What's a good build for survival?

[Grantorino]

please

[Vinnie Mack]

sneak sniper survivalist: pile up on agility and endurance. Get aquamarine so water no longer radiates. Take sneak, sandman, and ninja so your sneak attacks to great damage. I like leadbelly, which allows you to drink and eat radiated food without getting radiation. Some players think this is a waste of a perk. Make sure to pick up lockpick. it seems obvious, but i did not get lockpick and am now regretting it at level 33. Sniper rifle is easy to come by. There is one in one of the buildings in Concord. I usually run high intelligence and take Nerdrage, but many players don't want to skin 10 points into intelligence. Also, pick up the perks lone wanderer and local leader. If you are doing companions, skip lone wanderer. If you are going solo, definitely get it. If you are doing settlements, local leader is a necessity so you don't have to mule all that settlement loot acrosss the commonwealth.

[Kyros]

You can go with everything really, the damage gets buffed so you can do well against high level ennemies even with crappy weapons.
Although you might want to avoid Heavy Weapons since the ammo is expensive and not efficient damage/cost wise. Haven't tested melee at all, but ennemies can do quite some damage so I'd avoid that too but you can give it a shot.

I'm trying my sniper/pistol hybrid build and so far it's working very well. Really enjoying it. With a rifle or pistol only build I kinda get bored after a while.

[casualsailor]

I agree with The Trickster and most builds will work. I went with Power Armor / Melee / Automatic Weapons (Comando). And I travel alone so I went with Lone Wanderer

Here's my start:
STR 9 + 1 You're Special to get Pain Train (Stuns enemies when running into them, great for power armor melee.
END 4 for Lead Belly and Chem Resistance
CHA 3 for Lone Wanderer since I'm solo.
INT 8 + Bobblehead at library gets me 9 for Nuclear Physicist, really useful for power armor builds
AGI 2 for Commando, I use Spray and Pray as a default mid game weapon.

Edit: I went with this after starting 2 different builds for survival. I found this particular build from Major Slack. Not to promote his stuff but I found his survival info really good. If you watch just the first few videos he experiences most of the survival aspects and explains their effects very well. For example: I didn't know being hungry would negate all the HP gains from food or that using Radaway and Stimpacks induced thirst. But afte watching MajorSlacks start I revamped my toon and had no real issues with survival.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuzGD5C-DjX82ofb365xAlaQDlFfjxVit

[Count Smashula]

http://www.levelbased.com/guides/fallout-4/tools/special?build=6d.2.7.5.7.5

This is my stealth-sniper build (but I use plenty of mods that makes the game easier and harder) with the special book used on either strength, endurance or agility (depending on if I want more carry weight, health or faster reloads). Sneak, ninja, rifleman, aquaboy, lifegiver (I use a mod that massively reduces healing and heal speed, so a 4 medic stimpak only heals 50% and the health regen is a life saver(giver)), eventually gun-nut and local leader.

You can also ditch the high charisma and dump that somewhere else, then dump extra junk, ammo and items in settlements around the place (I use sanctuary, covenant and hangmans alley), then get more charisma points later and make supply lines later.

The key strats to surviving in survival is to get to sunshine tidings co-op (south-west of concord) and get the double meat magazine there, makes good much easier to maintain), not to mention that you should make small water pumps on any settlement you think you'll pass by more than once or twise, use it and BAM! free drinking, healing and bottlefilling.

Not to mention beds and knowing where to find doctors (the 3 main ones are covenant, bunker hill, diamond city and the faction head-quarters) since they can sell anti-biotics and cure rads, health and sickness.

For a sniper character, you want to make your way to the railroad asap. Not only to get ballisict weave sooner, but also to get tinker toms special, a suppressed hunting rifle with the best .308 reciever for only 1500-2200 caps (meaning that you don't need to get gun-nut unti you're around level 40).


ofcourse, thats what I do, hope I didn't bore you too much with my wall that the mexicans paid for.

