odd ^^ I always felt like I was already overpowered by level 20 in the last two Fallout games

you could easily up your 'Guns' skill to 100 early on and one shot most of the things in VATS... (except for maybe Deathclaws and Cazadors, which offered still quite a challenge)

Fallout 4 is by all means not a very hard game, compared to some others, and I don't really like how the difficulty settings work, but it's still way way harder than Fallout 3 and New Vegas, in my opinion...

Level 50+ is already 'very very lategame' (120+ hours) and it's common sence that the game will start getting easy at this point

It's still an improvement over the old games, where it became peanuts after the first 10-20 hours

But it is not easy around lvl 50 in Fallout 4. It's much harder than, let's say with lvl 20 or 30 or 40, at least for me. I face new enemies and fighting is stressing like it was at lvl 12 when I entered the scry scraqer with the dump actor in Boston.

If you don't like the abundance of loot, use an overhaul mod. I do and it's satisfying. If you like a harder game, restrict yourself. Low endurance is a nice feature.

Overlords appear at level 48 base health 750

Primus appear at level 59 base health 950

Yup, must be overlords. But isn't an overlord actually more than a warlord philologically?

I don't know about the language.

The ranks in ascending order are.

Regular

Skirmisher

Brute

Enforcer.

Butcher

Master

Overlord

Primus

Warlord.

If you got to Big John's Salvage you will get to meet the higher ranks in number.

As illustrated here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSTongo69Yw

guess that's why I faced Warlords at 50 °_°

I doubt that, I'd say they're equal in difficulty, mostly because the lvl.20-30 mark in fact the god-mode mark. If you're not obliterating things in a heartbeat, chances are you're not maxed out in damage yet or just having a terrible time aiming. In fact, it's kind of silly on how easy it is to get Combat Armor early in the game, which is probably the best looking/balanced armor set (Synth has the highest ratings, but it's heavier and pretty much uglier). The fact you can slide in Ballistic Weaved clothing underneath at a reasonably early-mid level with the combination of Combat Armor. Before any of this, I think the only enemy that ever gave me a challenge was missile-launcher wielding NPCs, which shows how bad the difficulty really is. Once you get over that small bump, the rest of the game falls flat on it's face. The fact I can block 99% of enemy attacks makes it trivial and teleport to enemies makes it a joke.

I'd say the only one who's having a bit of trouble through the game would be automatics, but once they get their explosive weapon and perks, it's smooth sailing from there on out.

i got 1 shotted by a warlord with two-shot gauss rifle fully modded

the second legendary mutant who melted me had a wounding minigun , i died 3 sec later

I once had a suicider bearing down on me with like 3 other mutants and I shot him twice with a rifle before running out of AP. I was stumbling back wildly trying to change weapons when this random ghoul leaped out of nowhere and started gnawing on his face. He blew up and killed all 5 of them.


I have a luck of 1 and no luck perks so I'm pretty sure this was real world luck. It was one of the best random things to happen to me so far.

Oh! I agree, my problem is I can never find the M****[censored]***!!!!!!

Tick! Tick! Tick! WHERE ARE YOU! VATS doesn't show you! I can't see you! Oh! There you... BOOM!

My first character is level 75 and nothing touches her but it's my own stupid fault. When I hit level 50, I had 27 unspent perks, but the game "reset" itself to the point I felt like I was level 1 fighting level 100 creatures. The scale really tilted, so I assumed the game would account players putting damage buffs on weapons. I boosted non automatic weapon damage, and the game was okay for a bit balance wise, but after 60, it's pretty much weighed in my favor. Even Assaultrons go down with a few shots.

I won't make the same mistake with my current character.

I just love shooting their right arm in the midst of the warloards.....One Shot, many kills....

Yes, I agree. I play only on Normal and find "Hard" and "Very Hard" to be a joke, if for no other reason than, the amount of hits common enemies can take is so egregiously incongruous with the rest of the feel of the game: a harsh and deadly place, full of NPCs that are virtually indestructible, *yawn* So until overhauls are available, it is Normal or nothing for me.

But I disagree with the underlying sentiment that "you made a mistake" in your character design. The only possible "mistake" a player can make, is one that leads to character death. Actions that lead to more effective, survivable, or potent characters can NEVER be a mistake for the simple reason, it is not a game at that point it is a farce. A game in which one must "show restraint" or it becomes unfun does not exemplify good design, at least with respect to that aspect of design.

