Here are some tips I wish I had known when I first started. I hope new players can read this and avoid my mistakes. Feel free to add on to this list:

1. You can drop off most of your inventory at settlements. Each interface (weapons, armor, power armor) have a different station and have to be dumped seperately.

2. On PS4 you undock from power armor by pressing X button. Do this right in front of the power armor station and then access (sometimes you have to move around the power armor so you dont activate its command choices) the station commands to upgrade / repair it.

3. You can increase SPECIAL attributes rather than choose a perk when you level up. Also, you will find items that level up the attributes, so not a good idea to start with a level 10 attribute.

4. Best way to hack terminals is to find code that is [surrounded by brackets], which will remove incorrect choices.

5. Graqe Mentants buff merchant prices. Put off on many or large ticket trades then pop one to save caps.

6. Pick a strategic settlement to develop. The first you find might not be the best. Consider existing defense capabilities and farmable ground / water. Consider not tearing down existing structures but using them as external walls.

7. Using VATS your critical bar will fil up, but you need to activate it yourself.

8. A good combat technique is to aim for legs first to cripple, slow enemies.

9. Use crafting stations to combine items. It not only creates better items, but reduces the weight / scroll fatugue of many smaller items.

10. the bottlecap mine is one of the best items in the game. Keep all lunchboxes to build these. They can one-shot kill most enemies.

Haha great tips man I'll keep those in mind. Thanks for sharing with us. XD

How do you combine items?

On the hacking you are looking for closed sets on the same line of the [ ] { } < > sets.

So if you see a line like x 9 { / ! > < } 2 &

Highlight the first { and it will highlight to the }. This can either remove a Dud entry or reset your number of tries.

When hacking, it is actually more than just brackets [ ]. There is also ( ), < >, and { }. They will also sometimes reset your number of tries. I don't know about hacking on Fallout 1 and 2, but this feature to remove incorrect choices has been in Fallout since Fallout 3.

One other tip: if you have a line with multiple open brackets but only one close bracket, you can select each open bracket to remove a dud password or reset your tries. Example: [.,?![#.?,!]
That line has two open brackets, so you can select each. The same concept does not work the other way around (1 open bracket and multiple close brackets). The game will not allow you to select the first bracket multiple times.

You combine items via recipes. For example combining a dirty water and nukacola bottle produces a clean water. Combining several mole rat meats produces a mole rat chunk which gives much more HP.

I didn't know about the brackets even in FO3 and FONV. I always exited out of the terminal then re-entered to reset.

This reddit thread is awesome: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3shl9i/fallout_4_tips_everyone_should_know/ Thanks Dylloop95.

General

• Sell Fusion Cores to traders before they run out, you will get much more for a partially charged core, over an empty core.
• Pickpocket enemies with power armor to steal their Fusion Cores, this will cause them to leave the armor, and you can steal the frame
• The Lone Wanderer perk still provides bonuses with Dog Meat as a companion
• When Leaving your power armor remove the Fusion Core so no one will decide to use it.
• When hacking look for [],(), <>,and {} with anything in between the brackets, clicking the leftmost bracket will reset your attempts to give you more tries, or remove dud words from the list.
• Try to always carry a weapon of each ammo type, that way you are less likely to be completely out of ammo.
• Some companions can pick locks and hack terminals for you. More specifically: https://www.reddit.com/spoiler
• You can tag specific crafting materials by going into your junk section in your inventory, and switch to material view.
• There is no level cap. Don't fret about spending perk points. The game's enemies don't scale with you, but they do get harder farther from the start, and the farthest away points of the map have level 50 enemies. There's no shortage of things to take down and no shortage of points to get strong enough to do it.
• To force a companion to equip, or apparel switch to their inventory in the trade menu, and a button will show up to have the npc equip the item. ( "T" for PC, "Y" for Xbox, "Triangle" for PS4)
• For Power Armor: sprinting, strong melee attacks and VATs drain your Fusion Core faster than walking or standing still.
• Fast Travel in Power Armor doesn't use and Fusion Core battery, and you can still fast travel with no charge in the core.
• You can zoom in on the pip boy by right clicking.

