Fallout 4 Hacking Guide

If you played Fallout 3 you're probably already familiar with the hacking system, but it doesn't make it any less of a pain in the arse. If you've never locked horns with the Fallout hacking system before: it's a pain in the arse. Either way, take a look at this guide and you might learn something you didn't know before to make it slightly less of one.

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The Basics of Hacking in Fallout 4

When you boot up a locked terminal you'll be presented with columns of figures mixed up with some words. One of these words is the correct password, and you only get a few guesses before the console locks you out for a few seconds and resets. Each time you select a word as a guess the computer will tell you how many characters in it are correct i.e. how many letters are in the right place. If the password is MOVE and you select ROAM you have one character correct, because the O is in the right place but the M isn't. If you select CAVE you'll be told you have two characters correct - the V and the E. Get it?

To start with you can only hack basic terminals, but you can level up the Hacker Perk to get access to more difficult ones. Keep in mind that this only lets you attempt to hack them. The actual process of doing it it still the same, and the higher the difficulty of the terminal the longer the password is.

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Look for Matching Brackets

Technically speaking the first stage of attempting to hack anything should be to watch Swordfish and take notes from Hugh Jackman's legendary hacker character, but we realise you might not have time for the full thing before approaching every locked terminal in the game.

Instead, before you make any guesses, start by looking for groups of random characters enclosed in matching brackets - so, () [ ] or < >. They should highlight as a block if you scroll through the screen and highlight the first bracket in the cluster. Selecting them deletes an incorrect password from the list. There, you just made your job a little bit less difficult.

When it's getting down to the wire and you're on your last guess before you get locked out of the terminal, go for the { } groups. Selecting these will reset all your attempts, giving you more time.

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Don't Rush; Be Smart

We know that hacking can be incredibly tedious and you probably want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible, but don't rush in and start selecting words at random. Slow down and read every word that's on the screen, and figure out the info you'll get from each of them.

If you're looking, as a basic example, at SING, RING, RUNG, and WALK, you should choose SING. If you're told you got three characters correct then you know the answer is RING. If there are two correct you know it's RUNG, and if there are no correct characters then it's WALK. Selecting WALK is a bad guess, because it gives you no information about the others if it turns out to be incorrect. Putting in a bit of extra time can save you time in the long run - and decrease the chance that you'll get locked out and have to repeat the process.

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Cheat. Sort Of

If you're down to your last guess and you're pretty sure you're not going to get it right you can always just back out of the terminal. This will reset it, but you're back to having all your guesses, and don't have to wait the 10 seconds to have another go.

The other option, if you really can't be arsed, is to bring along Nick Valentine as a companion. Just point him in the right direction and he can hack terminals up to the expert level for you. Of course, you won't get the XP for it, but you might decide that's an okay trade off for not having to stare at one of those screens again.