Hardcore Survival of the Commonwealth (HSC) is a mod that increases the difficulty of Survival Mode. Because of what it does, HSC also serves as the core foundation for this entire series of mods, which you can read more about at the bottom of this page. All the other mods in the series should aim to be designed and balanced with HSC and its systems in mind. This also means that HSC does not contain every feature necessary for a full survival experience, and the more specific features will be available in their respective mods.


Description

HSC primarily focuses on making food, water and sleep more essential to the player's ability to function properly, as well as introducing massive reductions to carry weight and the ability to improve it. There are also reductions to the player's ability to heal, visit a doctor, and increase weapon damage through perks. An average character will be able to carry a rifle, a pistol and perhaps a knife – along with a bit of armor and some supplies. But that's about it. Gone are the days of effortlessly lugging around a whole arsenal of weapons and ammunition, a hospital's worth of medicine and an entire garbage dump of junk.


Primary Needs

Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats – especially Strength, Endurance, and Charisma, will see additional and more severe reductions if you don't look after your needs to eat, drink and sleep. Furthermore, being hungry or thirsty enough will, just like with being tired, render you unable to sprint. And if you still negate your needs, you will eventually not even be able to run. These progressive conditions will also affect you at a much earlier stage with HSC than they would in the vanilla game. For the sake of immersion and quality, a few status messages have been edited slightly, to fit the situation regardless of which need triggered it.

The periodic damage itself, which you receive at the most extreme stages of hunger and thirst, has been increased significantly. HSC also removes the safety limit that existed in the vanilla game, which made it impossible to actually lose all your Health and die from periodic damage alone. Now however, extreme hunger or thirst can kill you if you ignore your needs for long enough.

Purified water is a central aspect of the survival experience, but despite being mostly healthy and posing no risk of inflicting a disease, it does still contain a tiny amount of radiation. When purifying water at a Cooking Station, you need Rad-X as an ingredient along with the dirty water. This feature is expanded upon much further if you also have Falltoxin and its Food Add-on installed, where more or less all consumables in the game will abide by similar rules as the water in HSC does.

Just before eating, you are able to wash your hands with soap and water in a sink (or similar), which will reduce the amount of radiation on most foods before consumption. In order for this to work, the sink has to contain clean water, and the soap must be applied first. If you apply soap but then don't actually wash it off with water afterwards, your hands will be too slippery, which temporarily reduces your ability to pick locks and use melee weapons. You are for obvious reasons unable to wash your hands while wearing Power Armor.


Carry Weight

Carry weight for the player has been reduced significantly. Now the player starts with a base carry weight of 30, with each level in Strength increasing it by 2. When picking the Strong Back perk, the player gains +10 to carry weight at rank 1, and +15 to carry weight at rank 2. The Lone Wanderer perk now provides the player with +5 to carry weight at rank 1, and +10 to carry weight at rank 2.

All in all, this means that a player with a Strength of 1 and no perks will have a carry weight of 32. A player with a Strength of 10, rank 2 in Strong Back and rank 2 in Lone Wanderer will have a carry weight of 75. It may seem very low compared to the vanilla game, but remember; this is the amount of stuff your character actually is able to carry while running around unhindered without any trouble. On the other hand, you should not be too intimidated by the number 30 being used either – that is the minimum, not the average.

If you do overencumber yourself, the penalties will also be much more severe than in the vanilla game, and your ability to perform in both combat and dialogue will suffer greatly. Additionally, just as with hunger and thirst, the periodic damage from being overencumbered has been increased, although not to the same extent. However, since it too had its safety limit removed, it is possible to die from being overencumbered for an extensive period of time. If you are wearing Power Armor, you will not take any periodic damage from being overencumbered.

The Strong Back perk does provide additional benefits though, with the higher ranks being used to negate many of the new penalties, as well as providing some new advantages from being overencumbered.

Strong Back

Rank 1 - What are you, part pack mule? Gain +10 to carry weight.
Rank 2 - You now have +15 to carry weight. When overencumbered, your Perception is no longer reduced.
Rank 3 - When overencumbered, your Endurance is no longer reduced, and you can use Action Points to run.
Rank 4 - When overencumbered, you gain +30 Damage Resistance, and it no longer damages your Health or your limbs. If applicable, you can also fast travel while you're overencumbered.
Rank 5 - When overencumbered, melee attacks become more powerful and reward you with more XP. Running also costs 50% less Action Points.


Health and Status

The effectiveness of Stimpaks and RadAway has been drastically reduced compared to the vanilla game. Their initial effect is now to restore 10% of their respective conditions, and they work much more slowly compared to before. The Medic perk will now increase their magnitude by 10% for each rank, which means that by rank 4, Stimpaks will restore 50% of lost Health, and RadAway will remove 50% of radiation. In addition to that, they now come with many more penalties when consumed, with new types of fatigue affecting both combat, dialogue and general survival. Furthermore, Stimpaks are now heavier, with a weight of 0.5, which means you won't be able to bring dozens of them wherever you go.

