Since I am playing hardcoe, I am going with Survival.

Survival is good because you can always get Arcade Gannon for Medicine. Medicine is good because Living Anatomy.

Why not: both.

I wonder if there'll be situations in which you can use Medicine to heal characters in game for some benefit during a quest. Or even just an option to do so at your own skill level for your companions.

Ahh Medicine, you'd think it would be a little more important.

If I recall in Big Town if you had a high enough medicine, you could save someone's life. I don't know about Vegas though. Since Stimpaks heal over time, I am giving the edge to Survival.

Survival all the way, medicine is good low or high

if you choose one, Survival for hardcoe. Medicine for normal.


Ofcourse you can have a build with both if you're really into sturdyness.

Besides, if you don't eat or drink at least in hardcoe mode you die.

Because you will only be able to raise less than half of the available skills without wasting perks on skill points so taking two skills that do almost the same thing is dangerous and stupid.

awwwww snap!!

How about curing a crippled limb?
In hardcoe stimpacks don't heal crippled limbs, you can do it with a doctors bag but that requires a decent medicine.

I would point out you that raising a skill to max isn't required for it to be good, maybe you should think about if a skill really needs that last 30 points, and remember that the skill mags[not to be confused with books] that grant a 20 point temporary boost to a skill. So take for example lockpick and science a 100 is required to open a very hard lock/hack but those are quite rare is it worth the extra points?

Couldn't you just save the skill magazines[not to be confused with skill books]. A skill magazine boosts a skill Temporarily by 10.
If you took comprehension to maximize your skill books, the skill magazines give a boost of 20. So you could cap out science and lockpick at 80 saving you 40 points, now in the rare instance you need 100. Read a skill magazine which are much more common then books.

Maybe a high enough Med for Doctor's Bags.

Chem dependance is for svckers.

Cooking your own meals over a fire out in the wastes with the Survival skill sounds a LOT more exciting than a static bonus to Stimpaks from Medicine.

Book hunting seems dull.

I agree. It makes the decision of where to spend your points so much more important and meaningful. That said surivial may be more improtant in the longer term for hardcoe but medicine may need to be raised to a reasonable level and not left abandoned. It may mean that both skilss are raised not not completely maxed.

i'll have both on my HC playthrough./

I'm probably going to go with Medicine since I Hotkey Stimpaks. It can be a real lifesaver. Plus there are a good chunk of Medicine checks around. They're both useful, but you'll probably find Medicine more so in many situations.

i have both as secondary tags in my build..

instead of maxing one or the other.. get both to around 70 ish or so.. save my mags for when I absolutely have to use them.

I do have admantium skeleton as a perk for the 50% decrease to damage on limbs.. so hoping it will be usefull. Playing hardcoe is all about the "not getting limped" so far from any semblance of medical attention.. specially for limbs. It will be hard enough just roaming the desert.. can't imagine how hard it would be limping it.

and there is absolutely noway I would take small frame as a trait for HC, with or without Ad Skelly.

just my thought.

cheers
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I dunno. I suspect there will be a fair amount of Survival speech checks in there aswell. And hotkeying stimpacks isn't going to do us much good this time since they heal over time (assuming you play with hardcoe on). The big thing for me is the ability to heal broken limbs, especially since I'll probably be taking the Light Frame trait. I might have to focus more on Medicine purely because of that.

On the other hand I do think that survival is quite useful in that it's a requirement for some decent perks. Entamologist and Hunter will probably be worth picking up, maybe Rad Resistance aswell. Whereas all that Medicine is required for is Living Anatomy and Chemist.

Basically it comes down to what you're more interested in doing. Survival will help you kill things. Medicine will help you survive things.

Though it can be annoying to be dependent, temp. skill boosts like mags and chems can be very handy.

It can save alot of skill points to just hit the minimal thresholds for certain skills and then boosting with chems or mags. It really allows you to make up for some of your character weaknesses.