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8 Things You Might Not Know You Can Do in Fallout 4

This article is over 9 years old and may contain outdated information

Fallout 4 is a huge game, and we’re constantly finding new things we can do in the Commonwealth. If you’re like us, you’re also finding things that you can do that you didn’t know about. Today, we’re sharing with you these eight things that we found that you may or may not be aware you can do. We hope it helps you out!

Think we missed one? Tell us what it is in the comments!

Shoot grenades out of the air

One thing about the enemies in Fallout 4, they are not afraid to throw grenades or Molotov Cocktails your way. If you’ve got good reflexes, you can make their decision to do so blow up in their face – literally. All you need to do is be quick on the V.A.T.S. button. As soon as you see the grenade indicator pop up, jump into V.A.T.S., target the thrown object, and blow it out of the sky.

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Organize your Pip-Boy’s weapon list

If you’re like me, you carry a number or weapons around with you when you’re wandering the wasteland. You’ve probably also sold one or two of them by accident, just like I have. There’s an easy way to avoid that, though. Just take your favorite weapons to the crafting bench and rename them with a special character in the front of the name. Every time you open the weapons list in your Pip-Boy, you’ll see those weapons at the top of the list.

Get rid of the irradiated pool at Starlight Drive-In

Once you’ve cleared the Starlight Drive-In, you’ll find that your newest settlement has a pool of heavily irradiated water in the middle of it. Don’t despair, because you can remove it. Just hop into the workshop interface and remove the radioactive barrels that are lying around. You’ll take some rads doing this, so move quickly. Once the barrels are all gone, you’ll see the ambient radiation is gone, and you can walk through the water safely. You can even set up a purifier and create drinking water.

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Scrap weapons and armor

All the junk you collect and throw in your workbench is automatically converted to the materials you need, but what about all those weapons and armor you’re stockpiling? That’s a lot of steel and other materials that you could use. Luckily, there’s an easy way to convert all that stuff, too. Just take it out of the workshop, throw it on the ground, and then scrap it using the workshop interface. Nothing to it.

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Sell Fusion Cores for full price regardless of charge

As it turns out, a lot of the merchants in the Commonwealth don’t know how to check the charge in a fusion core. This is a huge boon to you, if you don’t have any moral qualms about it. Just run your fusion cores down to single digits, then pop them out and sell them for full price. This won’t work at every merchant, but you’ll shocked how often it does.

Get more tries on terminal hacking

Hacking in Fallout 4 can be a fairly simple process, or it can be a nightmare. Invariably, you get to where you think you know the password, but you’ve only got one try left before the terminal locks you out, so you end up starting all over. It turns out that you can get some extra tries, if you know how to go about it. After you’ve tried at least one word, look through the list until you find a group of special characters together that light up like a word (something like “{[?!]}”), and click on it. This will remove a “Dud” password, making it easier to find the right password, and sometimes it will reset your tries as well.

Take cover and lean

One of the big problems I have with Fallout 4 is that a lot of its systems are either barely explained or not explained at all. Case in point: Did you know that there’s a dynamic cover system in the game? Well, there is. There’s no “stick to cover” button, though. All you need to do is duck behind the corner of a wall and face the wall. When you see your gun go sideways, you’re in cover. Hit your “aim down sights” button to lean out and fire, and then release it to duck back in cover.

Pickpocket enemies in Power Armor

This is by far my favorite thing to do in Fallout 4. You see, you’re not the only person in the Commonwealth who can use Power Armor. In fact, you’ll have to fight several people who are wearing it. Obviously, that makes them much tougher to kill. But if you’re sneaky enough (or you happen to have a Stealth Boy handy), you can slip up behind the enemy and pickpocket the fusion core out of his Power Armor. He’ll be forced to bail out of the armor, at which point you can finish him off. It feels great when you pull it off, and you get his Power Armor too!


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