Fallout 4 Companions Guide: The Complete List

Fallout 4 is here and with it come new companions, one of the game's most talked-about features. After you unlock each companion, they’ll follow you and help you fight; the catch is that you can only have one out at a time and each one has different perks, so you'll have to strategize as the perks disappear once the companion is gone. In battle, they can get knocked unconscious but they don’t die. You won't get XP if a companion kills an enemy unless you do damage to the enemy as well.

You can dismiss them, in which case they'll go to your settlement or return to the place where you found them. But when they're active, the distance between you doesn't matter; the perk will always stay active too. (Basically, the rules of Pokémon apply here.)

Your goal is to build relationships with these companions by issuing commands to them and influencing them with your actions. Some things you do will be adored by some companions and hated by others. So, just like real life. Any actions performed in a settlement that stores multiple companions will affect all of them. 

The interesting thing about companions is that you can build romantic relationships with a handful of them (Cait, Curie, Danse, Hancock, MacCready, Piper, and Preston Garvey -- all humans or ghouls). In order to do so, you have to raise your Relationship level with that companion; if you reach maximum Relationship level with a companion, you can unlock the Loveable achievement. 

Here’s a full list of the companions you can unlock:

Cait 

• Human
• Combat Zone (Quest: Benign Intervention)
• Perk: Trigger Rush (when health falls below 25%, action points regenerate faster)

Codsworth

• Your robot butler from before the war
• Sanctuary Hills
• Perk: Robot Sympathy (+10 damage resistance against robot energy weapons)

Curie

• Robot
• Vault 81 (Quest: Emergent Behavior)
• Perk: Combat Medic (heal 100 points if health falls below 10%; can only be used once each day)

Paladin Danse

• Human
• Cambridge Police Station
• Perk: Know Your Enemy (+20% damage when fighting Ferals, Super Mutants, and Synths)

Dogmeat

• Animal
• Red Rocket Gas Station
• Perk: None. But your Attack Dog perk can be used on him and he can be equipped with armor and handkerchiefs. He also starts with maximum affinity level.

Deacon

• Human
• Old North Church
• Perk: Cloak and Dagger (+20% sneak attack damage, +20% Stealth Boy duration)

Hancock

• Ghoul
• Goodneighbor (Quest: Recruiting Hancock)
• Perk: Isodoped (get criticals 20% faster at 250 rads and up)

MacCready

• Human
• Goodneighbor (Quest: Long Road Ahead)
• Perk: Killshot (+20% chance of headshots in VATS)

Valentine

• Synth
• Vault 114 (Quest: Long Time Coming)
• Perk: Close to Metal (one extra guess and 50% faster terminal cooldown while hacking)

Piper

• Human
• Diamond City (Quest: Story of the Century)
• Perk: Gift of Gab (+100% XP bonus for speech challenges and discovering new locations)

Preston Garvey 

• Human
• Museum of Freedom
• Perk: United We Stand (when facing three opponents or more, +20% damage and +20% damage resistance)

Strong

• Mutant
• Trinity Tower
• Perk: Berserk (+20% melee weapon damage when health falls under 25%)

X6-88

• Synth
• The Institute
• Perk: Shield Harmonics (+20% damange resistance vs. energy)

For more Fallout 4 guides, check out our Power Armor explainer and graphics comparison.