It's kinda looking like I may be forced to retire my character at level 15. For some reason, she cannot find, buy , or steal enough ammo to keep up with the baddies she's facing, and... she's flat broke. Spent her last cap on ammo for her sniper rifle, but the total of 19 bullets is not going to get her very far, eh?

I though maybe looting various structures would help, but for some reason all she's finding are ashtrays, ghouls, and more guns for which she has no bullets. She just cleared a Raider hangout, and was hoping to get some resupply, but she used more bullets than she found, and their armor won't bring enough caps to even cover the stimpacks she had to use.

So... has anybody seen a Social Security office for broke and retired characters?

Sell ammo you don't use, they can worth a lot and also try to loot as many weapons to sell

I know it's not ideal but maybe you could temporarily lower the difficulty to use less ammo. Once you get some more ammo back up you could maybe bump the difficulty back up.

I generally use a 10mm, .38, .308, .45, .44 and a fusion cell weapon. I only ever use the melee attack on small things like mole rats, bug and dogs. Sometimes I'll use the ranged weapon melee attack on wounded ghouls too. I haven't found enough 5.56 ammo to use the assault rifle yet and I've given Piper a shotgun so don't use shells. I'm also playing on Normal difficulty. I also avoid auto weapons except of the minigun which I only use on bosses like the...

Edit: I also never use chems because they weigh next to nothing but have a good value. As slaydo said, search everywhere. Try to stick to open faced helmets too, that way you can wear any type of eyewear to get +1 to PER.

early on I had to switch constantly between .38 pipe gun & my 10 mm found a lot of ammo in out of the way places ( searching for bobby pins lol ) it's there just have to be very through in your searches also a few points into perception makes a huge difference the other thing that helped me out was I carry a melee weapon to use on the lighter enemies

Yeah, in theory that should work, but the reality is that there is no ammo I don't use. I have a fat man with nothing to shoot, a mini-gun with 200 rounds of 5mm (a 15 second supply I guess) an assault rifle with a dozen or so rounds of 5.56, a sniper rifle with less than 20 rounds of 308, an armor piercing .45 cal submachine gun that I saved ammo for over the course of 10 levels, and used entirely during one encounter with a sentry bot, and a powerful suppressed 10 mm pistol with the aforementioned 19 rounds.

Aside form that, I use captured weapons when I can with ammo of 38 or whatever caliber trying to save my good ammo for tough opponents. The result is there I am trudging along carrying 200 pounds of weaponry with total ammo for maybe one firefight if the fight doesn't last more than 30 seconds or so and if I don't miss...

...and dipwad Minuteman wants me to go retake the Castle.

One thing I miss is the ability to make ammo. Hope a mod returns that feature.

Ammo is a bit scarce out there. You may have to carry several weapons with you, and using VATS conserves ammo greatly.

Is this a difficulty setting issue? I got 99 problems but ammo ain't one.

I think you are being greedy on your weapon of choice. normally i only keep 4 weapons type and sell other weapons (mind you this is my 4th characters with over 60hours so far). I normally keep the following:

* Low damage cheap weapons for easy encounter like raider (.38 or 10mm)

* short range high damage for close encounter (shotgun, split laser)

* general purpose (5.56mm, fusion cell)

* long range sniper (.50, plasma, 2cm)

also bunch of grenades with grenade crafting. works well on pest control like feral hordes, mole rat. molotav is very easy to craft.

in most case i just sell everything and frequent restock all ammo i need. also proper perks that increase your weapons damage and crafting can reduce ammo required to kill an enemy.

holding fatman or missle launcher is fun from time to time but i normally just use grenade instead as they are slow reload and most of the time you encounter enemy in close distance. and if it is long distance i will just snipe them.

I'm playing on the dafault difficulty, whatever that's called, but I think it's a combination of poor charisma that keeps prices high, and a low perception. I also suffer from the bug that keeps the lockpicking window invisible, so I never have any bobby pins. Locks can be picked, but to say it's difficult is an understatement. That means I rarely get into a good safe or locked area.

Then I keep running into really tough guys who it takes 30 rounds or more to kill, another 20 rounds to kill his damned dog, and what do I get? A stinking BOARD and a portion of dog meat!

If you don't want to retire there is a glitch in diamond city to get ammo and other gear for free. I don't really like doing glitches too often but I did do it a few times for powercores because they're pretty difficult to find. And also with certain types of ammo.

Playing on Survival difficulty I had huuuuge ammo problems around level 10, mostly due to over-levelled enemies being bullet sponges. Now I am at level 25 and I have 1k+ of all ballistic ammo types, so it does get better. It seems like there is a hill you have to climb around level 10-15, but if you get the Scrounger perk, that helps immensely.

btw try to aim headshot, they seem do better damage

Yeah, you're carrying too many guns.

