Overview
This is a complete build for a sniper character that duals in energy weapons as a crit build. Near the end of the game this build becomes extremely overpowered and you will be one-shotting the hardest enemies in the game so much so that you don’t even need to sneak.
SPECIAL
Strength – 5
Implant +1
Weapons Handling +2 (effectively)
Reinforced Spine +2 (After OWB)
End Game – 8 (Effectively 10)
Strength can start at 5 as your equipment won’t take up much of your carry capacity but you will need the space to carry guns to sell. We need to get to 8 STR to be able to wield any sniper weapon such as the Anti-Material Rifle or YCS/186. All we need to do is take the implant to get to 6 and Weapons Handling to reduce the requirement from 8 to 6. Later, after Old World Blues, getting our spine back gives us +2 STR so all weapons can now be wielded properly.
Perception – 5
Implant +1
1st Recon Beret +1
Walker’s Instinct +1
Alertness +2 (effectively)
End Game – 7 (Effectively 10)
Perception is a bit of a dump stat as the only thing it affects is compass range, which is not super important for us. We do need PER 6 for Better Criticals so start it at 5 and take the implant. Later on Walker’s Instinct can give us +1 when outside and Alertness can give us +2 when standing still, which can get us up to 10.
Endurance – 7
Implant +1
End game – 8
Endurance is only really necessary for the number of implants we need. We also need END 8 for Implant GRX.
Charisma – 1
It goes without saying this is a dump stat. Hopefully you won’t be using companions that much as they would get in the way more than anything.
Intelligence – 9
Implant +1
End Game – 10
Intelligence is always super important. We need to get as many skill points as possible. We will max out every important stat with a comfortable margin by level 50 anyway but this is still important early.
Agility – 6
Implant +1
Small Frame +1
Walker’s Instinct +1
Completing Lonesome Road +1
End Game – 9 (Effectively 10)
Agility is another important one. We need it to be 8 later for Tunnel Runner but we can get the implant for 7 and we will take Small Frame for 8. The only thing this inherently effects is reload speed, which we will do a lot of when we use Pew Pew, so we can put the free SPECIAL point for beating Lonesome Road into AGI as it is the most useful there. Walker’s Instinct will also give us a point whilst outside, which gets us to 10.
Luck – 7
Implant +1
Intensive Training +1
Lucky Shades +1
End Game – 10
Luck is the most important SPECIAL of all as Crits are what this character is all about. We can get this to 10 very easily to maximise this chance. We can get the implant, take Intensive Training early to get an extra SPECIAL point and later on we will get the Lucky Shades to get our max crit chance.
Traits
Small Frame
Small Frame is a bonus point of Agility. It’s drawback is negligible as we shouldn’t be in a fight long enough to get a crippled limb and even if we were then we could just use a Stimpak to fix it. If you are playing this in Hardcore it still shouldn’t be a problem; Doctor’s Bags are plentiful and so are Hydra.
Built to Destroy
Built to Destroy is a bonus 3% Crit Chance, which is very important for maximising our crits but the trade-off is that weapons will lose condition faster. This can be countered by making Weapon Repair Kits, getting Jury Rigging later or just having the money to use a vendor’s repair.
Levelling Perks
Leveling Perks
2 – Black Widow/Confirmed Bachelor
Black Widow is probably the most powerful level 2 perk of all. It gives some bonus damage against male enemies, which is most of the human enemies. I usually play female characters and I would say the male version of this perk is not quite as useful as there will be more dialogue options for Black Widow.
4 – Educated
Always take Educated at level 4 if you care at all about skill points, which we do.
6 – Intensive Training: Luck
None of the perks available to us yet are ones we are interested in, so this is the time to take Intensive Training and put your point into Luck.
8 – Strong Back
The carry weight of our equipment late game will not really push the limits of what we can carry unless you aren’t storing items somewhere. This perk is mainly so we can carry more loot to sell, which will help us make money faster.
10 – Finesse
The first of our crit-improving perks. This one gives a flat +5%, which is very useful especially when applied to a weapon with a high crit multiplier.
12 – Silent Running (Requires Sneak 50)
This is a very useful perk that allows us to move quickly when sneaking. As you can guess, it’s essential for any sneak character.
