Now I know this is a touchy subject for a lot of people on this forum because they wanna believe their build is the "special snowflake" but when it comes down to it, after going through the game a couple times on survival, some perk choices are just better than others for the early game. Now im not talking about a "base building" or a "level by discovery" play through. Im talking playing it the way Bethesda originally intended. This is something ive really been looking into lately. So im going to go through it. Im posting all of this with playing survival from the start in mind.

1. Getting Lockpicking/Hacking early game is just a waste of valuable points. I promise, you will NEVER need either at any point in the game for any quests/imperative objectives. Unless if we're talking about when one of the Lockpicking/Hacking companions are forced to be with you; then they will open said thing. All these perks will do for you is give you more supplies; and a collectible or two are also behind some of them. If you actually need these supplies you are playing the areas wrong. Novice picks/terminals give you WAY more than enough supplies even if you are mediocre at collecting stuff in your environment. On top of this, if you actually do need Advanced+ supplies or the collectible inside one, just come back later in the game with the specified companion. Lone Wanderer isnt an excuse to not do this either; all you gotta do is grab em, go there to get the stuff, and dismiss em.

2. This ones bound to be controversial; but ive found that Bloody Mess, Lifegiver, and Damage Resist are all simply inferior to the mod perks. Think about this one, you dont have to commit much stat wise to get Gun Nut/Armorer, and the defense/attack power they provide always outshine what you are getting from the previously mentioned perks. I really do hate saying this too because I love bloody mess and lifegivers last perks, but they are not worth sacrificing your early perk points over the mods, trust me. Dont assume you are going to just get "lucky" and get all the best modded legendary gear so you wont need mod perks. Even playing 8 luck on survival, chances are it will not happen. Now, if you want to get both mod perks and a bit of the others because combat is challenging for you, thats fine go ahead. Im just talking about as optimal as possible perk spending early game.

3. Never combine an intelligence and luck build. This should go without saying but I would say one of luck's perks that represent it best (and you would honestly be a fool to skip) is idiot savant. In its description is reason enough "The lower your intelligence, the greater the chance." It does make a large difference as ive tested both sides, if you go anywhere past 3/4 intelligence you are severely hurting your idiot savant procs. Not to mention the more points you put in luck, the better your chances for nearly all of your luck perks to happen; So why divide your attention between int and luck?

4. Cap collector (better vendor deals), fortune finder (more caps found in wild), and scrounger (more ammo found in wild) all serve the same purpose. What are you doing with caps other than buying ammo? Buying junk? Be a better garbage collector on your missions. Buying aid/chems? Be a better garbage collector on your missions. Seriously I cant stress this enough there are FAR more than the necessary amount of supplies scattered throughout your quests/areas. The only thing that this statement isnt true for: ammo. Ammo is definitely a struggle without any collector perks to help you. Across my three characters my two with the bottlecap perks ended up only spending bottlecaps on ammo the entire game. If you grab one rank of the scrounger perk this will totally eliminate that struggle I assure you. The only reasonable thing you could be spending bottlecaps on other than ammo are some of the legendary weapons/armor the vendors sell. I assume you are playing on survival so for the most part, you will be over saturated in legendaries and many of the vendor ones are just overkill and can be saved for way late game.

5. Scrapper is unnecessary. Trust me this is tough for me too because I loved breaking down all those guns/armors to actually get the nuclear material/crystal/fiberglass, but again this just results in oversaturation of junk. If you find you are always out of materials without it, BE A BETTER GARBAGE MAN.

One last time: im not trying to tell you how to play the game thats your choice, this is about what perks are objectively bad choices to get early game on survival because they wont help you as much. Yes I know the game lasts forever and you can get all the perks. You can eventually get your favorite stuff down the line; but if you are looking for the optimal way to build a foundation for your character, this is it.

Anyone else who wants to add ideas is welcome and I will most likely add them to the list. Please dont include ideas with PC mods of any sort, this is for the vanilla version of the game so lets keep it fair for console players.

I don't think bethesda have any original plan on how to play the game, that's absurd thinking in a open world game, by all means. In same spirit, there is no right way to play the game, there is only "play the game as you wish, and learn what suits you" The end.

Mmkay, some perks are better than others... but who's to say we can't have both? My Doomgal's got Bloody Mess, Life Giver, Gun Nut and Armorer. Works out great. And Idiot Savant is just one perk in Luck, and it's only function is to get more XP. So, I don't think that devalues a Luck/Intelligence build by any large amount.

Yes that is how they originally intended you to play the game. You think the first thing they thought of when making this game was people leveling by building? or discovering? No, they created their quest lines and enemies and environment to fight. Sure the other stuff are fun side project builds but they are far from the point of their intended game.

