» Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:10 pm Phase 1: Your Special build.
A pure melee character is going to be a bit minmaxxed. No matter. You want adrenaline. This is the way to go. There are several potential builds but we're always looking at a STR of 9 or 10 from the start. Perception? Take it down to 1. There's not a darn thing you need it for. My first character used this build and had Energy at 100 and noticed no problems with the low perception. Ealy in the game you'll be ambushed by gecko's, coyotes, men in wheelchairs, etc because you're blind as a bat, but Primm is pretty close and ED-E is easy to get and negates the little ambush problem quite nicely. More about ED-E later.
END is a toss up. I usually keep it at five in order to pump Luck and Int, but if you're willing to give up one or the other? A high Endurance is nothing to sneeze at. Charisma... you're a crazed berserker. Charisma 1. Again, with a high Int you can pump speech if you want it and frankly I finished the game with a barter of 9 several times with extra money in my pocket. Not really needed for this build. Intelligence. I like having a ten in this simply because it makes it much easier to get both melee and unarmed up earlier with your secondary skills. To get access to the best meleeing perks you're going to need both melee and unarmed very high. Agility? Really noit needed. When you melee or unarm, VATS is negligable as you can only do a 'whole body hit' in VATS. The only way to target a limb or the head is to stay out of VATS and deliberately whack the part you wish to cripple. Very different dynamic from vats and guns. Agility gives you a little speed and some AP. The AP you won't need but the speed is nothing to be sneezed at. Luck: I like taking luck to a nine or ten. It helps with starting skill along with gambling and crits still do a lot more damage even with the Heavy Handed Perk.
Phase Two: Tagging Melee and Unarmed is suggested. Whatever third skill you like is nice. Choose sneak if you plan on going for Ninja, though Ninja and sneak are not necessary for this build. I, personally, like to tag science as almost every important locked object in the game has a computer termainal you can hack open the lock with. Another choice is Speech to get over the initial slap of the Charisma of one. EArly in the game most speech difficulties are at 25ish and your Vault 12 uniform gives you +2 speech, so tagging speech with a high luck and the uniform can easily get you through most oration checks at the beginning of the game.
Phase 3: Perks? I suggest Heavy Handed. Even with a Luck of 10 you do more damage, hands down. (pun intended). The second perk is up to you. I tend to take Wild Wasteland. You will likely not want to take small frame as meleeing causes quite a bit of limb damage in fights with big mutated things trying to eat you. Kamikaze is a bad idea as you want your DT to be high. The ranged perks are sort of a waste... the explosive perk, the same. Honestly Wild Wasteland or nothing seems to be the best idea. With that luck of ten and the suave gamblers hat you can clean out casinos fairly quickly.
Phase 4: Levelling
You'll want your melee up to 70 ASAP then have Unarmed follow suit. This will allow you your super slam and piercing attack perks very early on. A melee build gives you a lot of versatility in perk choices but there are some you should not pass up: Peircing attack, Super Slam, Unstoppable Force is wonderful for large groups of humanoids. They always try to block and Super Slam can work with Unstoppable Force on a good day. You'll want to seriously look at both toughness perks as well as the Stonewall perk because you will be wading into battle with people shooting you and the higher you can get that damage threshold the lest you have to worry about the automatic weapons later in the game. They're usually the first people you go after anyway. Slayer is -great- for late in the game. So you'll have your melee maxxed and leave unarmed around 90 unless you have some reason to max it. I'd suggest the Educated perk at level 4 but its not necessary. It just makes everything come together a level or two more swiftly. So you can see there are plenty of open perk spots for a secondary or even tertiary focuse for the character.
Phase 5: Companions
Here is the trick. Passive does not work. Your companion still wanders off and kills things while you are busy looting, eating, poking wannamingos, etc. You want ED-E early on. The trick is you still get the perk the companion gives you for seven days if you ask them to wait somewhere and never return. So you don't -need- the companion present. Park ED-E somewhere and use him as a high tech safety deposit box that you can return to. Then ask him to follow and then mmediatly wait.
