Staring at a flickering green CRT screen while a Super Mutant breathes down your neck is the classic Bethesda experience. You've got four tries. A wall of nonsensical symbols. A handful of English words that look like they belong in a SAT prep book. If you mess up, the terminal locks. You're stuck outside the loot room. Or worse, the turrets stay active. Honestly, Fallout 4 terminal hacking is one of those mechanics that players either love or absolutely loathe because it feels like a guessing game. But it isn't a guess. There is a rigid, mathematical logic happening behind that "Likeness" score, and once you see the pattern, you can't unsee it.
Most people just click words that look cool. Don't do that.
The Brutal Logic of Likeness
When you select a word and the screen flashes "Likeness=0," it feels like a failure. It’s actually a gift. In the world of Fallout 4, Likeness refers to the exact character position. If you click "HOUSE" and get a Likeness of 1, it doesn't mean the secret password contains an H, an O, or a U. It means that in one of those specific slots—the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth—the letter matches the password perfectly.
Let's look at a real-world scenario. You see the words SHIPS, SLIPS, and SHEEP. You click SHIPS. The game tells you "Likeness=3."
If the answer was SLIPS, the Likeness would be 4 (S, I, P, and S all match the position). If the answer was SHEEP, the Likeness would only be 2 (S and H). This is a game of elimination, not a vocabulary test. You’re basically playing a digital version of the board game Mastermind. The difficulty scaling—Novice, Advanced, Expert, Master—doesn't change the rules; it just adds more words and makes them longer, which actually makes the logic easier to narrow down if you have the patience for it.
The length of the words increases with your Science! perk level. Novice terminals usually give you short four-letter words. Master terminals throw ten-letter monsters at you. It's intimidating. But paradoxically, longer words are often easier to solve because the probability of "accidental" letter matches in the same position decreases.
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The Secret "Cheat" Nobody Mentions
You’ve probably seen the brackets. (), [], <>, and {}. Most players ignore the strings of gibberish between the words, but that’s where the real power is hidden. If you find a pair of brackets on the same line—even if there are symbols like @ or # between them—clicking the opening bracket will do one of two things. It either removes a "dud" (a wrong word) from the screen or completely resets your allowance of four tries.
Wait.
Don't click them immediately.
If you use your first three guesses and you're down to your last one, that is when you go hunting for brackets. If you click a bracket pair and it says "Tries Reset," you suddenly have four more attempts. It’s essentially a legal cheat code built into the game's UI. You can find several of these on a single screen. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can click enough brackets to leave only one word on the screen. No thinking required. Just click the survivor.
Nick Valentine and the Companion Factor
If you hate hacking, you probably spend a lot of time with Nick Valentine. He’s the only companion with a built-in "hacker" personality, and he can bypass most terminals for you. But he’s not perfect. Nick can fail. If he fails, he gets locked out for a period, and you’re back to square one.
There’s also the "Science Bobblehead" located in the Malden Middle School (Vault 75). Finding this gives you an extra guess on every terminal you ever encounter. It moves the needle from four tries to five. That single extra guess is the difference between a successful hack and a ten-second lockout timer that feels like an eternity.
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Why Perception and Luck Don't Help
A common misconception in the Fallout community is that high Luck or Perception makes hacking easier. It doesn't. This isn't like the speech checks in New Vegas where a hidden roll determines your fate. In Fallout 4, terminal hacking is entirely dependent on your Intelligence stat and your Science! perk.
Higher Intelligence reduces the number of words on the screen. That’s it. It makes the "haystack" smaller, but you still have to find the needle. If you're running a "dumb" build with 1 Intelligence, the screen will be flooded with words, making the Likeness mechanic a nightmare. You’ll be staring at 20 different options instead of six.
Advanced Strategies for Master Terminals
When you're staring at a Master-level terminal, the stakes are high. One wrong move and you're waiting out a lockout. Here is how an expert approaches a high-level screen:
- Pick a "Tester" word. Choose something with common suffixes like -ING, -ION, or -ED.
- Evaluate the Likeness. If you get a 0, you are in luck. You can now ignore every single word on that screen that shares even a single letter in the same position as your tester.
- The Bracket Sweep. Once you are down to your final try, do not guess. Stop. Scan every line for closed brackets. Look for
<$!^>,[#], or(....). Click them all. - The Exit Trick. If you are on your last try and you haven't found a "Tries Reset" bracket, just exit the terminal manually. Tab out. When you log back in, the password has changed, but your tries are reset to four. It’s faster than waiting for a lockout.
It's sorta funny how the most advanced technology in the Commonwealth can be defeated by just turning it off and on again.
Breaking the 4th Wall of the Code
Under the hood, the game generates these puzzles by selecting a "target" word and then populating the list with "distractors" that share a specific number of character placements. It’s a procedural generation system. Because of this, you will occasionally find "clusters" of words that are almost identical, like "STATION," "SECTION," and "FACTION."
If you see a cluster like that, one of them is almost certainly the answer. The game is testing your ability to distinguish between very similar strings. If you pick "STATION" and get a Likeness of 6, you know the answer is one of the other "-TION" words, and you just have to figure out which starting letters match.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Session
To master hacking without pulling your hair out, follow this specific progression:
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- Prioritize the Science! Perk: You can't even attempt Advanced or Master terminals without it. If you see a locked terminal you can't access, mark it on your map. There is almost always high-tier loot or a shortcut behind them.
- Hunt the Science Bobblehead: Head to Malden Middle School early. The extra guess is a massive safety net.
- Invest in Intelligence: Even if you aren't an "energy weapons" player, having at least 4 or 5 Intelligence makes the hacking mini-game significantly less cluttered.
- Look for the "Total Hack" Magazines: These are scattered throughout the Commonwealth (like in Wildwood Cemetery). They don't make hacking easier, but they give you "source code" that lets you do cool stuff once you're inside, like subverting turrets or commanding protectrons.
- Master the "Tab Out": Never, ever let the terminal lock you out. If you're down to one try and no brackets are left, exit and restart. The time you lose by restarting the puzzle is much less than the time you lose waiting for a lockout to clear.
Hacking isn't about being a genius. It's about being a detective. Treat every "Likeness" score as a clue in a crime scene, and you'll never be locked out of a bunker again.