You don't mention what difficulty you're playing on (or else I just missed it), but on normal you shouldn't be having these problems unless you miss a lot. And on higher difficulties, you need to play more efficiently.

Use the crank laser musket for awhile. That's what I did when I started running low on ammo. Also put points into the scrounger perk. You'll get quite a bit more ammo that way.

Yeah, default is Normal difficulty. On the PC I've had a weird visual glitch that makes the weapon disappear in first person perspective and prevents it from reloading. I've found a way to reset it by switching between first and third perspective. Maybe this will help with the lockpicking?

Scrounging is VERY useful. Occasional use of V.A.T.S. helps too, to reduce misses.

Keep 2-3 weapons. Sell the rest of the ammo and weapons. Scrounger perk is what really makes a difference.

I'll try that scrounger perk next time.

Being greedy? I dunno about that. I mean, I don't CARRY the fat man or the mini-gun anymore, and I've never carried or used the fat man. I like having it though in case I run into something that really needs it (if I can ever find ammo). I've never found even a single round of 5mm ammo either. and by the way, I've never encountered .50 cal ammo either, not that it matters because I have nothing that could use them without special chambering which I can't do.

I used to have 4 grenades, but then I met a glowing one...

My weapons of choice are the 308 sniper rifle and the suppressed 10mm pistol, but I keep running out of ammo, and that's why I carry the other weapons. Not because I particularly WANT to use them. I DO sell everything I find, aside from my different cal back ups.

well then try to aim for headshot and not use too much ammo. i have been playing survival mode for my last 2 characters and i always have plenty of ammo (of course i need to frequently trade to get them but i never run out of cap)

and btw maybe you don't have enough weapons if you only use .308 and 10mm. also unless you perk in both weapons type i suggest you stick with only one type. i dropped 10mm as soon as i start perk into rifleman. some enemy also have different weakness you have to deal with. for example, against Radscopion you better use ballistic weapon. in early game you should avoid fighting supermutant until you have better weapons and perks. normally if i found they are too hard i just run until i come back later.

also try to replace pipe weapons as soon as you find a proper version for those ammo type. a proper .308 sniper version do better damage than pipe .308 version.

also keep landmines, they are useful against hard legendary. just run and once you get around a corner or something and place landmine and walk further back and wait for them fall into the trap. especially bottlecap mines against deathclaw is my favourites (no idea how can i survive this game without one)

on my previous game play (now glitched) i got up to level 25 and 300hp with standard combat armor. i can tank the normal deathclaw and kill it with only 10 laser rifle shot (got rifleman perks and weapon upgrades).

also choose your perks wisely, try to focus on survival perks first more than utility perks like lockpick. lock pick is nice, but they are not as necessary as they are useless in battle

I think it's a matter of inertia. That is, while you have plenty of caps, you can spend caps to buy ammo or whatever to go get MORE ammo and caps. Once you're broke and out of ammo, you can't just run down to the corner market and open a credit account, eh? So, you're stuck trying to make do, and every resource you get is gone before you're able to recover.

Lootable enemies are farther and farther away, and respawning critters keep you using more and more ammo just to get to lootable enemies.

Like, I went to take care of a settler issue, right? So I get to within about a 30 second run from the place, and I'm attacked by a swarm of mosquitos. Trying to save on ammo, I run and jump in the lake. In the lake I run into a legendary critter, which forces me to jump back out of the lake, and spend some ammo trying to slow the thing down. Now the mosquitos are back, accompanied by the incredible hulk, and they are joined by a psychotic Mr Handy who solves my problem by one-shotting me with some kind of explosive.

On the bright side, now i have all my ammo back, but I'm back to being miles from where I've got to go... and all that stuff is still in front of me again.

Haha.. sorry to laugh, but that's crazy. Does your character have low luck by chance?

Heh, Luck is 1...

Well... there ya go

I have relatively low luck and have actually been enjoying the challenge of managing ammo and caps, it is making me less reckless. I will probably put some points into Luck soon tho - I am level 20 and have been doing okay on default but definitely getting my ass handed to me far more frequently than I ever did in FO3.

I sell everything - I have favorite items, use tags for things that contain screws, copper etc., but every thing else, I load down my companion, jump to the diner with the old lady and her junkie son or some other spot where i know there is a merchant (Trashcan Carla is frequently in Sanctuary) and offload just about everything. Also, collect stuff to make meds and sell off the bulk of it.

I've decided to retire the character. I liked her a lot, but many early decisions made in ignorance have come back to haunt me. I'm pleased though that with all her problems, she was only killed I think 3 times in 15 levels, so that much was good. My first character didn't do as well, really but he got caught in an inescapable death situation.

On to Char #3!