Can Repair skill be ignored??

[ReadyToPlay]

I repaired by stuff using my repair skill fairly frequently early in the game. But as my caps and looted items increase, I began to just sell the looted items and use the caps to pay the 100% repairman in Mojave Outpost for all my important repairs. And I haven't upped my repair skills nor chosen any repair-related perks for a long time. I'm at Level 20 and my repair skill is only 25. Does anyone of you do it this way?

As my level goes up, my enemies get tougher and possess better items for me to loot. Why waste an item that is worth hundreds of caps on repairing your item? At higher levels, you surely use better weapons and apparels than you were at lower levels. If you have expensive items, then you have to repair them with expensive items. And every time you do that, you lose the caps that you would have got if you had sold that item instead.

Another thing is that as my level goes up and I become a better fighter, I don't get hit as often and I don't need to fire my weapons as often, hence I don't need repairs as often.

The only downside seems to be that Mojave Outpost is such a remote location that every time I go out there to get my stuff repaired, I waste food and gain dehydration and sleep deprivation (I'm playing in Hardcore mode).

I know there are tasks that required high repair skill. But the ones I've seen so far always provided an alternate means for repair, such as with spare parts.

[Nuzzyfuts]

Playing the game this way isn't bad, it's doesn't really make the game any more difficult. But you can miss out on some speech options and ingame options for experiance, with the Add-ons that increase the level cap there are enough skill points in game to get all or most skills to 100. At level 14 with 90 repair, you may choose the "Jury Rigging" perk which lets you repair any item with another item of the same catagory as it; so an Anti-Material rifle with a sniper rilfe or a marksman carbine with a service rifle. And the "Hand Loader" perk which lets you make special ammo types at reloading benches and increases your likelyhood of recovering cases when you shoot your weapons.

[di eshor ribly]

^ What Nuzzyfuts said. At about 7-8 Intelligence (or higher), you should be able to get every skill up to 100 by level 50 (with all DLC - Dead Money, Lonesome Road, Old World Blues, Honest Hearts). Especially if you can find the skill books lying around. Personally I find the Jury Rigging and Hand Loader perks to be very useful indeed. Repairing your high-end Riot Armor with raider leather armor? Awesome. Dismantling crappy ammo (base type) and making the JHP (hand loader rounds) at about 1.75x damage? Even better! Repairing the Gobi Sniper rifle with hunting rifles? Freaking Awesome-sauce!

Not to mention the many skill checks that save you the hassle of lugging around a Radio Shack's worth of scrap metal and electrical bits.. they definitely have their uses... but in the grand scheme of things, sure I guess you could ignore it. I imagine it would take a lot of caps to keep your high end gear repaired though... caps that could be better spent on food/water (in Hardcore) or extra ammo for your weapons of choice.

Honestly though, I think the dump skill of choice would probably end up being Barter though... it doesn't really change a whole lot in the game.. sure you could buy stuff cheaper and sell items for more, but vendors only have so many caps, ya know?

[Yung Matt]

Thing is, repair is potentially one of the better skills in the game since it effectively increases your self-sufficiency (you can repair own items and hand craft your own ammo, or even superior ammo), in fact besides that it's arguably more profitable than barter (which is still great) provided you get Jury Rigging sooner or later.

But I for one do kind of like having Major Knight and others repair my weapons on occassion.

[talgaby]

Jury rigging was one of the god-tier perks. With Dead Money and the infinite supply of WRKs it is fairly obsolete, although you may still try to get Jury rigging and go for the infinite stimpak supply instead. But repair is like barter: it's actually a very good skill, but most people overlook it.

[Discreet_Pigeon]

Originally posted by talgaby:

Jury rigging was one of the god-tier perks. With Dead Money and the infinite supply of WRKs it is fairly obsolete, although you may still try to get Jury rigging and go for the infinite stimpak supply instead. But repair is like barter: it's actually a very good skill, but most people overlook it.

On the notion of repair and barter I hate to choose between the two but I normally choose to use repair in order to fetch a higher price on the weapons that net lots of caps such as using nail boards and sledgehammers to repair bumper swords and super sledges and get 2000 or so caps. I do train barter but it is normally the last thing I ever invest in sadly or I only invest 1-2 points every time I lvl up.

[Bansheebutt]

Technically speaking, any skill in the game can be ignored.

Dialogue options aside, maxing repair is less useful than it was in Fo3 because your maximum condition that you can repair isn't hardcapped. Even with repair 1 the only thing that prevents you from getting maximum condition is the number/quality of parts you need.

Jury Rigging which requires 90 repair is nice, but unless you're using a ton of weapon mods that greatly increases weapon variaty, it isn't that necessary, especially for the Energy Weapon character. Even less so if you just get your repair to 50 and build Repair Kits instead.

Of course, the difficulty of maintaining Power Armor is another thing all together, but if you're like me, you stick to lighter, more practical armor for general use, and use the Heavy Duty stuff only for when you really need it anyway. (I can't imagine how people don't go crazy from slogging through the wastes at a snail's pace in Heavy Armor constantly.)

Maybe you won't make as much money looting, but come on, you easily get 2 to 3k caps from Legion/NCR hitsquads anyway.

[insolent1]

Its worth putting points in for the already mentioned perks and light touch which is a decent perk especially if you play "dead is dead" games and wear light armour.
The main reason to get jury rigging is too repair armour as it can be difficult to repair certain types of armour without it aside from paying for repairs