For power levelers like myself, enough XP is never enough. It’s not enough to get powerful, I need to get as powerful as possible. It’s something I do in almost every RPG I touch, but Fallout 4 is different, and as I climbed in levels, I had to know: is there even a max level in Fallout 4? What is it? Can I get there? Should I go there at all?
We had to know, so here at Gamezo, we did some digging. It turns out there is a max level in Fallout 4 after all, and you can get there. But you definitely should not. In short: the max level in Fallout 4 is 65,535, but please, please, please do not grind to that level.
Level 95 is the Endgame
If you want to experience all the enemies Fallout 4 has to offer, 95 is the sweet spot. This is the level where you start to see Ancient Behemoths, a type of super mutant that most players never see. But, while this is the endgame, 95 is not the max level. Not even close.
Level 286 is all you need.
With all of the DLC installed on an unmodded version of Fallout 4, 286 is the maximum level that makes your character stronger in any way. At this point, you will have 10 in every SPECIAL, and every tier of every perk unlocked. It’s also possible to get there a little faster with support from items like Bobbleheads and Magazines. Once you have all the perks unlocked, there’s no reason to keep going. Every level past 286 just increases the level of enemies you encounter in the wasteland, causing them to steadily grow spongier and spongier while your gear stays the same. But, for some of you, 286 levels will simply not be enough. You need to go all the way, and we obliged.
Fallout 4 Max Level C: 65,535 is the limit
The real, final frontier of Fallout 4 is 65,535. After this, if you level up at all, the game will crash. For us, this froze our computer and required us to shut down and restart the device with a manual power switch. Why is 65,535 the max level of Fallout 4? The best explanation is math. According to our friends at Wikipedia, “65535 occurs frequently in the field of computing because it is 
(one less than 2 to the 16th power), which is the highest number that can be represented by an unsigned 16-bit binary number”
What this means for us is that Fallout 4 stores the player’s character level on one byte of data, and the highest number that the byte can store is 65,535, and above that, you trigger an overflow error. This limitation is similar to the reason why Madden NFL titles, for example, can still only display scores of up to 255 per team.
Want to test for yourself? PC players can open the console (default ~), and then use the command “setplayerlevel X” where X is the desired level. Be careful though, as you can only increase your level, and not decrease it.
