» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:01 am Okay, a lot of people are complaning lately on the weapons types and how crap damage they do... or perhaps they aren't getting the kind of quality they want in their character or perhaps they are overdoing it... if you just want to make sure you get the most out of those 30 lvls and 15 perks, you've come to the right place.
Is this going to be a perfect guide? No, not at all. But I think i've stumbled across values that work for nearly every quest and situation in game, and come up with a method that can be tweaked to meet any player's needs without making a crap character that puts points in everything... first up, we have skills
Skills have changed dramatically in NV especially weapons skills, now your tri beam laser rifle won't be accurate without 75 energy weapons, or your riot shotgun won't do near as much DAM as it is supposed to... getting the right skill values is the key to using your weapons to their max, as well as meeting str requirements...
They lumped big guns into either Energy weapons or Guns or Explosives, also, unarmed and melee are rediculously effective now, even on the best armor which is a huge improvement from FO3 in my opinion, nuking everything with a plasma rifle in 3 shots was a MAJOR let down and rediculously easy even on very hard with the T51B cookie cutter characters, now we have a huge amount of choice that's fair and legit.
Some whine about this, I embrace the change....
Now you're thinking, do I need 10 INT or 6 PER or 3 STR or what?
Depends on the character:
STRENGTH: used primarily on melee characters, but also for weapons requirements, having 6 STR base for every character you make is pretty solid, it's only adding 1 additional point, and you get to wield most weapons, even moreso with the Weapon handling perk
PERCEPTION: This one is very useful, especially since it unlocks some of the best perks and is good for not only energy weapons but explosive weapons as well... This one is good left at 6 or maybe 7 if you plan on using energy weapons, it also increases lockpick so you can get it high early on
ENDURANCE: This one isn't really need above the base value of 5. Maybe 6 for melee characters/unarmed but really, before level 6 I had over 100 Stimpaks and plenty of caps to buy more if needed... you really don't need resistances either because poison bugs like cazadors and rad scorpions aren't abundant, and radx and radaway are just as available as stims...
CHARISMA: Ahhh, the laughing stock of FO3 comes back with a vengence. This is really good to have high now, since it grants bonuses to speech and barter, which are a HEAVY part of this game, and no longer is speech based on a percent chance, neither is barter, this stat gives combat bonuses to companions as well with Nerve, so if you play hardcoe and don't want to save every step you take just to make sure your buddies survive, keep this at AT LEAST 4 if not increased with Intense Training to 5
INTELLIGENCE: This one, man, I don't know what they were thinking, with 10 INT I got just as much skillpoints as I did with 8... no joke, it wasn't increased at all, so really, 8 is a good value, raise it to 8 during creation, and raise the others with intense training, this skill boosts repair and science which are valuable in this game, science I think is more valuable then lockpick, or at least more valuable then it was in FO3... IMHO
AGILITY: This stat isn't really that important anymore, grim reaper's sprint doesn't fill ALL of your vats points which is pretty stupid and makes that perk a waste considering you can only take on half the perks now but hey, it's good to raise to 6 if you invest in GUNS and wanna be a sneaky assassin type, I don't, I like blasting my way through with a Gat laser hehehe. It's really worthless with another build like explosives, melee, unarmed... keep it at 4, it's a good value, and plus, you can increase it with implants to get the perks this stat offers which IMHO aren't as good as in FO3... it's like they saw that Sniper, Commando, and Gunslinger were amazing, and then though, "how can we make these perks worthless?"
LUCK: Raise it to 6 every time...seriously it raises your skills, makes you jam your gun less, makes your vats shots hit more, affects gambling a little... it's just good overall... raise it to six because you want FINESSE and BETTER CRITICALS or just keep it at 5 and get an implant but I tend to get the vital perks first, then the junk ones after... you're call though...
Okay, so now that you know what to raise for SPECIAL, how about skills?
