Fallout 4 Things I Didn't Know


I started over once because, as with earlier versions of Fallout, I put almost no points into Charisma, but in F4 where building settlements is a major part of the game, having at least 6 points in Charisma makes life a lot easier. I started over a second time because I didn't understand the best (necessary, actually) way to do things.

The following come from mistakes I have made. Please don't hate me because I'm stupid...

Read F4's built-in Help system.

    Nobody likes to read the directions, especially when you have a new game to jump into, and the info there is not very extensive, but it's a start.

How the leveling-up screen works:

    This should be obvious, but lots of people say that they thought they had to max out a SPECIAL category at the top of the screen before they could select a perk under it. You don't. See this Wikia chart for the requirements for each perk.

    On the flip side, some people have said they didn't realize you could put level-up points into the SPECIALs themselves, such as increasing STR or INT. You can.

Crafting Adhesive and Oil.

    While I was scrambling for sources of oil, I ignored Bones when I saw them around because I didn't know of any use for them, which I now know is part of the Chemistry station's recipe for Cutting Fluid which the workshop converts to oil. Most people learn more quickly that Corn, Tatos, Mutats, and Purified Water can be used at a Cooking station to make Vegetable Starch which the workshop turn into Adhesive. The fastest/easiest way to get those plants early in the game is from Grey Garden on your way down to Diamond City or Vault 81.

Power Armor ("PA").

    Power Armor is not just one item. It consists of a frame which holds the helmet, two arms, two legs, and a chest/torso piece ("components").

    Power Armor components must be kept repaired. If a component's "health" drops to 0, it will be moved from the frame to your Pip-Boy inventory. When I first started using PA, I didn't know about using the Power Armor station to repair them and when I saw the parts in my inventory, I thought they were stuff I had picked up somewhere and sold them. I was walking around in just the frame.

    Upgrading Power Armor can also be done at Power Armor stations. You can increase the damage resistance and add many features, such as "pockets" which increase the amount of weight you can carry, and ultimately the jet packs which let you fly for short distances. Note that "Paint" for PA is not just decorative but can enhance the PA in a variety of ways.

    Fusion Cores ("FCs"):

    Power Armor is powered by Fusion Cores but they run down after a while. FCs can mostly be found in large machines in buildings. They can be bought from merchants, but they are pretty expensive. If you destroy a Sentry Bot, it will explode. Loot it and you will get at least 1 FC.

    Some people wear PA only for tough battles and take it off the rest of the time in order to conserve FCs.

    Fusion Cores which you buy or take out of PA go into your Ammo inventory. They are then grouped by the amount of charge they have, so all your 100% FCs will be together and partially charged ones will be listed separately.

    When you need to put a Fusion Core into PA, do not just press the action button and let the game pick an FC for you because it will always take the most fully charged one, leaving you with a bunch of partially charged ones. Instead, select Exchange and pick a partially charged FC to put into the PA.

    Since FCs are regarded as ammo, getting the Scrounger perks, which help you find more ammo, will also help you find more FCs.

    Rundown Fusion Cores are swapped out automatically and the old one disappears. If you keep your eye on the FC charge gauge, when you see it get under 20, you can stop, take off the PA, click Transfer/Exchange, take out the old FC and put in a new one. You can then sell the rundown FC for the same amount you would get for a fully charged one. If the charge hits zero and gets replaced automatically, you will get nothing for it. Unfortunately, you cannot just swap a rundown one for a fully charged one from a merchant. But by trading in a run-down one for a charged one, you only have to pay the merchant's mark-up, which is better than paying full price.

    Finding Power Armor:

    Power Armor can be found in many places, including in Concord on your first mission and in the woods when walking to Ten Pines on another early mission as well as one east of Ten Pines. The reason for picking up new PA is that you start with the most basic and weakest type, so you should be on the lookout for better PA. The best Power Armor is the X01 model (see how to get it here). If you find PA but it is a model you already have and not upgraded any more than what you already have, there is no point in taking it (unless you just want to collect PA). But some power armor you find will have 0 weight and can be sold for a good price, in which case you may as well take it. If you don't take PA that you find, at least take the FC if it has one.

    When you find more Power Armor, you can't just pick it up. The only way to transport it is to put it on, which you can't do if you are already wearing some. The safest way to handle this is to kill any nearby enemies when you find new PA, Fast Travel back home and remove your current PA, then Fast Travel back to pick up the new one. This assumes you are at or near a Fast Travel point on the map; otherwise, you will have to walk back without any PA on. Don't forget to take an FC back with you to power it up with.

