The Fallout 4 console is a powerful tool that can help you get new items, act like a god, or simply turn you into a hundred-foot tall supersonic monster. I mean, we all do that after we get fed up with playing an excellent RPG title for over a thousand hours.
I guess it can also be used to cheat at the game, but you probably shouldn’t use it for that. Well, unless you’re really stuck. Or, I guess, if you really want to cheat. But just remember, as your high school gym teacher would say, you are only cheating yourself. So that’s alright then.
Seriously, though. For a lot of people, the command console is a necessary tool for making movies, moving around quickly, or speeding up the collection of those hard-to-find items. So today we’ll take a look at what you can do with the Fallout 4 console, but feel free to check out our guide on most useful Fallout 4 mods as well.
How To Activate the Fallout 4 Console
First of all, you’re going to need to activate the console. That’s easy: press the tilde (~) key.
Didn’t work? Yeh, you might need to press the apostrophe (*) key. The difference seems to be something to do with the native language of your keyboard, but no-one really knows.
Anyway, now you’ve got a console, you just type in one of the commands below, and hit enter. Then your command will come into effect.
Fallout 4 Cheats
I’m calling this section ‘cheats’, although they can be used for more than cheating.
tgm – God mode, which is what you are all here for.
tcl – This turns off collision detection, so you can go wherever you want.
tfc — Free camera is activated, which is good for making screenshots of or movies.
tfc 1 — This is the same as the above, turns off animations as well.
tm — This clears your screen of all menus and UI, again for taking screenshots. BUT it will also hide the console itself, so press tilde and then tm and then enter to get it back when you need it.
csb — Resets blood and damage effects.
fov [first-person FOV] [third-person FOV] — This swaps between the two fields of view.
set timescale to [insert number here] — This slows down or speeds-up time. Type a number to set the time to whatever you like. Default is 16. 1 is realtime, believe it or not. And 10,000 is super, super-fast, so activate it and watch the sun race across the sky.
coc [cell id] – Type an area and this command will teleport you there. An example is ‘coc RedRocketExt’, but you can go anywhere you like.
Find Item and NPC IDs
For a lot of the following commands, you’ll need to know the IDs of items and NPCs, as well as the names of locations and factions and other stuff. So how do you find these? Some of them are really easy to find: if you have an item, click on it with the console open, and it will show you the ID. Sometimes it’s hard to do that, though. So there are a couple of tools that can help you find IDs.
help [item name] [0-4] — This command searches through items, NPCs, and commands. It will give you a list of IDs, and you can use Page Up and Page Down to scroll through the list. Type “0” and you’ll get a list of everything in the game, or you can specify the name of something.
help “attack dog” 0 – for instance, will tell you that there is an NPC with the name of “attack dog” that has the ID 000B2BF2.
Or, for a more surreal experience, try this:
coc qasmoke — This teleports you to a magical area. Here there are boxes, and these boxes contain every single item in the game. There’s nothing else here, so it’s not as fun as it might sound. But it’s useful for finding IDs because you can just click on what you want.
Or, you know, teleport in and quickly stock up, and then leave again once you’ve got some killer weapons.
How To Change Your Character With Fallout 4 Console Commands
You can also use the console to change your character. If you get bored of the way your character looks, you can go back to the customization menu. Or you can regenerate all your health immediately.
showlooksmenu player 1 — This command will take you back to the character customization menu that you normally see at the beginning of the game. Just make sure you use the free camera also, so you can actually see your face.
player.setrace [race id] — Yeh, this is a weird one. It will change your race (to, e.g., ghoul or mutant). You can find race IDs with the find tool above and then enter them. Just BE CAREFUL, because most of the races will just make your game crash. So save before you try this.
player.resethealth — Does what it says: resets your health. Useful if you are losing a fight, obviously. Just be aware that you will still be radioactive afterward, so take some Radaway if you want to stop all damage.
setgs fJumpHeightMin [insert number here] — This modifies the height that you jump. You can play around with different values, and setting it really high will let you jump over buildings. Give it a try. See?
Oh, one thing I forgot: you’ll need to turn on God Mode, or the damage from the fall will kill you. Sorry about that.
tdetect — This makes you invisible to the game’s AI, so nothing will react to your presence. So you can walk around like a ghost, stealing whatever you like.
player.modav [skill] [number] — This is a direct method of modifying your skill levels. So if you type player.modav strength 10, for instance, this will boost our strength by 10 points. You can use whatever number you like.
This is useful if you want to quickly hack a terminal, or can’t be bothered to increase your persuasion to get an NPC to let you in somewhere. But most of the time you’ll want perks rather than extra skills. So that’s the next command:
player.setav [character variable] [number] — This one sets your traits to a particular value. But unlike modav, it will also unlock the perks that come with the new trait level.
player.setav speedmult [insert number here] — Ok, now we’re getting silly. This one will boost your running speed to a set level. You can go pretty high, just make sure you turn on God Mode so you don’t hurt yourself.
Oh, and this one combined with the next command is great …
player.setlevel [insert number] — Which sets your character level to whatever number you want. Useful for walking through the game killing everything, or just saving time on leveling up.
player/additem 0000000f [insert number here] — This is the ID for bottlecaps, and will add the number that you specify to your inventory. Suddenly, you’ll be very rich.
player/additem 0000000a [insert number here] — Same as above, except this one adds bobby pins equal to the number you specify.
player.additem [item ID] [number] — And this is the more general command for adding items to your inventory. You will need to know the ID for the item you want, so look above for some ways to find that. But then you can add ANYTHING you want, whenever you want. Pretty useful, huh?
