What do you do when you want to play Fallout 4 again, but you already know how that first firefight in Concord goes, and how every fight after it ends? You’re not alone: One Reddit user with more than 1,000 hours in the game asked the same thing after trying every build and mod they could think of. Hundreds of hours in, even a world this big can start to feel like a to-do list — another settlement under attack, another warehouse full of raiders, another supply run.
Once you’re running the Minutemen, Preston Garvey’s quests do start cycling back through places you’ve already cleared. Here are eight self-imposed rules to get you out of that rut, from swearing off anything invented after the Dark Ages to hunting animals for a living to taking over Nuka-World as a raider warlord. Vault-Tec guidelines: Start a new character on Survival difficulty.
Treat dying as the end of your run. Climb out of Vault 111 and you’ll find yourself in the Commonwealth, a ruined version of Boston in the year 2287. It’s already a hostile place, with raiders, feral ghouls, and super mutants roaming the rubble.
Survival mode makes it a lot less forgiving. Here’s what you’ll face: Fast travel is disabled, you can only save by sleeping, and hunger, thirst, fatigue, and disease all demand attention. Meanwhile, enemies hit harder, ammo has weight, and legendary enemies show up more often.
Permadeath isn’t built into Survival mode, so you’re going to have to keep yourself honest, there, but this rule changes the calculus before you undertake any expedition. Do you have enough clean water? Is this fight a risk to everything you’ve built?
These seem like questions the Sole Survivor, a pre-war parent who wakes from cryosleep to find their spouse dead and their infant son kidnapped, would be asking… Vault-Tec guidelines: Melee only. No guns, explosives, or powered gear. And you’ll heal with sleep, food, and water instead of chems.
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