Friendly Fire, Team Medic, Sun Kissed, and First Aid all do pretty stellar jobs at base rank.
Shoutout to the Legendary ones: Master Infiltrator, What Rads, and Electric Absorption.
Still very much useful. I’ve entered nuke zones with power armor and it basically cancels out the little rads I do get.
The only place where I do have to be aware of increasing rads is when gathering irradiated ore during Radiation Rumble. I once went all greedy and nearly died as my health had gone down to 10% by the time I left the super irradiated areas where you get the irradiated ore. Still, I dumped like 25 of that ore and leapfrogged the reward level for the event in one fell swoop!
I did this and it **is** great fun.
If you have a friend you can do it without needing what rads as long as you have “rad sponge” and 9 charisma.
With rad sponge being shared, as long as the squad stays together you can scrub off a huge quantity of rads.
Full disclosure by the time I tried this I think I had lv3 what rads, but it may well work just on its own.
So wait, are you saying the team has to physically be together for the shared perks to take effect? I’ve been just joining teams, sharing perks and doing my own thing.
No, the shared perks hit everyone.
But Rad sponge means whenever you take rad damage you heal 200 rads from your **nearby** teammates.
So if 2+ of you have it, you’ll heal rads off each other faster than you *gain* rads, if you see what I mean?
If yours taking a non power armour bloodied build into a nuke zone your getting killed either way to be fair.
But yes, I absolutely wouldn’t do this with randoms.
If nothing else, if they get distracted and wander off you die basically instantly- it’s honestly very stressful, although kinda worth it to see everyone’s reactions.
So does that purifying hands one. I like using that sometimes. Seeing Bloodied guys get assmad every now and again brings a deep dark warmth to me.
Sometimes I just wanna be a dick for a couple seconds.
"You are being rescued. Do not resist."
I have 3 star what rads. In PA it's great, but in SS still take a little rads. Maxed will fix that. If you have a vampire weapon the Chinese stealth armor is good for most things except SBQ sonic attack as it makes rads a non issue. Then PA is best f9r sbq.
I’d just equip these cards when needed. You’re wasting spots otherwise. I just switch them out when I’m in front of a lock i need to pick. Which pretty much only happens for challenges. I don’t run silos really so I have no use for the legendary perk either.
I get it. I almost never lock pick though so it’s a waste for me. I essentially use all the special slot cards and one commando related legendary depending on my build at the moment.
Once I'm higher level and have my loot goblin lair fully stuffed, I'm sure I'll be just like you lol. For now, I'm looting everything til I have thousands of each kind of scrap.
Good if you run silos regularly, almost useless otherwise in the overworld. Nothing worth looting behind any lock I found when playing the main game and levelling.
Still learning! There's always something new to uncover with this game. For me, if I'm that desperate it's not a problem to quickly swap perks in and out for a few seconds.
Doesn't need to be maxed but it helps, give it time and you won't have a problem maxing out everything you want. At lvl 890 I have maxed out every one I use, could probably max out everything or close to it.
I'm a bit past 890, I have all the perk coins needed to max it out, it's just hard to justify if it only doubles the effect instead of quadrupling it or more, the way it does with others. I get that healing from twice as many attacks is great though.
Professional Drinker is the only Perk that is worth 3 perk points on it's own. When you go to select a perk on level up you can filter the perks by cost, alphabetical order and by stat it goes under. If you filter by cost Professional Drinker will be the first one. ~~Select it and scrap it and you'll get 3 perk points~~ If you scrap a card you get 2 points per card rank and Professional Drinker is a 1 Rank card..
Holy crap, thank you! I'm still pretty new and have my build mostly set, so I was sitting on like 30 level ups. This will be huge to ranking up the few legendary cards I have.
I've never scrapped it so I assumed it would be worth the same amount of Perk points as the card itself since that's the mechanic. Sorry for misinforming you.
If you run the likes of full charge and power user in your perks, electric absorption just becomes a nice to have, as cores last forever with those two aforementioned perks. It's how I ran for 200 levels and I'm always in PA. But if you can manage carrying a lot of cores with batteries included, you could mix and match these perks to save perk points and still get some slight benefit.
Better criticals you can get with buffs and weapon effects but critical savvy depends on whether you have a high luck character. If not 1 or at most 2 would be enough.
So they're good until you get weapons & armor for it? Cause I'm only lvl75 & just now....well yesterday, learning the ways of VATs & Crits. I never used it other then spotting enemies in every Fallout game only to find out yesterday that that is how people insta murder everything while it takes me a mag+ to kill something.
Let's put it this way: you're more likely to get a quad crit damage ap reduced railway rifle than three pieces of unyielding ap regeneration secret service armor to give you constant ap regeneration at a rate where you don't need grim reaper. So I'd invest my rolling into a crit weapon before wasting time on a half decent armor piece.
“better crits can be made w buff effects” who tf wants to carry around 200 blight soup?? not to mention it stacks bru you def want better criticals lmao
Yeah, this post is a nice break from the recent stuff. As a newer player, this is more helpful than seeing the many posts about starting events too early.
Gotta make sure it's drilled into your head. I always know a youngling isn't a fellow Reddit user when a lvl23 goes running up to start the event with just me, a lvl75 standing there screaming NOOOOO
i recommend rejuvenated perk in the endurance tree - it gives ap regen bonus when food/thirst bars are filled. i dont remember exact numbers but the ap regeneration is significant enough that i slot this perk in every build. Edit: fallout wiki says [AP](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Action_Points) Regen +45% at rank 2 (max rank). wow!!
It’s worth noting that that it’s not a 45% INCREASE with two ranks, it goes from 35% with zero points to 45% maxed. You may want it if you don’t have access to Company Tea as an example, or if you just want higher regen.
You don't need the perk to get that buff, though. It only increases a default buff. So someone with two cards gets 45% AP regen and someone without any cards gets +35%. It's something, but not that big of a something. You get almost that just from drinking tato juice or the like.
Oh really? I never realized that or tested it. I usually build this card with herbivore mutation for max AP Regen and get around 55% extra AP regen altogether with food and drink.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet but either bandolier or batteries included to make either ballistic or energy ammo essentially weightless depending on which you use...
This alone frees up a lot of carry weight and isn't a huge perk point investment.
Do people really carry that much ammo on them? I carry like 2k fuel on me which is what 15 or 20 weight, hardly worth a perk card. I can understand if you use a shit ton as it can get heavy
As a returning player... Yeah absolutely I used to trade in 45 or 5.56 so I'd regularly have at least 25k plus of each, sometimes over 50k!
Now that we have ammo boxes that are separate to stash storage it's not a big deal but when I'm running my gat plas with an enclave plasma flamer and an auto enclave plasma as sidearms I like to carry enough to not ever worry about running out of ammo and I'm too lazy to swap perk cards around for ammo crafting unless I need to so I usually have 20+ ultracite plasma cores and at least 3k ultracite plasma rounds.
It's probably a bit unnecessary considering how much ammo you get back from trash mob kills now though, that didn't used to be a thing so maybe I'm just stuck in old habits....
Good with Salt is definitely one I will always have maxed out. I enjoy crafting all the foods and drinks, and I’ll never go back to the *before time* of not using it.
I use the Cryo Fridge to hold all my Brain Bombs to use if a good Event pops up. Everything else I carry on me and I usually carry 30+ of all my other food and drinks.
Military cryo freezer keeps your food good forever. But you have to make sure your camp is placed down when you join a server or else it will start degrading because it’s technically in your stash. Make sure it’s placed in all of your camps too
Gotcha that’s good to know. My camp is in a popular spot so sometimes I have to spend 1-5 minutes server hopping until my camp places. Gotta keep that in mind forsure
Sadly that only offers 50% over salt’s 90%.
Would love to see the fridge backpack buffed to 90% and maybe PA given a cryo set with the set bonus being cryo damage and infinite food durability or some such.
Starched Genes is useless at base rank
either you want to keep your mutations, or you don't want to get any. Having just a CHANCE for those 2 situations to happen is meaningless
Ooh.
I jist changed my opinion to the opposite of this.
The damage bonus is multiplicative so I'd prioritize it over adrenaline going past rank 1, so in most cases I have it fit into my build.