14 – The Professional (Requires Sneak 70)
This perk will be more useful later but it’s 20% extra crit damage with pistols. A bug in the game means it applies to all pistol and SMG crits not just sneak attacks like the perk description says.
16 – Better Criticals (Requires PER 6)
This is another major one that gives +50% crit damage. Essential for crit builds. Remember all these perks apply to sniper damage and to our energy weapons later.
18 – Weapons Handling
This perk lowers all weapon strength requirements by 2. By this point, you should be ready to use the strongest sniper rifles in the game.
20 – Them’s Good Eatin’ (Requires Survival 55)
By this point, you should have all the Star Bottle Caps you will need and can now get rid of all of your Sarsaparilla and replace them with Blood Sausages and Thin Red Paste as they are lighter, more powerful and more plentiful. You will rely on these more than Stimpaks and the effect of both at the same time stacks so you can regenerate very quickly. They drop from enemies as well meaning the more you kill, the more you can heal. You will probably have so much of these that you will be selling them and they are very valuable. This perk is very overpowered.
22 – Light Touch (Requires Repair 45)
This perk is the start of us spec-ing in light armour. This perk gives +5% crit chance while wearing light armour. If you weren’t already, from this point on only wear light armour. You can see which armours you should be wearing in the “Apparel” section.
24 – Chemist (Requires Medicine 60)
This is setup for Implant GRX as it makes all aid items last twice as long, including GRX and Stimpaks in hardcore.
26 – Tunnel Runner (Requires AGI 8)
This is an exceptionally powerful perk that greatly increases sneak speed. +25% when wearing light armour. This will basically be irreplaceable for the rest of the game.
28 – Travel Light
A simple perk. +10% movement speed in light armour. We want to stack movement speed perks which will make sneaking much easier.
30 – Implant GRX (Requires END 8)
Another OP perk. If you don’t know this is 5 free daily Turbos.With Chemist and Day Tripper with rank 2 of this, it will last 8 seconds each.
32 – Impant GRX (Rank 2)
Increase the number of implants we get from 5 to 10. Now it’s even more OP.
34 – Laser Commander (Requires Energy Weapons 90)
Now we start our pivot into energy weapons. At this point, energy weapons will become more powerful than our Anti-Material Rifle. Pew Pew will be our best weapon and it gets the benefit of The Professional and this so it will become very powerful very quickly.
36 – Meltdown
Basically turn every YCS or Pew Pew shot into an explosive round. The splash damage on this match the Anti-Material Rifle’s explosive rounds ability to take out a small crowd.
38 – Jury Rigging (Requires Repair 90)
A very powerful perk to completely offset Built to Destroy. We can repair our Anti-Material Rifle with pretty much any two-handed rifle and the YCS with Plasma Rifles. We could already repair Pew Pew with Laser Pistols but now we can also use any one-handed energy weapon.
40 – Pack Rat (Requires Barter 70)
This perk will be very useful as it basically allows us to carry double the Weapon Repair Kits, healing items, Stealth Boys and ammo in Hardcore mode. Though it doesn’t seem immediately useful, you will notice you encumbrance go down by a lot when you take this. An excellent perk for hoarding things.
42 – Hand Loader
This is a questionable perk. It basically allows us to make Match Hand-Load ammo for the AMR, which will do 15% extra damage but even with this it will still not be more powerful than the YCS with Max Charge ammo. This perk is still the most useful but you could swap this perk with another one below in the “Honourable Mention Perks” section if you want.
44 – Living Anatomy (Requires Medicine 70)
This is another convenience perk. You can use it to see health and DT of targets, which can help you choose which ammo type to use on the AMR. Other than that, it gives a minor damage boost and is just generally good to have.
46 – Walker’s Instinct
This perk gives +1 AGI and PER when outside, which is useful to squeeze out the last little bit of bonus from our SPECIAL. Compass range is somewhat important as we will need to see things before we can sneak up on them.
48 – Alertness
This perk gives us +2 PER when crouched and standing still. This lets us max out our PER and can be very useful for our character.
50 – Just Lucky I’m Alive (Requires Neutral Karma)
Lastly, we want this perk of all the level 50 perks as this one gives +50% crit damage. Combined with Better Criticals we can +125% overall crit damage for rifles and The Professional increases that to +170% for Pew Pew. This will greatly increase our single shot damage and DPS.
