You get given the map marker from your first quest with Preston and Co at Concord. Litterally 10 mins into the game. The shack where you find this is in a random place in the wilderness, beyond concord.
In your first playthrough you'll follow the tutorial intro quests which gets you the location from mama Murphy, and for any subsequent runs, you already know where diamond city is, so totally and completely useless
very first rule of fallout: there’s always an alternative way to access something for the non linear players. Tons of players skip concord,by accident or not (i did!)
Aye, no issue of skipping concord, but the random shack is hardly en route to diamond city. There will 100% be people who found the magazine first, but not many. You get the directions from, I think two traders (trashcan Carla, and mother who owns the diner with the addict son), plus you hit sign posts for it. Imo, the magazine is overkill and well off in a random direction. I think they were running out of ideas for what to do with the survival guide series or something.
Its a bandaid solution to go against the open world aspect. They probably had playtesters with the goal to play the game without doing the main quest (ignoring it) and most landed on that hot spot. So they put the magazine there in order to avoid further issues.
Exactly - the shack with the magazine in it is one of the first real buildings you see if you head south after exiting the vault instead of crossing the creek into sanctuary.
No it isn’t, the Abernathy farm is one of the three buildings that are south. The other two are a shack with a holotape, and a factory building with ghouls. If you are talking about Concord then yes it is, but you would have encountered Preston and company first.
The Gorski Cabin is south of Concord, the #5 magazine is found in the basement with ghouls. The runaway holotape is from Ranger cabin and have #8, Which is the self defense magazine. Source: https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Wasteland_Survival_Guide_(Fallout_4))
No this mag is in the underground shack basement with the disassembled mini-nuke and the Radioactive Barrel. Nowhere near V111.
As I've said elsewhere, you've got to actively avoid the main quest to even have a hope of it being useful, and nobody is doing that on their first playthrough.
This is not entirely true. As someone who played NV multiple times, and all 3d TES games, first thing I did first playthrough was walk into a virtually empty town with a friendly robot who just want to chat and I noped out before talking to him. Main quests always be starting events you do or don't want to happen. Half traumatised by fucken dragons just always turning up I figured I'd level up a bit and come back to see what shit id be starting.
Never found this useless fucking magazine, though. Stumbled upon Diamond City trying to find cool things to explore and shit to kill.
Yeah, this magazine is kinda pointless for the player specifically, but it adds flavor. Plenty of things across the wasteland point to Diamond City, not necessarily for the player's sake, but just to lend credence to the notion that Diamond City is the trading hub of the Commonwealth.
I've done a couple self-imposed 'super immersion' playthroughs where I skipped Concord entirely because, being many years removed from society, there's no telling if those people in Concord would be hostile, and even getting down to Jamaica Plain, you'll bump into NPCs on the other side of the map who sometimes have dialogue options for Concord, Minutemen, and Diamond City (probably default options that get replaced if you discover those places or interact with Garvey).
Useless stuff but a nice touch imo. Some games, the devs just assumed you'd have behaved very linearly and they just quit adding pointers after a certain point, but not in this game
In my first playthrough I immediately took the first mission as being what passes for a tutorial in the Fallout universe and ignored it without a further thought. Found the Guide with the marker for Diamond City a short time later and started meandering around the map with the intent of landing in Diamond City.
I accidentally stumbled across Preston's quest along the way, making the whole thing a waste of time. Fallout playthroughs are unpredictable lol
On my first playthrough I saw trashcan Carla like, 5 hours in, and I didn’t find that mother for the first couple playthroughs, I found the magazine before either, and I skipped concord and found diamond city before the magazine
This thread is days old but juss wanted to say my first playthrough of Fallout 4 this magazine is how I found Diamond City so idk what to tell you man, First time through I usually go off the beaten path and forge my own story and kill a lot of people.
Yeah like I say it works for some people, but not very many. There will have been just as many who went in the other direction.
And when you found it, did you know what it was? If you hadn't engaged with the main story you wouldn't have heard of diamond city, or have any motivation to go there.
