Hacking in Fallout 4 is a bit different and very much still the same compared to Fallout 3. The only major difference is that there is a 10 second lockout, instead of the previous you’re no longer allowed to ever even get near the terminal ever again for the rest of your life lockout you’d experience before.

When the display comes up, press the action key immediately to avoid the slow scroll of information. Hacking is very, very simple, but at the same time, more of a game of random luck than actually figuring things out. You’ll get a display of garbled symbols, numbers, and letters (#$&s41) and words made out between. You can distinguish words from symbols by hovering over them.

Words will highlight, whereas the random symbols will highlight individually. Your first course of action is to literally choose a random word. You’ll get a likeness score. The likeness score isn’t a literal match-up of how many correct letters there are, but instead the number of correct letters in the correct spaces.

Your job, assuming the first one you choose wasn’t it, is to play a game of cat and mouse of sorts. The first step is to see what the likeness score is. So let’s say there is four words: road, boat, coat, and note. You choose boat and get a likeness score of two. That means two letters are in the correct spot. You then choose coat, again a likeness score of two. That would mean road would likely be it, as the common denominator between the two is “oa.”

Bigger words can get harder, but that’s the only relevant bit. You get four attempts, flunk out, and you only have to wait ten seconds to try again. You can also unlock a terminal by providing a password, if it’s found contextually in the world.

You can “cheat” the hacking mini-game, along with access additional tiers of difficulty with the INT 4 perk “hacker.” At its max level, you no longer will get locked out (therefore just trial and error).

Certain NPCs during quests will be capable of unlocking some terminals. As a general rule of thumb, anything that moves a quest or story forward will generally have a terminal that’s hacked by an NPC or a nearby password to allow you to continue. Sometimes it might be faster for you to hack the terminal than to search for a password, and other times you might not know to look and just naturally hack into it.

Terminals can be used for a variety of things. You can activate a robots to attack, unlock or lock doors, disable security turrets, and read lore and backstory behind different characters. Most interfaces are generally the same as you move terminal to terminal.

There isn’t much difference between Fallout 3 hacking and Fallout 4 hacking. The only difference is that you don’t have to “reset the terminal” at the third try because the fourth one locks you out forever. You’ll get another go after the ten second cooldown.

That’s about all there is to the hacking mini-game in Fallout 4! If you need any more help, remember, you can just literally keep guessing and trying. I’ve often picked the right word on the first go multiple times so far.