Other Perks
Implants
Overall, we will have taken 6 SPECIAL improving implants of our 7 END and that means we can get either the DT implant or the Regen implant. I recommend the DT implant as we will have no need of extra regen. However, the big implants come to us in the form of Implant M-5 from OWB. This increases our sneak speed by another 20% which, combined with Tunnel Runner and Travel Light, allows us to sneak almost as fast as we can run. Needless to say, this will make us very powerful.
To keep in mind, here are the implants from the Medical Clinic we will need:
Intelligence – Top priority so get this as soon as possible.
Luck – Very important to get before gambling. Pick this one up early so it can get you the money for more.
Strength – Get this one early is important as you need it to use the AMR.
Perception – Get this one before level 16. We need it for Better Criticals.
Agility – Get it before level 26. We need this one for Tunnel Runner.
Endurance – Get this before level 30. This one is for Implant GRX.
The rest is up to you.
Companions
I would say don’t use companions if you don’t have to with this character but if you do then you will find useful perks all around. ED-E is basically some free PER but this exists mostly for Boone who lets us see targets from very far away. Raul helps us offset Built to Destroy and Lily gives us longer Stealth Boys and 10% extra crit damage.
Day Tripper
Day Tripper is necessary for increasing the length of Implant GRX (+33%). It can be easily obtained by taking 25 of anything that can give addiction, including alcohol. All you need to do is chug 25 alcoholic items in Goodsprings and go to Doc Mitchell to heal any addictions for basically nothing.
Fast Times
Fast times increase the length of Turbo, but not Implant GRX. Just going to mention this as you may think it useful, but it’s not.
Set Lasers for Fun
This is a very useful perk for us. Rank 1 requires us to do 16,000 damage overall with energy pistols (Pew Pew) and rank 2 requires us to do 25,000 damage with energy rifles (YCS/186). Once we do this, we can get an extra 4% crit chance with energy weapons.
Lonesome Road
If you want, this perk is here. If you do not rescue ED-E in Lonesome Road before confronting Ulysses you get an extra 10% damage when you have no companion as well as some extra VATS hit chance.
Honourable Mention Perks
These Perks are perks we can consider taking if you don’t like some of the levelling perks we took. Nothing else is going to be useful for you.
Rapid Reload – Can be useful since its effect multiplies with AGI meaning Pew Pew can become even more viable in straight combat. The most useful perk here.
Bloody Mess – Some extra damage, I suppose.
Light Step – Useful perk, but I personally like manually disarming traps, more in the spirit of the playstyle. Also it will probably be a bit late by the time you can take this.
Literally any VATS perk – Perks like Gunslinger and Sniper can be useful but I think if you are sniping with VATS, you’re doing it wrong.
Toughness – You’ll be a glass cannon in your light armour so extra DT is nice but then you will always be that way, even with this perk and it won’t matter that much anyway.
Vigilant Recycler – Sorry, but no. Optimised ammo is not as good as Max Charge ammo. They are better than overcharged ammo though and cost the same. You could use this to save on ammo and condition of your energy weapons but you should have enough for both.
Long Haul – Useful for getting those Gold Bars out of Dead Money. Not really like you need the money though.
Adamantium Skeleton – Offsets Small Frame. Not really that useful overall though.
Voracious Reader – Pick up literally every damaged book in the game and use them to craft True Police Stories as it gives +5% crit chance. Combine with Comprehension and Retention for +10% crit chance for 180 seconds. But here’s the thing: You’ll need 3 perks to do this and what benefit will you get from it? You should be getting crits with basically every shot anyway so this won’t actually help much. Even if you use this for other skill magazines I can’t imagine this would be at all worthwhile for you.
Eye for Eye – Top tier memes. Useful with Small Frame for up to 60% extra damage. But y’know, you’re limbs will be crippled. RIP speed and accuracy. Also RIP this perk after OWB.
Skills
Tag Skills
A classic Guns/Lockpick/Speech will be good here. Your Speech will be very low so you will need to boost it. Guns needs to go up to increase our damage and Lockpick is just a skill that is always useful. You can replace this with Sneak if you want since we will need that a lot early on.
Levelling Guide
This is a brief outline for skills to focus on throughout the game.
