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Through quest progression and exploring, I've run across unique, named raiders. For example, Gristle was encountered in Concord as part of the main/Minutemen quest. I've also run across a couple others, such as Tower Tom, and his terminal makes reference to another named raider and some info on other locations occupied by raiders.

  1. Is there a list of unique, named raiders and their location?
  2. Are these named raiders special in any way? Do they offer guaranteed/better loot than other equally-leveled raiders, or any bonus for taking them all out? Are they just named so we know who the "leader" of the respective location is? Or, are they just there for some additional info and backstory to raider relations in The Commonwealth?
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  • Only thing I have found so far is they are referenced in in-game materials, logs, notes and the like. I've not seen anything to indicate better loot or anything else really besides they have a name. Be nice to know if there is something more to them.
    – James
    Commented Dec 2, 2015 at 18:18
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    They tend to be higher level than their surrounding thugs as well. Pretty sure they're just there to act as a 'boss' for the dungeons in which they're found and to provide some extra lore. Commented Dec 2, 2015 at 18:31
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    Note that it's not just Raiders either, there's also named Super Mutants as well
    – Robotnik
    Commented Dec 2, 2015 at 21:59
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    In addition to acting as 'boss' enemies in various sections of the map, sometimes you'll also find additional data pertaining to the named enemies, like holotapes, keys named after them, or just passing references in various computer terminals. I noticed this particularly when encountering named 'Gunner' members (who aren't technically "raiders", but might as well be for most practical purposes).
    – aroth
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 6:03
  • @Robotnik Yes, I guess the question could've been framed as named enemies of any type, but the raiders seemed the most intriguing to me because of Tower Tom's terminal entries about his relationship with other raider parties, notably Red Tourette's. I haven't run into any named Super Mutants or Gunners yet, but I do recall running into a group of named feral ghouls a few places around the Commonwealth. There were about 5 or 6 of them, I remember a Mr. and Mrs. Parker among them...
    – king14nyr
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 15:02

1 Answer 1

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  1. The wiki you have linked to contains the most complete (English-language) list of unique named FO4 raiders online thus far. The Raiders category page and the Raiders article page both show a list of notable named raiders. Clicking on each raider's name brings you to a page showing the location of said raider. A few more named FO4 raiders appear on the Gamepedia Wiki's Raiders article page.

  2. The rest of the raider group doesn't appear to disperse or aggro when the leader is killed. The named raiders do seem to be a bit stronger than your standard raider, often taking a number of headshots or an otherwise extended firefight/brawl to kill. In addition to being sometimes involved with quests, they also occasionally have keys, passwords, or rare weapons and armor on their person. It's usually worth it to take them down if you have the patience.

As to their importance, one might also ask a different question; why don't most of the other raiders have names? The regular raiders differ little in appearance, equipment, and tactics. Giving them all names might dissuade gamers of any skill level from even attacking the raiders, perhaps judging them all to be important somehow. Meanwhile, players encountering difficulty with a certain section of the game may be able to use the named raider as a descriptive landmark. If all raiders had names, the leader's name would get lost in the crowd. As it is, the leader stands out from the crowd and this lets the player infer that this raider is not to be taken lightly.

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    Ah, yes. I got caught up in the details again. Answering the questions for bullet points 1 and 2 distracted me from the bigger question...
    – Ayelis
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 0:00
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    @DCShannon To be fair though we as players can't answer questions of why something is the way it is in a game. We can answer something like if there is an importance to named enemies, but we can't say why they are named without saying "because the devs made it that way". Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 0:28
  • @VanBuzzKill which is exactly why one of our Off topic RTC is "This question is about game development, which we don't do here."
    – Dallium
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 0:30
  • @VanBuzzKill That's completely fair, but that's a problem with the question. Luckily, you appear to have fixed that, and now everything's good. +1
    – DCShannon
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 0:41
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    @DCShannon Sorry for that, when writing the question and landing on the original title, I wasn't thinking that "devs did that for their own reasons, we don't know" was a potential answer. I honestly thought there had to be a bigger reason than what I'd run across so far for the named raiders. The edit to the title makes it much more answerable without leading it to that unknown 'dev only' knowledge base. Thanks all!
    – king14nyr
    Commented Dec 3, 2015 at 14:59

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