    Another alternative is to pick up the components, leaving the frame, and back at home, you can swap the components into an existing frame such as the one you have on or have found or purchased.

    You can buy the PA frame from a few merchants, though there is no real need to ever have more than one frame unless you just want to display PA parts which you have found. When you buy it, the PA will not appear in your inventory, but standing up nearby. Again, the only way to take it is by putting it on. Since it never goes into your inventory, you cannot sell it back to the merchant.

    PA frames are expensive. Back when you could use exploits to buy expensive items, it could be fun to buy the frames for display, but since Bethesda saw fit to remove those exploits, they removed that bit of fun from the game. Thanks for nothing, Bethesda!

    When you find Power Armor, it may not be a complete set of components. If that is the case, you can "fill in" missing pieces with other pieces you have found or from other PA you have found. They do not have to be the same model of PA. You can mix and match.

    You cannot swim with Power Armor on. You can try to walk across the bottom of deep creeks, rivers, etc., but that does not work out well very often, since it is often not possible to walk across without encountering impassable obstacles. If you find yourself in water over your head while wearing PA and unable to walk out, your only option may be to bring up your Pip-Boy and fast travel out.

    Power Armor protects you when you fall from any height. If you drop from a distance of about two stories or higher, without Power Armor on, you can die.

    People may steal your Power Armor if you leave it somewhere with an FC in it. There are many times you may have to take off your PA in order to perform some task (e.g.: you cannot use workbenches with PA on), it's easy to Fast Travel away without remembering to put it back on. It's a nuisance to take out the FC and put it back in, but less of a nuisance than having someone take your PA.

Regular Armor, Other Apparel, and Ballistic Weave:

    Like Power Armor, regular armor also comes in pieces which you can mix and match to get the most damage, energy and radiation resistance, as well as special perks which come with some items.

    In addition to these two layers, some gear you find can be worn under regular armor, giving you 2 layers of protection. Long johns and "leathers" are two such items. Oddly enough, a Baseball Uniform (which you can buy from a merchant in Diamond City or find in several places) can also be worn under regular armor. On its own, it has no damage resistance, but an upgrade option for it is Ballistic Weave which gives it enormous damage resistance. Unlocking Ballistic Weave on the Armor workbench is a long process. Here's a video detailing it (not by me).

    If you wear gear upgraded with Ballistic Weave, be aware that it may turn some characters against you. I wore it without Power Armor for the Big Dig mission. When I got to Fahrenheit, she tried to kill me. Since unexpected reactions like that for no reason are usually because of the gear you are wearing, I reloaded, took off the gear with Ballistic Weave, and she no longer tried to kill me.

    At the bottom right hand corner of the Pip-Boy inventory screen, when in the Armor list, you can see how much resistance your current gear has. This is easier than trying to add up the resistances of the individual pieces of apparel.

    Some non-armor garments have damage resistance and/or other resistances. The Vault 111 uniform has 6 energy resistance and 10 radiation resistance but no damage resistance. When you loot corpses, you should always watch for gear with better resistances and if you find any, put them on right away.

    The first such opportunity is between Sanctuary and Red Rocket. Nothing like taking clothes off a corpse and putting them on. You don't exactly feel Zestfully clean.

    Gear with Perks can give you a boost when and where you need it. For example, there are items which increase your Charisma, and higher Charisma makes it easier to sway people with your speech (which earns you XP) and gets you better prices at merchants. Intelligence-boosting gear lets you earn more XP. Strength-boosting gear lets you carry more stuff.

    Regular armor can be upgraded at an armor workbench.

Power Armor versus Other Apparel/Armor:

    Power armor removes any SPECIAL point increases provided by other clothes/armor. For example, if you put on clothes which increase Charisma and then put on PA, your Charisma will revert back to what it was. However, any points added to SPECIAL categories by drugs or foods are NOT removed by PA.

    PA removes any resistances of other armor/apparel worn underneath the PA, including Hazmat suits.

    Since PA negates the benefits of regular armor, there is no reason to wear both. If you want to wear PA, then instead of wearing regular armor under PA, you can leave the regular armor at home and wear gear for boosting your intelligence or charisma under your PA. For example, if you know that you are going to be shopping or doing speech checks, wear your CHR-boosting gear under your PA, then take off the PA when you need the boost.

    PA Pros:

    PA has a lot more resistance to damage than even regular armor with ballistic weave.

