ALL SKILLS 100 Energy/Explosives/Unarmed Crit Build

This build lets you burn, vaporize, blow up, punch, shoot. Destroy practically everything in your path with critical hits, dismemberment, explosions and other stuff.

Introduction

You have tried every build possible, and you're desperately looking for new ways to make your run exciting because you're addicted to New Vegas, i know that feel.
Well, luckily you found this guide, which i came up to merging the 3 things that i love most in this game: Critical hits, unarmed and energy weapons, then i got full mad and decided to also put explosives in it, and thus this baby was born. Every single one of these builds is fun as hell, but what if you put them up together? I know what you're thinking "B-but you can't do that, it makes no sense, plus you don't have enough SPECIAL" well you know what, that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ wrong!
This build is a detailed walkthrough of almost everything you need to do, so there is no need to say that there may be SPOILERS, but i recommend doing this only if you finished the game once, twice is better, or at least played it for as long as it takes to learn some advanced mechanics, because it could be hard to get some things right, expecially at the start.

That's it for the boring part, lets make this dude.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

So, as I said earlier, it could seem like there is not enough points to make everything work, but that's only appearance, because you got implants, you got Intense Training and you get one SPECIAL for ending Lonesome Road, so that's a lot of points.

Starting off, those are the special i recommend and used in my personal run which i based the guide on:

Strength - 5
Standard for S, in the end you will be able to wield every weapon in the game, boosting it to 9, except for the minigun, but that's not a problem since using guns with this build is pure heresy, with perks you will increase carry weight.

Perception - 5
This build is energy weapons and explosives focused, so this attribute should be much higher, but i realized that what is important in this build is the critical hit, the skills added by P to the en. weps. and explosives is useful, but that's it, it doesnt give much more, so this is where P will stay, a mediocre 5.

Endurance - 7
Ok so E is our little star, everything it does is useful, survivor skill enhancement, which is needed for certain perks, it gives HP, unarmed damage, and with 7 points you can get every stat implant in the game. This will be increased to 10 in the end, but with the OWB perk Heartless you already get 100% poison resistance, so taking that 50% res which 10 E gives you is pointless, but the little HP bonus is good and the point really can't be used anywhere else.

Charisma - 1
Dump stat, never put any points here, companions are already strong (if not OP), Barter and Speech can be raised quickly, absolutely useless attribute for this build.

Intelligence - 9
This is the important one, 9, because you want those 15 skill points every ♥♥♥♥♥♥ level: level fast, build up fast, so you can destroy everything earlier. Get the implant before level 2 to do so, it can be tricky but i will add a tutorial on how to do it down below, anyway you can find everywhere in the web how to get that implant.

Agility - 6
Reload speed! But that's not the main purpose, we need this for mandatory perks in the build, so yeah put at least 6 points to A.

Luck - 7
You wont go anywhere without a bit of luck, said my grandma to me once, and she was right! We will get this straight to 10 in the endgame, because every 1 point of L is 1% of crit chance, so we have to use it all.


After you read all this, i wanted to show you how your SPECIAL should look once the build is fully done.

S - 9 (implant-1+reinforced spine-2+Intense Training-1)
P - 7 (implant-1+first recon helmet-1)
E - 9 (implant-1+Lonesome Road perk-1)
C - 3 (implant-1+Ulysses Duster-1)
I - 10 (implant-1)
A - 7 (implant-1)
L - 10 (implant-1+Intense Training-1+Lucky Shades-1)

More info about gear and perks in the next sections.

Screenshot taken after 150 hours in this build.

Traits and tagged skills

So you will start with this half rotten character, which isn't good at anything and still has to do a psychological test for Doc, but now we will gather some points.

You have 45 points distributed by 3 skills of your choice, it obviously isn't important which ones you will choose, because in the end each one of them will be to 100, but you can get a good start if you choose wisely. I personally chose Barter and Speech because they are useful ALWAYS and you start with 8 points each with my SPECIAL, which is very sad, and Lockpick, because it's another always-useful skill, but you can choose energy weps or unarmed if you feel like having a kickstart in one of your two main skills.


Traits:
Built to destroy - 3% more critical chance, this is needed and ♥♥♥♥ the drawback.
Skilled - 65 free skill points, actually not free, you get 10% less xp, but it's so unnoticeable that it almost feels unfair, again ♥♥♥♥ the drawback and take it.

"But why haven't you taken the Four Eyes trait since, with the lucky shades and implant, it would boost your P to 9?"
Well my annoying friend, because this is an energy weapons, explosives AND unarmed, so P becomes much less important since we need a trait that works for the other skill too, therefore I prefer 65 skill points which boost you in the beginning and let you max your character much earlier. You ain't ready for my wizardry if you feel the need of Four Eyes, get out of here.

How do you get all your skills to 100?

So, this is an important question that i often hear, and the answer is only one: Math and Patience.

Yes, i know those are 2.

Anyway, i know nobody likes to do Math while playing, so i will do it for you:
You have 13 skills, and to max your character you need 1300 points.
If you followed my character creation, got my SPECIAL+45 from tagged skills+65 from the skilled trait, you should end up with exactly 338 points, which is quite a lot for a start.


You have 50 levels, which means 49 level ups, and, if you get the INT implant, 15 points per level.