Level 1-14 – Guns, Speech, Lockpick etc. goes up as with any normal playthrough but you will need to get Sneak to 70 by level 14. For reasons I will explain later, we also want to get Barter to 15 and you may also want to think about getting Repair to 50
Level 14-24 – Survival needs to be 55 by level 20 and if you didn’t get Repair to 50 before, make sure it is now. After, get Medicine to 60.
Level 24-34 – Around this time you will need to start putting points in Energy Weapons. Hopefully, you can get it to 100 before level 34 at the latest.
Level 34-40 – You will need to get Repair to 90 by level 38 and Barter to 70.
Level 40-44 – Max out any core stats like Repair and get Medicine to 70.
Level 44-50 – You should easily max out every relevant skill. By the end of the game you will only have Melee Weapons and Unarmed left to put points into thanks to our INT 10 and Educated perk.
Apparel
For most of the game we want to exclusively use light armour. So here are the important light armours.
Leather Armour, Reinforced
This is the basic armour you can wear for most of the base game. Not really thrilling. 10 DT, pretty easy to find.
Chinese Stealth Armour
If you can get to Hoover Dam early, you can pick this up for 2 more DT and the bonus of +5 Sneak.
Vault 34 Security Armour
This is the highest DT light armour in the base game at 16. Since no other light armours have bonuses we are interested in, this will probably be the armour you will use the most until the DLCs. Of course, you can get this in Vault 34, the radiation vault.
Sierra Madre Armour, Reinforced
Starting now with the DLCs, this armour found in Dead Money has the highest DT of any light armour altogether at 18. This will be the tankiest armour you can wear and still get the benefits of our perks. Assuming you are doing the DLCs in the correct order, you will be using this armour in Honest Hearts. You can get it from inside the Sierra Madre Casino but you can get the standard version (16 DT) as early as the Police Station.
Joshua Graham’s Armour
After completing Honest Hearts, we get access to this. Although it has slightly less DT at 15 but we won’t care since crits are more important than DT, it gives +3% crit chance, which is very valuable and worth using instead of the SMA. We will be using this armour during OWB and Lonesome Road.
Ulysses’ Duster
This is the best armour we will get in the game. Although it’s another downgrade in DT to 13, it upgrades our 3% crit chance to 5% which is important for our minmaxing. You get this armour after completing Lonesome Road.
1st Recon Beret
Our most longstanding piece of equipment as we can get it from doing “One for my Baby” the first time we go to Novac and we will basically never take it off. It gives +5% crit chance and is unmatched in that regard by any other hat or helmet.
Lucky Shades
We will want these as they give +1 LCK. I’ll be brief here but explain later how to get these but we need to have access to The Fort and be Liked by the Legion.
Honourable Mention Apparel
Stealth Suit Mk II – A good idea on paper but some idiot decided to make it medium armour, rendering it therefore, useless. It has less DT and even with the upgrades, still makes you move much slower.
Salt-Upon-Wounds’ Helmet – An argument can be made, since this gives +2% crit chance, for getting a little extra DT instead of even more crit chance, but I would say just stick with maxing out your crits and ignore DT.
Weapons
I will now list all the weapons that could be useful to us. I’ll put them in order of most important weapons first.
—————— Endgame Weapons ——————
Anti-Material Rifle
This will be our main sniper rifle for most of the game. It’s the most powerful rifle in the game, has access to the special ammo types Armour Piercing, Incendiary and Explosive and powerful mods. We will buy it and all its mods from Vendortron once we reach level 16 and have enough money. We can also keep coming back to buy ammo until we can find a better solution. I will cover how to get lots of ammo for all our guns later so just understand for now that ammo is very easy to get.
YCS/186
At endgame, this weapon will outpower the AMR by quite a lot. Although this is basically an energy weapon equivalent, we can use max charge ammo to greatly increase the damage output. This guns runs on microfusion cells and although it eats them quickly, nothing else we have will use them. We can get this very easily as it is on an enemy at an unmarked location on the north edge of the map.
