Fallout 4 Survival Mode Lands on PC Today in Beta Alongside New Patch

Following the launch of Fallout 4's Automatron expansion last week, Bethesda continues to update the RPG, today launching a beta version of Survival Mode on Steam. You can grab Survival Mode on Steam by opting in to the beta, instructions for which are available here.

In a blog post on Bethesda's website, the developer said its overarching goal for the new, ultra-challenging mode was to force players to make "interesting choices."

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"We did that by bringing more contrasting motivations to Fallout 4 using the type of circular systems you might find in a game like Dark Souls," Bethesda explained. "(By which we mean, two or more systems that push against each other.) This resulted in four major pillars for Survival Mode."

Survival Mode Four Major Pillars:

Descriptions written by Bethesda

• Strategy: Intensify decisions involving when to get into combat versus when to avoid it, and also make you think more about what gear to take into combat. Then back up those decisions with faster, more brutal fights.
• Exploration: Slow down the pace of the game and encourage players to explore the nooks and crannies of the world.
• Resource Management: Balance out items in the world that may be too easy to acquire or horde, giving players more to consider when planning their current loadout.
• Role Playing: Increase the realism of the world and the issues one might face there.

Here are some other key points for Fallout 4's Survival Mode:

• Quicksaving and "almost" all autosaves are disabled; you will instead need to find a bed and sleep for at least an hour to save the game.
• Fast travel is disabled
• You now deal more damage, but you also take more damage. Players can also further increase their damage with the new "Adrenaline" perk, Bethesda explained. Every five kills increases your Adrenaline rank, adding 5 percent each time for up to 50 percent damage at the max rank of 10.
• Combat is now "more strategic," as you will need to make use of block/parry to stay alive
• Threats (outside of those added by a Recon scope) will not display on your compass; additionally, the distance at which areas of interest will show up has been "significantly shorted."
• You will also need to take care of yourself, staying hyrdated, fed, and rested. Don't eat, drink, or sleep for a while and your health will deteriorate.
• Fatigue will affect your Action Points, meaning the more Fatigue you have, the less Action Points you'll have available for sprinting and using V.A.T.S.

Also in the blog post, Bethesda mentions that it's made changes to other Fallout 4 items, including bed types, for Survival Mode. In Survival Mode, the type of bed you're sleeping in will limit how long you can sleep, in turn affecting how much you can recover. The rarest form of beds are Real Beds, and if you find one, Bethesda recommends you make the structure around it your home base.

Survival Mode also introduces Illnesses that can affect players, as well as Antibiotics that can be crafted and found to help you feel better. Bethesda also confirmed that Stimpacks will no longer heal you in the way they did before. Overall, players will heal more slowly with Survival Mode.

These are just a sampling of the Fallout 4 Survival Mode changes. Be sure to read the full Bethesda blog post to get a full rundown of what to expect.

Survival Mode's beta lands today alongside a new patch, which also fixes some bugs.

Fallout 4 1.5 Survival Beta Patch Notes

New Features

New Survival difficulty

• Survival adds additional challenges including no fast travel, saving only when you sleep, increased lethality, diseases, fatigue, danger and more. Get detailed information on Bethesda.net.
• Characters set to Survival difficulty appear under their own Character Selection filter
• Survival difficulty characters are not backward compatible with the 1.4 version of Fallout 4. If you opt out of the Beta, do not use Survival character saved games.

Fixes

• General stability and performance improvements
• Fixed rare crash related to reloading a save that relies on Automatron
• Fixed issue with the robot workbench camera not moving properly immediately after canceling out of the menu
• Fixed issue with perks being repeatedly added when reloading a saved game while in robot workbench
• Fixed issue with Ada not properly traveling to an assigned settlement
• Robots can now be assigned as settlement vendors
• Fixed issue with "Appropriation" where blueprints would not appear properly if the container had already been looted prior to getting the quest
• In "Nuclear Option," entering the Institute using the targeting helmet on Power Armor no longer inadvertently causes the player to go into combat, and become stuck in the Institute
• Fixed distance check with Robotics Expert perk

Survival Mode is coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Fallout 4 in April. That's also when the game's next expansion, Wasteland Workshop, is due to arrive.