    PA has a lot more upgrades available, such as displaying red marks in your HUD for enemies, boosting your intelligence or carry weight limit, flying (jet pack upgrade) and more. Offsetting that somewhat is that foes will drop legendary gear for regular armor which will have random benefits. Because they are random, you have little control over doing a specific upgrade you may want/need.

    PA prevents damage from falls which would otherwise seriously injure or even kill you when wearing regular armor.

    Both PA and regular armor can be upgraded for greater carry capacity, but for the same amount of upgrading, PA lets you carry more.

    PA Cons:

    PA requires Fusion Cores which are relatively scarce and cost hundreds of caps. This scares some people into only wearing PA when they really need its damage resistance. However, as a full-time power armor user, I've never had a problem finding or buying FCs, nor has any such player in any video I've seen.

    You can't swim with PA on. You can still walk through water, but in deep water if you drop down to the bottom, you may not be able to walk back out. Also, a swimmer can bob to the surface, take a breath, and go back under. While a PA helmet or a mirelurk cake will each extend your underwater breathing, they won't help if you are stuck underwater.

    The AquaBoy/Girl perks let you swim underwater without breathing, but with PA on, you still may get stuck. In playing a LOT of F4 games, I've never felt the slightest need for this perk. Yes, it can give you a place to run when attacked, but with good weapons like the Spray n' Pray and good PA, you don't HAVE to run; you can just kill the attackers.

    For a quick dip into the water to get something and come right back out at the same spot, you can just take off your PA first. Obviously this doesn't help if you want to cross a river as a shortcut on a longer trip.

    One benefit for the non-PA wearer is that you can get around much of the Commonwealth trouble-free by swimming. Since AquaBoy/Girl also protects against radiation, the perk makes a little more sense for that use; however, this deprives you of the chance to discover new map locations. Not only do you not get the XP for that, but it also means that you will have to walk or swim over the same route again to get to those locations in the future.

    Bottom Line:

    PA has more damage protection, higher carry weight, protection from falls, and better/more upgrades. The only real drawback is that you can't swim in it. For me, this makes PA a no-brainer. However, there is no one right way to do things in F4. For example, if you just don't like the feel of wearing PA, don't. You will still have fun and make it through the game.

Hazmat Suits and the Mysterious Serum:

    A Hazmat suit provides 1000 radiation resistance. One of the major uses of this is in the Glowing Sea. It can be used anywhere that has high radiation, but that would mean always carrying one with you in case of random needs. For such situations where you may temporarily need radiation protection, taking Rad-X or one of many cooked foods for radiation resistance and taking Radaway or Refreshing Beverage or having a doctor cure you is a reasonable alternative to always carrying a Hazmat suit.

    While it is useful for the extended time spent in the Glowing Sea, it provides no damage protection from the dangerous critters you will run into there. You can wear a Hazmat suit under Power Armor, but since PA removes any benefits provided by gear under it, the Hazmat suit will provide no protection.

    An alternative to a Hazmat suit is the Mysterious Serum which you get from doing the Cabot House mission. You can get as many as 13 doses during the mission plus after those, you can go back once a week to get another dose for free, but only if you side with the father.

    The Mysterious Serum provides 36000 rad resistance at the rate of 10 per second for 1 hour. The Chemist perk increases its duration. Since the effect of drugs still works with power armor, this is a good alternative to the Hazmat suit in the Glowing Sea.

Legendary Gear:

    If you have played a game such as Borderlands where legendary weapons are awesome (or even if you haven't), you may be disappointed with the legendaries in F4. My experience is that only a small percentage of them are worth keeping.

    If you have saved before entering a building or area in which a legendary foe spawns and you are not happy with the gear you get after killing it, you can reload to try again. If you want the same category of gear (e.g.: leg armor, sniper rifle, etc.) load the save made after entering and you will get the same category with different benefits.

Workbench inventory categories are the same as Pip-Boy categories:

    Weapons, Armor, Aids, Misc., Mods, Junk, and Ammo. You can store things in workbenches that you don't need right away and get them out later. When a settlement generates excess water or foods or cash from Stores, that excess shows up in the workbench inventories of that settlement. If in the Build mode you scrap a container, it will move any non-scrappable gear in it into the workshop. You can transfer those things to your Pip-Boy inventory if you wish.

