In FO3, EVERY drug had an in-game use. But in FO4, though some drugs are still present, they no longer are useful. For example, in FO3, plain Mentats would give you an extra boost in INT so you could temporarily perform an INT-focused task that you otherwise couldn't do, such as Hacking a PC. However, here in FO4, you either have the necessary Hacking perk level or you don't; NOTHING will allow you to hack a Master encrypted PC except that level-3 Hacking perk. Other than being an ingredient for making Graqe Mentats (+5 CHA), I have had no use for Mentats. Likewise whatever drug boosted AGI enough to pick difficult locks. Buffout, Psycho, Jet, etc., can give you temporary AP, END (hitpoints) and STR increases, which are decidedly useful, but it seems I am getting more benefit from Apparel than from drugs. Even Stimpacks aren't as useful, given that soooo many food items accomplish the same effects for comparatively "free" ingredients. (I end up selling 95+% of my Stimpacks rather than using them to heal myself.)

I think you meant perception in case of the lockpicking thing. Fallout 3 and NV had nothing for agility in that department.

I also find myself using stimpacks alot early levels for healing against normal firefights.

I can agree though, some chems are just as useful anymore. I would say that once HH for NV was added, the black coffee served mentats' purpose much more effectively.

Mentats helped me jury rig all the stuff in the USS Constitution... but you're right. It's most useful quantity is the +2 Perception bonus to make your VATS more accurage, and even then it's better to get some Orange Mentats for that (+5 Perception AND +10% VATS accuracy).

Meanwhile Psychobuff and Jet Fuel help make you into a Super Saiyan, needing only to hit the Ultrajet for even more fun and games.

I just use Psychobuff when necessary because I don't have power armor and I'm playing on hard. I kinda think this chem is a bit overpowered but I still love it.

I agree mentats are useless now. Since you can spam save loads now all speech bonuses are worthless too.

Except for those people who don't like/want to savescum it.

Mentats now make hacking & lockpicking easier. You still need the right perk to access each level lock/terminal--but with Mentats the lock sweet spots are bigger and terminals have fewer dud entries and/or more chances to remove duds.

It seems odd to me that they made this subroutine for lockpicking that relies on the player's dexterity rather than the character's skill. I've been playing FO and Skyrim so long, _I_ can easily pick even Master locks. But because my character doesn't have that third Lockpicking perk star, he's not even allowed to to try to pick a Master lock. This seems contradictory to me: Is it me picking the lock, or my character? What if my character has maxed Lockpicking, but I happen to to be a total hamfisted klutz? There really needs to be a bypass for skilled characters that have been cursed by being saddled with inept players.

Skyrim was the only Bethesda game where you can pick any lock regardless of skill level. Fallout 3 and New Vegas required a certain level for each difficulty, not sure about Fallout 1 and 2 since they're not Bethesda games though and it's been ages since I've played them.

This is why unwound honestly be happier if the mini games were scraqed and all we need is the skill and the bibbypins/lock picks. I'd be fine with it being a 100% chance once at that level like speech was in New Vegas. But I'd also be cool with a percentage based chance like lock picking was in Morrowind. The mini games are, like you said, somewhat contradictory in their attempt to simultaneously be both player and character skill based. I'd rather it just be on the character.

Another reason for this is that I just flat out don't like the mini games. They can be such a break from the flow of the game sometimes.

High int seems to reduce the number of possible passwords when hacking. At least my high-int character seems to have less words than my lower-int character, with both having the same hacking skill level.

So mentats may reduce the tedium

Mentats give you more XP and higher % hit chance in VATS useful while turning in alot of quests in a short time like if you turn in 5 different quests to different people in dimond city you get alot more XP

My best use for mentats to mix them with buffout to make bufftats. +3 STR, +3 END, +3 PER and +65 HP for 8-24 minutes (depending on your Chemist rank) is nothing to laugh at. Combined, they are more effective than either chem is by itself.

