Things Fallout Doesn’t Tell You
Fallout 4 is a huge game, and it doesn’t always do the best job explaining things you ought to know. Here’s a wiki guide to 11 things Fallout doesn’t clearly tell you at first, but probably should.
YOU CAN STORE THINGS IN WORKBENCHES AND CRAFTING STATIONS
Every station and settlement with a friendly Crafting Station is a storage extravaganza. You can use the transfer command to dump your Junk and spare weapons in these locations, and come back for them at any time.
What’s even better, is that all crafting stations are linked. Dumped your items into a Weapons Workbend? Head over to the nearby Armor one, and you’ll see all your items here as well!
This is hugely useful as Fallout 4’s complex crafting system requires you to constantly gather new resources for modding and repair jobs. Use fast travel to hop back and forth between Sanctuary and the areas you are exploring and constantly drop offthe excess materials and weapons you’ve discovered.
YOU CAN’T THROW GRENADES IN V.A.T.S.
It’s weird, but you can’t throw grenades from inside the V.A.T.S. system. Even if you individually select a grenade just before entering, the interface will simply refuse to let you throw it. You CAN throw a grenade and switch immediately to V.A.T.S. to try and shoot it down, but it doesn’t work very well.
YOU CAN LEVEL AND REBUILD SANCTUARY TO GET COOL STUFF
Using your crafting abilities, you can tear down the old houses in Sanctuary (be sure to loot them first) and replace them with new structures of your own design. Build enough beds and setters, as well as accomplish enough Minutemen recruitment missions and you’ll soon have a bevy of settlers.
This, in turn, will attract traders who will wander in with new wares to sell, including some killer weapons. You can also level up just by building Settlements. It’s extremely rewarding.
POWER ARMOR STAYS AROUND
Power Armor stays where you leave it, so if you run out of gas or want to save Fusion Cores don’t be afraid to abandon it…just be sure to remember where you dropped it off. The map will display a Power Armor helmet icon of the location of your Power Armor.
THERE’S A MAGICAL PLACE YOU SHOULD SAVE YOUR GAME
Just before ascending the elevator from Vault 111, create a save file. This point marks your last chance to respec your character and allows you to skip the fifteen-minute tutorial with a new game.
It’s also worth noting that if your saving your game constantly, and have the game set to frequently autosave, it can get confusing when trying to remember which of your save files are which. Consider saving your game while looking at something important - like a person or place, so you can better identify what you were doing at the time.
YOU SHOULD BUILD A BELL
As you gather followers, you’ll discover that they tend to wander around your Settlements. You can waste a lot of time looking for them, so craft a Bell at your main settlements Workbench. Ringing it will call everyone to you.
YOU’RE CARRYING A GAME BOY
Your Pip Boy has a tape drive, and that means you can play your minigame tapes on the go… no need to wait for a terminal.
YOU CAN TAG MATERIALS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
You can break down Junk at Workbenches to build more Crafting materials, but you’ll sometimes find yourself short of key components you need for your projects. That’s where the Tag command at the bench comes in. By Tagging a material, you’ll cause a magnifying glass icon to appear next to every piece of Junk you encounter that contains that desired element. It’s a great way to complete Crafting and mod projects quickly.
BUILD MODE TIPS
The ability to scrap everything saves huge amounts of time when you’re trying to thin out your inventory and put some defenses up around your settlement. Dropping weapons and Junk in build mode and scrapping it draws every last potential component out of the dropped items and wastes nothing.
UNPLUG YOUR SUITS
If you leave a suit of Power Armor, you may want to take the Fusion Core out using the Transfer inventory command. Otherwise, NPCs, might grab them when alerted and move them!
UNDER-ARMOR AND OVER-ARMOR
There are three kinds of armor in Fallout 4, and they’re not clearly defined. Some full suits are sort of self-contained full armor sets. You can’t customize them or layer over/under them. Other armor (especially some kinds of clothing) act as an under-armor layer which can be combined with over-armor head, chest, arm, and leg pieces. Experiment in your Pip Boy to see which combinations work.
YOU REALLY DO NEED TO RUN FOR THE VAULT
Did you go right to the vault in the beginning? The game makes a point to insist you go there, but if you don’t you’ll be in for a surprise. Linger around Sanctuary for a long enough period of time, and you can find out just what happens when the bombs fall and you’re out in the open!
YOU CAN USE HTML TAGS WHEN NAMING WEAPONS
Turns out you can use HTML tags when renaming your weapons! You can underline, bold, and italicize your weapon’s name in Fallout 4. In order to do this you must go to a weapons workbench and put the tag in front of your weapon’s name.
The HTML tags I’ve found useful thusfar are the following:
(This will underline the text)
(This will make the text italicized)
(This will bold the text)
This is an example of what it will look like in game!
Make sure the tag goes in front of the weapon’s name, for example: Deliverer = Deliverer
(This works on all platforms of the game as well)