Fallout 4 Endurance Perks

Stat Benefits and Making Use of END Perks

Endurance is a SPECIAL stat that most builds will at least want to dabble in, and it does contain some interesting Perks but is likely one of the less-used trees in Fallout 4. It's not increasing you kill speed nor offering many amazing incentives to max it, given the amount of options for restoring health and the abundance of wealth later in the game. However, Endurance as a stat is incredibly useful when you plan to take your Character to a high level. This guide will teach you about the stat and all of the Endurance Perks.

Jump to an Endurance Perk! - Just need the Perk ID to cheat, or want to know more about one of the Endurance Perks? Click to jump to info about that perk:

• Toughness
• Lead Belly
• Lifegiver
• Chem Resistant
• Aquaboy
• Rad Resistant
• Adamantium Skeleton
• Cannibal
• Ghoulish
• Solar Powered

Endurance Effects

Base Life and Health Gain per Level
Endurance has a direct impact on the health gain per level, as well as a character's starting HP. It is a stat you do not need in abundance early on, but there is a benefit to taking more Endurance at character creation - You get 80 + Endurance x 5 for your starting HP (so a Character with 4 Endurance would start with 100 Health). However, it's an insignificant amount later in the game so do not let this worry you. 3-4 points at minimum should do you just fine.

On level up, you get 2.5 health + half a point per endurance. So 3 health per level at 1 Endurance (minimum). With 10 Endurance, you gain 7.5 points per level and will see the extra point come every other level. Thankfully, this effect is retroactive. Your character's current max life looks at total Endurance, as well as level and gives you what you'd have if you'd chosen to make your character high-endurance from the start. At high levels, getting some bonus Endurance from equipment or drugs is not bad, as for +2 you would get 1 life for every level you've gained.

Because of Endurance and its retroactive effect on Health gains, the Endurance Bobblehead is probably the only one I would not acquire until I had put 10 Perk points into Endurance later in my game. Every 100 levels you'd gained would give you another 50 hp with 11 Endurance instead of 10 - so a super character at level 300 would have 150 more HP. Quite a difference, even that far into the game, and a welcome one when you want to make your Character nearly unkillable.

Action Point (AP) Drain from Sprinting
The second thing that Endurance affects is the AP cost for sprinting, allowing you to run further or reach your target with more AP available. This is more important for Melee users, who need to close gaps to deal damage - at least until they get the amazing Blitz Perk from Agility.

On testing this, I found that AP drain was reduced about 30% between 1 End and 10 END. So you're getting 2.5-3% less drain per point of Endurance, which does make a significant difference especially with a high Agility Character with a large AP Pool.

Endurance Bobblehead

Where to Find the Endurance Bobblehead: Poseidon Energy, far Southeast in the Commonwealth. You'll find it in the main area, far up in a room you must climb ramps to reach.

Endurance Perks

This is the list of all Endurance Perks in Fallout 4. Every perk starts with a minimum SPECIAL rank, which does not go up with future points in the perk - only the level requirement changes. You will find the Perk ID for the player.addperk cheat, as well. This is useful in order to avoid leveling your character to get perk points, or to remove perks and respec your build with the player.removeperk cheat. In case I've made a typo in any of these, you can find any Perk ID in the cheat menu by typing help perkname 0 - for perks with multiple words, try only one word in the perk name. Expect to see them listed without ranks. You can omit the 00s when using these cheats - start with the first non-zero character to save yourself some typing.

About Toughness: In my opinion, this Perk needs buffed at higher ranks to be truly desireable. +10 is a good start for a low level character, but at rank 5 it should probably be doubled. It does have a great effect at levels 1-31 where it will give you a substantial improvement in defense against ballistic and melee attacks assuming +40 damage resistance, but it's almost completely useless if you're wearing Power Armor. +40 is not even a 10% gain in Damage Resistance. Another shortcoming is that later on, many enemies will be using energy-based weapons against you. It will help against missiles and fat men then, but those are best avoided anyway.

I personally don't like Power Armor in Fallout 4, mainly due to the HUD and that I like to be sneaky. That they give it away so early just feels ... wrong, but I'm a veteran of the series. On to the benefits though: Toughness is a good Perk for a stealthy character who will wear the best leather gear, in order to shore up Leather's inherent weakness of low DR with higher Energy Resistance - it'll make it more like you're wearing heavier Combat Armor. Additionally, you can Join the Railroad and get Ballistic Weave upgrades for clothing to further boost DR for a sneaky type.