338+15*49=1073

This means you can have 1073 points by level 50.
Now we have to take care of skill books, there are 4 in the base game for each ability (5 for science), plus 1 copy of each is craftable in OWB (then 1 more for science and 2 more for sneak), DM adds one of each, and LR adds one of each too, HH adds crates in which they can spawn, but they are random so they wont be counted. Putting all thes numbers together, we get 4 points per skill for each read book, with the Comprehension perk, doing some math you will find that we have in total 377 skill points in skill books. So in the end we have:

1073+377=1450

As you can see, we have 150 points more than needed, so you just have to get the majority of those skill books.

Now i have some more math for you out there who enjoyed this.
For every special you level up, you get 2 points to each influenced ability, except for Luck that gives you 1 point to each ability every 2 perks (3,5,7,9), you will increase your stats with implants and apparel, but since apparel can't be used as a solid upgrade since you can easily take them off, i wont count them.
Starting off with Luck, we will get that to 9, so it's 13 points more already.
Strenght will be upgraded by 3 levels, 2 of which are not irreversible, but since you will always have the reinforced spine i'll count them,6 points to melee skill.
Perception will have 1 upgrade, so those are 6 points in total, distributed to En. Wep., Lockpicking and Explosives.
Endurance will be upgraded by 2, so that means 8 total points, 4 each to Unarmed and Survival.
Charisma will have 1 upgrade, 4 points between Speech and Barter.
Intelligence, 1 upgrade, 6 points to Medicine, Repair and Science.
Agility, 1 upgrade, 4 points to Guns and Sneak.

Combining all these we get additional 47 points, this is not really important as we clearly saw that you get enough points from skill books, but if you want to max it ASAP you might want to make them count.

But hey, am i forgetting something? A little perk that gives you 2 points for each level up? Yes, that is the educated perk, well, this perk can be described with one word: lazy. If taken by replacing comprehension it doesn't let you max your character and you still have to hunt for books, which will only give 3 points each, and it gives you very little space of mistake, so no, no educated perk in my build, move your asses and go hunt for those skill books if you want to max you punch-vape guy.

I skipped every skill book in Lonesome Road, and some of the Dead Money ones, but it's not a problem as you can see, I even lost 65 skill points from removing the skilled trait in OWB and I still managed to do it, so you can take it pretty easy with skill books after all (MIND THAT I HAVE GOT ALL THE MOJAVE ONES AND THE OWB ONES).
This last part was copypasted from one of the last sections of the build, but keep in mind that you still have to collect them all in the earlier stages, or you will end up without a lot of skill points, but it's just to show that in the end it's not too hard.

Perks

*I marked the very importand ones, you can exchange the unmarked ones for every other perk you want, this is my personal list.

Levels - Perks - Requirements - Comment
02 - Intense Training (1) - n/d - Put this one in Luck.*
04 - Comprehension - IN 4 - Do not read any skill books before getting this perk!*
06 - Light touch - AG 6 Repair 45 - +5% crit chance when wearing light armor*
08 - Super Slam! - ST 6 Melee 45 - A downed enemy is a harmless enemy. Works with Deathclaws.*
10 - Finesse - n/d - Plain 5% crit chance, must have.*
12 - Piercing Strike - Unarmed 70 - Do you feel like punching unarmored foes, like always?*
14 - Jury Rigging - Repair 90 - Very useful perk for any build.
16 - Better Criticals - PE 6 LK 6 - The name says it all, more damage.*
18 - Stonewall - ST 6 EN 6 - If you fall, you're dead, so this doesn't make you fall.
20 - Them's good eatin' - Survival 55 - Adds lootable things that heal, a lot, a big ♥♥♥♥♥♥ lot.
22 - Laser Commander - En. wep. 90 - More crit chance with lasers.*
24 - Vigilant recycler - Science 70 - The ammo you get from here are OP.
26 - Slayer - AG 7 Unarmed 90 - The more you hit, the more criticals you inflict.*
28 - Pyromaniac - Explosives 60 - With the SH saturnite fist this is a bliss.
30 - Burden to Bear - ST 6 EN 6 - 50 more carry weight.
32 - Strong Back - ST 5 EN 5 - 50 more carry weight. Again.
34 - Pack Rat - IN 5 Barter 70 - Ammo weigh less.
36 - Intense training (2) - n/d - Put this in ST, needed for the next perk.
38 - Heavyweight - ST 7 - Big explosive weapons weigh less.
40 - Demolition expert (1) - Explosives 50 - Better damage.*
42 - Demolition expert (2) - Explosives 50 - Much better damage.*
44 - Demolition expert (3) - Explosives 50 - ♥♥♥♥♥♥ blow everything up.*
46 - Splash damage - Explosives 70 - Bigger bangs!*
48 - Voracious reader - INT 7 - The ultimate crit chance boost.*
50 - Just lucky I'm alive - Neutral Karma - Better criticals.*

So, that was the hard part, now i will list the other important perks, the ones you get from challenges and quests, not obtained by leveling up.

Set lasers for fun - 4% crit chance with energy wep.*
All usanagi implants (not the HP one) - Stats and DT.*
All unarmed technics - Enhanced combat style.*
Heartless - 100% poison resist right at the start of OWB.*
Reinforced spine - +2 ST at the end of OWB.*
Lonesome Road ending - +1 SPECIAL.*


And that's it for the perks, obviously you just have to follow the marked ones, the others are here just to show how i set mine.

Best clothing

There isn't much choice here, because the highest crit chance can be achieved only this way, so i'm just going to list the apparel here.
For a big part of the game you will not have access to the duster, so just use any light armor you like, i personally use Graham's armor, before that Gecko reinforced leather armor, and even before that a normal reinforced leather armor, but it's your choice.

Ulysses' duster - +5% crit chance, +1 CHR.


