Talk:Bloody Mess

So, is Bloody Mess a 5% damage multiplier; or simply a +5 to all weapon skills (Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Melee Weapons, Small Guns and Unarmed)?--Nux Matrix 02:19, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Aside from people around you always dying violently, you’ll also do 5% extra damage with all weapons. PlasmaFox 02:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Ha HA HAA

Do you like the damage increase but do you hate the animations?
Me too! But here's a mod I highly recommend that takes the animations away:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35157 ~ User:YesMan

mediocre perk
This perk is fun at first but get annoying later on. The special death effect gets extremely repetitive over time and makes the special deaths way to common and less entertaining. All that really happens is the head, arms, and legs explode leaving the torso intact most the time. Energy weapons will make people turn into a pile of dust more often. It takes a good bit of realism out of the game and makes looting harder. Seeing a raider/super mutant die violently from getting hit from a 10mm bullet is kind of silly. If you have to choose something other than this get commando/sniper since the 5% damage from bloody mess perk barely helps so your better off with more accuracy.

just a statement, it makes looting easier actually. however looting a missile launcher of an eyeball is pretty unrealistic62.163.88.139 18:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You both make very good points. And taking Enclave Power Armor off an eyeball is pretty silly, too!  But so is looting an intact set of six-foot-tall power armor out of a three-inch-tall pile of ashes... especially after you just watched the power armor disintegrate.  Anyway, I have to agree.  I play on a PC, so I have the ability to remove perks from my character... and I am going to remove this one.  You can read my little rant below if you want to know exactly why.  ("Comparing...") 12.204.48.130 07:33, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I like just shooting people in the head and the head flying off, not the arms and legs and everything else. It makes it a lot less fun. On my most recent character, I didn't invest in the Bloody Mess perk. So far, I've enjoyed seeing the heads roll, and only the heads. Birthday Suit 00:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Comparing Bloody Mess across different Fallout games
All right, let me make one thing clear up front. I LOVE Fallout 3. I am not bashing this game in any way. However, I also love Fallout and Fallout 2, and I played them "back in the day," and I've played them again since then. In fact, leading up to the release of FO3, I played FO1, FO2, and Tactics all over again, just to get back "into" the Fallout universe. Having said that, I've decided that Bloody Mess was a much better-implemented feature in the previous games than it is in Fallout 3. I am not talking about the 5% damage bonus, which is modest but unquestionably nice to have. I am talking specifically about the graphical impact of the perk (formerly a "trait," I know). This is kind of ironic, because it's clear that the graphics in Fallout 3 are significantly more advanced. Note that I didn't say "better," but "more advanced." The old Fallout games had amazing graphics given their technological limitations. It's evident that a lot of work went into ALL of the Fallout games. Even so, it seems that in the case of Bloody Mess, a lot MORE work went into the previous titles. What I mean is that in those older games, the Bloody Mess trait allowed the player to see a "death animation" that was appropriate to the way the target was killed. If you shot the enemy with a single projectile, you saw one big chunk come out of them. If you fired a fully-automatic weapon, you saw multiple exit wounds as the dying enemy did the "chain-gun cha-cha" before falling down. In Fallout 3, however, the "death animation" provided by Bloody Mess is exactly the same, regardless of how you kill the enemy: the limbs all come off, the skull comes apart, and blood sprays in the air. The same thing happens whether you kill the enemy with a grenade (in which case it looks appropriate) or with a single 10mm pistol round to the arm (in which case it looks downright stupid). At first, it was fun... and by "at first," I mean maybe the first 5 or 10 times. After that, it got annoying. I realize this is not by any means a game enslaved to absolute realism. Still, I have stopped using any ranged weapons except for shotguns and missile launchers, because otherwise the "explosive" deaths just kill the whole sense of immersion for me. I do occasionally allow myself to fire full-auto weapons, but only OUTSIDE of VATS, and only from a distance. That way, I can pretend that bullets are hitting the appropriate body parts and causing them to separate. The only melee / unarmed weapon I allow myself to use is the Deathclaw Gauntlet, because the multiple fingers could possibly tear off multiple limbs, at least in theory. It's almost bearable, and sometimes even kind of fun, but that means I'm basically limited to playing the game with 2 or 3 weapons. They're not even my favorite weapons, but I'm stuck with them. As a consequence, I have finally decided to use the command console to remove this perk from my character so that I can go back to enjoying my game. All I'm really trying to say is that I wish the folks at Bethesda had put as much work into this perk as the developers of the previous Fallout titles obviously put into the death effects in their games. They used actual animations to show what was happening in the game, whereas Bethesda pretty much just used ragdoll physics and scripts. You just don't get the same effect. (They put a tremendous amount of work into the overall game, mind you... just not this one perk.) Sorry for the rant... this has been bugging me for a while, so I thought I'd share my opinion here on the talk page. Just my two caps! 12.204.48.130 08:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you in every way, except for one. Big guns users. There's nothing more irritating than some little prick pecking away at your health. You run up to him with your minigun drawn, then throw a wall of lead at him, and see him explode into a bunch of little giblets. Hardly anything more satisfying than that. 69.244.16.169 05:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

