History GameBreaker / Fallout

* If you go to The Castle with Preston and the Minutemen, then walk away with the mission incomplete (before clearing out the eggs), Preston will follow you forever. He does this as a Temporary Companion - meaning (a) you can also have a normal companion (b) Preston uses the NPC scrops (like a provisioner) and therefore has an infinite supply of whatever ammunition you gave him earlier; he can throw a single grenade an infinite number of times. Note that

** this can trigger some cut content - Preston will comment on your interactions with Dogmeat.
* you can do essentially the same exploit with Travis. Travis has the (unique?) feature that if you take him to the Museum of Freedom, and allow him to take the suit of armour, the parts will automagically heal.

** you can do essentially the same exploit with Travis. Travis has the (unique?) feature that if you take him to the Museum of Freedom, and allow him to take the suit of armour, the parts will automagically heal.

* In fine Fallout tradition, plain and simple sneaking is as overpowered as ever. True, ''Fallout 4'' makes it somewhat harder to max out the skill, mainly by forcing the player to collect ten skill magazines instead of just power-levelling with skill points like in ''Fallout 3''. However, most of them are fairly easy to acquire if one knows where to look, and once around five mags are collected and the regular Sneak skill is maxed at level 4 (character level 23), the Sole Survivor can squat in arm's reach and plain sight of enemies without being detected. Add to that the many, many silenced weapons, several more sneak-buffing perks as well as the possibility to make even power armor invisible while in sneak mode, and it's ridiculously easy to clear entire enemy bases with one shot per baddy and not a single aimed shot ever flying in the Sole Survivor's direction. And that's not even counting in the fact that sneak attacks are always critical hits that can inflict up to six times the base damage with regular perks alone. Your power-armored ninja just found an Instigating gauss rifle? [[CurbstompBattle Happy hunting!]]
* With enough Caps, one can buy the Overseer's Guardian from Alexis Combes at Vault 81. It's a Combat Rifle (the third-tier rifle) with the "Two Shot" ability, has a very high ammo capacity, and it has a great rate of fire. This goes excellently with either a sniper build or an automatic build, though the increased damage isn't quite as impactful on the sniper as it seems (the second projectile only does the weapon's unmodded base damage) and the extra 25% recoil is rather significant on automatics.
* Another one of the purchasable weapons with Two-Shot is the Big Boy from Diamond City's Arturo, a ''Fat Man'' with Two-Shot. Now add the "MIRV Launcher" mod to it, and you get to fire out two clusters of six nukes, giving you ''[[MacrossMissileMassacre twelve]]'' mini nukes for the price of one! Needless to say, this is enough to kill basically anything in a single shot, even without relevant damage boosting perks.
* Pickman's Blade, which is easily obtainable through a short low level (excluding a scripted level 30 raider near the end) sidequest. It not only has wounding, but it's also a combat knife already upgraded to its highest rank. What does this mean? Every single hit from this little beauty does 40 extra unmitigatable damage. And being a combat knife it has the fastest melee swing in the game, able to swing 3 or 4 times for every swing of a slow speed weapon. As an added bonus, acquiring issue #2 of SCAV! in ''Nuka-World'' gives it, and several other bladed weapons, a permanent 25% damage boost.
* You can get Righteous Authority by completing the first Brotherhood of Steel mission. It's a DiscOneNuke that uses very common and cheap ammo, is effective against nearly everything (including the newly-buffed robot enemies), stays useful throughout the game, and can be modded with a scope to boot.
* The Cryolator, located in Vault 111, if you can get it early enough (Dogmeat can grab it the moment you acquire him, thanks to a GoodBadBug). While you won't have much ammo for it until much later (making the weapon somewhat TooAwesomeToUse), it's a very powerful DiscOneNuke, especially for Legendary enemies, bosses, and difficult encounters.
* Final Judgement is a Gatling Laser with the "Rapid" effect, making it shoot 25% faster than normal and reload 15% faster. This turns into utter nonsense when you slap on charging barrels[[labelnote: description]] Charging Barrels reduces fire rate to a sixth to increase damage fourfold, losing some DPS to make it more ammo efficient (Although thanks to how armor works,this is still a DPS increase on many late-game enemies).[[/labelnote]]: The rapid effect's bonuses are calculated off of an [[BeamSpam unmodified gatling laser]], which more than doubles charging barrel's fire rate and brings it in line with most automatic weapons. And while burning fusion cores for ammo at first seems like the very definition of AwesomeButImpractical, the fact that you can get up to 1000 shots per core, which, with proper trade skills, can cost you a total of 240 caps a core, while "normal" ammo cannot go under 1 cap per shot, making it both an extremely powerful ''and'' economical endgame firearm[[note]]In survival mode, where ammo has weight, fusion cores weigh 4 pounds each. For 500 shots. This calculates to about 0.008 pounds per shot, a weight economy rivaled only by flamer and minigun ammo... ''until'' you put points into the Nuclear Physicist perk, which decreases the fusion core drain per shot by up to half (while you're still forced to reload every 500 shots, the fusion core will be placed in your inventory at 50% when you reload), making gatling lasers the undisputed king of ammo economy in ''Fallout 4'' by a wide margin.[[/note]]. Oh, and to cap off on the "Get four times what you paid for" spree, Charging Barrels doesn't affect the amount of shots in VATS; each burst fires off 10 shots for the same AP, despite each one doing QuadDamage.