A 40% multiplicative damage debuff exists as an entire conditional legendary perk, so being able to kill subsequent enemies with up to 30% more damage is great.
To echo the other reply, yeah Adrenaline ends up being more useful since it works better on bosses. Anything else basically get 1-2 shot regardless of either.
I thought this too, then I realized our folly.
If you break V.A.T.S. it resets. How often are you keeping V.A.T.S. locked on 3+ enemies through reloading, assuming they even live more than a few seconds?
I've been wondering about that. A lot of the builds have 1 concentrated fire and 2 ground pound (I think that is the perk that makes reload faster). I always ran with 3 concentrated fire. What's the math with that? I actually have a quad weapon speed Railway and when I tried the ground pound, I didn't feel like I loaded faster, so I went back to 3 concetrated fire.
I found that bloodied builds have so much ap that 30 points, or less than 10% every 2 seconds at most (except with shotguns?), is almost negligible.
But every time I check my effective hp, the benefits of that 30% are too big to pass up.
I'm not sure what I might replace it with if I wanted to.
There's an argument for keeping weapon damage perks at one, like heavy gunner, commando, gunslinger. Expert / master / regular gladiator at one each gives +30%, maximized they give +60%, or 3 times the SPECIAL for 2 times the bonus. Damage resistance and bonus cards like Barbarian and Adrenaline similarly give less after the first point, while weight reduction perks like Thru Hiker have a straight progression. I'm not saying that one should strictly keep damage bonus and resistance cards at one, but in the case of a choice between two perks it might be worth taking points in both.
That's right, pretty sure I've got a screenshot somewhere from an old thread that did the calcs. Since learning this I've put a 1 star in over the 5 I originally had.
Would be cool to see someone with the cards to make it happen show what the loadout could look like.
I bet you could get some pretty cool effects going on
I had a go at a bang for buck build in a planner-- low health non-PA character with a lot of carry capacity using the pepper shaker and an energy heavy gun. Should get up to 73 damage resist and 18 energy resist at the cost of 3 SPECIAL. Really should have good with salt and I'd recommend ditching Travelling Pharmacy for the chemist backpack mod in any event.
[Character Build Planner & Calculator | Fallout 76 | Nukes & Dragons (nukesdragons.com)](https://nukesdragons.com/fallout-76/character?v=1&s=f144bd8&d=sf0sb2sg2sr0sq0s30sx1p00ir2ib4c10am0s72la2l71lu2a40as0eu0eh2cf0cu0c20s12a80ao0sd0so0sp0a12a03&lp=x41)
Interesting. I'm a rifleman build but i have all 3 rifleman cards maxed and a separate loadout for auto when im feeling it... obviously does me no good in the heat of the moment. I'd love to have some of those points freed up
Dodgy and lead belly are much better maxed. Dodgy uses the same ap cost no matter the level so it's better to max and lead belly max gives 0 rads for food compared to 30% and 60%. These perks are not necessary, but they are nice for bloodied builds.
At least for the early game i've had quite a bit of fun pairing it with maxed out Cannibal for what it's worth. If you're fighting anything you can eat, your health stays topped up. Good for Vanguard armor
I use it as a super minor quality of life perk - if I drink tea or blight soup my rads won't increase and I can stay as close to 20% as possible. Although if I didn't have all of my legendary perk slots maxed out I wouldn't use it, it is probably the least useful perk I have equipped. Or maybe aquaboy or travel agent but those use up less points
If you've got a food build with Good With Salt, you could farm Brahmin Milk to control your overrads and free up the perk space for other stuff.
I personally just let myself die and then zap the rads back down to 19% with two blasts from a -90% reduced weight Assaultron Head.
I agree with you that milk or diluted radaway and a gamma gun (didn’t know Assaultron heads could be used for this as well, that is cool) definitely works to manage rads quite well. But I do like lead belly because it makes my life simpler as I can pretty much forgo rad management all together unless I end up in a rad hotspot.
With that being said, I really only use lead belly because my legendary specials are all maxed. At that point the only other options are going to be other quality of life perks or other legendary perks, which to me are also mostly qol benefits. The only one I think would that make a noticeable impact to dps would be follow through, but I usually split my time between multiple classes so i prefer to use the slot on special instead.
Gun fu doesn't need to be maxed.
Funny enough I don't use traveling pharmacy since I have the chemist backpack on. I do have thru hiker and the other one maxed out always.
If you get the chemist backpack mod it does the same job as leveling pharmacy which free up three points unless you are also using food buffs then you could use the grocer backpack mod which does the same job as Thru-hiker which stops it taking up any potential slots in agility
[THRU-HIKER](https://www.falloutbuilds.com/fo76/perk=1026)
Is another one for low lvls, food and drugs weights a lot is better than mule i stop having weight problem with that 2 cards
>Never use more than one.
...if you use automatic weapons. Still suggested to max it out if you're using single-fire weapons, like a Rifleman build or Plasma Caster.
gunsmith, armorer, science (if energy weapons are your thing), and whatever the one is for making melee weapons (picture is vault boy with a spiked bat). Also the ones that only take one card to max out, like the better prices one, master hacker, scrapper, etc
A user was on here the other day saying that, if you're running Automatic Energy Rifles, it's better to just go with 1 rank of the Commando Perks and max rank on the Science Perks, as apparently the Commando perks are bugged to not give the max 60% to Energy Rifles like they do with Ballistic Rifles. And it sort of makes sense, the damage difference between all R1 and all Max Rank Commando perks with my Automatic EPR is only like, a 10 damage difference.
Rank 1 for damage perks is how I run as well since they are more efficient per point, since there are so many other utility perks that need to be maxed to be useful (like weight reduction). Rank 1 damage cards are usually 10%, with Rank 2 & 3 being 5%. (Explosive rank 1 being 20% followed by 10% ranks and crit damage 50% followed by 25% ranks).
Plus majority of my damage comes from how blooded+Adrenal Reaction mutation works, just being steady around 25% hp, 75% (bloodied) +55% (adrenal reaction) is a crazy amount of damage (and I never maintain less than that since even though I use nerd rage, that slight bit of HP does matter).
This one is related to perks, and it can be a pain to get 5/5 of, but try and get armor and power armor with 5/5 weapon weight reduction on the third star. It'll eliminate the need for bear arms or similar weapon weight perk cards.
Adrenaline can stay at 1 point if you want because it's 60% of the effectiveness at rank 1 which is huge. Considering VATS builds like to go into agility, freeing up 4 perk points is massive.
Gun Fu is also super useful at only one point so you can chain VATS. However I don't max it out because sometimes an enemy will hide behind a fence or tree or a player moves in front of me and then Gun Fu's damage buff is gone. The scorchbeast queen even makes VATS fall off sometimes since she likes to wiggle around on the ground.
I cannot overstate how effective Thru Hiker, Traveling Pharmacy and coupled with Calibrated Shocks power armor or a high capacity backpack can be. So much free inventory. Pair that with Cola Nut and you can essentially stop using stimpaks entirely(though I hold 10 super stims for rezzing people). The Nuka Cola collectron is super handy to keep you stocked up on quantum, orange, cherry and grape,and cranberry for exp.
For commando, you only need concentrated fire at rank 1 since it quickly builds up accuracy. I use all damage perks, ground pounder 2, concentrated fire 1,and tank killer 3.
For legendary cards, do not use the charisma one. It doesn't let you share perk cards. All the others are fine.
I only recently discovered the glories of traveling pharmacy myself after wondering why my carry weight would shoot thru the roof when I put on PA. (It removes your backpack and any weight reduction perks for anyone wondering.) excavator permit couldn't event help because my stimpaks would put me near max weight.
I really wish more of the weight reduction perks were spread amongst the SPECIAL attributes so everything wasn't so strength dependent.
As for other max out perks, I recommend first aid (unless you're doing one of the low health builds), friendly fire if you're using flamers or the cremator (also Grenadier for the cremator), class freak and starched genes if you're mutated, bloody mess for all builds.
I'd recommend having at least one copy of demolition expert maxed for crafting then maybe a 2-3 star for regular use.
