Hi,
Been a huge fallout fan and obsessed with immersion and roleplay. So with my second play through I decided to try the game playing without HUD, on the hardest difficulty to get the "survivalist" feeling.

My greatest fears were:

- going to get lost especially in Boston
- not seeing my health resulting early and frequent death
- can't see the content of containers

My experience:
- get the V.A.N.S perk. It's godsent helping you finding your way around. Prior I saw no point of it, now I find it incredibly useful
- no hud makes survival a bit more tricky, but soon I learned to play more carefully using cover more often. Nohud's one of main feature is that you don't see the name of enemies neither. Anything you encounter can be a lethal threat. Any creature you bump into can be a legendary beast and you won't have any clue till its late. This makes the game more thrilling. Prior when I saw the enemy was simply a common raider I just ran up for shotgun headshot. Now? I pick my battles more carefully.
Had to learn to spot weKer trash enemies that are less likely bosses. With humanoids it was easier, but never 100% foolproof.--> look at heir equipment, the better the armor and weapon the more dangerous they can be.
Now with animals, it's different. There is no good strategy, you just pray the boat fly you ran into is not a festering legendary super-duper killer machine. Happened before.
-containers: I had to learn that it's possible to peek into containers, but playing with HUD I completely missed this feature: when looking at a container you won't see the quick contents, but you can activate the transfer function nevertheless. Main issue was first succeeding to activate the container since there is no pointer nor crosshair helping you. Generally what's in the middle of the screen is the target for activation. Need some getting used to.
The second big issue arose later. Owned property. Items not in containers are impossible to determine wether are faction bound and therefore taking them is considered stealing or not. Now a workaround is: peek into a container, then you can see if the items inside are owned property or not. If so, likely the rest in the area will be too.

Playing without HUD is a decision I wish I made earlier. The game becomes more thrilling and world more dangerous. Now it has a real end-of-the-world feeling, where you are prey more often than before.
I recommend the feature to anyone.

I don't like that the container content isn't visible, but the rest of it seems pretty interesting. I might just look this up, and maybe tweak it arond a bit. Thanks for sharing your experience.

I tried to play without HUD but as I don't like at all to be in 1st person I had big problems with aiming guns without scopes. I would immediately turn HUD out if you would come into sighted aiming from 3rd person view when pressing M2, as some other games had it. Now that I use mainly a scoped combat rifle I might try it again. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

It was annoying first, but then I just realized this is more immersive like this. Practically only one extra button to press. But unless peeking into a container how would you tell what's inside? Gives a better experience imho searching through everything. Especially that I need to remember which ones I had looted prior.


Btw one more extra thingy. If you can get the Pipboy application on any mobile device it makes the game even more immersive.

How do you see how much radiation you got? I can control my hp in the Pipboy but where is the rad shown? And how did you disable the HUD? Is there a button or .ini-file entrance or did you just turn it invisible in the ingame controls (as I did)?

Radiation is not really a problem.

I picked up a habit flushing my system every once in a while near settlements, or after rad storms, barrels etc. Radaways are plentyful so I use them whenever I feel I am rad overdosed. Besides in the Pipboy it shows: you cant have the max HP back no matter you healed up maximum. Then its a radaway.

As for HUD removal: Option, turn HUD opacity to the minimum. It vanishes

Yesterday I started new, my second char, although the first was just lvl 36 and had entered the Institute for the first time. I play now without HUD, with restricted loot mod (hard times it is...), stimpack weight etc. on Survival and at first look it's a better experience than normal Survival. The world feels much harsher. I will carry only one rifle and a melee weapon at the same time. I also plan to use fast travel much less, but who knows, I'm weak... What I'm considering is to use an 1x damage modifier instead of the vanilla 0,5 but that feels so like cheating.

What is the biggest disadvantage so far is that I cannot see the floating markers which are at times rather helpful to find quest items or quest relevant doors. Does this strange VANS perk help here? I don't have problems to find quest places, buildings or so, using the map, but in buildings I'm sometimes lost, especially when looking for exits after the quest.

VANS help indeed. Though often indeed indoors it messes up pathfinding. VANS is very good though directing you out of the building.

When I am lost indoors though I rely less on the VANS and more on the Local map, checking where the quest indicator is exactly. (Kendalls hospital was a nightmare for instance, heh)

I simply tend to search every desk and containter because, how else would my character know where to find that holotape he 's looking for ( I must admit though that sometimes I had to turn back on the HUD when I was lost what to activate. Happened 2 times, in places/quests which include activating special thingies. Ironsides anyone? )

Immersion up top.

I never ever fasttravel either, so when the vertibirds arrive and had the option to summon one, i was very happy. Immersive fast travel.

Additional experience: Actually severe irradiation is shown in the pip-boy too. The Stats menu character display becomes ghoulish when you swallow a good dose of rad.

If you like the immersive luggage idea here's some good concept. Check Tamriel vault, travellers backpack. Sorry have no permission to post links.

Although I havent tried it. I love settlement building, and this would severly cripple me getting building materials from junk, though I am going to give it a try.

On a couple occassions when I stashed most my chems and ammo, I found encounters more thrilling. I knew that I had like 5 stimpacks alltogether and 4 rounds of ammo, had to pick my battles even more carefully. No more Shotgun-in-yourface while Jet-high in the sky mode. Hehe. )