I’ll be honest right up front and say that I really love this game. Yes it’s similar to fallout 3 and yes you can spend almost as much time in a load screen as you do actually wandering the wasteland, but you know what? I don’t care – the game is really that good! Never have I prowled through ruins searching for useful pieces of junk like I have in this game. The trouble with the predecessor (Fallout 3 and even New Vegas) was that if you spent a decent amount of time playing and were little more than a noob at picking locks or hacking computers, you could pretty much find a lot of kickass weapons without too much trouble. So then spending time trawling shelves and ruins searching for a key piece of kit to upgrade a standard weapon just seemed kind of pointless…..But with the new settlements feature in FO4 they’ve actually managed to make the process of scavenging for junk seem worthwhile.
Now I’ve seen some extreme player vids on youtube and I’ll admit if you have the time and inclination you could go waaaay overboard and build some sort of super structure, complete with inner sanctum, hotel-like rooms, each with their own toilet – but that’s all just decoration and ultimately a waste of good junk. But being able to build your own little oasis in the Wasteland complete with functioning generator, lights and laser turrets to ensure any raider unfortunate enough to stumble upon your settlement meets a grissley end is great. If you prefer to spend your experience points on non-combat perks it also has the distinct benefit with artilleries and fellow settlers of allowing the player to rain hellfire down on even the strongest of enemies or at least giving the behemoth someone else to shoot at while you make your getaway….
As to how to become the master of the wasteland? Personally, I recommend strength, charisma and intelligence perks. There are others – I recently watched a vid with a dude who managed to play the entire game without a single kill – the mind numbing boredom and load/reloads using quirky perks to befriend hostiles aside that is pretty bloody clever and more power to ya if you feel like playing it that way. For me though, I want to be able to carry as much as possible, always get the best outcomes from conversations with NPCs and gain the most experience as possible as quickly as possible.
In the early stages of the game you’ll no doubt want to hang on to a few good guns and bits of armour but by and large the more junk you can carry by maxing out your strength perk, the more you can later sell or as above, salvage and turn into a genuine kitten portrait to hang on your settlement wall! Always pick up as much pre-war money and gold/silver plated jewellery/lighters as possible – they don’t weight much (or anything with money) but can be sold to bring in more caps than heavier items. Modified weapons are also good to sell for lots of caps but weigh more. You’ll need caps later on when you’re building your empire of settlements or if you can’t be bothered scavenging for stimpaks or radaway (or at least paying the local doctor to heal you up!).
High strength allows you to unlock perks which not only let you carry more stuff but also allow you to use your AP to keep moving normally when overloaded and even better – fast travel when overloaded so you can just offload stuff at a workstation and get right back to the action!
High charisma makes it easy to get what you want from NPCs and with the black widow/lady killer perk even unlock special dialogues not normally accessible – basically I don’t like hearing NO from anymore! You also get experience for every successful persuasion dialogue attempt. If you like the clatter of lots of caps you can also ask for more money out of NPCs for the various quests you embark on.
Intelligence determines how much experience you gain from various actions (killing enemies, building things, successful persuasion attempts etc.). By upping the intelligence perk early too you’ll level up more quickly meaning you can customize your character more quickly.
Have fun roaming the wastelands, watch out for the geckos – they bite…..