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About this mod
A complete de-levelling and overhaul of the game's NPCs, enemies, equipment, and the player themselves. Everything is deadly, the wasteland is harsh, and levels are no longer a thing. Bye-bye to 80's RPG game design.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
If you liked my Damage Overhaul for Fallout: New Vegas, here is the same thing but for Fallout 4. Not one of the 180 people that played it? Well, here's what to expect!
The changes are very significant, and they all culminate in making the wasteland (including Nuka World and Far Harbour) into very deadly places, that require you to think every step of the way. You will no longer be able to just charge at a group of raiders and mindlessly slaughter them, with you taking little damage from their dynamite, 9mm pistols, and machetes. You might be able to take on two at once, but three or more? Unless you have a missile launcher or have an explosives-focused build, you're dead.
The changes are very significant, and touch pretty much every aspect of the game. The Wasteland is now deadly, but so are you, and you'll have to act like it. No charging into Lexington as you shrug off bullets that do 1% of your health, against raiders that are armed with itty-bitty pea-shooters and have 10HP vs your 150 at level 1.
In fact, you're not level 1. And neither is anyone else. The player is capped to level 50, and reaches that level upon leaving the vault. But it's not just you, *ALL* human NPCs are level 50. And they have the same stat distribution as you. What does this mean? Well!
Bloatflies? Scary!
Raiders? Scarier!
Wild dogs? Scary!
Gunners? Very scary!
Feral ghouls? Scary!
Super mutants? Really scary!
Radstags? Believe it or not, scary!
Deathclaws? !!!!!!REALLY SCARY!!!!!!
The following parts of the game are completely overhauled:
Weapon Damage
Every weapon is made viable, with very few exceptions where they are just joke weapons (i.e, rolling pins). The weakest pistol in the game, the pipe pistol, deals 38 damage. The Gauss Rifle deals 73 damage. So we have a range of 38-73 from weakest-strongest single shot weapons. In vanilla, the damage range is somewhere between 13-110, with the weaker weapons being rendered completely useless outside Sanctuary Hills.
Which is awful. The vanilla game is based around the same horrible levelling design as World of Warcraft, which is atrocious and bad.
Those days are over.
The lower tier weapons are now viable, but the higher tier weapons still retain their prestige; sure, the gauss rifle will only do 92% more damage over a crummy 9mm pistol, but that comes along with much better range and requiring less ammo to kill an enemy. You're not going to be able to afford much, what with how dangerous it is to go in guns blazing.
Armour Resistances
The armour in the game is now no longer about outright upgrades. But which type of armour is best suited for the job. And while synthetic armour looks nice early game, it falls off late game. And it's expensive, doesn't have any alternative upgrade paths, and none of the useful accessories. That being said, it's very light which counts for something.
Here are the base stats for the torso chest pieces without any upgrades, and then with:
Leather - 21 AR, 12ER, 4RR
Leather (heavy, upgraded) - 37 AR, 48 ER, 4 RR
Raider - 29 AR, 2 ER, 8 RR
Raider (heavy, upgraded) - 47 AR, 27 ER, 8 RR
Metal - 34 AR, 2 ER, 8 RR
Metal (heavy, upgraded) - 52 AR, 30 ER, 8 RR
Combat - 27 AR, 6 ER, 3 RR
Combat (heavy, upgraded) - 44 AR, 33 ER, 3 RR
Synth - 33AR, 16ER, 8RR
Synth (heavy, upgraded) - 45AR, 49ER, 8RR
Power armour's resistances are unchanged, but with much higher health for the armour pieces. For example, Raider T45's Chest Piece has gone from 200 health, to 4000. This sounds like a lot, but you'll not be taking hits from little pistol pea shooters that do 8 damage a pop. If you want to survive grenades, death claws, packs of mobs? You're gonna need your power armour.
All outfits and DLC armour pieces are a mix of these values; the more metal the model appears to have, the more its stats trend towards metal armour. Same for leather, rusted metal, etc. Full outfits are treated the same way; if it looks like some slacks and a vest, it's gonna have no resistances. If it looks like a full on raider knight, it'll have those resistances (e.g, Spiked Armor).
Why the mixed resistances? With damage threshold not having been added by Bethesda, an alternate way of adding diversity to armours is making some armours better at some damage types, and worse at others.