[Astariol]

I dominated Survival recently with this build:

Starting SPECIAL

S 3
P 3
E 4
C 3
I 3
A 7
L 5(6) I used the SPECIAL Book in Sanctuary on Luck

End/Midgame SPECIAL

S 6
P 4
E 5
C 3
I 7
A 9 (10)
L 9

Primary Perks. You will always put points in these. These are *not* situational.
Gun Nut
Weapon Damage (Rifleman or Gunslinger)
Idiot Savant
Ninja

Mid-Game Primaries (Level 30+)
Critical Banker
Grim Reaper's Sprint
Four Leaf Clover


Secondary Perks. You (almost) always put points these, but think about it. If you're sneaking just fine with 3 points in Sneak for example, save yourself a point and maybe add one down the line if you find you have a lot of trouble sneaking in the late game. That kind of thing.

Armorer 3-4 pts as needed
Mister Sandman 3 pts (you'll want to max this, but it's not urgent)
Sneak 3-4 pts as needed
Scrounger 1-3 pts as needed
Better Criticals 4 pts (You'll want ot max this eventually, but it isn't urgent)

Mid-Game Secondaries (Level 15-30+)
Chemist 1 pt is fine (needed for Antibiotics)
Aquaboy/Aquagirl 1 pt is fine, (needed because water is everywhere and swimming is useful)

SPECIAL Advancement.
Any points you do not spend on Primary (combat) or Secondary (utility) Perks should be used for increasing your base SPECIAL stats to meet End-Game goals.

Primary SPECIAL Advancement

These Breakpoints are crucial, and will largely affect your long-term success wtih this build. T

7 Intelligence - 2pts + Bobblehead. Once you hit 7 intelligence, drop a point in Chemist if you have one to spare. Antibiotics and Refreshing Beverages are a game-changer.

9 Luck - 2pts + Bobblehead. Once you unlock the rank 7 through 9 Luck perks, they become Primary Perks. Each increases your combat effectiveness exponentially.

5 Endurance - Just need the bobblehead. This unlocks Aquaboy and makes the game so much more enjoyable.

Secondary SPECIAL Advancement

The following Breakpoints just offer quality of life changes, but I like them. They don't affect combat in any way, nor do they offer and kind of survivability, so I think of them as being Tertiary if anything. Like if you just have extra points after all the bases are covered, and you will, this is where I recommend spending them.

6 Strength - 2pts + Bobblehead. This unlocks Strong Back which makes life much easier.

Any Endurance. All Endurance is good. I recommend ending with 10. I did. And I even picked up Solar Powered, though at that point the game becomes so easy it feels trivial. Still, there's nothing wrong with more HP and more Survivability.

7 Charisma - 3pts + Bobblehead. This unlocks Party Boy which is by no means required, but a useful combat perk to invest in. Also, 7 Charisma allows access to all of the settlment building perks, and additonally grants you 10 Charisma for speech checks while wearing dresses/suits, and hats.

Tertiary perks. Fun stuff if you have extra points.

Medic
Science
Nuclear Physicist
Penetrator
Gun Fu (I wasn't impressed, but it's still fun to have)
Local Leader (if you want to build settlements, this can be bumped up to Secondary Status)

That about sums it up.

Started as a sneak build. Currently I'm level 92 or so and I mostly just walk around in my armored Tuxedo with an upgraded .44. The luck perks make it so easy to queue up headshot crits all day long.

The game isn't trival, but it's not challenging anymore. It's kind of boring because they only mobs that I fear are really tough ones that can one-shot me even though I have over 1k health, and enemies that just eat bullets like corn flakes.

Seriously, there's something in Far Harbor. I can't even remember what it is, but it ate about 7 headshot crits from a fully-upgraded double-shot .44 pistol before it died.

Silliest thing ever.

Anyways, have fun destroying this busted ass game. lol

[Boyar]

^ Idiot savant + 7 INT
You are a real savant, mate

[Kyros]

Originally posted by Boyar:

^ Idiot savant + 7 INT
You are a real savant, mate

Nice necro.

[Grantorino]

This is old. My character mainly uses explosives and sniping perks. I put luck on 1 since I never use it and most of my exp comes from intelligence.