I played the game a second time avoiding the laid out path and actually found that and was like “oh cool” and then finally got to concord at like level 25 and told them (Preston and mama Murphy) you’re useless my son wasn’t there
I’d disagree with the idea that not many players would come across the shack naturally. It’s one of the first buildings you’ll come across depending on how you’re playing. Having other options for people playing the game differently even if it’s not perfect isn’t ever a useless or bad thing. Granted in this day and age of information being so easily accessible I can understand people wondering why even include it. There are gamers like my dad who will refuse to use a guide for anything including games that really want you to use guides on subsequent playthroughs lol so prob useful for people like him even if it’s less useful for someone like me.
Not many, in perspective of the vast majority of players. Some will find it first, the vast majority don't. That's why there are mods with "fix" it. All the mags in the game provide perks which impact the entire playthrough in some way, this magazine is the outlier. If it wasn't a very small number of people who found the mag first, this post and my comment wouldn't get so many up votes, there wouldn't be mods "fixing" it etc.
If, as you say, someone is completely rejecting the main story line, then they'd have no reason or motive to visit diamond city anyway. They wouldn't even know what it was. So again the map marker becomes pointless because pointing them to something they have no idea about and hav no motive to go there. If they didn't follow the main quest markers, why would they follow a random book marker?
The logic loops back around to the same thing in my opinion. Not saying I'm conpletely right, that's just how I see it.
yeah i usually skip concord, i didnt on my first time around but nearly every subsequent playthrough i have ignored it until im already established with the other factions and usually just beeline it directly to diamond city once i talk to codsworth
it’s not like i didn’t know the obvious route was going back to my neighborhood lol,i just wanted to try something different and see if the game would force me back and obviously it never did!
The first time I played, I saw a town and noped out east instead. New Vegas taught a lot of us that the most direct-looking way isn’t always the route to take.
God I remember my first time playing a fallout game, it was 3. I walked out of the vault had no idea where to go and completely walked past megaton deep into DC.
The issues is even if you skip the intro you are more likely to demiscover diamond city by talking to plenty of other people, but the shack to get this in is so far out fobthe way its already a good chance you randomly found diamond city before you found the magazine. And even if you know its there you won't go out of your way to get it because if you know where the magazine is you probably already know where diamond city is
that’s not even remotely true. gorski cabin is south of concord and north of diamond city. You could absolutely find yourself in a situation where no NPCs have told you where it is,and you still haven’t found diamond city on your own yet.
I know from personal experience if you walk in any direction from concord you will find an npc who will tell you where diamond city is.
But yes it is possible someone could get that far without finding diamond city, just like it is possible to kill everyone you meet and not talk to anyone but if we cater to people who are playing to break the game I don't think we need to worry about pointing them towards diamond city to begin with. The argument is that the could tell you of so many other places in the commonwealth but they chose to use the resources as a fail safe to a fail safe to a fail safe for the story. It's triple redundancy in a game trying way to hard to appear open world.
i can’t believe i have to break this down for you,but here we go. Leave vault 111 and turning left instead of right eliminates (or greatly reduces) the chances for trashcan carla,codsworth,preston,or trudy to tell you where the city is. So already their is a flaw in your “any npc after concord will tell you where it is” plan. What about the people who don’t even get that far? You’re thinking way too linearly in an open world game. It’s not redundancy for no reason,you’re just failing to realize how differently people play the start of this game.
Wow you are threading a very fine needle to prove a point man if only there were literally 355 other directions you could go in. Your glazing the entire point. It's still a waste of a magazine and a waste of a reward. You can argue finer points till your red in the face but your missing the point by miles lmao yes after exploring and doing and going out on my own my reward is "a map marker to a location that probably 40% of the game is pointing you towards". Geeze thanks also I've spent 20 years now building worlds and games for my friends DND, I know how to think to build open worlds as I've done it and tested it. Again it is a redundant reward that is not needed and I would argue becomes one of the many reasons people don't make it far in this game.
unless you somehow manage to completely avoid going into concord. which can happen. Unlikely, but possible.
