Ostriig on 25/2/2016 at 10:22
You may have had the feeling that Survival Mode got gutted from Fallout 4 prior to release. All it did was fiddle with the damage intake/output and, uniquely, modified the heal rate. Felt like there may have been more in the works that didn't make the cut.
Well, now they're doing it. In the spirit of Hardcode Mode in New Vegas and all those popular needs mods that came out for Fallout 3 and Skyrim. And I like the sound of...
nearly all of it. Some crafty type fished the details out of existing game files and Bethesda have since kind of (
https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/702583559392010240) confirmed his observations.
Quote:
* Saving
Manual and quicksaving are disabled. To save your game, you'll need to find a bed and sleep for at least an hour.
* Combat
Combat is more lethal for everyone. You now deal, but also take, more damage. You can increase the damage you deal even further with "Adrenaline" (see below).
* Fast Travel
Fast Travel is disabled. If you wish to be somewhere, you'll have to physically travel there.
* Weighted Ammo
Bullets and shells now all have a small amount of weight, which varies by caliber. Heavier items such as fusion cores, rockets, and mini-nukes can really drag you down.
* Compass
Be sure to keep your eyes peeled, as enemies will no longer appear on your compass. As well, the distance at which locations of interest will appear has been significantly shortened.
* Adrenaline
Survival automatically grants the Adrenaline perk, which provides a bonus to your damage output. Unlike other perks, the only way to increase your rank of the Adrenaline perk is by getting kills (hostile or otherwise). The higher your Adrenaline rank, the higher the damage bonus. Sleeping for more than an hour, however, will cause your Adrenaline rank to lower. You can check your current Adrenaline rank at any time in the Perks section on the Stat tab in your Pip-Boy.
* Wellness
You'll find it difficult to survive without taking proper care of yourself. You must stay hydrated, fed, and rested to remain combat-ready. Going for extended periods of time without food, water, or sleep will begin to adversely affect your health, hurting your SPECIAL stats, adding to your Fatigue (see "Fatigue" below), lowering your immunity (see "Sickness" below), and eventually even dealing physical damage to you.
* Fatigue
Fatigue works like radiation but affects your Action Points (AP) rather than your Hit Points (HP). The more Fatigue you've built up, the less AP you'll have for other actions. The amount of Fatigue you've accumulated is displayed in red on your AP bar.
* Sickness
A comprised immune system and a few questionable decisions can end up getting you killed. Eating uncooked meat, drinking unpurified water, taking damage from disease-ridden sources, such as ghouls and bugs, or using harmful Chems all put your body at increased risk for various ill effects. When you are afflicted with an illness, a message will appear onscreen. You can view specifics about your current illnesses by navigating to the Status section on your Pip-Boy's Data tab and pressing [RShoulder] to view your active effects.
* Antibiotics
Antibiotics, which can be crafted at Chem Stations or purchased from doctors, heal the various effects of sickness.
* Bed Types
The type of bed you're sleeping in determines the length of time you are able to stay asleep. A sleeping bag will save your game and may help save your life when you're desperate, but it will never allow for a full night's rest and the benefits that come with it.
* Crippled Limbs
Crippled limbs will no longer auto-heal after combat and will remain crippled until healed by a Stimpak.
* Carry Weight
Exceeding your carry weight reduces your Endurance and Agility stats and periodically damages your legs and health. Think of your back!
* Companions
Companions will no longer automatically get back up if downed during combat and will return home if abandoned without being healed.
* Enemy and Loot Repopulation
Locations you've cleared will now repopulate enemies and loot at a significantly slower rate.
Ok, ok... let's get this one out of the way. I
hate the sound of
Sleep-To-Save. I can't stand checkpoint-save systems in general, and this is worse. Think about it, at least games like BioShock Infinite and Metro: Last Light are relatively linear experiences, wherein devs can space the checkpoints reasonably well. But this? I've got, like, shit to
do, man. Like, you know, going to work the following day? I don't wanna spend time, if I deign to play on the odd weekday evening, running around radioactive Boston looking for a virtual bed before I can get to my
real bed. Or maybe it does Save-And-Quit too, Diablo-style? Even so, running the risk of losing an hour's worth out of my weekend due to a stray bullet is not something I'm up for.