Pew Pew
This will be our best dps weapon and even match the single shot power of the YCS. This is largely thanks to Pew Pew’s 2.5X crit chance multiplier, a huge amount. If you don’t know, this means our exisiting crit chance is multiplied by 2.5 meaning by endgame, we will have way over 100% crit chance in addition to our crit damage modifier perks massively increasing the power of this weapon. We can easily do over 1,000 damage a shot with all of our perks so you can see how even the strongest enemies in the game can be one-shot with this. We can use max charge energy cells to get this weapon to it’s full potential. The only drawback is that since it shoots 5 rounds at a time, you only get 2 shots per clip but even with this, most enemies will die in the first shot and even if they survive the first shot, they won’t survive the second. To get this, we need to do “Legend of the Star” so you will need to collect 50 star bottle caps but the reward will be well worth it.
A Light Shining in Darkness
After completing Honest Hearts we get Joshua Graham’s gun. This will be ideal for a light dps weapon when we don’t want to waste Pew Pew shots. The only pistol that has more dps is Li’l Devil, which you can buy from Mick and Ralph’s but it’s honestly not worth the money. Bonus points for this gun though is that you can make Hand Loader ammo for it.
——————————————————————-
Ratslayer
This will be the best sniper we will have before the AMR and can be obtained with only a slight detour on the way to Novac. It’s found in the Broc Flower Cave where there are some high level rats to take down but your reward is the best early sniper in the game. One key feature of the Ratslayer is that it has a massive 5X crit chance multiplier so that even early on, we will easily get this to 100% crit chance. This weapon’s effectiveness will start to drop off at the point we can switch over to the AMR anyway so we will want to make this a key part of the early game.
Ranger Sequoia
This is the highest single shot damage pistol in the game so we can use it quite well. The only issue is that it’s not great for dps, which is what we will want of this gun late game since Pew Pew will completely outmatch it for damage. This is still a useful weapon though and gets special ammo so it’s worth using if you can get it. The easiest way to get one is if Chief Hanlon kills himself in “Return to Sender” but there are other ways.
Elijah’s advanced LAER
Now these weapons won’t be overly useful but I’ll talk about them anyway. This is a very good dps laser rifle but it eats through he same ammo as Pew Pew and it degrades very very quickly. With this build, I’m not a huge fan of it. You can find one at either the Signal Hills Transmitter or Little Yangtze in OWB.
AER14 prototype
This is an ideal midgame dps weapon. As a unique laser rifle, we are perked to use it and it does good damage so it’s worth picking up and using. You can find this somewhat hidden in Vault 22, the spore carrier vault.
Laser RCW
I consider this an honourable mention as, aside from normal laser pistols, this is the only other weapon to benefit from both The Professional and Laser Commander. This could tear through lightly-armoured enemies but the only problem is that this weapon has one of the lowest crit multiplier of any weapon, making it’s potential neutered.
About Christine’s CoS Silencer Rifle and the Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle…
You always hear about these sniper weapons being good but frankly neither of them can hope to match even the AMR for damage and neither fills a niche that’s useful to us. We can just go straight from Ratslayer to the AMR to the YCS and have no issues at all so I would honestly just skip using these.
There are many good weapons in this game we can see good use off. Hunting Revolver, Maria, That Gun, Lucky, Paciencia, This Machine. You can still find them yourself but these are the main ones we want.
Routing
As mentioned before, you can get Ratslayer easily by diverting off the road to Novac to the Broc Flower Cave. That bit is simple. I also find it unnecessary to use the shortcut to Vegas to get the implants at level 1 because you will have more than enough skill points and you will miss out on the loot needed to pay for them.
Getting Pew Pew
After picking up your first star bottle cap, Malcolm Holmes will appear and tell you about the Legend of the Star, obviously, we want to kill him for his caps and for another reason I will explain in a second. We get 6 from him, up to 9 from Tomas and Jacklyn outside Nipton and you can find plenty around. There are 100 fixed location star bottle caps to find. We will be chugging Sarsaparilla after getting Them’s Good Eatin’ and even before that there are so many to find, we would do this just to save weight. Of course, after that we can go to the Sunset Sarsaparilla Headquarters to start the quest and get into the back room, where Pew Pew is.
Getting the Lucky Shades
The Lucky Shades are in the Legion Safehouse. To get it, you need the Legion Safehouse key and you can only get that if you are Liked by the Legion. I’ll remind you that any quest you do to annoy the Legion should be done before dealing with Benny and getting the reputation reset. When you are doing NCR quests early game, make sure to pickpocket NCR soldiers for their dog tags.
