Overview
Heroes don’t do drugs, except Drug Man, I guess… – Phillip J. Fry, Futurama
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my Fallout: New Vegas Character Build Guide. Remember in when you were in school and pretty much everyone and their grandmother told you drugs are bad for you? Well guess what; they were right.
Thank you for reading my first Steam guide. Have a nice day!
Well okay that’s fine advice for real life, but this is a Video Game and in a video game you can do whatever the hell you want because litterally none of it is real!
*A moment of silence for those who did not live long enough to see video games get invented*
Well enough of that crap, time to get down to business. In this guide only two things are required to make this build:
1.) Fallout: New Vegas (duh)
2.) Old World Blues Expansion (For the trait that makes this build possible)
In this guide I will teach you how to make a character that can:
1.) Take as much chems and alchohol as there are stars in the sky and never get addicted.
2.) Have higher than average points in every skill at the start of the game.
3.) Be very versitile for just about any type of build that can viably finish the game.
However the above superpowers are not without downsides, which are:
1.) You cannot level above level 30.
2.) You will gain experience points a tad slower (Optional and Fixable).
3.) Heavier weapons will suffer handling bonuses (can be offset slightly at level 16 with certain point allocation).
With all that said let’s get started!
Pictured: Not you, ever again
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.: Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Luck stat
Okay first thing’s first you do not have to follow this guide to the letter. If you want to make any changes to fit your idea for your character then all power to ya. I only ask that if you find something awesome (or hilariously bugged or broken), please let me know so I can shamelessly steal it for the guide and give you no credit add it to the guide with your permission and acknowledge that you help me do my job for me.
Okay so in order to make every stat well balanced to give our newly created junkie a great blank stale to work with we’re going to make his stats as follows:
Strength: 5
Perception: 5
Endurance: 5
Charisma: 5
Inteligence: 5
Agility: 5
Luck: 10
Or to put it more simply; Dump it all into luck!
This way all skills will be slightly increased at once without any decreasing.
Also getting caps will get hilariously easier when you reach The Strip because the gambling games will be in your favor (If the game says you feel lucky after a win it means your Luck stat won it for you). This is the secret that the casinos don’t want you to know!!
—
So when you’re done answering Doc Mitchel’s questions your character sheet should look like this before andy skills are tagged:
Note the 17’s across the board.
Now you can tag whatever you want to build your character. Despite the fact that you can’t get above level 30 there will be no shortage of skill points as you begin leveling. Whatever skills you tag will be brought up to 32. I chose Guns, Medicine, and repair to illustrate my point:
Also a screenshot to literally illustrate my point.
32 is not the end of the bonuses.
Traits: what the makes the build work!
Okay we now have a choice of between 0 to 2 traits. We’re gonna use ’em both.
Trait 1: Logan’s Loophole (Will NOT show up without Old World Blues)
Now here’s where things are going to get a bit lenghty so bear with me while I throw a wall of text at you.
Logans Loophole, in a nutshell, Gives you additction immunity and doubles the length of all items under the aid category.
That is not a typo. Any item, not just chems, under the aid category last twice as long.
This is due to a bug/oversight on the developer’s part. Chems, alchohol, food items like purified water, and, most importantly, skill magazines will last twice as long. Seriously.
So this is why you would want all stats to be as even as possible to start with. If there is ever a skill check you can’t quite meet the requirements for, just pop some mentats or read a skill magazine and watch as the conflict at hand gets it’s ♥♥♥♥ erased out of existance.
Pictured: Your sleeve full of aces.
Because of this you want to find as many skill magazines as humanly possible. To go back to the awful school joke I made at the beginning of this guide; Reading is knowledge and knowledge is literally power. (Thanks to the power of Video Games)
Trait 2: Skilled (Also requires Old World Blues)
This is what I meant earlier when I said the bonuses don’t stop at 32. At the cost of 10% less experience you start with 5 more points in every skill. this brings the 17’s up to 22 and your tagged skills up to 37, to start with.
Perk reccomendations
Now because this is more of an open ended build I’m just going to recomend a few perks that will help in a general sense.
Intense Training
Basically this gives you an extra special point. You might want to put it in intelegence (for more skill points on a level up) but it’s up to you.
Retention
Incase you need more time for skill magazines this might be a decent option. Not great, but decent.
Swift Learner
This can negate the 10% less experience con from skilled. you can also choose this up to 3 times if you want to hit level 30 that fast (although I wouldn’t reccomend it).
Educated
As with pretty much any build educated is too good to pass up, more skill points is never a bad thing.
Comprehension
This makes skill magazines give you 20 points instead of 10. it also makes Skill books give you 4 points instead of three, which ain’t bad neither.
Weapons Handling
Seeing as we have a strength of 5 this will make the penalties of weapons with a strength score of 7 have no penalties. This will give you more options in your weapon of choice.
Chemist (As suggested by RoachBait)
If you have at least 60 points in the Medicine Skill you can get Chemist at level 14. This will double the effect time for all chems and in Hardcore mode will effect all aid items, just like Logan’s Loophole! Kinda like Retention except signifigantly better.
Day Tripper
This is a challenge perk, meaning that you automatically get it after completing certain challenges. In this example Day Tripper is awarded by taking 25 addictive chems (Which souldn’t even be an issue with this build). Day Tripper makes Chems and Alcohol last 33% longer and that’s on top of Logan’s Loophole and, if you have it, Chemist. Hope you packed a change of clothes, becuase thats gonna be a long trip!
Early advice and the Closing
As far as early advice goes I reccomend rooting through the mailboxes in Goodsprings, as the have a high chance of spawning many different skill magazines. Don’t worry about getting arrested for stealing mail the Feds can’t do ♥♥♥♥ here.
—
Welp that’s about it. This is my first guide and any feedback would be greatly apreciated (I already know I’m a big dummy so some other advice would be superior).
All images were either screenshots from my game or taken from the Fallout wiki (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki) so please don’t sue me, I’m brittle!
Welp that’s it then.
Happy Trails!
