Tips on getting legendary items

[Moo]

Anyone has tips on getting legendary items? I am trying to get some nice legendary effects on my armor and weapons, but I am not sure which areas I should go that would give me a good chance of getting legendary encounters. I seem to get more frequent legendary encounters in the Glowing Sea and Far Harbor, but both of those areas are kinda tough. Are there other good places to go for legendary items?

[-={LG}=-]

I find that every time I get my arse beat in and have twelve health left and am trying to click on a stimpack I get bum rushed by three legendaries.

[RabbitRidge]

The National Guard Training Yard has been a favorite area over the years (saving at the door before entering and then reloading the autosave when a specific item wanted from a legendary enemy drops to reroll the legendary prefix, plenty of videos and posts on the subject).

Honestly if you're willing to do that, might as well use console commands to apply legendary effects to a held item and skip all the time and grief.

[Mofuji]

If you want to go the mod route...

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42081?tab=description

This will allow you to increase the number of enemies you encounter, along with how often you get encounters. Combined with the boosted percentage from Very Hard/Survival, you'll run into far more legendary enemies through sheer numbers.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/66900?tab=description

Allows you to break down legendary items to get chips that then allow you to add legendary effects to gear you already have. it also adds new legendary effects, both custom and those from Fallout 76,

[Stardustfire]

higher luck = higher chance to find legendary enemys

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

higher luck = higher chance to find legendary enemys

This...unless you do something outside the normal game dynamic. I actually get kind of pissed off because I have to offload so much legendary stuff I end up with after a battle. Usually at least two legendary fighters in almost every tussle.

[Kalixrii]

0-x2 power Armour.............YEAH!

[Larco]

More chance of legendaries in the workd on very hard as I recall. For specifics places, NGTY usually has a legendary ghoul. The trick seems to be to hard save outside and reload that till you get the type of weapon you want, then reload the autosave the game makes once you zone in. The weapon type should be locked, but the perk will change. This seems a bit janky for me - it didn't work some places, but it did work there. But if I took a quick save inside and reloaded that, it didn't seem to. Maybe they changed it, maybe my mods. Either way I was able to reload till i got what I wanted. Also got it to work at Faneil hall (sic).

[DouglasGrave]

My tips are mainly about what you're hoping to find, rather than where:

It won't influence the effect (which rolls randomly), but your own level will influence the base item, so if you're at an especially low level, certain items won't show. The highest yo need is about level 37 for gatling lasers, and the specific case of railway rifles has a separate requirement to reach middle-to-late stage of the Railroad questline if you happen to want one of those.

In addition, guns have a high-low split for their random lists at about level 15, and while there's some overlap, some guns only appear on either the high or low list (for example, pipe guns of all three types and double-barrel shotguns are only on the low guns list). Armour has a similar split, but the only significant difference is that crappy raider armour isn't on the high list. it mainly means that if you're after a specific type of legendary gun, you may need to pick or avoid low-level areas.

Also, there are no random legendary helmets, so the only ones you'll find are specific items sold by vendors.

What does limit the effect is being valid for the item, as certain legendary effects will only appear on appropriate weapons, like the Explosive effect requiring a ballistic weapon (armour doesn't have any specific restrictions, except it being a valid armour effect). When an effect is used for spawning a random legendary item, it also goes onto a temporary exclusion list until a number of different effects have been used to make items, so if you're hunting for something like a full set of armour pieces that all have the same effect, you'll need to get items with other random legendary effects in between.

Originally posted by Larco:

More chance of legendaries in the workd on very hard as I recall. For specifics places, NGTY usually has a legendary ghoul. The trick seems to be to hard save outside and reload that till you get the type of weapon you want, then reload the autosave the game makes once you zone in. The weapon type should be locked, but the perk will change. This seems a bit janky for me - it didn't work some places, but it did work there. But if I took a quick save inside and reloaded that, it didn't seem to. Maybe they changed it, maybe my mods. Either way I was able to reload till i got what I wanted. Also got it to work at Faneil hall (sic).

It's basically a matter of timing, since the game generates the base item, then applies the legendary effect to it, and the autosave on entering happens quickly enough to occur in between the two steps.

It's technically possible for a player to manually make their own saves to do the same with any random legendary item being generated (which happens right when the legendary enemy spawns), but requires such precise timing that it's not generally practical to even try outside of a few specific cases.

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

higher luck = higher chance to find legendary enemys

Luck has nothing to with finding legendary enemies. Game difficulty does. Very Hard, 2x increased chance of encountering a legendary enemy versus Normal. Survival 3x verus Normal.

