Hacking computers is one of the more important skills you’ll need to take on the wasteland of Fallout 4. These computers contain important information, and will often let you unlock doors, or perform actions that are key to completing quests and finding the best loot. So here’s some tips and tricks to make your hacking that much easier. If you’ve played Fallout 3 or New Veags you should be familiar with the process, but hopefully there’s still some bits of info you hadn’t thought of.

First of all, to hack the computers you need the right skills/perks. You can’t just stumble out of the vault and start hacking away at Advanced computers. Once you have an Intelligence of 4 you can begin putting emphasis into the Hacker perk. This will let you hack Advanced computers at first, but adding points will give you Expert and Master abilities. At its max the Hacker perk will make it so you never get locked out. Of course, if you follow these tips that won’t be a big concern.

So, here’s the basics of how hacking works in Fallout 4. When you load up a computer that has been locked down you are presented a garbled mess of letters, numbers, and symbols. Your job is to find the password hidden within this mess. You’ll quickly see some words in there, and only one of them is correct. You have just four guesses before being locked out for a certain amount of time, so here’s how you make them count.

You aren’t just blindly guessing here, you actually get some help. Each time you pick a word the computer will tell you how many of the letters are correct, meaning they are the right letter and in the right place. So, for example, if you picked FALL and the real password was BALD, you would be told that you had 2 correct: the AL in the middle.

Using this, and a bit of trial and error, you should be able to get the password. However, things can get tricky with the tougher ones, so you need to be smart. If you have FALL, BALD, CALL, TAIL, and BITE available to choose from, you don’t want to pick BITE first, as it gives you far less information than the rest. Picking FALL or CALL would be the best, as it will either be 100% right, or quickly point you where you should go next. For example, if it said 3/4 correct, you know it is CALL. If it says 2/4 then it has to be BALD or TAIL, and BITE is right out. But if it says 0/4 then it has to be BITE.

Now, let’s say you’ve tried this method and still end up on your final guess. Don’t make it! Choosing wrong here locks you out, causing some major issues sometimes. Instead look for brackets of jumbled letters. These are anything contained in the following symbols: {}, [], <>, or (). By highlighting these and selecting them you will remove a dud answer or giving you a new set of guesses, possibly giving you the last bit of info you need to get it right.

Of course, if you can’t or don’t want to find them there is a slightly more nefarious way of getting an entirely new set of guesses. By simply backing out of the computer and retrying you lose your progress, as the password is randomly generated anew, but you get to start all over with your four guesses back intact.

These tips should get your right through any computer that Fallout 4 can throw at you. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions, or any tips that have helped you out.

- This article was updated on:April 17th, 2017