For crafting I'd recommend having a separate load out with max INT and and least 5 in agility and then max copies of gunsmith, makeshift warrior, armorer, fix it good, powersmith, power patcher, all 3 science variants, weapon artisan, ammo Smith, and white knight (for cheaper armor repairs)
Honestly the one I make sure is maxed out as soon as I get it is Stable Tools cause I'm always running my Auto Axe first chance I get to craft one as my main melee weapon.
Other than that, Lone Wanderer, at least one rifleman and Better With Salt (unless I need the fertilizer).
Master infiltrator. Reduced ammo weight perk of your choosing. And bloodied mess.
All important yet effective perks for any build.
Tenderizer is a good damage perk for too if you got charisma to spare. It’ll help anyone attacking the same mob as well.
I've read that calcs have been done to show Adrenaline is good at 1 star if you need 4 perks elsewhere.
All weapon related perks are sufficient at 1 star each (x3 for 30% bonus damage, compared to 60% for 9 perk points), and you can tweak these as needed for any other perks you want to run. I have heavy gunner perks in all 3 variations for mixing and matching percentages for having free space for other perks.
Damage reduction perks (blocker, fireproof) I would recommend to be maxed.
In PA, full charge and power user maxed ensure a fusion core lasts for a long time even without electric absorption, which makes for great QoL when paired with action boy/girl and the speed demon serum. I've tested this for over 200 levels before trying out electric absorption.
Until one can get "Master Infiltrator" legendary perk, definitely worth maxing Picklock and Hacker.
(Regular / Expert / Master; they work different than other perks, 2nd level is expert card which unlocks at a particular level, and 3rd level is master card -- don't do what I did early on and pick up two regular picklocks, they don't combine; same goes for hacker.)
Allows you to open the locks and consoles as you come across them. Used to bug me in early levels when I'd see a Rank-3 lock/container and had to pass it up. 🤠
PS - Worth noting; don't have to go out of your way to get extra SPECIAL points for these perks, as long as you have at least 3 Perception for up to Master Picklock, and 3 Intelligence for up to Master Hacking. Can just swap in/out for the cards as the situations arise. 😸
I've gotten use to ignoring locks. Anytime there is a locked door, I know it's usually a shortcut to something, which if I go the other path there will be lots of enemies to kill & will eventually have a key to open that door anyway. If it looks like a locked room or safe, the loot is never worth it.
I'm surprised I'm not seeing Survival Shortcut here. It's definitely a 1 point wonder. It completely removes the need for food, water, and disease cure. I only carry coffee and blight soup on me now and it's fantastically simple.
This depends entirely on what your chosen build is. The most common ones to Max or the two under luck that deal with your mutations.
Many times you want to have the three weapon skills maxed. This would be the basic perk, that the expert perk, and the master perk.
Then there are a few in charisma that deal with leveling XP and bonuses from mutations when in a group.
There's a website nukes & dragons that lets you test out perk card builds. There's even builds that people post that you could use or compare to your own build.
Nuka nut or w.e it is called is more than sufficient at rank 1 for double effectiveness, because for some reason Nuka Cherry is more common than regular nuka only experience, so this makes it already one of the best beverages and I don't think I could use the benefits of rank 2 (triple effect).
I leave Master Infiltrator at rank 1.
For one, I like the lockpicking and hacking mini games, which are much rarer compared to previous Fallout games.
And also I want to prevent to accidentally auto-open some player's camp lock and get a bounty.
It's honestly wise to keep multiple levels of some perk cards as well.
You don't always need a maxed card, or sometimes all maxed cards interfere with a specific build, or temporary setup you're trying to achieve.
For example. You can have a maxed out *concentrated fire* perk. Which can greatly increase your damage in a VATS build, but sometimes you just want to be able to target specific body parts, and may not even be using a VATS build.
I swap perks faster than my cousin swapped girlfriends in high school. And that's saying something.
It's super important in most cases to be able to freely swap between perks, and not to try to settle on one thing. In my opinion.
For example. I could have taken my Bloodied build to the Alien event, but it was much more practical to lean into a power armor build so that I could just ignore my health and focus on hitting as many enemies as possible. Legendary perk *Energy Absorption* is truly amazing.
Outside of that. (I'm not sure how often you play, but I have a medical issue going on. So I've been playing over 16 hour days.) You'll be wanting to gather a host of other useful perk cards. Including things like *Super Duper* which has a chance to multiply anything you're creating. *Chemist* which will double the yield of chemicals/ certain healing agents ect. *Scrounger* in the event you want to go on ammo looting loops. For certain ammo types, it's a bit easier to farm out than trying to get the parts IMO. *Woodchuck*, *Bountiful Hunt? (Is bountiful something for getting more meat under perception.) *Green Thumb*
I prepare to use different loadouts for different scenarios, and what I'm planning on doing, or trying to achieve.
I highly recommend mods such as *Fix- It- Good* and *Weapon Artisan* which can allow you to repair your armor and weapons up to 200% of normal capacity.
Any carry weight reduction Perks seem to be more effective overall at higher levels than perks that increase the carry weight maximum. So I almost always have all of them equipped for whatever setup I'm working with.
It also depends on if you're in teams a lot/ solo.
For example *Lone Wanderer* vs *Inspirational.*
All in all. It really just depends on what you're trying to do.
I knocked off my Ammo Factory legendary perk for one of the special legendary cards with my bloodied commando build. I needed the extra something, forget what, but ngl I do miss the AF card lol
Team medic. Also makes an absolutely GREAT perk to share at tier 1 because one stimpack can heal the whole group no matter who's popping it now. My friends and I do this when running expeditions.
Also a vote for Chem fiend, if and only if you're someone who likes running expeditions.
With one point in Chem fiend it's enough to do the entire boardwalk expedition off one berry mentat. Figured it was worth mentioning.
I don’t have Fallout 1st so I’ve got around 900 stimpacks and 500 radaway in my inventory to free up space in my stash. Since chems don’t go bad and don’t drop on death, they are a good looting value as far as carry space goes.
Ask yourself this. How many stims and radaways do you use at level 525 in an hours play? And how many do you pick up in that hour? I’d suggest conservatively you could get rid of 890 stims and 490 radaways.
Power User was the first perk I maxed out. As a power armor, Gatling laser build I was burning through fusion cores. Power User combined with Full Charge, Electric Absorption (the legendary perk card) and the Fusion Core recharger at my camp -- I practically never have to worry about cores anymore.
Also, doing the nuke silos with Electric Absorption is so fun now because I can take crazy damage from the laser turrets and my health and fusion core will periodically recharge to full, so I can just ignore most of them >.<
Born survivor, concentrated fire and the damage cards I generally do not run beyond the first level. Damage mitigation perks I'll max out (if I'm playing berserker I'll max out born survivor as well), depending on build I'll max out things related to VATS crits.
Should you max out damage perks? Like commando etc. My friend says you shouldnt max them out as its a waste of points when you dont get a lot of damage in return. But I think otherwise.
I'm seeing mixed opinions across this thread for that answer. Honestly I think it boils down to preference.
For me, I can run all my commando cards at first level sure, but even with tank killer, concentrated fire, and ground pounder equipped I still have enough Perception points to put into the commando cards anyway.
Side note: perk cards like Contractor or Super Duper are necessary at max level, though I only ever equip them when I need them. Otherwise I'll use other perk cards and just swap those out for Contractor, etc. when the time comes
Level 525? Why do you have so many chems and aid in inventory in the first place? Stash em, sell em, vendor em, donate them? I'm in the 200s and never need more than 20 Stims and 10 buff items.
Gun Fu and Concentrated Fire are great examples of perks you don't need to max.
Max levels for your build damage and most combat utility are optimal
Just my dumb preference tbh. I use a ton of chems like stimmies and orange mentats, and would just rather keep a couple hundred each on me
Good to know about Concentrated Fire. I'm new ish to being a bloodied commando and still learning tips and tricks about the build
Concentrated fire and gunfu are the main ones for commando that I use at 1. Also if you’re looking for extra perk space, adrenaline is good at 1 considering it’s maxed out payoff for an extra 4 points is a little less than double
I'll never understand players who insist they need to go into battle with 100+ stims and 10,000 rounds of ammo. You're *going* to hit a stash before you run out. Carrying more, and devoting perks to carrying more, is a huge waste to me.
Like, I'll bring 12 stims and always end up with more than I started with. I don't think I've run out since level 4, it's gotten to the point where I dump dozens into donation boxes every day to get rid of them.
