me in particular (or wasting hours of in-game time to do so). I don't want to waste a bunch of materials when I realize my building looks stupid.
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One thing you can do is click the "Sleep" to trigger an autosave then immediately cancel it.
Rather than taking a whole hour of game time, it takes about 1-2 min, but achieves the same effect.
RE: settlement management - I feel you there, but there's typically the "Store" option for most settlement assets.
One advantage to the PS4 is you can put it in rest mode, and when you restart the machine it reopens right where you were.
Save on Sleep sucks. It's not immersive.
I agree that the game is much more rewarding when you accomplish something like clearing Concord for that first mission. And it totally sucks when you die unexpectedly due to: glitches; unbalanced random encounters (uh, a Mr. Gutsy vs me @ lvl 8, with no option to not converse with it?); or getting one-shotted by Wolfgang at Drumlin Diner when, for rp reasons, I sided with Trudy - the animation had JUST completed from ending the conversation and it went right into the death animation cam. WTF? I didn't have a chance to do anything!
Then, after finally surviving the Order Up encounter, I headed right back to Sanctuary and in-game I had only spent about two hours, if that. Time for bed again?? So I puttered around Sanctuary until it was dark, and then went to bed, all the while I - the player - was ready to quit for the day and really wanted to just save and quit out.
Mods. Mods to the rescue!
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Yeah, I may just totally avoid survival mode...I never was a fan of playing when I can't save easily. I like the idea of diseases and parasites and managing the inventory better but I usually play in small spurts and if I have to sleep in order to save that is going to eliminate most of the times I can actually play as a decent mission can take more than an hour, especially if moving stealthily. I want to do it but all I am hearing about it makes me not even want to try it because I can't see me being able to work around the severely limited saving. It's a shame too, I like some of the ideas that I hear about Survival mode.
Mods of some sort are coming to console in June, and no other DLC have been announced. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if additional DLC weren't made available.
Supposedly, there will be additional DLC, which was why BGS raised the season pass price from $30 to $50.
It will be very interesting to see what they offer once the Creation Kit comes out for everyone. Why pay for DLC when modders will do it for free, and often better?