Shared supplies do not show in the workbench inventories of linked settlements::

    Shared crafting/building materials only show up when you go to build or craft an item, thus shared supplies can only be used for building and crafting. For example, if one settlement has bottles of purified water in its workbench inventory, that water can be used in a linked settlement to, for example, cook recipes which need water, but the actual bottles cannot be picked up at the linked settlement simply because they do not show up in its workbench inventory.

    Shared materials are not limited to items in the Junk inventory. Anything used in crafting/building can be shared, no matter what category it is in, such as food for planting from Aids, Vault-Tec lunch boxes for crafting bottlecap mines from Misc, all Mods, etc.

The Pip-Boy screen that lists stats for the settlements you have built is crocked.

    It may show some low amount of beds or water or food and you drop everything to run to the settlement and it turns out everything is fine. That Pip-Boy screen is an easy way to locate a settlement on the map so that you can fast travel to it, but otherwise, it's not worth much.

Vendors are more expensive in F4 and caps are not as plentiful as in earlier Fallouts.

    While a lot of people online talk about generating excess water to raise caps, and that does work, people rarely mention the importance of using apparel and meds to increase your Charisma in order to improve prices. See this page for more info.

Economies of Scale, a staple of real life, do not apply in F4.

    It is commonly understood in the real world that you save money by buying in volume or buying a large item to accomplish the same task as several smaller items, but the opposite is true in F4.

    For example, virtually everyone posting online assumes that a Water Purifier is the best or only way to generate excess water to sell when in fact, simple water pumps are cheaper to build and do the same thing. The same principle applies to building turrets and to buying supplies in bulk ("Shipments") versus buying random junk with the same supply material in them.

Fences around settlements are worthless when attackers can and do spawn inside the fences.

    Some people will say: "I saw my fences keep out a Deathclaw." Sometimes it will, but other times Deathclaws will spawn within the walls. Just put a lot of turrets around to cover the inside and outside of settlements and you won't need walls.

Exploring generates relatively little XP.

    Some people were talking about just exploring the Commonwealth instead of going on missions all the time. Having just completed F4, I decided to start a new game crossing the top of the map going east to see what I could find, going into buildings I came across to loot them and kill foes. I was level 14 and already had Spray n' Pray and Overseer's Guardian, two of the most powerful weapons in the game, so I wasn't afraid of anything.

    I learned two things:

    1. Enemies with skulls next to their names are hard to kill, even with the Spray n' Pray, and it takes a ton of expensive ammo to kill them.
    2. Even killing advanced enemies, you don't rack up a lot of XP compared to crafting and building which generate continuous streams of XP.

    While I did come across some settlements I could build up, I didn't want to stop exploring to build them, so I was missing out on the XP from building settlements. Without heavy XP coming in, you can't get perks which let you increase your powers and your weapons' and armor's powers.

    Also, since I wasn't going on missions, I wasn't getting XP (or caps) for completing missions, even if I was killing the same enemies in the same places.

    Having finally caught on, I am through exploring to the exclusion of all else. I'll still do some exploring while on missions, but clearing buildings which are not related to missions is a low-profit enterprise. This also applies to missions such as Corvega which has dozens of Raiders trying to kill you. After killing Jared to complete the Tenpines mission, I used to continue killing Raiders, but now I just return to Tenpines to turn in the mission and then return to Sanctuary.

    2025 Update: I recently got to go exploring as above before rescuing Preston Garvey, mainly because I wanted to see where Garvey would send me if I had already helped out the settlers he normally sends me to and even built up their settlements.

    I found that I actually made about the same caps and XP as I did when I let Garvery send me places. In my most recent game, I'm at level 23 and have maxed a half-dozen settlements in terms of number of settlers and other stats. This includes the Castle, where I found it was easier to kill all the mirelurks by myself.

Factions and Missions.

    New missions are constantly being heaped on you. And you are told that you Failed any that you don't get to within some arbitrary period of time. I've yet to learn if there is any penalty for that, but it doesn't appear so.

    Part of the problem is that the game has several factions: The Minutemen, The Brotherhood of Steel, The Railroad, among others, and you can end up running errands for all of them. So it might be best to pick one and concentrate on their missions.

    F4 starts with a mission for the Minutemen (in Concord), but you don't have to take it. You can do a little exploring east and south of Sanctuary, but eventually, doing the mission is probably best because you get Power Armor, some nice weapons, and more. Plus you end up back in Sanctuary where you can start building settlements which is an easy way to gain XP and level up, even if you don't want to do more settlement building afterwards.

