Never have the bullets for my guns

[JupiterXOXO]

Want to ask you fallout experts out there. How do you manage your weapon inventory? I usually have a weapon of choice, and i upgrade the gun any chance i get. But usually in the heat of battle i run out of bullets so fast. And end up either having to hold five or more weapons in my inventory at once to switch guns when i run out of ammo. What do you guys do? Also even if you have the caps to buy bullets you need, the venders don't have the bullets you need to sell.

[Zekiran]

Use VATS and headshot as much as you can. Being careful in combat is important.

On the other hand, there are plenty of ways to get more ammo as you progress, if you vary your guns. I've found myself using a couple of really powerful .44s and that is among the rarer of the ammo.

I buy it whenever I find it - usually from Goodneighbor and Diamond City.

[Bobby Digital™]

melee, don't use automatics often, sell water and all ammo you won't use and go to elanor and buy ammo as needed

[☣Patient Zero☣]

I thought there was way too much ammo when playing. literally have 1000's in inventory and havent been conserving it

[Bobby Digital™]

he's probably using ammo that is not common, like the guy above said – .44, plasma, 2mm, cryo etc.

[JupiterXOXO]

Originally posted by Bobby Digital™:

he's probably using ammo that is not common, like the guy above said – .44, plasma, 2mm, cryo etc.

yea, i think the game designs it so that u should be using what your enemies are using based on your level scaling. which kinda sucks, cause it would make all the advanced weapons you have pointless. such as the minigun u get early on. literally useless till maybe mid/lategame once you use up all your ammo (the also sell like 7 ammo tops in diamond city, even if you want to buy from venders).

[GoreTiger]

Get a pipe pistol, Upgrade it to armor piercing automatic. You can find .38 ammo almost anywheres, So use the pipe rifle on lower enemies and save your bigger ammo for bigger enemies.

Alternately, You can SELL the .38 ammo you pick up to afford better ammo.

[Gerza71]

I carry three guns that have different type of ammo. 10mm pistol, and one of the four .45mm combat rifle or .308 hunting rifle(rarely) or 5.56 assault or laser
I carry a malee

If I sneak and the npc don't see my character with a silent weapon I put them down quick. Deadly
If I seen here comes the malee. Close and personal.
I been using silent weapons since level 70 now I up to level 90.
If I close of running out of ammo I stop using that type of gun until I have plenty ammo for that gun.

I play on very hard.

[Neutralize]

- Diversify and carry an extra one or two weapons with more common ammo, and that fit the damage perks you're using or that compensate for the drawbacks of your favorite weapon. For example, a .38 or 10mm pistol with higher capacity if you like to build up Gunslinger and rely on a .44, an automatic .45 Comat Rifle or .38 Pipe Rifle (actually pretty decent for eliminating lower tier Raiders and mutated animals, and with a decent Legendary prefix like Crippling, an effective "filler" gun for tougher stuff) if you like rocking the Assault Rifle with Commando(though the weight does add up, especially on Survival difficulty), or a semi-auto Combat Shotgun or Combat Rifle if your preferred weapon is something like a Hunting Rifle or Gauss Rifle for sniping with Rifleman (also fills in the range gap nicely).

As some mentioned, you can also opt to use melee weapons sometimes, if you have higher Strength, some points in VATS, and/or ranks in the melee skills. Just be mindful of what you try to melee (if you aren't built for it, i.e., lots of Endurance or Blitz or stealth perks or any of those combined, I wouldn't go after any of the tougher mutants or try to close the gap on well armed Raiders/Gunners/whatever- they'll gun you down or wipe out most of your health before you get your first swing in). I personally like a good Machete for killing stuff like Radroaches and Mole Rats, or dueling Raiders that come at you with a Tire Iron or Pool Cue. Against the random Super Mutant with a Minigun or Missile Launcher, though, yeah...no.

- Take Scrounger (Luck 2) as early as possible and prioritize building it to rank 3, and loot every possible container you find. You will find significantly more ammo, common and not. You'll find ammo in everything from mailboxes to trash cans to you name it...it's overpowered. Fusion Cores can be found in stacks in ammo cans- if you like to use the Gattling Laser (a very ammo effecient weapon, though heavy and more end-game. I would also recommend the mod that changes its ammo system so you don't end up with a dozen half spent cores in your inventory) or rock Power Armor.

Rank 4 is not really worth it in my opinion, at least in most circumstances, such as if you find yourself never manually reloading (yikes).

- Alternatively, build up your Charisma (certain armor pieces and chems can help in a pinch), grab the perk magazines and Bobbleheads relative to bartering, invest in Caps Collector, set-up a reliable farm in your settlement(s) such as Purified Water or Mutfruit or Vegetable Starch, and use all of those sweet Caps to buy as much ammo as your heart desires. Or not alternatively, and take Scrounger along with the above, and you'll have enough unspent/undesirable ammo to buy whatever else you do need. Once you set-up plenty of weapons merchants in your settlements, then you really have nothing to worry about save for making the rounds, and it's much more convenient than making the trips to the various major city markets.

- To a lesser extent, the Wasteland Workshop is an option that can help supplement your ammo needs by crafting the machines at your settlements and manufacturing the ammo from the components. The return isn't exactly so great for the investment, though, and it's not exceptionally reliable (Fertilizer is less than common, and Lead is kind of a ♥♥♥♥♥ to find unless you actively keep an eye out for it. Scrapper is a must. Hold onto Leaded Armor pieces to scrap, as well).
There are also a handful of well-made and balanced ammo crafting mods out there that add workbenches or allow you to craft ammo at the Chemistry Workbench.