And saying theres no "right way" to play the game is like saying theres no right way to play a Metroid game or Final Fantasy game. Theres always an "optimal" way to play a game, true there is no "right" way to play but there is an optimal one.

Right, but gun nut took 3 intelligence. Thats not much investment to counter your idiot savant. What im saying is going like 5+ intelligence and 5+ luck. They are both power house stats for the game there is no need to combine them, they even encourage that in the perks.

Also like I said go ahead and get the defense/attack boosting perks with the mod perks if you need them. My point is having neither makes you go slower because you take too much damage and do way too little for it to be optimal. What you will find when you have both for a while though is that you will be oversaturated in food/stimpaks. Thats what ive been trying to avoid, because it feels like a waste of perk points. If its not for you than by all means go for it, this is more of a difficulty subject than anything.

Eh, in a game with level scaling, infinite leveling, and so much to do in any order, I'm not sure "optimal" really matters. My main character is level 50 and still hasn't picked a single rank in Gun Nut. But let me tell you, the second and third ranks of Solar Powered are amazing. Combine rank 3 of Life Giver with rank 2 of Solar Powered, and I'm completely healed just by fast-traveling during the day.

Thats great, but why would you really go that far into endurance early in the game? All that stuff is cool yes but do you seriously need like 8+ endurance at level 15 vs 1 point in each mod perk and the other points in your powerhouse stat? Get it down the line. Nearly anything in endurance should be brought into your build more down the line.

I really can't agree with you. You are under no time-pressure, 'cept for a few quests that's irrelevant regarding the rest of the game, and then the timer is only activated when you accept the quests. I don't know what they thought of first creating this game, nor do you, unless you were there. People can level up with a minimum of enemy contact, and stay in the lower level zones for as long as they like, who are you to tell otherwise?

Sure, there is always the min/max people who thinks of optimal playthroughs, but that doesn't make it the "right way" nor the optimal way, when the purpose of a game is fun / entertainment. Linear games, yes / perhaps, open world, no.

I don't mind how long it takes me to get from point A to B. I don't buy computer games often enough to worry about making way for the next big thing.

Yes the min/max people do make optimal plays. Thats why they are called min/max people. If what you are saying is true than people wouldnt speedrun games like Dark Souls, or Morrowind, or like I said Final Fantasy. All of those games are open ended to different extents and all of them have been speedran. Therefore, there are optimal ways to play every game. Go ahead and have fun playing the game at your own pace, but I will beat it faster than you using these tactics as will the other min/maxers. Those are the people im catering to.

If the idea bothers you that much that your build might not be optimal than just leave the thread lol. Im not here to offend people but im not gonna coddle your playstyle either.

As for what they intended for the game. No I wasnt there, so you know what if you have an optimal way to do a build play through or whatever go ahead and make a different thread.

Cool, than this thread isnt for you.

Well, it could have been if the topic wasn't about optimisation and actually about good/bad perk choices. I mean for example heavy weapons is a bad choice because you wont get to use it for ages. Scrounger works straight away, so does lockpicking and hacking... especially if you have idiot savant and want as many rolls of the dice. But anyway, surely the most optimal build is 11 int and idiot savant then just reload every quest hand in until it triggers?

The thread is about good/bad choices early on. Heavy weapons isnt discussed here because its a playstyle choice. If you were to ask me about it I would say get it later on. NO PERK IS BAD, just the order in which you get them.

Like I said, scrounger you dont need if you actually collect everything in your questing environments. You might use it later on with some awesome late game legendary to get good materials, but what you get out of it early on is outshined by what you should just collect in your environment.

As far as leveling off of lockpicking/hacking, you will get much more mileage level wise by actually performing better in combat. You will move through rooms easier and will gain experience faster than going around picking/hacking everything. As for the stuff behind them, like I said all you gotta do is grab the respective companion when you need it and voila!

Well, there are multiple ways of seeing the optimal way of playing the game. Which is why I find "optimal" play guides absurd in a open world game. Optimal for what? Optimal for fun? Optimal at killing? Optimal of acquiring caps? Optimal for finishing the game fastest way possible? Heck, you can play and finish the game, while not shooting at a single thing 2/3 of the time you spend in the game (In theory, you can escape with only shooting in scripted events through good use of the charsima perks)

All I'm saying is, that what is optimal play for you, might not hold true for all the players out there, k? Sure, if you find it more fun finishing the game the fastest way possible, go ahead, it is your game. But calling it optimal, is purely subjective in my book.

And it has nothing to do with my build, lol. Don't take criticism so close to heart mate. And why would I make another thread? I'm not the one making a claim of optimal way of playing the game.

I don't know about your luck with them, but lockpicking and hacking really wasn't bad in the beginning for me because I have high INT and they give a good bit of extra XP and extra items. I've found some items that were quite useful early on when gun nut is low in rank, buying the same guns from traders is expensive and the companions that hack or lockpick for you are simply not available. They can also be useful when you have enemies to deal with if your character has low endurance like mine does. It balanced out quite nicely for me. Maybe because I explore a lot and ran across a variety of locks and terminals.