After doing that, go to The Fort and complete Render Unto Caesar to the point of either destroying the bunker under the Fort or activating the Securitrons (You get positive reputation with the Legion regardless of which one you do). This should get you up to Accepted. After that, go back to Cottonwood Cove and speak to Aurelius of Phoenix. He will tell you that you can turn in dog tags for Legion fame. You will then need to pass a Barter 35 check in order to get supplies as well as fame. I told you earlier to have Barter at 15. To pass the check all we have to do is wear a Roving Trader Outfit and Hat. Fortunately, we have that, Malcolm Holmes is wearing both of those. When we kill him for his caps, also take his clothes as each piece gives +5 Barter taking our total to 25. Now all we need to do is read a Salesman Weekly to get 35. Now we go to Decanus Severus and, thanks to what I assume is a bug, we want to specifically turn in dog tags 5 at a time in exchange for food as this gives the most amount of fame per dog tag. You should only need about 15 or 20 dog tags before we get to Liked. Remember to keep exiting the dialogue as the fame isn’t applied until after you are done talking. Once we get to Liked, go back to The Fort and talk to Lucius, he should now give you the Safehouse key.
How to be OP
Getting Weapon Repair Kits
Weapon Repair Kits are something we will want a lot of to offset Built to Destroy but to craft them we need Repair 50. You will want to keep an eye out while exploring for crafting materials for when you get to this point. One kit takes 2 scrap metal, 1 scrap electronics, 1 duct tape, 1 wonderglue and a wrench. When you start looking for these things you will find them everywhere but limiting factors will be scrap electronics and duct tape.
Getting Lots of Ammo
Outside of just looting, you might find ammo like .50MG and max charge ammo rare but fret not! Ammo is easy to get if you know where to look. The first place to get AMR ammo is from the Gun Runners, the inventory regenerates every 3 days and they have every type of special ammo. You should be able to make a small stockpile if we keep coming back here.
That will do for the early game but we want lots more ammo for all our late game guns so allow me to introduce you to two special NPCs: Quartermaster Bardon and the Great Khan Armourer. The Great Khan Armourer is in a somewhat hidden bunker underneath a burnt out house at the entrance to Red Rock Canyon and to trade with her, you need to be at least Accepted with the Khans. She will have hundred, maybe even thousands of energy weapon ammo as well as hundreds of AMR ammo. But even with this, she’s still not the best merchant in the game.
Quartermaster Bardon is at Hoover Dam and you need to be at least Accepted with the NCR and pass a Speech 50 check to trade with him. He has even more ammo than the Khans and both these merchants regenerate their inventory the same as Vendortron meaning you can get lots of ammo very very quickly and you will need that much ammo as we will be eating through a lot of it.
We will want to make all our energy weapon ammo into max charge for a sweet 50% damage increase. We need to have Science 70 to make the Energy Cell Max Charge and 75 to make the Microfusion Cell Max Charge. 5 of either convert to 2 max charge ammo so buying 1,000 SEC with result in 400 max charges. Also consider Pew Pew shoots 5 rounds at a time and the YCS shoots 4 meaning those 1,000 SEC become only 80 shots with Pew Pew so you will want to make sure you have a huge supply of ammo. If you need help and are not using any Electron Charge Packs, make sure to buy those as well and convert them to SEC as they will be the ones you need most. This is secondary however as 2 ECP becomes 1 SEC meaning 1,000 extra ECP rounds become 40 more shots for Pew Pew.
For the Match Hand Load .50MG ammo, you will need to break down all of your normal .50MG. Crafting the ammo itself needs Repair 100 and doing this only gives us the enough materials to make about two thirds the amount. You will probably not need to worry as you will still have plenty but if you do want more, the major shortage will be in rifle powder so break down ammo you’re not using that gives you that such as 5mm, 5.56mm or if you’re keen, .308 or .45-70 Gov’t.
