Up there with scrapping, hacking is a fundamental skill in the wastelands of Fallout 4.
First, you’ll need an Intelligence of at least 4. Once you start putting emphasis into the Hacker perk, you’ll be able to get into Advanced computers. As you progress, you’ll gain Expert and Master abilities as well. Once you max out the Hacker perk, you’ll pretty much never get locked out of anything.
When you turn on locked computers, you’ll have to look through the gibberish onscreen to try to find a password. There will be a lot of options but only one is the correct answer. You only have four guesses before you’re locked out (unless your companion has a perk that gives you an extra guess). Luckily, the computer will give you hints. If you pick a word and it’s incorrect, the computer will at least tell you which letters are in the correct position.
If you guess incorrectly four times, you’ll be locked out of the computer for a set amount of time. However, if you back away from the computer and come back, you’ll have four guesses at a new password.
One last tactic you can use before completely backing out of the computer is the bracket trick. Look for words that are encased in any kind of brackets – {} [] () <> — and hover your cursor over the punctuation marks inside the bracket. If they light up, you’ve found a bracket trick, which will either give you another attempt or remove a possibility from the Code Block.
For more simple Fallout 4 guides and tips, check out a few of our explainers: increasing inventory space, changing your field of view, skipping the intro video, unlocking frame rate, which settings to turn on or off, basic and advanced console commands, and disabling mouse acceleration.