If you're planning to do a speedrun of Fallout 4, they're still useful by letting you get through areas faster, depending on how good you are with hacking terminals.

Its kind of tough to fit into a one sentence explanation. What I mean is optimal in terms of not screwing yourself into a weak build for progressing through game content. Sure I bet theres some guy out there that bugged the game and completed it in half an hour naked or something not killing a single dude. Thats not what I mean either.

Come on, you know what I mean. Yes optimal for killing and getting through quests without getting wrecked while also not wasting perks on resources you already have available to you. There is no optimal for fun thats just playing the game the way you want to play it, which this thread isnt. And optimal for acquiring caps, why would you need that? Unless if you were doing some other type of play through.

Its so funny to read this top serious min maxing lists and so on for Fallout 4.

Fact is..Survival is a joke.

My first playthrough I got Full Gun Nut first when I was level 40 and I never took LifeGiver or any of the other you mention as needed.

its hard to take it serious when the game isnt really...created serious.

It was absolutely the same in the highest difficulty in Witcher 3.

But see, the exp you got from the lockpicking early on still would not compare to how much easier combat would be, therefore allowing you to move through it quicker while not needing to hide and recover as much. I dont care how good of an FPS player anyone might claim to be, any of the combat enhancing perks that ive mentioned give you more mileage than relying on leveling off of lockpicks/terminals. Through my 4 characters I didnt find a single item inside those locked away areas that I couldnt find just being a good garbage collector in the actual quest area. Sure you might get mini-nukes or some kind of collectible, but any of that stuff can be put off for later in the game either when you have the companion with you, or after you get through the early game so you dont miss out on important combat perks.

Its a joke for many, but not all. I didnt wanna come in here bragging but ive gone through the game on survival with pretty much none of the important perks ive been mentioning. Hell one of my buddies didnt even pick up a perk for 10 or 15 levels lol.

Im here to help out some of those struggling on survival. Some people are better at RPGs than other. Some people are better at FPSs than others. Worlds collide here and you get a wide array of player skill.

Technically, you don't miss out on any important combat perks and it's easy to get lockpicking/hacking along with the combat perks because of perk level gating. If you want to help people struggling to beat survival, just tell them to make a stealth build. Being sneaky most of the time will allow you to kill tougher enemies for better loot, save up fusion cores and ammo faster for the noisy, but powerful guns for boss fights. Nothing beats the Big Boy when you get enough caps for it and you can get more caps by selling the stuff from stuff you lockpicked or hacked, including some of the sets of power armor that you can only get to by hacking. It was rare for me to find nothing particularly useful inside a safe early on. You can also strip more valuable mods off of guns you find to get mods that require higher levels of gun nut early. I got a silenced .308 pipe pistol early on in the game from lockpicking and it was the best non big gun I had for a little while. Later I upgraded it to a sniper rifle and then later I was able to attach a silencer to a hunting rifle and that's when I replaced it.

No, OP, that is not how Bethesda intends for players to play the game. Also, some of your assertions are completely false. I can explain why very easily...

... there is this little concept called "role playing". There are games made with this as a fundamental element and Fallout 4 happens to be one such game.

Bethesda intends for players to make a character concept and play according to that concept. That does NOT mean min-maxing stats, using the game mechanics efficiently to defeat all enemies, etc. It means deciding on a concept and sticking to it, choosing perks and other in-game choices that match the character you are role playing. The game is balanced around the fact that it must be playable for a wide variety of different concepts. That is why someone such as yourself who ignores role playing a character and only focuses on game mechanic efficiency makes posts such as this one. That completely defeats the intent of Bethesda when they created the game, though.

Lockpicking is a given Hacker is also a given at least it is for me, Scrapper and gun nut i got those as fast as possible second playthrough, since you scrap certain items you could get more crafting mats.

Trying to complete the game as quickly as possible = trying to get the least amount of value out of your game purchase.

There are certain things in the game that annoy different people. for me, it's being unable to get into somewhere because I can't hack the terminal or open the safe. Lockpick and Hacking (wish it was still Science) negate that annoyance and it's worth it for me. Likewise Scrapper is all about not being desperately short of some materials. Yes I collect a lot without them, but having the perk allows me to collect easier.

The neat thing about this game is that there are MANY paths to victory.

No, its actually just a different way to play the game. Im here to cater to those that do want to play through it the most efficient way possible. You can go ahead and cater to the roleplayers. Your definition is not end all be all and neither is mine. Im just helping out the people who do want to be ready to take on the wasteland as an actual game. Not here to cater to another episode of "roleplayers weekly."