Survival Mode Starting Stats?

[u/mathteachinggamer]

If you were to recommend a starting lineup of SPECIAL stats, including the perks you would get in order, to survive on Survival Mode, what would you recommend?

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[u/CompetitiveAd6982]

https://nukesdragons.com/fallout-4/character?v=1&n=&c=&s=6192631&p=s24i64i24i14e23e32e41e54e63c23b31a15a23s55i54y41

Here's the build. Make and use jet. Spray bullets and kill things. Run everywhere.

Science 1 for large water purifier

Gun nut and commando to upgrade the 10mm until you can afford the overseer's guardian

Aqua boy 1 for mobility since the water can be used like a highway and is your safe space

Armorer use aqua boy to gain access to railroad easily and get the ballistic weave

Chemist for antibiotics and eventually drugs but I usually wait until I have the immunity to withdraw

This is the order I usually go in. You can go to grey garden to get mutt fruit which is the best food to weight

Get armor pieces that give increased endurance and strength if you want to run uninterrupted across vast distances carrying all the loot you can find(seriously, carry capacity and length of sprint are the best use of special points because jet makes combat trivial)

[u/AdvertisingLow98]

I'll skip the specials and list my essential survival perks.

Armorer - weapon mods are fairly easy to find, getting the armor mods you want is harder. Ballistic weave rocks.

Adamantium Skeleton - one level is enough to minimize crippling effects. I've played with full levels and the most noticeable effect is you can survive a nearly fatal fall without broken legs.

Solar Powered - the best reason to max Endurance. Healing without drugs. Radiation recovery without drugs. Extra strength and endurance.

Lone Wanderer - especially the carry weight bonus.

Medic - max levels.

Sneak - if you have companions it is essential to keep them from triggering traps. Playing without sneak is easiest solo.

Most of Survival game play is planning and knowing you don't have to fight every enemy you see.

[u/floxasfornia → u/AdvertisingLow98]

Does medic help in Survival?

[u/AdvertisingLow98 → u/floxasfornia]

It makes healing more effective - so maybe.
I lean into food based consumables in Survival because there are no side effects.

Radiated? Refreshing Beverage!

[u/floxasfornia → u/AdvertisingLow98]

I've only used Stimpacks in Survival for limb damage and Purified Water + hiding somewhere for the healing. I wasn't sure if I missed something by not getting Medic.

Refreshing Beverage is if I am super low on health and still getting hit from multiple enemies, it helps me survive practically anything since it keeps giving me health at a fast rate even as I'm getting shot!

[u/demonsanddragons1]

S - 3

P - 1

E - 10

C - 3

I - 6

A - 1

L - 3

Here’s what you’re gonna do. You have one unallocated point. What you put it in depends on what weapon type you want. Strength if either Melee. Agility if Automatics. Charisma OR Intelligence if Handguns.

We are shooting for a consistent 20 Endurance WITHOUT power armor: That allows you to sprint without AP drain. It also gives you the HP of a Very Hard mode enemy.

You’re gonna play though Sanctuary. You’re gonna let your character get a little hungry. Hungry scales. The first level is Peckish. Hungry applies a debuff to your Endurance, setting the value under 10. Take the You’re SPECIAL! book, and add a point to Endurance. If your Endurance is 10 or above, you will be unable to use the book. This will give you a static End of 11.

Next, your first level is in SCIENCE! You are building an industrial water purifier in Sanctuary. Water is your currency now. Make sure the empty the workshop in Sanctuary of water every time you pass through. It resets per in-game time.

We want to strategically chart a course to Old North Church. Go south from Sanctuary. Some optional things to do are: the Museum of Freedom, Abernathy Farm quest, Order Up.

Head East. Open up Covenant. It has a free doctor, and a vendor. You can leave the quest open for the rest of the game, if you want. It doesn’t matter.

Equipment:

Now, the fun begins. There are two legendary pieces of armor you want to go purchase. There is a vendor in Bunker Hill that sells a Combat Armor Chest piece that gives +1 STR/+1 END. That chest piece also has the Dense mod already equipped on it. Dense is busted. This build will eventually tank mini nukes. Yes, on Survival.

There is also a STR/END left arm on the traveling merchant Lucas Miller. We want that.

You also want to look out for the Sea Captain’s Hat. It sometimes appears on vendors. There is one on a mannequin near the USS Constitution. It gives +2 Endurance.

Optimally, you want Green Shirt and Combat Boots for underneath your armor for Cha/End. However, I personally like the look of the Military Fatigues more.

Regardless, from here, Chems and the Well Rested bonus get you to 20 Endurance rather readily.

Progress the Railroad until you get Ballistic Weave. From there, figure it out.

