Overview
In this guide I’ll be talking pretty in depth about how to have a good Fallout: New Vegas character from the start of the game. Along with a few possible build ideas.
My Credibility…
Alright, so you may be wondering “Why should I listen to this guy?” or “Does he even know what he’s talking about?” and theres an answer to both of those questions.
Why you should listen to me.
As far as new school (all the new fallout games like Fallout 3, NV, 4) Fallout game veterans go I like to consider myself a hardcore veteran. I have been playing the new fallout games pretty much since the fallout 3 came out. I play almost every day. I have thousands of hours on fallout New Vegas alone. (it doesnt say on my steam but I didnt used to have a PC good enough to run New vegas on day one so I played on Xbox 360 for a while) I know almost every nook and cranny of this game wether it’s Tracking Benny down to getting all the companions to little glitches and secrets. I like to think I really know fallout and how it works.
Yes I really know what I am talking about.
When you have been playing fallout as long as I have (5 years for New Vegas alone) you remember where every item is, where every enemy spawns, and every stupidly hard fight.
A Good Start…
Face Bones guide to a good start early on!
So you’ve just created your first character and haven’t even picked your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Yet. Let’s take a look at some different builds I have tested extensively.
Face Bones Average build.
S.trength: 5
P.erception: 5
E.ndurance:5
C.harisma. 6
I.ntelligence: 7-8 (← This tends to varies from build to build)
A.gility: 5
L.uck 6
TAG Skills: Barter, Speech, Sneak
This build allows for a very flexible play through. It gives stat boosts to many good stats like science and energy weapons. Let’s talk about the extra point into charisma. This is a moderately important part of the build because during the entire game I’m relying heavily on speech checks and I have never seen a speech check that requires a charisma higher than 6. Now the 7-8 Intel. The reason I go so high with Intelligence is because during one of the dlc’s there is a speech check that requires a high intel to do. The extra luck is just there for extra crit chances and V.A.T.S percentages.
Ripper/Chainsaw Crit Build
S.trength: 6-8 (You’ll want to do the special training perk to get this up.)
P.erception: 5
E.ndurance:5
C.harisma. 5
I.ntelligence: 5
A.gility: 5
L.uck 10 (There is a very good reason very having this much luck, don’t worry I’ll explain below)
TAG Skills: Melee, Sneak, Speech
This is an incredible strong build that is capable of taking down mass armies of enemies. So the Ripper and Chainsaw are two of the strongest weapons melee portion of this games but they tend to be expensive so the you’ll have to wait till you get enough caps. (Which won’t be a problem I’ll talk about how to get this many caps very fast without cheating) So every single tooth on these weapons has a chance to score a critical hit hence the ten luck. Luck affects your critical hit chance. So basically this means that every single tooth that hits someone has a chance to do large DPS. (damage per second)
Stealth with Chances Knife Build
S.trength: 5
P.erception: 5
E.ndurance:5
C.harisma. 6
I.ntelligence: 6
A.gility: 8 (Agility affects how much and how well you sneak.
L.uck 6
TAG Skills: Sneak, Melee, Lockpick
This build is based highly around stealth and melee.
First lets talk about the Stealth part. Stealth is how this build will be themed. You will sneak into battle and slash all of your enemies. You want to get your Stealth Skill to 100 as fast as possible and wear armor that compliments it. (Like the Chinese Stealth Armor)
Now the Melee
Chance’s knife. This is quite possibly the best melee weapon in the game because it has an amazing Crit chance. Getting chances knife can be challenging because to get it you have to get past 2-4 Cazadores. (Cazadores are quite possibly the most vicious mutated bugs in all of the Mojave wasteland) But your sneak will come in handy. First you need to buy the shovel from chet, this will allow you to dig in graves. (like chances) So your going to want to go to the Goodsprings cemetery. (It’s the big water tower in Goodsprings) You are going to want to sneak past the water tower till you come to a road, watch out now, the cazadores will be to the right of you somewhere. when you look left you will see a split way, the road or a open area. You’re going to want to go into the open area and stick left. You’ll be taken up a little elevated path. then you’ll come to a grave. Chances grave. You can dig it up and get an amazing weapon almost immediately. Now you teleport back to Goodsprings and Start doing quests.
