using my fallout 3 build, i'd spend special points evenly accross, with 6 in everything except endurance and perception, but with new vegas's changes, i.e. you don't need your repair too high to be effective, everything repairs to 100% (which i just love)

but i've seen around, where people would focus all there talents in a certain area, i.e all intelligence and agility, etc. i've also noticed that explosives aren't that good, since you can't even use them except in VATS..

basically what i'm saying is this, i wanna wear heavy armor, use guns and energy weapons effectively, so what special points should i spend where, how should i arrange my points since barter and speech are more important in this game. i've already made mistakes on my first character like balancing the special points out, spending alotta points in guns and explosives and repair.

what should i do to be an effective shooter with heavy armor and be very effective?

thanks for any help you can provide.

Well ONE thing that I didn’t know was that in this game “Strength” affects your ability to use some guns.

I was using a sniper rifle and I didn’t realiz that my strength was to low to be any good with it.

Had to get some implants!

i also don't know which 2 perks i should start out with... never seen perks with a good use, AND a negative catch... i was using the one where you get 20% bonus to accuracy and -20% firing speed and the once with +3% critical chance but 15% weapon degradation, which svcks when a deathclaw is breathing down your neck...

not sure which i should get now...

wild wasteland seems useless, i love a good time (which is why i love bloody mess perk) but WW perk seems more useless.

also, any tips for perks? is miss fortune and mysterious stranger the same? i got mysterious stranger in FO3, and never seen him at all...

Why do you say that? I use explosives all the time (mines + dynamite mostly) and have never used them in VATS. Explosives are awesome. After I realized that I chose it as my 4th tag skill and raised it up to 70.

Anyway, keep in mind you can buy an extra point in each SPECIAL area when you have enough of caps. Also keep in mind that Intelligence grants you extra skill points the higher it is so it is best to put more points into that as early as possible if that's important to you (some people start their character with 10 Intelligence, though I wouldn't go that far). Also keep in mind that one of the perks is double the temporary skill point increase from magazines so you might want to take that one early and put 20 points less into certain skills. That is, if you want to pick some average locks you can do it with 30 pts in lockpicking plus a 20 point increase from a lockpick magazine, so you wouldn't necessarily want more than 30 points in lockpicking. There is also a perk that gives you a permanent 4 point increase for reading skill books rather than the usual 3 points. Either take that perk early or don't read the skill books until after you have the perk.

So for my build the things I wish I had known about and done are:
1. Put more points into Intelligence at the beginning
2. Save all my skill books until I have the extra point perk
3. Save all my skill magazines until after I take the point doubling perk
4. Put 22 points into lockpicking at the beginning but plan on finding at least two Tumblers Today skill books to raise it to 30 as soon as possible. Then rely on lockpicking magaines to temporarily raise it to 50 when I need to.
5. Ditto Speech. Meeting People is much easier to find than the lockpicking magazine, whatever it's called.
6. Ditto Repair. Start with 22 points, find a couple of skill books to raise it to 30, then use Fixin Things to bring it up to 50 only when using a workbench at which point you can create Weapon Repair Kits.

So for me 22 is the magic number but that assumes I'll go after some skill books very early on.

thanks for the help. i did something a little different, i have 6 inteligence (2 whole special points for just 1 skill point per lvl is something i didn't like. i do love my choice of kamikazee and the trait that gives you +5 points to 4 or 5 support skills, repair, barter speech, etc. and takes 5 from all your weapon skills since i'm only lvling up guns for now til i hit 80 then switching to either energy weapons or explosives.

They are quite different. Miss Fortune makes the enemy lose, Mysterious Stranger makes you win. Miss does stamina damage and appears more often. Mysterious Stranger outright kills the enemy.

Dynamite, for real?

Anyways, I think it is good for new player (my assumption) to play a generalist to get a feel of the game before they went specialist.