I was going to attempt Fort Hagan at level 9, but when I got there, it looked like this.
The first rad flash took roughly a fifth of my health bar instantly. And then the turrets started wrecking me, and I was having trouble hitting them hard enough. So I decided maybe it wasn't my day and went to hang out with the mole rats over in Vault 81. And then maybe I can come down from the mountain with my new Overseer's Guardian. You can go there and buy it for cheap. It's a combat rifle with the two-shot legendary perk... essentially making it one of the best weapons for almost the whole game. You'll be into the 50s at least, before it stops being good. You can really make it boring with that thing, right from the start, if you want. Just a lot of damage and range with plentiful ammo. Take it anywhere and clean up any which way you wanna use it.
Will be handy until I unlock the next upgrade tier, which takes quite a while. Even at level 9, I could play for a couple hours to get level 10. Level 2 weapon mods come at 13. In the middle of the fresh side of the curve, it tightens and you progress a little more. But after that it slows down even more than before. You have to live with different weapons for longer. I did it that way because I found that many weapons... and even classes in the game just age out in a matter of a few levels. You don't get to use them much. And then you hit that late-game wall where it's narrowed down to a few options that all lead to drawn out, spongey combat. You're a sponge, they're a sponge, weapons are never, ever getting stronger... nobody gains firepower... only hp and maybe defense... forever. Better to stretch things as far out of that range as possible. There's too much content for the vanilla pace. Beyond too much. Past a certain point, you can keep leveling and getting perks, but progress-wise it is no-man's-land. There's no meaning to it for your character because in combat, nothing ever changes. None of the fights are exciting. It's what you avoid using... the majority of the vanilla weapons at any point earlier in the game for. Because when you do, it's like getting a cat through a full bath. It's always funneling you. You can choose a lot of things but in reality only a few options are viable. So as you progress, you slip into this or that thing that actually friggin works until you run out of ways to advance offenses. And then that thing you've been avoiding is just the game.
At least this way, not only do I have the time to explore everything and anything, but it becomes worth it to do so. See... there's an extra incentive to find modded weapons when you can't quickly level into making weapon upgrades. Occasionally, they drop high-level mods that make them more usable than they could ever be, outclassing technically superior weapons with appropriate mods for your level. It's also nice to know I can stop and go anywhere to see if there's anything interesting and collect the loot, without advancing my character to another major turning point too soon in the game. I add another bonus... all of the steamer trunks contain legendaries and I upped the odds of legendary enemies. Changed the drop pool so they favor ballistic weapons... I swear to you, it's all shitty melee stuff if you leave it be. So every location gives me at least one roll on a legendary. Surprisingly, even finding what has to be 5 times more legendaries overall, most of them still aren't worth using. Either a gun I don't like, bad match, or just one of the weaker perks. In a whole playthrough, going through all of the DLC and exploring quite a lot on the side, I may get 8 legendary weapons that are worth it. Mind you, that adds up to entire days and days worth of actual play time. It's crazy how cruel the odds are by default. Sniffing out holographic Pokemon cards is a better use of your time. Faster than finding a good legendary weapon in Fallout 4. That might realistically not happen for you in 3 full playthroughs of the game. I think they forgot this wasn't an MMO with a few hundred thousand players and an economy to control. I have to assume that's what they were thinking about because otherwise the good legendaries are so off of the beaten path that they almost don't exist. Nobody's farming these things and selling them for cash or anything, so you can't get them
Again, it all keeps me exploring different places and using different stuff throughout everything the game has to do in it. It's great. I'm finding so much that I've never seen before in the game. I thought I knew the bulk of it by now, but the nooks and crannies really are endless. It's one of the great things about this game. A huge environment packed with places and interesting little details... that nobody will ever see and the game will ultimately start pushing you past. It loses the momentum that would put the player in them. I've been trying to unlock more of that.
I pair it with higher-stakes combat. Weapons and monsters do more damage. The right weapon can always be a quick kill for you, if you're good with it. But your enemies can kill you quickly in the open, and your vision gets muddled every time you're hit. You will not be fighting while getting hit. I like this a lot better. There is tension, no more running in (and if DO you see a window for that and succeed, it means something and feels good,) and varied tactics are better rewarded. Preparation means more. I have the full armor system overhaul, which opens up customization immensely. You can make and use all sorts of different armor, work in different advantages. And boost your armor rating way up. Early if you want, but you'd have to stop and grind quite a lot. The way I play, I'm always needing to work to up it a little more. And I change it around regularly.
All sorts of stuff I'd still like to play with when it comes to the balancing. I've mixed some mods together, changed around a lot of parameters, but never went into a full overhaul... like enemy-by-enemy. It's mostly brute-force, global changes. Finding a better concept and seeing how it goes... what works with each weapon. With real fine tuning, I might never use VATS. Don't get me wrong, VATS was a rare good original thing they came up with. Like, that was kinda revolutionary. It was a great way to bring that part of the OG mechanics in. It's fun and they give it some nice spice with perks. It's just that they started balancing the games to favor VATS heavily, even with a perfectly fine, new shooting platform. And VATS itself doesn't have much depth. Even less when they lightened-up the RPG mechanics. I want to emphasize the shooting part, use the interesting and unique weapons. Stay in the game environment as much as possible, and out of menus like VATS. That's why I run a mod that makes the magazine perks apply to non-VATS instead (most of them are VATS only! WTF?) Fallout 4 is significantly less of an RPG that past titles, and yet the main way it wants you to fight is more RPG than anything else in the game. It's a waste. And it gets beyond repetitive. I feel like it's better suited to be a real-time game. The RPG mechanics remaining are slim pickins, but there's a good bit more in the physics and combat. Why didn't the push more in that direction given all of the elements they changed with stats and weapons?
www.bbc.com
