Wandering around Fallout 4’s world will have you coming face-to-face with some pretty nasty enemies. Therefore, you’re gonna need quite a bit of ammo to defeat any folks, robots, or creatures that try and step in your way. Ammo can be quite sparse during your time with Fallout 4, but with the help of this guide, you’ll never be left in want of a bullet again.
Loot Your Enemies
It may seem like common sense to go and loot every fallen enemy’s body once the gunfire has come to an end, but sometimes the idea of spending a good few minutes running from body to body can be quite tedious. If you’re struggling to find ammo, looting your enemies is one of the easiest ways to come across a couple extra bullets. Seven or eight bullets may not seem much at the time, but grab this amount over 6 bodies and you’ve got a good couple clips of ammo for the next firefight you jump into.
Take the time to check your enemy’s corpses, it’s the easiest way to solve your ammo woes.
Pick Out the Best Traders
The wasteland is full of traders, whether they have set up shop in a city or a diner, or constantly travel the world with their Brahmin caravans, there are plenty of opportunities to trade. On your travels, you’ll come across some traders who have a lot more ammo to sell than others. Trudy, for example, at the Drumlin Diner just to the west of the Starlight Drive-In, is one of the best vendors to grab ammo early on in the game.
Make sure you keep a note of the vendors you stumble upon who have a ton of ammo so you can revisit them in the future. It’ll save you from wandering around the vendors of Diamond City, who tend to lack substantial quantities of ammo.
Oh also, check the inhabitants at your settlements. A lot of them are carrying items that you can take for free, and a load of them have a good few bullets worth pinching before you head off on your next quest.
Common Ammo Locations
If you’re still not having much luck gathering the bullets you need to open a can of whoop-ass on your enemies, try searching in a couple particular locations. Ammo seems to have been hidden by people living before the war, in particular places.
Check out cash registers and safes when you stumble upon these two containers.
While the contents of a safe are never guaranteed to be something cool, more often than not, the contents of that safe you just spent five bobby pins opening will contain a good few bullets, some caps and a couple crafting components. The more you build up your lockpicking skills, the more difficult the lock you can pick and thus, logically, the better the reward will be that awaits you inside.
We can’t really explain people’s love for putting ammo inside cash registers but trust me, you’ll find way more ammo in them than you’d ever have thought. The last place to check is, of course, ammo boxes or weapon bags. Any kind of yellow or green looking container, or those long green bags you tend to spot inside a camp, are a great source of ammunition.
Check Your Perks
First things first, take a look at the perks under Luck. There is a perk called Scrounger which gives you the ability to find even more ammo in containers around the wasteland. The more points you put into it, the more ammo you’re gonna find on your travels. This is a sure fire way to make those safes, ammo boxes, and cash registers a lot more lucrative.
If you want to make the most out of your caps when going to trade with a vendor, look at putting some points into Charisma. The Cap Collector perk can help you to buy for cheaper, and sell for much higher, meaning you can get more bang (literally), for your buck.
Maximize What You’ve Got
If the rest of our suggestions to resolve your lack of ammo haven’t helped, here are a few tips which are almost certain to help in one way or another. The other thing you should bear in mind is the type of weaponry you’re using. Are all of your weapons focused on one specific ammo type? If this is the case, try and find a weapon under the same type, but one that takes a different type of ammo. For example, the 10mm pistol and the pipe pistol take two completely different types of ammo and will both still benefit from the gunslinger perk, which gives your non-automatic pistols an extra 20% of damage.
Finally, some ammo types are much more common than others across the Wasteland. If you’re having problems acquiring shotgun shells or 10mm bullets, try searching out a weapon that takes .38 ammo. You’ll find a lot more .38 ammo than most other ammunition types, and with the right kind of modifications, most guns can be altered to accommodate to your abundance of the bullets.
Conserve Ammo with Damage Perks
While our tips prior to these have helped you find all of the ammo scattered across the wasteland, these next few will help you to make the most of the ammo you do have. Our first tip is to take some of those skill points you’ve been earning as you level up and pour them into the perks that allow you to do more damage with a particular type of weapon. For example, the Gunslinger and Rifleman perks will allow you to do much more damage with pistols and rifles respectively if you put a few skill points into them.
Though this isn’t guaranteeing you’re going to end up with an abundance of ammo, it does mean you’ll be able to use fewer bullets to take down whatever the Wasteland throws at you.
Conserve Ammo by Aiming for the Weak Spot
Another perk which can be quite handy for you to get is called Awareness. This allows you to see the level, damage resistance and radiation resistance of an enemy in VATS. This can now allow you to not only work out whether to even bother engaging in combat with an enemy, but also allows you to work out whether using a weapon with high radiation damage, or whether to stick with ballistic damage.
Combining this with just using VATS in general to aim for the weakest part of the body on an enemy, for example, the head of a human enemy leads to much higher hit damage and allows you to conserve your bullets.
Conserve Ammo by Using the Right Weapon
So you’ve poured some points into the correct perks, aimed for the weakest part of your enemy and you’re still not chipping away at your enemies health fast enough? Perhaps you’re using the wrong weapon. Each different ammo type, for example, ballistic, pulse and energy is stronger against a particular type of enemy. Take those pesky Synths, for example, using 9mm or any other ballistic ammo is going to take a lot longer to tear through them than energy or armor piercing.
You can check out our full weapons guide to make sure you’re being smart with your ammo. And check out our guide on how to take out Fallout 4’s toughest enemies.
Conserve Ammo by Being Accurate
It may sound like common sense but in the heat of battle, some wasteland wanderers may forget this. If you’re struggling to keep your ammo reserves up, make sure you’re taking your time to aim and nailing your target right in the face (or wherever their weak spot may be).
When you’re getting swamped out by ghouls, it’s easy enough to just start popping rounds off from the hip, not aiming properly and wasting a perfectly good clip because you were completely missing your targets. Instead, try and get some distance between you and your enemy, aim down your sights taking into account movement, and fire off perfectly aimed rounds. These will be much more effective than spraying and praying as ghouls try and maul your face off.
Conserve Ammo by Using Melee Weapons
If worst comes to worst and none of our other tips have helped you save your ammo, perhaps try investing some perk points in the Big Leagues perk. This will grant you up to double the amount of damage done with melee weapons, allow you to cripple enemy limbs and even knock their heads clean off.
You can find all manner of melee weapons scattered around the wasteland but the best way to deal some serious damage with them is to use a workbench to make some handy little additions such as nails in a baseball bat or even a razor blade. You’ll be tearing through packs of raiders in no time and your ammo reserves won’t be taking a beating.
And there you have it, where to find ammo and the best ways to maximize what you’ve got. Have you got any other tips? Let us know in the comments below.
For more Fallout 4 guides, check out our wiki!
MORE FALLOUT 4
- Fallout 4: How to Craft and Upgrade Your Power Armor
- Fallout 4: How to Get the Alien Blaster Gun
- Fallout 4: How to Level Up Quickly
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