1st Recon beret - +5% crit chance, +1 PER.



Lucky shades - +1 LCK.

Best unarmed weapons

Here you have a wide variety of gloves and fists, every one listed has its own good things, so i suggest you try them all until you find the one you like.

With the endgame gear and perks your unarmed damage will have a 28% crit chance affected by the weapon multiplier (not counting true police stories), and 5% not affected by it, considering this, my favorite choices are:

Fist of Rawr - This one looks sick and does a good amount of damage, which combined with an awesome 61% critical chance lets you have some fun with it. Best unarmed weapon in the game imo, very fun, literally 1 shootting things and those not instantly killed get knocked back so you can chug 3-4 more fists at them and obliterate their internal organs.


Industrial Hand - Man this thing is a monster, it rips through anything and does nearly 4 hits per second with a flat 33% crit chance and ignores DT/DR, so yeah this is the weapon to go if you just want to left click to win by sawing through naked enemies.




Saturnite fist superheated - This weapon is not that good, but things change if you get the pyromaniac perk, then this will become one of the highest damaging unarmed weapons, and who doesn't like a 33% chance of setting someone on fire? Its only drawback is the speed, it hits hard but slow.




Embrace of the Mantis King! - With a multiplier of 3×, this fist makes you get an unbelievable 89% crit chance, which is almost always. The only shame is that those crits don't hurt that much, and it's a bit slow, but you can get your hands on this toy pretty early in the game, and it's the most op weapon you can find until you get one of the above.




Greased Lightning - A faster (much faster) version of the power fist, but i find it boring to use and its damage output it's still worse than a good crit weapon, like the one above.




Pushy - Although this fist becomes pretty weak pretty fast, its really useful to push enemies away from you while dealing a moderate amount of damage, but since every statistic it's mediocre i recommend it only if you really can't get any other of the above.


Paladin-toaster - "What the ♥♥♥♥ is this thing doing here?" that's what i'm asking myself while reading this, well it's a good situational weapon against robots or power armors, though there are many better choices, but the nice thing about this is that you can get it just at the start of the game by making a quick run to the cave and using a stealth boy, so i recommend using this exclusively if you can get it in the first 5 levels, as a kick start for stronger enemies, but since it attacks slow due to your ♥♥♥♥ start unarmed skill and does poor damage, merged with the very high cost of maintenance, you will want to switch ASAP to brass knuckles, spiked are better, and then again ASAP to one of the fists above.


Two-step goodbye - What we have here is a masterpiece of mad minds, first of all, with a 4× multiplier, you get 117% crit chance, which is obviously rounded to 100%, this means that every hit is a critical hit, but it doesn't stop here, every critical kill (which translates to every kill) you do will stick a grenade to the corpse which does over 300 dmg with the explosive perks, this weapon is pretty dangerous for you and your allies, so i don't really recommend it, but it's really fun to use and it's very particular so i'll list it here.

Best energy weapons

There is lots of energy weapons in this game, but most of them are not optimal for a crit build, like the plasma ones, but i'll list what i found out to be the best ones, even the non-critchance friendly.

But first, math! The standard crit chance for laser weapons, in the end game, will be 28% affected by the weapon multiplier, not counting true police stories, and 19% not affected by it (9% for the plasma weapons). Laser weapons have the highest crit chance of all the weapons in this build.

LAER+ - Very good weapon, almost perfect. 1-shotting deathclaws and everything less tankier, 2-3 shot for the biggest guys, very precise, high rate of fire. It has one and only one small drawback: durability. It just lasts for a little time, which is not that good, but it's ok since in the endgame we will have millions of money and alternative ways to repair it.



Laser rifle+ - Hold on there, don't jump on me yet, let me explain why this takes such a high place on the energy weapons list: the Tri-beam laser rifle is a better option, better damage, better critical, hell it tears down Deathclaws as nothing, but it uses too much ammo, way too much. I couldn't get out of my house with 300 MFC because 30 minutes after I would have had the need to get back and take more, as if it wasn't enough, you always have to aim carefully or you'll waste 3 MFC, and you can shoot only 16 times. That's not very good, same thing with the YCS/186, too much ammo wasted and reloads too often. But then you get the Laser rifle: you have to fully mod it, and then it will do a great job, only 1 MFC per shot: you can waste as many as you want and you will still use less than with the Tri-beam, and 24 shots until reload. Like the less reliable counterpart, it has a 61% crit chance, but this one shoots 2 lasers simoultaneously, each one can crit for the same amount of damage as the Tri-beam's ones. It can take the place of the YCS/186 because with the scope it becomes a fair sniper weapon, even though the damage isn't nearly as big as the YCS. So, in the end, use this instead, it's a solid weapon and you will like it, trust me, you wont notice a great difference in DPS, but you will on ammo. The only reason to use the Tri-beam instead, is if you've been stocking up MFC since 2010 and don't mind losing them all, and I mean a stock of tens of thousands of those, and maybe they wont even last long enough to finish the game. As a side note, the laser rifle, if it scores a critical for each laser, with my perks and my build, it can oneshot most things, with just one MFC per shot.



Pew Pew - This is an alien blaster, except it uses 5 energy cells per shot and it has the skin of a laser pistol, even with that yellow-ish thing going on. With the crit chance applied to its mulitplier (2.5x) we will have a 89% crit chance, which means a lot, and the damage done by this weapon's crit is the same as the alien blaster's one, even more if loaded with optimized/max charge ammo. Its main drawback is the 2 shots magazine capacity, which means you have to 1-2 shots something that charges at you, and this doesn't happen with Deathclaws, keep it in mind.