The Chem Resistant perk and Adamantium Skeleton perk have both received some changes to prevent them from allowing gameplay mechanics to be completely negated. Instead of providing the player with a way to eventually build up a complete immunity, each rank, including the final one, simply increases one's resistance against the respective conditions.

When visiting a doctor, the cost for all services has been increased by a lot compared to the vanilla game. This effectively means that you can choose between the cheaper but more painful process of using medicine yourself, or the painless but expensive treatment at the doctor. Prior to this change, this option was a hugely imbalanced part of the game, allowing the player to essentially bypass a lot of the mechanics meant to make Survival Mode and HSC harder. Prices for the other services, for example facial surgery, have also been increased.

If you have the HSC Edition of SPI installed, the ability to regenerate Health with the Life Giver perk has been much more limited, being unlocked with the new rank 5, and working 80% slower compared to the vanilla game.


Weapons and Damage

The four main perks for ranged weaponry – Gunslinger, Rifleman, Commando and Heavy Gunner – have all received a major change: instead of increasing damage output, they will now instead increase the amount of Experience Points you receive. Each rank will add a 10% bonus to your gained Experience Points if you are using a weapon of the corresponding type. Aside from what they do, this feature should function according to the same rules as the increased damage did in the vanilla game. All the other features unlocked with these perks, for example improved hip fire accuracy, increased range, or armor penetration, will also continue to work as they did in the vanilla game.

The two main perks for melee combat – Iron First and Big Leagues – have actually received increased damage improvements for each rank, along with the new bonus system for Experience Points, which also has been increased. This means that melee combat is much more rewarding than before, as far as Experience Points go.

The Demolition Expert perk has not received any changes in HSC. This means that any bonus to explosive damage from this perk still will apply. For those weapons where both the Heavy Gunner perk and Demolition Expert perk were combined to increase the damage of a shot in the vanilla game, now only the latter perk will contribute to it. This was done in order to increase compatibility with WDI, but also because someone who knows enough about explosives (and can craft their own) realistically could make them more powerful as well.

The effects from Adrenaline or using Psycho will now only apply to unarmed and melee attacks, but not to ranged attacks.


Balancing

This mod is very much open to feedback and ideas for additional modifications and improvements to be made – as long as they are aiming to make the game more realistic, and are focused around Survival Mode.

This is probably self-explanatory, but do not download this mod unless you are looking to turn Fallout 4 into a realistic hardcore survival experience. If you prefer to play the game casually or more for the story, this mod is absolutely not suited for your gameplay preferences.

As of version 1.1, the "can't run" penalty has been moved from the Ravenous stage down to the Starving stage, in order to work better with Night Stalker.

As of version 2.0, the mod has gotten the new features related to healing, weapons and perks. The effects of Psycho will now only affect unarmed and melee attacks, just as the Adrenaline has done since version 1.0.

As of version 2.1, the cost for services has been drastically increased.

As of version 2.2, purified water still contains a tiny amount of radiation regardless of its source, and requires Rad-X for cooking.

As of version 2.3, the hand washing system has been implemented. To accommodate this mechanic, the "Soap" from the vanilla game was changed into the "Dried Soap", in order to let the former term be used consistently when referring to the new consumable item, which now is what goes under that name.

As of version 2.4, Stimpaks and RadAway will bring additional side effects when consumed.

As of version 2.5, the Strong Back perk has received multiple new features and benefits. In addition to that, Power Armor will also prevent periodic damage when overencumbered. Finally, this version introduces small improvements to the effectiveness of the hand washing system.


Installation

Using Vortex is the recommended method.

Due to user requests, any new update for any mod in this series, uploaded to the Nexus from August 14, 2021 and onward, should no longer follow the system where the same ESP file would be given a new name for each new version. Instead, new version names should be given to the ZIP file in which the other files are contained. For mods in the collection where one or more ESP files have a name that ends with a version number, they will be renamed back to their original names in their next update, and the plan is to not rename published ESP files after that point.


Requirements

This mod is intended to be played in Survival Mode. This mod requires the Far Harbor DLC.

It is recommended to start a new character when downloading or updating this mod, in order to ensure that the perks related to extra carry weight are applied properly.

If you install this mod on an older save, you might need to alter your Strength the first time, by using a consumable or anything similar. This should make sure that everything about your carry weight is updated and set appropriately. If you don't do this manually, you are almost guaranteed to have it happen automatically as soon as you get hungry, or are affected by any other similar feature. Nonetheless, it's still something worth being aware of.

If you install this mod on an older save, the former costs for all the various services may still be shown in the dialogue. This is just an issue with the text being displayed, and will not actually affect the gameplay – the new prices still apply. This relatively minor issue should be fully solved when you create a new character.