This is a potential deal-braker for me. I'd love almost everything else - get to that in a second - but if enabling manual saves can't be toggled back on or at least
modded back in, I think it'll jump straight from "challenging" to "frustrating" for me, too much to put up with.
The other thing I'm iffy on is
disabling Fast Travel. Not viciously opposed to it, but without some sort of replacement feature - Skyrim had those carriage thing, Fallout 4 has Brahmin caravans... - could see parts of the game degenerate in quite the slog and it'd significantly impact settlement building possibilities.
The rest of it, if nicely balanced, sounds pretty cool. I'd like to do a second playthrough, and I think I'd like it to be with that stuff.
Jason Moyer on 25/2/2016 at 10:48
I can already imagine the hilarity of the settlement invasions when you can't fast travel.
Enemies not appearing on the compass makes me wonder what the point of Perception is other than determining which perks you can take, and Perception is already pretty nerfed since they only appeared once hostile anyway.
Ostriig on 25/2/2016 at 14:34
From what I've heard about the upcoming 1.4 patch, settlements will be able to defend themselves without and correctly report it, so there's that. But it could definitely be a problem. All the more reason to enable fast travel between caravan locations and perhaps big hubs, like Diamond City or Bunker Hill. Gives you more of a reason for building caravan stalls in your settlements. On a sidenote, Pillars of Eternity "you're gonna get raided in X days" approach might also be a plus, though Fo4 is pretty permissive too.
I think Perception also influences your hit chance in VATS. But yeah, never got why they only made aggroed enemies ping on the compass, makes the stat a lot less useful.
You know, a lot of this stuff is dependent on the finer points of balancing it. I only whinged about the two I'm genuinely concerned about, but some others could be good or meh. Like adrenaline or differentiating between beds on how long you can rest. Sounds a bit much, that last one. The problem with these "realistic needs and conditions" in Beth games is that they've generally never hit the right note - New Vegas's vanilla Hardcore Mode was too lax and added very little, mods for Skyrim tend to be overly complex and disruptive in their pursuit of "realism." I tried this mod for Skyrim and despite its generous customisation options, its linear rather than threshold-rigged handling of hunger values got to be a nuissance, where you'd often have to consume several items at a time. This never happened in STALKER SoC (only game that did it right, in my experience) where I think I only once had to scarf down two food items when I was near starvation, and the mechanic was designed as part of inventory weight management and world loot from the get-go. Will have to see Beth's implementation in practice.
zombe on 25/2/2016 at 19:20
Quote Posted by Ostriig
I
hate the sound of
Sleep-To-Save.
That is a total deal breaker - till it gets modded out.
The rest sounds good tho. I am even fine with no fast travel - brings a sense of adventure into the exploration.
Jason Moyer on 25/2/2016 at 20:26
Quote Posted by Ostriig
But yeah, never got why they only made aggroed enemies ping on the compass, makes the stat a lot less useful.
I don't have it installed at the moment (I just did a massive installed game purge to clean up some things before re-installing my favorites again) but I'm pretty sure they made that change in Skyrim.
Ostriig on 28/4/2016 at 19:06
Well, it just came out in public release. Now gotta wait for a console enabler and save enabler.
Also, they changed the mods listing, anyone know how to manually edit the plugins lists? There was a thing about adding an * in front of the mod name during Beta, but I'm not sure whether that's still valid. I've been using a basic mod manager that someone put together but I'm not sure it's gonna get updated in a hurry, and I'm not keen to get the Nexus Mod Manager for now, nor do I want yet another account so I can use Bethesda's integrated one.
Vae on 28/4/2016 at 21:43
Yep, just released today...
Quote:
Fallout 4 1.5 Steam Update (1.5.157)
New Features- New Survival difficulty
- Survival adds additional challenges including no fast travel, saving only when you sleep, increased lethality, diseases, fatigue, danger and more. See the in-game Help menu for more details.
