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We’ve known about Bethesda’s plans to institute a Survival Mode (opens in new tab) in Fallout 4 (opens in new tab) for a little more than a month now, but the tough-as-nails option finally feels like it’s just around the corner. A beta is now available for the Steam version of the post-nuclear RPG, but Bethesda has some tips and details (opens in new tab) that anyone thinking about starting fresh in the Commonwealth will want to know.
For example, where you sleep matters as much as what you sleep on. With manual saves disabled in Survival Mode, you’ll need to cap off a day of adventuring with a power nap if you want to keep your progress and prevent exhaustion. However, the quality of bed changes how much you can rest, and therefore how much health you’ll regain from sleeping (though any kind of bed will work for purposes of saving your data). As Bethesda puts it:
“Finding a sleeping bag in the middle of a dungeon will feel great… finding a dirty mattress will feel even better… finding a real bed will be like winning the lottery. You know all those spots where you can use Workshop mode in the game? It’s time to start building beds.”
Beds are actually an excellent example of the four pillars Bethesda is using to craft Survival Mode. As listed on the company’s news post, the pillars are Strategy, Exploration, Resource Management, and Role Playing. Deciding when to enter combat and when to avoid it because of when you last saved is Strategy, desperately searching the wilderness for places to sleep is Exploration, using beds to regain health and keep from being exhausted is a type of Resource Management, and humans need sleep so making a virtual human adhere to the same principles fits with Role Playing.
Although there’s no official word on when Survival Mode will come to consoles, typically there’s a wait period of about a week. Hopefully all you Vault Dwellers can last until then.
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