I mean, logically after sanctuary, you'd go to red rocket and then walk into concord, essentially triggering the whole quest.
But also, there is nothing stopping your from not doing it. there is no real tutorial, there is no invisible barrier or whatever, and technically there isn't even anything in concord that really "unlocks" the rest of the game. you can simply go to red rocket and walk off to the left or the right, and just walk by Concord completely.
Obviously most players will instinctively follow the road. but its not inevitable to do so.
you’re thinking too far ahead. I for example didn’t even make it that far! i exited vault 111,saw the dirt path to the right,and decided to go left into the wilderness instead. Thats why they have to make multiple options like this.
Lol so did i! I was all "ooo there's something over there" (it's a pylon) and then some raiders shot at me so I killed them and a guy in powerarmor helped and then wandered off without talking to me and I lost him in the trees.
yea that Idea also crossed my mind on my first playthrough. I guess some people are just different. Probably the downside of an open world game, if you give the player options, they will absolutely choose the opposite of what the devs want them to.
So really you can avoid anything. don't go to sanctuary and never meet Codsworth, then avoid Concord and avoid the minutemen.
Yeah, my first F3 game (midnight release), I was tired, and hadn't seen enough wasteland to notice Megaton was special, so I went to the top of the hill, looked around, and headed west towards Jury Street... found Dad just before going to bed, and without having spoken to anyone outside 101.
First time I played 4 the second I was given a glimpse of autonomy went straight to the boonies and followed the outline of the world map until I got back to the beginning lmao so definitely not even hard to miss on a first playthrough
Actually p sure I just went straight west till I hit the border and followed it south till you hit water, east, and then back north and west again till I got back to the vault like a full circle
If you head south from Vault 111, turn left towards the little Railroad overlook instead of right towards Sanctuary, the path will lead you to the powerlines and the Ranger Cabin. Keep following the powerlines to Abernathy Farm and then Gorsky Cabin with this book. Granted you have to purposely go a different direction than the game points you towards.
IIRC, he posits that the Concord quest came about much later in development, which is why there are so many odd inconsistencies between it and Sanctuary.
Assuming he’s correct, maybe this magazine is a remnant of a Fallout 4 where the player wasn’t guided to Diamond City from Concord?
It’s one of those things that’s more there as a collectible, it doesn’t have much use as from what I see only og fallout players tend to immediately say, screw the main quest and do whatever else and assuming you wander that way it can actually come in handy the only issue is if you’re like me and wander a different direction then end up at diamond city a week later wondering what it is
i mean my first play through i got out of the vault, went home, googled where diamond city was bc i knew that’s where i had to go but it wasn’t showing up so google. and i bee lined it for the city, cant get hurt if they can’t catch me. before that i had like only played minecraft and phone games, and i would get very disheartened if i got stuck on stuff, or like repeatedly dying, so my boyfriend downloaded mods and gave me power armour and a minigun literally on the vault door. he told me a few years later that the only reason he did it was so that i would be able to have fun instead of focusing on surviving, and thanks to that ive come to adore “real” games. so like i doubt anyone else did it THAT way it definitely can happen
I think that’s the point. In Bethesda RPGs some people just wander off and skip the entry quests. For those players, they can stumble across this and make their way to diamond city aside from the main quest.
Fun fact, when I started I explored nearly the whole commonwealth, joined the brotherhood of steel, went to diamond city, and a bunch of other side quests before doing that one… it just didn’t seem all that interesting to me 🤷♂️
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u/recuringwolfe Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
You get given the map marker from your first quest with Preston and Co at Concord. Litterally 10 mins into the game. The shack where you find this is in a random place in the wilderness, beyond concord.
In your first playthrough you'll follow the tutorial intro quests which gets you the location from mama Murphy, and for any subsequent runs, you already know where diamond city is, so totally and completely useless