I have high accolades for FO4 in general and in many specific areas. But the dynamic of the game getting far, far too easy at higher levels is something with which I am strongly dissatisfied. I cannot honestly be too critical because I have managed to get in the ballpark of 500 hours of play before the realization of this sapped much of my enthusiasm for the game. It is a fantastic game, a masterpiece; but it would be an even better one if the game remained challenging at level 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and on up. Perhaps not challenging in the same ways, but challenging or at least engaging . . . Running across the wasteland literally killing everything in sight and virtually impregnable is engaging for a while, but it doesn't last. There need to be new and novel wrinkles in the game that keep it fresh, slightly unpredictable, and potentially lethal at virtually all levels.

I am a strategy gamer at heart and thus an inherent "min-maxer," I take great joy in building my characters to have every possible advantage she can accumulate. The anolysis, strategy and tactics is at least half of the fun to me. So I do a good job of building a strong toon and what happens? I get past level 35 or 40 and start to increasingly realize the game just isn't there for me any more, it didn't anticipate that I would be so resourceful and industrious and exceed its level-scaling. It doesn't even seem to "know" how potent I am and thinks that mere Super Mutant Warlords can stand before me?

If you properly build your character to be the most effective and efficient at lower levels, if you do not ignore or neglect possible advantages your character can attain as you level up, and you do what any "role playing game" involves: develop a 'good' character, then you will be OP at higher levels. Having switched to check the harder "difficulties" this is no less true for those settings either. I'm not going to 'play stupid' just so the game remains challenging at higher levels; that wouldn't be fun at any level or difficulty.

I disagree. You cannot play a roleplay game like a strategy game. Or, to turn it around, also in strategy games you have sometimes to restrict you. I'm f.e. sick of complaints of TW players about "it's sooo easy for my ahistorically composed all-elite units badass Roman army, do something for me, CA".

The devs have to please all players and player wishes differ. Some people don't want to transfer their lives into a game and suffer. If you don't play on Survival and complain about "game too easy" I don't know what to say. I play on Survival but with an 1x damage modifier for the player because I don't like bullet sponges that much. I cannot complain about difficulty. With the vanilla 0,5x I used in my first play session it would be even more difficult. In addition I use a loot overhaul which makes ammo, stimpaks and so much rarer, but also without it the game has a good combat balance imo.

BTW yesterday I saw a legendary supermutant warlord on a building near a certain place in Boston (infamous for a bug earlier) although I'm only lvl 48. Is he handpicked or is the spawn policy inconsistent?

Amazing drops by the way, wounding minigun is devastating, two shot gaus is the single best sniper in the game.

A well-designed game corrects you for "not" playing smart and encourages you to play smart. If you play a game that you initially find to be challenging so you play smart and then the game gets boringly easy at ANY difficulty level at or above "Normal" then it has flawed design.

I can beat the game just as easily on any of the available difficulties, but I find playing with bullet-sponges to be so stupid it is painful to experience . . . bloatflies that absorb 3 or 4 direct hits? Totally unarmed civilian settlers who can take 4+ direct hits, at point-blank-range to the head, and still be ducking and diving? No, that isn't "more challenging" or engaging it is just more stupid.

The "survivalist" part of Survival, that is a nice tweak. But why does one have to play with Bullet Sponges to get those settings in vanilla.

Like I said, I love the game. It is a masterpiece. But their obvious lack of any serious, thoughtful or engaging design to "how to make the game more challenging for either: a. more capable players, or b. characters which have leveled up a lot, is very disappointing. So much so, I'm not sure how much more play time I'll get out of the game until the GECK comes out.

Given I've netted ~500 hours of play time, maybe that is a fairly petty complaint, but I'm not alone. There are multiple users on this board who have posted to express similar disappointment at the difficulty scaling with advancing player character level.

I liked Very Hard. The early levels were very hard scrabble, and I still find non-PA moments to be fairly hair raising and very much a matter of reacting faster and more brutally than the NPCs.