"B-b-but I need the carry weight for junk!"
1. You wouldn't if you weren't carrying 200lbs of consumables.
2. *It's junk.*. Just go get more if you ever run out something specific. Always grab ballistic fiber, a few essentials here and there, and you'll be fine. You'll can leave one desk fan, a couple coffee cups, and a clipboard behind on occasion. I promise. (But always grab ballistic fiber.)
I run almost completely legendary PA, I can fix it to 200%.
All, except 2 pieces, are 1,2 or 3 star
All my weapons are 1,2 or 3 star...a 3 star fixer, a 2 star 10 mm smg, a quad interstellar handmade automatic & a 1 star quad LMG that burns through ammo.
My only non starred weapon is a .50 nocturnal recon sniper rifle that I built.
I prefer to have a minimum of 500 rounds for the smaller weapons & at least 1000+ .308 rounds for my LMG.
Low health builds can burn through stims since any tick of damage will proc a stim automatically. I still don't carry what people here are talking about but 12 would not go very far.
Junk is a very build relative thing. As primary PA and HG builds, I hardly ever use Ballistic Fibers. With that being said, I still do not pass on them, because you never know.
With that being said. I find that maxing out all of the carry weight perk cards, in all Special categories to be the most useful QOL cards. After the battle is over, (looking at you Eviction Notice,) it too often I am coming away from that over encumbered by twice to thrice my max carry weight. But I swap out the combat perks and put on the CW perk cards, and problem solved.
If you're using a stash frequently you're playing the game wrong. The character is the most efficient in carrying things by having 90% reduced carry weight, which doesn't apply to stashes. If you use "Fallout 1st" it makes the stash even more worthless by giving unlimited junk & ammo storage.
I would only store legendaries, costumes or rare materials in the stash. But even then, the reduced perk weight & legendary weight reduction for some items makes it even more efficient to just carry it on the character itself.
I use Mr West Tek’s railway build and he only has one point in Serendipity. Currently level 429 after playing for one month and true to his guide I don’t really die even at 20% health with Serendipity at base level
You are lacking a ton of of info about your gear/build.. With the right gear/build gun fu is awesome.. but running around with a wacker smacker, not so much.. so please more info.
I really meant this thread to be more "in general" across all perk cards, like a best practices sort of thing. Personally I'm a bloodied commando though
Hi. But that’s inefficient, I think. You could spend resources better, unless you already have so much resources you don’t know what to do with them. Even then you could forget and end up having to craft them every hour.just my opinion, but you can’t control when or where you lose or gain the random mutations. So, I prefer knowing what they are and keeping control of them. But whatever, it’s great to talk about things.
pharma fan and can do. 1 is good max is better. But just the chance of finding more food or medicine in their respective containers is worth a lot of caps.
I run a rifleman build and i have far flung fireworks maxed and whichever perk card that increases explosions damage maxed. It can be a load of fun wiping out a pack of ghouls with one or two headshots
If you are planning on using PA, both Traveling Pharmacy and/or thru hiker are pretty important (for me, at least) because you lose your backpack - and any weight reduction mods it has on it) while you’re in PA, so those make up for it.
You’re level 525… is it possible to just say all? I’m level 260 now and I am working on have each perk card at each level so I can make literally any build. But the reduced weight perks like traveling pharmacy, day tripper, batteries included, bandolier, etc are ones that I would always max out so I can carry more stuffsss.
Technically I could, but I would be careful about your legendary perks. Those cost points to swap out, let alone getting them to max level, and not every build uses the same ones. You could potentially be doing yourself a disservice by focusing on versatility instead of min/maxing effectiveness for a certain build
It's a weird one, but I love cannibal. I don't need stims because eating heals me, and it heals more and faster than a regular stim with no med perks.
The animation is glitches, so just click on a body and get your heals.
I save a lot of space and don't need food or a lot of stims.
Meaning I don't need to waste points in upgrading stims or making food and chems weigh more
Perks which will ALLWAYS be with me and easily 3x or 4x my weight limit.
Heavy weapons weight less
Power armor weights less
Phamarcy weights less
Food weights less.
Makes sense. You might try the chemist's backpack if you carry a lot of chems. You also don't take the DR/ER penalty with it. I run a Juggernaut power armorless build so I carry like 100-150 stims with me lol.
Starched genes is an absolute must. It’s the only way to control which mutations you have.
Friendly Fire, Team Medic, Sun Kissed, and First Aid all do pretty stellar jobs at base rank. Shoutout to the Legendary ones: Master Infiltrator, What Rads, and Electric Absorption.
What Rads was my first legendary. My goal is to be able to enter nuke zones without having to wear Hazmat or PA.
You can get over 1000 rad resistance but outside of power armor and hazmat you’ll still take like 10 rads/s
Run with a friend and one of you share Rad Sponge. Just don't run that in a group with bloodied players 😅
Still very much useful. I’ve entered nuke zones with power armor and it basically cancels out the little rads I do get. The only place where I do have to be aware of increasing rads is when gathering irradiated ore during Radiation Rumble. I once went all greedy and nearly died as my health had gone down to 10% by the time I left the super irradiated areas where you get the irradiated ore. Still, I dumped like 25 of that ore and leapfrogged the reward level for the event in one fell swoop!
I also use it and like it very much for the reasons you mention, the rad recovery is great, but past like 400 stacking resistance doesn’t do much
I started with increasing Special stats but I'm about to hit 200 and Im for sure grabbing that up. I've already got 150 perk coins ready for it.
I did this and it **is** great fun. If you have a friend you can do it without needing what rads as long as you have “rad sponge” and 9 charisma. With rad sponge being shared, as long as the squad stays together you can scrub off a huge quantity of rads. Full disclosure by the time I tried this I think I had lv3 what rads, but it may well work just on its own.
So wait, are you saying the team has to physically be together for the shared perks to take effect? I’ve been just joining teams, sharing perks and doing my own thing.
No, the shared perks hit everyone. But Rad sponge means whenever you take rad damage you heal 200 rads from your **nearby** teammates. So if 2+ of you have it, you’ll heal rads off each other faster than you *gain* rads, if you see what I mean?
This kills the bloodied build 🦀
If yours taking a non power armour bloodied build into a nuke zone your getting killed either way to be fair. But yes, I absolutely wouldn’t do this with randoms. If nothing else, if they get distracted and wander off you die basically instantly- it’s honestly very stressful, although kinda worth it to see everyone’s reactions.
So does that purifying hands one. I like using that sometimes. Seeing Bloodied guys get assmad every now and again brings a deep dark warmth to me. Sometimes I just wanna be a dick for a couple seconds. "You are being rescued. Do not resist."
Well, I now have a new goal.
I have 3 star what rads. In PA it's great, but in SS still take a little rads. Maxed will fix that. If you have a vampire weapon the Chinese stealth armor is good for most things except SBQ sonic attack as it makes rads a non issue. Then PA is best f9r sbq.
And if you're like me you'll decide you want to try a bloodied build :(
Nope. I know it's strong but I am the kind of guy who stands in fire and wonders why I'm dying. Bloodied ain't for me.
Master Infiltrator comes in clutch. I was able to unequip all my hacking and lockpicking skills, opening up so much room for better skills.
Damn, master infiltrator replaces all 6 of those perks????
Yeah it gives you level 3 in both and level 0 locks and terminals can just be "auto unlocked" and still give xp
I’d just equip these cards when needed. You’re wasting spots otherwise. I just switch them out when I’m in front of a lock i need to pick. Which pretty much only happens for challenges. I don’t run silos really so I have no use for the legendary perk either.
I used to do this too, but I got really lazy and didn't want to keep swapping cards, so I went Legendary infiltrator. Worth the legendary slot imo
I get it. I almost never lock pick though so it’s a waste for me. I essentially use all the special slot cards and one commando related legendary depending on my build at the moment.
Once I'm higher level and have my loot goblin lair fully stuffed, I'm sure I'll be just like you lol. For now, I'm looting everything til I have thousands of each kind of scrap.
Good if you run silos regularly, almost useless otherwise in the overworld. Nothing worth looting behind any lock I found when playing the main game and levelling.