Barter: This one is good to get to 90, pretty soon, not absolutely first to max, but it's good because you get a lot of quests that use BARTER checks. I like 90 because the quest for Red Lucy in the Thorn gives you the max rewards which are quite nice... over 12k caps with the bloodborne chest added in. If you don't care about that, then keep at at 50 or 60 for quests, I don't remember any quest needing it higher than that, and you'll get better prices on SOME things... not ammo though which is stupid
Energy Weapons: If you don't like E-Weapons, don't raise this, if you like them, max it... that simple, before, in FO3 you could get by with non maxed weapons, hell, you could max pretty much every skill in FO3 which is probably why they nerfed the skillpoints, being innaccurate with a Gatling laser or or Tesla cannon is a big no no... so max it. Also, flame weapons are under energy now, like flamer and incinerator
Explosives: This skill is dramatically improved from FO3 but it only has one useful perk related to it, Splash Damage, the other is pretty useless since you won't have 50 frag and Incendiary grenades so Heave Ho! doesn't really come into play that much or is that important. What is important, is that explosives is WORTH RAISING if you want to use them, before, they only had grenades and mines... so investing skill points in this was kinda pointless but in New Vegas, they have grenade rifles/launchers, missile launchers, and the Fatman and C4... plenty of goodies to utilize but if you have a knack for killing yourself a lot, then don't take up this skill
Guns: Ahh yes, guns. These are rediculously over powered as of now, and make other weapons short of unarmed seem weak. SMGs, Shotty's, rifles, machineguns, snipers, you name it, it's under guns. The great thing about guns is that the ammo is so varied, that's also a curse as well, since you have to spend extra caps to maintain your ammo stores, however, each ammo type has a tier of weapons for it, for example, Hunting Rifle - Sniper rifle, or .44 Magnum Revolver - Trail Carbine, Varmint Rifle - Service Rifle - Marksman Carbine... this offers a HUGE amount of customization, I personally like to roll with a weapon for each Hotkey that uses different ammo and like to keep it 75 or 100 skill to keep out the new player weapons....
Melee/Unarmed: keeping these two together because you essentailly do the same thing, get up close and bash the hell out of their face... after 50 melee you can get unique vats moves, and unarmed gets unique moves taught by NPCs... DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THESE they are rediculous... just go to the weather center near the Fort and try to take on a dude with a chainsaw and 3 buddies with ballistic guantlets... yeah.... OUCH. One huge advantage these two have, is that you never jam or need to reload, or need ammo.... and they degrade much slower... the bad news... you have to get close to attack, although DT verses DR in fallout 3 works differently so... meh, they are pretty fun...
Survival: You don't need this unless you are in hardcoe... period... you don't... if you are in hardcoe, then this is a good one to level up high, maybe 75 or so to make purified water, food, and other goodies to keep you alive, without it, it'll be VERY hard to keep your meters up, IMHO this skill was designed to make hardcoe bearable...
Lockpick and Science: Both do the same thing... get you into areas that normally keep others out...75 is good for both of these since VERY HARD terminals and locks can be bypassed almost all of the time, I can think of just 2 or 3 VH Locks and maybe 6 VH terminals... is that really worth puting a combined 50 skill points into? not really, not in my mind... but again, you have enough skill points with 8 INT to get barter, speech, 2 weapon skills, lock/science, repair to high levels... and still have some leftovers... so by all means, get science to 100... there's really no point to it, but hey, your call...
Medicine: For me, I think they lowered the benefits of Meds bonus from FO3, so the only real merit of this skill, is the medicine challenges for quests, I recommend 75 because that's the highest you need for camp forlorn hope's patients, 60 for the Nellis AFB, really NOT worth taking over this value, you have WAY enough Rad meds and Stims....unless you're just careless
Repair: THIS is one to max... or atleast 90. Why so high? two words: Jury Rigging. This makes it so you can repair all of those sixy weapons that are pretty much one of a kind easier, and without scauaging for crap to make kits to fix your junk with... repairing a plasma caster with an incinerator? Hell YES!!! This skill is so great, and has some bypasses for quests AND lets you get better crafting techniques for the reloading bench... it's just a great skill and you get more effiecient repairs... good stuff
Speech: This one is NOT based on percents anymore, it's either you get the speech option which makes you look like an idiot, or you get the poetic, persuasive character.... 80 is a good level to have, it makes you able to solve almost every single speech challenge, except for veronica's quest, and some endgame speech challenges which, IMHO, make the game weak.... being able to talk your way out of fighting NCR and the Legion... PATHETIC... take it to 100 if you wish, but at least 80... otherwise, have fun getting railroaded in quests and their rewards....
AGAIN these are just what i've seen work for me for practically every situation i've gotten into, you can change them or not even use these values at all, but for me, they work just fine....Pick your fav weapon, and raise that first, then a second weapon, or take those points and put them into other areas like maxing lockpick/science or repair/speech or something....
The order i'd raise these in... would be to TAG Speech and lockpick first, then choose to either tag barter, or your primary weapon... the thing is, you'll kill just fine in lower levels with pretty much anything so i'd personally go for barter to get some quest dialogues complete but hey, your call, but DEFFINATELY get 75 lockpick ASAP you can get so much out of the low level areas like nipton, primm, hideouts for the vipers, etc.... Then raise speech to 50, then work on your weapon, get it to 50 (obviously you're not going to be able to afford those endgame weapons, so leaving it here for a while is fine) then max speech at 80, get barter up to around 50, THEN you can go solve quests without ever worrying of not passing a speech check.....
Then raise repair to 90 to get Jury rigging, then science (because most quest checks can be left alone for later, and terminals... locked containers contain VALUABLE stuff to sell to get your ammo stores and mods up) Then i'd say go for your second weapon or whatever else you want to raise.... try to plan it out so you can get all the perks you need and not waste any....