For much of the playthrough on that difficutly, I had to be very optimized and absolutely loaded on chems to really tear though things. That's gotten a bit better and the chem use can slack off a little. There are still moments where I need to make sure the Jet Fuel and Psychobuff and the Orange Mentats are flowing to make sure I can plow my way through. They usually involve Supermutants as those things combine a measure of durability with some extremely high damage output (and throw in some miniguns and missile launchers and suiciders for funsies).

Survival was not well done, IMO. They should have copied the F:NV survival.

So what I've done to fiddle with difficulty is add more environment effects since I'm a PC player. Radstorms cause way more radiation damage. The Glowing Sea is waaaaaaay deadlier (RadX + Radaway does not cut it - you need a hazmat suit or PA to have even a chance -- and I lost 30% of my HP jumping out of my PA to hack the terminal in the Federal Ration Stockpile... oof). I've removed all the non-sourced ambient light so that ruins and empty wilderness away from civilization is like it should be -- lit by the night sky or nothing at all, and there are plenty of 'can't see your hand in front of your face' moments (combine rain + night = wall of darkness and shadows).

This helped a lot, actually. Enemies were more likely to close on my effectively, and I was more likely to be down on HP from radiation damage throughout the game. There were times I was forced into cover just by the weather and nothing more.

And then there was getting jumped, last night even, by the Legendary Deathskull Radscorpion (and his two buddies) in the middle of a Radstorm that rolled in while I was walking to Sentinel Site in the Glowing Sea. Didn't even see them in the distance due to the storm that just started. The ground just boiled up underneath Danse and I and suddenly he's on his knees and I'm going "OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP".

Much more fun and intense that way.

Yet in all this, there are moments with my minigun spinning and my power armor hiss-clanking that I feel like the walking warmachine that I want to be, even on this difficulty. Chewing through a swarm of ferals in a single strafe is satisfying, or killing a Mirelurk Queen with a single load of missiles from my missile launcher, or standing in a choke point and killing enough raiders in a single moment that not only does my companion comment on it, the surviving raider poops himself, screams in terror, and runs and cowers behind cover.

Aight, I see what you are saying. You've convinced me. I'll give it a whack for a playthrough as far as I can get Dead is Dead on Very Hard, and just try not to fixate on the unbelievable durability of the low-tier mobs at the beginning.

If I'm going to judge it as harsh I should at least attempt it, if not on all the difficulty settings.

Thanks, you may have just granted me the resolve for another couple hundred hours

I hope you have fun.

I crutched on that early T-45 suit from Concord pretty heavily to keep alive. It helped that I knew where most of the low level accessible Fusion Cores were.

Nice benefit of Very Hard is the fairly prodigious amount of legendary mobs... so you get a lot of chances at finding a gun that's actually good.

Curious though, why do you prefer Very Hard over Survival?

I have played very little on those levels, mainly just switching over for an hour or two here or there to compare the dynamics to Normal.

The "survival" difficulty setting seems to = "Very Hard" + reduced yield from chems and food?

Both Very Hard and Survival have the same damage modifiers. Enemies do double damage and you do half damage.

Survival's differences are less health regen from anything that provides it and huge enemy HP pools. Supermutants are especially dumb. It's not hard, it's annoying. The enemies on Very Hard can kill you just as fast, yet aren't completely ridiculous.

It did require me to plan my build a little tighter, get a serious amount of resources backing me by really delving into the Settlement game, so I had the best gear I could each level, and I'm using chems extensively (with the Chem Resistant perk) for the first time ever in a Fallout. You definitely need to work to maximize damage, as you have to kill things fast enough that they are not able to do the same to you. It's not just a matter of tanking it all. Things aren't immortal, though, and go down when put real effort into it.

All in all, though, the things that I feel should be tough are (Radscorpions, high end Supermutants) and I still chew through and spit out chumps like the average Raider. Gunners actually feel like the step up and above raiders that they're meant to be, as the gear and their higher DRs from having combat armor start to really show, as does their higher damage weaponry like Plasma. My power armor, for the first time isn't just 'Military Paint' on my X-01, and I'm putting the Bonus Energy Resist paint jobs onto it as I'm running into so much plasma and laser fire that it was actually cutting me up pretty badly.

