Best Fallout 4 Legendary Effects

Fallout 4 Legendary effects are the most powerful effects in the game. You may have come across several legendary weapons in the game. Fallout 4 offers a lot of legendary weapons with unique legendary effects.

In Fallout 4, you will stumble upon several legendary level enemies who would be difficult to defeat without legendary weapons. You get legendary weapons when you defeat these special, uncommon enemies. You might face difficulties defeating an uncommon enemy without legendary weapons, but once you obtain one, you can go on a winning streak of obtaining more weapons.

In this article, we will list all the Fallout 4 best legendary effects so that you know what effect does what for maximum utility. 

Fallout 4 Best Legendary Effects

Legendary weapons or armors exhibit legendary effects, mostly found on the bodies of “Legendary” enemies. These “Legendary” enemies will always almost carry legendary weapons or armor, which you can obtain by defeating them.

The legendary weapons or armors found on the enemies are random. This means that the weapon you get from an enemy is not specific. The type of Fallout 4 legendary effect you get mainly depends on the location of the spawned enemy, and a group of weapons are tied to the type of enemy and location they are spawned in.

1. Berserker Weapon Effects

Berserker weapon effect does more damage according to your damage resistance. The lower the damage resistance you have, the more damage you do. The berserker effect also works in reverse, where your damage will decrease if your armor rating is too high.

It is a double-edged sword and is best used with less armor on you. The lighter the armor you wear, the more damage you do. This effect is not affected by the radiation resistance.

There is an occasional problem with this effect where your damage will decrease if you are not wearing any base clothes like jeans, a t-shirt, army fatigues, or vault jumpsuits.

This weapon effect can be added to the ranged weapons via the console, for example, Berserker’s Shielded Gauss rifle.”

2. Crippling Weapon Effects

Crippign effect is not something that does damage or increases 

the attack power of your weapon. It may sound misleading, but it causes limb damage to your enemies. Your enemies will essentially take the same amount of damage, but it will be much easier to cripple their limbs.

Using this weapon effect will deal 50% more limb damage. This can be useful against enemies that are bigger in size or quick. You can quickly decapitate or cripple them and finish them off with a powerful attack.

3. Damage Reduction Armor & Weapon Effects

This Fallout 4 legendary weapon effect is quite complicated to understand but effective in battle. Using this effect will cause all Damage Reduction mod stacks along with the armor and weapon mod carrying the same name.

Due to how Fallot 4’s AI is designed, you can make the enemies run away by equipping these 7 pieces (helmet, weapon, left arm, left leg, right leg, right arm, chest). This will negate all the damage to your enemies.

4. Defiant Weapon Effects

This is a unique and really powerful effect. It essentially doubles the damage of any weapon that has a capacity of 1. Technically, this is used on weapons when they are on the last round of their weapon. 

Since weapons with just 1 round or capacity are always on the “last round” before reloading, this can be used as a permanent effect on such weapons. But, this is not good for explosive weapons such as the Fat Man since damage multiplayer does not work for explosive or area damage.

5. Elemental Weapon effects

Elemental Weapon effects are a group of different types of effects which are – Freezing, Incendiary, and Plasma Infused. Each of these deals different damage and type of effect on the enemies.

5A. Freezing effect

This type of elemental weapon effect combines critical hits and freezing the enemy. It deals critical damage will freezing the enemies and deals 10 points of Cryo damage. 

5B. Incendiary effect

This type of elemental weapon effect is a fire-based effect that will set an enemy on fire. It deals additional damage of 15 points against the enemies. 

5C. Plasma Induced effect

This type of elemental weapon effect is unique, letting you deal extra energy damage of 10 points. It also enables a chance to turn your enemy into “plasma-goo.”

5D. Poisoner’s 

It is the least powerful elemental effect since many enemies are resistant or immune to poison damage. Poisoners keep dealing small damage for a prolonged amount of time which, when totaled, deals a lot of damage.

6. Explosive Weapons Effects

The explosive weapon effect is a simple and straightforward weapon that can prove extremely powerful when used with weapons with a higher rate of fire with low base damage. It also works well with weapons that fire multiple projectiles or does area damage. Explosive projectiles or bullets explode on impact, which also deals area damage of 15 points.

7. Furious Weapon Effects

This is certainly a useful and consistent weapon effect that increases the weapon’s damage by 15% after each hit. For example, hitting an enemy the third time will increase the damage of 4th attack by 30%.

