The First 76 Seconds...Minutes...and Hours

Need help or reassurance? Sure you do! There’s no harm in learning some key elements for surviving and thriving. If you don’t have the time for a deeper dive into what to expect as you explore the initial woodland and valleys of the Forest, just follow the seven sets of Survival Skills you’ll need to muster:

Survival Skill #1: Stay Hydrated!

Drinks prevent Dehydration. Open your Pip-Boy and go to Items > Aid.

Keep your Thirst and Hunger bars over 75% for bonus active effects.

Thirst: Find Dirty Water at a pump or river. Boil it at a cooking station. Purify it at Flatwoods, a chemistry Station, or your camp (with the correct equipment). Consume, and enjoy!

Thirst: Harvest wild flora and find recipes for more beneficial drinks that remove Thirst and offer other bonuses.

Hunger: Find uncooked meat, harvest some wild flora, then cook immediately so you aren’t as likely to receive a disease from it. Consume immediately or very soon, or the food spoils.

Hunger: In addition, scavenge canned or processed food that can be stored in your inventory and eaten whenever you like; it does not spoil.

Hunger: Cooked food takes longer to spoil. You have to eat the same amount of food regardless of when you eat, so feast early to stay above your 75% range for the benefits.

Hunger: You can sort the Pip-Boy Aid Menu by “Spoil” to check which foods are about to go off; eat those first!

Hunger and Thirst: You need wood to cook stuff; so make sure you gather wood from logs as you explore.

Rad-X: Each time you eat or drink, you receive a small dose of radiation applied to your Health Bar. Consume Rad-X first to reduce or remove that chance for a limited time.

Add your most-often used food and drink to your Favorites menu wheel. Add more drink than food as you become thirsty more often than hungry.

Complete the Responders Quests in Flatwoods to gain step-by-step guidance on food and drink preparation.

Survival Skill #2: Health and Medication!

Stimpaks heal damage over time. Quick-use them instead of flailing in your Pip-Boy menus when you need healing the most.

There is a wealth of other items that can heal you too (including food and drink).

Be aware of the strengths (buffs and boosts) and weaknesses (radiation, thirst, addiction) when using chems.

Learn there are recipes for Super Stimpaks, and there’s Diluted Stimpaks if you don’t need a full boost of health juice.

Craft more Stimpaks as a matter of priority, as well as Disease Cures and a host of other useful concoctions at any chemistry station.

RadAway removes radiation over time. It is used often, and should be on your Favorite menu wheel. Search or craft these as a matter of priority.

Use Diluted Stimpaks, Rad-X, and RadAway more often. Unlike Stimpaks, they grant their health benefits without the need for you to be badly wounded. Good Health also means protecting yourself; gather a few pistols, find one you enjoy the most, craft ammo for it, and either specialize (adding perks) and/or test out a different weapon type as you gain experience. Find plans and mods for these weapons.

Good Health also means protecting your body; search for armor plans and craft protection at an Armor Workbench.

Repair your armor and weapons at the appropriate workbench. Craft ammo instead of purchasing it. Learn the base components of your weapon and armor, and scavenge more of it so you can easily repair these critical items.

Visit the Overseer’s Camp on the road between Vault 76 and Flatwoods to gain guidance on armor and weapon repairing.

Survival Skill #3: Power Is Key!

Before wiring up your first dwelling (i.e., your camp), start to forage for building supplies.

You leave Vault 76 with a few supplies; add to them by scavenging.

You need to focus on gathering Wood, Concrete, and Steel for the majority of the foundation, walls, and roof of your dwelling.

For this, you need to find objects that either automatically break down into components (like Logs, which break down into Wood Scraps, or small, roadside Gravel Pits, which contain Concrete Scrap).

Scrap junk items you find at different locations. Use your common sense to figure out the type of junk that’s available at lumber yards, farmsteads, coffee shops, so you have some idea of what you’ll be returning with.

Scrap everything you scavenge at any workbench or Power Armor station, reducing your weight in the process.

Items with components can be used for crafting (cooking, armor, weapons, and ammo) and construction.

Stay in the initial valley and forests, and make a concentric circle of exploration, scavenging each location you find and noting the types of items so you can return there in a day to grab similar items again.

This guide’s Atlas provides helpful knowledge on the types of junk at every Primary Location in Appalachia.

Got Junk? Then build generators to power lights, traps, some defenses (like sliding doors) and most importantly; resource generators!

Need more power? Then siphon it from Substations and Power Plants once you bring plants back online.

Survival Skill #4: Join a Team

Don’t be intimidated or worried about meeting your fellow Vault Dwellers again.

Start off with a wave or other Emote by learning and perfecting the Emote menu wheel and the Social Menu.

Offer to trade and talk to your new neighbors. If you’re both friendly sorts, team up.

