25 Fallout 4 Tips & Tricks You Should Know

Fallout 4 is massive in every respect, be it the quests, the map, game elements, loot, or the sheer amount of secrets that players are still discovering almost a month after the game’s highly-anticipated release. With so much to do in Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic Boston, players could find themselves requiring a little nudge in the right direction. In what follows, we aim to make your Fallout 4 experience both more fluid and more enjoyable with a compilation of tips and tricks that you might not know.

Fallout-4-Tips-&-Tricks

1. X-01 Power Armor

Spoiler Alert: This tip reveals secret locations for sets of the X-01 Power Armor.

The X-01 Power Armor offers the best stats in the game, and is also the hardest to come across. There are a bunch of locations where you could possibly get one, including the roof of the unmapped 35 Court building directly to the East of Goodneighbor, in a tunnel found half-way through Bobbi’s The Big Dig quest, and to the North-East of Poseiden Energy Turbine #18-F, beside a tank and aircraft debris.

X-01-Mk.-III-Power-Armor-Fallout-4-Court-35

However, it seems these locations offer leveled loot, that is, they may spawn anything from a X-45 or X-60 armor to an X-01 with some pieces missing or mixed pieces from one of six tiers (Mk. I through VI). Save your game before you visit one of these locations and if you don’t like what you find, load the save and try returning after leveling up a bit. Reports from several gaming forums suggest the 35 Court building offers up a full set of X-01 Mk. III armor at level 28. We got our own from the same location at level 30.

2. Alien Blaster Pistol

Spoiler Alert: This tip reveals the secret location of a one-of-a-kind weapon.

Fallout-4-Alien-Blaster-Pistol

That’s right. There’s an alien weapon to be had in Fallout 4. Even though it is literally out of this world, it won’t give you a that big an edge over enemies in battle, but it’s definitely worth adding to your arsenal, especially early in your playthrough. Check out our Alien Blaster Pistol walkthrough to get your own.

3. Pip-Boy Zoom In

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By default, whenever you call on your Pip-Boy, Fallout 4 gives you a full view of the portable computer. You can zoom in on its display by pressing the Aim/Block button, which is right-click for PC, LT for Xbox One and L2 for PS4, as per the default control scheme.

You can hold the same button and look around to move your character’s Pip-Boy-wielding arm around, though we’re not sure how that would be useful.

4. Power Armor Jump

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Power Armors negate all fall damage, which means you could survive a jump from the tallest building in the wasteland as long as you’re in one. This can really help you get around faster in areas where there are a lot of heights. Plus, it just feels awesome.

5. Use Your Companion for Extra Inventory Space

There’s absolutely no ignoring this tip if you want to be able to explore the wasteland for longer periods before you return to your base to store your grub. Companions like Paladin Danse and the Super Mutant Strong can carry more than others.

6. Store Junk & Extra Items in Workbenches

Strewn all across Fallout 4’s post apocalyptic Boston are crafting stations for structures, weapons, armor, chems and food. Pick the one place in the wasteland that you find yourself visiting the most – preferably one that has a Power Armor station as well as all three workbenches, like Sanctuary – and use the workbenches there to store all the junk you find during your quests. All the workbenches in one location share inventory, so you can deposit your items in any one of them.

Workbenches-store-all-junk-Fallout-4

To transfer all Junk items in your inventory to a workbench, simply interact with it and use the Store all junk option. You can then use these items for crafting across all workbenches in the same location. These workbenches are also good places to store extra weapons and apparel that you’re on the edge about, scrapping them for parts during crafting sessions if needed.

7. Sleep Regularly

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You can use any bed that isn’t owned by an NPC to sleep for up to 24 hours. Not only does this fill up your health bar and help you pass time when required, it also gives you +10% XP gain for the next eight game hours.

8. Craft Food Items at Food Stations

While crafting weapons and armor seems more interesting, mixing together food items gets you consumables that provide with all sorts of additional perks, like rad-free healing, added damage, endurance, strength, carrying capacity, charisma and more. Also, like with weapons and settlements, you get a little XP for each crafted item.

9. Exiting Conversations to Consume Charisma-Enhancing Aids

Unless you’re going with a Charisma-based build for your character, you’ll often find yourself in conversations where you just aren’t able to pass a persuasion attempt and the ongoing quest takes an unfavorable turn. Instead of loading an earlier save and consuming a CHR-enhancing drug like Grape Mentats beforehand, simply hold down a movement key (or the analog stick) while trying to look away from the character, then open up the Pip-Boy and equip/use whatever apparel/aid you think would be enough to get you through the conversation.

10. Have your Companion Climb into Power Armor

You’ll find several suits of Power Armor all across the Fallout 4 map. Interact with your companion by pressing the Activate button (“E” for PC, “A” for Xbox One and “X” for PS4), point towards a suit you don’t intend to use and hit the same button to have them enter it.

Fallout-4-Companion-Power-Armor

The great thing about this is that you don’t need to insert a fusion core into the armor to have your partner use it, it gives them an extra layer of protection and more inventory capacity. Parts of the armor will, however, get damaged and require repair after intense battles while the frame remains intact. When you want your companion to exit the armor, simply interact with them and select Talk > Exit Power Armor.

