I wish I knew for certain whether all quest givers are only Essential up until you either finish or fail their quest(s). Also whether companions/potential companions are essential only until you do something to make them hostile.

I can understand the use of "Essential" NPCs, but I cannot say I like it as a player nor that I think it is best choice. I guess it boils down to how many complaints they'd get if all currently Essentials were set to Protected versus how many they get now.

Not that I like to go around killing everyone, but I find the fact that you CANNOT kill certain individuals at certain points in the game to be tremendously immersion breaking, and as many have said, it stands as a serious impediment to an "evil playthrough."

So far the "testing" I've done has been quite limited and only done in a few impulsive instances, for example:

1. Something about Deacon just rubbed me the WRONG way and on the way to finish that first mission with him I resolved to kill him, and destroy the Railroad and forego whatever errands they might send me on. Not happening at that point anyway. Now that he is my "follower" (and sent to live with Danse and Hancock at the Slog) I haven't bothered to check if he is still Essential.

2. Danse: I don't think I ever met an NPC I wanted to shoot in the face more than him. Also a no go, at least up through that first ArcJet Quest.

3. Tommy Longegan: cannot be killed, at least not immediately after he "sells" Cait to you . . .

4. Preston and Piper cannot be killed, either before, during or after they are your companion.

5. Virgil: I stole some of his crap, his Protectron got hostile, as did he, but he is Essential still *sigh*

Is there any real reason why every NPC that has the "Essential" flag couldn't be downgraded to "Protected?"

Might it even be possible to enjoy the game if Companions were more or less completely mortal (albeit with perhaps a tad bit of extra damage resistance when their health gets low??).

Thankfully: Maxson !CAN! be killed almost from the moment you meet him (well you do maybe have to endure that little speech of his first). It seems that, irrespective of stealth, this automatically makes the entire BoS immediately and irretreviably hostile, and not sure if Danse stays Essential or not. I fought my way through the Prydwen for quite a while and I think it might have been Danse who finally did me in . . .

Haven't even tried with Railroaders (other than Deacon, who is no longer a RR, and is now one of my lackeys = one less gun to face when I take out the RR).

So when is it "SAFE" to basically try to destroy each of these factions?

1. BoS: you can obviously take them on as soon as you get to the Prydwen, which is refreshing that you can take advantage of their utter stupidity by bringing someone they barely know into their esteemed leaders midst and assassinate him forthwith, but still frankly a bit lame, in that you have to FIRST do a mission with them before you get the opportunity to aggress them 'effectively.' If you attempt to kill Danse and the others on sight in Cambridge, you'd probably kill Haylen and Rhys but Danse of course would be Essential I guess. I've even noticed that sometimes a named NPC who is essential can revert back from hostile because you attacked them to "meh, whatever, we're on speaking terms again."

2. RR: can you just bust in there and kill everyone? Just skip over every thing involved in that faction and just kill every single one of them?

3. Institute. Father definitely deserves a bullet in the head, but while I was there, I didn't try. I kinda wanted to have the freedom to see what this "Institute" was all about first. But it makes me wonder, now that I have the chip to transport back in there (and have yet to piss them off enough, despite having bagged half a dozen coursers out in the Wasteland so far) can I just go back and kill everyone?

From your initial list, I have killed Deacon, Danse and Virgil. Deacon and Danse I killed during the course of questing. Virgil I killed on accident, sort of. After getting his serum, I walked into his cave wearing power armor and he was hostile. He died well enough.


So some of the essential NPCs are not always essential. As the story progresses, that tag gets turned off when Bethesda deemed appropriate.

Well I think I only killed Lydia or other protected Skyrim followers once, they died a few more times because of enemies triggered traps while she has 1 health left.

On the other hand I adjust, dogmeat was stupid and ran up to 6 forged, I used an bleeding minigun on the group, weirdly he was the only one standing then the fight ended (low and small profile + plenty of hp)

Problem is Danse and Piper is involved in the main quest arc.

Still its idiotic if you can turn an faction hostile pretty easy while it have essential members.

Same here 9r Deacon and Virgil.

And the tag also gets turned on. During the main quest, Desdemona was always non-essential for me. After finishing it on the RR side, she now is.

Eh, if you manage to get on a companion's bad side enough, for instance kill an entire settlement with piper she'll go hostile and you can kill her iirc. Danse should go non-essential the moment you get hated by the BoS, same with the companions for Institute and Railroad.

This is why I love the pc, just add the line

[GamePlay]
bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0

to your fallout ini file in my documents/games/fallout 4

it worked in skyrim and it works here, kill anything you want, cept kids, sadly does not work on them but there are other mods for that.

Obviously this can break your game depending on who you kill that wasn't supposed to die, so use with caution.

Used it to kill Strong, Hancock, and Curie, all freaks who wouldn't make it my Brotherhood Dominated Commonwealth!

I would guess, only problem with that being: they can then be killed by NPCs?

I don't have a particular problem with quest-givers or other NPCs who are critical to one of the story arcs in some way to be Protected. I'm slightly less 'okay' with all companions being Protected (to say nothing of them being Essential) but I can understand the predicament the developers would find themselves in if Companions were fully mortal.

If what that console command is doing is to change all Essential (meaning they cannot die as a result of damage from anyone) to Protected (meaning they cannot die except as a result of damage from the player character [or his 'representatives' which, at least in Skyrim was a bit complicated]) then it is golden. I will use it always.

But if it is just basically making Essentials mortal, I think I'll hold off.

A console command that changed all Essentials in the game (or which could be used on a target in game) to Protected is what I'd really like.