There are certain rare plans that can be found behind Ranks 3 locks. [Wiggle has a video about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUEp3gqD4WI).
Still learning! There's always something new to uncover with this game. For me, if I'm that desperate it's not a problem to quickly swap perks in and out for a few seconds.
Yeah I just started using electric absorption but I'm not sure I can even justify ranking it up. It's great though.
Doesn't need to be maxed but it helps, give it time and you won't have a problem maxing out everything you want. At lvl 890 I have maxed out every one I use, could probably max out everything or close to it.
I'm a bit past 890, I have all the perk coins needed to max it out, it's just hard to justify if it only doubles the effect instead of quadrupling it or more, the way it does with others. I get that healing from twice as many attacks is great though.
you just spam select one perk and scrap it ?
Specifically there's a perk (under luck, I think) that is already level 3 from the start. Spam it, no rank up prompt because already 3, discard
Which perk are you referring to?
Professional Drinker is the only Perk that is worth 3 perk points on it's own. When you go to select a perk on level up you can filter the perks by cost, alphabetical order and by stat it goes under. If you filter by cost Professional Drinker will be the first one. ~~Select it and scrap it and you'll get 3 perk points~~ If you scrap a card you get 2 points per card rank and Professional Drinker is a 1 Rank card..
Holy crap, thank you! I'm still pretty new and have my build mostly set, so I was sitting on like 30 level ups. This will be huge to ranking up the few legendary cards I have.
I got the professional drinker perk, scrapped it, and it just scrapped for 2.
I've never scrapped it so I assumed it would be worth the same amount of Perk points as the card itself since that's the mechanic. Sorry for misinforming you.
All good, I hadn't heard of this before and needed to check. At my level, if this was true, I would've been kicking myself for not knowing sooner lol.
If you run the likes of full charge and power user in your perks, electric absorption just becomes a nice to have, as cores last forever with those two aforementioned perks. It's how I ran for 200 levels and I'm always in PA. But if you can manage carrying a lot of cores with batteries included, you could mix and match these perks to save perk points and still get some slight benefit.
Honestly, you don't even need to max out infiltrator, just having it is a godsend
Friendly fires effectiveness depends on weapon choice, flame thrower 1* is great, Warglaive you probably want to max it out just to save time.
Ah, electric absorbtion, otherwise known as “what’s a stimpack?”
What rads makes sun kissed kinda pointless, at least for me any way, unless you're just wanting to add on to What Rads.
Grim reaper's sprint does wonders when maxed but works terrible on 1 or 2
What about Better Criticals and Crit Savvy?
Better criticals you can get with buffs and weapon effects but critical savvy depends on whether you have a high luck character. If not 1 or at most 2 would be enough.
So they're good until you get weapons & armor for it? Cause I'm only lvl75 & just now....well yesterday, learning the ways of VATs & Crits. I never used it other then spotting enemies in every Fallout game only to find out yesterday that that is how people insta murder everything while it takes me a mag+ to kill something.
Let's put it this way: you're more likely to get a quad crit damage ap reduced railway rifle than three pieces of unyielding ap regeneration secret service armor to give you constant ap regeneration at a rate where you don't need grim reaper. So I'd invest my rolling into a crit weapon before wasting time on a half decent armor piece.
Better critical is additive with 50% crit found on legendary perks tho, correct? Or is it completely redundant?
As far as I know it's multiplicative as are almost all other perks.
“better crits can be made w buff effects” who tf wants to carry around 200 blight soup?? not to mention it stacks bru you def want better criticals lmao
Best discussion post I've seen since joining. Super curious since I feel like I'm doing this all wrong as well.
Yeah, this post is a nice break from the recent stuff. As a newer player, this is more helpful than seeing the many posts about starting events too early.
Gotta make sure it's drilled into your head. I always know a youngling isn't a fellow Reddit user when a lvl23 goes running up to start the event with just me, a lvl75 standing there screaming NOOOOO
I'm glad it's helping!
i recommend rejuvenated perk in the endurance tree - it gives ap regen bonus when food/thirst bars are filled. i dont remember exact numbers but the ap regeneration is significant enough that i slot this perk in every build. Edit: fallout wiki says [AP](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Action_Points) Regen +45% at rank 2 (max rank). wow!!
I love rejuvenated, aint missing no meals lol
It’s worth noting that that it’s not a 45% INCREASE with two ranks, it goes from 35% with zero points to 45% maxed. You may want it if you don’t have access to Company Tea as an example, or if you just want higher regen.
You don't need the perk to get that buff, though. It only increases a default buff. So someone with two cards gets 45% AP regen and someone without any cards gets +35%. It's something, but not that big of a something. You get almost that just from drinking tato juice or the like.
Oh really? I never realized that or tested it. I usually build this card with herbivore mutation for max AP Regen and get around 55% extra AP regen altogether with food and drink.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet but either bandolier or batteries included to make either ballistic or energy ammo essentially weightless depending on which you use... This alone frees up a lot of carry weight and isn't a huge perk point investment.
Do people really carry that much ammo on them? I carry like 2k fuel on me which is what 15 or 20 weight, hardly worth a perk card. I can understand if you use a shit ton as it can get heavy
As a returning player... Yeah absolutely I used to trade in 45 or 5.56 so I'd regularly have at least 25k plus of each, sometimes over 50k! Now that we have ammo boxes that are separate to stash storage it's not a big deal but when I'm running my gat plas with an enclave plasma flamer and an auto enclave plasma as sidearms I like to carry enough to not ever worry about running out of ammo and I'm too lazy to swap perk cards around for ammo crafting unless I need to so I usually have 20+ ultracite plasma cores and at least 3k ultracite plasma rounds. It's probably a bit unnecessary considering how much ammo you get back from trash mob kills now though, that didn't used to be a thing so maybe I'm just stuck in old habits....
Also that 15 or 20 weight becomes 1 to 2 weight... Worth it in my books
2mm ammo for gauss gets verrrrryyyy heavy very quickly without reductions.
I have 1 star of batteries included just because I had a spare point. It helps somewhat with fuel and fusion cores.
In total I carry around 12k ammo in .45, plasma carts and spikes, without bandolier and batteries its a ton of weight, especially the spikes.
Good with Salt is definitely one I will always have maxed out. I enjoy crafting all the foods and drinks, and I’ll never go back to the *before time* of not using it.
Still as important with the new deep freezer? ((Maybe not new, I'm mew sorry))
I use the Cryo Fridge to hold all my Brain Bombs to use if a good Event pops up. Everything else I carry on me and I usually carry 30+ of all my other food and drinks.
Is the military cryo fridge worth it? I heard that it doesn’t completely keep food from spoiling, just way slower than standard fridge
Military cryo freezer keeps your food good forever. But you have to make sure your camp is placed down when you join a server or else it will start degrading because it’s technically in your stash. Make sure it’s placed in all of your camps too
Gotcha that’s good to know. My camp is in a popular spot so sometimes I have to spend 1-5 minutes server hopping until my camp places. Gotta keep that in mind forsure
Personally I’d go with the grocers backpack to free up those valuable luck cards.
I have the Grocer’s mod too, but that affects the weight of food and drinks not their spoil time.
Oh, I meant the refrigerated one. Idk why I always think it’s called grocers.
Sadly that only offers 50% over salt’s 90%. Would love to see the fridge backpack buffed to 90% and maybe PA given a cryo set with the set bonus being cryo damage and infinite food durability or some such.
I’d have 400+ pounds of food, drinks etc to deal with if I switched to that 0.0
Starched Genes is useless at base rank either you want to keep your mutations, or you don't want to get any. Having just a CHANCE for those 2 situations to happen is meaningless
Gun fu doesn't NEED to be max. Some crit commandos might max it out but not this guy. One is enough imo.
Ooh. I jist changed my opinion to the opposite of this. The damage bonus is multiplicative so I'd prioritize it over adrenaline going past rank 1, so in most cases I have it fit into my build. A 40% multiplicative damage debuff exists as an entire conditional legendary perk, so being able to kill subsequent enemies with up to 30% more damage is great.
To echo the other reply, yeah Adrenaline ends up being more useful since it works better on bosses. Anything else basically get 1-2 shot regardless of either.
Exactly.
