Talk:Demolition Expert

Does this include the rocket launcher and fatman, or is it just grenades and mines? Thousandfracture 10:09, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Only Grenades and mines. This perk is very useful against super-mutant behemoths. Simply run backwards and drop Bottlecap Mines. They will die FAST by itself and even faster with this perk
 * Why does this not affect the Nuka-Grenade?Crimmastermind 09:05, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thinking about it, I can think of only one reason: In Fallout 3 without Broken Steel, I think you could consider the Nuka-Grenade a "unique" grenade, because of the low amount of Nuka Quantum in the game, which allows for only a certain amount of Nuka-Grenades. Also, Nuka-Grenades do a quite decent amount of damage to start with. However, with Broken Steel out, this does make the Demolition Expert perk a bit less interesting to take, since you can just make a whole lot of Nuka's and throw those around. =)

If you love Frag Grenades and Frag Mines, you'll like this perk. It does a noticeable difference in damage when you hit it's last rank. If you're a stealthy type player, having an additional damage percentage added to the Frag Mines will give your character a greater advantage as well. One of them (if planted just right) will take out a mid level Raider. I've taken the perk and liked it. I've played without it and had just as much fun. I think it's all about how you play the game. Can't go wrong with this perk, though.--HeadphoneDisaster 05:49, September 6, 2009 (UTC)

Before using this perk my grenade damage was 103, after using this perk my grenade damage was 103... does the damage increase not show correctly? 94.170.240.245 15:46, March 5, 2010 (UTC)d0gMa

The frag grenades inside the Operation Anchorage simulation don't appear to be affected by this perk. They also don't stack with "regular" wasteland frag grenades if you usue the Gary 23 glitch. The Wasteland grenades list 123 damage, while the OA are listing 102. Observed on xbox360. 96.240.120.171 21:27, June 20, 2010 (UTC)

Worth mention that at level three you will only get 1,6 times the damage an not 1,728 (1,2*1,2*1,2)? SciFerr 16:07, November 5, 2010 (UTC)

Bugs
The nuka grenade not being affected should not be classified as a bug because it is a fire weapon. It should be affected by the pyromaniac perk, and the guide lists it as being affected by it.

New Vegas question
Does Demolition Expert stack with Pyromaniac when using Grenade Lanucher with 40mm Incendery grenades as ammo? I know pyromaniac works with that ammo, but I'm just not sure about demo expert.
 * Yes, though it only effects the grenade fire damage and not the guns damage (as it does with the Flamer, etc). Mictlantecuhtli 12:05, December 3, 2010 (UTC)

Meltdown
Does anyone know if this perk affects the damage of the Meltdown explosion?
 * It should say that in this article unless someone removed it. Though no, meltdown isn't affected by this. Mictlantecuhtli 09:59, January 20, 2011 (UTC)

FNV: Dynamite not affected :(
Sadly, I've discovered that Dynamite and Long-Fuse Dynamite are NOT affected by this perk. I had Dynamite and Frag Grenades in my inventory when I got the perk, so I was able to see the change in both items' DAM/DPS displays. The Frag Grenade gained damage, the Dynamite did not. Bummer. I was hoping to stack it with Cowboy for some rockin' Dynamite attacks. (Just to be sure, I tried it with and without the Cowboy perk to see if it was interfering, but I got the same result either way.) PC version, latest patch. 68.53.162.70 07:35, February 4, 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm this: before I took the perk my dynamites and frag grenades shows the same DAM, but after taking the perk my frag grenades displayed higher damage. GTA1122 00:48, March 18, 2011 (UTC)

Fat Man and Annabelle not affected
Just tested this on PS3. After taking Demolition Expert I noticed that my Plasma Grenades, Grenade Launcher, and Grenade Machinegun got a significant damage boost but that the Fat Man and Annabelle (the unique Missile Launcher) remained exactly the same. I'm thinking that this probably affects normal MLs as well. Can someone else look into this for confirmation? Btw I did not increase my Explosives at all during level up. 68.110.27.209 03:18, April 28, 2011 (UTC)

I also had this problem...I really hope its just an accident or a pesky bug, instead of the Devs screwing up the weapons now :/-Zerginfestor

NV: a bit of testing
In New Vegas, i tested actual dealt damage of some weapons with "Demolition Expert (3)" perk present, and also recorded DAM stat of these weapons with Demolition Expert x2 and x3 to see which ones are affected by the perk, and which ones are not. I found that previous posters were correct about Dynamites, Anabelle, Fatman. I also found C-4 and Time Bomb are not affected, as well. I also found there are hard to understand relations between DT of the target and actual damage done. Below are all the details, and table with numbers.

