I haven't played this game on anything harder than "Hard," but for all games, I take a https://www.thinkvirtues.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Perseverance-quote-by-Thomas-Edison-400x335.png approach to defeat and the subsequent reloading. Each "death" is an opportunity to learn something about the fight or about my character. Sometimes the lesson is that my character wasn't ready for that particular fight yet, but at least as often there's some tactical thing that I initially missed. As a player, I've become more cautious about scouting out areas, being mindful of nearby hostiles, looking for avenues of retreat (or clearing them out) before engaging, using cover, spotting mines, using environmental hazards to my advantage, etc.

I get the appeal of "Dead is Dead," and I used to engage in it myself. However, I only did so after I felt like I'd learned most of what there was to learn about a game. For me, DiD was a test of sorts to see how far I could get with what I knew. I never really considered starting a new game with a DiD mindset, because I knew I'd get frustrated too quickly - either the game would feel boringly easy, or I'd have to create 2 or more characters to get past one tricky fight (effectively diluting the lesson I might have learned from it). Never struck me as worth it.

That last bit isn't a condemnation of the OP or anyone else - just a reason why the first bit should be taken with a grain of salt.

I agree with you Ted that playing DiD is a "test" of how well you get it or else how well you can anticipate it.

DiD would be fun...once..

I'm fine with games having 'save spots', and when you die you go back to the last checkpoint or whatever, like God of War..but that's usually only a few minutes between saves...but even then it gets tiresome replaying those few minutes over and over, if it's a difficult area..

I couldn't imagine restarting all over after HOURS of playtime...if it was forced on me, I would have thrown the game in the garbage long time ago...

Also since Bethesda games, in general, have soo many bugs, you could die out of the blue for no apparent reason...like in FO4, a couple times, for whatever reason, I had a car shell just slam into me by walking by it, and insta-kill me...

yea I'll just stick to how I play...I have zero problems restarting from a previous save...playing the beginning of a Bethesda game, more than seeing the end would svck IMO...

but different strokes for different folks, right...

For the Skyrim group who had been doing DiD for a long time (and I presume still are), there is a consideration of "reasonable reloads" even within the framework of Dead is Dead.

Like I said above: if you wife comes home, the dachsund sitting on your shoulder hears the garage door open and goes bananas and tromps on your keyboard RIGHT as you are having a boss fight, and you thus die: that would by most DiD 'advocates' be considered a completely legitimate basis to just reload a save immediately before this mishap. This is also why many games' "Iron Man" mode (particularly those that require connectivity to Steam) can be a less than ideal implementation of the DiD ethos.

Game bugs are also a big category in the "reasonable reload" category.

In the "debatable" category would be things like: you had been playing for 6 hours straight, it was 2 am, you were tired, but you didn't do the wise thing and save, turn off and leave it for the next time, and instead you went into a boss fight or other tense situation foggy headed and died.

Ultimately, the point of DiD is not necessarily "bragging rights" nor pride, but just an internal sense of accomplishment. Neildarkstar and several other regulars in the Skyrim forums were doing a "DiD Contest" for a long time, maybe 50 or 100 iterations of it? and for those kinds of "friendly competitions" I think th expectation would be that you would NOT reload in this type of scenario because you would be verging into the "cheating" in a "competition" with other players. They have a set of 'standards' for which mods are permissible, a scoring algorithm to allow players to play at whatever difficulty they want etc..

I've done DiD in Skyrim and it was not fun. At least not for me.

Hard is my favorite mode I'd say.


The whole bullet sponge thing really kills immersion form me in survival. I'm on the fence with very hard though, been messing around with it some, I like the challenge but I still run into annoying bullet sponges.


As for Dead is dead. I don't follow that practice strictly as in 1 death per character, but already now I've had two characters that I quit playing early on because I ran into a situation where I died 2-3 times in a row. After that I just lost interest and restarted. It's more of a "my design was not sound" principal than from a role playing perspective.


Also, a strict dead is dead is a bit ridiculous in fallout IMO. There's some weird/unexpected deaths I've had that I don't really feel responsible for. Like turn a corner and someone shoots a missle launcher at point blank - no warning, or a creature runs up to you and attacks but there was never any sound of it approaching.

I honestly envy you. I don't mean to hold up "DiD" as some badge of merit. It is really more a neurosis than anything

DiD is for masochists. I've seen people argue for it in every game forum and it's never added anything other than a brusque reminder of how much of your life you wasted.


If you don't play fallout 4 on survival you are cheating yourself. If things have too much hp maybe figure out a better build.

