Any player who calls themselves anRPGfan has heard ofFallout: New Vegas. Praised as one of thebest open-world RPGs of all time, this gem makes exploring the apocalypse an experience. Along with its overabundance of weapons and armor, the game features a vast selection of perks.
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Compared to the previous games,Obsidian Entertainment’sNew Vegas only allows you to choose a perk every two levels. Once you max out, you’re locked in. With how many there are, and the requirements they demand, first-time players can feel overencumbered. So, before taking that next trip to New Vegas, check out these perks worth investing your points on.
10Comprehension
The First Perk to Get
In-Game Description
With the Comprehension perk, you gain double the bonus from reading magazines and one additional point from skill books.
Requirements
In the world ofFallout, skill points are everything. They’re the glue that keeps your characters together and makes them powerful. Yet, no matter how much you invest in, there’s always a situation where you find yourself lacking the required amount. Maybe it’s for a dialogue choice, to hack a terminal or pick a lock.
Fortunately, New Vegas includes skill magazines that temporally boost your stats, along with skill books for a more permanent boost. If you want to get more bang for your buck, however, the Comprehension perk will double everything. Every time you read a skill book, you’ll get 4 points instead of 3. On top of that, magazines go from 10 points to 20. Never feel lacking again.
9Mysterious Stranger
The Franchise’s Guardian Angel
Gives you your own personal guardian angel… armed with a fully loaded .44 Magnum. With this perk, the Mysterious Stranger will appear occasionally in V.A.T.S. mode to lend a hand, with deadly efficiency.
He’s the biggest mystery in the franchise. He’s been around since the first game, all the way toFallout 4, making him among thefew characters to reappear in every game. He arrives with his signature guitar theme and loaded magnum, only to disappear as quickly as he comes. He has no name, except for the perk that summons him: The Mysterious Stranger.
Definitely one of the oddest reoccurring perks in the series, it’s not clear if the Mysterious Stranger is a ghost or perhaps an actual guardian angel. Whatever he is, one thing’s for certain – he’s helpful. Though the chance is only a slim 10%, when fighting in V.A.T.S., the Stranger can appear to aid in combat, unloading six shots before disappearing. It’ll tip the odds in your favor when starting a new character, so long as the Stranger doesn’t glitch behind a wall.
Completing the “He Moves in Mysterious Ways” challenge—having the Mysterious Stranger appear 15 times—will unlock the Friendly Help perk, which increases the chance of the Mysterious Stranger appearing by an extra 10%.
8Enhanced Sensors
Get By With A Little Help from Your Friends
While ED-E is a companion, the player can detect enemies at an increased range. Additionally, enemies will appear on the player’s compass and can be targeted in V.A.T.S. even when cloaked.
ED-E as a Companion
One of the best reasons for bringing companions along is because each gives the player a companion perk. Granted, certain party members require you to finish their personal quests to unlock better ones, but out of all of them, the one you get right out of the gates is the Enhanced Sensors perk from that loveable eyebot ED-E.
There’s no lengthy quest you have to undertake. Once you find ED-E and repair it, the bot will automatically join your team. Thanks to his Enhanced Sensors, it doesn’t matter what level your Perception skill is at, you’ll have the detection radius to see any threat for miles. Even better, it’ll allow you to target cloaked enemies such as the tricky Nightkin. Just another reason this little guy is one of the mostuseful companions in New Vegas. The one setback about the perk, however, is that it has limited use indoors. So maybe leave him outside.
7Grim Reaper’s Sprint
Don’t Fear the Reaper
If you kill a target in V.A.T.S., 20 Action Points are restored upon exiting V.A.T.S.
V.A.T.S. are the biggest mechanic in the Fallout series. Though its design has been slightly altered with each new release, the core function remains the same. It stops time and allows you to target your enemy. How much you may use it, however, is determined by the amount of Action Points you have. Meaning, there’s a limit to how many times you can rely on this mechanic.
Thankfully, with the Grim Reaper’s Sprint perk, your V.A.T.S. use just increased. Now, every time you take out an enemy in V.A.T.S., you’ll stack on an additional 20 Action Points. Plus, when paired with other perks like Math Wrath or Better Criticals, you’re basically turning your character into a time-stopping killing machine.
With the Sniper perk, your chance to hit an opponent’s head in V.A.T.S. is significantly increased.
