Any tips for starting a survival playthrough?

[DeadlyNeurotoxic]

I've been wanting to start a survival playthrough but i keep failing at the first hurdle as i continuously die and get frustrated, can anyone give any decent mods or tips to help me?

[torqueblue]

Go to sanctuary. Click on the WorkBench. Build yourself a bed and save.

Avoid Concord. Preston isn't going anywhere.

Go. Very. Slow. Not kidding here. Too many peeps get wasted too far cause the most likely sprint into an ambush.

Invest some time in settlements. Having a Place to get Water, Food, and A place to sleep/save, Saves you some frustration.

Grab Empty Bottles of Whatever and go to a Water source and refill them with dirty water. Then, Depending on your call here, Turn the Dirty water into Purified Water for clean water to drink and Xp.

I'll update you some more if I have anymore tips I can think of.

[Archmage MC]

If you can get into vault 88 and buy the Overseers Guardian, you win the game until you can get a Guass rifle.

Getting Inspriational once you unlock Ada and finish automiton means you have access to robot companions who are insanely strong and with your overseers guardian or guass rifle you can snipe while Ada wrecks things. Only use Ada or Codsworth so they wont die. Make sure you give them a sentry body, assaultron legs, and fatman launchers. Once you do Nuka World, giving them Quantom nuka cola launchers for weapons means you now have the absolute strongest companion. Before that experimental explosive minigun is good.

[DeadlyNeurotoxic]

Thanks for the heads up, i have minimal experiance playing survival mode and tried using a choose your own start mod... big mistake as i started in the main city where most enemys have skulls xD.
Anyway I think that the only reason i'd go to concord is for the power armour as that seems like it would be OP in survival, as for vault 88 i would have to find the 4 fusion cores to give them which could be difficult

[Archmage MC]

Choose if your going to do lone wanderer or companion. If doing companion, a robot companion can solo a lot of things with inspriational and a properly built robot.

Settlement building is important in survival as well. and Brotherhood of Steel is needed to get vertibird grenades (Unless you mod other faction vertibirds or fast travel back into the game) But you don't need to end the game with them, just don't become their enemy.

[Plays In Traffic]

Stealth builds rule survival, you can get a suppresed pipe bolt-action sniper rifle away. There's a pipe bolt-action sniper rifle in a house in concord next to a dead raider & Trudy at drumline dinner always sells a suppresed pipe bolt-action pistol even at second level. You just can't get there and resolve Wolfgang with out leveling up I tried. Also iirc you can get four like's from Codsworth if you resolve Wolfgang peacefully.

[ghpstage]

Originally posted by LuckyMcluckface:

Thanks for the heads up, i have minimal experiance playing survival mode and tried using a choose your own start mod... big mistake as i started in the main city where most enemys have skulls xD.
Anyway I think that the only reason i'd go to concord is for the power armour as that seems like it would be OP in survival, as for vault 88 i would have to find the 4 fusion cores to give them which could be difficult

People are just scared of the deathclaw, but its not much more dangerous than in VH where it'll also kill you fast if you get caught, and the same methods for killing it easily that work in VH apply here too.
For example, use jet and maybe other chems, hide in a building or take a sawn off, calibrated double barrel with the critical banker perk (you really need no other perk to do this!) and executing it with two point blank crits to the belly.
The power armour probably won't be as much help as you think, enemies will still pile hurt on you through it, and while it blocks your clothing bonuses it does nothing against explosives (molotovs pose 90%of the threat at lower levels!) unless you coat it in explosive resistant paint.

You only need 3 fusion cores to get into vault 81, and they are pretty common. Alternatively you could try and get in for free by popping grape mentats a beer/gwinnet and donning any charisma clothing you found. You'll want to do this to bring the cost of the OG down anyway.

The easiest general purpose technique you can use to get through survival without much drama is to snipe using a long range scoped, preferably silenced weapon. Using this the specifics of your 'build' become a lot less important, though if you want to become god of the wastes quickly then one of VATS, sneak or blitz-melee builds is a good place to start.

[Gamefever]

Power Armor,
Pain Train

Win.

[Vinnie Mack]

the death claw is really more of a matter of patience. If you want the job done quick, be prepared to die. Those with patience, just snipe the deathclaw from some rooftop with the minigun. Once the deathclaw receives damage it runs away for a few seconds and then comes back to take some more damage. Of course, you are in sneak mode when you snipe at the death claw. Last time i took care of the death claw in survival mode, it was about 15 or 20 minutes of this sniping. Once the death claw was dead, i jumped off the back end of the museum roof (in power armor, or course) and took a nap at the camp fire.

as for general survival, like everyone else that plays the game on survival, sneak snipe character is your best bet as a noob. Silence sneak build is quite powerful with the right perks. Sneak, ninja, and sandman give bonus for sneak attack with a suppressed weapon or from sneak mode.


What i generally do is build a settlement, clear the area around the settlement, and then go on to the next settlement. In survival, dead enemies don't respawn nearly as quickly. So once you clear an area, it is clear for some time. And the settlements are nicely spaced in most world areas. If you don't want to do the settlement thing, i would suggest finding a mattress for a save point before going out on your adventures. and know where you next mattress is before going into a new dangerous area. And the mattresses are quite abundant in most areas. If you want more sleeping bags, there are mods for that. Even for the ps4.

i always take the aquamarine perk. Water ways thread through the whole region, and can be used as a safe way to get to different areas of the map. By safe, i mean that enemies will not follow you into the water, and you can swim away from the bullets before taking too much damage. Of course the reason you would take aquamarine is the amount of radiation. A lot of survivalists bad mouth leadbelly, but i have found it helpful since eating most food you find has radiation, as does all but pure water. And it cuts back on disease too. At least from my experience. Lifegiver is a must as well. It only requires an endurance of 3, and by the third rank gives you health regeneration. Chem 1 is a must for crafting medicines.

and make sure to sleep at least 3 hours at a sleeping bag. If you sleep 1 hour too often, you will eventually become so tired that you will walk as if encumbered, and your vision will get bleary.