While not feeling as strong about it, I agree that this perk is mostly annoying, in that it makes bodies hard to find or loot. Also makes multiple enemies impossible to distinguish. - Redmess 23:10, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

Very Well written. I would like it more "the old way" too. I took it initially because of +5% dmg and because i thought it works the same as in FO/FO2. Started a new Game now and will pick something else, as the 5% dmg increase are not that important.

Bloody Mess & Knuckles?
On the wiki page it says that Bloody Mess doesn't effect hand-to-hand weapons like brass or spiked knuckles, and more prone to just working with the PowerFist weapons. But I've been using the Steel Knuckles from The Pitt expansion (trade Steel Ingots to Everett for'em), and these things are making folks explode. While it is gratifying to catch someone with a left hook in VATS and have them liquify in slow-motion, I'm starting to feel like I'm playing that guy from Fist of The North Star.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

-Shashka

It happened only once, however I managed to make a torso explode in VATS with my bare fists. Before I chose Bloody Mess, I enjoyed watching Spiked Knuckles tear off a Raider's arm, but now it's just annoying. I think such brutal and unrealistic deaths should be limited to Shotguns, Big Guns and Explosives.84.115.18.130 19:38, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Just an idea to improve the article
I think it would be of benefit to the article if someone could find a video or picture of the bloody mess in use, that is an enemy being affected by the perk and stick it to the article. than again this is just in my opinion, so it is just an open sugestion.Superinsomniac 01:24, November 8, 2009 (UTC)

Glitch Causing
Did anyone notice that when a body becomes completely gibbed (turned into mutilated organs, limbs, etc) and you loot everything off of it, the body reappears? Well it doesn't completely reappear, the torso is completely invisible and the head, arms and legs are like they've been blown off. It only happens to humans when you take their armor. I've first starting encountering this during Take It Back (had Bloody Mess before that) and now that I've got Eugene out, I've noticed that this happens much more often. Anyone else see this?--KnightNapier 03:31, November 27, 2009 (UTC)
 * If the torso is invisible, how can you know its there? - Redmess 09:25, November 27, 2009 (UTC)
 * The stub of the arms legs and head suddenly appear where the person died but the actual torso isn't there. The body looks like a target who got all of limbs blown off in a normal shot except the central body is invisible. I can't really get a good picture because I'm on PS3.--KnightNapier 14:45, November 27, 2009 (UTC)
 * I've had this happen to me, too, but the only time I saw it was during Take It Back. I don't think I've seen it anywhere else, though, so I thought that it might have been something to do with Liberty Prime's ultra-gib eye beams, and not Bloody Mess. RolandWolfheart 18:10, October 12, 2010 (UTC)

new vegas section
i disagree with the section saying this is valuable in new vegas because it affects all weapons. its such a mild increase in damage that having bodies explode all over the place takes more away from the game than it adds in my opinion.

the fact that it affects all weapons is really a non-issue in my opinion, because with the limited skill points in new vegas you are generally only going to be using 1 or 2 types of weapons for 99.5% of the game. by the time you get done raising lockpick, science, speech, medicine, survival, repair, sneak, and so on you will only have enough points left over for 1 maybe 2 weapon skills which is perfectly fine. i used guns exclusively and never felt like i was 'doing it wrong'.

i dunno, i just think a mild 5% increase in damage isnt really worth how much it detracts from the game with exploding bodies and all that. if i make a clean head shot kill the persons body should not just instantly explode into bits.

there are plenty of perks to increase your combat ability without taking this. rapid reload, finesse, math wrath, better criticals, action boy x2, grim reaper, nerves of steel, hand loader, toughness x2...