Exit-Power-Armor-Fallout-4-companion

11. Steal without Getting into Trouble

To steal an object from a green area (like Diamond City) without triggering an alarm, hold the Activate button (E for PC, A for Xbox One and for PS4) to lift it, then carry it to a secluded place, hit the same button once to drop it and again to pick it up.

12. Use the Junk Jet When You Run Out of Ammo

Tactical-Junk-Jet-Fallout-4

Found in ArcJet System’s Rocket Control Room, this weapon lets you load junk items into it and fire them at enemies. Fired items can (mostly) be retrieved, which means that the Junk Jet has virtually unlimited ammo.

13. Get Your Character a New Face at Mega Surgery Center

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At the Mega Surgery Center in Diamond City, you can give your character a new face (and hairdo) in exchange for a 100 caps.

14. Get the Strong Back Perk

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If you find your inventory overflowing with items, and you most likely will, put a few points into the Strong Back Strength perk. It adds more capacity than a single point in the Strength attribute while the third and fourth upgrades let you run while encumbered and fast travel respectively.

15. Enter V.A.T.S. to Spot Mines

Active mines can be hard to spot even if you know they’re around. If you narrowly avoid being blown to bits by one, try looking around and hitting the V.A.T.S. button once or twice to make sure there aren’t any more left. You can then walk up to the mine and hit Activate to disable and pick it.

16. Enter V.A.T.S. to Detonate Grenades Immediately

Enemies tend to scatter as soon as you toss in a grenade. To ensure your grenade does maximum damage, you can enter V.A.T.S as soon as your grenade is about to drop and shoot at it, preferably utilizing a critical hit to cater for a possibly low hit chance.

17. Talk to Anyone with a Name

Any NPC with a proper name could have information vital to a quest or an entirely new quest for you, so be sure to interact with them.

18. Complete Cabot House Quests as Soon as You Can

Spoiler Alert: This tip contains spoilers regarding a particular set of quests.

Cabot-House-Fallout-4

The Cabot House West of Railroad HQ, Pickman Gallery and North of Boston Bugle Building offers a series of particularly engaging quests that could, if you play your cards right, yield an endless supply of strength-enhancing, radiation-curing serums. If you side with Lorenzo Cabot at the end of the last quest, he gives you one Mysterious Serum, which removes 36000 points of radiation, grants +5 Strength and +50 Damage Resist. Once you’ve consumed said serum, you can return to him to get another as many times as needed. The strength boost from the serum is particularly useful if your character has a melee build or often find yourself encumbered.

Mysterious-Serum-Fallout-4

19. Use These Tricks While Renaming Weapons

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You can style weapon names using certain HTML text formatting tags, such as <i> for italics, <u> for underline and <li> for lists as shown in the shot above. You can also use unique characters or numbers to rearrange the Pip-Boy’s Weapons section. Inserting a hyphen or asterisk at the beginning of a weapon’s name, for example, will have it appear at the top of the list.

20. Have Your Companions (Even Dogmeat) Equip Armor & Other Apparel

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To have your companions equip apparel of your choice, simply interact with them, select Trade, transfer said items, then individually select them and hit the button for the Equip option (“T” for PC, “A” for Xbox One and Triangle for PS4). Dogmeat can equip certain types of armor and apparel too, such as Raider Dog Armor, goggles and bandanas.

21. Use the Lone Wanderer Perk with Dogmeat

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The Lone Wanderer perk found under the Charisma branch works even if you take Dogmeat along. The perk gives you 25% more damage, 30% resistance to incoming damage and +100 carry weight when it’s maxed out.

22. Sell Almost-Depleted Power Armor Fusion Cores For Full Value

Whether your Power Armor’s fusion core is at full capacity or has a single point of energy left in it, you can take it out and sell it for full value. You’ll have to exit the armor and hit the reload button while looking at it to transfer its fusion core to your inventory.

23. Look For Pairs of Brackets While Hacking

While hacking a terminal, selecting the left-most bracket in a pair will either reset your tries or remove dud words.

24. Transfer Mods From One Weapon to Another

By selecting the base mod for a weapon part (such as the Sights), you can store the existing mod in your inventory and equip it on another weapon of choice. For example, selecting Standard Sights for a glow-sighted 10mm Pistol will add the Glow Sights mod to your inventory.

25. Play Pip-Boy Games on Your Phone

Fallout-4-Pip-Boy-app-holotape-games-iPhone-Android

Bethesda’s Fallout 4 companion app for Android and iPhone can be linked with the game over WiFi for constant access to the Pip-Boy and all its features, some of which is only available for as long as you’re connected to the game. The app does, however, offer access to the holotape games found under Inv > Misc even in Offline Mode, allowing you to play them on the go.

Holotape games include Zeta Invaders, Red Menace, Grognak the Barbarian and the Ruby Ruins, Pipfall, and Atomic Command.

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Sameed Khan

I write, game, design at times, and revel in sarcasm. You can find me on Twitter.