    Getting the first mission for the Brotherhood of Steel is easy and earns you a pretty nice weapon. It's not as good a weapon as the Spray n' Pray or Overseers Guardian, but it is easier to get. So even if you want to concentrate on Minutemen missions and settlement building, you may want to do the BOS mission.

    In contrast, you have to jump through a lot of hoops (do a lot of missions) for the Railroad to get the big reward from them (Ballistic Weave -- look for it on YouTube). Just getting to the Railroad is a big pain.

    Missions the factions give you can go on forever -- or until you start on the main story missions at which point they may get serious. Some people on Youtube claim they have done "everything" in F4, but since these side missions are infinite, it is impossible to do "everything". There are always more side missions to do.

There is a limit to how much you can build in a settlement.

    It is shown by the Size bar at the top right of the screen in the Building mode. Unless you go nuts trying to build a whole city in a settlement, you may never run into the limit.

    If you do reach the Size limit, there is an exploit which lets you get around it.

F4 doesn't play fair.

Radiant quests:

"Radiant quests" is the name for random computer-generated quests which do not carry the main story line forward and which can continue indefinitely.

For example, you get a message that some settlement you've built is under attack and needs your help. This can be repeated by F4 forever and it is basically the same mission with the same dialog, so after a doing a few of these quests, they start to get boring and even annoying.

Once you start doing radiant quests for the Brotherhood of Steel, they will go on forever, or until you do the main story quests up to a certain point, then the BOS story line will advance to the next level. I didn't realize this at first and kept doing more and more of the repetitive quests, expecting to be rewarded at some point with a trip to the Prywden, but of course it never happened.

Game mechanics: Believe it or not, it took me a long time to discover all these things:

  • Saving games:

    • Quicksave is very fast and convenient, but one Quicksave after another keeps overwriting the last one, meaning that if something goes wrong or a save gets glitched, you cannot back up to the previous save. Instead, you have to back up to the last non-Quicksave. If you are always Quicksaving, you might lose a lot of progress.

      Quicksaves do have their place though:

      • When nothing much has been going on since your last non-Quicksave.
      • Before doing a speech test (where your reply options are a different color).
      • Before selecting a Perk (in case you change your mind immediately afterwards).
      • Before doing anything else for which you might want a second chance.

    • New save is the second fastest and most convenient and assures that you can always back up to the previous save since saves do not get overwritten. The problem is that if you keep doing new saves, you can run out of space and the game cannot save anymore. Then you are faced with having to go through a very long list of saves, deleting them to make room, which is a time-consuming chore.

    • Auto-saves are actually the very most convenient, but if you have them all selected (in Settings), you will run out of space even faster. For example, one auto-save option is to save when you go into Pip-Boy (though you can control to some extent how much time must pass between saves). This is most useful when you are walking around the Commonwealth and bringing up the Pip-Boy frequently to check the map, which means you will get lots of saves, but it is only necessary if you can't remember to save on your own now and then.

      I turn off all the auto-saves except for one. I let it auto-save when fast traveling (which includes going through doors where the game loads a new environment) because unpleasant surprises can sometimes await you. However, sometimes F4 does not autosave on such occasions when it should, and I don't know why.

    • Overwrite is the one I use most and is also the slowest. A good plan is to only keep the most recent save and overwrite the 2nd-most-recent save, first deleting any saves beyond that which auto-save has created.

      One exception is to save just before leaving Vault 111 the first time and keep that. This allows you to start over, resetting your SPECIAL points, without having to go through the whole initial start-up prior to that point.

  • Starting new games:

         There are several ways to start a new game:

    • Exit the current game and at the F4 menu, click on New. If you want to keep the prior game, give yourself a new name. Example: If your name in the first game was Joe, you could make your new name Joe2. This option starts the game from scratch, before the bomb.

    • If you saved the game just before leaving the vault, reload that save. You get the chance to change your name as well as your SPECIALs. Then your new game will be saved under your new name.

    • At the F4 menu, click on Change Profile. This lets another player start a new game on the same device. The first time I wanted to start a new game, I didn't know that it was possible to start one and keep the old one, so I set up a fake user name unnecessarily.

  • Changing games:

    • If you have more than one game saved, do NOT select Change Profile, which is an option shown below the F4 menu, unless you want to change XBox/PS4/PC user name.

    • To change games under the same XBox/PS4/PC user name (not to be confused with the F4 game's character name), at the F4 menu select Load, then select the option below the Load menu to change characters.

