New Fallout 4 player at level 37 couldn't find a suitable target for the Fat Man and asked other gamers for advice

Any RPG inventory eventually turns into a museum of items that never get used. Elixirs, scrolls, rare ammo just sit there gathering dust until the credits roll, and Fallout 4 takes this to an absurd extreme: players haul portable nuclear artillery across the Commonwealth and never fire a single shot with it.

A telling example popped up on Reddit, where a newcomer who'd reached level 37 admitted they hadn't found a single reason to use mini nukes, and their Fat Man just sits in the inventory collecting dust. The question "when do you actually use this weapon?" got answered with a whole list of situations worth breaking out this piece of mass destruction for.

The first and most obvious target is Kellogg at Fort Hagen. The developers clearly weren't being subtle when they left a Fat Man with a mini nuke in a locker right before the boss room, and veteran players have turned it into a ritual: bank a crit charge in VATS, wait for the mercenary to step around the corner mid-speech, and cut the monologue short. Some call it a Big Guns skill check, and there's some truth to that joke.

The second category covers anything with a health bar longer than the screen. Mini nukes earn their keep against:

• The Mirelurk Queen at the Castle, where every extra second of fighting means another face full of acid

• Behemoths, which tear through power armor at close range

• Alpha deathclaws, especially in open terrain with no cover

• Stealth assaultrons, whose laser beam drains health before players even figure out where the shot came from

There's an interesting detail about the Queen at the Castle: she isn't tied to the "Taking Independence" quest and shows up just from killing enough mirelurks and eggs at the fort. A sneak attack with the Fat Man strips most of her health, a second shot finishes her off, and players can then tell Preston Garvey the fortress is already clear. That does require clearing out the nest first, which is where the flamer comes in handy.

There's a flip side to all this too. "Safe arming distance is a synth lie," as one player put it, describing the classic ending to many survival mode runs, where firing in a tight corridor leads straight to a three-hour-old autosave. And as a bonus practical tip: don't leave a Fat Man on a workbench in a settlement, since a single mini nuke gives a settler infinite ammo.

The Fat Man in Fallout 4 gathers dust not because targets are scarce, but because players keep convincing themselves something bigger is waiting just ahead.