13 Fallout 4 tips for new and returning players

polygon.com:

The wasteland can be a hard place to survive, and the Commonwealth in particular is full of dangers.

This is a flowery way of saying Fallout 4 is hard, and it's going to kill you a lot if you're not careful. And also even if you're careful. With that in mind, we thought we'd give you some basic, broadly applicable tips to make your life a little easier out there, whether you're new to Bethesda's open-world games, new to Fallout after watching the Prime TV show, or haven’t touched Fallout 4 since it’s initial PS4 and Xbox One release.

Fallout 4 communicates in a lot of ways, but its clearest voice is always death. Death can mean a lot of things in Fallout 4, but if you die and lose more than a few minutes worth of progress, what the game is telling you is to save more often. You can increase the frequency of your autosave in the options menu, which is great, but remember that this setting only applies when you go in and out of your Pip-Boy. But good news! Quicksaving is available in the pause menu and is incredibly fast.

Also, maintain a lot of save files. At launch, our friend Chris Plante wrote about the great time he was having in Fallout 4 until he found himself stuck in an elevator after multiple in-game glitches. This is awful, and ideally it won't happen. If it does, the best way to fix it is to save often, and maintain staggered saves. This means you should select «create new save» in the save screen. This could be the difference between losing 20 minutes or losing everything.

There are perks for different kinds of weapons that give them better damage and effectiveness, so it doesn't hurt to pick one based around the best weapon you find early. The 10 mm pistol is useful for a long time, so points in pistols early can't hurt.

If you get into trouble, or see an enemy you don't think you can kill, use Fallout 4's new sprint function to get the hell out of there. And don't be cute and use VATS to try to kill it with a critical hit — VATS and sprint use the same