It's been about a month since I started playing Fallout 4, I still have a lot of things undiscovered and I've only finished the main quest with 1 faction.

But there's one thing that's always been constant, in all my playthroughs testing different perks and characters, from the weak stealth to the tanky ones, I've always died a lot, and that was the main reason I never wanted to play on Survival, I think the normal Difficulty is really well balanced, or maybe I am just a bad player? Bethesda games have always shown combat systems where you normally take damage, you either cannot dodge, or you are put in situations where enemies spam their range attacks at you with deadly accuracy, it's even more extreme this time around, since most enemies are faster than you and they throw explosives while they remain covered except you cannot attack the weapons in their hands unlike past fallouts, and not to mention they can come in huge groups that jump at you, or remain at a far distance where you can't even see them while they are blowing your ass with a fatman.

In Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV, and Skyrim, I always felt the combat forced me to move backwards while attacking because there's simply no other way to avoid getting hit, despite being action orientes combat systems, there's no way to get out of the path of an incoming attack, or completly block the damage of an enemy. That means you will always get hit no matter how skilled you are. Unlike other games from other companies where we face dangerous enemies and bosses but we can still defeat them without getting hit if we are good enough, Dark Souls for example, in Bethesda games that is only possible on stealth characters, and even then it always felt like cheating or like if you were using cheap tactics.

In Fallout 4 I can't get past Concord on survival difficulty.

How the [censored] do you even defeat the deathclaw? I spend all my minigun ammo, and it's health is still not even half, I try to use the explosions on the vehicles, but the damn thing still survives, and if I try to use cheap tactics, the Deathclaw runs to a position where it's completly out of my reach, he hides behind an alley, and when I get relatively close enough to try and throw a molotov, the bastard runs straight to me and kills me. I've tried it many times but whenever I start a new character on survival difficulty, Concord is as far as I can get. If I decide to go south I encounter tougher enemies, it's specially annoying to fight bugs even in normal difficulty because they hover around you spamming ranged attacks, and they don't always come alone, wild wolves dont cover or anything, they just run straight to you, and you have to pray that you kill them before they come close enough or you will get hit as well, the blocking mechanic is also unreliable, even if you block an attack despite being really difficult, you still get damage, and enemies attack you in groups, that means you can only block the attack of 1 enemy, while the rest jump at you, or they are shooting you from a safe distance.

How can you say survival mode is easy? I think even skyrim's legendary difficulty is easier than this, at least enemies dont have bullets and you can stay out of their range, except for mages/archers, but that's another story.

So what can I do?

how did you defeat that Deathclaw?

Kneecaper weapon for a deathclaw and watch it crawl. Same for behemoths. Break a supermutants legs and they fall over, deathclaws weakpoint is the belly. Used buildings as cover. And used the raiders against the deathclaw.

its pretty common for people to come onto a game's forum to brag as if they are complaining about how easy the game is.

Or they will insist the game is just objectively bad and cite their hundreds of hours of play time as credibility.

Or will complain that the game is boring because all they do is run around shooting stuff and never consider the possibility of exploring or experimenting with different play styles.

Don't get me wrong, there are valid criticisms, I just rarely see them coming from people jumping on the band wagon.

With every game there will be a certain segment of the population for whom it just "clicks".

Everything is absurdly easy.

Everything they try turns out to be the best possible way to do things the first time. They experience few if any serious Bugs, and those they do experience turn out to be beneficial.

They are just AWESOME, forces of nature that simply cannot be stopped.

They are like this from minute one.

And you will NEVER convince them that this is not normal.

There is another segment of Super Gamers.

They STUDY the game.

Every decision is pre-made, every skill point already decided.

They have already won, on the hardest possible difficulty, before the game is even done downloading.

Actually playing through is an afterthought. They just want to field test their already invincible character.

And it will boggle their minds until the day that they die that EVERYBODY doesn't play exactly like this.

The only thing that the rest of us can do is ignore them and hope the Devs. do too, maybe just give them Hellish Deathmarch To Nowhere Mode, or something, where you can't use any gear, only have one HP, all the Guns are unmodified Pipe Pistols, there are only 12 bullets in all of the Commonwealth, and all enemies are replaced by Liberty Prime. Because their version of the game is an unplayable nightmare for everyone else unless you make it a second job or cut and paste a character from one of the Super Gamers.

You just get behind a car, strafe a little and easily kill the first deathclaw on survival...

That's why its called Survival and not Normal. I honestly think Concord and Corvega were intentionally placed at the start of the game to get players ready for the rest of the journey. Pass that test without cheating and you should be good to go. Frequently getting one or two shotted means that you need to study the battlefield and figure out a game plan instead of standing there trading shots with the enemy.

I ran into the store near the Museum of Freedom, not initially as a strategy just freaked out looking for shelter... when the initial shock wore off, I just kept moving back and forth near the door/windows to keep him "interested", the windows were great for belly shots.

The game got allot easier for me once I gave up on using followers for the most part. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy that codes the bethesda follower AI worked on Daikatana 20 years ago.