- As others have mentioned, be more selective with your shots, use VATS, try to be more accurate, all that. Though some of that really depends on the weapon, the situation, and your build. Even with an overpowered, high damage, high rate-of-fire, high dps weapon, like say...a modded out auto-Handmade Rifle with a cherry Legendary prefix like Furious or Powerful or Explosive, if you use it exclusively and you're going on a rampage and murdering every last thing you see with it, well, it's easy to conceive that you're going to chew through ammo, even decimating all but the toughest stuff in a few bursts. Coupled with the fact also that the DLC ammo's (under normal circumstances) are damn hard to come by since they only appear in those DLC's and mostly have to be bought, or looted from certain foes.

[Water Dragon]

Well for me I use two methods one being make sure I do missions and collect everything from bodies. After that sell it and repeat each mission. Another thing that helps is by having one wepon for each situation. One night vision long range, one meduim range, and one short range. Perferably these will have different damage types as well

It also helps to invest in charisma which lowers bartering prices. Typically you will want to start atking enemies with whatever will cost you less and see if that works then move upwards.

Also avoid having two guns of the same ammo type. Also think about what you are using to win in accordence with what it costs. Like if you jsut threw a plasma garnade and you aren't getting over 250 caps from the loaction you are going to be in the negtive for the trip. Try to stay in the positive and replace what you use each time plus a little more when you can. If you go back you cna find easier missions and location to reraid for gear and other items if your a higher level then they won't cost you as much in bullets to clear.

This also works in the opposite way if you end up wasting a lot of smaller damage items when one fragmation garnade would have done the job your losing more then you need to. Mostly having caps requires being super aware about what you are using them to do.

[Bobby Digital™]

all good advice in here. get charisma up a bit, set up water production at a few settlements*, every 24 hours (or as you run across them while adventuring) you can collect water, profit and buy what u need.

* if playing survival, choose a few centralized locations such as taffington boat house, hangmans alley and egrit tours marina.

[Cakefiend]

I have one character who does the carry-several-weapons-thing and doesn't even have Dense --err, Danse using anything but his default gun so he doesn't use ammo... and I kind of hate where she is now playstyle-wise, so I'm probably going to change directions orrr go cheeseball the prototype gauss rifle until a regular one drops (she's level 55, so annnytime now). Basically, if I'm having that much issue with ammo, I know I'm doing something wrong. My other shootin' chars don't have this problem, but they're also not trying to tank with weird stats and overuse power armor just to stay alive, while spraying ammo everywhere.

Yes, sell the .38 ammo and shotgun shells, stuff like that, if it's not something you ever plan to use (or use much). If you aren't able to *find* enough ammo on vendors, buy what you want, sit down, and force-wait the game 48 hours forward in time. All vendors have now restocked, buy them ammos.

Edit: Oh, and the Scrounger perk set helps with ammo a ton, but my current run of a Deliverer pistol build sneakytype is able to keep up on 10mm ammo without issues and hasn't bothered with Scrounger, even though I'm doing what is essentially a no-building challenge with her so that means her levels are coming from kills and quests. That means a lot of pew-pews.

[Rotiart]

Have multiple weapons, when you start to run low on ammo for your primary, go back to base and swap out for a different gun with different ammo

[JupiterXOXO]

Originally posted by Cakefiend:

I have one character who does the carry-several-weapons-thing and doesn't even have Dense --err, Danse using anything but his default gun so he doesn't use ammo... and I kind of hate where she is now playstyle-wise, so I'm probably going to change directions orrr go cheeseball the prototype gauss rifle until a regular one drops (she's level 55, so annnytime now). Basically, if I'm having that much issue with ammo, I know I'm doing something wrong. My other shootin' chars don't have this problem, but they're also not trying to tank with weird stats and overuse power armor just to stay alive, while spraying ammo everywhere.

Yes, sell the .38 ammo and shotgun shells, stuff like that, if it's not something you ever plan to use (or use much). If you aren't able to *find* enough ammo on vendors, buy what you want, sit down, and force-wait the game 48 hours forward in time. All vendors have now restocked, buy them ammos.

Edit: Oh, and the Scrounger perk set helps with ammo a ton, but my current run of a Deliverer pistol build sneakytype is able to keep up on 10mm ammo without issues and hasn't bothered with Scrounger, even though I'm doing what is essentially a no-building challenge with her so that means her levels are coming from kills and quests. That means a lot of pew-pews.

yea ii totally hate the building aspect of this game. it's like every settlement requires u to build it, a waste of time if u ask me, if i want to build i'll play minecraft. i'll stick to quests and kills anyday. but yea, in the end i realized that enemies are all level scaled, and drops the appropriate ammo per level you are at. and since i'm in the beginning of the game, i am getting 10mm and 38 mostly, while trying to use stuff like the laser rifle is not recommeneded, since they dont drop cells often.

[Bobby Digital™]

Just thought of something else to help with ammo, when looting make sure you pick up the enemies gun from the ground, not their body. this will at least double the amount of found ammo.

if you go into enemies inventory and take the weapon, the ammo in the gun vanishes. pick it up off the ground first, you get ammo that was already in the gun, then loot the body for their reserver ammo.

[JupiterXOXO]

Originally posted by Bobby Digital™:

Just thought of something else to help with ammo, when looting make sure you pick up the enemies gun from the ground, not their body. this will at least double the amount of found ammo.

if you go into enemies inventory and take the weapon, the ammo in the gun vanishes. pick it up off the ground first, you get ammo that was already in the gun, then loot the body for their reserver ammo.

nice find! i didn't realize that