Fallout: The Traveler/Sawyer Mode

Sawyer mode (sometimes called Sawyer difficulty) is a unique gameplay mode in Fallout: The Traveler with significant differences to other modes.

Overview
Similar to Fallout New Vegas' hardcore mode and Fallout 4’s survival mode combined together with the popular JSawyer Ultimate and Horizon mods for New Vegas and Fallout 4 respectively plus the SawyerBatty mod for Tales of Two Wastelands with some of Project Zomboid and Misery mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. Sawyer mode gives you the ultimate experience of the post-nuclear role playing game by making it much more challenging (and more rewarding in turn) and adding features exclusive to this mode. This option is not recommended for a first playthrough of the game, particularly when paired with Immersion Mode.

General Features
Sawyer mode can be only accessed when starting a new game. This mode cannot be toggled freely.

In Sawyer mode, autosave and manually saving from the menu has been disabled. The only means of physically saving the game is to sleep in a bed, on a mattress, or in a sleeping bag. The exit save function is still available but is a temporary save that is deleted automatically upon loading. Additionally, the use of console commands is disabled.

Ammunition has a set weight, per round, based on the ammunition type. For example the 9mm round has a weight of 0.015 per round, whereas the mini nuke has a weight of 12. If one becomes overencumbered, their Agility and Endurance will drop by 2, they will suffer from Fatigue and they will take periodic damage which can cripple the legs. Location respawn time is 7 in-game days for non-cleared locations and 24 in-game days for cleared locations to repopulate enemies and loot, as opposed to the standard 3 days and 12 days respectively.

While fixed enemy locations have increased repopulation times, the occurrence of random enemy encounters is two days or less.

Summary


Diseases
Exclusive to this mode are Diseases, returning from Fallout 76. They act as temporary debuffs, and can be acquired by various means; by being submerged underwater without protective headwear, sleeping on the ground, or by fighting diseased enemies. Chance of diseases can be lowered by depending on the Traveler's Survival skill. While diseases do not last longer than an hour, they can be removed prematurely by using antibiotics, disease cure or a Sympto-Matic.

Combat
In combat, there have been several key changes. Firstly enemies have had their attack strength (damage output) and overall health/damage resistances increased. Relative to Very Hard difficulty player outgoing damage is increased by x1.5 and player incoming damage is increased by x2.0, with both effects applied prior to any reductions for DT. The Traveler's damage output is increased in absolute terms but reduced relative to the greater increase in damage done by enemies. This generally results in more challenging battles (unless the enemies are given no opportunity to attack). Also, the encounter frequency of higher level enemies has been increased, adding an additional layer of difficulty.

Experience Points however, have been doubled. Additionally a new perk, Adrenaline, is automatically applied to the Traveler as one rank for every five enemies they kill. This perk increases up to a 50% increase in damage, but the bonus is rapidly reduced upon sleeping, proportionate to the time slept. In addition the healing rate of Aid items is significantly slowed, reducing the ability to offset health damage by using Aid items in mid-combat.

Health and well-being
In Sawyer mode, the Traveler must remain hydrated, eat periodically and have a regular sleep cycle in order to survive. Failure to manage one's well being will result in negative effects such as Fatigue, Hunger and Thirst, reducing maximum AP, and increasing the risk of contracting an illness. Illness risks come from various sources, such as food, drink, chem use, exposing more skin when wearing certain apparel, being hit by many creatures' unarmed attacks, immersion in water, or rain. Immune deficiency can be caused by certain chems, further increasing the risk of disease. Poor sleep quality (more specifically: sleeping too frequently, for shorter periods) may increase the overall risk of disease, meaning that a pattern of using low-quality sleeping places (sleeping bags, mattresses) may indirectly increase the risk of disease.

Healing
Additionally, sleeping in a bed for less than 7 hours will not heal all Hit Points (HP). There is a sliding scale of health recovery for sleep duration of fewer than 7 hours. Furthermore, the healing rates of all health-restorative items are significantly slowed, rather than being instant, and the use of medicinal items such as stimpaks, RadAway and chems can result in thirst, hunger and immune deficiency, which will then increase the risk for the Traveler becoming ill. Healing effects from foods and drinks only occur if the Traveler is free from (respectively) any hunger or thirst status effects. The healing effect of drinking from water sources (contaminated or not) is greatly reduced, from 15 HP per drink to only 1.5 HP per drink - and only if there are no current thirst status effects.

However, visiting a doctor for purposes of restoring health, removing rads, and curing addictions still carry no side effects. Paying a doctor to "Cure Health" will remove all diseases, in addition to restoring the player character to full hit points, at no extra charge.

The mode also adds antibiotics, a rare loot item, craftable, also obtainable from some doctors and vendors, which will immediately cure all diseases, with no side effects. Antibiotics can be self-administered "in the field" and do not require traveling to a doctor. Sawyer mode also adds various herbal remedies of different types. These can be crafted, found in loot, or bought from vendors, and are cheaper and more common than antibiotics. Each type of herbal remedy will reduce the chance of contracting certain specific disease types only (not all types). The herbal remedies are preventive rather curative: they must be taken prior to exposure, or at least, prior to sleeping.

Crippling
If one is crippled in any form, this no longer recovers with time and must be rectified with a stimpak, by sleeping in a bed, mattress or sleeping bag for two hours, or by visiting a doctor for treatment.

Companions
As noted above, the carry weight of companions has been reduced.

