Speech, Lockpick, and Science.

Guns, Sneak, Repair, Medicine and Survival if I can squeeze it in.

The rest are cool at 80 with some skill mags handy covering key skills.

Guns , sneak and repair are the main ones I get to 100 first

Guns, Science, speech, meds

Guns, Science. lock-pick,

Guns & Speech are the only ones I'll get up to a 'hard' 100 (including using the perm. skill books).

Speech, lockpick and ____ depending on what build I do

Main combat skill for my character.

Small Guns
Medicine
Repair
Lockpick

I first get guns, lockpick, speech and repair to 100 the rest is optional.

Unless I'm doing an energy weapons play through, guns always goes up to 100. Everything else depends on the kind of character I want to build. But it's a pretty safe bet lockpick will make it to 100 as well. Passing up safes ends up being pretty difficult for me, even though most of what's inside can be fairly useless. But the siren call of "what if" gets me everytime.

Guns, Science and Lockpick. I'll raise everything else with chems or clothing when needed.

Repair, medicine/survival, sneak, science (if I'm using EW) and one of the five combat skills.

It depends on what character I'm building to be honest. Usually though it's sneak, guns and speech.

Lockpick, Repair, Medicine, Sneak, 2 Combat Skills (I have Guns/EW, Melee/Unarmed, Guns/Explosives characters so far). Science stays at 92 (Followers Lab Coat), and Speech is at 71 (Naughty Nightwear+Skill Mag)

All of them except melee, unarmed and survival.

I don't like lugging skill mags around.

As a hardcoe player guns sneak survival repair i will try to max them in that order by points and hunting books and still sometimes the game is a pain in the ass even once i have maxed those skills, gotta love that there is no true god mode that it is still difficult to make an OP character even late in the game. 100 guns is no guarantee of a hit and at first i found it MOST annoying to get stuck in a rut that even at 100 guns i could empty a clip and miss entirely. That is Fallout and it took me awhile to get that now it is just plain funny, but i do save alot now so those "ruts" cost me at most 20 minutes of game time. You must adapt and improvise to over come the Mohave and its denizens who says it stops at the game lol.

Asai

Barter, Speech, one of Medicine/Survival, at least one combat skill (usually either EW or Guns), Lockpick, and Science. Any others are optional, although I often cap 1-2 more.

Those are all silly skills to bring to 100, Magazines can add 20, and apparel can add 5 or 10.


They are weightless ya know.

Energy Weapons
Science
Lockpick
Medicine
Barter
Speech
Repair

:banghead:

Yeah, thanks Dead Money for the "great" specialization....
The only skills I don't have at 100 is Sneak and Survival and the latter one is at 70 anyway.

I'm on my 1st playthrough (normal/hardcoe), lvl 30 and want to see all there is to see before getting
to the end-game quest. So far, had no troubles at all with only
having Guns & Repair 100 (Jury Rigging is great) while Lockpick, Science and Survival in the 80 (miscalculated some of the books).
Sneak and Speech are around 70 and never ever needed more than that thanks to various bonus granting clothes and
magazines, and I didn't bother spending much on Barter after I took that to 40. Even thus, I have more than 80k in caps
and I can't imagine what to do with them after buying the best equipment and implants.

Medicine was a gray area during all of the game and I always had
the feeling I was sort of wasting points but in the end, I was happy to have it raised to around 70
because there were several situation where being a good doctor helped alot.

The only time I wished I had 100 Lockpick was on top of the Sniper's nest.
I stumbled to that location after for some times I couldn't find even 1 of those @#$%! Locksmith's Reader magazine.
I badly wanted what is in that [ Very Hard ] locked crate but had to come back at a later time,
grumbling and cursing all the way along.

Oops. Forgot to say that I dumped into Explosives enough points to get Demolisher Expert and the rest
went to Energy Weapons just for lack of better candidates. I might try a different build next time, focusing more on those
since explosives are fun and EW are ... well, colorful

They also create clutter in your item list, you know.

Whatever my main weapon skills are, and maybe sneak depending on the build. Skill mags and clothes can do the rest.

Energy Weapons, Explosives, Guns, Lockpick, Science, Sneak, and Speech

The rest of the skills being at least 80. I originally had it planned to have all the weapons skills at 100 but with Dead Money taking all your stuff I'd rather be able to get into all the hard lockpicks and computers and not rely on magazines to drop in my lap. Plus I rarely use the melee and unarmed skills so I felt 80 was enough.

EDIT Forgot Explosives....

True, but it's annoying to have to keep a supply of items that buff skills just for a mere moment 24/7. Those three skills are the skills I also bring to 100.