You'd think even in a post-apocalyptic society, precious metals and gems would still be prized and valuable for their appearance at the very least, right? Why is there no jewelry or gems to make loot a bit more interesting? Jewelry could even be melted down for raw materials necessary for circuitry like gold.

1. we have bottlecaps & salvage, and

2. (total guess) likely to distance it a bit from fantasy games

(3. at some point, there's too many items to model/stat/keep track of in a game, so they won't add more just because it'd "make sense".)

edit: some mods did add jewelry to FO3, but it was as clothing items. Earrings, necklaces, nose-rings.... that kind of stuff.

Yup the dev team are too busy making 4 types of baskets and 3 types of shovels to bother with important items...

*facepalm*

From what I've heard, your player character's wedding ring is a wearable item in Fallout 4? That might hint at jewelry being in the game if they have a unique apparel slot for rings.

I think that has more to do with romance dialogue, ring on = no romance (and vice versa).

As I understand it, there were all sorts of apparel slots in FO3/NV, the game just didn't use them - mods did, though, making clothing that wasn't full outfits/etc.

I guess that makes more sense. Now that I think about it, rings wouldn't serve much of a purpose gameplay wise in the Fallout games. They can't be enchanted like in a fantasy RPG and obviously don't offer any sort of defense. Unless they plan on rings having magical stat boost like +1 STR or something...

If they let us wear wedding rings they should let me wear things like a diamond encrusted 24-karat gold dollar sign chain. You know, the sort of elegant tasteful jewelry favored by the refined wasteland gentleman

Thought you were a suit-and-tie man now, Stringer. Thought you weren't like that no more.

I wouldn't mind raiders and such to wear some sort of DIY jewelry. It doesn't have to be pretty. Raiders decorate themselves with various ways, why not have DIY jewelry?

As for the real, pre-war jewelry, that should an extreme rarity, if even to exist at all.

because carbone gets burned in the nuke blast.

...

no idea actually, just talking

I'm guessing it's not that common in the wasteland and doesn't have much use in nearly all of the places with people. I think the NCR used to value gold for money but it has no real value in the wasteland. You can get the big gold bars in Deadmoney worth 301 caps per 1 weight but we don't know why it's valued so much by so many who have no use for it lol.

I don't see why 99.9% of the people in the wasteland would care for jewely, a shovel yes as digging can be rather useful.

Why did people place value on gold in ancient times? Because it's pretty. Simple as that. I see no reason why gold and jewelry couldn't be used for bartering. Gold is also a common component used in electronics, so it's not exactly useless if it's implemented into the crafting system.

i think i read stg about the sun, holy, blah some time ago...

my own little theory anyhow is much simpler than this: because, among what other metals were available at the time, it's color makes it pretty fake proof (until the invention of brass anyway, but the fo universe is past that i guess

oh.

please.

not.

an.

inverse.

amulet.

of.

mara.

!.

Very few people have the skills to use gold, so far old the BoS, Enclave and Institute seem to have the skill and equipment to do that. The energy weapons shop and maybe the Followers could in NV as well but I don't think it's much. Most electronics uses more common and easily aquired metals, the tiny performance improvement gold offers I don't see being of much value.

In previous history they had more culture and civilisation where gold became valuable at the same time bronze was valuable or purple dye. When there's very few wealthy people in the world I don't see why they'd go for gold, if anything basic charms and stuff made from local materials would be more common and made simply. Making jewelry takes time to develop the skills and tastes for it.

If we're going to see necklaces appear should start off with ones people could produce, like bottle caps on a string or empty bullet cases or maybe even Deathclaw teeth? lol

I wouldn't mind something like that. I mean, just look at the Mad Max movies for great examples of jewelry and post-apocalyptic adornment.

Gold was only really a valuable thing in FO2 but the rest of the games all used caps as the main currency so it's most likely going to stay that way.

Besides that I don't think rings or jewelry would be a very good addition since it's not like TES where you have magic to add a worthwhile effect to jewelry,(Unless they really do add magic and give us stuff like "ring of rad resistance" )

Though we do have a wedding ring in our inventory at the start of the game so maybe there's more rings you can get throughout the game.

Hey, that's what those things are in the real world! Never heard of the cheater's tactic of "going to a single's bar and removing your wedding ring"?

If the science behind the TV show Jericho is correct, silver is avoided because it can ionise with radioactivity and become dangerous, or some other scientific mumbo jumbo (can someone with a background in physics please clarify?), I have no idea what the properties of other metals or minerals are. With gold, if I recall some BBC magazine article a couple of years back, possible reasons why it was always so valued is due to the fact it is solid, durable, doesn't oxidise, isn't dangerous to handle and other such properties.

I wouldn't mind finding a character like Porky Logan from Alas Babylon, dead, wearing am obscene amount of irradiated jewelry.
But ya. Jewelry in FO doesn't make as much sense as it would in a fantasy game. Don't get me wrong. I imagine some would be present. And it could possibly be used as currency, but so could so many other things. Even original devs decided to go another route as far as that goes.

Hells yeah! Like bone amulets, and [censored]!

Just no lol

grampy bone?

Most jewelry is useless in the wastes the only ones with even a minor use would be gold and diamond and even then not much.

gold is a super conductor and guess what the fancy laser rifles use... that is right super conductors.

diamonds are the strongest material on earth, though they are quite cheep when not behind a monopoly pay wall. My guess is in the early days jewelry would have been looted for value and then as money became useless for parts as such actually jewelry is likely extremely rare in the wastes betting the wedding ring the protag has is worth a lot more then they will make it worth in game. cause even the simplest wedding bands are made of gold.

yeah most hte gems and rocks they use in jewelry is useless with only a few of them having actual use so it is likely that they where just ditched after the bombs fell or looted and melted down to other things.