Important Notes
Fallout 4: Important Notes
This guide covers critical warnings, pitfalls, irreversible choices, missable content, difficulty spikes, grinding traps, save management advice, and common player regrets. Follow these to avoid frustration and maximize your experience.
---
⚠️ Warnings & General Advice
- Save Often, Save in Multiple Slots: Fallout 4 is prone to bugs, crashes, and corrupt saves—especially on PC and older consoles. Use at least three rotating save slots (manual saves) and never rely solely on autosaves or quicksaves. Quicksaves can become corrupted if used repeatedly in the same spot.
- Modding Warning: If you plan to use mods, install them after your first playthrough or make a clean save before adding them. Mods can break quests, cause infinite loading screens, or corrupt your save. Always read mod descriptions for compatibility.
- Survival Mode is Brutal: Survival mode disables manual saves (only sleeping saves), increases enemy damage, introduces hunger/thirst/fatigue, and requires ammo to have weight. Do not start Survival unless you are experienced with the game's mechanics.
- Power Armor Needs Fusion Cores: Fusion cores are finite early on. Do not sprint in power armor (drains cores fast). Use the "exit armor" trick to conserve cores when stationary.
- Nick Valentine Questline Bug: If you dismiss Nick Valentine before completing his personal quest "The Long Time Coming," he may become unrecruitable. Always complete his quest before switching companions.
---
⛔ Pitfalls & Common Mistakes
| Pitfall | Why It's Bad | How to Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Selling Pre-War Money | Pre-War money weighs nothing and can be used as currency in certain vendors (e.g., the Railroad). It also has high value-per-weight for trading. | Keep all pre-war money in a container or your workshop. Only sell if desperate for caps. |
| Using Bobbleheads as Decor | Bobbleheads provide permanent stat boosts or perks when collected. If you place them in your settlement, you lose the effect. | Collect every bobblehead you find; do not drop or store them. |
| Ignoring the Luck Bobblehead in Vault 111 | The Luck bobblehead is on a desk in the overseer's office, just before you leave the vault. It's easy to miss in the rush. | After leaving the cryo chambers, search the office thoroughly before exiting. |
| Rushing the Main Quest | The main quest locks you into one of four factions. If you progress too far with a faction, others become permanently hostile. | Do quests for all factions until you get a warning popup that a choice is irreversible. Save before committing. |
| Not Picking Up Junk | Junk items can be scrapped for materials needed for settlement building, weapon mods, and armor upgrades. | Collect all junk with labels like "steel," "aluminum," "screws," "adhesive." Use the "tag for search" function. |
###