I'm having a hard time understanding the way enemies scale their level with you in this game.

I hear it's similar to Skyrim where, once you 'discover' an area, it's capped around a certain amount.

Does this mean that, if I go around and discover a lot of areas at a very low level, then most of the enemies I'll encounter for the rest of the game will be low level? Even if I'm a stupidly higher level?

Or, do certain areas reset after a while or if you clear it, so that the next time you go there, the enemies are closer to your level?

No, areas are not caped based on you entering them. Their minimum level is rater set based roughly on distance to vault 111. In other words, if you venture too far east and south too early, you will encounter much tougher enemies.

Other then that, Each enemy type have several subvariants. Each of them is progressively harder -better weapons, better armor, better perks, more health. They are indicated by their name -for example raider scawer is higher variant of raider. Mutant scout is higher variant of mutant What subvariant will game spawn is based on your level (and is usually a mix).

Of course some enemies are naturally more difficult then others, basic rad scorpion is much more difficult then molerat.

Besides that, every sub variant have it's own level adjusted to your level. But only thing that NPC level influences is health points. So basic raider at level 20 will have same crappy equipment and stats like one at level 5, but he will have more health.

This is based on my experience so take it with a grain of salt

you start in the nw section of map. low level encounters remain in that area throughout your game.
SE and SW and extreme E are higher level mobs. they will always be.

As far as I have seen, there is a cap on the mobs, but depends where you are on the map.

highest level mobs are still gonna be below level 60-70.

To give you simple answer, each enemy has different level set-up and few of them(chosen enemy type) will have level scale per your character`s level.


However, some enemies do have cap even on scaled level. Raiders, for example, will never go higher than level 50.




Good example would be random encounter of 3 men party of BoS at your character level 45.



Paladin Commander - Level 56 (constant)

Star Paladin - Level 45 (Scaled for you. Can go up with no cap)

Initiate - Level 1 (Constant)

Ooh, that's actually a pretty cool system then.

Thanks!

There is level-scaling, but it is pretty light. For the most part, difficulty is based on regions: NW is the safest and then it goes clock-wise towards SW which is the most perilous.