Doc Mitchell (The man who fixes you up) has one of two broken houses in Goodsprings. You can loot every single item in his house. So after you get your Pip-Boy loot everything. Chances are you’re going to be over-encumbered so head to the general store. Sell all the junk to Chet. Chet is a good merchant cause he always has a good bit of caps and sometimes a weapon mod. Now go clean out victors house. (He’s the robot you probably met coming out of Doc’s house. His house it to the right of Doc’s house next to a red building.) Sell all of the stuff to chet again. If chet runs out of caps and you still have stuff you want to sell leave his shop and wait for a while and he will restock in a couple days.
Once you leave Doc Mitchell’s house I would recommend doing the full tutorial quest. Gives some good XP and you’ll learn a majority of the mechanics. You’ll get to kill 8 geckos (and if you’re fast enough you can save a Goodsprings settler and get “Liked” by the Goodsprings community). After you clear the geckos you’ll be taught how you use the survival skill and make healing powder. These items are next to the door of the school and up at the cemetery. Then you will bring these back to Sunny Smiles and then make the healing powder and you have completed the tutorial. Congratulations.
Choosing sides/Introduction to Factions
When you re-enter the saloon you will find the barkeeper Trudy arguing with a man named Joe Cobb. Trudy represents Goodsprings and Joe Cobb represents a small faction called the “Powder Gangers” They will both ask for your help in taking out the other group. You can choose whichever side you want but be warned. Once you complete the quest for that faction you will be vilified with either good springs or the powder gangers. This means whenever you encounter a member of this group the will be hostile towards you and attack. (This can be a nuisance in the beginning but once you’re a little farther in these groups are incredibly scarce)
For simplicity sake I’m going to choose the side of Good Springs because they have two possible merchants and a doctor while the powder gang doesn’t offer anything to the player besides a few quests which you could actually run over and do before you choose a side)
Trudy will ask you to talk to the “fella” staying in the gas station because that’s who the powder gangers are looking for. His name is Ringo. Once you enter the gas station ringo will talk to you. From here you have the options of helping him or killing him (Killing him means your working for the powder gangers and will fail the Goodsprings quest) Ringo will tell you to ask around to see if anyone will help in the upcoming battle. So first you will talk to sunny smiles. She will agree to help immediately. She will tell you to try and recruit Trudy, Doc Mitchell, Chet, and Easy Pete. To get Trudies help you will need to have either 30+ Speech or 25+ speech. This won’t be a problem. Easy Pete requires you to have 25+ in explosives. This is the hardest part and I recommend either putting points into this right at the beginning of the game or leaving Goodsprings and killing stuff till you are a few levels higher and have put points into this. Once you have recruited Easy Pete you will want to talk to chet. This requires either 35+ speech or 35+ barter. Yet again you’ll have to put some points into those because unless you put 2+ into the Charisma SPECIAL you won’t have enough. Once Chet is convinced you need to talk to Doc Mitchell. He will give you medical supplies for the fight. No Speech Checks needed.
Now that you have recruited everyone it’s time to talk to Ringo and start the big showdown between the Powder Gangers and the people of Good Springs. Once you tell Ringo your ready Sunny Smiles will come through the door and tell you the Powder Gangers have arrived and it’s about to go down. So you follow sunny and you and the town will have to take out six powder gangers or so.
Once all the powder gangers are killed you will have completed the quest and Ringo will pay you half of what he owes you (to get the other half you have to find him later on) and thank you. Now you should loot every powder ganger body and sell it all to Chet. You should have anywhere between 2000 and 3000 bottle caps. (For those doing the Ripper build this will be enough to buy a ripper, they usually cost about 2,800 caps)
That’s Pretty Much It…
Yep. That’s pretty much all you need to do to have a good start in Fallout: New Vegas. There’s hundreds of minor tweaks you can make. And well… I’m not going to go into all of them because figuring that out for yourselves is for you to due. So enjoy it.
Feel free to comment and tell me how I did or just tell me how I have no life. I appreciate all of it!
More to Come?
I loved writing this guide. I may do random updates to this guide and become a “Face Bones Guide to a Good New Vegas” where I go more indepth and basically make a guide for the entire game. IF i decide to make more this could take a very long time though, months or possibily years.