YCS/186 - The big guy of the energy weapons, this rifle is pure destruction, one shots almost everything, it has a very high crit chance of 65%, but since i think it will be used as a sneaky weapon it will crit always, and its damage is madness, a crit hit with all the perks with this thing can cause more than 400 damage. It's situational though, as it works best in long distances, and there are more practical weapons in close quarters.



Plasma caster+ - If Mercy (see explosive weapons section) was an energy weapon, this is what it would be like. I chose this over The Smitty Special (unique variant) because of the higher crit chance, the plasma caster has a small 37%, and yet does a decent amount of damage. Obviously mod it. It has a small magazine but that's not a problem because by the time it ends everything will be dead, the problem is its very wide spread, so you can't engage foes in long range combats with it.



Holorifle+ - I have lots of thoughts about this rifle, it's the best damage per cell energy weapon in the game, but its magazines are small and it doesn't fire quite fast, you might want to try it and see if you like it, it has a max 47% crit chance without True Police Stories, but those crits hurt as hell. I like it as a weapon you can use to kill small groups of enemies with low hp pool, but since it doesn't crit that much, a weapon like the laser rifle surpasses it in DPS.



Cleansing flame - Since you will probably get the pyromaniac perk for the saturnite fist superheated, you will use it in your energy weapons too! This flamethrower does a good amount of damage overall and it's very fun to use.


Tri-beam laser rifle+ - This is awesome. Let's have a look at this: fully modded, it does a very good damage, it shoots 3 lasers and each laser, separately, has 61% crit chance, if each laser scores a crit, you get an obliterating weapon, and since you have 61% chance, that is going to happen. If you're wondering why such an amazing weapon is here, and you haven't read the Laser Rifle description, it's because it destroys your ammo very badly.


Q-35 matter modulator - One of the most balanced weapon in the game, its projectiles are fast, only 1 MFC per shot, high crit damage and 65% crit chance, and many other aspects that make this one good, we don't get a lot for the crit chance because it's a plasma rifle, but it's ok since it's very good at what it does. It can be used in every situation early on, and you can just switch to another one if you feel the need of more range or damage, and use this as a main weapon. After using it quite some time with this build i found that its fire rateo is a big drawback and i don't feel to recommend it anymore for the late game, but it''s still a great all around weapon.



Sprtel-Wood 9700 - This monster doesn't quite use your crit chance bonus, but it's very op so you might want to try it, again it's fun as hell to use, so just buy it and go shoot at things.



AER14 protorype - This is an all around good weapon, works in every situation, 75% crit chance, doesn't use much ammo, and it's very efficient, but it doesn't have any strong point, it's good at everything but there are many weapons that do certain things better. Anyway, it's a generic weapon to use against non-difficult enemies, its damage is pretty bad though, even the critical.

Best explosive weapons

This is the fun part of the weapons listing, those things are pure madness and i love every single one of them, they are situational so i ended up using all of them.

Mercy - This weapon of pain has to be one of my favourite in the game, and while you hear that ''CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG'', and your enemies limbs fly all over the place, you realize explosives was a good choice. Add plasma nades for the best explosive-energy combo in the game!


Esther - So here you are, above cottonwood cove, with your better-than-the-fatman weapon embraced, you check all your damage and area perks, you load your Big Kid ammo, and then fire. The sight is almost as beautiful as megaton detonating.
Even though this is fun i prefer the normal Fat Man upgraded with GRA because it weighs much much less.



Red Glare - Have you ever seen an Apache attack helicopter? Well if you haven't, they have those big things that fire dozens of rockets per second. What do you think about having one of those on your shoulder?



Annabelle - This missile launcher is op and easily obtainable, it will serve you right from the start of the game, and be sure to kill some guys on the Hoover Dam battle with it, just in its honor.



25mm grenade APW - This is your little boy, it's nothing special but it's a good alternative if your CHUG CHUG CHUG runs out of ammo, i choose this over the grenade machine gun to add some variety, since their stats are almost the same.

Getting the INT implant before lv. 2

Now you have all the theoric part, but you have to play, and you're scared, how the hell do you get to Vegas so fast? How the hell do you get 4000 caps right at the start of the game? Fear no more, fellow wanderer, i got that covered, just keep reading. Skip to the next section if you're a cool kid and already have your own method.
But why do we have to get the implant before level 2? Because we want to have 15 points every single level, and if we get it al level 2 we get only 14 points, so since it doesn't take much effort to get the implant ASAP, just do it and enjoy +1 skill point.

REMEMBER: We have the skilled trait so we get only 90% of the xp, that means the "drawback" is actually helping you!

I have done this in very hard mode with hardcore on, so it will ALWAYS work if you do it right.

So as soon as you choose either you want the hardcore mod or not (yes), start looting Doc's house, mind to take everything that has value>10, but be careful, because you don't want to make any xp, so there are a few things you can and you can't do.

First of all, don't pass the skill check with Doc, it gives you only poor medical stuff and you end up with 27 xp more than needed.

Doc looks ♥♥♥♥ here i know.


You can't repair the broken smg, it gives you 9 xp. You can always come back later if you want it, don't worry.



You can create stimpacks/drugs(i haven't planned this build to use chems, but if you want they don't hurt, kinda) becasue this doesn't give you any xp.



Don't forget to sell some goods to Doc, you get around 100 caps.

When you're ready, get out of the house and, without talking with anyone neither stopping, go to the general store. Sell everything you can to Chet, until he doesn't have any money left, you should end up with a total of 800-850 caps.

