Most valuable skills for a balanced run

[Crystal_Pistol]

Let's say you're playing a balanced character, not stealth or a tank but rounded in combat and crafting. What skills are best and which are unnecessary? Thanks for comments.

[C4Warr10r]

Good aim, which the game cannot give you without your practice. Next, physical damage resistance, energy resistance, and maybe limbs, depending on your armor. Lock picking, hacking, medicine, scavenger, all to get the plentiful loot in surplus enough to sell and craft with. Or you could just build tons of pumps in Sanctuary to sell purified water. It's liquid gold.

Oh, and you will probably want the Caps Collector perks to set up stores in your settlements. A "balanced" playthrough is going to need a lot more access to resources than a focused one, so any settlement you can set up with your own stores to buy and sell to will be helpful.

Explosives Expert isn't a bad pick, since you'll have plenty of opportunity for those, and beyond that, the companion enhancing perk, will help with any temporary shortfalls in skill allocation.

That's about all I've got off the top of my head, unless you want to include melee, which would be stretching "balanced" pretty thin.

[-={LG}=-]

I don't really see it in a binary way like that, it's more prioritization. Your overarching goal should be maximization of damage while improving survivability as required by your skill/build/difficulty level. Crafting contributes to that, and you just focus the crafting types that fit your desired build.

The main thing is staying focused on those goals. You'll always come to a point here and there where you don't have anything that contributes to those goals at that level-up, in which case you're free to open up some "luxury" skills if you will, branch out into some other crafting areas, build up a stat to open up new skills. Whatever strikes your fancy.

If you intend to kick back and play completionist you have a lot more flexibility since you're going to get a lot more skillups. The only skills I personally consider totally throwaway are lockpicking and hacking. They only provide a trivial return for the points ... they are the "fomo" skills lol!

I don't play with companions, and I use rifles. So for me it's Scrapper, Lone Wanderer, Rifleman, Armorer, Gun Nut, keep working up Perception and Agility for VATS, that sort of thing. Then I like to get Local Leader, Aquaboy, Demolition Expert, Bloody Mess, Better Criticals. After that it's just whatever I feel like that game.

I find stealth skills to be very useful personally, I've never played without them.

[Anderson]

well, you upgrade the perks by style of the weapons you use. You aways have a balanced character. You really need crafting? Nope... you can remove all the upgrades for the simple put the more cheap one and store the mods.

i dont think in balance, just in time saved by perks. You really need caps? Or you will upgrade damage and ammo search? Just focus in what you need and what you want to use or turn more fast to obtain.

The game dont have a level cap. I think its something like 270 or 280 lvs to get all the perks.

And i think the only two perks must have is lockpick and hacking.

[Xenon The Noble]

Depends on your style of game play.
I don't know your style, and I don't even know mine. I change from game to game, try something new. e.g. I really like T-51 power armor, so I go for the nuclear physicist perk.

[sdack]

Stealth to level 3 is a "must have" for me, because it stops mines from triggering.

[B-o-B]

A bit of just about every other fps game experience is helpful, since this game employs many things found in other fps games.. and some. who knew !!

[@%thesock10150alpha49]

Bare Minimum:
Lone Wanderer, Life Giver, Gun Nut, and your respective gun perk. I recommend Rifleman over Commando because of ammo use and how damage resistance works. Power armor is optional on low-mid difficulties, but it's incredibly important on higher difficulties. This core will make you pretty universally good in a firefight.

The try-hard permadeath build:
Lone Wanderer, Life Giver, Gun Nut, Rifleman, Chemist, Chem-Resistant, and Aqua Boy. Drugs are your best friend for extra damage, weapon mods are usually bigger jumps than the 20% perks in the early game, and Aqua Boy allows you to travel relatively safely through a lot of the higher level areas via the waterways. This build is meant to maximize forgiveness in the most unforgiving rule-set (Perma-Death) and can protect you from a lot, but not all, of the random deaths that could end the run.,

Optional:
Science - There are a lot of ways around needing this perk, but it has a lot of uses. Such as weapon upgrades or better water farms.
Idiot Savant - Even with a 6 luck for science, it still procs fairly often and the majority of your early XP on survival/challenge runs is often going to be from crafting spam.
Attack Dog - If your planning to use Dogmeat (since he does not disable lone Wanderer) this perk can be handy.
Armorer - EASILY the most busted perk in the entire game, *IF* you complete the Automatron DLC. It gives you access to the carnage style head armors for the sentry bot companion, which has a small chance per hit to instantly explode targets, regardless of health. Pair this with fast firing weapons on their arms and they will kill things so quickly it can sometimes crash the game.

[@%thesock10150alpha49]

Originally posted by @%thesock10150alpha49:

Life Giver,

Also, people don't really understand that +20 health in the early game is massive. Forgot to mention that.

[Death Approaches]

just like all games, a jack-of-all-skills build doesn't bloom for many many levels, where a specialized focus has more immediate gains... some people level both lockpick and computer hacking at the same rate, but in almost all cases if you can't do one, you can do the other. and sure a high perception is good, but so are your eyeballs detecting movement on the screen in front of you, right? if you don't think you need those higher perception perks just yet, hey why spend the points? you can always tap V and see if VATS is targeting a friendly or bad guy, etc.

it depends on you, sole survivor. concentrate on what you're doing now, though, is always the best route. since there's no (realistic) level cap, you'll eventually be god of the commonwealth anyway, if you play long enough.

[sdack]

Originally posted by @%thesock10150alpha49:

Originally posted by @%thesock10150alpha49:

Life Giver,

Also, people don't really understand that +20 health in the early game is massive. Forgot to mention that.

I do not think it is massive. One either kills fast or gets killed fast. Hardly ever does one have fights where one survives with only a small percentage of life left. It is more about picking the right strategy and coming out of fights as unharmed as possible. One would certainly not fight like this in real life by having only a sliver of life left, losing an arm or a leg, and having it stitched back on again.

I never needed Life Giver. As you have said, it may be useful early in the game, but it becomes points wasted after a while. And if one needs extra health points early in the game then it is more of a sign of making the wrong choices, like not healing back up by other means before a fight, not using armor or cover. There is lots of armor around one can use, stimpaks and food, and plenty of water to drink from. Not to mention sleeping bags and mattresses where one can take a 1-hour nap.

[Zes]

depends how you play but there is no real diplomacy in fo4.. so your weapon skill is essential

[Crystal_Pistol]

Thanks everyone for the advice! There are so many skills I hate to spend points on useless ones and leveling takes a while.

[@%thesock10150alpha49]

Sorry to necro the post, but I was out on vacation.

Originally posted by sdack:

I never needed Life Giver. As you have said, it may be useful early in the game, but it becomes points wasted after a while.

It is definitely more useful early than late, since below level ten it's worth several levels of endurance.

The reason you "killed or got killed" is probably *because* you didn't have it. I have survived by a sliver plenty of times. Having all that extra health is great for running to cover and popping a stimpack. And in the later game, the third rank still helps because that HP regen is no joke. Most of my characters still end up tanky as hell with only 3 endurance.

So do you *need* it? probably not. But it is still a HUGE boost to survivability and can be the unsung hero of hardcore playthrough, where a stray bullet or Molotov can cost you 20+ hours of your life.

[Babbles]

Aqua Girl on Survival is simply amazing.