- Characters set to Survival difficulty appear under their own Character Selection filter
- Third person camera movement improvements when player is close up against walls and other objects
Fixes- General stability and performance improvements
- Fixed rare crash related to reloading a save that relies on Automatron
- Fixed issue with the robot workbench camera not moving properly immediately after canceling out of the menu
- Fixed issue with perks being repeatedly added when reloading a saved game while in robot workbench
- Fixed issue with Ada not properly traveling to an assigned settlement
- Robots can now be assigned as settlement vendors
- Fixed issue with “Appropriation” where blueprints would not appear properly if the container had already been looted prior to getting the quest
- In “The Nuclear Option,” entering the Institute using the targeting helmet on Power Armor no longer inadvertently causes the player to go into combat, and become stuck in the Institute
- Fixed distance check with Robotics Expert perk
- While in Workshop mode, if the Jump button is remapped, the Y or Triangle button can still be used to jump
- Fixed issue with “Defend the Castle” where speaking to Ronnie Shaw would not properly complete the quest
- During “The Nuclear Option,” fast traveling away from the Institute immediately after inserting the relay targeting sequence holotape will no longer block progression
- Fixed issue where Workshop placed light bulbs would occasionally not light properly
- Fixed occasional flashing issue with entering and exiting Power Armor
- Fixed issue where terminals would not work properly after downloading and initializing an Add-On from the Add-Ons menu
Ostriig on 30/4/2016 at 17:06
Alright, I've got my Fallout 4 installation updated to 1.5 with mods enabled. It's saving and loading, everything
seems in order so far, just got out of the Vault with a new character in Survival Mode. So I'll put some notes below on updating, though your mileage may vary. Don't take my word for any of this, just going through what worked for me. Nor can I guarantee you won't have trouble further down the line doing this.
Note that I'm doing this by manually managing the plugins list. I don't use the Nexus Mod Manager nor have I touched the new in-game Addons or Mods menus. From what I understand the in-game manager tends to vie for control of your plugins file with your third party mod manager, so I'm happy to let 'em be for the time being.
[INDENT]1. Back stuff up. Your saves and .ini files in the Documents folder, as well as the mod files in your primary drive's Users/AppData/***/Local/Fallout4 folder. In the latter, plugins.txt manages enabled mods, the other two I don't really know. I suspect that DLCList.txt is used by the in-game manager to track available plugins, loadorder.txt might be what it's called.
Anyway, just back up anything you might wanna restore or have as a reference later. I even made a full copy of the install, just in case.
2. Remove any GUI mods you're using from Fallout 4/data/Interface. People using stuff like Full Dialog Interface and DEF_UI have reported crashing on startup, and it's not surprising, there are new mechanics linked to the UI in 1.5. So delete everything and reinstall after you're done, FDI has a new version which works, HUD menus I don't know. Strings for FDI I think you can leave in there, but if you want to be safe, revert to the original ones and then reinstall the modded ones later.
3. In your Documents/My games/Fallout 4 folder, if you have a Fallout4Custom.ini, open it up and remove:
Quote:
[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=
If you have it. Not sure if it's necessary or people reporting it are misdiagnosing problems from the Interface mods, but what the hell, do it. You should only have the default entries under [Display] in there now.
4. Now open up your Fallout4.ini and paste
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1 there instead, under [Archive] somewhere. I've seen other suggest that you instead use
sResourceDataDirsFinal to add, after STRINGS, all the other directories for MESHES, TEXTURES, etc. but this seems to work for me. If it doesn't for you when you eventually load the updated game, try
sResourceDataDirsFinal instead of
bInvalidateOlderFiles.
One more point here - if you update the game and you crash, you can try renaming Fallout4.ini and running the launcher should create a new one. If it loads with that, then go back and try changing whatever you need changed.
5. I'd suggest you start up the game to make sure you haven't removed any base asset at this point, so that if something doesn't work later, you know it's the update and not a deleted file.
6. Ok, now cross your fingers and update the game from Steam. Once done, launch it but don't click Play, just close the launcher window down again.
7. Now go and update F4SE, there's a full release for the current version of Fallout 4. Even if you haven't used F4SE, (
http://f4se.silverlock.org/) go get it. You can launch the game with it directly, without going through either a mod manager or the default launcher.