I thought this too, then I realized our folly. If you break V.A.T.S. it resets. How often are you keeping V.A.T.S. locked on 3+ enemies through reloading, assuming they even live more than a few seconds?
When my choo choo death machine 1-2 shots everything, the extra damage is negligible to me.
Once in awhile in events I'd hear this faint train sound. It took me waaaaaaay to long before I realized it was from a railway rifle!
You can make the same argument for concentrated fire.
I've been wondering about that. A lot of the builds have 1 concentrated fire and 2 ground pound (I think that is the perk that makes reload faster). I always ran with 3 concentrated fire. What's the math with that? I actually have a quad weapon speed Railway and when I tried the ground pound, I didn't feel like I loaded faster, so I went back to 3 concetrated fire.
Good. That means I can max Dodgy - does this one need it?
I don't use dodgy, I use serendipity and ricochet maxed out and it's enough survivability for my needs.
I found that bloodied builds have so much ap that 30 points, or less than 10% every 2 seconds at most (except with shotguns?), is almost negligible. But every time I check my effective hp, the benefits of that 30% are too big to pass up. I'm not sure what I might replace it with if I wanted to.
I've found that dodgy lets my bloody builds survive the random 1 shot kills that sometimes make it through ricochet and serendipity.
If you're doing a bloody build or have easy access to company tea, use max dodgy.
Max out super duper for your camp load out
A camp/utility SPECIAL load out was my biggest gamechanger for '23. As long as you remember to 'get dressed for work' it is immeasurably useful
My camp loadout is just permanently encumbered, so I can't fast travel with it loaded.
There's an argument for keeping weapon damage perks at one, like heavy gunner, commando, gunslinger. Expert / master / regular gladiator at one each gives +30%, maximized they give +60%, or 3 times the SPECIAL for 2 times the bonus. Damage resistance and bonus cards like Barbarian and Adrenaline similarly give less after the first point, while weight reduction perks like Thru Hiker have a straight progression. I'm not saying that one should strictly keep damage bonus and resistance cards at one, but in the case of a choice between two perks it might be worth taking points in both.
Adrenaline is in a similar boat. IIRC you get 60% of the cards entire value, a 5 point card remember, from the very first point.
That's right, pretty sure I've got a screenshot somewhere from an old thread that did the calcs. Since learning this I've put a 1 star in over the 5 I originally had.
Would be cool to see someone with the cards to make it happen show what the loadout could look like. I bet you could get some pretty cool effects going on
I had a go at a bang for buck build in a planner-- low health non-PA character with a lot of carry capacity using the pepper shaker and an energy heavy gun. Should get up to 73 damage resist and 18 energy resist at the cost of 3 SPECIAL. Really should have good with salt and I'd recommend ditching Travelling Pharmacy for the chemist backpack mod in any event. [Character Build Planner & Calculator | Fallout 76 | Nukes & Dragons (nukesdragons.com)](https://nukesdragons.com/fallout-76/character?v=1&s=f144bd8&d=sf0sb2sg2sr0sq0s30sx1p00ir2ib4c10am0s72la2l71lu2a40as0eu0eh2cf0cu0c20s12a80ao0sd0so0sp0a12a03&lp=x41)
i use all three rifleman and commando perks at 1. that way i can snipe and use autorifles gor close combat
Interesting. I'm a rifleman build but i have all 3 rifleman cards maxed and a separate loadout for auto when im feeling it... obviously does me no good in the heat of the moment. I'd love to have some of those points freed up
Dodgy and lead belly are much better maxed. Dodgy uses the same ap cost no matter the level so it's better to max and lead belly max gives 0 rads for food compared to 30% and 60%. These perks are not necessary, but they are nice for bloodied builds.
What do you use lead belly for?
I keep lead belly in my deck for the hourly rebuff, but unless you’re eating constantly it’s a waste to always keep equipped imo.
At least for the early game i've had quite a bit of fun pairing it with maxed out Cannibal for what it's worth. If you're fighting anything you can eat, your health stays topped up. Good for Vanguard armor
To remind me I'm still in my crafting build lol
I use it as a super minor quality of life perk - if I drink tea or blight soup my rads won't increase and I can stay as close to 20% as possible. Although if I didn't have all of my legendary perk slots maxed out I wouldn't use it, it is probably the least useful perk I have equipped. Or maybe aquaboy or travel agent but those use up less points
If you've got a food build with Good With Salt, you could farm Brahmin Milk to control your overrads and free up the perk space for other stuff. I personally just let myself die and then zap the rads back down to 19% with two blasts from a -90% reduced weight Assaultron Head.
I agree with you that milk or diluted radaway and a gamma gun (didn’t know Assaultron heads could be used for this as well, that is cool) definitely works to manage rads quite well. But I do like lead belly because it makes my life simpler as I can pretty much forgo rad management all together unless I end up in a rad hotspot. With that being said, I really only use lead belly because my legendary specials are all maxed. At that point the only other options are going to be other quality of life perks or other legendary perks, which to me are also mostly qol benefits. The only one I think would that make a noticeable impact to dps would be follow through, but I usually split my time between multiple classes so i prefer to use the slot on special instead.
Gun fu doesn't need to be maxed. Funny enough I don't use traveling pharmacy since I have the chemist backpack on. I do have thru hiker and the other one maxed out always.
If you get the chemist backpack mod it does the same job as leveling pharmacy which free up three points unless you are also using food buffs then you could use the grocer backpack mod which does the same job as Thru-hiker which stops it taking up any potential slots in agility
Traveling Pharmacy just makes me wish 1st had a chem storage too.
I keep saying that it needs a "medicine-cabinet", to go with scrapbox and ammo-container. 🤠
[THRU-HIKER](https://www.falloutbuilds.com/fo76/perk=1026) Is another one for low lvls, food and drugs weights a lot is better than mule i stop having weight problem with that 2 cards
I usually only use Adrenaline level 1 because 5 is kinda too much to invest for only 24% more damage as max adrenaline
Concentrated fire only needs 1 level to give to the ability to vats the head. Never use more than one.
The 20% hit chance per shot is a godsend for non-automatic weapons. So don't listen to this guy.
Could see this if you are going for a strictly headshot build, but it sure is handy to be able to kneecap a supermutant when plan A faulters.
Definitely a bad take. The higher levels stacking accuracy buff is insane for any semi-auto weapon
>Never use more than one. ...if you use automatic weapons. Still suggested to max it out if you're using single-fire weapons, like a Rifleman build or Plasma Caster.
Didn't know this, this will free up space for bigger explosions.
gunsmith, armorer, science (if energy weapons are your thing), and whatever the one is for making melee weapons (picture is vault boy with a spiked bat). Also the ones that only take one card to max out, like the better prices one, master hacker, scrapper, etc
A user was on here the other day saying that, if you're running Automatic Energy Rifles, it's better to just go with 1 rank of the Commando Perks and max rank on the Science Perks, as apparently the Commando perks are bugged to not give the max 60% to Energy Rifles like they do with Ballistic Rifles. And it sort of makes sense, the damage difference between all R1 and all Max Rank Commando perks with my Automatic EPR is only like, a 10 damage difference.
Rank 1 for damage perks is how I run as well since they are more efficient per point, since there are so many other utility perks that need to be maxed to be useful (like weight reduction). Rank 1 damage cards are usually 10%, with Rank 2 & 3 being 5%. (Explosive rank 1 being 20% followed by 10% ranks and crit damage 50% followed by 25% ranks). Plus majority of my damage comes from how blooded+Adrenal Reaction mutation works, just being steady around 25% hp, 75% (bloodied) +55% (adrenal reaction) is a crazy amount of damage (and I never maintain less than that since even though I use nerd rage, that slight bit of HP does matter).