To me, survival is the only way to play the game. By about level 20, you will be a god of the wasteland. It is at that point that you will want to bring in mods to make the game difficult again.

[casualsailor]

Lots of good tips in the first few videos. He discusses most Survival "features" and how best to combat them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMJrCBo31Vo&list=PLuzGD5C-DjX82ofb365xAlaQDlFfjxVit

[Hobo Misanthropus]

I personally think the ideal Survival tips don't revolve around suggesting builds or certain pieces of gear, so here's a few of my favorites:

Companions, companions, companions. Get access to Codsworth ASAP. He is an unstoppable tank early in the game. Make sure you craft a few Robot Repair Kits incase he goes down. More importantly, learn how to use the command function by issuing orders directly to him (And other companions) to run interference and draw fire. This is especially important early on when something like a Hardened Sniper Rifle will kill you in one hit.

For the first ten or so levels, Psycho and Med-X are your savior. Combined, you gain +50 DR which will protect you from just about every ballistic weapon at the early stage of the game. Later on, replace with Psychobuff and Bufftats combos for a quick HP boost if you go critical. Sadly, only Radscorpion steak provides protection against energy, so it's very impractical. Med-X should always retain a spot on our "Belt" to counteract Poison, particularly from Bloodbugs.

Explosives are great equalizers, but also present huge hazards for you. Never use a Grenade in combat if the enemies have Molotov Cocktails or other explosives themselves. Your grenade can be detonated in your face in an air-burst if a Molotov even hits close enough to cause any damage to you (Even fractional)

Learn how to organize your trips to minimize backtracking. I generally like to accept every quest available in a given city, and then do them in one or two trips outside, as opposed to accepting and completing quests one by one.

Take every Fuse and Vacuum tube you can. You'll need that copper, trust me.

Optimize your ammo load for your trips. Too much ammo and you lose valueble space, too little, and well, hope you like fisticuffs. In general, ammo like .38 and .45 you don't need to carry much of, because you find a lot of it. Make sure you pick up every dropped gun an enemy had, as you'll unload the remaining magazine into your inventory. It's a little tedious, because then you have to drop the gun back in their inventory, but it's a good way to keep your ammo high on long trips.

[danconnors]

The very first thing you should do is get a complete set of power armor, and I don't mean the beat up one in Concord. At low level you probably won't win the fire fight to get to it.

Head southeat from Sanctuary, bypassing the fighting in Concord. Give Starlight Drive In a miss also. You're not yet ready for the mole rat gang bang there. But keep going in that direction till you reach the lake. I should have mentioned to save just before you leave on this quest.

Take a rad X. You should have found some of those by now. Get as close as you can to the crashed vertibird in the water, then dive in. You'll still take radiation damage, but not much. Underwater near the vertibird, to the right of it, is a suit of power armor. It has a fusion core. Get into it, and check how many pieces it has. If it's less than three start over. If not keep it, and walk out of the water before you drown. You probably don't have aquaboy/girl at this point; that's why you use the rad-X.

Out of the water return to Sanctuary, sleep and save. Set a course of about 45 degrees northeast. You should soon reach another crashed vertibird not far away from the large satellite antenna. Nearbye is another set of power armor. This one has no fusion core. That' why you get the one in the water first. Try to find a suit with the parts needed to complete your suit. That's what the save is for after you find the first fraction of a suit. You can safely settle for one missing arm or leg, but no more.

You are now armored enough to survive your first fire fight in survival mode. Start killing.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by danconnors:

The very first thing you should do is get a complete set of power armor, and I don't mean the beat up one in Concord. At low level you probably won't win the fire fight to get to it.

What? lol. That fight is so easy I had to make sure I was still on Survival. Adrenaline bonus makes the Minigun Grind down that Deathclaw before it can even get out of the vent.


Also, a Tip I wanted to add. In one of the houses on the Right-Hand side of the Sanctuary Road (If you're leaving) is a house with a terminal (NOVICE) detailing some clients of a drug dealer. In the bedroom across from the room with the terminal, there is a syringe of Med-X. This Syringe makes getting to the Power Armor laughably easy. You should be able to punch everyone to death with the MedX bonus.

[danconnors]

Well, we're not all as good as you. In survival mode, armored only in the heavy coverall and the hard hat I find at Red Rocket, I'm almost always killed in my very first fire fight, the one with three raiders, their dog, and any nimber of nearby mole rats, near the dead guy with the snub nosed .44.

To save myself time and the humiliation of defeat after defeat while I'm at level two, I go looking for that suit of power armor. It is my very first quest

[Plays In Traffic]

Originally posted by danconnors:

Well, we're not all as good as you. In survival mode, armored only in the heavy coverall and the hard hat I find at Red Rocket, I'm almost always killed in my very first fire fight, the one with three raiders, their dog, and any nimber of nearby mole rats, near the dead guy with the snub nosed .44.

To save myself time and the humiliation of defeat after defeat while I'm at level two, I go looking for that suit of power armor. It is my very first quest

Easy way to get a full set of PA, is to head south to the overpass just north of Cambridge PD, it has a vertibird crashed into it, just east of the road is an elevator & a small herd of brahmin. STAY AWAY from the brahmin unless you want to fight a rad scorpion. Take the elevator up & theres a full set of PA w/ a fusion core.

[danconnors]

Probably not something I could do at level two or three, but interesting none the less.