* If you go to The Castle with the Preston and the Minutemen, then walk away with the mission incomplete (before clearing out the eggs), Preston will follow you forever. He does this as a Temporary Companion - meaning (a) you can also have a normal companion (b) Preston has an infinite supply of whatever ammunition you gave him earlier; he can throw a single grenade an infinite number of times. Note that
** while this exploit is in effect, you cannot change his loadout or talk with him normally - he will merely repeat the same line about needing to focus on re-taking The Castle.

* If you do enough of the Railroad cache sidequests, you can talk to Tinker Tom and unlock the Ballistic Weave mod, which allows you to add armor to most forms of basic clothing, including clothing that can be worn under a full set of armor. The ingredients are rare, but so very worth it. Just how effective is this? The Mk 5 version provides a whopping 110 to ballistic and energy defense, which rivals most sturdy armor in terms of effectiveness. It also works on a select few ''hats'', meaning you can mod a '''fedora''' to give better head defense than freaking ''power armor''. This gives you a total of 220 ballistic and energy defense along with Luck/Charisma bonuses from both the hat and glasses, which helmets do not allow to be worn together. Combine with modded Heavy armor and you easily pass 300 ballistic and energy defense. Add the ballistic and energy defense perks and that can potentially pass 400. Even better, the materials might be rare, but Tinker Tom still starts selling enough Ballistic fiber clothing at a decent enough price that you can very easily scavenge enough Ballistic Fiber to upgrade whatever you want to the highest level possible of Ballistic Weave. Or, with enough caps, you can buy a shipment of Ballistic Fiber (which gives you 25 units of the stuff) from Kleo the robot in Goodneighbor and mod up your clothing and hat to [=Mk5=] (24 total fiber required) in one go.

** The "Staggering" effect can effectively StunLock enemies with certain weapons. Due to the way they and the effect work, non-automatic combat shotguns are virtually guaranteed to stun the enemies, stunning with a 30% chance per pellet, and you can even buy one, "Justice", in Covenant.

* A modded Plasma gun is absurdly powerful, especially combined with the proper perks. A plasma sniper rifle when modded does more than 100 damage total before perks are added. Perks will double the damage, give this weapon the ability to penetrate armor, and have a bonus to making headshots. It is balanced by a high AP cost, but the right build can handle that. If you can manage a build that has the critical and AP bar fill one another, you can become a murder machine.

* While the Flare Gun looks like a JokeWeapon at first glance, [[GuideDangIt it has a hidden attribute]] makes up for its many weaknesses: Abomination-type creatures (including Deathclaws) who are lit on fire by a flare [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere are forced to flee for the duration of the burning effect]] (10 seconds), which also prevents them from attacking. This allows the player to light an Abomination on fire, switch to another weapon, attack them with impunity, and then switch back to the Flare Gun in time to set it on fire once again.

* Upon defeating [[BonusBoss Swan]], you're guaranteed to find a Power Fist with the Furious Legendary Effect, in which consecutive hits on the same target do increased damage. The Power Fist already hits pretty hard, but this effect will let it smash through the bulkier enemies with ease. If you want to really squeeze as much as you can out of this, switching between first and third person after an attack hits will allow you to attack again immediately. Pop a Psycho Jet and most enemies go down before they can even attack.

* The settlement system itself breaks the game in numerous ways. Every item you build nets you a small amount of experience and it'll add up quick, so sinking time into building up settlements can level you up quite a bit. Settlements that produce more food and water than they need, the excess goes into the workshop for you, giving you a steady supply of Purified Water for healing or selling. You can also fill settlements with Mutfruit, Tatos, and Corn, which you can use to craft Vegetable Starch that breaks down into 5 Adhesive, one of the most valuable crafting components that is hard to find is large quantities. And if you build shops in them, the settlement will regarly generate a small amount of caps for you in the workshop, which you can grab whenever you swing by. The shops are also open to you, giving you more places to get rid of your ShopFodder and pick up valuable crafting components and ammo.