Good early ways to increase karma?

[Tokage]

I'm planning to start playing again after several years, and I was going to do an unarmed character, because martial arts are a lot of fun in this game.

Now, you of course know that either Dragon or Lo Pan can raise your unarmed skill, provided it's not already too high. So my plan is to not put any points in unarmed, nor to tag it, and just run down to San Francisco right from the beginning to pick up this early benefit.

Problem is, I need to have at least 250 karma in order to be trained by Dragon. What're some good ways to earn this much karma in Arroyo, Klamath, San Francisco, and perhaps Den?

[Goldfish]

You can get most of it from the Den, if you're willing to get physical. Give Vic the radio parts, but don't pay Metzger off. Kill him, and all of his guards. Unlock all the gates, free all the slaves, etc. In addition to the loot and ~4500ish XP, you'll get something like 200-225 karma from the endeavor.

[psychotron666]

You can pay off Metzger, get Vic to aid you in killing Metzger and take the 1000 caps back plus get all the benefits. If you got sulik too you should stand a pretty good chance early game.

Also get the unarmed training by the guy in Klamath and in Arroyo .
You also might wanna tag unarmed later or even at the start as you want like 200 skill in unarmed to fight enclave guys , after getting the training.

Plus I think either the Sierra army depot or mariposa has punching bags that increase unarmed by 5, and I think there's two of them. Can't remember off the top of my head which one they're in though

[A New Player]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

You can pay off Metzger, get Vic to aid you in killing Metzger and take the 1000 caps back plus get all the benefits. If you got sulik too you should stand a pretty good chance early game.

Also get the unarmed training by the guy in Klamath and in Arroyo .
You also might wanna tag unarmed later or even at the start as you want like 200 skill in unarmed to fight enclave guys , after getting the training.

Plus I think either the Sierra army depot or mariposa has punching bags that increase unarmed by 5, and I think there's two of them. Can't remember off the top of my head which one they're in though

Sierra. Entrance level.

The Arroyo guy has a cap, the Klamath guy does not to my knowledge. Arroyo caps out at like, 60%?

[Racuch Zawodowiec]

From my experience, getting positive karma is simply doing quests for people, it's hardly to be evil in this game, because you will sleep with tons of money very early, so it's not question of being profit. Even if Dragon will train you early, you will still not be able to defeat his students or his rival and his training isn't infinite. I usually wait to get 24 level and get slayer perk to get critcal hits and then bother with his quest.

[Yodaballz666]

Hello! Sorry I am late to this post, but I actually did this just exact thing in my play-through and see no one really answered your question with specifics. I was able to get more than 250 karma by the time i left Kalamath.
I got 150 total from saving Smiley and talking to his lady friend. (Avoiding payment probably awarded so much karma) The rest was done with saving the dog in Arroyo, killing rat god, helping Torr (+killing Dunton brothers for 10 karma with some sweet early game spiked knuckles) and refueling the still for bob. I had a total of 305 karma before going down to SF. (Also gambled at the Den for some spending money in SF too)

So the only real challenge is getting past the geckos with a decently low unarmed skill. But there are some tricks! You can use meat jerky to distract geckos for a turn bu dropping it. You could buy some from the dunton brothers before killing them or you can loot some from the slaughterhouse northside klamath/that shack on the map where you help out Torr.
Geckos are also weak to groin shots/kiting. I got through the whole cave one spiked knuckle punch at a time and then running with 10 agility pretty easily.

Happy punching 👊