Fallout London guide: Getting started, surviving London and other tips

Fallout London is a free PC expansion for Fallout 4, which relocates the action to the UK. It’s absolutely brilliant, to the point where it almost out-Bethesdas Bethesda. But where do you start with it? Our Fallout London guide has tips to help you get started, and survive your initial encounters.

We’ve also compiled answers to some of the more pressing questions you may have, given how different Fallout London is to Fallout 4. So read our Fallout London starter guide and have fun in old Blighty.

Fallout London guide: Quick links

About the game:

• Is Fallout London free?
• How to install Fallout London
• How big is Fallout London?

How to play:

• Tips for getting started
• How to save your game
• How to stop the game crashing
• How to join factions
• How to cheat
• How to deal with broken quests

Tips for getting started in Fallout London

Fallout London isn’t Dark Souls difficult but it does plunge you it the deep end. If you don’t build the right sort of character you could be in trouble. Here are some tips for playing Fallout London, to guide you through the ruins.

• Put at least six points into strength. There are guns in the game but hard to come by at first. You’ll need to be able to deliver some serious melee damage.
• Stay out of the water. Yes, it’s radioactive, but compared to Fallout 4 a lot of the water does 250 radiation damage, which can kill you in seconds.
• Use tickets to open Underground train barriers. Tickets are the game’s currency, replacing Nuka Cola caps, but you’ll also need them to open barriers often. Look along the barrier and find the working ticket slot and activate it.
• Keep hold of Stimpaks. They’re much, much less common than in Fallout 4, so it’s better to use food if you just need a health boost.
• Recruit Churchill. He’s Fallout London’s equivalent of Dogmeat, a canine companion who can take on some low level foes. You’ll find him by the Prilladog Food Factory, just after you meet Sebastian Gaunt.
• Stay clear of the Fesco supermarket. There’s a high-level Bloatfly queen in there, so save her for later.
• Remember to use your torch. The game doesn’t tell you, but hold down the Attaboy/Pip-Boy key, which is tab on the keyboard, or its joypad equivalent.

How to stop Fallout London crashing

Unfortunately, you can’t stop Fallout London crashing 100%. However, what you can do is install Buffout 4. Download Buffout 4 here, then do the following:

• Go into the Buffout 4 zip file and copy the F4SE folder.
• Go your Fallout 4 folder and past the folder into Data, overwriting if prompted.

You can also try running the f4se_loader.exe file instead of clicking Fallout London from the menu, but that’s not made a difference for us. Installing Buffout 4 definitely has helped. However, you will still get crashes, so we recommend you save often.

How to join factions in Fallout London

You can run errands for all sorts of groups and NPCs, but factions only really come into play during what some players call the game’s third act. After you’ve finished the War Games quest you’ll have the option go to speak to one of three factions, and your quest markers will direct you there.

How to save your game in Fallout London

You can save your game from the main menu, but you can also use F5 to quick save and F9 to quickload. Fallout London does autosave, too.

How to deal with broken quests

You may encounter some broken quests in Fallout London. Team FOLON is working on fixing bugs but it may be that you’ve hit something that renders a quest uncompletable, normally. For example, there’s a point in the game where you have to investigate a train crash but the item you need may have clipped through the floor. I’d recommend you save often and if the object you need is not reachable, cheat.

How to cheat in Fallout London

Are we telling you to cheat? Not at all, but chances are you’ll be glad for this Fallout London guide’s cheat section. Why? Because we’ve twice had quest-critical objects clip out of reach and had to cheat to get them. So, read on and don’t worry about any sense of overwhelming shame.

To cheat in Fallout London, press the console key. Depending on your keyboard layout it could be ` (top left hand corner of the keyboard next to 1) or ‘ (apostrophe, two keys left of the main enter key). Now, type in a console command to cheat. You can find all the console commands on this Fallout 4 wiki, but here are some that should be useful.

• tgm – god mode
• tim – immortality
• tcl – lets you walk through walls
• killall – kills all non-essential NPCs in the area
• tcai – turns off combat AI. You can steal and NPCs won’t do a thing

To disable one, just type it in again. TCL is especially useful, since it’ll let you get to objects that may have clipped through floors, due to a bug. These need to be reactivated each time you load up the game, they don’t carry across through saves.

Is Fallout London free?

Sort-of. Fallout London itself is completely free, but you will need a PC copy of Fallout 4 with all the DLC, either separately or the Game of the Year Edition, from GOG or Steam. The Epic Game Store and Xbox Store versions do not work and it’s not available on console. It’s easier to install if you buy Fallout 4 from GOG, rather than Steam.

How big is Fallout London?

Fallout London is roughly the size of Fallout 4, with some of the game’s area divided into individual maps. The team may call this an expansion but it’s not expansion sized; it’s as big as a new Fallout game.

How to install Fallout London

The Fallout London team has pretty detailed instructions on how to install Fallout London, but the basics are as follows. In both cases, once Fallout London is installed you can’t go back to Fallout 4 without deleting Fallout London. You’ll need to get Fallout London from GOG.

On GOG:

• Install Fallout 4, preferably via the GOG Galaxy Launcher.
• Now, install Fallout London.
• Run Fallout London, it’ll go through steps to install itself a second time and you’re ready to go.
• It’s that simple for GOG.

On Steam:

• Install Fallout 4 from Steam
• Download and install Fallout London from GOG (it’s only available via GOG), using the GOG Galaxy Launcher if you can. But don’t run Fallout London yet.
• Get and run the Fallout Downgrader from Nexus Mods.
• Run it, and let it finish. It may take a while.
• Now, run Fallout London and let it install.

You should now be ready to play Fallout London with our guide. Well, as long as you can survive the radshrews, the cannibal beefeaters, the leeches and so on.