Psychobuff (+25% damage, +3 Strength, +3 Endurance) and Orange Mentats (+5 Perception, +10% VATS accuracy) combine for a much stronger effect when taking as two separate items. Neither has particularly difficult crafting requirements.

I make and use psychobuff occasionally, but I tend to use all my psycho making Psycho Jet. I don't really fool with the Orange Mentats or any other feature that makes use of VATS, which I don't use. If I find myself in a VATS appropriate situation I prefer to use psycho jet instead.

idk i never used drugs in past fallouts. I actually used psycojet for tough fights in fallout 4. I'm glad that they made it have an actual effect over just a slight stat boost.

That said psycojet is the only drug i've used as the other ones seem fairly useless.

Since I'm getting the damage buff from Psychobuff already, I use Ultrajet instead. As a character with a small AP pool, the 100 extra AP I get to burn through for free while bullet timed is great, especially as I tend to use AP greedy weaponry (heavy guns, super sledge)..

Typically I'm on Psychobuff, Jet Fuel, and the Orange Mentats mentioned previously, with Ultrajet hotkeyed for intense fights.

With both Chemist (for the 200% duration buff) and Chem Resistant (look ma, no side effects!). Started off with just Blood Cleansers in my power armor, but it worked. Only ended up addicted once early on (and then, just to Graqe Mentats due to using them to buy stuff, and I had the power armor off). Got Chem Resist 2 and all good.

I dunno. I think a 25% damage boost (with major stat boosts - Psychobuff or Psychotats) is pretty substantial. It's really noticable when I'm fighting without it and when I start buffing. When I can get it to run for 24 minutes before running out, that's a considerable amount of combat that a single dose can cover.

Heck, even Bufftats is useful. The downsides to the Psycho part of it is the major penalty of addiction. Chem Resistant is basically required unless you're willing to non min/max and suffer the penalties.

It's the raw, base chems (Buffout, Mentats, etc) that just kinda svck. Psyho and Jet are useful on their own (damage boost and bullet time), but are very, very addictive. Initially their duration is also extremely short. Mixing Psycho with Buffout or Mentats both extends its duration but boosts its overall effect. 25% additional damage while also getting a +3 Strength buff is a massive melee booster. Adding +3 to Perception greatly increases VATS accuracy with Psychotats.

TBH, the biggest drawback to chems are the companions who don't like it and make you fight without (or make their getting their affection perk really hard) after being used to them. Cait, after doing her story quest, basically got tossed into Coastal Cottage in the middle of nowhere and forgotten about. Piper, Nick, Curie all are ok with the chem use (but might snark on you for it), but dislike getting addicted. It took me like an hour to get Hancock maxed.

Mentats aren't useless. They reduce the number of words when hacking, they add two to perception, and another two to intelligence. Intelligence boost XP points, so when you turn in a quest or kill ennemies with mentats you get quite a boost in XP points. It makes a significant difference if you do it all the time. Combined with the 4 chemist perks and the addiction resistant you can be high on mentats for most of the time.

My high intelligence/chemist/nuclear physicist/demolition expert/X-01 with intelligence boost character is the most fun I've had so far in Fallout. Institute for the win!

I don't see how things like +5 to intelligence, +5 to perception, +5 to charisma, AP regneration boost for 8 min (without perks), +25% damage, 25% damage resistance, etc. qualify as useless... It's like saying increasing your SPECIAL stats, taking perks that make weapons do more damage, or the Action Boy perks are useless.

I'm playing the male Sole Survivor in my current Very Hard playthrough. I've head-canon assigned him the role of 'Former Power Armor soldier on the Anchorage Front, typically assigned as heavy support gunner'. I wore a Winterized T-51b set as soon as I could find and mod one up (while slumming in T-45 from Concord from level 5 or so upwards). As such, I figured that he was dosed regularly and often with Psycho and Buffout while on the front line by the medic corps on orders by the US Army officers. This is what lead to his 'war hero' status, as his performance was ridiculously above and beyond standard troops like this.