With DirectHit, body parts are only protected by the DR of the equipment on that part of the body. Which works perfectly with this mod. Highly recommend it!
NPCs
Like all Bethesda games before it, Fallout 4's NPCs (both creatures and human NPCs) have a very broad level range, which is unfortunately directly linked to the level-gated areas you find them in. Not only that, just by virtue of your character's level increasing, lower tier enemies are made completely useless. A pack of vicious dogs is very threatening at level 3, but at level 30, they're an utter joke that pose no threat, even with trash armour equipped.
That has been completely changed. A creature's threat (level, stats, health, damage output, damage resistance) is determined by the design of the creature, and the tactics they employ. Bloatflies, for instance, had a moderate increase to their stats. On their own, they are still pretty weak, but when you encounter a swarm of them, sure you won't be slain unless you're a nudist paraplegic with no weapon, but you will lose enough health to warrant a stimpack or two.
Enemies aren't the only NPCs that have been re-balanced, either. Human NPCs, whether they be Gunners, BoS soldiers, or synths, are all level 50, just like the player. Also, in vanilla, most of the human NPCs have less than half as much health as the player would at the same level. Ever wondered why those Lexington raiders were so easy to kill? Not only did their armour have trash stats, they had at least half the player's health.
The changes to human characters have drastically changed how they are to be approached by the player. Those lone raiders in a shack, that suddenly thinks you look tasty? They're now a genuine threat that aren't to be taken lightly, just like how they're represented in the game world. You don't live long in the Wasteland without being a threat.
Character Levels & Damage Scaling
Enemies and gear have been balanced with it being kept in mind that the DLC has already been released. We're not getting any more, and I've changed the game in accordance to a fixed player level of 50. So now, rather than your character's combat prowess being almost entirely dependent on having a high level counter & 10 in every stat & every perk, it's almost entirely gear. The damage difference, with the same weapon, from having 1 in the weapon's damage stat, to 100, has been reduced to 30%. Your combat stats do make a significant difference, but they don't make useless weapons decent, nor do they turn powerful weapons into WMD's.
Levelling has also been removed from the game. As soon as you leave the vault, you are granted all 50 levels, with no more exp being collectable. Your build now matters. There is no power creep. There are no Gary Stu and Mary Sue builds. You can be a jack of all trades, but you will be a master of none. You can be a very good scientist with great nerditude in medicine and making stuff, but you will not be a hot-shot with a gun nor an expert warrior with a machete.
Difficulty has also been revamped. Harder settings increase the damage done to you, but also done by you. And to the same extent. In other words, all damage is increased. And it goes in reverse. Easy and Very Easy reduce damage done & damage taken.
New values:
Very Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.50, Player Damage Dealt * 0.50
Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.75, Player Damage Dealt * 0.75
Normal = Player Damage Received * 1.00, Player Damage Dealt * 1.00
Hard = Player Damage Received * 1.50, Player Damage Dealt * 1.50
Very Hard = Player Damage Received * 2.00, Player Damage Dealt * 2.00
Survival = Same as Very Hard
Vanilla values:
Very Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.50, Player Damage Dealt * 2.00
Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.75, Player Damage Dealt * 1.50
Normal = Player Damage Received * 1.00, Player Damage Dealt * 1.00
Hard = Player Damage Received * 1.50, Player Damage Dealt * 0.75
Very Hard = Player Damage Received * 2.00, Player Damage Dealt * 0.50
Survival = Same as Very Hard
These are the default values for my mod, but you can adjust them however you prefer with the new MCM.
Perks
The only change to perks, is that they now have no level requirement. Stat requirements remain. And remember, you only get 50 points!
Levelled Lists
In vanilla, you will only see certain variants of enemies at specific levels. You will only find the high tier, heavily armed soldiers near the borders of the map, and will hardly find any of the enemies you found earlier in the game. This has been completely overhauled. You will now find all enemy variants from the very beginning, and they have all been balanced to be slight increments over each other.
With the base mob being deadly. The best variant is a bit more deadly.
The same thing has been applied to item levelled lists; there is no longer any level gating on items. It's gonna be *wild* out there.
---
I have also included a tool I made in FreePascal which allows you to see the stats certain armour pieces have; torso/limb, leather/metal/raider/combat/synth, light/medium/heavy, and upgrades 0-4 (some go up to 5). This is useful for mod authors and people porting modded armours to fit in with the overhaul.