These tesults will probably be useful to make some conclusions about the perk. I hope people who know more about game mechanics will use these results to improve the article. I use version 1.3.0.452 on PC, with two addons installed, hardcore mode off.

Character used for tests had these: cowboy (+25% damage dynamite); lord death (2); toughness (2); +4 DT implant; weapon handling (so STR requirements were met for all tested weapons); SPECIAL (perhaps it matters somehow, who knows?) 6.10.8.3.8.7.10. This includes +4 PER and +1 LCK from Lucky Shades (with four eyes trait) and 1st recon beret, which were equipped during all tests. No other perks which would affect the outcome of the tests in any way i know of were present.

Actual damage was tested by repeatedly inflicting damage with a weapon to full-health player character, by making explosions directly under character's feet (maximum possible "looking down" angle), while staying on completely flat surface (tarmac road near Novac). Mines were exploded by dropping them down near stopped travelling merchant in Novac, as it seems that detonating by shooting in some cases reduce potency of explosion. Other "placed" weapons (dynamites, time bomb, C-4) were exploded with player character standing directly on 'em ("walking" was used to position character precisely on top of very middle of explosive). C-4s were exploded by detonator. In majority of cases, weapons were inflicting very same damage every time, in few cases damage varied by 1 point, in two cases by a few points. Maximum inflicted damage is shown here. Except for obvious crits (like plasma grenades crits, which were a whopping 431 points of damage).

In case anyone will do tests of their own to compare results to my numbers, please use same procedure. Otherwise your results may be much different; for example, exploding C-4 by shooting it seems to produce times less potent explosion.

Numbers recorded are:

column B: displayed in pipboy DAM stat of weapons, at level 37, with Demolition Expert (2), 100 explosives skill;

column C: displayed in pipboy DAM stat of weapons, at level 38, with Demolition Expert (3), 100 explosives skill;

column D: actual damage, character level 38, with Demolition Expert (3), 100 explosives skill, and DT = 25 (perks plus Joshua Graham's armor);

column E: actual damage, character level 38, with Demolition Expert (3), 100 explosives skill, and DT = 10 (perks only).

column F: difference between D and E (which in most cases is higher than "should-be" 15, - seems for some weapons additional 15 DT negates more than just 15 damage. Weapons which properly shows 15 here has it in bold font);

column G: difference between C and E (which in most cases is higher than "should-be" 10. Weapon which properly shows 10 here has it in bold font).

Questions marks are where significant variability of damage (several points) was noticed.

Column A: weapon____________B___C___D___E___F___G

Anabelle____________________224_224_178_193_15__31 /this is unique rocket launcher

Fatman______________________342_342_305_320_15__22

Grenade machinegun__________50__57__16__40__24__17 /standard 25mm weapon

Thump-thump_________________74__85__42__65__23__20 /this is unique 40mm grenade launcher

C-4_________________________256_256_229_244_15__12

Time bomb___________________193_193_158_178_20__15

Bottlecup mine______________287_328_284?307_23__21

Frag mine___________________144_165_108?138_30__27

Plasma mine_________________216_246_189_214_25__32

Dynamite____________________97__97__63__82__19__15

Long fuse Dynamite__________97__97__63__82__19__15

Frag grenade________________109_124_81__105_24__19

Incendiary grenade__________73__83__48__73__25__10 /fire "over time" damage not included, of course

Plasma grenade______________216_246_203_228_25__18

Notes.

Thump-thump seem to be nerfed alot. This wiki lists it having 100 explosive damage. Even with x3 Demolition Expert and Lord Death x2, it only has 85 listed in my pipboy. Too bad; this weapon fires slowly, and with that much nerfed damage, i see no use for it, at all. Just too weak.