Get out and run to the school, get in, open the safe (you 100% have science at 25, even lockpick if you tagged it) and take everything (stealth boy is very important), don't kill any mantis in the school, unnecessary xp.

You now have 36/200 xp, let's start traveling to freeside.

Get to Sloan without descovering it or any of the locations on the way, you can follow the road south then north-east and you will not have any trouble with enemies.

Follow the rails until you get near Black Mountain, and when you get a "caution" alert from the deathclaw to your left just use your stealth boy and keep following the rails crouched (be sure not to have any clothes on, they will ruin your stealth), avoiding getting too close to deathclaws. You will eventually get past them, simply keep going straight towards camp mccarran. DO NOT DISCOVER ANY LOCATION UNTIL YOU GET TO CAMP MCCARRAN.

Once you discover mccarran head right towards the NCR farm, discover it, then straight nord to the gun runners, discover them too. You now should have exactly 63 points, if you have more, just repeat the process without descovering locations on the way to mccarran, takes less than 10 mins once you get it done the first time.

This is what your map should look like once you get to the gun runners:


Start selling to the gun runners' robot until you have a total of 1700-1750 caps, you can keep selling until he has no money if you want.

Discover the freeside east gate (9xp), just a few metres north-east of the gun runners, enter and go straight to the atomic wrangler. Don't mind thugs and people fighting, just run to the casino.

Once you are in, buy 500 chips and get to the blackjack table, start playing it and winning money, it's really easy to win with 7 luck so don't worry much about it. After 10 games you will earn 90xp, but it's not a problem since you will not get to 200 anyway. Keep playing until you have 4000 caps or if you are like me until they kick you out.

If you stayed and won caps until you got banned (5000 net win), you should have around 7000 caps and 162 xp (90 xp from playing blackjack 10 times). Now fast travel to freeside east gate.

From there travel directly north-east and in a minute you should get to the clinic, with 171 xp.
Enter, buy the INT implant and fast travel back to goodsprings, finally starting to play your game.

Level 15 summary and making money

Hey dude back at it again with that stupid guide? Yes, after some days from the last big update i finally decided to make the levels 1-15 specific guide, tips and tricks and other stuff. Or just to show off my character, that may be the reason too.



25 hours into the game and I'm really happy with this build and liking a lot how it's coming out, I have so far encountered no issues with perks and I'm satisfied overall, now I'll stop this useless introductive thing and get to the point.

As you can see just down below, i already bought all the implants, i think you should get them one after the other as soon as you have 4000 caps to spend, the first one should be STR for level 8 perk (so you must get it before), or LCK if you feel like you are going to have spare money to get also the STR implant before level 8. I personally did it in this order:

INT(obviously) - LCK - STR - PER(main skills boost) - END(all around useful) - CHR(companions boost) - AGL(last one because doesn't give anything particularly useful for this build, just reload speed)



Looking at the skills, i got all the skill books in the southern area of the map, and like half of the northern, you should take them ASAP because it's very useful to have a lot of skill points at the start, some areas are a bit hard (like the nuclear test site that has an energy wep skill book) but you can get to them later, just remember to take them. Did i already say that it's very ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ultra important to take skill books? Are you still sitting here reading this? GO ♥♥♥♥♥♥ GET THEM.

For the leveling part, just focus on leveling the skill that is needed for the next perk, while also looking at your favourite and/or main build skills, it can be tricky but it becomes focken ez with skill books. Yes, still skill books.



The perks are the ones listed in a section above this, the killing things perks that give small damage boosts, unarmed combat skils, the implants and companion perks.



For the early game companions i highly (very very very very very very highly) recommend ED-E, he is the best companion in the game and you can get it in like half an hour from the start, you can make energy ammo from him and he is badass. Did his quest too, upgraded the blaster. Now i'm using Rex just for his ability to take down foes (sometimes...) and for fun, but ED-E is better, sorry doggo. Umanoid companions are all good, they all have their strong points but i wanted one that gave me a lot of damage output, and while Boone is very good at it, he shoots the poor legionaries that just do their work, and you must be friendly with the legion and do whatever it takes to get in their likings, because you need their safehouse for the holy Lucky Shades. Then and only then you can stab poor Caesar in the back, blow everything up and set the east on fire with nukes, things like that. So, no Boone for the early part of the game, the other high dmg dealing without any item given by the player is Lily, i rushed Jacobstown almost at the start of the game to get her, and it's worth it, she's a killing machine at this point of the game, and combined with ED-E makes a big team, same with Rex. Just let her use ranged attacks, cause she can die pretty easily if she goes full melee, and her assault carabine shots do hurt.

These are the weapons i currently use, the plasma defender is there just for the Set lasers for fun perk, i will not use it after that, the laser RCW doesn't use my crit build wisely but it's a fun way to waste ECP ammo. The Q-35 matter modulator is a must at this point of the game, you wont find better MFC energy weapon this early. As i said some time ago, Embrace the mantis king! is the best fist you can get at this point of the game and it's not that expensive (I'm looking at you greased lighting). Annabelle is very situational but also very good, i have no other explosive weapons for carry weight problems, we will get to them later in the game.



