Forum:I need help picking the last 5 perks for my level 38 Character.

Level 38 Character that has completed Dead Money and Honest Hearts, will start Old World Blues and Lonesome Road from now (in that order). Looking to Build the Perfect Character, but I can’t decide on level 40 through 48 perks. I am looking for help/assistance; possibly start an interesting conversation string.

Regardless of the fact that my character is Intelligence 4 he is going to reach Max 100 for all 13 skills (thanks to Educated and Comprehension Perks and a lot of Book Searching), therefore I do not need to tag any skills.

Apparel - 1st Recon Beret, Lucky Shades & Currently Joshua Graham’s Armor (plan to change to Ulysses’ Duster after completing Lonesome Road)

Traits - Built to Destroy & Kamikaze

Special -

Strength 8	(7 + Implant, will be 10 after completing Old World Blues)

Perception 7	(5 + Implant + 1st Recon Beret)

Endurance 10	(9 + Implant)

Charisma 2	(1 + Implant)

Intelligence 4	(3 + Implant)

Agility 8	(7 + Implant, will be 9 after completing Lonesome Road)

Luck 10		(8 + Implant + Lucky Shades)

Perks -

2 – Confirmed Bachelor

4 – Educated

6 – Comprehension

8 – Bloody Mess

10 – Strong Back

12 – Finesse

14 – Sniper

16 – Math Wrath

18 – Center of Mass

20 – Grim Reaper’s Sprint

22 – Action Boy

24 – Action Boy

26 – Nerves of Steel

28 – Better Criticals

30 – Jury Rigger

32 – Toughness

34 – Toughness

36 – Burden to Bear

38 – Concentrated Fire

40 – ?

42 – ?

44 – ?

46 – ?

48 – ?

50 – Ain’t Like that Now or, Just Lucky I’m Alive or, Thought You Died

All ideas and opnions are welcome. Thanks! Aaronjg77 05:53, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that you don't use Melee or Unarmed Weapons, since it looks like most of your skills cater to Guns, Explosives and Energy Weapons. The fact that you have Bloody Mess and Confirmed Bachelor, tells me you like to do more damage to everything, so Lady Killer could be useful. You should tell us what things you don't want too. Like, is there are reason you have Confirmed Bachelor, but not Lady Killer? Are you playing on Hardcore? Which faction have you sided with?

Maybe you should have Atomic! if you don't mind radiation, since you quickly gain AP outside of irradiated areas. Perhaps you should get Implant GRX. Walker Instinct gives you +1 Agility and +1 Perception, which will make them Perception 8 and Agility 9/10, when your outside (day or night). With Alertness AND Walker Instinct, you'd have 10 Perception while standing still, outside. If you use Energy Weapons often, Meltdown could be useful. How about Plasma Spaz? -20% AP cost for Plasma Weapons. Robotics Expert? It gives you +25% damage to Robots and you can make them obsolete.

I've never tried to make a Perfect character before, but hopefully I helped! P.S. You spelt Nerves of Steel wrong, but I fixed it. --Tag! 07:34, October 3, 2011 (UTC)


 * If you're using the right guns Hand Loader is worth consideration. --Warb10 11:25, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Heavyweight or Pack Rat are good perks. If you pick up lots of stuff then pack rat, if you carry alot of weapons then Heavyweight. Crossfire XVI 12:25, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Please do answer Tag! questions. It will help us help you. I agree Hand Loader is a great perk. Pack Rat helps if your playing hardcore, the weight of ammo adds up fast. Considering your perks and the duster you want, Light Touch would add another +5 critical chance plus defend against you getting criticaled. Unless you used your last implant slot for the constant healing I'm guessing your not playing hardcore, since you finished Dead Money.

I too am looking to build the perfect character so lets compare. My traits are Built to Destroy and Fast Shot. My starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L. was S-5 P-5 E-7 C-1 I-6 A-8 L-8

My perks in the order I took them are

2-Light Touch

4-Comprehension

6-Hand Loader

8-Grunt (all Mojave books except Vault 34 guns and Tops unarmed)

10-Finesse

12-Silent Running (began Old World Blues)

14-Long Haul

16-Better Criticals

18-Piercing Strike (began Dead Money)

20-Solar Powered

22-Jury Rigging

24-Slayer (began Lonesome Road)

26-Pack Rat

28-Voracious Reader

30-Nerves of Steel

32-Chemist (began Honest Hearts yesterday)

My S.P.E.C.I.A.L. now (in daylight w/implants) is S-10(OWB bonus) P-7(Boone's Beret) E-9(Atomic Valance) C-1(nobody likes me) I-7 A-10(DM casual clothing glitch) L-10(LR bonus). My critical chance is +33% w/Beret & Duster and I stopped making Police magazines at 150 copies.

Is this a perfect character ? No, the perfect character is the one that gives you the most fun. Some people here put down people for choosing VATS perks or "perks of convience" or not playing hardcore. Hell with'em, it's your game. Squalor 14:21, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

You're missing what I'd argue were the best perks, Rad Child for a start, when you look into it, the health regenation you gain, far, far outweights the loss in special stats, which are incredibly minor really and can be negated with Buffout if you're really all that bothered, and after beating Dead Money you can get an unlimited supply of free Buffout from the Abandoned Brotherhood of Steel Bunker. Basically once you have it, and are at at least Crit. Rad Poisoning, you'll never need a Stim or any healing item again, and even on Very Hard/Hardcore, you're pretty much impossible to kill.

Also, considering your build seems quite V.A.T.S oriented, you could take 'Atomic!' along with this and your AP would regenerate insanely quickly, plus with this the loss in special stats becomes even more negligible.