  • Sneaking:

      Whether walking through a building or across the Commonwealth, I always sneak.

      Sneaking also displays an indicator at the top of the screen to warn you if you have been noticed and if so, then you know to look around for enemies. The easiest way to do this is to hold down the left bumper (on the XBox One), which is the button you click to scan ahead for enemies. When you hold down the button, it scans 360 degrees. See more info in the next section.

      I used to always select the Sneak perks. I never used a Stealth Boy because with rank 3 of the Stealth perk, you can walk into a room of Super Mutants and they never seem to notice, even if they bump into you.

      However, in recent games, I have not been getting the Sneak perks and I have been doing well without them. See the Perks page for what I get at each Level Up. You'll notice some levels later in the game with no Perks listed for them. I might throw a Sneak or two into those where I don't need or can't yet get something I really want/need.

  • Traveling The Commonwealth:

      Stay Safe Out There: When walking about the Commonwealth, in addition to sneaking and the warning you get from it, you can increase your safety by frequently tapping the control which lets you scan ahead for danger (land mines, turrets, etc. as well as enemies). This also lets you walk (faster and quieter) with your weapon put away since if a scan shows an enemy, your weapon will be brought up automatically. Also, this scan doesn't even slow you down; you can scan and walk at the same time.

      To be really safe, instead of just tapping the scan button (left bumper button on the XBox), you can hold it down and it will do a complete 360-degree scan. The disadvantages of this compared to the front-only scan is that (1) it will cause you to stop and (2) it always brings up your weapon which you must then put away each time. And while it's nice to know what's around you, normally if you are sneaking and not walking towards something, it will not come after you.

      On the other hand, sometimes you are being attacked and can't tell from where. In that case, the 360-degree scan is very helpful.

      Avoid flying insects: If a scan shows a flying insect, it is wise to change your course to get around it. They are a nuisance, use up your ammo, and give little reward in return. Given that most legendary gear is not worth keeping and that legendary insects are even harder to kill, even they are not worth the effort in my opinion.

      If you have good weapons and plenty of ammo, it is worth going after non-flying critters. They are easier to kill (a Spray n' Pray weapon kills anything quickly) and their meat can be used at a Cooking station to craft some good meds. It's like getting free Stims.

      Valuable plants vs. weeds: Always pick the following plants for crafting valuable items: bloodleaf (roundish orange plants along the sides of or in creeks), brain fungus, glowing fungus, hubflower, tarberry, and silt bean. You can leave any whose name starts with "wild" such as "wild carrot"; you cannot plant these as Food crops nor use them in crafting. (Reminder: does not apply to Survival Mode games.)

      Plants whose names start with "fresh" such as "fresh corn" have a much higher value and weigh very little, so they are worth picking up to sell. A lot of these can be found in Vault 81.

      Using V.A.N.S.: VANS is a perk you can get which displays a green "trail of smoke" to show the path towards your destination. For this to work, you should have only one mission selected. Even then, it works correctly, when it works at all, only about 70-80% of the time. The rest of the time it may say that it can't find a route, even if it just showed one a few steps earlier, or it may not show the optimum path, or it may even show you a path away from where you should be going. (At Fort Hagen, it leads you away from the building you need to enter.) So if it doesn't seem right, check your map.

      Also, if the current challenge is to find a particular location (as opposed to finding an item or person), it's not going to help you.

      Nevertheless, it is very helpful if you are having trouble finding your way. I would have paid good money to have had this in earlier Fallouts where you could spend long, frustrating periods trying to find your way around convoluted paths both inside and outside of buildings.

  • Changing weapons, grenades

      Putting weapons and drugs on the easy-access wheel makes it easier to change weapons when you are not under duress, but when you are surrounded by Super Mutants or Deathclaws bumping into you, trying to find the right position on the wheel and bring up the weapon you want is not so easy, especially since clicking the wheel does NOT pause action.

      In such a situation, it is better to hit the Pip-Boy button, which pauses the action, bring up the Weapons menu, and select the weapon you want. You may even want to bring up the Aid menu first and take something to restore your health or to boost your fighting powers.

      As you should already know, since grenades and mines are "thrown" by using the right bumper (on the Xbox), one of them can be selected as the default as well as selecting the current weapon to use.

      If you need to reload a weapon while foes are trying to kill you (and are close to succeeding), the instant way (in game time) to reload is to bring up Pip-Boy, change weapons, then change back and the weapon will come back fully loaded.

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