Very Hard.....and for me, that's almost too hard sometimes, but at this point I need the challenge to stay awake and alert. On top of that I ditched the power armor a long time ago so drugs are very important to me now. haha

From the beginning, Survival mode makes it so that "things have too much hp". You don't even have a build at that point. You don't really have a "build" until you are well advanced into the 20's or so, in my opinion. My character was getting his hiney handed to him on Survival at low levels. Wasn't fun at all.

I usually start on Very Hard so that I get more Legendary drops sooner, but there will be some battles I cannot win on lower levels on Very Hard, so I will switch to Normal on the particularly tough spots, then switch back to Very Hard for the majority of my game play.

Once I get into the 20s or so, I usually don't need to switch back to Normal anymore, but can generally make it on Very Hard.

I don't feel the need to use Survival at all.

How can you be both interesting and a jerk at the same time? Takes talent.

Most of us do not want to play Fallout 4 on Survival mode. It adds nothing but bullet sponges and severe limitations on yourself.

Games are about fun. Judging others for the way they play is childish. You are not the arbiter. Besides, Fallout or any TES game has never been about "builds". Builds are what people that believe that they are the only ones that know how to play a game correctly claim are the only way to play the game correctly. It is a weak argument.

Current difficulty system is really awful. You reduce the damage you do, then take perks to counteract it. Monsters do more damage to you? Take some perks to give you more hp or resistance. Health regeneration slower with stims? Well take medic. (And if you don't like those options, good luck in finding a fun set of perks to invest in)

I can hardly wait til the geck comes out and something more interesting comes out for balance. Get rid of + dmg perks. Replace it with something thats not so boring. Increase number of spawns, allow critters to have certain perks to make them more dangerous. Allow a wider level range of spawns, and a equipment/armor list to match.

My argument is that if the game is too hard on survival (it isn't) you need to find a better weapon or invest in perks that directly influence combat. More legendary enemies = more chances at good legendary items = more viable character.

I found starting the game on Hard was a good balance. Enemies aren't too easy, but they're also not the stupid bullet sponges that harder difficulties offer early in the game. As the game progressed and my character leveled and became more powerful, I continued to up the difficulty to accommodate for it. It was about at level 40 I bumped it up to Very Hard, and for a while I was satisfied with it, up until level 70 where it felt like barely anything made a dent in my character anymore. That's when I decided to jump to Survival to balance the lack of damage I'd take with slow healing. Even then though, my character's health only ever took significant damage against the obvious contenders (Mirelurk Queen, Brotherhood with a gatling laser, Sentry Bots, sometimes an Assaultron Dominator that got lucky).

But that's how I chose to play. Starting on Hard offered a level of difficulty that offered a challenge at the beginning of the game but not some ridiculous bullet sponge. As things got easier, I made the game harder by upping the difficulty. Never bother to start Bethesda games on the hardest difficulties because the damage sponge enemies don't pose any meaningful challenge from their actual design, they're just tedious, unnecessarily time consuming, and utterly boring to face. I've played far better games that actually mix things up a little with higher difficulties.

As for dying in the game, my days of playing the Souls games, Halo, or Hotline Miami have made the idea of dying and reloading part of the game, in further understanding what mistake was made and what could be improved to come out victorious. Although no Bethesda game comes close to doing difficulty and offering a challenge as well as those games, dying is never immersion breaking for me.

there is no difference with the damage calculation between Survival and Very Hard ^^

both difficulties make you deal 0,5x the damage and your enemies 2x the damage

the only difference between Survival and Very Hard is the amount of legendary enemies and the healing rate of Stimpacks, Radaway and food

Playing on Very Hard/Survival from the start just changes the game for the better, you can no longer rush to the high level locations cuz you will die, you have to earn everything and be smarter, use all the options, like using chems properly and modding, use perks wisely etc you just approache everything differently. Add into the mix not using PA too and it's even better

You are right. Can't argue that. Just me, but I don't like being handicapped. Don't mind a challenge, but the artificial slowdown in health regeneration and upping the NPC's to bullet-sponge level doesn't do it for me. Of course I had the same issue with Legendary on Skyrim.

I actually kind of liked Survival in NV, simply because it added needs as opposed to handicaps. Could just be me though.

You compensate for a lack of PA by either stacking Chems, full on stealth, or taking pa off after you've already leveled up.


Or excessive use of VATS


Why is that so much better?