Just after hitting level 14, you will have just taken the Jury rigging perk (lets you repair things with vaguely similar things, you're not limited anymore to the same item, easily the best perk in the game), and you can make tons of money. All you have to do is buy or find almost broken good weapons, they cost nothing for example a ballistic fist almost broken from the BoS shop costs 600 caps, or you can steal all the goodies from the silver rush, find very good energy weapons on dead Bright followers, and so on. Then you buy another similar weapon, at full condition, much weaker, but a one you can repair your other powerful weapon with (say boxing tape for the ballistic fist) which wont cost more than 200-300 caps if you're smart. Then repair the big broken weapon with the noob max condition one, and voilà you have a 7700 worth ballistic fist, sell it and profit. Repeat all this, doing it also with multiple weapons at a time, sell them to various people, do it with apparel too (power armors repaired with metal armors!) and you will have 45k caps by level 15 just like me, probably even more, i was a bit lazy and I still have to sell a lot of things.

I use the followers' safehouse as a house, clean water, free meds supplies every now and then, not to mention Julie farkas gives you a very useful apparel that boosts your Science and Medicine skills by 10 when you wear it, just collect a lot of Med-x and donate them all to Julie, when she says she doesn't want them anymore give her Rad-away, and at a certain point you will be idolized and she will give you the Lab Coat and the Safehouse key.

My main quest is not really advanced, still have to go to boulder city, but will soon go to vegas, I already spoke to every faction in the game save for the Khans.
I will make another section similar to this when i feel i have to say something, cheers.

Level 32 summary and Honest Hearts

Ok, 65 hours into the game I finished HH, and i didn't make a level 30 summary because i was in the middle of the DLC and wanted to finish it before doing the summary. As you can see, my sleep is disabled, this is because the first quest of every dlc disables the sleep need, not sure if a bug or what, sleeping should fix it.



That said, let's not waste your precious time saying nothing, i just finished the add-on, and finishing the add-on gives you Joshua Graham's armor, well that's the best armor set for this build right after the Ulysses duster. As you can see, I got the Lucky shades too, not too hard to get, just take NCR dogtags to the Decanus at Cottonwood cove.



My abilities are nearly all maxed out, I'm just trying not to get anything to 100 because i need the skill books from the DLCs so I don't waste points. Just trying to get anything 20-30 points from 100 so if i need it i can easily take it up with chems, robes and magazines. Except the combat skills, of course.



My SPECIAL are maxed out for the build purposes, except STR, need OWB for that. And CHR, because I need Ulysses Duster.



The weapons I use atm are Gehenna and the Laser rifle, i took Gehenna over the unique mantis fist because i just got the Pyromaniac perk and wanted to use it, and as soon as I'm going to start OWB I'll get the Saturnite fist super-heated. I've been using the laser rifle since the end of HH because the Tri-beam destroyed my ammo supply back at Zion and i was constantly searching for MFC and buying them from Graham. Never again. No explosives yet, only used them sometimes but they don't do enough damage to be useful in any way now, except Esther/Fatman, but that's another story.



Right now I'm searching for a Heavy incinerator, I want one because of Pyromaniac and Cleansing flame didn't work as much as I expected. As soon as I find it and done some basic stuff in the Mojave (mostly farming the free stuff NPC give to you when they like you i.e. medicines from Julie Farkas, ammo at the BoS bunker, Caesar's legion dropboxes, stealth boys from legion safehouse, super stims from the follower's safehouse etc.) I'll be doing OWB, and probably I'm going to make another section like this when I'm done, probably much shorter because there will not be much to say about it. Cheers.

Level 40 summary and Old World Blues

There it goes, the best of them all. At 90 hours' cap Old World Blues ends, and I have pretty much completed the gear for my character, the only part I miss is the Ulysses' duster. Anyway, summary of what I did in the dlc.



I finally got the Saturnite Fist super-heated, best unarmed weapon in the game, except for the industrial hand thing. One of the most important things is that I changed my traits with the autodoc, I removed the skilled trait, thus removing 65 skill points from my character, in exchange for fast shot. That's because skilled is not necessary anymore at this point of the game and I needed a more endgame trait. Fast shot was the most useful one. Getting the LAER and modifying it was awesome, and I think this weapon is even better than the laser rifle, I'm just a bit worried about the fast decay, but it shouldn't be a big problem since it's not too fast.

Exchanged the spine for the original one, kept the mechanical heart and took back my brain.

SPECIAL are the ones that should be. Everything maxed out except END and CHR, for those we need Lonesome Road.



The skills are a bit short for the level, since I lost the 65 points from skilled (my game is patched with the unofficial patch, and without it the game would be bugged and wouldn't take your 65 points but just remove the -10% xp penalty, up to you if you want to ''cheat'' that way). Anyway, I have every skill book that was in OWB and in the base game, and this is the situation, with gear on.



Got the transportalponder as a souvenir from OWB, the LAER and saturnite fist super heated are also from OWB. No explosive weapons yet. That's because they don't do quite the damage they should, I still have to get some perks for them. I will just run around with Esther sometimes. Probably after Dead Money the explosive weapons will finally take part in my arsenal. Fire weapons, like the Heavy incinerator and Cleansing flame, pretty much suck, even with en wep 100 and pyromaniac. Shame.



Clothing is this, i managed to get both the Tri-valence thing and the beret with the unofficial patch, but since i uninstalled it short after this you wont see it again.



Remember to make the most Weapon Repair Kits you can, because in OWB the ingredients to make them are just everywhere, in the whole dlc i made around 60 of them, and use them to repair the LAER if you can't find plasma rifles and such, or to repair rare weapons that have high value and don't have many things to repair them with (i.e. minigun, grenade machinegun, missile launcher, etc.)

I'm probably going to sell some things and jump to Dead Money, will do a summary after that. Probably will be rich asf.

