Caps versus crafting

[ninjakreborn]

I've reached about 159 hours into the game, and throughout the entire game I've either used all the items I've picked up, or put them into storage for use with crafting, the global storage that's shared betwene all settlements once they are connected.

 

That has been all great until lately. I recently had a series of really hard areas that I had to go through. I made it through them, but at the expense of most of the ammo from most of my guns, as well as all my stim packs and a lot of my re-usable items and healing items, and cooked items. Long story short, I had about 4900 caps. That is what I acquired without really trying through the last several hours. Randomly picking up caps, and so forth. I didn't sell anything yet.

 

So I finally needed to turn around and buy some stim packs, and ammo and a few other things. What strategies have you used throughout your play through to get a lot of caps. Any items that are better off selling as opposed to crafting?

 

I don't need to be rich in the game, just have enough to buy extra stuff when the time requires. Like stim packs, ammo, certain weapons that roll good stats, and some other random stuff I've had my eye on throughout the game.

 

Thanks!

[robhartman9]

All of my characters are arms dealers. I don't bother picking up armor unless its better than what I'm wearing or is a legendary drop. The amount of resources from scrapping weapons is small. Better to sell all the weapons you don't use. Some of my characters have specialized in using the gatling laser so they can sell all the ammo as well. After a couple of playthroughs without cheating or mods I start to cheat and modify the game so I can ignore grinding for resources and make whatever I want

[RattleAndGrind]

I sell everything I do not immediately use with the exception of crafting materials. But there are some perks which help.

 

1. A maxed out Scrounger perk. Unless you are playing in Survival mode, Ammo has no weight and any ammo you do not need is as good as caps.
2. A maxed out Cap Collector to help get prices down when trading.
3. A maxed out Fortune Finder Perk. More caps is more caps.
4. A maxed out Scrapper Perk. Getting more from scrapping is always better.

Do not let the game scrap things for you during crafting. Throw everything on the ground and scrap it yourself. There is a bug which does not put the residual materials from items scrapped during crafting into the work bench.

 

At the risk of arousing the ire of some, I recommend that early in the game you deal almost exclusively with the vendors in Diamond City. Arturo Rodriguez at Commonwealth Weaponry for weapons, ammo and armor. Solomon at Chem-I-Care for chems (imagine that). Myrna or Percy at Diamond City Surplus for some limited ammo and chems If you are wanting to deal with Power Armor, Rowdy at the Atom Cats Garage is the other vendor I recommend. If you still have stuff to sell, visit Goodneighbor. KL-E-O at Kill or Be Killed for weapons, ammo and armor, Daisy at Daisy Discounts for chems and ammo.

 

I also recommend that after you have cleared an area that you go back through it a second time. Never know what you might have missed while you were dodging nasties.

Edited August 9, 2016 by RattleAndGrind

[bobofudd]

I tend to play Bethesda games the same way and so far I've been pretty successful in each one as far as making enough money to support myself. It usually starts with finding all the perks/abilities that max out your carrying weight as well as anything that will give you the advantage when buying and selling. Every fight I encounter and every bad guy killed, I'll take every item I can possibly carry then take it to the nearest merchant and unload. If you stay in this habit from the very beginning, you will be fairly wealthy midpoint in the game. It's not hard but rather tedious and sometimes annoying. In FO4, I think I'm at 250K bottle caps but I buy a lot of building supplies so it should be higher. When I played Skyrim, I think I had around 1.4 million gold. It was pointless after a while once I learned how to make expensive potions and weapons. Just too easy.

[cossayos]

 

So I finally needed to turn around and buy some stim packs, and ammo and a few other things. What strategies have you used throughout your play through to get a lot of caps. Any items that are better off selling as opposed to crafting?

 

If you need to buy stimpacks you're doing something wrong in the first place. Many enemies drop them and there's an abundance of first aid cases all over the land.

 

What rakes in caps as if there is no tomorrow is building lots of water purifiers at every settlement that supports them. Selling purified water not only makes cash but you can also buy ammo, chems and shipments with it.

[TheGadget1945]

Synth Armour pieces generally seem to be worth a shedload of caps. Of course the usual strategy to obtain a lot of caps is to erect a lot of water purifiers at places like Nordhagen Beach and the Castle.

[bLakZmOkeareOoouYyye]

My strategy is grabbing everything of high value. Good guns and armor, all the chems and pre-war money, and all ammo. I usualy have too much loot on me when buying all .50, 5.56, 5mm and Shotgun Shell ammo, that I don't spend a single cap, the vendor doesn't have enough ammo/caps to trade

 

 

Currently I'm about 120lvl with something like 150k caps + tons of stimpaks and psycho + a mountain of ammo

Edited August 9, 2016 by bLakZmOkeareOoouYyye

[ninjakreborn]

Thanks for all the responses. With all this feedback together I should be able to get it all figured out.

​Thanks again, I'll go through and read all this and use some of this feedback.

 

Thanks again!

[Zaklex55]

~Snip~

Do not let the game scrap things for you during crafting. Throw everything on the ground and scrap it yourself. There is a bug which does not put the residual materials from items scrapped during crafting into the work bench.

 

~Snip~

Not sure exactly what you're referring to, whether it's when you take an item and upgrade it's components(in which case the specific item you upgraded is removed and placed on your character under the Mods category) or if you mean something else, as in when you scrap something using the crafting workbenches(if that is the case, then not everyone experiences this bug[otherwise there's no way I'd have 20K steel in my shared workbench inventory).

 

As for caps, I usually attempt to spend as little as possible until I have an adequate supply to begin with(somewhere around 10k caps is when I start buying things, otherwise it all comes from scrounging, the perks mentioned above and selling anything I don't use).

Edited August 10, 2016 by Zaklex55

[thunderlord2200]

best way i find my self is being a chem dealer. jet is great for selling and with the said perks someone else said you get a lot more. if you have clothing/ armor that boosts your charisma stat ware them when trading and take the 10% better rate (i think its a orange chem) and drink beer it also boost ur charisma up..

 

also if you have still have Carla alive/ or not mugged her, get the settlement cap taken off so u can make complete stock pile of water and any food u may or may not want.. the game caps how much food and water you can have at any given day. dono why they did this...

 

(so in turn, i take out all my water and sell it to her when i can. (with a rich merchant mod i can sell everything..)

 

also use armor that increases your charisma stat