And if you notice any issues, please report them here so I can take a look. I burnt out repeatedly when making this mod, as I tested every change I made to the balance. Doing all the DLCs was a nightmare.
The changes are very significant, and they all culminate in making the wasteland (including Nuka World and Far Harbour) into very deadly places, that require you to think every step of the way. You will no longer be able to just charge at a group of raiders and mindlessly slaughter them, with you taking little damage from their dynamite, 9mm pistols, and machetes. You might be able to take on two at once, but three or more? Unless you have a missile launcher or have an explosives-focused build, you're dead.
The changes are very significant, and touch pretty much every aspect of the game. The Wasteland is now deadly, but so are you, and you'll have to act like it. No charging into Lexington as you shrug off bullets that do 1% of your health, against raiders that are armed with itty-bitty pea-shooters and have 10HP vs your 150 at level 1.
In fact, you're not level 1. And neither is anyone else. The player is capped to level 50, and reaches that level upon leaving the vault. But it's not just you, *ALL* human NPCs are level 50. And they have the same stat distribution as you. What does this mean? Well!
Bloatflies? Scary!
Raiders? Scarier!
Wild dogs? Scary!
Gunners? Very scary!
Feral ghouls? Scary!
Super mutants? Really scary!
Radstags? Believe it or not, scary!
Deathclaws? !!!!!!REALLY SCARY!!!!!!
The following parts of the game are completely overhauled:
Weapon Damage
Every weapon is made viable, with very few exceptions where they are just joke weapons (i.e, rolling pins). The weakest pistol in the game, the pipe pistol, deals 38 damage. The Gauss Rifle deals 73 damage. So we have a range of 38-73 from weakest-strongest single shot weapons. In vanilla, the damage range is somewhere between 13-110, with the weaker weapons being rendered completely useless outside Sanctuary Hills.
Which is awful. The vanilla game is based around the same horrible levelling design as World of Warcraft, which is atrocious and bad.
Those days are over.
The lower tier weapons are now viable, but the higher tier weapons still retain their prestige; sure, the gauss rifle will only do 92% more damage over a crummy 9mm pistol, but that comes along with much better range and requiring less ammo to kill an enemy. You're not going to be able to afford much, what with how dangerous it is to go in guns blazing.
Armour Resistances
The armour in the game is now no longer about outright upgrades. But which type of armour is best suited for the job. And while synthetic armour looks nice early game, it falls off late game. And it's expensive, doesn't have any alternative upgrade paths, and none of the useful accessories. That being said, it's very light which counts for something.
Here are the base stats for the torso chest pieces without any upgrades, and then with:
Leather - 21 AR, 12ER, 4RR
Leather (heavy, upgraded) - 37 AR, 48 ER, 4 RR
Raider - 29 AR, 2 ER, 8 RR
Raider (heavy, upgraded) - 47 AR, 27 ER, 8 RR
Metal - 34 AR, 2 ER, 8 RR
Metal (heavy, upgraded) - 52 AR, 30 ER, 8 RR
Combat - 27 AR, 6 ER, 3 RR
Combat (heavy, upgraded) - 44 AR, 33 ER, 3 RR
Synth - 33AR, 16ER, 8RR
Synth (heavy, upgraded) - 45AR, 49ER, 8RR
Power armour's resistances are unchanged, but with much higher health for the armour pieces. For example, Raider T45's Chest Piece has gone from 200 health, to 4000. This sounds like a lot, but you'll not be taking hits from little pistol pea shooters that do 8 damage a pop. If you want to survive grenades, death claws, packs of mobs? You're gonna need your power armour.
All outfits and DLC armour pieces are a mix of these values; the more metal the model appears to have, the more its stats trend towards metal armour. Same for leather, rusted metal, etc. Full outfits are treated the same way; if it looks like some slacks and a vest, it's gonna have no resistances. If it looks like a full on raider knight, it'll have those resistances (e.g, Spiked Armor).
Why the mixed resistances? With damage threshold not having been added by Bethesda, an alternate way of adding diversity to armours is making some armours better at some damage types, and worse at others.
With DirectHit, body parts are only protected by the DR of the equipment on that part of the body. Which works perfectly with this mod. Highly recommend it!
