Difficulty and enemy scaling?

[Reeva!]

I read up on some posts posted around 7 years ago, I wanted to know how difficult or easy the game becomes once you reach high levels, like 50-70.
What I found was conflicting. Some say that on Survival difficulty, enemies become tankier at these thresholds, but going past it, people started saying full-blown firefights are literally impossible, whereas others say they facetank the toughest enemies and tear through them with basic weaponry.

I'm on Very Hard, and having played Survival for a little bit (until John's Salvage, where I told Dogmeat to wait and went back out on accident, only for the trapdoor to vacuum seal itself for eternity, no console for fixing that) I can tell that Survival is quite a bit easier than VH. On VH, enemies are getting insanely spongey, which didn't happen on Survival for me. It was always equal (for the most part). On VH when I think I'm carrying way too much ammo, a super mutant overlord will always humble me by taking thousands of bullets in a minigun to kill.

Does anyone know how this actually works? Because I'm seeing inconsistent values despite enemies being at my level.

[steventirey]

Most enemies do not scale at all. There are multiple variants of enemies (like a normal deathclaw being level 22, an alpha being level 31, and so on). Regardless of where you encounter it, a normal deathclaw will always be level 22 and have the same stats when you are level 1 as it will have when you are level 100.

The particular variant you encounter depends on your character level, with a minimum and maximum set by the particular area. The level of the enemies gets fixed at that specific level, based on when you first explore the area. So exploring the whole map at a low level results in all the areas being fixed at the lower end of the possible range.

Only a few enemies actually do scale their stats based on your level. To keep using deathclaws, all the variants have a fixed level and stats until you start encountering mythic deathclaws, which actually do scale with your level (with a level of 91 as a minimum).

[Reeva!]

Ahhh okay this makes a lot more sense, so really it depends on the specific enemy. Survival felt easier because of Adrenaline for sure, but due to the saving and no fixing things with console commands, I opted for VH. So VH is more challenging combat-wise than Survival if you find scaling enemies at certain levels. Thanks guys, helps a ton!

Think I'll stick with VH just for the saving. Can't always find a bed without waking up to a settler who wants to shoot me for catching some z's on his favourite dirty mattress. Really tricky without mods. Carry weight also bugs me without fast travel.

[SkunkPlaysGames]

It's typically the highest tier, charred ferals, etc, that level with the player while all of the lower variants have a hard level at which they appear.

[Reeva!]

Originally posted by gh0stwizard:

Originally posted by SkunkPlaysGames:

It's typically the highest tier, charred ferals, etc, that level with the player while all of the lower variants have a hard level at which they appear.

Well, I don't care, cause I am playing with my "unbloat HP" mod. But as I recall, it's boring even if there is only one Supermutant on level 100+ in vanilla.

The problem is that on Survival, damage is so high that cover is heavily incentivized, fighting around corners, avoiding the line of fire. But when you get to high levels, both you and the enemies are so tanky and so kitted out with custom gear that cover becomes useless. Ammo is also a pain so you don't want to stand miles away to snipe enemies with reduced damage.

They're so tanky, they will walk up to your cover and just shoot you. You can no longer just take a melee enemy out of the fight like an easy target, they will straight up root you out of cover and mess up your aim. I don't like bullet sponges... but I also wanna fix things with the console incase "It just works" comes into play. A compromise is needed, and I'll take VH.