[Larco]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

My tips are mainly about what you're hoping to find, rather than where:

It won't influence the effect (which rolls randomly), but your own level will influence the base item, so if you're at an especially low level, certain items won't show. The highest yo need is about level 37 for gatling lasers, and the specific case of railway rifles has a separate requirement to reach middle-to-late stage of the Railroad questline if you happen to want one of those.

In addition, guns have a high-low split for their random lists at about level 15, and while there's some overlap, some guns only appear on either the high or low list (for example, pipe guns of all three types and double-barrel shotguns are only on the low guns list). Armour has a similar split, but the only significant difference is that crappy raider armour isn't on the high list. it mainly means that if you're after a specific type of legendary gun, you may need to pick or avoid low-level areas.

Also, there are no random legendary helmets, so the only ones you'll find are specific items sold by vendors.

What does limit the effect is being valid for the item, as certain legendary effects will only appear on appropriate weapons, like the Explosive effect requiring a ballistic weapon (armour doesn't have any specific restrictions, except it being a valid armour effect). When an effect is used for spawning a random legendary item, it also goes onto a temporary exclusion list until a number of different effects have been used to make items, so if you're hunting for something like a full set of armour pieces that all have the same effect, you'll need to get items with other random legendary effects in between.

Originally posted by Larco:

More chance of legendaries in the workd on very hard as I recall. For specifics places, NGTY usually has a legendary ghoul. The trick seems to be to hard save outside and reload that till you get the type of weapon you want, then reload the autosave the game makes once you zone in. The weapon type should be locked, but the perk will change. This seems a bit janky for me - it didn't work some places, but it did work there. But if I took a quick save inside and reloaded that, it didn't seem to. Maybe they changed it, maybe my mods. Either way I was able to reload till i got what I wanted. Also got it to work at Faneil hall (sic).

It's basically a matter of timing, since the game generates the base item, then applies the legendary effect to it, and the autosave on entering happens quickly enough to occur in between the two steps.

It's technically possible for a player to manually make their own saves to do the same with any random legendary item being generated (which happens right when the legendary enemy spawns), but requires such precise timing that it's not generally practical to even try outside of a few specific cases.

Thanks, that actually makes sense of something I was really scratching my head over.

[Ffabbia]

Legendary loot is random. I've done entire runs from level 1 to level 90 where I've not found a single half decent weapon in the entire run, almost every single drop is a melee weapon like a Poisoner's Rolling Pin, or something equally crap. I've done others (such as this current one) where I get a staggering Combat Shotgun in the early game, which is a total game changer.

Now you can buy some decent weapons with legendary effects. The usual suspects: Spray and Pray, Overseer's Guardian, The Last Minute etc. etc. which can get you going if you're unlucky with drops.

And you can also up the game difficulty, which boosts your chance of Legendary encounters.

Not entirely sold on the idea of Luck boosting Legendary encounters - is there any hard evidence for this? I was always lead to believe that it was a myth.

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by Ffabbia:

Not entirely sold on the idea of Luck boosting Legendary encounters - is there any hard evidence for this? I was always lead to believe that it was a myth.

None. The game itself describes what increases your chance of encountering Legendary enemies and also what the Perk, Luck does. It has zero impact on your chances of encountering Legendary enemies.

[worm_master]

I went to the National guard depot, ha, as said, its well known.

Any way I spent 1h, killin an reloadin the Legendery Z. never got anything other then melee/armour.

[Lord Nighthawk]

The legendary system is pretty awkward in fallout 4, levelled loot tables, shifting legendary effect tables, legendary enemies spawnchance and legendary enemies own levels. And then not even real-live weapon effects but elder scrolls magic casted on them.

However, luck does not affect anything for legendary enemies to appear, that´s tied to the difficulty and there are mods that increase that chance drastically. Then a cell gets "stamped" with the player level when you enter it, so you should not enter areas too early, else the enemies get stuck on their level and can´t drop stuff heigher.
National Training Yard is a place where farming works good, if you have creation club stuff the manwell rifle addition with the quantum stag can be used pretty well to farm stuff up to level 20 if i remember right, the stag spawns on command and quicksave works pretty reliable there.

And as stated above, still a lot of randomness on that, as everywhere. I had runs where absolutely nothing useful dropped in 80 levels and runs where i got from the first legendary enemy a wounding shotgun.....game won. Stupid design.

[Moo]

Originally posted by RabbitRidge:

The National Guard Training Yard has been a favorite area over the years (saving at the door before entering and then reloading the autosave when a specific item wanted from a legendary enemy drops to reroll the legendary prefix, plenty of videos and posts on the subject).

Honestly if you're willing to do that, might as well use console commands to apply legendary effects to a held item and skip all the time and grief.

Using cheat codes to get OP items just doesn't feel right.