What's The Best Damage Type In Fallout 4?

Summary

• Poison damage is good for weakening foes over time, but often outclassed by bleeding damage.
• Radiation is effective against human enemies, but less impactful against mutants and robots.
• Energy damage includes a variety of elemental types and is the second most useful type of damage in the game.

While there are a wide variety of damage types that can be inflicted by the many weapons of Fallout 4, by and large they can all be broken down into one of a few very simple categories. Whether you're shooting, melting or irradiating your foes, you're always dealing damage within this basic framework.

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Each and every one of these types of damage is useful for different situations, some more so than others, and the true wastelander will know what the best tool is for every job. Figuring that out is more simple than you might expect, and more often than not can be deduced with only a little common sense.

4 Poison

Inflicted by

Poisoner's weaponry

Pros

Damage over time weakens foes

Cons

Outclassed by other forms of damage

For dealing damage over time, poison is always a safe bet. What this type of damage lacks in punch it, in certain situations, makes up for in the cumulative effect it can have over time on enemies afflicted by it. One of the downsides of this type of damage, however, is that it is routinely outclassed by weapons that inflict bleeding, a subtype of damage that can be found on certain weapons equipped with modifiers such as Wounding.

It is not uncommon for enemies to be either heavily resistant or outright immune to poison damage either, making it even more situational than it otherwise would be without these resistances. All in all, you probably won't find yourself relying on this type of damage very often, or, if you are, in a more supplemental role.

3 Radiation

Inflicted by

Gamma, irradiated weaponry

Pros

Good against human enemies

Cons

Bad against mutant, wasteland, and mechanical creatures

In the Fallout series, almost everything in the world is a source of radiation. Food, drinks, flora, fauna, and even the land itself can all serve as sources of this deadly emanation. Of course, weaponry is no different from the rest of these, and this can in turn be a double-edged sword. As dangerous as radiation can be towards you, the player, it can also be harnessed in your favor. When used against Raiders and other human foes, radiation damage can be a devastating force, melting through enemy health bars like nothing.

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As ubiquitous as radiation is in the wasteland, and as empowered by it as many of your enemies are, this translates into large swathes of the game's bestiary being less effected by any damage of this variety. Ghouls and super mutants, for example, thrive on it. Robots, on the other hand, aren't biological at all. That doesn't mean that radiation damage is useless, just that it's a more situational type of damage when compared to the other, more widely applicable varieties. For the most part, radiation is more of a danger to you than it is towards anything else.

2 Energy

Inflicted by

Laser, plasma, fire, cyro

Pros

Lots of options, relatively common

Cons

Cannot be suppressed

Energy damage in Fallout 4 can be considered a large umbrella that includes a variety of disparate types of energy-based damage you might otherwise expect to be listed as their own separate types but aren't. Laser and plasma damage is one thing, but this definition of energy also includes sources of damage as disparate as fire and cryo. In Fallout 4, these types of elemental damage are considered only a variety of energy damage.

Whether you're melting your enemies, freezing them, or lighting them on fire, what you're dealing with is essentially all energy-based damage. This broad definition means that Energy damage could be considered the second most accessible variety of damage in the game, or, in other terms, the second most useful. When building a character in Fallout, generally the choice that distinguishes a build more than any other is the choice to rely on either ballistic or energy damage.

1 Normal

Inflicted by

Hand-To-Hand, Ballistic, Explosive

Pros

Common and versatile

Cons

No special effects otherwise

Normal, physical, or ballistic damage encompasses most mundane sources of damage to be found in the game. That includes hand-to-hand damage, damage done by guns, explosive damage, and generally all other types of damage that don't explicitly have a secondary effect upon foes. As such, the vast majority of damage that any given player will dish out over the course of their playthrough will be of this variety. It will likely be the very first kind of damage you'll ever inflict in the game.

This type of damage is a good, reliable source of offensive power — one that you can almost always rely upon in the majority of situations. Even if an enemy is more heavily armored, all that means is that you need a little more firepower to break through their defenses. This is the bread and butter of damage types, and the most commonly encountered variety in the game.

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