CRAFTING

• You do not need to break down junk items to get components by hand the game will do it for you if the junk items are stored in your settlement workbench or inventory. Extra resources will be deposited in your settlement workbench.(It may take some time to appear)
• You can grow your own adhesive by cooking Vegetable Starch with Corn, Tato, Muttfruit, and Purified Water.
• When naming weapons, put a hyphen or space at the beginning of the name (EX: -gun name), and those weapons will default to the top of the list in your pip-boy.(Thanks: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3sgwpn/psa_when_naming_weapons_put_a_hyphen_at_the/)
• If you look at the Junk section of your inventory you can switch to a list of all the components your junk breaks down into (with C on PC). In that list you can set or remove a search tag.
• When you upgrade a weapon, the current mod will be placed in your inventory. If you transfer all mods to your workbench, if you put that upgrade on another weapon, it will use the mod before crafting a new one.
• You can salvage weapon sights by modifying the weapon with the no sights attachment, which costs no resources to make.
• If a gun/armour has a mod you can't build, you can still swap the mod out and install it on another weapon.

SETTLEMENTS

• When building settlements you can raise and lower objects by holding E and using scroll wheel on PC, X and L1/R1 on PS4
• When building your first settlement use E to move the initial workbenches instead of scrapping them.
• You can remove the radiation from Starlight Drive by scrapping the barrels in the center, and the Unrusted Crashed Car.
• Water pumps, farms, and traders deposit the Items and Caps they produce into the workbench.
• To help place objects in hard places use a small rug then place the object on the rug, pick up the rug and the item will remain attached but the game uses the rugs collision detection.(This allows you to clip objects into walls!)
• To assign settlers select them in the crafting screen then select the object you want them to work
• Settlers can work up to 6 Food at a time. Meaning a settler can tend to 12 plants that produce .5 food each.
• To reduce raider attacks make sure your defense state is higher than food + water.
• Highlighting a settler in workshop mode will also highlight anything he's assigned to.
• Fast Travel in between settlements will instantly grow all crops that have a settler assigned to them.
• When your selecting something through the workshop build interface if you press and hold the move command(Press and hold [E]) this will pickup all items attached(or very close) to the object you are picking up. (Be careful as if your walls are all attached you can pickup very large parts of your settlement!)

Thanks, Fabiano. A thread that is actually constructive, nice!

I didn't know a handful of these thanks. I'll keep them in mind going forward.

Awesome tips, thanks people

These ones were surprises to people a long time after F3 and FNVs release:

Hold the pip-boy button to activate flashlight.
You can hold activation button to drink continuously from a water source.

And one i've discovered, could be considered a spoiler:

The brackets remove bad words and also resets your tries. It's a waste to do if you haven't already tried a few guesses and did poorly. The best way to do it is to find a word that has all different letters. For example DIRTY vs SOLO. With Dirty if you have no likenesses, then you ruled out words with those letters. If they give you likenesses... just try another similar word with different letters (ie. TASTY). If you get two again you'll know the word has a T and a Y in it.

I never understood the computer hacking, and it took a little bit for me to get it right. Now I never lockout of the terminal and usually crack it pretty fast without the need to rule out bad words or get my attempts back.

Good tips thank you.

Good stuff! Thanks.

Thread of the year!

Learned the gun mod trick last night. Giddy glee!

Wouldn't that be letters in the same place? Or is it like the old game Mastermind that if you have zero matches that means the word has none of the letters at all?

Another good reddit thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3siuxl/electricity_and_you_how_to_power_your_settlement/

Here's another that isn't so obvious.

http://www.videogamer.com/features/game_guide/11_fallout_4_tips_and_tricks_you_absolutely_need_to_know.html

Me too. I feel like a whole new world opened up for me!

No, different stations inside the same settlement share inventory. You can dump something in to power armour station and then use it at the cooking station.

With leader perk, you can connect settlements with supply routes which will make stations share inventory even among different settlements.

You can activate Shaun's "Your Special" book for an extra point in any SPECIAL (post Vault)

Nice tips, about the terminals though, i just back out after 3 tries and start again, i cant be bothered with the whole brackets thing haha.

Not necessarily, SAID would work

3. You can increase SPECIAL attributes rather than choose a perk when you level up. Also, you will find items that level up the attributes, so not a good idea to start with a level 10 attribute.

Total Newb Question...At the lowest levels of game (just left Sanctuary Hills) is it better to invest the point from levelling up into the SPECIAL tree to build somewhat of a well rounded character (e.g. 6 across the board)...or immediately start putting the points into the Perks you're interested in using throughout the game?