Using this mod alongside FallExD and Fallfall is particularly recommended for those wanting to take the survival experience even further.

In addition to the main HSC mod, HSC-SB is a settlement building mod, which focuses on the production of many things related to the increased needs. In other words, where HSC makes food and water more important to consume, HSC-SB makes food and water more difficult to produce and obtain.


Compatibility

HSC should be compatible with most mods, unless they make edits to any of the same assets.

HSC is not compatible with Night Stalker version 1.4 or older. If you are using Night Stalker, make sure you are at least using version 1.5 or newer.


Mod Collection

This mod is part of a larger collection of mods aiming to make Survival Mode more difficult and immersive. They come packaged as separate mods in order to allow the player to choose which they want or not, but using them all together should hopefully bring out the best and the most immersive survival experience possible. The mods come in three main categories:

Survival

The mods in this category are aiming to make the game significantly more difficult and immersive in every way they can.

• HSC
  The primary mod of the entire series, HSC is the foundation for an extremely challenging survival experience. This mod focuses on making food, water and sleep management much more essential, as well as making sure things such as carry weight, healing, medical services and damage scaling are far more realistic and challenging than ever before. All the other mods in this series are designed or updated according to the standards set by HSC. For anyone looking to make their survival experience harder and only were to download a single mod in this collection, this should be it.

• HSC-SB
  Where the main HSC mod made sure to make food, water and sleep more important, HSC-SB makes these things more difficult to obtain. Introducing massive challenges in what you are able to build, along with a system for using tools in the construction of more or less everything, settlement building should be far less of a convenient safe zone than it was before.

• Falltoxin
  This mod significantly increases the danger and potency of most types of poison in the game, both from wild creatures as well as the syringes you are able to use. Falltoxin also comes with an optional secondary set of mods known as the Food Add-on, which increases radiation in food, and introduces simple mechanics related to food poisoning and nutrition. These mechanics add a third layer to the food aspect, and are of course designed with HSC and HSC-SB in mind.

• FallMisc
  Enabling the player to craft a bunch of tools and other useful items, this mod adds a lot of convenience. Aside from essential items, many other mods in the series will be referencing FallMisc, rather than having each mod introducing its own set of craftable tools. Both HSC-SB and Falltoxin rely a lot on FallMisc for this purpose.

• WDI
  This mod increases the damage for a variety of weapons from the vanilla game. It also introduces a few new special mechanics for a few weapons, making them more unique than before. Additionally, WDI increases the durability of most turrets. All in all, most of the changes made by this mod will be useful both to you, your allies, and your enemies.

• PADI
  This mod increases the defensive capabilities of Power Armor, a few other types of armor, and gas masks. It also introduces a variety of new features related to Power Armor, making it more detailed and functional. All in all, most of the changes made by this mod will be useful both to you, your allies, and your enemies.

Environmental

The mods in this category are focusing on making various obstacles in the world more difficult to overcome.

• Fallfall
  This mod increases falling damage to a much more realistic level. This should encourage the player to navigate the world in a more careful manner. Not only does it make the world feel bigger, but it also adds a lot to the immersion when you actually have a reason to properly navigate the environments, rather than carelessly performing super dangerous jumps and stunts without as much as a scratch.

• Swimout
  This mod significantly increases the amount of radiation in the various bodies of water across the game. This should encourage the player to actually stay on land, use bridges to cross rivers, and avoid falling into the water.

• FallExD
  This mod increases incoming and outgoing damage for the player in Survival Mode. This makes the game's combat far more dangerous.

• Fallock
  This mod makes lockpicking significantly more difficult, and gives lockpicks some weight. All in all, this should encourage the player to be more careful when picking locks.

Perks

The mods in this category are focusing on improving the variety of features some perks can have, but they also exist as a way to prevent certain perks from completely undermining gameplay mechanics intended to make the game more challenging.

• SPI
  A mod that improves a bunch of perks that had too little or too weak usage throughout the game. This mod comes in three editions, where the two others could be considered for everyone, but the HSC Edition is particularly designed for being used alongside HSC.

• Night Stalker
  A mod that adds new functionality to the Night Person and Cannibal perks. Aside from being fun and allowing for a new playstyle, this mod introduces a small new penalty to cannibalism.

• TWG
  A mod that adds new functionality to the Ghoulish perk. Aside from being fun and allowing for a new playstyle, this mod introduces small penalties depending on where you are.

• RTT
  A mod that adds a few small mechanics to the Solar Powered and Rooted perks. Aside from adding a few new fun and convenient mechanics, the main point of this mod is to reduce the ability to heal radiation damage when in the sun. Being able to get rid of radiation that easily undermined a huge part of the mods with features related to radiation, such as HSC and Falltoxin.