Level 46 summary and Dead Money

115 hours, I finished Dead Money. It's arguably the most tedious DLC, but it's pretty easy to go through if you speedrun. Of course i'm a sick bastard and have to collect everything, complete every challenge and grind the ♥♥♥♥ out of it.



There is not really much to say about all this, except how I managed to get all the gold bars in the dlc and some tips to survive through. Also comments on my current weapons and skill.

First of all, my congrats to the author of this awesome guide, the guide was so detailed and very useful, i knew most of the stuff but the attention in the details is what made me want to include it here, so if you want to know how I played money-wise in the dlc, just read this guide.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=627534420 (Edit: I was reading this in 2025 and the guide no longer exists and I can't even remember what it said. Very sad about it.)

If you want to know how i got the gold bars without exploits really easily check my video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbFJBu8LZLk
I ended up selling some of my gold bars to vendors in the sierra madre and keeping most of them because i got tired of waiting 3 days for them to respawn then do the trip around, so i got 35k chips, will last me for a lot of weapon repair kits.
So I still have 20-ish gold bars in the abandoned bunker. Will buy some unique weapons with those.

As for the skills, I skipped some of the books in the dlc, because by doing quick math I realised I have 40-50 spare skill points beyond getting all to 100, so I just took it easy and probably will do the same in the divide.



Clothing is always the same, weapons are those, I'm using the grenade MG because Mercy, although I already got it (stealth boy-ed myself through the legendary deathclaw), kills me because of the huge blast radius, so I'll just use Mercy some times, to have fun, but will use the grenade MG for going around. The fat man (GRA)+ weighs only 7.50, so it's ideal to have it replace esther which goes for 20. Using the Katana as a melee because it's absolutely OP against big groups of low hp foes (from mantis, to geckos, to cazadores and nightstalkers). Still going on the debate between LAER+ or Laser RIfle+, can't choose.



Brief strategy on how to survive in the Sierra Madre?
First of all, the normal cloud isn't a problem, your hp gets drained really slow and you can manage it, stick to Dean Domino when you want to go in places with the thick toxic cloud, it's useful. If you can't go somewhere because speakers, wait until the end of the dlc and go back there, although I didn't need it.
Use your melee weps, craft a clean knife spear which is op against ghost people, and towards the end dlc you will get your hands on the cosmic knife superheated which is very good too. Thems good eatin' helped me a lot, having always healing items with you is handy. If you have the Y-3 implant from OWB you can drink from the toilets scattered around the villa with a really small rad penalty, even for that there are a lot of rad away. I'll upload a vid on yt on how to trap elijah and get the gold bars without stealth boy nor turbos, but it works fine and better if you have them. Will be linked here. It's not a hard dlc if you know how to handle it, and if you have had nice farming. I've been able to pass every skill check without problems so far anyway. Good luck for when you'll do it though, even knowing all this and using method, it gets tedious, but don't give up and you'll come back to the mojave happy and rich.

Level 50 summary and Lonesome Road

I finished Lonesome Road at level 50, 135 hours in or something like that, normally it's a pretty short dlc, but I went back to the Mojave to raise my NCR reputation, so I could get the NCR courier duster which is useful for carry weight. Anyway, let's have a look at what we have here.



SPECIAL are as they should and skills are all maxed, because math always wins, and everything proceeded according to the plan. I skipped every skill book in Lonesome Road, and some of the Dead Money ones, but it's not a problem as you can see, I even lost 65 skill points from removing the skilled trait and I still managed to do it, so you can take it pretty easy with skill books after all (MIND THAT I HAVE GOT ALL THE MOJAVE ONES AND THE OWB ONES).
Ah yeah I'm glad you noticed the PImp-Boy 3 Billion, isn't it shiny aye?





Now for the weapons, I'm still testing out all the weapons this build might use, so this is not a definitive list, but it's the closest I'll get to endgame gear until the final section, Fist of Rawr is very fun to use, and makes a good stealth weapon if needed, whereas Industrial hand is op but doesn't use well the sneaky part or the knockdowns. I still carry around the Fat Man because it weighs only 7.50. My energies are the LAER+, which i believe is the most balanced weapon in the game for this build, and the YCS/186 for very long ranges, oneshots most enemies. Mercy is there because is my best gun and a filthy grenade machine gun, even though it doesn't kill me when i use it, doesn't feel the same, so i went with Mercy an try not to blow myself up while using it. I carry around some plasma nades and satchel charges just in case, but they're not really good, usually i just use them to blow up people's pants. All the other weapons here are needed for some challenges and I will not use them after that.



Clothing now, it's always the same, except I finally have the Ulysses Duster, been waiting for it for 130 hours and finally it's mine. I use the courier duster (NCR version) because of its carry weight bonus, so if i'm overweight i just pop that in and eat something that gives me +1 ST (bighorner steaks) and go to base to drop things. Rebreather always there because you never know.



And that's the end for the DLCs, little note here: I nuked both the legion and NCR to get the unique armors and weapons, but i still didn't talk to Crocker so i could save my NCR reputation, not the legion though, guess i will have to start raiding their camps and doing ♥♥♥♥ for the NCR.

I will definitely make another very last section when I'll be that close to 100% the game, and finish everything I can, with the very best endgame gear, and a nice little ending to this project I've made.

End Game - The Hall of Fame

Hello,
it's been a while since I started this, I always thought it was going to be my biggest and best play, so I decided to share its details with you, but now that's actually finished, I feel complete, a way to end my endless search for the best character, and to end this guide.
I have achieved just about now 170 hours with the run, and I started the Hoover Dam battle.