Yeah, I knew that already, just didn't articulate it. I guess the point I was making was that I do prefer the harder levels, but am not so dogged about it that I am unwilling to lower the difficulty at times, if it is too hard when I am at lower levels. The point I made about not liking survival is due to exactly what you described. Never did care for that. I remember the first run through on FONV I chose that option (don't recall what it was called in FONV) on my way out the doc's door, and wanted the achievement, so I played that way the whole game. My second time through, I did not choose it. I recall thinking, "Ahh... don't need to spend every waking moment thinking about a drink of water anymore, YAY!"

I wish 'survival' hadn't been stuck on the hardest difficulty, but rather an option that could be attached to any difficulty. Why isn't there a mode to play normal or hard with reduced stimpaks and the like? Stimpaks are so plentiful that the only reason to ever take a medic perk is to build a clinic in your settlement. Their abundance also lessens the value of the health regeneration effects of perks like solar powered.

There are way, way too many stimpaks in the game. Radaway, too.

Very true. That would have been great.

Reduced healing rate is great, makes deathclaw stew useful as well as medic 5. Increased rad healing rate is important if you're about to die from it. I don't see the problem with difficulty increases debuffing our chars, with proper build you can be easily more powerful than anything in the game before drug buffs. With drugs you might as well be a god.

You "builders". Oh you wonderful "builders".

I'd be dangerous if I was actually paying attention.

I have STR=1 and END=1 and play on Survival with no real problems (aside from the usual BGS glitches here and there, as well as FO4 using rather cheap one-shot skills such as Super Mutant Suiciders). I also do not use drugs aside from Rad-X, Radway, and Stimpacks as I see them as medical aids rather than street chems.

Bloodbugs Hatchlings at the start on the way to Concord... dead with one Molotov Cocktail. Flying insects are very vulnerable to fire despite their damage dealing abilities otherwise. Same is true for stuff like Mirelurks (they don't like fire and take a lot of damage from it).

I do not find enemies to be very bullet spongy in FO4 on Survival. I do not find that I need to focus entirely on combat- and damage-enhancing perks until I have established myself on an equal footing with the enemies (unlike prior games where this type of approach was almost required for higher difficulties due to the enormous bullet sponge effect). In my view, BGS balanced Survival very well, much better than their prior games.

Companions can also be helpful at lower levels due to drawing melee. Codsworth is as lethal to flying insects as Molotov Cocktails. Dogmeat is far better versus Molerats or Raiders and not very helpful with flying insects. This makes sense and helps role playing.

It also helps role playing that the enemies are actually dangerous rather than something you automatically take out with a couple of 10mm rounds.

You've just awakened from a 200 year cryogenic sleep. You are NOT in good shape at all and won't be for some time. The encounters and game world should be quite lethal at low levels. It makes sense that you would gradually toughen up and build up more stamina, health, etc as you explore the initial surroundings. Intelligent characters would stay near the starting area(s) for a long time in order to properly equip themselves, train themselves, learn about this new world they are in, and (hopefully) establish some alliances with individuals and/or groups who can help them. Intelligent characters would NOT run off chasing after whoever kidnapped Shaun as that would be a sure way to get killed and not be able to do anything at all about what happened. Of course, if you're like me, you are role playing a different type of character than the base character provided by BGS anyway. BGS games aren't about quests, anyway.

Assuming you are actually role playing in this world, you'd want to do some rebuilding. You will gain quite a bit of XP just from basic rebuilding (not completing anything, mind you, because you can't due to the extreme materials/resources limitations). I'm not talking about "power leveling" but simply role playing a reasonably intelligent character.

One thing, though... BGS games have glitches, bugs, etc and FO4, in particular, includes some utterly silly cheap kills against the player. Normally, Dead is Dead players are allowed reloads if death occurs due to game errors or something similar. Use your own judgment rather than blindly adhering to always "death=perma-kill". In some instances, death being permanent kill makes no sense because the game is actually designed for players to be cheaply punished from time to time but able to reload with no problem. The design can be flawed in some cases for a solely DiD approach.

BTW, the reason to take Medic or do things other than using Stimpacks (or Radaway) is role playing, the entire point of the game. It is not up to developers to force players to play only one way by limiting in-game supplies. It is up to developers to include in-game elements that allow for the widest variety of role playing possibilities they can.

Agreed. That's one thing I'd like to have a mod for.

Anyway, I'm on my third play through and have played on normal (I tend to play games on normal the first time as I figure that's how it's balanced to be), hard and very hard. I honestly found enemies to be spongy primarily during my first play through on normal, so I guess it depends a lot on knowing the game mechanics.

As for "strategies", my strategy is to get Overseer's Guardian ASAP, as it's sort of a life insurance against just about anything.