Tips for New Fallout 4 Players

You're S.P.E.C.I.A.L., be a jack of all trades, master of none

It's important that you balance out your stats early; you can spend points to specialize later. I recommend a 3-4-3-6-6-5-1 split for your stats.

Read the character creation guide for more information.

Save often. Before, during, and after everything

Fallout 4 is pretty unforgiving, especially for new players. Get in the habit of using quicksave. Nothing is more frustrating than opening a door, running into a trap, and either instantly dying or crippling every limb. You'll be surprised how much time you can save if you save before you enter a door, then immediately after entering the door (after the loading screen) when you know it's safe; that way, when you die, you won't have to sit through two loading screens.

Pick one weapon type (and maybe have one backup)

Pick one weapon type and stick to that type. Different ammo is fine (and probably good). Decent energy weapon show up surprisingly early in the main storyline, so that's a viable option. Melee is always a reasonable backup and it's an easy way to save ammo when fighting weak mobs.

Note: The main storyline on regular difficulty can be completed easily without spending any points in weapon specialization perks.

Use V.A.T.S.

This is Fallout, not Destiny. Trying to hit a moving target while moving in this game is near impossible. Building for V.A.T.S. allows you to make use of luck; AGI+LCK builds are good.

At higher difficulty, limb targeting becomes important. Crippling legs and disarming your opponent is necessary against some enemies.

V.A.T.S. is also useful for detecting enemies, especially landmines. Yes, V.A.T.S. targets landmines on the ground so you can sneak up, disarm, and take them.

Shoot the bombs on suiciders from a distance, they'll blow up and if you're lucky, you can take down some of their friends.

Ignore radiation, find a doctor

There's little to no reason to worry about radiation because it's so cheap to cure poisoning. Doctors cure radiation poison for 40 caps.

Or you could focus on low health builds that actually take advantage of radiation poisioning.

Note: My first character was STR/END. I largely ignored radiation effects for the second half of the main storyline and played the game at effectively 50% HP and didn't really care.

Power suits are cool but annoying, like your companion

Just leave your power suit somewhere and ignore it. Finding cores early on sucks and you'll only benefit from using the suit once or twice in the game on normal difficulty (and that includes a mission that you have to use it). On survival difficulty, the suit is a little more useful.

You're best off leaving it at a settlement and scouting areas on foot until you find an enemy dense area, then fast travel to get your power suit.

Save your perk points

Don't spend your perk points right away. Certain levels are clogged with lots of good perks (17-18 range is one of them) and you can save those points until then.

Dump perks into LCK or INT

Luck is probably the strongest S.P.E.C.I.A.L. in the game, but if you don't want to pray to the RNG gods, INT's Nerd Rage! is very strong. Melee specific builds should focus on STR instead of PER.

Understand weapon modifications

Weaponing modding can make or break Fallout. A lot of weapons can be modded in ways to change their weapon type; this means that some handguns can become rifles (and vice versa). You can also mod the firerate (adding or removing the auto feature to a weapon). This is extremely handy when you find legendary weapons that don't fit your weapon specialization.

The Scrapper perk helps out a lot, but isn't completely necessary if you take your time exploring.

If you put points into the Gun Nut perk, you'll be able to change the ammo type and therefore weapon damage later on. This will help you burn through ammo types that you normally don't use.

Get dressed up when you go to town

Charisma plays a huge part in the game and it's very easy to stack. The houses in Sanctuary will almost always have a dress or suit and you get a militia hat during the first quest and that's worth +3 CHA.

You'll get a lot of free experience (and caps!) by passing speech checks when your talk to people in town.

Settlements are all over place

Fallout 4 has a sidegame that's pretty much The Sims. You can spend a lot of time finding and building up your settlements. Get 6 charisma and the Local Leader perk (and two points into Fortune Finder) to take advantage of settlements.

Pick up junk whenever you can and store it in your main settlement. Pick up corn, mutfruit, and tato whenever you can. All of these resources will be shared between all of your crafting stations; this means your armor crafting, weapon crafting, and workshop share the same container.

Sanctuary will be your first settlement, but don't instantly make that your main base. It's a very large area and can be overwhelming if you build it out and there are some other locations that you might like more.