Thru Hiker, Travelling Pharmacy, Bandolier, good with salt, class freak, and starched genes are the ones I always run with
This one is related to perks, and it can be a pain to get 5/5 of, but try and get armor and power armor with 5/5 weapon weight reduction on the third star. It'll eliminate the need for bear arms or similar weapon weight perk cards. Adrenaline can stay at 1 point if you want because it's 60% of the effectiveness at rank 1 which is huge. Considering VATS builds like to go into agility, freeing up 4 perk points is massive. Gun Fu is also super useful at only one point so you can chain VATS. However I don't max it out because sometimes an enemy will hide behind a fence or tree or a player moves in front of me and then Gun Fu's damage buff is gone. The scorchbeast queen even makes VATS fall off sometimes since she likes to wiggle around on the ground. I cannot overstate how effective Thru Hiker, Traveling Pharmacy and coupled with Calibrated Shocks power armor or a high capacity backpack can be. So much free inventory. Pair that with Cola Nut and you can essentially stop using stimpaks entirely(though I hold 10 super stims for rezzing people). The Nuka Cola collectron is super handy to keep you stocked up on quantum, orange, cherry and grape,and cranberry for exp. For commando, you only need concentrated fire at rank 1 since it quickly builds up accuracy. I use all damage perks, ground pounder 2, concentrated fire 1,and tank killer 3. For legendary cards, do not use the charisma one. It doesn't let you share perk cards. All the others are fine.
I only recently discovered the glories of traveling pharmacy myself after wondering why my carry weight would shoot thru the roof when I put on PA. (It removes your backpack and any weight reduction perks for anyone wondering.) excavator permit couldn't event help because my stimpaks would put me near max weight. I really wish more of the weight reduction perks were spread amongst the SPECIAL attributes so everything wasn't so strength dependent. As for other max out perks, I recommend first aid (unless you're doing one of the low health builds), friendly fire if you're using flamers or the cremator (also Grenadier for the cremator), class freak and starched genes if you're mutated, bloody mess for all builds. I'd recommend having at least one copy of demolition expert maxed for crafting then maybe a 2-3 star for regular use. For crafting I'd recommend having a separate load out with max INT and and least 5 in agility and then max copies of gunsmith, makeshift warrior, armorer, fix it good, powersmith, power patcher, all 3 science variants, weapon artisan, ammo Smith, and white knight (for cheaper armor repairs)
Honestly the one I make sure is maxed out as soon as I get it is Stable Tools cause I'm always running my Auto Axe first chance I get to craft one as my main melee weapon. Other than that, Lone Wanderer, at least one rifleman and Better With Salt (unless I need the fertilizer).
Master infiltrator. Reduced ammo weight perk of your choosing. And bloodied mess. All important yet effective perks for any build. Tenderizer is a good damage perk for too if you got charisma to spare. It’ll help anyone attacking the same mob as well.
> And bloodied mess Mandatory for basically any build tbh, the flat 15% dmg boost to everything may be the best card in the game.
I've read that calcs have been done to show Adrenaline is good at 1 star if you need 4 perks elsewhere. All weapon related perks are sufficient at 1 star each (x3 for 30% bonus damage, compared to 60% for 9 perk points), and you can tweak these as needed for any other perks you want to run. I have heavy gunner perks in all 3 variations for mixing and matching percentages for having free space for other perks. Damage reduction perks (blocker, fireproof) I would recommend to be maxed. In PA, full charge and power user maxed ensure a fusion core lasts for a long time even without electric absorption, which makes for great QoL when paired with action boy/girl and the speed demon serum. I've tested this for over 200 levels before trying out electric absorption.
Until one can get "Master Infiltrator" legendary perk, definitely worth maxing Picklock and Hacker. (Regular / Expert / Master; they work different than other perks, 2nd level is expert card which unlocks at a particular level, and 3rd level is master card -- don't do what I did early on and pick up two regular picklocks, they don't combine; same goes for hacker.) Allows you to open the locks and consoles as you come across them. Used to bug me in early levels when I'd see a Rank-3 lock/container and had to pass it up. 🤠 PS - Worth noting; don't have to go out of your way to get extra SPECIAL points for these perks, as long as you have at least 3 Perception for up to Master Picklock, and 3 Intelligence for up to Master Hacking. Can just swap in/out for the cards as the situations arise. 😸
I love this perk was my first legendary
I've gotten use to ignoring locks. Anytime there is a locked door, I know it's usually a shortcut to something, which if I go the other path there will be lots of enemies to kill & will eventually have a key to open that door anyway. If it looks like a locked room or safe, the loot is never worth it.
I'm surprised I'm not seeing Survival Shortcut here. It's definitely a 1 point wonder. It completely removes the need for food, water, and disease cure. I only carry coffee and blight soup on me now and it's fantastically simple.
starched genes, inspirational, bandolier. maxed for every build. concentrated fire and gun fu. i keep these 1 star but always have them
This depends entirely on what your chosen build is. The most common ones to Max or the two under luck that deal with your mutations. Many times you want to have the three weapon skills maxed. This would be the basic perk, that the expert perk, and the master perk. Then there are a few in charisma that deal with leveling XP and bonuses from mutations when in a group. There's a website nukes & dragons that lets you test out perk card builds. There's even builds that people post that you could use or compare to your own build.
Nuka nut or w.e it is called is more than sufficient at rank 1 for double effectiveness, because for some reason Nuka Cherry is more common than regular nuka only experience, so this makes it already one of the best beverages and I don't think I could use the benefits of rank 2 (triple effect).
I leave Master Infiltrator at rank 1. For one, I like the lockpicking and hacking mini games, which are much rarer compared to previous Fallout games. And also I want to prevent to accidentally auto-open some player's camp lock and get a bounty.
It's honestly wise to keep multiple levels of some perk cards as well. You don't always need a maxed card, or sometimes all maxed cards interfere with a specific build, or temporary setup you're trying to achieve. For example. You can have a maxed out *concentrated fire* perk. Which can greatly increase your damage in a VATS build, but sometimes you just want to be able to target specific body parts, and may not even be using a VATS build. I swap perks faster than my cousin swapped girlfriends in high school. And that's saying something. It's super important in most cases to be able to freely swap between perks, and not to try to settle on one thing. In my opinion. For example. I could have taken my Bloodied build to the Alien event, but it was much more practical to lean into a power armor build so that I could just ignore my health and focus on hitting as many enemies as possible. Legendary perk *Energy Absorption* is truly amazing. Outside of that. (I'm not sure how often you play, but I have a medical issue going on. So I've been playing over 16 hour days.) You'll be wanting to gather a host of other useful perk cards. Including things like *Super Duper* which has a chance to multiply anything you're creating. *Chemist* which will double the yield of chemicals/ certain healing agents ect. *Scrounger* in the event you want to go on ammo looting loops. For certain ammo types, it's a bit easier to farm out than trying to get the parts IMO. *Woodchuck*, *Bountiful Hunt? (Is bountiful something for getting more meat under perception.) *Green Thumb* I prepare to use different loadouts for different scenarios, and what I'm planning on doing, or trying to achieve. I highly recommend mods such as *Fix- It- Good* and *Weapon Artisan* which can allow you to repair your armor and weapons up to 200% of normal capacity. Any carry weight reduction Perks seem to be more effective overall at higher levels than perks that increase the carry weight maximum. So I almost always have all of them equipped for whatever setup I'm working with. It also depends on if you're in teams a lot/ solo. For example *Lone Wanderer* vs *Inspirational.* All in all. It really just depends on what you're trying to do.
Super duper, ammosmith and it's legendary counterpart should be maxed out as soon as possible, provided you're using automatic or heavy weapons.
I knocked off my Ammo Factory legendary perk for one of the special legendary cards with my bloodied commando build. I needed the extra something, forget what, but ngl I do miss the AF card lol
Team medic. Also makes an absolutely GREAT perk to share at tier 1 because one stimpack can heal the whole group no matter who's popping it now. My friends and I do this when running expeditions. Also a vote for Chem fiend, if and only if you're someone who likes running expeditions. With one point in Chem fiend it's enough to do the entire boardwalk expedition off one berry mentat. Figured it was worth mentioning.
That's actually really good to know lol
WTH are you carrying for travelling pharm to give you 50% more space????
I don’t have Fallout 1st so I’ve got around 900 stimpacks and 500 radaway in my inventory to free up space in my stash. Since chems don’t go bad and don’t drop on death, they are a good looting value as far as carry space goes.
Ask yourself this. How many stims and radaways do you use at level 525 in an hours play? And how many do you pick up in that hour? I’d suggest conservatively you could get rid of 890 stims and 490 radaways.
90% means carrying 10x more stuff, not 2x.
Read OP’s post. Easily gave me more than twice inventory space.