When downed in combat, companions can die unless the Inspiration skill is up to 150 - Virtuoso. Robot companions like Codsworth, RL-3, Kaveh, Kokomi, SAM. ED-E, Skynet and Ada will require a Robot repair kit for healing.

Wellness
There are five stages in each category of Wellness that span in-game hours. Decreases in Wellness condition are called Fatigue. Decreases in Wellness are communicated to the player with a "Fatigue" pop up warning. The increasing thresholds for each level of Wellness condition are on a curve. For example, it takes about 6 hours without eating to go from Well-fed to Peckish to Hungry, then a further 12 hours to go from Hungry to Famished.

The tables in the sections below show the approximate times that it takes for a character to go from completely satisfied to the listed condition in each area. In-game time is expressed in "hours" and real-time is expressed in "minutes." These progressions can be sped up when using certain items - Stimpaks and many chems inducing dehydration, RadAway causing hunger, etc.

Thirst
Thirst will negatively impact the Intelligence, Luck and Perception stats, until corrected. Drinking dirty water, either bottled or directly from open water sources such as puddles and rivers, increases the possibility of contracting an illness. As a means of ensuring one has a steady supply of water, the Traveler, like in Fallout 4, can fill empty bottles with dirty or purified water. Dirty water is obtained from sources such as rivers, puddles, or ponds. Purified water is obtained from water pumps and water fountains.

Hunger
While the Traveler is hungry (including Peckish - anything other than Well Fed), the healing and bonus properties of normal (non-wild) food consumption is suppressed until enough is consumed to make the Traveler "well-fed."

The amount of food that must be eaten to reduce hunger is relative to its quality (which is equal to its nominal price), i.e, a ribeye steak satisfies hunger more than a grilled radroach. Certain foods, such as soups and certain crops, will satisfy both hunger and thirst, to the same value as their nominal price, so in effect have double worth or double effect.

Wild plants in general do not reduce hunger, but they do apply their other buffs regardless of whether the player is Well Fed or not. Razorgrain also behaves this way, which is almost certainly a bug. Certain wild plants (wild corn, wild mutfruit, wild tarberry, silt bean) behave like normal plants, not wild plants, in this regard.

The Cannibal perk has a special interaction called Dark Craving when eating a corpse is used to satisfy hunger.

Sleep
Sleeping for at least one game hour on any bed, mattress, or sleeping bag will save the game, but have no other effect other than causing a disease check. Sleeping longer (two hours or more) will progressively heal hit points, and begin to reduce Fatigue levels that the player character has developed from being tired (but not Fatigue from hunger or thirst). Healing of hit points can proceed over multiple sleeping sessions. Each sleeping session causes one disease check of the current disease risk pool.

It is possible to sleep for zero hours by hitting Cancel immediately after hitting the sleep command. This saves the game and carries out all of the normal disease checks, but does not reduce tiredness or grant any healing.

The Traveler cannot sleep more than 3 game hours in a sleeping bag or a tent, and more than 5 hours on a mattress. A mattress cannot reduce the sleep Fatigue state below "Tired" and a sleeping bag cannot reduce any existing sleep Fatigue state of "Weary" or less (Tired, Overtired, or Weary). Sleeping on a mattress or sleeping bag can prevent entering these sleep Fatigue states, but cannot remove them once they have been acquired. If no better place to sleep is available it becomes important to anticipate when the next worst sleep state will arrive, and sleep before that happens.

To sleep for longer amounts of time, or to fully remove all sleep Fatigue states, it is required to use a real bed. Attempting to sleep for longer than these times will result in one waking up at the time threshold.

More frequent sleeping indirectly increases the risk of contracting a disease, particularly if there is exposure to disease risk events between sleep. This is because while sleeping clears down the accumulated increased disease risk, a higher minimum risk is imposed by Fatigue (including hunger and thirst), and a disease check is forced each time the player goes to sleep, checked prior to any reduction in the disease risk pool.

Sleeping for 7 game hours or more allows one to recover full health and if sleeping in a bed as opposed to a mattress or sleeping bag, will ensure one is well rested and minimizes the risk of illness. Being asleep for any period of time, in any bed, of any type, will force a check for illness. It will then clear the disease risk pool down to the Fatigue-adjusted minimum regardless of how brief the period of sleep is.

Wasteland Survival
Added through the DLC of the same name. Wasteland Survival is essentially a more "realistic" difficulty version of Sawyer Mode, with all of the mechanics of Sawyer Mode retained with additional changes. A stray bullet or more or single slash from a creature i.e Deathclaw can kill the Traveler at low-levels unless wearing Power Armor, but it works both ways as all player weapons do roughly three times the damage they usually inflict. Ammo pickups usually contain one to five bullets and weapon degrades more faster than normal. The Heads-Up Display is disabled completely save for modded weapons and Power Armor. The Traveler is also limited to only carrying two weapons at a time and has lower AP points. Skill points at level up is halved, gaining perks is only gained by 4 levels and earning Shock to the System is increased per 10 levels. Survival needs increases more faster. Companions can die more faster if not planned tactically regardless of the Inspiration Skill. Stealth is advised, since the run-and-gun approach is severely limited by low ammunition supplies.

Trivia

 * The name is named after the project director of Fallout: New Vegas, Joshua Eric Sawyer. The name is also reflects to the JSawyer mod, by proxy the Ultimate Edition version of the mod for New Vegas.