NEXT, perks....
There are a few essential perks that every character should get no matter what because they benefit everyone like Jury Rigging, Strong Back, Intense Training (few ranks, maybe 3), Finesse, Better Criticals.... these are mandatory because let's just think, you want to be able to repair stuff effieciently, right? How about carry more junk? Yes... How about getting your SPECIALs so you can get the perks you want... uh huh.... extra critical hits scored? Sign me up! more critical hit damage? No brainer....No matter what your weapon or build, these perks will not let you down ever....
If you use guns, get rapid reload and shotgun surgeon, handloader wouldn't be bad either, it's the guns equivalent of Vigilant Recycler, not vital, but it helps on caps strains
If you use energy weapons, get Laser Commander (lots of people whine that they dont' do good damage vs plasma, but let me tell you, full upgraded Gat Laser destroys, laser RCW destroys, tribeam laser crits like crazy...) Meltdown (I thought this perk was gonna be dumb and have a tiny DOT effect...I was wrong...EVERY enemy you kill explodes and if they have buddies nearby, you can kill one guy and have the explosion trigger a mass death sequence...fun with bloody mess perk lol) Vigilant recycler is a must since you only have THREE AMMO TYPES for all your weapons, Small Energy Cells for pistols/small weapons, Microfusions for medium sized, and Electron chargepack for big, rapid fire weapons like Tesla, Gat, and RCW. Plasma Spaz is nice, but I don't use vats, so... meh, your call.
If you use explosives, splash damage is a MUST, missile launcher and fat man have a HUGE AoE and this perk makes them bigger and badder as well as frags, grenade launchers etc.... other than that, heave ho is nice, but pretty much useless so you can use those spare perk slots for your second weapon skill.... or not?
If you use melee/unarmed, get all the perks for those... they are worth it and make your weapons like a freakin' fist of god...nuff said...
Other than that, it's up to you, this setup has allowed me to complete any quest and dialogue challenge with ease, I could pick ANY path I wanted to follow and not be forced to forfeit a cool quest reward for low skill lvls... It's up to you, but my Energyweapons/ Explosives character nukes everything she comes across.... next, some preference stuff
Companions:
Veronica is nice for Energy weapons users simply because if you use an RCW or Gat, you want to be able to get your drained ammo back ASAP and her perk lets you do that, she's also a smart alick so that's cool too lol. she's annoying though in combat and gets in your way all the time so spray and pray might be worth investing into, and you don't have to give her ammo EVER which is nice, your alignments don't affect her staying with you either, like gannon or boone...
Boone is a freaking BEAST... he kills everything... i mean EVERYTHING in 1 hit with an Anti Materiel Rifle. He uses ranged attacks which means he won't get in the way of your killing, infact, you can eat a sandwich or something and he will defend you just fine lol he's amazing. The best follower IMHO but you need to upgrade his weapon late game, but it's good for most situations, the hunting rifle that is...HE WILL LEAVE YOU if you side with the legion or kill NCR dudes so, if you side with anyone other than NCR, try to have another companion in mind, or do the late game quests last or something. His spotter perk is amazing in the dark for easy sniping as well...
Lily Bowen doesn't have the same charm as Fawkes, she doesn't have a gatling laser with infinite max CND or Ammo either, but she is reliable at killing things with melee which is nice. She's an overall good companion to have, her perk is kinda useless though since stealthboys are hard to come by
Arcade Gannon is pretty good, his perk makes your healing more effective and he uses an infinate plasma defender which is a powerful weapon espeically not needing ammo or anything.... He will leave you if you side with the Legion (Personaly, they don't have many quests, give melee weapons that svck except for elite soldiers, and everything gets [censored], pillaged, and burned so... meh, I hate them but hey, you could love them so, your choice)
Raul is a ghoul companion, he makes you repair things better and keep them in tip top shape longer so that's always nice, he's not very good with combat, pistols yes, but everything else...no... I prefer boone or arcade but this guy is good too
Rex and ED-E are pretty much the same IMHO, I prefer ED-E's perk, but rex has better combat, so, it's your choice
One more thing... perks like rad resist, life giver, rad absorb or not worth getting...infiltrator and computer whiz as well since ALL of those situations can be avoided with meds or just not being an idiot when trying to hack/pick locks... also, perks that need you to invest in two skills are not worth it, if they have you being able to get it with one OR THE OTHER, yeah, okay then, but if you need 70 of one skill 70 of another... typically it's not worth getting, also, sneaking seems to be MUCH more difficult in this game, I got detected almost as quick as with 50 skill and silent running as I did with 20 sneak and no stealth perks... maybe just bad luck but, I think not...
Any questions, feel free to PM me or Email at: mikacz @ sbcglobal . net
I HOPE THIS HELPS!!!!!