Why? AS a meleer you want to get as many of the kill-perks as possible and they require that -you- land the finishing blow. Kill stealing companions like ED-E and Boothe make this obnoxious. So leave them somewhere until you need them. Boothe is still a good companion because you can spiff up his gear and start a major land war with a reasonable chance of succeeding as he snipes and you thwap. You typically don't want to keep a damaging companion around even on passive for most of the game.
Other companions can suppliment your weak points. Boone and Veronica's perks aren't expecially useful, but again, VEronica is a combo safety deposit box and workbench with a sassy attitude.
Phase 6: Weaponry
You'll start with a straight razor which is one of two melee holdout weapons. The Switchblade is the second and is superior. You can opt for unarmed weapons as well, but as for holdouts you'll be down to your fists. Great for the Ultra Lux if you don't have a high sneak.
You'll likely come across tire irons next. Yay. Repair the heck out of them. An extremely good early game weapon is the lead pipe. Extremely high DPS with this build and it costs almosy nothing to repair. I can't remember ever having spent more than 800ish on the thing. Good bang for your buck. Head to the main building of the racetrack for and opportunity at early game metal armor and lead pipes. Just be ready. They will hurt you with the very weapons you want
Darklings almost always have rebar clubs. Huge damage two handed weapon that is cheap to repair. The beauty of two handed weapons is follow-though. They have a much larger swing arc than one handed weapons and some enemies attempt to dodge out of visual range to your left or right. Single handed weapons will miss them but when you go swinging around a bunch of rebar in close proximity they still get hit.
Chainsaws YAY! Motor Runner and Praetorians have chainsaws. They degrade quickly but a re a lot of fun and DPS. Try a chainsaw with superslam and watch someone get caught in the teeth as they fall over and get pulled up repeatedly.
Hands down, fave weapon in the game? The Super Sledge. You can get one fairly early in the game by having some Chutzpah and hitting Black Mountain but these things are also disbursed among the Brotherhood and a few other places. Deathclaws are split-shielded to super-sledges. Wheee! The problem again is that to get the weapon you're going to have to let someone hit you with it until you take them down.
Ideally, endgame you'll switch to rebar for the little stuff (Like most of Caesar's Legion charging at you like Braveheart) and switch to the harder to repair Super sledge when you are in dire straits or fighting something big (Like a deathclaw).
Phase 7: Armor
Whatever gives you the highest DT. You're going to find yourself repairing often id your don't grab something you can loot. Jury-rigging makes this a lot wasier as you can repair your dead Mk 2 reinforced combat armor with regular combat armor. Woot! Power armor is nice but not necessary. With some skill and timing you can assault the SouthWest for the Remnant Armor wearing combat Mk 2. I was able to do it without companions because they were busy messing with lake lurks in the water. So like nobody did anything but stare at eachother while I went after the 'claws. The armor becomes -possible- to get with a melee build of 16-20 minimum. Clearing the Quarry can be done earlier depending on your overall build, weapon, and armor.
Phase 8: Implants
This is why the luck of nine or ten is so nice. You have to be able to raid the casinos in order to afford the implants. You'll want Subdermal armor first, then the healing nannites. After that you can pick and choose what to raise by taking stats you left at 9 to a 10. With this build you can hold five implants unless you use the intense training perk at some point. Remember, late game a single point of Endurance is a single point of another SPECIAL with bonus hitpoints added in. Remember you can only get one implant of each type and the Endurance implant does not replace itself in the Endurance count for implants.
Phase 9: Miscellany
Stay out of Vats and aim for the head with most swings. When things get frenzied, don't aim. Walk back and forth swinging like a maniac.
If someone has a two handed wapon they're usually screwed if you hit them once in the arm.
Bloody mess isn't needed with heavy handed and things wille xplode anyway... but hey, 5% more damage is 5% more damage.
Leave your companions behind to get Abominable and Lord Death perklines. Bug swatting in dry lake beds is useful for bug stomper as well as Lord Death perklines.
Don't stand still. As a meleer, things try to line up attacks. If you're constantly moving in circles or back and forth through groups it makes you harder to hit.
If anyone has any additional information on a melee build, please let me know. Until then, have fun playing golf with people's heads.