Although, there is a limit to this. The counter resets after 10 seconds of hitting your first attack or when you attack another enemy. But, the counter doesn’t reset if you miss the target.

Another thing to note is that the furious weapon effect only works on the ballistic types of weapons and does not work on weapons with radiation damage like the radium rifle.

8. Instigating Weapon Damage

Instigating weapon effect is a really powerful effect, but it has to be used tactfully with the right weapons. This effect lets you deal an additional 50% of damage when the enemy’s health is at 100%.

If you use a normal weapon like a shotgun, you will deal extra damage than usual, but that is not how you use the Instigation weapon effect. To be most effective, use this effect on weapons with high base damage like sniper rifles, bolt-action, or semi-automatic weapons.

Although it is most effective when used with a sniper. When you snipe an enemy, they are usually at full length, and a sniper has one of the best base damage. Combined with appropriate perks and a strong weapon, a one-shot kill is pretty much guaranteed.

9. Irradiated Weapon effect

Just like the instigated weapon effect, the Irradiated weapon effect is potentially a very powerful effect when used tactfully. The irradiated weapon effect lets you deal an additional 50 points of radiation damage.

Although this works with only radiation attacks, using it on proper weapons can make it a lethal weapon. It scales really well with higher difficulties and levels. The irradiated effect, when used on a weapon and combined with the Nuclear Physicist perk (Fallout 4 Perks), the weapon will deal 100 points of radiation damage and lower the enemy’s health by 10%. 

At lower levels, the normal radiation damage is enough, which may dwarf the 10% health reduction. On the higher levels, properly upgraded weapons can do a lot of damage with a single-irradiated shot which could deal damage in hundreds.

This effect is highly effective on automatic weapons, irradiated Gamma guns, and Radium Rifles.

10. Kneecaper Weapon Effects

This weapon effect is very similar to the Crippling effect, which does not deal any direct damage but deals very specific damage.

In the case of the kneecaper weapon effect, each projectile has an increased chance of 20% to instantly cripple the target’s legs. You don’t have to hit your target’s legs to activate this effect. It can activate regardless of your aim on your enemy.

This is highly effective on melee enemies, which are quick on their effect or are huge. Hitting the enemy with an automatic weapon will instantly cripple the enemy, after which they can’t do much. 

11. Never Ending Weapon Effects

This weapon effect eliminates the need to reload your weapons. When this effect is equipped, your ammo capacity becomes equal to the amount you carry (total ammunition in the player’s inventory). 

Although, this weapon effect is known to cause some weapons to be unstable with certain weapons like a laser musket. For example, a laser has a crank charge limit to its shot, but with this effect, it removes the crank limit. This lets you deal an insane amount of single-shot damage of about 30000 at 200 cranks.

12. Nimble Weapon Effect

The Nimble weapon effect lets you move quickly with some weapons scoped or aimed. It increases your movement speed by 75% while aiming. While it is hard to move around with weapons that have an actual scope, it is effective while using a weapon like a pistol.

You can move around much faster while keeping it aimed at an enemy giving you a speed boost to dodge enemies or their attacks.

This is helpful when wearing heavy armor, which slows down your movement speed. Using the Nimble effects increases your overall movement speed while also increasing your movement speed while aiming a weapon.

This is also useful when your movement is slowed by using heavy weapons like Fat Missile. It lets you compensate for the slowed-down movement.

13. Nocturnal Weapon Effect

This weapon effect lets you deal additional damage of varying degrees depending on the time of day. Morning, Afternoon, and Evening deal extra damage of 33%. Sunrise and sunset let you deal additional damage of 66%. During the nighttime, it lets you deal additional damage of 150%, and at midnight, it lets you deal additional damage of 200%.

This works with any weapon; the more powerful weapon you use, the more damage you do. It is most effective to use a weapon with high base damage at night and deal damages that can one-shot your enemies.

14. Penetrating Weapon Effect

The penetrating weapon effects ignore the enemies’ armor. The effectiveness of this effect depends on the target’s armor rating. Having said that, the effectiveness of this effect also becomes negligible after a certain threshold.

When the target’s armor rating is less than 15%, the damage to your weapon is applied at full. When the armor rating is between 15% and 21.4%, the damage to your weapon is still applied at full effect.

15. Rapid Weapon Effects

The rapid mod has an interesting effect, providing you with a 25% faster fire rate and 15% faster reload time. This effect is primarily effective with an automatic weapon like an assault rifle or Gattling laser.

