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Home / News / You’re not ready for Fallout 4’s new Survival difficulty, Vault dweller

You’re not ready for Fallout 4’s new Survival difficulty, Vault dweller

The Commonwealth wasteland is about to get a whole new level of punishing

Fallout 4‘s upcoming survival mode overhaul is going to make wandering the Commonwealth seriously hazardous for your health.

Bethesda launched Fallout 4 with a survival mode that made the game slightly harder, but missed out all the hardcore dangers that made New Vegas such a fan favourite.

This didn’t exactly go down well with gamers, but the developer took to Twitter back at the start of the month to confirm it was working to fix that. Promises of “Food, sleep, diseases, danger and more” all sounded good, but one Reddit user couldn’t wait and dug into the game files to get more information ahead of time.

We hope you’ve packed your Fat Man mini-nuke launcher; things are about to get brutal.

For starters, a new wellness system means you have to stay hydrated, fed and rested to stay combat-ready. Don’t get enough sleep and your maximum action points will drop until you find a bed.

Eat uncooked meat or drink unpurified water and you’ll get sick, which can only be cured with antibiotics crafted at health stations.

Crippled limbs don’t auto-heal when you’re out of combat any more, and downed companions won’t get up until you heal them, which makes stimpaks even more precious.

Fast travel is disabled, so you’ll have to trek across the wasteland rather than warp across the map. You’ll practically have to be standing on top of locations before they’ll show up on the compass, and enemies won’t appear at all.

Locations take longer to repopulate with loot and enemies, too, which should put an end to gear farming.

Keeping an eye on your carry capacity will be even more important, because ammo will weigh you down. It’s based on caliber, so fusion cores and mini-nukes can really drag you down. Your endurance and agility stats will drop when you’re over encumbered, and you’ll start damaging your legs and health if you stay that way for too long.

You won’t even be able to save your game without finding a bed and sleeping for at least an hour. Sleeping bags will never give the well rested bonus, so you’ll need to hunt down a proper bed if you want the bonus effects.

Fallout 4 verdict

Naturally every enemy gets a damage boost too, making things just that little bit harder. In case you thought it still sounded a bit too easy.

Bethesda has since confirmed the leak was correct, but that there would be even more to come before launch.

Basically, Fallout 4’s going to kick your ass – and we can’t wait.

There’s no word on a release date yet, but with DLC drops expected to start from March, there’s hopefully not too long to wait.

Profile image of Tom Morgan-Freelander Tom Morgan-Freelander Deputy Editor

About

A tech addict from about the age of three (seriously, he's got the VHS tapes to prove it), Tom's been writing about gadgets, games and everything in between for the past decade, with a slight diversion into the world of automotive in between. As Deputy Editor, Tom keeps the website ticking along, jam-packed with the hottest gadget news and reviews.  When he's not on the road attending launch events, you can usually find him scouring the web for the latest news, to feed Stuff readers' insatiable appetite for tech.

Areas of expertise

Smartphones/tablets/computing, cameras, home cinema, automotive, virtual reality, gaming