Any definitive first playthrough builds?

[Elazul]

Just bought the GOTY edition. Any builds in particular that are considered "a must" for a first playthrough?

[Tyrant]

build as in how?
characterstats? perks? weapons/armor?

just play the game and see where it takes you.

[Kameraden]

Counts what you want to do though.

I used to start with

Unless you plan to use melee and heavy weapons you can easily get away with 2 STR, with the bobblehead later on you can get 3 STR which will allow you to get the Armor Smith Perks which are necessary for making better armor and power armor upgrades, as well as ballistic weave which is a Railroad exclusive awesome toy.

Endurance is worthless, you can easily survive with just 1. Though you will die easier, but avoiding damage is the best way to survive anyways. Issue is since you have unlimited levels Endurance only helps out early game, but is worthless in the long run. You can always get better armor for DR/ER and there is no shortage of radx and radaway to help with radition.

Perception, as much as you can afford, helps accuracy in VATs, and some of the Perks like penetration makes guns a lot of fun when you use VATs.

Charisma, very useful, but not early game. You can afford to start with almost none, you can always add to it later, but it's mostly for speech checks, and settlement stuff.

Agility helps in VATs and sprinting as it increases the amount of AP you get, I'd say starting with 6-7 at start.

Intelligence, at least 3. Gunsmithing is important though you can always find weapon upgrades off guns you loot so, it isn't exactly necessary. YOU CAN however, try for 9 INT for Starts or even 10INT, INT also increases how much EXP you get so if you want to level up faster, it's kind of a work around, but will gimp you combat wise early game, but leveling faster kind of means you can make up for it by investing more into SPECIALS faster over time.

Luck is kind of a wild card. I never invested Anything in Luck when I first played. As I focuse dmore on sneak attacks which. It's very good to invest in Luck eventually though, definitely if you spam VATs a lot, but it is worthless if you just run and gun.

[Yhwach]

All builds have their strength and weaknesses, If you wanted the "pinnacle" of builds that'll enabel you to never die, and never take any damage (mostly..ai can still hit you because bethesda) then go for a stealth build.
There is no "best" build but each of them has their own differences.

[Doombringer]

The game is easy, so builds aren't super important.
You probably don't want to start with 1 endurance though...

(If you play long enough you get every perk eventually anyways)

[MortVent]

Stealth sniper is a good slow paced easy start to learning the game.

But you can just as easily play it run and gun assault trooper or pistoleer

Melee is a tricky one as most foes will be shooting at you.

[us271934-Слава Україн]

I put all I could into LUCK and then went and bought lottery tickets. I'm counting my $25 right now! Sweet.......

[Solomon Hawk]

Adapt as you go. Learn something for a change.

Take a risk.

[Zee_]

Play however you want. After lvl 30 or so you'll be an unkillable machine unless you focused entirely on non-combat perks.

Think about what you want to do and pick the perks that work for that playstyle.

If you want to play the game a bit more like an fps you can ignore much of the Luck tree, you may want to grab the ammo perk if you focus on ranged weapons however (its a low investment perk and pays off big if you use some of the rarer ammo types).

Do you want to be a sniper? Focus on sneaking and rifleman perks, pick up ninja and mr sandman as well for extra damage for your sneak attacks.

Do you want to melee? Focus on sneaking and melee specific perks, basically the same setup you would use for sniping if you want to be a sneaky melee type. For a more "chaaaaaarge" melee type, focus on melee and defensive perks and think about picking up Pain Train down the line.

Do you want to use VATS alot? Then focus on the Luck tree and think about focusing on pistols as your primary weapons (pistols are great for VATS spam).

Do you want to me a... well I'm sure you get the point. There are perks for any and all builds and play styles you could think of.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by Rhathymia:

Blitz combined with stealth= super easy game.

Stealth = Super Easy game on its own.


As a totally unrelated side note. Agility affects pickpocket success rate, along with the Perk in perception.

[Elazul]

Thanks everyone. I've been browsing myself and found this build by FudgeMuppet called the Gunzerker. Looks pretty fun I'll probably try this unless it's going to have problems due to low charisma?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAyJ3vj7pTo

[Doombringer]

low charisma mainly means no shops in your settlements until later (because local leader takes decent charisma) and lower max settlement population (until later), not that big of a deal.

[Maximum Sloth]

No.

You can beat the game flailing like a spastic chimp if your heart so desires. Builds don't matter in this game very much because you get overpowered equipment within the first 30 minutes that you can run around in and melt everyone around you using aside from, perhaps the one or two deathclaws you'll stumble upon.

[Vinnie Mack]

it depends on what difficulty at which you are playing. If easy or even normal, it really doesn't matter. If you get a good weapon drop, choose perks that help you use that weapon.

Remember that the north is the easier area of the map, as is the left hand side. The further south you go, the harder it gets.

as someone mentioned above, the easiest build is sniper-sneak. There is a sniper rifle in one of the first buildings in concord. If you go sniper-sneak, go high on agility so you can get sneak, ninja, and sandman. I have never found perception particularly useful, even as a sniper.

endurance is not useless. There is a lot of water in the area. Enemies won't follow you into water, and bullets often don't touch you if you submerge yourself. The water can be used to get to diamond city early game without much difficulty. But all the water is badly irradiated. You need an endurance of 5 to pick up aquamarine. Many say this perk is a total waste. I think otherwise. Decide for yourself. An endurace past 5 is kind of useless, however. Rad resistance doesn't matter if you are using a rad suit or power armor. or just pack a lot of radway. Sun powered can be got through lifegiver (health regeneration). Besides, unless you mod the game to make it harder, stimpacks are all over the place.

plan on doing settlements? Get charisma of 6 so you can use supply lines to link your settlements. also, if you go a charisma of 10 you do get a different feel to your game. You can get more out of people, bypass certain quests, etc. A charisma-sneak build is quite viable in my opinion.

As for the rest, part of the fun of these games is finding your own personal build. The first 5 or so characters i made for this game were all throwaway because i messed something up on their build. In this case, the learning was fun.