I think i have neglected my armour so will spend a bit time sorting that out, need to go rummaging for screws as I never seem to have enough.
Everyone has that problem in the early game. Screws and springs are the main two. It helps if you go into your inventory, switch to component view and tag screws (and anything else you need) for search. That way, any lootable item in the game world that contains one or more screws (or whatever you tag) shows with a magnifying glass next to it. That makes choosing what to pick up much easier. I have ~1000 screws spare now. I sell them to vendors. Once you have your kit finalised, you only need a few for repairs.
The key thing is to craft new armour as you level, if you can. It makes a difference. Craft at the highest level you can, add whatever useful mods you can. L25 studded leather armour is extremely better than L1 leather armour, for example.
As yet i have not been making stimpaks, trying to play without using them to often but that ain't working so will get onto that today.
The main bottleneck for making stimpaks (assuming you have learned the plan to make them) is blood packs. They're relatively rare. If you play in the forest zone, you should quickly acquire a multitude of stimpaks. I took to selling them when I had >40. I have only made a stimpak once or twice, to complete a challenge. However, since switching from shotgun+rifle to heavy weapons, I need stimpaks more. My damage output is higher, but I'm taking more damage because of the vastly reduced staggering.
I have plenty of power armours and armour pieces but as yet have not the frame to use them, I actually gave a PA to someone on level 2 yesterday, lol.
Odd. You usually find armour pieces on a frame. You must be taking up a lot of your carry weight and/or stash with PA pieces. They're very heavy off a frame.
If you find a PA frame in the gameworld (there are maps showing where they spawn and they're quite common), the way to take it is simply to enter it and then exit it (by holding the use button, default 'e' on keyboard). That marks it as yours. You can put it in your inventory by looking at it and collecting and if you don't it will be returned to your inventory in 90 seconds anyway. If you can't enter the frame because it has pieces on it that are above your level, look at it, select 'Transfer', transfer the pieces into your inventory and then you can enter the frame.
Fusion cores can be found on PA frames in the gameworld, in some fusion power generators in the gameworld, in some containers in the gameworld, just lying around in the gameworld, at some player vending machines and as a possible reward for some quests and events. You should be able to find enough to keep yourself supplied. I have ~40 at any one time, which is probably too many (they're quite heavy).
If you're >L25 (as I think you are), you will have some option for PA. There are L25 T-45 pieces. Maybe you've got a set already. Maybe you can search the PA spawn points in the forest to find a set. Or maybe you've already scrapped lots of unpowered armour (you should have done) and learned lots of mods for it so you can craft yourself some new unpowered armour at the maximum level and then mod it with useful mods to increase protection.
Same for weapons, of course. I only used rifles and shotguns until I switched to heavy guns recently, so I'm not the right person to ask unless you're using rifles and shotguns. Which is a great combo, in my opinion, but that's at least in part because it suits the way I like to play.
Perks matter a lot too, as I mentioned. It helps to plan your build beforehand, so you can raise your stats and choose your perk cards to suit.
Can you be a bit more detailed with the mod thing I would love to sort out the carry weight thing and tidy up the inventory a bit and anything else you might consider useful?
Thanks.
I don't know of a mod to change anything to do with carry weight. I wouldn't use one anyway, as I'd see it as cheating. FO76 mods are very limited in scope.
There are three steps in modding FO76:
1) Download the mod file. I use the Nexus website and I use the BA2 versions of the mods, so this is for mods in BA2 format. Unzip the compressed file you downloaded to extract the BA2 file, if necessary.
2) Put the mod file in your FO76 data subdirectory. Bethesda.net Laucher/games/Fallout76/data, wherever that is on your PC.
3) Put an entry referencing the name of the mod
file (not the name of the mod itself) in a valid entry in Fallout76Custom.ini in your FO76 ini subdirectory, wherever that is on your PC. My Documents/My Games/Fallout 76 on my PC. If you don't have a Fallout76Custom.ini file in there, make one. It's better to not edit the Fallout76.ini file, though that would also work. Stuff in the custom ini will take priority over settings in the ordinary ini file, unless Bethesda have hard coded it not to (which they have for a few entries).
My Fallout76Custom.ini file contains only these settings:
[Archive]
sResourceIndexFileList = BetterInventory.ba2, Power Armor Clean HUD.ba2, IntRaw.ba2, BetterPALight.ba2
[SaveGame]
fAutosaveEveryXMins=2.0000
That loads the 4 mods I use and forces the game to save my game every 2 minutes instead of every 10 minutes. Given how unstable the game is, I think that's a good idea.
Better Inventory is great for inventory management. It's one of those "that's how it should be in the vanilla game" mods. Power Armour Clean HUD removes the opaque grey plastic parts of the PA HUD, which I like because I find them annoying and pointless. You can change the PA HUD in game settings since the last patch, but I haven't tried it to see what that's like. Oooh baby I like int raw is purely for camp builders. It shows the camp budget as the integer value it really is and not just the vague bar. Does a potted plant take up more building budget than a carrot? You can find out with that mod. It helps when trying to make the best use of the very limited building budget. Better PA light is a vast improvement over the poor quality torch that's the default PA light. Which is far better than the original default PA light, which was so bad I considered stopping playing because of it.
Perk Loadout Manager comes highly recommended. I really should get around to installing it. It allows you to save collections of perk cards, which makes swapping between them far less inconvenient. So, for example, you could put your normal play perk cards in play, save that as 1, then swap in your crafting perk cards (removing other cards as required) and save that as 2. Then swap in your hacking and/or lockpicking cards (if you don't have them in your normal hand) and save that as 3. After that, you just load set 1 for normal play, load set 2 or 3 as required and then reload set 1 when you've finished crafting/hacking/lockpicking. Much less bother than swapping cards individually.