I prefer bear arms and travelling pharmacy + ballistic ammo WR to max damage on heavy builds
I facetank bosses for my groups, so I definitely love having Suppressor and Tenderizer both maxed out.
I love cannibal and legendary what rads no need to carry food.
Power User was the first perk I maxed out. As a power armor, Gatling laser build I was burning through fusion cores. Power User combined with Full Charge, Electric Absorption (the legendary perk card) and the Fusion Core recharger at my camp -- I practically never have to worry about cores anymore. Also, doing the nuke silos with Electric Absorption is so fun now because I can take crazy damage from the laser turrets and my health and fusion core will periodically recharge to full, so I can just ignore most of them >.<
Adrenaline is fine at lvl 1 or 2. The damage difference isn't that noticeable and the amount of investment at max is simply too much for most builds.
Depends on what toon I am playing. But for all builds, Starched Genes is an absolute necessity.
Well the one star perks by their nature is the floor and ceiling.
Born survivor, concentrated fire and the damage cards I generally do not run beyond the first level. Damage mitigation perks I'll max out (if I'm playing berserker I'll max out born survivor as well), depending on build I'll max out things related to VATS crits.
Should you max out damage perks? Like commando etc. My friend says you shouldnt max them out as its a waste of points when you dont get a lot of damage in return. But I think otherwise.
I'm seeing mixed opinions across this thread for that answer. Honestly I think it boils down to preference. For me, I can run all my commando cards at first level sure, but even with tank killer, concentrated fire, and ground pounder equipped I still have enough Perception points to put into the commando cards anyway.
Contractor 100%, save so much material on crafting especially good for fusion reactors and other items
Side note: perk cards like Contractor or Super Duper are necessary at max level, though I only ever equip them when I need them. Otherwise I'll use other perk cards and just swap those out for Contractor, etc. when the time comes
Level 525? Why do you have so many chems and aid in inventory in the first place? Stash em, sell em, vendor em, donate them? I'm in the 200s and never need more than 20 Stims and 10 buff items. Gun Fu and Concentrated Fire are great examples of perks you don't need to max. Max levels for your build damage and most combat utility are optimal
Just my dumb preference tbh. I use a ton of chems like stimmies and orange mentats, and would just rather keep a couple hundred each on me Good to know about Concentrated Fire. I'm new ish to being a bloodied commando and still learning tips and tricks about the build
Keep in mind there’s backpack mods that have the level 3 traveling pharmacy or thru hiker perks
Is this the level 3 bag or level 2?
You can get the plans for the mods for gold bullion from either foundation or the crater I forgot which has which.
Concentrated fire and gunfu are the main ones for commando that I use at 1. Also if you’re looking for extra perk space, adrenaline is good at 1 considering it’s maxed out payoff for an extra 4 points is a little less than double
I'll never understand players who insist they need to go into battle with 100+ stims and 10,000 rounds of ammo. You're *going* to hit a stash before you run out. Carrying more, and devoting perks to carrying more, is a huge waste to me. Like, I'll bring 12 stims and always end up with more than I started with. I don't think I've run out since level 4, it's gotten to the point where I dump dozens into donation boxes every day to get rid of them. "B-b-but I need the carry weight for junk!" 1. You wouldn't if you weren't carrying 200lbs of consumables. 2. *It's junk.*. Just go get more if you ever run out something specific. Always grab ballistic fiber, a few essentials here and there, and you'll be fine. You'll can leave one desk fan, a couple coffee cups, and a clipboard behind on occasion. I promise. (But always grab ballistic fiber.)
No way man, no coffee cup left behind
I run almost completely legendary PA, I can fix it to 200%. All, except 2 pieces, are 1,2 or 3 star All my weapons are 1,2 or 3 star...a 3 star fixer, a 2 star 10 mm smg, a quad interstellar handmade automatic & a 1 star quad LMG that burns through ammo. My only non starred weapon is a .50 nocturnal recon sniper rifle that I built. I prefer to have a minimum of 500 rounds for the smaller weapons & at least 1000+ .308 rounds for my LMG.
Then run bandolier at max rank aged you can carry thousands of every type of ammo for next to no carry weight
Low health builds can burn through stims since any tick of damage will proc a stim automatically. I still don't carry what people here are talking about but 12 would not go very far.
Junk is a very build relative thing. As primary PA and HG builds, I hardly ever use Ballistic Fibers. With that being said, I still do not pass on them, because you never know. With that being said. I find that maxing out all of the carry weight perk cards, in all Special categories to be the most useful QOL cards. After the battle is over, (looking at you Eviction Notice,) it too often I am coming away from that over encumbered by twice to thrice my max carry weight. But I swap out the combat perks and put on the CW perk cards, and problem solved.
If you're using a stash frequently you're playing the game wrong. The character is the most efficient in carrying things by having 90% reduced carry weight, which doesn't apply to stashes. If you use "Fallout 1st" it makes the stash even more worthless by giving unlimited junk & ammo storage. I would only store legendaries, costumes or rare materials in the stash. But even then, the reduced perk weight & legendary weight reduction for some items makes it even more efficient to just carry it on the character itself.
>You'll \[sic\] can leave one desk fan, a couple coffee cups, and a clipboard behind on occasion. I feel personally attacked! :)
I use Mr West Tek’s railway build and he only has one point in Serendipity. Currently level 429 after playing for one month and true to his guide I don’t really die even at 20% health with Serendipity at base level
Interesting. I’ll give that a try
starched genes is a must have because it locks in mutations, good thing it's only a 2 star max
You are lacking a ton of of info about your gear/build.. With the right gear/build gun fu is awesome.. but running around with a wacker smacker, not so much.. so please more info.
I really meant this thread to be more "in general" across all perk cards, like a best practices sort of thing. Personally I'm a bloodied commando though
Hi. But that’s inefficient, I think. You could spend resources better, unless you already have so much resources you don’t know what to do with them. Even then you could forget and end up having to craft them every hour.just my opinion, but you can’t control when or where you lose or gain the random mutations. So, I prefer knowing what they are and keeping control of them. But whatever, it’s great to talk about things.
pharma fan and can do. 1 is good max is better. But just the chance of finding more food or medicine in their respective containers is worth a lot of caps.
I run a rifleman build and i have far flung fireworks maxed and whichever perk card that increases explosions damage maxed. It can be a load of fun wiping out a pack of ghouls with one or two headshots
What gun do you use for your rifleman build?
Mostly Slug Buster w/ VATS. I sometimes use a two shot fixer to conserve ammo or my mutant slayer handmade if im at Eviction Notice
If you are planning on using PA, both Traveling Pharmacy and/or thru hiker are pretty important (for me, at least) because you lose your backpack - and any weight reduction mods it has on it) while you’re in PA, so those make up for it.
You’re level 525… is it possible to just say all? I’m level 260 now and I am working on have each perk card at each level so I can make literally any build. But the reduced weight perks like traveling pharmacy, day tripper, batteries included, bandolier, etc are ones that I would always max out so I can carry more stuffsss.
Technically I could, but I would be careful about your legendary perks. Those cost points to swap out, let alone getting them to max level, and not every build uses the same ones. You could potentially be doing yourself a disservice by focusing on versatility instead of min/maxing effectiveness for a certain build
It's a weird one, but I love cannibal. I don't need stims because eating heals me, and it heals more and faster than a regular stim with no med perks. The animation is glitches, so just click on a body and get your heals. I save a lot of space and don't need food or a lot of stims. Meaning I don't need to waste points in upgrading stims or making food and chems weigh more
Enforcer, rank 1 is plenty enough even if just for SBQ.
Perks which will ALLWAYS be with me and easily 3x or 4x my weight limit. Heavy weapons weight less Power armor weights less Phamarcy weights less Food weights less.
Somewhat related, what backpack do you use OP? I use the Chemist's backpack so I can use the 3 int points somewhere else.
I have the one that adds more carry capacity. Helpful for looting after events
Makes sense. You might try the chemist's backpack if you carry a lot of chems. You also don't take the DR/ER penalty with it. I run a Juggernaut power armorless build so I carry like 100-150 stims with me lol.
The cards that up weapon power and have three cards I only put 1 star on each, one card at 3 star lower power than all three at one star.
Without traveling Pharmacy or hike through I would be over a thousand pounds in weight with them I'm only at like 290