NPCs
Like all Bethesda games before it, Fallout 4's NPCs (both creatures and human NPCs) have a very broad level range, which is unfortunately directly linked to the level-gated areas you find them in. Not only that, just by virtue of your character's level increasing, lower tier enemies are made completely useless. A pack of vicious dogs is very threatening at level 3, but at level 30, they're an utter joke that pose no threat, even with trash armour equipped.
That has been completely changed. A creature's threat (level, stats, health, damage output, damage resistance) is determined by the design of the creature, and the tactics they employ. Bloatflies, for instance, had a moderate increase to their stats. On their own, they are still pretty weak, but when you encounter a swarm of them, sure you won't be slain unless you're a nudist paraplegic with no weapon, but you will lose enough health to warrant a stimpack or two.
Enemies aren't the only NPCs that have been re-balanced, either. Human NPCs, whether they be Gunners, BoS soldiers, or synths, are all level 50, just like the player. Also, in vanilla, most of the human NPCs have less than half as much health as the player would at the same level. Ever wondered why those Lexington raiders were so easy to kill? Not only did their armour have trash stats, they had at least half the player's health.
The changes to human characters have drastically changed how they are to be approached by the player. Those lone raiders in a shack, that suddenly thinks you look tasty? They're now a genuine threat that aren't to be taken lightly, just like how they're represented in the game world. You don't live long in the Wasteland without being a threat.
Character Levels & Damage Scaling
Enemies and gear have been balanced with it being kept in mind that the DLC has already been released. We're not getting any more, and I've changed the game in accordance to a fixed player level of 50. So now, rather than your character's combat prowess being almost entirely dependent on having a high level counter & 10 in every stat & every perk, it's almost entirely gear. The damage difference, with the same weapon, from having 1 in the weapon's damage stat, to 100, has been reduced to 30%. Your combat stats do make a significant difference, but they don't make useless weapons decent, nor do they turn powerful weapons into WMD's.
Levelling has also been removed from the game. As soon as you leave the vault, you are granted all 50 levels, with no more exp being collectable. Your build now matters. There is no power creep. There are no Gary Stu and Mary Sue builds. You can be a jack of all trades, but you will be a master of none. You can be a very good scientist with great nerditude in medicine and making stuff, but you will not be a hot-shot with a gun nor an expert warrior with a machete.
Difficulty has also been revamped. Harder settings increase the damage done to you, but also done by you. And to the same extent. In other words, all damage is increased. And it goes in reverse. Easy and Very Easy reduce damage done & damage taken.
New values:
Very Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.50, Player Damage Dealt * 0.50
Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.75, Player Damage Dealt * 0.75
Normal = Player Damage Received * 1.00, Player Damage Dealt * 1.00
Hard = Player Damage Received * 1.50, Player Damage Dealt * 1.50
Very Hard = Player Damage Received * 2.00, Player Damage Dealt * 2.00
Survival = Same as Very Hard
Vanilla values:
Very Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.50, Player Damage Dealt * 2.00
Easy = Player Damage Received * 0.75, Player Damage Dealt * 1.50
Normal = Player Damage Received * 1.00, Player Damage Dealt * 1.00
Hard = Player Damage Received * 1.50, Player Damage Dealt * 0.75
Very Hard = Player Damage Received * 2.00, Player Damage Dealt * 0.50
Survival = Same as Very Hard
These are the default values for my mod, but you can adjust them however you prefer with the new MCM.
Perks
The only change to perks, is that they now have no level requirement. Stat requirements remain. And remember, you only get 50 points!
Levelled Lists
In vanilla, you will only see certain variants of enemies at specific levels. You will only find the high tier, heavily armed soldiers near the borders of the map, and will hardly find any of the enemies you found earlier in the game. This has been completely overhauled. You will now find all enemy variants from the very beginning, and they have all been balanced to be slight increments over each other.
With the base mob being deadly. The best variant is a bit more deadly.
The same thing has been applied to item levelled lists; there is no longer any level gating on items. It's gonna be *wild* out there.
---
I have also included a tool I made in FreePascal which allows you to see the stats certain armour pieces have; torso/limb, leather/metal/raider/combat/synth, light/medium/heavy, and upgrades 0-4 (some go up to 5). This is useful for mod authors and people porting modded armours to fit in with the overhaul.
And if you notice any issues, please report them here so I can take a look. I burnt out repeatedly when making this mod, as I tested every change I made to the balance. Doing all the DLCs was a nightmare.