If Fallout Wiki is to be believed:
Uppercut a special unarmed VATS move does a bonus 15% more damage, whereas after reaching 75 unarmed you get the ability to throw a Cross yet it only has a 10% damage bonus.

Surely the higher damage bonus should be on the move that takes more skill to learn?

Having just completed a melee/unarmed playthrough, I can assure you that I was highly successful and only used the "supermoves" occassionally to break up the monotony of the default gut punch that you do in VATS... Found no real value beyond that (I could be wrong, but they also used more AP in VATS from what I could tell- 4 regular strikes turned into 3 uppercuts-)

The moves are a flat 20ap a piece apparently.

Another issue is the loading screen says that these moves can be performed outside of VATS, if this is accurate how?

Some NPCs can teach you special moves. Those are the moves.

My character seems to occassionally mix an uppercut or cross into realtime without me doing much more than spamming the pucnh button... You can also hold down the button and perform them that way, correct?

And is the 20 AP cost in addtion to the weapon I am using, or instead of? If I'm using a powerfist I punch slower than with brass knuckles, but both weapons can be used to perform uppercuts and crosses.

Uppercuts break through an NPCs block, if I recall correctly.

Alhtough the UNSTOPPABLE FORCE perk does a far more dominant job of doing such.... A must have for any melee character: Super Slam and Unstoppable Force.

Uppercut looks cooler and occasionally their heads fly into the air, especially cool with a sneak attack. :ninja:

Really? If so they need to change the loading screen as it implies that after reaching set skill points you do it, rather than finding the person or giving a dress.


I'm pretty sure just holding the attack button does a "power" attack rather than anything any special moves.

It's all about style, baby.

I never played an unarmed or melee build. How does one survive charging in sometimes if multiple enemies are firing?

Charging in on multiple enemies blazing their guns is a tactical choice. :gun:

If you are high enough level and have good enough equipment you can charge into almost any small group. If you don't have good equipment you sneak around/wait for people to come around corners one at a time/bait 1 enemy at a time with an incinerator/defend your companions instead of charging/use a gun.

The key thing to keep in mind is that melee doesn't use ammo, so you can use that saved money to buy stims etc. You take more damage but can afford to heal more often even in hardcoe.

It should be uppercuts and hooks imo, I just don't see how a high level move is a right hand punch.

If you're that badass, you don't really have to worry about such things.

Most likely uppercut increases your chances of breaking through a block along with doing more damage while crosscut does something else like knockback or stun or extra crit chance...but not quite as mjuch damage as an uppercut.

Since i also play fighting games, i find the ranger takedown much more seperior. I play in 3rd person and never use vats, i managed to get the button press timing to where i can do the leg sweep without moving backwards. It knocks them pretty far back and keeps them down for a few seconds. then i just run up to the enemy and pound their face in while they are laying down. when they get back up i just do another takedown on the spot. :toughninja:

I do wonder how to do Ranger Takedown without moving backward at ALL; my best consistency is one foot back.....

Or you can do it while your power attack is charging up (or may be my keyboard is just crappy? )

Turbo B)

Tap back on the anolog stick (ps3) while holding down power attack. [censored] AMAZING! :toughninja: plus it looks way cooler in third person view, as opposed to that lame palm strike in first person view, espically in ranger combat armor. I just wish the duster made a woosh noise for added epicness. XD

Thanks for the advice....but my keyboard is pretty crap I have to double tap to get it working consistently.

But I haven't been using it since I got Legion Assault and combine it with Super Slam......

I've also been wondering about the effects of uppercut and cross, as I don't see an appreciable damage increase between the two. I will say, though, that both make corpses fly upward or backward after a killing blow, which is TOTALLY AWESOME when taking on a group of Deathclaws.

I don't know why uppercut does more damage than cross. Cross is supposed to have a higher skill damage multiplier, but in my tests it didn't seem to do anything.

The real power of these attacks is the flat 20 AP cost. The more powerful fist weapons (power fist, displacer glove, ballistic fist) cost 28 AP for normal attacks, so dropping that down to 20 AP is huge. Oh, and all unarmed/melee attacks in VATS are treated as power attacks by the game, so you get another 2x damage multiplier on top of the 10%/15% you get from cross/uppercut.

I think someone asked how to do the moves outside of VATS? Well, if ranger takedown is back + Power Attack, maybe the uppercut is forward + Power Attack ?

I found a great move for that guy's Nine-Iron: Driver Nephi's... Driver? You go forward, press powerattack, and swing backwards. That's the 'fore' strike from VATS for that weapon. Just pretend that you're playing Street Fighter, and you only have one button (the Power Attack). BTW, moving any direction plus PA will get you a different move; with the Super Sledge, for example, there are left smash, right smash, smash down, and I forget the last one... But you get the idea. Go... try it out. I loved the specials - they're different with all the weapons.

To trigger special moves in real time you must hold the trigger to do a charged attack while simultaneously (different for each move) walking backwards, for example. A charged punch while walking backward knocks an opponent down.