8. Last step, edit your plugins.txt file. There's a point of dispute here, some say that the vanilla entries (Fallout4.esm, DLCRobot.esm, DLCworkshop01.esm) should no longer be featured, whereas others think that could lead to some load order conflicts. I've gone with the second camp and so far I'm not complaining. What you'll want to do is to go back to your existing plugins.txt in AppData/Local/... and an asterisk in front of each entry in the mods list. So, to give you an example:
Quote:
*Fallout4.esm
*DLCRobot.esm
*DLCworkshop01.esm
*Gasmask Fix.esp
*Craftable Armor Size.esp
*Quick Save.esp
*SMC.esp
Any new mod you wanna add, just stick a new line in there, along with an asterisk followed directly by the filename of the .esp. But wait until you're confirmed to be up and running before adding anything new in the mix.
9. Ok, now you should be ready to play. Were you reaching for your mod manager? No! Bad TTLG member! Just launch via f4se.exe instead. On a serious note, I dunno, up to you, but I'm happy to leave the managers alone until the kinks are worked out.
10. Hopefully you're fine at this point and your game's in working order. If you were using Full Dialog Interface or have new mods to add, you can try them now. If you crash, try restoring the default Fallout4.ini, not sure what else to suggest as, luckily, it hasn't happened to me yet.
[/INDENT]
So, assuming you're good and you now wanna try the new Survival Mode, you'll probably want to make it less frustrating. Which means you'll need your console and your saving back. And I'm happy to confirm these are working:
(
www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11834/?) Survival Mode Console - does what it says on the tin, allows you to access the console again via ~.
(
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12593/?) Survival Quick Save - by (
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1CSCMwaDubQ4rcYCpX40Eg) Gopher, in case you're looking for a great Youtube channel for mods. This adds an item to your inventory, under Aid, called QUICK SAVE, which you can just hotkey. When you activate it, it'll trigger an autosave. One caveat, which I half expected: if you start the game with it, it can't get added to you until you have the PipBoy, guessing it runs on first load after activation. So bring up your console, type in
help "quick save" 4, and then do a "player additem ID" with the ID it pops up.
zombe on 30/4/2016 at 18:36
Quote:
2. Remove any GUI mods you're using from Fallout 4/data/Interface. People using stuff like Full Dialog Interface and DEF_UI have reported crashing on startup, and it's not surprising, there are new mechanics linked to the UI in 1.5.
Quoted for visibility.
Was going nuts in figuring out why it crashes ... even made a complete clean reinstall.
Long story short, the .swf format has changed and hence any mod with old format will crash on UI load time (the moment you load save game or start new game).
... this seriously sucks as some of the essential mods have not updated (most notable, in my case: noDotDotDot).
zombe on 30/4/2016 at 21:34
Got a few hours to sink into the new survival (even got all the mods i want updated / replaced ... except noDotDotDot). Won't be home tomorrow ... seems i have to wait a little longer till i get play it more throughly. Still, a new character has born:
* no powerarmor
* no vats
* stats: STR1, PER3 (+early bobble), END5, CHA5 (+special), INT6, AGI7, LCK1
... worried about all the bugs - they are the most dangerous creatures without vats / spam weapon. I would say, seriously, more dangerous than sculled deathclaws.
On another note, updated my little personal "better sorting" mod/script:
(
http://postimg.org/image/kaj1j82vl/)
Inline Image:
http://s32.postimg.org/kaj1j82vl/Screen_Shot0.jpgIt is created with FO4Edit script.
* last run on 1.5.157. changed the names of 4097 items
* applicable subgroups for the script: Ingestible, Ammunition, Armor, Book, Flora, Key, Misc. Item, Note, Weapon
* food and water etc show their base HP RAD effects in name
* ... also F if it is food in Survival difficulty and W for water, D for disease (D! for high probability)
* junk shows the component yield divided by total item weight, rounded
* armors are grouped by what they cover (a'la [LegR])
* ... etc ... etc ... etc
* feel free to modify the script to your liking
Script and resulting .esm here: (
http://www.filedropper.com/mystuff)