Interestingly, plasma grenade and plasma mine have same listed DAM values, but perform differently when tested: plasma grenade deals more damage. By checking this wiki, one may see that base AoE radius of the mine is 192, but is 450 for the grenade. Could this be a root cause for the difference - i don't know. Additionally, i'm curious if this wiki is wrong about plasma grenade having zero crit damage: as mentioned above, it dealt 431 damage sometimes to the character, which really looks like a crit. Better criticals perk was present. I guess further testing would be required to sort this out.

For dynamite and long-fuse dynamite, test results are completely identical - it's amazing how precise game engine can be when using "all things being the same" testing procedure. This, apart from repetition of all tests to see same damage is done every time, is one additional confirmation that there is little to none error in numbers above. Of course rounding is always there, though, so +-1 should be kept in mind.

Note how all weapons which "correctly" perform against DT (bold font numbers above) do not have increased listed damage between Demolition Expert x2 and x3 (columns B and C), except incendiary grenade. This makes me to think that in all cases when Demolition Expert _is_ properly applied to increase damage of a weapon - it not only increases damage of the weapon, but also (erratically) increases somehow DT of the target against that particular explosive-based attack. Boo! :( And incendiary grenade could be just a coincedence of less explosive damage than actually recorded above in the table, with the remainder being additional fire damage (first "tick" of fire (over time) damage). Then unproportianlly higher value which incendiary grenade has in column F would make complete sense. Or perhaps there's something else, i don't know.

25mm and 40mm grenades seem to be specially treated by the game; some kind of unproportionally high damage reduction seem to be in place, or perhaps, full explosion's damage is only dealt if these grenades hit the body of the target directly. Too bad i din't have Mercy (unique 40mm version with about double the damage) to test it out. But regular grenade machinegun was definitely too weak, as you can see above. In any case i recommend to use only advanced types of ammo with anything 25mm and 40mm, as standard rounds suffer alot against higher DT of the target.

Significant portion of difference between listed and actual damage may or may not have anything to do with Lord Death (2) perk which my character has a the time of testing. Perhaps additional damage from this perk is listed, but not dealt with explosive weapons? I wouldn't be surprised. Or perhaps, that additional damage is done not to literally "everything", but to "everything except player character himself", and thus perk's damage is actually dealt to all targets except player himself? I don't know.

P.S. Testing Anabelle's actual damage was done using fast-flying missiles (which should have standard damage, i recon). Out of curiousity, i fired high explosive one to check if it indeed deals that much more damage - and well, it does, and radius of explosion of HE rocket is insanely huge (some 20-25 meters or so by eye, and that's radius which means area is twice that wide, and that's without perk increasing radius of explosions by 25%). This wiki says HE rockets indeed has radius of explosion increased by 35%. In-game, it feels like even more than that, but of course i may be wrong, just a feeling, only. I went on to play with the Anabelle and HE rockets killing some bots in New Vegas and then took out one of casinos completely. My impression is: Anabelle has small spread (0.2 degrees according to this wiki, and indeed it feels very precise for a rocket launcher), and is quite fun to nuke things with. Despite HE rockets being expensive in-game, i recommend this weapon with HE rockets VERY much for dealing with anything "big and scary", anywhere, except areas where you expect to find "laying around" useful loot - cause this baby throws things around like crazy which may result in losing valuable items (like skill books) if it throws these into some inaccesible hole. Price of HE rockets is a good measure of how powerful these are; actually i even think price may be set even a bit higher, perhaps 200 caps per HE rocket, but then i'm quite a hoarder and not everyone out there is. Having high stealth and/or stealth boy, and no companions to not spoil your stealth, allows for repeated insanely devastating stealth crits with this weapon. Cleaning any but very largest of rooms before going into it is a matter of just one HE rocket to the middle of the ceiling; many of Casinos' main floor halls (which are rather large) can be dealt with in such a way, hope this gives you a true impression about how huge explosions these are. Having high DT and lots of stimpacks helps alot, though, as it sometimes not possible to avoid the blast outside the room, especially for smaller ones and/or in angled corridors. Bright side is, if you play with Anabelle, then you'd definitely earn achievement "tough guy" for being crippled so much. Fun! :D

P.P.S. Sorry for typos and poor english. It's not native for me. Hope it's not too bad to read...

(L) Fins.