It took going home, having a kid, getting clean before he had his head on straight. Then the world blew up. So, with everyone missing and nothing to live for but searching, he went back to the only thing that gave him an edge... the pills and the dosing. It's fun. There is a very brutal satisfaction to hearing the Psycho induced roar of the Sole Survivor followed by barreling into a group of raiders or strafing them back and forth with a minigun (and Bloody Mess) to leave no single bit of them larger than the palm of your hand. Did you know that they actually programmed some NPCs to start screaming and running if you kill enough fast enough? It's hilarious.

So... I took Chem Resistant pretty quick and started mixing as much Psychobuff as I could. Early levels were beating raiders to death in Lexington with Big Jim (from under Walden Pond). It got more violent and brutal from there.

Nice RP. Didn't touch chems at all, not once, in my first playthrough, but opted for the high intelligence chemist build after. It really adds a fun element to the game. You become this sort of chem-god machine for short amount of times, then go back to your (in my character's case) nerdy/weak personality when they go out. My character totally relies on his power armor, his drugs and his explosive-making skills to survive. Without that, he's pretty ordinary.

To keep the game interesting it's good to make different character types with a little RP.

EDIT: Yes, on the "Destroy the Railroad" mission for the Institute I entered their HQ, popped a few chems and killed Desdemona, Deacon, Drummer Boy and another agent in a matter of seconds. A bunch of them started running away for the back exit screaming like lunatics. The only one that stood ground was Thinker Tom. It was hilarious, but I gained respect for Tom. I still shot him in the face with a plasma rifle though.

Oh yeah, outside of the PA, I'm a total glass cannon.

I only wear cloth with ballistic weave while in the PA and rarely take time to swap back into my old Combat Armor (which probably needs to be brought back up to spec). My weaponry (Carrying a Mingun, a Gatling Laser, a Missile Launcher, and a Super Sledge) consume enough enough of my inventory space that I'd never having carrying capacity if I wore real armor underneath the power armor suit.

I feel very, very, very naked with this character outside of PA. My sniper from my last playthrough couldn't care less about their power armor suit, which was just for going into the Glowing Sea. I think she took Orange Mentats once during the whole game and never anything else but Rad-X, RadAway, or Stimpacks.

Mentats offer a minor boost to VATs and XP gain by themselves and are common enough that if you wanted to, you could keep the effect going almost permanently.

They are also used for graqe mentats, orange mentats and bufftats which are all very useful. Bufftats being particularly hilarious when combined with psychotats as the strength, endurance and HP boosts stack!

So no, mentats are not useless at all.

The point that I was trying to drive home was that in previous games, using Skills 0-100, the assorted drugs could (and did) jack up Skill levels enough to get past a threshold. For example, a Mentats +5 INT would affect Hacking enough to allow a character skilled only enough to do Expert computer locks to be able to do a Master computer lock. Now drugs do NOT ever push a character's abilities past the thresholds. It's the Perk star or nothing. Which is kind of counter-intuitive. If certain abilities are Attribute-based, a temporary boost to the relevant Attribute really should be able to favorably affect how well a character can perform the ability in question.

Performance-enhancing drugs are useful only when the character is doing the related task. Which means, here's the situation, STOP and take the drug, then do the task. But how do you know when a given ability will be needed in advance? You don't, particularly in the case of being ambushed. The only safeguard is to be drugged up all of the time -- and I'd rather not deal with the addiction effects OR the cost of acquiring and expending that many drugs. In the case of being ambushed, I'd rather be spending my time pulling the trigger rather than fiddling with drug consumption. For a comparatively few instances, taking drugs in advance is the smart thing to do. (Taking Graqe Mentats just before engaging in Barter for example.) But outside of those few threshold moments, having the stat boosts available as you need them means being high all the time, just in case.

I never found the way chems worked in NV or FO3 to be realistic. I mean, how does taking a chem suddenly make you better at hacking? You can be intelligent and yet have no clue about how to work on computers, let alone hack them.

Besides, Mentats in NV did not add a +5 to Intelligence. Black Coffee was always better than Mentats to boost intelligence with HH installed.