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I've been playing survival mode and it frustrates me to no end that I can't keep an eye on how thirsty, hungry, or tired I am. There is no way to know just how bad off my needs are until I am so deficient in one of those areas that I start taking penalties.

There's nothing like running a long way with intent to clear out a point of interest for a quest only to arrive and suddenly get drowsy because I haven't slept in a real bed for an arbitrary number of hours (and then there's no way to fix the problem because the only thing available nearby is a dirty mattress on the floor).

So, I wonder: Will drinking before you get parched, eating before you get peckish, and sleeping before you get tired stave off the negative effects before they can occur? Will performing these actions reset the timer in the game code that counts down until the negative effects happen, or will performing these actions before they are "necessary" just waste the effort?

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  • It would be programatically insane to restrict health item benefits unless under only certain conditions. As in - it would be more work to specifically tell the code that drinking water only replenishes and resets status if it is in a certain state. Have you tried fully resting, eating and drinking before embarking on a quest of mass murder?
    – Kai Qing
    Commented Jun 19, 2017 at 23:47
  • @KaiQing You say that, but they did already go out of their way to make it so that food doesn't heal you or give you buffs if you eat it while hungry. So I wouldn't put it past them to code it so that needs can only be sated after they reach dangerous levels.
    – Unknown Zombie
    Commented Jun 19, 2017 at 23:53
  • Never noticed that I guess. Then maybe the insanity is a reality
    – Kai Qing
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 0:52
  • Actually, it is very noticeable with foods like Mutant Hound Chops. If you're hungry, you do not lose radiation. What I typically do is eat 5 Mut Fruits, then eat a mutant hound chop. This cancels out my radiation and gets me a regrow-able food source.
    – Nelson
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 11:09

1 Answer 1

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(this answer assumes that Bethesda didn't try and reinvent the wheel: that F4 survival mode is built off of what existed in NV, and my own personal experience)

The only thing tending to needs before they reach critical level does is keep your health bar at full utilization.

Yes, doing the other thing that keeps the first thing from happening, will keep that thing from happening.

There isn't a timer in the game code that counts down until the negative effects happen, it's a cumulative stat, specific numbers at which negative effects happen. The only timers involved are whatever the script says for e.g., every X minutes add Y to HUNGER.

And then e.g., at Z HUNGER, minus 1 from [stat] and so on.

You can test it yourself by having just a bit of [radiation poisoning] thirst, but before you're dehydrated, and then drink some water (dehydration doesn't cause incremental HP loss; radiation does). You'll see a gap between the green in the health bar and the red. That amount of HP is what you're missing out on while under an unnotified negative effect.

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  • The last paragraph in this answer doesn't make sense to me. It does not describe how thirst works in Fallout 4. There will be no gap in your health bar from being thirsty because being thirsty in Fallout 4 does not afect your health bar. You can't just describe how survival worked in New Vegas and apply it to F4 by thinking that Bethesda wouldn't reinvent the wheel, because they tend to do that a lot.
    – Unknown Zombie
    Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 17:56
  • @UnknownZombie - You're right. Dehydration doesn't cause heath loss; it's radiation.
    – Mazura
    Commented Aug 3, 2017 at 1:05

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