The Rapid Weapon Effect can effectively increase the “damage per minute” since it will be firing more projectiles or shots per second. This can be tactfully used against a horde of enemies or a long-range enemy, not giving them any chance to make their attack.

16. Resolute Weapon Effect

The resolute weapon effect essentially slows down the time when firing the second to last bullet in your weapon. Although, it does slow down time even when you switch to another weapon with resolute effect, which has a single round left in the weapon.

For a laser-based weapon like Laser Musket, the resolute effect will occur on the first crank, and the player must wait a little while before cranking the weapon, or else the effect won’t activate.

17. Slow Time Weapon Effect

The Slow Time weapon effect is similar to the Resolute effect but is more generic and doesn’t have very specific conditions. It slows down time when firing the weapon and while switching the weapon.

The Slow Time effect does not interfere with or cancel the Resolute and Dead Eye slow effects when switching the time. This gives you a better advantage while trying to make a last-minute critical hit using a weapon like a sniper.

18. Staggering Weapon Effect

This weapon effect allows you to stagger your enemy when hit with powerful attacks or shots. This is particularly effective when used with a weapon with a high fire rate like a flamer or ripper. It also works well with weapons with more than one projectile, like the combat shotgun.

Being hit by such weapons with a Staggering effect will render the enemy helpless, making them easy targets.

This is even more effective when used with other staggering effects like the Commando or Knockdown effect of Sniper. Non-automatic weapons have a 30% chance of staggering a target with each attack, while automatic weapons have a 5%. 

Melee weapons have 50%, which allows weapons to unlock the enemies.

19. Two-Shot Weapon Effects

The two-shot weapon effects allow you to make your weapon fire additional projectile while still using only 1 ammo. But it will be fired at slightly reduced accuracy and increased recoil.

Something important to note about this weapon effect is that it is not usually possible to find heavy weapons like harpoon guns or missile launchers with this effect. This effect has several interesting effects that change with the weapon you use.

For example, when the two-shot weapon effect is applied to a double-barrel shotgun, it will essentially double the base damage, but it will have nearly 0 accuracy, which makes it useful in close-range situations.

20. VATS Enhanced Weapon Effect

VATS effects have two variations, and each behaves slightly different. The VATS weapon effect is linked to the Action points.

Both the variants of the VATS Enhanced Weapon effect improve the chance of hit in the VATS and reduce the Action Points (AP) by a percentage. 

The VATs Enhanced [1] will reduce the Action Points by 25%, whereas the VATS Enhanced [2] will reduce the Action Points by 40%.

21. Wounding Weapon Effects

Wounding weapons effects applies sustained bleed damage on the enemy by an additional 25 points of damage. The enemies in the Fallout 4 are not known for having high health meters, but they are hard to kill because of their high resistance.

But, Fallout 4 does not have any Bleed damage resistance or Bleed damage stacks making this effect somewhat effective. The effectiveness of this effect increases when used with weapons that fire multiple projectiles per shot, such as a shotgun. The bleeding effect is also applied to the synths and robots.

22. Lucky Weapon Effect

The Lucky weapon effect lets your critical meter replenish quickly by 15% and causes double the damage with critical hits. The Lucky Weapon effect does not stack with “Better Critical” perks.

This can be effective with weapons effects based on critical hits like the Crippling Weapon Effect. When these two effects are combined and used with a weapon, critical damage to the enemy will increase substantially.

23. Powerful Weapon Effect

A powerful weapon effect is a simple and straightforward weapon effect that lets you deal an additional 25% damage to the enemies or targets. But it cannot be used on missile launchers which is its only drawback.

It is a generic damage-powerup effect that can be applied to any weapon to increase its damage. It works best with high fire rate weapons like assault rifles.

24. Junkie’s Weapon Effects

This is an interesting and unique effect, but it may not be very versatile and can be used in specific conditions. The Junkie’s effect increases the weapon damage when the player suffers from chemical withdrawal effects. The more the suffering, the higher the damage. Unlike the powerful weapon effect, this effect works on missiles too.

Conclusion

The long list of Fallout 4 legendary weapon effects can be used effectively if you know what kind of damage it does. Combining multiple effects and using them with the most compatible weapons makes these legendary weapons’ effects more potent while making your weapons much more powerful.

Combining multiple effects and modding them to a weapon makes using the weapons fun and removes the “boring” factor. You can build a weapon that can do the highest damage possible or build a weapon for a specific condition or an enemy to do the most possible damage.