But first I took some screenshots and I would like to end once and for all the struggle between the best weapons in the game for this char, so before saying anything else let's get into it.

The true jewel of this play is the LAER+, I can safely say, after all this time, that this is the best weapon in here, it's basically an alien blaster with infinite ammo, over 350 dps without the crits, which hurt like hell and do crazy damage, easily disintegrated everything that ever crossed my path, deathclaws, cazadores, radscorpions, tunnelers, marked men, robots, dumb people, centurions, ncr veterans, you name it. Usually 1 shots everything, can take a max of 2-3.

Chug chug chug gotta be here, mass destruction, if you are more than 30 feet away from the enemy, take this badboy and rain death on them, and don't stop shooting until you no longer see limbs and heads flying.






I wasn't so sure about this at first, but in the end, it's just the best unarmed/melee weapon ever, the Fist of Rawr attacks like a hell fury: fast and deadly, and heads fly like vertibirds.







Then we have this, the YCS/186, you already know why this is here. I managed to one shot an alpha male deathclaw with this bad boy, nothing more to say.







This is here instead of Esther because of its weight, almost three times less, the Fat Man(GRA)+ is a monster anyway and it's light to take around.








Also best items showcase.
Those two items are among the best in the game, turbo slows time, and true police stories makes you crit a lot more. Be sure to craft and use tons and tons of them because they're fantastic.

And that's it, the best of the best. There is not much left to tell you, so i'll just put some random screenshots of my most proud stats and items, to honor the memory of those 170 hours.


Now it's time to end this, it was awesome doing this guide, I felt really part of something by creating all of this, and I'm proud of what I have accomplished, and I will be happier the more people will read and try this out. I hope I explained literally every my feeling towards aspects of the game, and through this build I want to make people play the game more, and explore it in every corner, while also building something really awesome as this character is, and even if you would want to copy from this, the character is still yours personal, and his story and what you experience playing with it it's the important part.
And that's the end of this, my friends, I have finished the run and the guide. I guess I'll just pop a beer and end it. Meanwhile you can look at all those screenshots of the Hoover Dam battle, which I'll just put here for the sake of feels.

Thanks for reading through all this, you're awesome.


Chillin' with the boys during the legion assault


NCR, Brotherhood and Enclave fighting side by side, only in New Vegas.


Last pic with my buddy Johnson


War... war never changes
men do, through the roads they walk
and this road
has come to an end.

Additional notes

• My game is modded, but it's only bug fixes and graphical enhancements (now removed), hence the guide is perfectly vanilla and can be done by everyone.
  
  
• This run is over, most likely there won't be any new update to the guide, but you can always comment if you need to know something or want to ask any question, I'm always here to answer.
  
  
• The pics in this guide are either taken from the wiki or directly from my personal footage, no other sources were used.
  
  
• If you are planning on starting a new build with my guide, or you need help with particular passages, feel free to add me and let me now!

Thanks for reading, i hope you liked it, and if you learned something or just want to be a cool kid be sure to vote and favorite.

[Uncle_J]

I'm bailing on my current play through using this guide. It is a compromise. You can't use all of the perks that fit any one of the three weapon types. Nor use certain QOL perks i enjoy.

[Uncle_J]

I'm going to try the suggestions of niet and GHSTBSTR04. Personally, i like to do HH early, to get Joshua Graham's armor and Daniel's Hat, which gives
+5 Speech, and pair it with Naughty Nightwear +10 Speech for +15 Speech if needed.

[GHSTBSTR04]

For anyone following the level 1 INT implant route, I highly recommend grabbing the Goodsprings snowglobe from the cemetery and the snowglobe from the cocktail lounge within the Lucky 38 as your means of affording the implant (you turn them in at the lady securitron Jane in the Lucky 38 penthouse). You will need to either raise 2000 caps to enter the strip normally or scrounge an NCR outfit from around Mccarran so you can use the monorail. I happened to get mine from a dead soldier outside Mccarran as the NCR and Fiends are always fighting.

[John Blow Jobi]

Pipboy 3000 hd retexture

[moesaic]

what do you use for the pipboy ui?

[niet]

The unique energy pistol "Compliance Regulator" found at the beginning of HH is great and worth mentioning. It gives 10 full seconds of paralysis on crit. You can tackle the giant cazadores in the rest of the DLC very easily around level 15 by landing a crit, then running up and powerfisting them to death.

[dudlajz1]

Ok, thank you for thorough clarification. Now I see ITs are really worth it.

[John Blow Jobi]

Two points in intense training are core for the build, the first one directly increases your crit chance, which is better than 90% of the perks listed, and the second increases strength which is the only way to get the heavyweight perk. Looking at the other perks you can pick at those stages there is not really anything worthwhile and I could tell you to get any other perk but the reality is that you would just lose efficiency in the build

I guess at the start you could remove one point in endurance and put it into strength, removing the need for more strength thus not needing intense training (2). Doing so you will lose a bit of health but gain a perk point, you dont lose the poison resistance since OWB gives it to you. But, as I already said multiple times throughout the years, there is not really many useful perks at this point, and towards the end i had to choose some not-so-useful perks like pyromaniac just to put something cause there wasn't anything interesting.

[dudlajz1]

Hi, I really like the depth of this guide and I prefer crit builds in almost every game. But I think it's a little pity to use Intense Training (IT) twice. Is there a way to make this build still working without using IT? And which two perks would you recommend instead of IT?

[John Blow Jobi]

No I don't think so