How To Manipulate NPCs With Fallout 4 Console Commands
Now we have some commands that let you play around with the way that NPCs act. These are very useful if you are making movies, but you can also use them in combination to create some truly hilarious effects.
tai — This disables AI for everything. All NPCs will now stand around looking vacant. This is useful if you want to play around without them getting in the way.
tcai — This is the same as above, except it only disables AI combat. So nothing will fight you, and peace will reign all over the world. Boring, right?
killall — As you might have guessed, this command kills everything around you. This command is (kind of) smart, in that it won’t kill your companions or anyone else that the game thinks is important for your quest. But it will injure them, so give them a stimpack if you want them back to normal.
This command, as you can imagine, is super fun. Walk into a hostile area, attract some attention, and then kill everything. Ah, sweet victory.
kill [insert ID] — If you want to kill something (or someone) in particular, use this command. There are two ways to do this. You can either type the ID of the entity you want to kill into the command, or you can click on an entity with the console open, and then just type “kill”.
Just be aware that if you type an ID, this command will kill the entity you’ve told it to, no matter where it is. So if you want to kill the Feral Ghoul in front of you, and not one mile away, make sure you use the correct ID.
resurrect [insert ID] — Brings the creature with the ID you supply back to life. A miracle!
You can use this to resurrect anything you like if you’ve got the ID. You can also click on the body of a deceased enemy or friend, and then type ‘resurrect’. Just be aware that any physical damage they sustained will still be there. So if you killed them by cutting their head off, they are still going to be headless after you bring them back to life.
recycleactor — Resets a particular character back into the state they were in when they first appeared.
setscale [number from 1 to 10] — Ah, yes, this command. This makes you or your target huge if you use a high number. This is great fun, because you can stomp around the world like you are Godzilla.
sexchange — Ha. Yes, this does what it says it does. You can use it on almost anything, although using it on some unique characters has effects that are … interesting.
getav CA_affinity — This is a quick way of seeing the affinity level of your whoever your companion is at the moment.
setav CA_affinity [number] — This is linked to the command above. It will let you set your current companion’s affinity level to whatever you want it to be. So you can make instantly love you, hate you, or something in between.
modav CA_affinity [number] – Adds a number to your companion’s affinity level. Like the command above, except a bit slower.
unequipall — Unequip all items from the selected NPC. Useful when you want your stuff back.
How To Change Factions With Fallout 4 Console Commands
Sometimes, it’s also useful to be able to change the factions you belong to or to assign NPCs to particular factions. There are also console commands for that. For these, you’re going to need to find the IDs for factions, so have a look above for the tools you’ll need to find this. Then you can get going …
player.AddToFaction [faction id] [0 or 1] — This will change your affiliation with a faction. 0 is friendly, and 1 is allied, so you can choose.
You can also use this command to change the faction of NPCs. Leave out the ‘player’ bit at the beginning, and it will work on the selected NPC.
player.RemoveFromFaction [faction id] — Remove yourself from a faction. Again, like the command above, you can also use this on NPCs by removing the ‘player’ prefix and clicking on an NPC before you use the command.
removefromallfactions — Removes the target from all factions.
setally [faction id] [faction id] [0 or 1] [0 or 1] — This one’s a little more complicated. You can use it to change the stance of two factions to each other. Type in two faction IDs, and then 0 for friendly or 1 for allied.
You can use this to make all factions allied with each other, and finally achieve the dream of world peace. Or, of course …
setenemy [faction id] [faction id] [0 or 1] [0 or 1] — Use this command to make factions neutral (0) or enemies (1) and set everybody against everybody.
How To Complete The Game With Fallout 4 Console Commands
Ah, really? Is that what you came here for? Well, if you really want to cheat your way to the end of the game, here are the console commands for that:
completeallobjectives [Quest ID] — This will automatically complete all the objectives in a particular quest. This is useful if you get stuck on a particular quest, or if you run into a bug that won’t let you progress.
resetquest [Quest ID] – Alternatively, you can reset a quest that you are on, and set everything back to how it was. Have another go, and see if you can do it this time.
completequest [Quest ID] — This will complete a particular quest, without going through the objectives in between. Useful if you are playing the game for the hundredth time, and just want to get through to the good stuff.
Or …
caqs — This is the command that will complete every step of the primary quest. That means it will complete the game for you. Unfortunately, that means the great game you’ve just bought is no fun anymore, so BE CAREFUL.
Final Words
So there we have it: all of the most common console commands for Fallout 4. I haven’t shown you absolutely everything, but only the ones that you are likely to need. And some that are just for fun. The Fallout: New Vegas console commands are very similar to the Fallout 4 console commands.
There are a couple of reasons why you would want to use Fallout 4 console commands and a few reasons why you shouldn’t use them. First, you can use them just for fun and really get into creative combinations. You can turn yourself into a superhero, or a grotesque monster.
Second, there are genuinely times in Fallout 4 when the game will make a mistake, and won’t let you progress. This is particularly true if you complete the quests in a weird order that the developers didn’t forsee. In those circumstances, you have little option but to use the commands above to complete a particular quest automatically and get rid of the bug.
And then, you can use them to cheat and to make the game a whole lot easier. Sometimes that’s justified, I suppose if you are really stuck and can’t get past a particular battle. But ultimately, if you do this once, you’re just going to get stuck again. So use the console sparingly for completing the main quest, please. It will make the game more fun when you complete it the way it was supposed to be done!
Also, if you’re looking for more similar gaming options, check out our guides on some of the most amazing survival games, or maybe even outstanding FPS games!