Speaking of being pretty much impossible to kill, both ranks of Implant GRX and Chemist mean pretty much nothing can ever touch you, even the hardest fights such as Deathwind Cavern become insanely easy. It suits pretty much every build too.

Tommson 17:15, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all for your input. I am playing Devil’s advocate for a lot of the comments so please don’t be offended.

-	I am not playing on Hard Core Mode. Been there, done that during my Mr. House playthrough. Once was enough, I found that instead of making the game more fun, it just made for extra tedious tasks that I needed to constantly keep aware of.

-	On this playthrough, I am not particularly going for siding with anybody nor do I actually plan to complete an endgame. That being said, I am currently idolized by the NCR and am a soft-hearted devil (Liked + Vilified) with the Legion. The reason for this is simply because there are just way more NCR related quests than Legion. But I had to make sure to get Liked once by the Legion so I could get those beautiful Lucky Shades I am now sporting.

-	The reason, I got Confirmed Bachelor was because it is the best option for Level 2 when the perks available are very limited. Lady Killer would be interesting but it seems a little late in the game for that since both, 1. My Speech Skill is well over 80 and there are not really any hard to kill females in the game.

-	I’m not really keen on the idea of being irradiated all the time for the following reasons: I like playing with light Armor therefore I need the DT provided with Endurance and as you all guessed, yes I love VATS. Therefore, I can’t afford the loss of AP from the Agility loss. Unless I took the Atomic! Perk, but then I would have to carry around irradiated food all the time. Also, the – Strength would interfere with the fact that many times I am carrying around close to my max weight limit.

-	I do love me some guns and sorry for being so trendy but that damn Sniper Riffle is so much fun. Explosives are fun but at this point I don’t really have any related perks. Anybody try the Gun Runner’s Mad Bomber Perk? I would be interested to hearing some honest feedback. I do use Melee and Unarmed all the time, but the thing is I don’t use them for the big kills. Just for killing Fiends, Geckos and the such. I have the 4 Unarmed perks that you get through talking to certain characters in the game. That’s enough for me.

-	Implant GRX is definitely peaking my interests. I would like to hear feedback on the effectiveness. The only thing is… this really takes of 3 perk slots because for it to be of any use at all, I would need to take it twice and then take Chemist. Is it so great that it is worth 3 perks?

-	As far as Alertness and Walker go, my Perception is already 7. Isn’t that good enough? If you have some compelling argument why an extremely high Perception is good, I am all ears. As far as I know, it just makes the little red line show up a little faster. Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t increase VATS accuracy. If it did… I’d be all over it. The addition to Agility with Walker is tempting, but in that case maybe I should just take Intensive training to move my Agility up from 9 to 10?

-	The Energy Weapons Perks are tempting especially Plasma Spaz because of the -20 AP, but I don’t know if I plan to use Energy Weapons that much. Are they used heavily in OWB, LR and GRA?

-	For Robot Expert, I just don’t find myself running into enough Robots in the Mojave to justify this perk.

-	Handloader – Hmmm Interesting! I never really considered this perk before but after reading the details, might be good. Somebody willing to convince me how good this perk is?

-	Seriously considered Heavy Weight and Pack Rat, but I already have Strong Back and Burden to Bear and will have a Strength of 10 after Old World Blues. Might be a little hard to justify these two perks, but yes still tempting.

-	Light Touch – I was seriously considering this one but threw it out for two reasons. It conflicts with the level 50 perks that totally wipes out your enemies ability to get a critical hit. The second reason is the best thing about criticals is that when you use the correct weapons you get a multiplier. This perk unfortunately adds the extra +5 after the Multiplier, not before.

-	Voracious Reader - Very Very Tempting, considering that I could have unlimited Police Stories i.e. +10 Criticals any time I want. But I will soon max out all my skills. Is this perk worth it just for unlimited Police Stories? Aside from the above, other perks I have considered are Commando, Fight the Power, Them’s good Eatin, Living Anatomy, Miss Fortune, Life Giver, Ninja & Professional.

Also, what is everybody’s preference for the level 50 perk? Any quick ways to change Karma real quick to get the preferred one? Maybe bombing the Hell out of everywhere at the end of Lonesome Road will get me Bad enough Karma to get Ain’t Like that Now… Aaronjg77 08:05, October 4, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Implant GRX is worth the three perks, although the first rank alone certainly isn't useless, I'd say take that and try it out, if you're happy with it and don't need anymore then you can just leave it be really. Although my guess is you'll end up taking the second rank along with it.

As for being irradiated, -2 Agility is only something like -6 AP, and Endurance gives you health not DT (I think?), which is calculated from your base Endurance so there's no loss there, just a small loss in the Endurance based skills. And you don't need to carry about radiated food for Atomic!, it works the same as Rad Child pretty much but with AP instead of Health, but gives a speed and attack boost while in radiated areas. (Not trying to force it on you, or saying being radiated isn't a pain sometimes, but I'd say try it out and you'll probably find it's really, really worth it.)

And yeah, if you're not going to be carrying Buffout or Alcohol about, the loss in Strength can be really irritating. Although there's light/medium/heavy armour that gives a boost to Strength as well. Each point in Strength is just 10 carry weight, mind, and since you said you were interested in getting Pack Rat/Burden to Bear or Strong Back, I'd say this would be a pretty good excuse to pick one of them up really.

As for changing your Karma, it's fairly easy really, if you need to boost it there's always Fiends, otherwise to decrease it I'd say steal everything from the bar near Boulder City, or steal all the books from the house in Nelson, either one gives you 'Very Evil' Karma straight away. (Well, it did for me at least.)

Hope I've helped! Probably haven't. But still.

Tommson 10:05, October 4, 2011 (UTC)