Oh, and pipe weapons truly are garbage at that difficulty. Don't even bother. I use .38 ammo as a secondary stash of caps. "So, Kleo, here's 1400 .38 rounds, give me those five fusion cores..." Stick with the 10mm until you get something better.

That's just my opinion, though. As I mentioned before, I also made the environmental effects meaner on myself, just to add that much more to it.

The benefits of Very Hard -

Tons of Legendaries that give you a lot of shots at generated loot ( a lot will be crap, but there's enough that some will be very good)

Tons of consumables in containers (seriously, I only received a fraction of this amount on other difficultes)

Luck Based Scrounging Perks become even more rewarding. (I was getting more ammo than usual before, now I'm pulling between 45-75 rounds of random stuff out of an ammo box - and Fusion Cores are considered ammo).

Tons of gear in general (enemies have better gear? That means you will too once you kill them. I think I had a Combat Shotgun and Combat Rifle with ammo for both by level 8-10 or so)

I'm level 49 now, got quest from Preston about defending hangman ally on arival I was told to improve defenses, I also got message that both Somerville place and zimonja is under attakk.

Yes they are on opposite side of the map. So I traveled to the institute and down to Somerville as its largest and an outpost to glowing see. Used intitute teleport to not use time in game.

5 supermutants and some dogs, two warlords, rest overlords and I landed in the middle of them.

Back at institute, this time off to castle and into an fully upgraded X-01.

Pump an phycojet and starting shooting with an two shot automatic assault rifle, was overpowered again, try again now primary objective was to get some distance while killing the dogs, then fire up the exploding minigun who worked well.

Off to zimonja outpost where it just was some stupid raiders.

Hangman ally failed however even if short time had passed in game, it don't have an trade route so it was no way to upgrade defenses fast.

Also the father at Somerville died so the kids ran off, leaving only the extra settler who manned the gun.

Dense armor mods are your friend, pretty much no explosion scratches me, not even a suicider blowing up in my face.

Personally, I've had to bump up the difficulty all the way to survival as I got up in level, over 100 now, but I see how some people wouldn't like enemies being such bullet sponges. There's always psycho. I'd prefer enemy damage to go up, but not my damage to go down ... just for a "feel" that I'd like.

But I would suggest to anybody that wants the game to play harder but doesn't like how very hard or survival plays ... lose the HUD.

And don't get the awareness perks that tells you all about anything you highlight in VATS. Set the opacity down to zero. You can still do everything. Converse. Loot bodies and containers. Everything. If you need to find a door or a location, the local map in the pip-boy points it out. But turning the HUD off makes the game more cinematic and takes away all the things it does to weigh the game in your favor. Not knowing where the enemies are makes you have to use your own senses, not the mini-map. Not knowing when you are hidden or seen does the same thing. It may seem like a small thing, but not having all the HUD help makes the game play way different. With the HUD up, I've never been taken by surprise. I turned my HUD off about 150 hours ago and it was the best move I've made in this game.

It was a mistake, and you seem to disagree simply because choices are about "survival" while negating this shouldn't come at the expense of turning a somewhat balanced game on its end.

My mistake was select all the levels for the perk, so rather than take may the 20% and 40%, I took all 5 which put my weapon to 100% more damage, and that is why my character is now OP.

It's difficult to judge level balance while playing a game, and it's crystal clear to me Bethesda scaled the level at 50 with entirely new classes structured on the belief we players would now be running around with the 100% buffs.

Keep in mind, I took none of these prior to level 50. The only "buffs" my weapons got came only through modding and any legendary bonuses (such as 15 points of fire damage).

The realization came when coming up to a junk yard swarming with mutants, and all of a sudden, these mutants had names like "Warlord" that wasn't taking but scant damage from my 128 base combat shotgun. Literally, one level increase, and these new super mutants might as well have skulls next to their names given how ineffective my weapons were.

I made the mistake assuming the game scaled itself to play as though were were level 1. Turns out, just a new class of enemies arrived with double the HP and DMG, something a 100% doesn't need to take out, but a 0% would take a while (if at all, given there were three Warlords shooting at me).

That's why I said with this new character, the mistake won't be made. Right now, 10mm is at 20% buff and CS is at 40% at level 26ish, and holding my own. I'll keep these stats until level 50, and determine then if they need adjusting. I just won't adjust to 100% buff.