The 10 Ways Fallout 4's 'Survival Mode' Makes Your Life a Living Hell
Now that Survival Mode has been released (it’s available as a Beta on Steam), we can take a look and see how it will increase Fallout 4’s gameplay difficulty and, well, pretty much make your life a living hell.
Before we dive into things, I want to point out that there's just one way Survival Mode makes your life easier: cleared locations will repopulate with new enemies (and loot) at a significantly slower rate. So if you cleared a location, it will take longer for new enemies to appear, which makes your life a little bit easier. Apart from that, everything in Survival Mode is designed to be as difficult as possible.
1. No manual saving, quicksaving, or autosaving.
You can’t manually save the game, then enter a fight knowing that you can easily load the game if things don’t go your way. In Survival Mode, you must find a bed and sleep for at least an hour to save the game.
“Some fights you may deem above your level and decide to avoid,” Bethesda explained. “Other fights you may decide to go all in. Scouting and gathering information to make this decision can be fun in its own right. Also, when beds are your only means of saving, they become the Holy Grail. With that level of importance tied to them, you will scour the Earth to find the closest bed to your next chosen encounter – and in doing so you will likely discover things that you might have otherwise missed.”
2. No fast travel.
If you want to get from point A to point B, you have to do it the old-fashioned way, because fast travel is disabled in Survival Mode.
3. You take (and deal) more damage.
The enemies are more powerful and deal more damage. But you are more powerful as well, and you deal more damage. This makes combat more challenging, encouraging you to use strategy to not get hit by enemies.
4. The compass is less useful.
Threats do not show up on the compass, unless added by a Recon scope. The distance at which locations of interest appear on the compass has been reduced.
5. New “Adrenaline” perk.
The new Adrenaline perk boosts your damage. To increase your Adrenaline rank, you have to kill enemies: 5 kills adds 5% bonus damage. You can take your Adrenaline up to a maximum rank of 10 and get an extra 50% damage. Sleeping removes Adrenaline ranks.
"That extra damage is alluring. Adrenaline motivates the types of stupid decisions that always lead to the best water cooler stories," says Bethesda.
6. You have to eat, drink and sleep.
Just like in real life, you have to stay hydrated, you have to eat, and you have to rest. If you don’t, it will negatively impact your health, it will hurt your SPECIAL abilities, it will lower your immunity, and it will even cause physical damage. So forget about always using Stimpacks to regain your health. In Survival Mode, you have to eat, drink, and sleep to stay healthy.
And speaking about sleep, it must be mentioned that “the type of bed you're sleeping in limits the length of time you are able to sleep, thereby limiting how much you can recover. Real beds – which are hard to come by in the world – offer the highest bonuses for sleeping; this rewards you for working out of a home base or even spending the caps for a good night’s sleep.”
7. You’ll get tired.
Fatigue, which comes from being tired, affects your Action Points (AP), just like radiation affects your Hit Points (HP). The more fatigued you are, the less AP you’ll have.
If you use items that cleanse radiation, it will make you tired and, if that wasn’t enough, it will temporarily damage your immunity. RadAways give you immunodeficiency, making you more susceptible to illness.
8. You’ll take longer to heal.
The health recovery rate for Stimpacks and food has been significantly reduced. It will take longer for you to heal from damage.
Speaking about that, the most annoying type of damage, crippled limbs, will no longer auto-heal after combat. Your limbs will remain crippled unless you use a Stimpack or unless you sleep. No problem, you might be thinking right now, I’ll just take lots of Stimpacks with me. Stimpacks don’t weigh anything, right?
9. You can carry less and new items have weight.
Your carry weight and your comapanion’s carry weight has been reduced. And items like Stimpacks and ammo have weight now. If you exceed your carry weight, it will affect your overall wellness and add Fatigue. It might even cripple your legs.
10. Companions return home.
If your companion gets downed during combat, you must go heal him. Otherwise, he will return home. This applies to Automatron robots too. Unless you repair your robot, it will return home.
Before we dive into things, I want to point out that there's just one way Survival Mode makes your life easier: cleared locations will repopulate with new enemies (and loot) at a significantly slower rate. So if you cleared a location, it will take longer for new enemies to appear, which makes your life a little bit easier. Apart from that, everything in Survival Mode is designed to be as difficult as possible.
1. No manual saving, quicksaving, or autosaving.
You can’t manually save the game, then enter a fight knowing that you can easily load the game if things don’t go your way. In Survival Mode, you must find a bed and sleep for at least an hour to save the game.
“Some fights you may deem above your level and decide to avoid,” Bethesda explained. “Other fights you may decide to go all in. Scouting and gathering information to make this decision can be fun in its own right. Also, when beds are your only means of saving, they become the Holy Grail. With that level of importance tied to them, you will scour the Earth to find the closest bed to your next chosen encounter – and in doing so you will likely discover things that you might have otherwise missed.”
2. No fast travel.
If you want to get from point A to point B, you have to do it the old-fashioned way, because fast travel is disabled in Survival Mode.
3. You take (and deal) more damage.
The enemies are more powerful and deal more damage. But you are more powerful as well, and you deal more damage. This makes combat more challenging, encouraging you to use strategy to not get hit by enemies.
4. The compass is less useful.
Threats do not show up on the compass, unless added by a Recon scope. The distance at which locations of interest appear on the compass has been reduced.
5. New “Adrenaline” perk.
The new Adrenaline perk boosts your damage. To increase your Adrenaline rank, you have to kill enemies: 5 kills adds 5% bonus damage. You can take your Adrenaline up to a maximum rank of 10 and get an extra 50% damage. Sleeping removes Adrenaline ranks.
"That extra damage is alluring. Adrenaline motivates the types of stupid decisions that always lead to the best water cooler stories," says Bethesda.
6. You have to eat, drink and sleep.
Just like in real life, you have to stay hydrated, you have to eat, and you have to rest. If you don’t, it will negatively impact your health, it will hurt your SPECIAL abilities, it will lower your immunity, and it will even cause physical damage. So forget about always using Stimpacks to regain your health. In Survival Mode, you have to eat, drink, and sleep to stay healthy.
And speaking about sleep, it must be mentioned that “the type of bed you're sleeping in limits the length of time you are able to sleep, thereby limiting how much you can recover. Real beds – which are hard to come by in the world – offer the highest bonuses for sleeping; this rewards you for working out of a home base or even spending the caps for a good night’s sleep.”
7. You’ll get tired.
Fatigue, which comes from being tired, affects your Action Points (AP), just like radiation affects your Hit Points (HP). The more fatigued you are, the less AP you’ll have.
If you use items that cleanse radiation, it will make you tired and, if that wasn’t enough, it will temporarily damage your immunity. RadAways give you immunodeficiency, making you more susceptible to illness.
8. You’ll take longer to heal.
The health recovery rate for Stimpacks and food has been significantly reduced. It will take longer for you to heal from damage.
Speaking about that, the most annoying type of damage, crippled limbs, will no longer auto-heal after combat. Your limbs will remain crippled unless you use a Stimpack or unless you sleep. No problem, you might be thinking right now, I’ll just take lots of Stimpacks with me. Stimpacks don’t weigh anything, right?
9. You can carry less and new items have weight.
Your carry weight and your comapanion’s carry weight has been reduced. And items like Stimpacks and ammo have weight now. If you exceed your carry weight, it will affect your overall wellness and add Fatigue. It might even cripple your legs.
10. Companions return home.
If your companion gets downed during combat, you must go heal him. Otherwise, he will return home. This applies to Automatron robots too. Unless you repair your robot, it will return home.
