Hey guys. I'm new to Fallout, really. Didn't play 1 or 2, or anything besides Fallout 3. LOVED Fallout 3, I should say.

So I'm enjoying New Vegas. Sort of playing through it casually like I do most open-world games. Not really concerned with questing at the moment so much as wandering. I killed a couple coyotes and I was pushed up to level 3, and I noticed something.

First, the number of skill points I was able to allocate went down from level 2 (from 14 to 13). Secondly, I wasn't allowed to choose a perk. I thought this might have been a bug, so I went back and loaded the game again, shot the coyotes, and leveled up on more time. Same thing.

Is this some new leveling system? I honestly don't remember that from Fallout 3 -- though it's been quite a long time since I played it. Regardless, I definitely remember choosing a perk at every level up... I think. Uh, any ideas?

Perks are only every even level.

I believe you get perks on the even levels now instead of every level. I'm not sure why there would be a change in the skill points though.

Hopefully that will make you less of a walking Thor-God when you reach the level cap.

Ah, understood. Guess I didn't do enough reading up while I was waiting for this game! Really appreciate the remarkably fast responses though.

Curious about the skill points, too. Guess I'll see what happens when level four rolls around.

Just double check your int score.

Skill points - if you have an odd Int score (5, 7, 9, 3, 1), then you'll get x skill points on odd levels and x+1 points on even levels.. It's just done so you do not have a situation where a 9 int gives no benefit over an 8 int, and where a 10 int gives no benefit over a 9 int, which would happen (either one or the other) if the game rounded up or down.

The skill point thing is kind of odd. I got 13 skill points to allocate at Level 2, with my INT at 6.

ETA - explained in post above.