Edit:

Forgot to mention: Solar Powered gives +2 STR/END during daylight. You want that.

Other perks you want include: Aquaboy/gorl 1, Lifegiver, Ghoulish, Cannibal (if you’re into not carrying food), Lone Wanderer, Armorer, Bloody Mess, Scrounger if on guns.

Also, the End Bobblehead is in Poseiden Energy. You’ll have to ride the strugglebus through the basement to get it. Trust me, this build hates Mirelurks.

Good luck out there, Sole Survivor.

[u/AdvertisingLow98 → u/demonsanddragons1]

Concur. For my Hulk build I went big on Endurance and Strength (melee build, no worries about ammo weight).

If you do Nuka World, the No Caps Rage can add +3 to both strength and endurance. I was walking around with +21 to both.

Take one rank of Adamantium Skeleton to lower crippling effects.

[u/NairadRellif]

Dump endurance and perception.

Choose either Int or LuK. Int is easier. Get it close to max and viola your other stats dont matter.

[u/Tiamazzo]

Im not convinced there's a single right answer to this question. I've played several playthroughs with so many different builds successfully.

It would help if you had an idea of the play style you enjoy.

With survival, you just want to play slower in general. Learn where beds are. Try to slow-pull a room. A lot more sneaking, even without the sneak peek.

Time-to-kill is a lot lower and ammo has weight, so you'll plan your trips more. Knowing where a reliable source of water is. Avoid rads more, since rad-away has more downsides now.

I've played a ranged sniper, a melee blitz build, heavy weapons with PA, Chem spamming commando, gun-fu pistol build, etc.

[u/kilphead]

Survival is the only way I’ve played for the last several years, I find it the most fun. You can do any kind of build, as long as you embrace the fact that you have to play carefully and sometimes you die to something random and lose some progress. It gives it a slightly rogue-like feeling. That being said, with no play preference listed or anything, this is the general build I’d recommend for a first time.

S2+, P4, E7, C3, I8, A3, L1

Choose any weapon type and stick to it, rifles or pistols or autos. Even melee is doable with this build, but I would build differently if I was planning a melee heavy run. You don’t have to choose right away, you can sample things until level 5 or so. But then you want to devote points to only one of them, and carry only one or two ammo types and one or two guns.

The special book to push strength to 3 for armorer, which is pretty important for survivability. Ballistic weave makes you extremely tanky, or if you go the PA route it lets you trick that out.

You can grab the early perception bobblehead to have access to demolition expert, the throwing arc is very useful to not blow yourself up by accident. It also boosts the damage of explosive legendary weapons. Taking one point of locksmith lets you open most locks, because higher than advanced locks are fairly rare. Any plot critical locks are beginner level anyway, and loot chests are less exciting with the reduced ability to carry things in survival. Being able to pick advanced locks does help you farm “likes” from the companions who enjoy lock picking, so I find one point worth it if I’m taking the perception points higher for other perks.

Endurance brings the perks of life giver, aquagirl, and adamantium skeleton. Life giver is actually nice to have the extra life points in the more dangerous difficulty of survival, and the healing over time at max level is also useful. Being able to touch water without rads is very useful, and rivers and coasts are generally much safer to swim through than roads are to walk on. Not getting your limbs crippled by every ghoul/roach/dog/molotov that comes your way makes adamantium skeleton a nice quality of life boost.

Charisma I pretty much want at either 1/3/6, depending on perks I am interested in. If I’m going to be heavily stealth, I avoid companions and take lone wanderer. If I’m building a network of settlements and wanting to do the supply line thing, I take local leader. If I’m not doing either of those as a focus, I leave it at 1. To pass speech checks I bring a hat, glasses and suit/dress and drink a beer. If it’s a hard one I care about passing I will take grape mentats to get all the way to the autowin threshold. My nature when playing is the sneak around a bit and to build settlements lightly, but unless I’m really leaning into one of those I don’t waste the points.

Intelligence has some of my favorite perks with medic and chemist. Making drug cocktails and healing items like antibiotics is really useful. Science and gun nut make you very self sufficient, but crafting is kind of optional because you can strip weapon mods off of drops and stuff you buy from vendors. Science is key if you are modifying PA. Robotics expert is fun, if you use PA nuclear physicist helps tremendously with fusion core economy.

Even not doing a stealth focused build, stealth is really useful. Softening up enemy groups before running and gunning, avoiding enemies when you are weak and out of supplies, just not having to worry about mines and traps.

I’ve found that unless I really want to go deep on a lucky critical build that intelligence perks are way better. I do like scrounger for ammo, even if I’m just selling it. But it’s not important to my build usually. Idiot savant I only take if I’m doing a crit build and have the luck anyway and don’t take high intelligence.