Teaming up offers some advantages over going it alone; you can share quests, workshop building techniques, and perks (some are tailored to team play). You can also divide responsibilities as you explore.

After reaching Level 5, you become susceptible to damage from hostile humans. But there are easy ways to mitigate this.

Survival Skill #5: Camping Made Easy!

After you leave the Vault, build a C.A.M.P. in the wilderness.

The optimal time is when you’re Level 5–10, after you’ve completed the Responder Quest in the woods north of Morgantown (after investigating the airport).

Find an area of flat ground to make it easier to place your foundations.

If you place an item and need to move or remove it, do not scrap it; this destroys the object and gives you only half the components you used to create it. Move or store it instead.

Utilize the resources you gathered and make a basic construction; err on the side of a small cabin. Do not make a large structure, as you will run out of budget!

Find Plans to unlock more types of construction objects. To begin, place your camp near a workbench you use a lot, so you can quickly scrap items as you build.

Blueprint your camp so you can move and erect it again in seconds, not minutes.

Move your camp close to where you want to explore, so you have somewhere to return to and a free Fast-Travel location.

Later in your exploration, place your Camp in the center of the map to lessen the Caps cost no matter where you Fast Travel to.

Survival Skill #6: Get a Job!

To begin, learn everything about your SPECIAL attributes and perks so you can more effectively tailor your choices to your play style.

Your calling involves trying out different tasks, which increase as you learn more about Appalachia. To start, try to be the best forager and scavenger possible.

Specialize in weapons crafting and modding, or Tinker’s Workbench ammo creation.

Find collectibles; holotapes, Bobbleheads, Magazines, Power Armor frames, and Caps Stashes.

Visit robots, listen to holotapes, follow checkpoints, and complete quests, gathering up some choice rewards.

Set up a workshop with your friends, and mine or grow resources for fun and profit.

Set up a camp with your friends, and bring out the banjos!

Show others how to create a particularly bitchin’ cabin, defensive turret tower, or other structure.

Find a specific location, explore it, and regale others with tales of your exploits.

Become a hunter of enemies, both mundane and bizarre, including mythical Appalachian cryptids!

Join others and complete a variety of challenges, events, and team quests.

Find out exactly what happened to the Brotherhood of Steel, the Responders, the Raiders, the Free States, the Mothman Cultists...and dwellers from other Vaults?!

Set about finding every recipe, mod, or plan you can find.

Find some choice spots for a selfie, looking for the best views in West Virginia.

Journey to all four corners of the map and all six regions before you reach Level 20.

Plan on becoming one type of character archetype (like a stealth expert or melee-focused warrior) before changing to another build type. And another.

Band together and attempt to solve some fiendish cryptic passwords in order to get into a secret military base, so you can launch nukes.

Then parlay many of these jobs into profit-making schemes by selling items you made or found, or the knowledge that you acquired on your journeying.

Survival Skill #7: Weigh Your Opportunities!

Carry Weight represents how much you can haul in your inventory before it starts to slow you down.

Look for your current/maximum Carry Weight (and icon) in the following places:

• The Items menu of your Pip-Boy (bottom-left corner).
• The bottom-right corner of your world map.
• The bottom-left corner of each menu box when you’re about to pick something up.

When the Carry Weight information turns red (in menus aside from your Pip-Boy’s), you are overencumbered.

The more Strength you have, the more you can carry.

Each item you pick up has a weight value. If the total weight of all your items exceeds your Carry Weight, you start to suffer penalties:

• You will not be able to Fast Travel.
• Your Action Points (AP) will continuously drain and won’t regenerate. You’ll still be able to move at full speed, but actions like Sprinting or V.A.T.S. will become unavailable since they cost AP.

Eventually, if you pick up enough items to exceed double your Carry Weight, then your movement speed will be reduced to a walk, in addition to draining your AP. Getting around becomes difficult and you’ll be vulnerable to any enemy trying to chase you.

The fastest way to reduce your inventory weight is to drop items.

To drop an item, enter the Pip-Boy and navigate to the Items tab, highlight the items you wish to drop, and do so.

Items you drop will appear in the world inside a paper bag. Other players can loot this bag, and the bag will disappear over time or when you log out.

The other way to reduce inventory weight is to scrap junk or unwanted items into components (at a workbench), which usually results in an overall weight reduction. If you want to increase your Carry Weight or reduce the weight of items:

• Choose Strength when you level up to increase your total Carry Weight.
• Wear a suit of Power Armor. The suit will increase your Strength as long as you’re in it.
• Equip perks like Thru-Hiker or Packin’ Light to reduce the weight of certain items.
• Consume items that temporarily raise Strength, like Buffout.
• Store excess items in a secure container, like your Stash Box.