A Twitch streamer has dedicated nearly three years of his life to Fallout 4, struggling to complete the most challenging feat I’ve ever heard of: a 100-percent completion of Bethesda’s 2015 action role-playing game without taking one single bit of damage.
As spotted by PCGamer, streamer Vrexia spent the last two years and seven months working on a no-damage, 100-percent speedrun of Fallout 4 with some incredibly strict rules. For starters, the run was permadeath, and the game had been modded so that any damage, no matter how minuscule or trivial, would kill him. And since it was a 100-percent run, he also had to collect everything the game had to offer, including collectibles like the Fallout Boy bobbleheads and Nuka-Cola recipes, alongside finishing the game’s DLCs and unlocking all followers and settlements. Basically, Vrexia had to literally turn over every stone in Fallout 4 without dying—lest he start all over.
There were other restrictions Vrexia imposed on himself, too. He couldn’t use legendary weapons or armor (including power armor and clothes with special stats), anything that mitigated damage or removed radiation, or any food, drink, or drugs (aka “chems”) that provide various buffs. Although legendary items received from quests were allowed, Vrexia pretty much completed this goated run with some super-basic gear: a variety of standard, ballistic guns and very, very light clothing. I’m talking, like, underwear and a zip-up sweater.
As you can imagine, all kinds of shenanigans ensued. It’s a Bethesda game, after all, so anything you’d think would kill Vrexia has killed Vrexia. He told PCGamer about some of the funniest deaths he experienced while working on this run.
“A scorpion disappeared, reappeared in the sky and fell on my head,” Vrexia said. “I picked up a box and it slammed into my face killing me. I aimed my gun and got flung into the air and died by falling damage. Tripped on a tire and died.”
He also spoke about one time when, right at the end of the game during Fallout 4's last mission, he died and “immediately started a new run.” The worst part about this, though he said it doesn’t bug him much, was that he was at 99.5 percent completion. He was almost there, then unceremoniously died. Now, that’s a major bummer.
But he eventually did it! Vrexia rolled credits on Fallout 4 during an October 2 livestream, putting an end to his no-damage 100 percent run after 415 attempts, almost three years, and 2,000 hours in pursuit of this incredible goal. He told PCGamer that, in total, he’s spent some 13,395 hours on the game according to Steam. That’s a long time, and finally pulling off this achievement was an incredible thrill. He told PCGamer as much.
“As for how it felt to achieve it, there was a rush when I first completed a No-Hit run, similar to when I went skydiving IRL, it’s hard to match,” Vrexia said. “In fact, I was actually a bit speechless that I’d done it! I set a silly challenge initially, nothing like this, and loved it. That moment in the stream where you’ve actually done it is magic. You just see chat’s reaction instantly, and moving forward, I’ll still play some Fallout 4 now and then, but my real passion is retro gaming. I am going to get some sort of similar challenges going for retro games.”
Kotaku reached out to Vrexia for comment.
Vrexia’s final, successful run was clocked at 52 hours, 20 minutes, and 23 seconds. With over 400 attempts under his belt, I think it’s safe to say that Vrexia is a master of Fallout 4 at this point. It takes serious dedication to pull this off.