About Lead Belly: Very useful early-game, since RadAway is quite expensive and doesn't come up often. Later, it's less of an issue. The first rank will cut the radiation taken from eating contaminated foods or drinking water by half - and this is reflected when you view the food in your inventory.

Rank 2 reduces it by a bit more, causing you to take only 1/3 the Radiation you'd normally take - it's substantially less effective than the first rank. However, you'll be one rank away from being able to use any food or drink unlimited water to heal yourself. It is, however, a slow process particularly for a high-life character. Drinking water only heals about 15 life, though early on it gives you 3 rads - costing you 1% of your max life to drink it.

Overall, I'd leave this Perk. You WILL find it very useful early-game, it's just that you could rather take Medic and make RadAway and Stimpaks more effective, and later will not even use it. That's one of my criteria for Perk choices - if I won't use it late game, why bother. Normal foods - like mac and cheese and cram just do not heal much HP to begin with, so they're less useful to a high life character. I personally use these irradiated foods to make some extra caps at vendors and never bother eating them - we can cook in Fallout 4!

About Lifegiver: A very powerful Perk early on, because you will gain something like 5 levels worth of HP if you had only 3 Endurance. Taken early, it's usually around a 20% increase in total life and very noticeable in helping you survive combat. It's great for your survival because enemies level up with you, and taking this Perk gives you a distinct advantage at low levels only. Stimpaks will also go much further, since they heal a percentage of life./p>

Later it is less noticeable, but the third rank fixes this issue and makes it incredibly useful everywhere but inside combat. While out of combat, you'll regenerate 1% of your total health every 2 seconds. So in about a minute and a half you could go from half HP to full. It's great from recovering from small skirmishes, just not useful for long battles. It will absolutely save you some caps in the long-run, and many players will end up selling off excess Stimpaks using this Perk.

About Chem Resistant: Find Fallout 4's drugs like Jet, Mentats, Psycho and Buffout save your life on a regular basis? The powerful chems you can combine to create at the Chemistry Station can be highly addictive and makes it likely you end up hooked on one or both drugs when used in a few battles within a short time frame. This is a great Perk, since you'll get by with using Jet to save your butt or using Mentats to get extra XP from quests/better Perception for sniping enemies.

I definitely recommend this Perk if you like the benefits of chems, since Addictol and the components to make Refreshing Beverage at the Chemistry Station can be rare or costly and addictions seem to be permanent, requiring these items. I tried sleeping for a week and was still addicted to simple alcohol, maybe more live game time needed to pass but it's nice to get to use these in hard fights without worrying about drawbacks. It's not a stellar Perk, it's just one that will certainly serve you into the late-game when you can afford to buy masses of chems.

So what's the chance to get addicted? It seems the first time is unlikely to get you addicted, but afterward the chance begins to ramp up. I did a few dozen tests and it seems like it's around a 5x that you can use most chems before you're almost 100% likely to be addicted. I imagine that not using them for quite some time will reset a hidden meter of sorts. So with rank 1, it will double the amount you can use before addiction. Note that alcohol doesn't fall under this category - party boy/girl affect that, and it's around a 10% addiction rate.

If you'll ignore chems, I don't need to tell you to skip this Perk. They can be worth a good bit, so you can pocket the caps and skip this while using chems sparingly.

About Aquaboy and Aquagirl: This Perk can help with a few things you might find underwater in Fallout 4, since taking Power Armor underwater can sometimes mean having to leave it there for being unable to find a way out (you sink). Otherwise, it's not that useful and will come into play only in a quest or two. You can use Rad-X to help prevent radiation damage while underwater in those situations, or else wear a Hazmat Suit.

Rank 2 may help with ambushes in some situations, but it's not going to come up often - you're in a city with few large bodies of water, although there is some hidden treasure to be found in the actual ocean. The glowing sea is all land, not underwater, so don't be tricked by the name and choose this Perk to help you with any related quests.

About Rad Resistant: Radiation Resistance works similarly to Damage Resistance. It helps more with large amounts of Radiation and is based on proportions. There are other Perks here related to Radiation that may be better, but this Perk is certainly better than Aquaboy. For example, going into bodies of water you may take 10 rads. When you take rank 1 and get 10 Rad resistance, you'll see this fall to half - 5 rads. Now, with the 2nd point, you'll take 3 rads. What is telling is the third point still left me at 3 rads while in water, so it's functioning a bit like damage resistance in that it gets harder to reduce the amount taken on low-strength attacks.

