Level

Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics Level Up Fallout 3 Level Up



Levels are the general competency of the player character in the SPECIAL character system, and a measure of their experience and abilities; generally, the higher the level, the more potent a character is. Levels are determined by the amount of experience points you have earned throughout your journey.

Prior to Fallout 4, level ups allow you to modify your skills (but not your primary statistics) as well as special perks depending on your current skills. However, because Fallout 4 removes skills, points earned from levels can be invested in a perk or a SPECIAL statistic.

Level cap
The maximum level you can reach varies from game to game.
 * In Fallout it's 21.
 * In Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel it's 99.
 * In Fallout 3 it's 20. With the Broken Steel add-on, it's 30.
 * In Fallout: New Vegas it's 30. With every subsequent main add-on, the level cap is raised by 5, up to a maximum of 50.
 * In Fallout 4, there is practically no level cap, although the level-up menu will only display up to 99.
 * In Fallout Shelter, an individual dweller's level cap is 50.

Bugs
There was a glitch that allows you to level up to 31, 32, 33, etc. However, your title will still be Messiah, True Mortal, or Devil. Also, while Health increases from each level up stay with you, the points and the perks you choose will not be kept.
 * Encountered on the PS3 when the player leveled to level 30 and continued on the game will freeze constantly meaning you could not continue past level 30.

Fallout: New Vegas

 * Your character must also not have the Logan's Loophole trait, as this caps your level at 30.

Fallout 4

 * Unlike earlier games, there is no practical level cap in Fallout 4
 * However, if level 65,536 is reached the game will crash (this is due to the fact that 65,536 is one greater than the largest possible number that can be stored with 2 bytes of data: 65,535 or 216 - 1)
 * Every time the Sole Survivor levels up they can choose a perk or an upgrade to a single SPECIAL rank from the perk tree.

A graph of the total XP required (y-axis) to reach levels 1-150 (x-axis):