Whether you’re playing anFPSor any other action game, remember the golden rule: always aim for the head. Going for the limbs and torso might work in certain combat scenarios, but whether it’s a mutant or a fanatical Legionary, a headshot is always an easy kill. Even with V.A.T.S., unfortunately, trying to hit a moving target can be challenging.
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Luckily, the Sniper perk boosts your chance of scoring a headshot by 25%. If you plan to invest in this perk, though, verify you pair it with a decent gun. Hitting the target is one thing, but unless you’re using a powerful enough rifle, you might as well be shooting at them with a BB gun.
5Robotics Expert
Man vs. Machine
With the Robotics Expert perk, you do an additional 25% damage to any robot. But, even better, sneaking up on a hostile robot undetected and deactivating it will put that robot into a permanent shutdown state.
Robots. They come in all forms throughout New Vegas. Some hover, some roll, some are friendly and some want to incinerate you to ashes. Regardless of how you play, you’ll run into hostile machines one way or another. And if you didn’t pack a laser or plasma rifle, it’ll be a difficult fight unless you become a Robotics Expert.
With this single perk, every fight with a machine becomes a breeze. Besides the extra damage boost, the perk also turns you into a ninja-like mechanic. Just sneak up on a robot that hasn’t noticed you and you can deactivate the machine without spending a single bullet.
Shield Your Eyes
Meltdown causes foes killed by your Energy Weapons to give off a corona of harmful energy. Note: this can cause a chain reaction.
One of the fun things about the laser or plasma guns of New Vegas is the way they utterly disintegrate your targets. With a well-placed shot, you’re able to reduce your enemies to a pile of dust or a puddle of green goop. If you consider yourself a fan of Fallout’s techy weapons, then this perk is for you.
With Meltdown, killing an enemy with energy weapons will cause a massive explosion of plasma energy, completely decimating the target and damaging those around them. Just bear in mind that it can also harm you and your companions, so make sure to keep your distance.
3Concentrated Fire
Increasing Your Aim
With Concentrated Fire, your accuracy to hit any body part in V.A.T.S. increases slightly with each subsequent hit on that body part.
The best thing about V.A.T.S. besides stopping time is that you can fire more than once at a particular limb – depending on the amount of Action Points the player has. The tricky part is accuracy. While your skills and the condition of the weapon factor into it, when trying to hit a small moving target, your accuracy will suffer.
Using the Concentrated Fire perk completely changes the game. Now your accuracy increases per shot, meaning even if your first shot has a measly 30% chance of hitting, the third has a 55% chance. Just make sure you have extra Action Points ready for the next target. You don’t want to empty all your V.A.T.S. into one measly Cazador.
2Strong Back
Perfect For Every Gaming Hoarder
With the Strong Back perk, you can carry 50 more pounds of equipment.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a Vault Dweller, a Chosen One, a Lone Wanderer, a Courier or a Sole Survivor. The universal truth that binds all Fallout players is loot, loot and more loot. The series is chock-full of goodies, but between the loot you scavenge and the essentials you pack, eventually you’re going to run out of room.
Nothing stings more than locating an awesome piece of equipment deep in some vault only to realize you can’t carry any more items, so you’re forced to drop something and either must come back for it later or discard it forever. The Strong Back perk gives you some extra room, a whole 50 lbs. for the weight you can carry.
Honorable Mentions: Monocyte Breeder, which regenerates health, and the Sub Dermal Armor, which adds +4 to the damage threshold, are all decent perks. Since these are implants that can be acquired via caps, they weren’t counted.
1Jury Rigging
Take Care of Your Equipment
You possess the amazing ability to repair any item using a roughly similar item. Fix a Trail Carbine with a Hunting Rifle, a Plasma Defender with a Laser Pistol, or even Power Armor with Metal Armor. How does it work? Nobody knows… except you.
An important feature of New Vegas is maintaining your equipment. Between taking damage and overusing them, your weapons and armor will decay over time. The problem is that some unique weapons/armor, particularly endgame gear, can only be fixed by certain NPCs, and even then, it’s expensive.
So either save up those bottle caps or start investing points in the Repair Skill and snatch the Jury Rigging perk. With this, all your unique gear can be repaired with any useless junk you come across. Now, instead of draining your funds, your one-of-a-kind Elite Riot Helmet can be repaired using some clunky helm you snatched off a raider. While it requires having a Repair Skill of 90, the perk will practically pay for itself in the long run.
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