 * I think the whole point of taking up Bloody Mess (once you already know how it works / how over-the-top / how fun the visual effect is) is min/maxing your character. If you're trying to really squeeze the most out of your character, a 5% (10% in NV?) damage increase across the board is good times, especially considering that damage-increasing perks are somewhat scarce.


 * I will agree, though, on the point that if I'm not obsessing with maximizing damage output in a particular run, I will most definitely skip it. As someone pointed out earlier, the FO/FO2 original trait was a lot more polished and worth picking up. On FO3 it just disappoints.


 * I think the first poster is a bit confused. When people point out that Bloody Mess effects all damage, they don't mean just the weapon skill-type, they mean the different weapons within a skill-type category. For example, if you had a character that was exclusive to just using Guns, Bloody Mess's damage bonus applies to pistols, rifles, sniper rifles, sub-machine guns and so on. Opposed t a perk like Cowboy, which only applies to only action-lever based weapons. Or Entomologist, which has a damage bonus exclusive to insects.


 * Moving on though, I disagree about the damage aspect. Mathematically, the damage doesn't seem that far off from Better Criticals actually. Lets say your using an Anti-Materiel Rifle. It does 110 damage per hit and another 110 damage a crit. With Better Criticals, you would do another 55 damage when it crits (50% of 110 = 55). Granted, that's only when you hit for a crit. Considering that, let's say you have 10% chance to crit (10 luck, no other bonuses). That means you have a 1 in 10 crit chance. The way I see it, you can just divide that extra critical strike damage, 55, by 10, to get avg damage per hit of the Better Critical bonus; which is 5.5. Now take Bloody Mess. +5% more damage out of 110 is 5.5. So every hit, your doing an additional 5.5 more damage. Funny how that works out, both perks result in a +5.5 damage per hit increase. Lets take the same scenarios again, but let's say you have 18 luck instead (10 Luck, Built to Destroy, Finesse). 18% equates to about 1 critical strike out of every 5.5 (technically repeating) hits. So I would take that bonus 55 damage and divide it by 5.5, to get the damage per hit, which equals 10. So in this scenario, the difference is 10 (Better Criticals) vs. 5.5 (Bloody Mess). Again, not a major difference here, and in order to get that you have to make sure your making a build focused on critical strikes. So yeah, Bloody Mess still doesn't have as much potential for damage as much as Better Criticals does, but it's still relatively comparable in scale.--74.65.102.32 10:54, July 4, 2011 (UTC)

Self Infliction Question
If you take this perk and kill yourself with one of your own weapons (grenades, missiles, Fat Man/MIRV shots aimed directly up or in a corner), does it increase the chance that you gib yourself? I don't think I've ever seen a player character explode into bloody chunks, so I'm not sure if it's even possible, but does it increase the chance that all of the PC's limbs come off? RolandVH 21:50, November 24, 2010 (UTC)

I've never tried it, but I imagine the easiest way to pull this off is with some big explosives. Fatman, Grenade Machine Gun, Grenade Launcher/Rifle, or Land Mines + Grenades all should work, give or take, depending on your current level. Just aim for your feet and happy testing. I do have one more thing to add to this discussion though - would Bloody Mess's effect proc if you walked into a field of enemy-laid land mines? I don't think it would, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did. --74.65.102.32 07:48, July 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * if it's the enemies mines, no. I dunno about if it's your own mines. 76.198.70.129 03:56, July 20, 2011 (UTC)

Removing gore effects via console
If, like me, you want to take the perk only for the damage bonus and are annoyed by filtering through pieces of raiders for the loot, then you can easily remove the mess effect of the perk:

1) select the perk at level up 2) Open the console (via the ~ key, see Console commands for more detail) 3) type "player.setav bloodymess -1" (without quotes) 4) check success with "player.getav bloodymess". It should return 0

After saving your game, the changes should be permanent. If you return to a previous save where you had bloody mess but did not apply the console command, you'll have to do step 2) and 3) again.

Enjoy your increased damage without a bloody mess.