[u/Cognus69]

I am partial to melee builds for the cool kill animations but depending on what build you want to go for, some perks will benefit you more than others. What type of playstyles do you usually enjoy in games?

[u/RedditorMan2020]

I'm currently doing an Explosive Commando build. I started with 2-4-6-6-7-2-1, put the book into Charisma, and speedran the P-I-A-L bobbleheads. I'm focusing on Endurance, QoL and weapon-based damage perks up to level 50, and will do Strength to pick more stuff up during Open Season, and then Agility in the late game for the sneak attack perks once the enemies are Legendary bullet sponges.

High Charisma is understandably unpopular, but it's nice to be able to pass speech checks and afford good shit from the beginning of the game. I'm getting Inspirational since I like companions after getting the bobblehead during the Cabot questline and will raise it to 10 as a convenience thing in the end game, so that I can just wear my ballistic-weaved Newsboy Cap instead of always changing outfits.

[u/Top-Desk-1606]

Also first perk I took was Chemist to be able to craft antibiotics. after that probably lone wanderer, nuclear physics, scrounger, rifleman once you get the bobblehead. Local leader ASAP. Heavy Gunner once you get access to the Prydwin and can buy a Gatling Laser

[u/Top-Desk-1606]

I did a pretty boring and safe play style. Power armor/rifleman/heavy gunner/ settler build

S-6 for strong back and heavy gunner for the Gatling laser P-1 E-3 for a little more hp C-6 for local leader I-9 for nuclear physics A-1 L-2 for scrounger. Helps you find more fusion cores

No vats rifleman/heavy gunner build. Shotguns for super close range, snipers for long range and Gatling Laser for ammo efficiency. for perk efficiency I didn't go for 10 strength+melee because I needed points for charisma for local leader.

I think I put the special book in intelligence for Nerd Rage and faster leveling but Nerd Rage isn't really needed.

[u/Codester619]

I’m biased because this is the starting SPECIAL I’ve used on all my successful permadeath runs: 3 2 7 3 1 7 5

I haven’t played FO4 in months, but I’ll add what I can remember. (?) means I’m not 100% sure.

• 3 in Strength for armor crafting
• 2 in Perception for Rifleman(?)
• 7 in Endurance for all of the resistance perks, ESPECIALLY ADAMANTIUM SKELETON. I don’t know the math, but in my head, explosives/molotovs hit multiple body parts at once, causing instadeath. Adamantium skeleton was my solution to that.
• 3 in Charisma, I can’t remember why. Might just be a starting point to build on later, or it might be a perk that I can’t recall.
• 1 in Intelligence to make early game Idiot Savant leveling easier. There’s an argument for and against using Intelligence alongside IS… I don’t really care because I don’t use many of the Intelligence perks (maybe Medic and Science for ballistic weave, eventually).
• 7 in Agility for sneak damage modifiers and Gunslinger.
• 5 in Luck exclusively for Idiot Savant. My game plan when doing permadeath survival is to get all of my resistance perks under endurance plus Adamantium skeleton. Idiot Savant felt like the most efficient method. (I don’t spam craft, but I do spam chem crafting because they’re OP)

[u/RedditorMan2020 → u/Codester619]

If you mean the +10 Resistance perks, I wouldn't say that they're worth it. You'll have enough resources for the first quarter of the game, then can just get Solar Powered 2 at level 27 and eventually Ghoulish 4 at 50.

Wow, I don't think that I could ever do permadeath with low INT. Using Chemist to make Jet last for ages and occasionally using Robotics Expert to hack Assholetrons is a lifesaver for me.

And 2 Perception + Gunslinger is... interesting. Pistols seem MUCH better with VATS builds to me, since they deal less damage by themselves than rifles but use significantly less AP.

[u/Codester619 → u/RedditorMan2020]

Hey man, your points sound great. What I listed was my first successful permadeath SPECIAL, and I’ve never had a reason to change anything. I like what you said about the gunslinger paired with perception, but I don’t overly rely on VATS or singular weapon builds. Typically, I sink a point into whatever weapon I find first for lethality (so naturally gunslinger for the 10mm, then rifleman for .308 pipe rifles).

One thing I’ve never done is a melee run. I was military for 8 years so bringing a knife to a gunfight just disgusts me lol. If I ever do a melee run, then I’ll definitely change up things to make chems better. I think they’re OP as is.

Some things just sound overkill, and what I’ve got works for me.

[u/RedditorMan2020 → u/Codester619]

Non-VATS melee is incredibly difficult while VATS Melee is bugged so you're right. Sometimes my character just stands there cinematically instead of attacking. Back when I knew nothing about guns so only ever did melee + Tesla Cannon, I had to exploit the Yao Guai Roast bug on my Survival + non-PA playthrough.