Where larger amounts - 30-50+ Rad resistance are going to come into play is during situations like fighting a Glowing One, an enemy capable of delivering a large amount of Radiation damage. The effects of having 10 vs 30 are much more dramatic. Having even 10 is great for reducing average Rads taken in normal situations, but the large amounts will only help with big enemies and strong sources of radiation. I suggest you carefully consider between this and Ghoulish as having Rad Resistance will prevent Ghoulish from working at its full potential. If you use Power Armor heavily, ignore both of these Perks!

About Adamantium Skeleton: A point or two in this can be helpful, as limb damage can occur at frustrating moments and force you to blow a Stimpak. Still, there are much better Perks available and you should put those first because you can prevent ever taking damage by dealing more of it yourself, or giving yourself the ability to make better armor, criticals and loot, hack and lockpick, modify a gun - need I go on? Seriously, too many strong choices. Regardless of my recommendation to avoid this for the first 40 levels or so, when supermaxing a character being able to reduce then eliminate limb damage will be one more luxury that helps you feel truly godlike.

About Cannibal: Feasting on corpses takes a strong stomach and a lot of resolve, so it's no surprise this Perk requires such a high level of Endurance. The first 2 ranks of the Cannibal Perk will heal you for 25 health for any of the listed corpse types. The next rank does not add additional corpse types, but doubles the healing to +50 Health.

I'd take this Perk if you are a penny pincher, because it's going to help you recover health after battles and save on Stimpaks - the only thing that heals you well when you've got tons of life as a high Endurance character would have.

As far as Companion influence, note that only Strong will like you doing this - Supermutants of course don't mind you being a Cannibal. Cait, Deacon, Nick Valentine, Piper, and of course Preston Garvey will frown upon you using this Perk in their presence. Just so you are aware, it does have that drawback - but a Melee character can gain great Affinity with Strong by using this regularly, resulting in getting his unique Perk - Berserk - which gives +20% Melee Damage when you're below 25% health.

About Ghoulish: This is a very interesting Perk. You will still take Radiation damage and thus lose some of your max health, but whenever you take Rads, you restore health equal to 50% of the Radiation Damage with Rank 1. At rank 2, it becomes 100, then 150%. Now, if you're fully healed this is useless. Some enemies, however, deal damage along with radiation damage, and it can prevent them from hurting you nearly as bad. Realize that having even 10 Rad resistance may greatly reduce the healing factor, but you are probably better off to have a mix of both - with rank 3 and some Rad resistance, enemies would not be able to drop your max health as much while healing you for some of the damage they've dealt.

You can go with 0 Rad Resistance from Perks if you want to maximize healing - a strong Glowing One or any Glowing enemy can deal Radiation damage, but they'll do as much in health given their typically high levels. This is a tough call as far as how much Rad Resistance to go with and will be entirely situational, but there's 0 doubt that the Ghoulish Perk will be an entirely bad choice. There's radiation everywhere in Fallout 4, and this will offset some of the damage irradiated enemies deal to you.

About Solar Powered: After doing some testing with this Perk, I'm left disappointed and will not use it in my main build - I've had my eye on it a while, but will instead go with Lifegiver because it doesn't require as much Endurance. I think Life Giver and Ghoulish are much better Perks. First - the 2 stats being boosted only during those specific hours are only good for melee, and only going to come up half the time unless you wait around to do things by day. Second, by the time you get Rank 2, you should not have a problem with Radiation. Sure, you can sell your Radaway but you may as well take Ghoulish rather than this and heal some health during combat - that brings up my third issue with this Perk, which I really wanted to like. Despite you being 'solar powered', like Life Giver, it just doesn't work during combat. 0 regeneration during a time when it would be most helpful. Both are good for restoring lost health after battle, but they will do nothing for you in fights. I wouldn't recommend rank 3 at all, but Melee characters may want the first 2.

Endurance in Builds

Endurance comes in handy more for higher level characters who will face more damaging opponents - 4 or 5 points will do, and of course you can get the Bobblehead. It's fundamentally more important for Melee builds than ranged, who are better off with high Perception, Agility, or Luck. A few of these Perks are worthwhile, but even Strength has more universal offerings with Pack Mule and Armorer. Endurance is not going to be central to any build, but it may help you to make a bruiser who does not use VATS much and soaks up damage - that can certainly be done and would be effect. Higher Endurance will help you on Survival difficulty, although you will also need much more damage to eliminate enemies quickly and thus will choose a weapon type and build around it to be truly effective. When you make a high-Endurance build, you may be doing it more for the raw HP and sprinting than the Perks. I find it to be the weakest tree, though every tree has at least a few useful Perks and this is no exception.