Getting Lots of Money – Weapons Dealing Edition
Early game, you will make your money from weapons. Pick up weapons from enemies based on value to weight. You will notice a lot of weapons have quite a high value. Even a 10mm pistol has a value of 750 when at full condition. Even with your low Barter only giving you half that with merchants, you will make over 300 caps for a 3 weight item. Lots of guns are like this and you will have lots on inventory space early on to carry them. You should be able to clean out Vendortron despite your Barter, you can make a lot of ammo to start off with. This early money should go into implants at the New Vegas Medical Clinic as you will need most of them and they cost 4000 each, which is still a lot and moving into the mid-game, you will find that you won’t be earning money that fast. (You should still collect guns for most of the game though as they will be a major income generator pretty much forever)
Getting Lots of Money – Casino Abuse Edition
Hopefully at this point, you will have the Luck implant. If you don’t have the Lucky Shades yet, you can buy Naughty Nightwear from Mick and Ralph’s for the +1 LCK. This will get us to 10 LCK which is very important as gambling is affected by our Luck. Go into each of the 4 casinos in Vegas and play Blackjack. It should be very easy to win as easy hands will keep falling into your hands and continue until you get banned from playing. The Tops has 10,000 caps to earn, Gomorrah has 9,000, The Ultra Luxe has 15,000 and the Atomic Wrangler has 5,000 for a total of about 40,000 caps. This will be more than enough money for the AMR, all its mods, a ton of ammo and all the remaining implants you will need. Don’t bother with the Vikki and Vance Casion in Primm, they have only 2,500 caps total, barely worth it.
Getting Lots of Money – Dead Money Edition
I’m sure many of you know it’s possible to get the 37 gold bars out of Dead Money. It’s actually pretty easy, if you just hide behind the generator to the right of the vault door and sneak around it as Elijah walks past. When we starts interacting with the terminal at the door, you can just get up and walk through the door he came through. No need for Implant GRX or abusing any glitch, it can be done simply. Now those gold bars are worth around 390,000 caps in total. The major problem is that they weigh a lot and it will be hard to find a vendor with enough money to sell them. My solution is The Sink in OWB. It spawns with at least 14,000 caps, easily enough to sell your gold bars one at a time. The drawback is you have to wait 3 days for the inventory to regenerate and those 3 days have to be spent in the Big MT. You can do this if you want but it’s annoying to deal with and not really necessary.
The best way to get money with the gold bars is in the casino itself. After restoring power to the Sierra Madre Casino, you can play more Blackjack. This casino is different however, as the payout is in Pre-War Money instead of caps. Pre-War Money has a value of 10 caps and you can win 10,000 Pre-War Money before being banned. You can sell this later on for a total value of 100,000 caps. The best place to get rid of this all at once would be the Commissary Terminals in Lonesome Road. It spawns with 6,000 caps and it instantly regenerates when it goes below 200 caps, meaning you can sell constantly to it. It would probably be easier for you though to use Pre-War Money in place of caps from now on. You should be making a habit of clearing out merchants of all their caps every single time you use one even from the start of the game as this is the best way to get lots of money. Remember to keep an eye out for if the merchant offers you the full 10 caps or only 9.
Free Stuff!
As I mentioned, you should be able to keep clearing out every merchant you come across by selling weapons or armour you collect but later in the game, money will matter less and so you will not want to do this as much. That being said, there is a way to get free income in a nice convenient bundle. The Gun Runner guards.
On the same cycle as Vendortron, 2 guards spawn with Combat Armour and Helmet and a Hunting Rifle with some .308 ammo. They won’t be hostile to you until you enter the complex so you can easily kill them for their stuff. One will probably be facing you but is pretty unperceptive and you can snipe them right in front of them. The other one will be on a barricade to the right and is probably facing the wrong way. Once you’ve killed them, take their armour and weapons. Even if you are overencumbered, you are right next to one of the major shops in the game. When you sell all their stuff, you should make about 4-5,000 caps every time, which helps in clearing out Vendortrons 8,000 cap inventory.
Conclusion
Remember to Thoroughly Explore
There is so much loot to gain if you explore everything as much as possible so you should never want for items. Stimpaks, drugs, Doctor’s Bags, Sarsaparilla, Stealth Boys, etc. You will probably have so much you will be keeping them in whatever safehouse you choose. With this guide, I hope you have learned that Josh Sawyer was totally right to try to nerf some of this stuff and I also hope that you will have a lot of fun one shotting everything with this build. It may not be for everyone, but those that enjoy a slow-burning power-creeping experience will hopefully enjoy this as much as I do.
Thank you for reading this super-long guide and if you have anything to add, feel free to comment and I may update this.
Happy Sniping!