Fallout 4: Your Pip-Boy and You

The Vault-Tec advantage

There are a few constants that run the entirety of the Fallout series; radroaches, raiders, super mutants, and the perk system are the foundations of the franchise at this point. But another constant throughout the wasteland is the infamous and all-knowing Vault-Tec. And while you can avoid entering Vaults or interacting with Vault-Tec technology as much as you want, you can’t escape from your Pip-Boy.

Your Pip-Boy is your high-tech, sci-fi advantage over your wasteland counterparts. It gives you tons of information about your quest, location, and inventory. It’s one step down from an AI companion following your every step.

As you journey through Fallout 4, you will use your Pip-Boy frequently. Like, extremely frequently. It behooves you to familiarize yourself with its ins and outs, hidden tabs, and ill-explained secrets.

Fallout 4 is notorious for not telling players the finer details of how to survive in the wasteland. And we found that glaringly obvious when it came to using our Pip-Boy. So allow us to demystify any confusion around your wasteland smartwatch.

Pip-Boy status screen

The first screen you’ll often pull up when using your Pip-Boy, the status tab, shows your character’s status and then some. You can see your health, armor, resistance ratings, action points, and level with your current experience. Since your body parts can be injured separately in Fallout, each limb has a health bar next to it. If you’re ever injured–your arms are broken, your head is wounded–you can go to this screen to see the damage in detail.

The pill in the upright corner means our character was currently under the influence of drugs. If you’re addicted to a chem, strung out, or presently raging on psycho, your status screen will show it.

Special

The first subtab under the status tab, special, shows your character’s stats and specs. SPECIAL stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, and under this tab, you can see how many points you have in each. Since numerous items around the wasteland can either enhance or subtract from your special points, you may want to double-check every so often.

Perks

Every time you level up, you can choose to boost your standard special traits or purchase a perk. Every perk you’ve accumulated is listed here. It’s a pretty small list initially, but as you help companions, find rare items, and complete quests, you’ll earn unique perks.

Pip-Boy inventory screen

This is where we spent the most time during our gameplay. We were constantly switching around to the best weapon for the job at hand, changing outfits whenever radiation got too intense and scarfing down purified water when our health reached critical. Most subtabs under inventory can be filtered by weight, damage, armor rating, etc. It saves a lot of time when you’re looking for something specific but can’t remember its name. Some subtabs even have unique shortcuts.

Weapons

Behold your beautiful arsenal of deadly weapons. Just don’t carry too many, or you won’t be able to use any of them. This tab will show you every weapon you currently have. You can assign favorites to a quick-select menu on this screen.

Apparel

Fashion. You’re dead without it. Change armor and underclothes, or just put on a nice dress. Apparel is where you’ll change your character’s appearance and armor.

Aid

Stimpaks, purified water, and Rad-X are all found under this tab. Pick up some crispy squirrel bits you want to chow down on. It’s listed under Aid. Same with chems that make you superhuman. You can also select favorite items from this menu to use in a quick-select menu.

Misc

This tab mostly holds quest items. Letters, notes, comics, technical documents–stuff like that. We found we couldn’t get rid of 90% of our Misc tab items since Fallout doesn’t let you remove quest items from your inventory once picked up.

Junk

We don’t know why this is called Junk; it holds some of the most valuable items you’ll find in the wasteland. All crafting components are listed here. You can even switch the view to look at the components instead of the item they break down from. 

Mods

Junk holds crafting items for your settlement, but Mods hold crafting items for your weapons and armor. Extended mags, long barrels, and enameled armor add-ons will be listed here. You’ll want to clear this tab out often, as all those mods will weigh you down eventually.

Ammo

Got missiles? You’ll find them here. 10 mm? .308? Plasma rounds? You’ll find every kind of ammunition possible here.

Pip-Boy data screen

Quests

You will mostly pull up the data tab when you want to switch quests or ensure you’re on the right one. Each quest is listed in no particular order, but at the bottom is a list of more minor side quests for you to browse. If you keep the quest highlighted till the animation is over, you’ll get a brief description of the quest’s details. 

Workshops

But quests aren’t the only thing listed under this tab. Workshops hold a list of all settlements you’ve earned friendships with during your exploits. We thought this tab would be useless for us, but after dumping many hours into our story, we were allied with far more settlements than we realized. This was helpful for us to craft some weapon mods on the fly or seek shelter in the middle of a quest.

Stats

These are your actual stats for your current save file. Want to know how many people you’ve killed? Quests you’ve completed? Bullets fired? It’s all here. Your entire depressing journey is spelled out in depressing numbers.

Map

Your map will look barren and empty at the beginning of your journey. However, after you’ve spent a week traipsing around the wasteland, you’ll have so many locations discovered they’ll overlap. The map is excellent, and it’s how you’ll fast travel around the world. It will also show you which locations you’ve cleared with the [CLEARED] indicator.

If you’re indoors and completely turned around, you can switch to local map view and see the immediate area in much closer detail. We found it to be more confusing than helpful, but you may differ.

Pip-Boy radio screen

The radio tab was always our least used tab on our Pip-Boy. We sure love to listen to Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries while mowing down raiders, but we found little use for it aside from that. We did enjoy that Fallout found clever ways to incorporate the radio into a few quests. Sometimes you need to locate a radio beacon, and the only way to do it is to listen for beeps on your radio that increase the closer you get. 

Sometimes you’ll hear a distress signal through your radio. But our favorite was the Silver Shroud quest line, where your character embodies the Silver Shroud vigilante and listens to the radio for their next objective/target.

Once you’ve befriended several settlements, you can switch back and forth between their radio stations. Some play classical music, some play oldies, and some have this weird talk show host who mentions your adventures every so often.

Bonus Tips

1. You level up your character and select perks by entering your Pip-Boy screen and pressing T on your keyboard (respective button on your respective console.) One of the most common complaints in Fallout 4 is this screen, which hides a lot of perks from the player and shows no indicators they exist. On this screen, roll your mouse down (or your thumbstick) to see the rest of the perk screen. You’re welcome.
2. If you hold down the button that brings up your Pip-Boy (tab on PC), you will turn on a light. Very helpful for dark dungeons and for shutting up your companions when they keep complaining about the darkness.
3. You can change the color of your Pip-Boy screen and the light it produces on the settings screen. Play around until you find a color you enjoy. We liked the original green, but this weird, sickly yellow looked sharper.
4. On PC, you can hit I to jump straight to inventory. J for data, M for the map, and O for radio.

Conclusion

Fallout 4 is a game that looks to overwhelm its players with content and quality. There is a whole world out there for players to explore, encounter, and conquer, and the only way they will succeed is if they master their Pip-Boy.