Agree with the post above, using the store on the corner across the street from the museum is a great vantage point, just don't stand too close to the Windows.

Survival is easy if you do a proper min-max build right at the start. I manage to kill the deathclaw in the starting quest on level 3.


and for survival mode once you got to level 15 with proper gear you should be get away from 1 hit kill (you either die a fragile or live long enough to see yourself become a tank). I started a new character and into survival mode after I beat the game once (first one was rush main quest as I want to know what happen to shuan).


I think to play survival mode is that you need to plan ahead on your perks and SPECIAL. My build was 9 END, idiot savant and demonlist for explosive (you can grab 2 frag grenade in santuary) and when the deathclaw spawn I throw the grenade plus some minigun to cripple it, once it crippled it crawl very slow that you can punch it to death if you want. Don't even need to exploit the building entrance like lot of people suggest


If you like pistol build there is a .44 magnum right next to santuary you can pick as well, another good weapon to cripple it

Another strategy is sniping from where Preston is at the museum

In my second play through I tried crippling the legs with the minigun, I literally just did nothing but shoot its leg and even when it was about to die it never got crippled. I checked the limb status with vats and it was nearly full limb health. I feel that was something odd with my playthrough though and not what was supposed to be the norm.

Poison kills fast on survivor and legendary enemies have pin point accuracy especially after mutating. Imagine if all enemies had that level of accuracy.

Thanks for this suggestion.

I always used that store people keeps bringing up, but as I said, the deathclaw simply runs away and covers wasting all my ammo, then he comes back when I am far enough from it.

I will try your method it seems reliable enough, and it doesn't sound like cheating.

No it's not just you, I did the same and got your result, but jk2l is saying we can also use explosives, I supose that can guarantee crippling limbs. I haven't tried it yet though.

Or from the top of the Temple right next to the Museum. Running into the nearby store is a good idea as well, too bad the DC could glitch to the walls and teleport inside - just like probably any NPC, hence why Settlements.walls useless against enemies.

I think the grenade helps a lot, but it can also quite luck depended because if it doesn't hit the leg first on explosion it may not hurt the leg as much.


I done that deathclaw 3 times on survival (one of my character was bugged by confidence man quest so I need a reroll the other one was I don't like the stealth mechanic and I just scrap it), the easiest time was actually I picked big gun perks for level 2 (that character was big gun character and use junk jet when no bullets for minigun) having 1 rank of big gun can drop the death claw with just about 600 bullets still got 200 to spare after kill it

Yea. I also leap frog the around the car. It screws with his pathing and I can shoot away up close but its risky

People who say survival is easy typically play games on the hardest difficulty, so whats difficult for you, may be the norm for them. there is nothing to not believe.

Eh, planning ahead isn't super necessary. I usually play a sneak build and I didn't plan a thing out and I've still been doing alright. The initial deathclaw attack in concord was a bit scary but I made it through without dying. I basically just grabbed the minigun and used the wreckage as cover.

For the planning ahead part though I didn't even think to start putting points into the damage perks until mid 40's. That's how little I planned my build. I just picked whatever looked interesting like gun nut and sneak skills and I managed just fine. I imagine when I go back through a second time and get damage perks instead of some of the more useless ones i picked (like pickpocket) I'll be able to just decimate people.

Oh and I'm on survival. Cool-dude has a point. I generally always play on the hardest difficulty, I don't like playing most games multiple times because it's always the same just a different difficulty so I prefer to have the most challenge since it's my only playthrough. Obviously FO4 is more replayable but I still go with the hardest difficulty just because that's what I'm used to and by now the lesser difficulties don't really give me enough challenge

Most people who play 'Survival' mode are usually those who just do the typical crap: spot something half a mile away with their Q pressing and VATS, go into stealth mode, sneaky sneak, and then either 2 things happen:

-the enemy gets sniped by someone in the distance repeatedly.

-the enemy is suddenly shanked by some teleporting crazy being and killed in a heartbeat.

There is some though that do go for the "leeroy jenkins" outlook in Survival, I'm sure they're having the most fun as we speak right now.

I wonder, are you acquainted with most people on the internet, or only those who play on survival difficulty?

I am not sure about other, but for me I already get used to Bethesda system (I was playing new Vegas before this game release, and right now I back to skyrim on requiem)


One thing is that when played enough of their game you can pretty much predict the AI interaction and also can predict how broken some combo can pull off between perks. If you used to play requiem on skyrim you can pretty much can handle yourself in survival of this game. Because requiem is more saddist to player in term of difficulty


I am not saying survival is very easy but when you get used to the AI behavior the game will eventually feel much easier.


Also btw I don't use VATS as I like pure shooting game

I'm acquainted with neither, all I have to do is open my eyes and read people's bragging rights and just go "Huh". They might as well state "Staring into the sun hurts your eyes".

two words "bullet sponge". Even on normal that deathclaw takes allot of hits if it's full health. I got lucky the first time I killed it. the raiders and 2 cars blew up and took it down to half health. I finished it. also Vats seems to help some. that way you don't waste ammo.