Ok, we got a lot of different types of armor - its a bit over whelming and nice at the same time. What is generally considered the best all around gear? I have collected a ton and I am not sure which to wear. Generally i've been wearing legendary gear, but i'd like to use other and not suffer.

Also, do the bonues/resists stack with the power armor?

None of the legendary perks apply while wearing power armor, and damage/energy/poison/radiation resistance of regular armor doesn't stack with the resistances of the power armor. If you're traveling with power armor, your best bet is to leave all of your regular armor behind because it takes up a lot of your carry weight.

Personally I think the Combat Armor and its variants are the best all around armor in the game. They're the most well balanced between general damage and energy resistance, they can be modded to have pretty solid radiation resistance, and they're at least reasonably lightweight considering their resistances. There are three variants of it. The Combat Armor, which is basically the 'light' Combat Armor. Sturdy Combat Armor, which is heavier, but offers greater resistances. And there's the Heavy Combat Armor, which is, as the name implies, a fair amount heavier, but offers even better resistances. Personally I prefer the Sturdy Combat Armor as my standard outfit. I have Heavy Combat Armor as well, but it's bulkier and takes up more of your carry weight. It's best saved for situations where you know you'll be needing that extra damage resistance, but don't necessarily want to wear power armor. I rarely use the 'light' Combat Armor anymore, but it could be good for doing things like just going and collecting salvage from an area that you've already completely cleared. The lighter weight means you can carry more junk.

I wear either a Vault Suit or a Brotherhood of Steel Officer Uniform as my base layer, with a full suit of modded Polymer Sturdy Combat Armor, with Destroyer's Helmet, which is a legendary Combat Armor Helmet that comes with +1 Perception and +1 Intelligence, as well as a pair of Patrolman's Sunglasses, which offers another +1 Perception. It's well balanced between general damage and energy resistance, and when worn with the Vault Suit it has decent radiation protection as well. Plus it just looks damn good in my opinion.

It's best to put together a high charisma boosting outfit as well. It's possible to put together an outfit that will give you up to +5 Charisma on top of your base charisma. For my charisma outfit, I have Reginald's Suit (+3), and a Trilby Hat (+1) which both have the Ballistic Weave mod applied to them, and the Fashionable Glasses, which offer another +1 Charisma. I always carry my charisma outfit with me in case I face dialog checks. My base charisma is maxed out, so it may not even be necessary, but I still like to be on the safe side. When wearing power armor, I just wear my charisma outfit and leave the rest of my clothing and armor behind.

To add to this, you can get Reginald's suit from doing a quest at the Trinity Tower. Black-Rim Glasses offer +1CHA if you don't want to wear Fashionable Glasses. And you can get the Ballistic Weave mod from doing a few quests for the Railroad, particularly one to secure a DIA cache. Also, with 11 Charisma you're guaranteed to pass any speech check but bonus charisma past that still helps you in bartering.

Personally, I prioritize Legendary effects over base resistances offered by armor. Especially the really good ones like Sentinel or Martyr.

They do not stack. The armor choices feel overwhelming in the beginning, but you'll soon come to realize there's about a handful of armor worth wearing. Combat Armor is among the best, Silver Shroud is excellent as well, Leather should do before you reach those. Don't bother with anything else unless you want a very niche character build for role play purposes.

The black-rim glasses offer +1 charisma? I didn't know that. So long, ridiculous looking fashionable glasses. Hello style.

For me, ballistic weave unlocked after doing one of the Tinker Tom/MILA quests. I'm not sure how exactly it unlocks, but I think it's some combination of the P.A.M./DIA Cache quests and the Tinker Tom/MILA quests. The materials are found in a cache, and Tinker Tom eventually perfects the modification technique or something along those lines.

I'm going to start playing around with my armor a bit more. I have like 8-9 legendary Combat Armor pieces. I need to take the time to look through them and mod them out to see what'll make the best overall outfit. I'm pretty sure I have enough pieces to assemble a full suit of legendary Combat Armor.

Some of the Synth armor is really good too, but I haven't played around with it much yet. Once you start getting combat armor though, in my opinion the rest of the lower level leather/metal armor becomes nothing more than scrap. Some of it is very good scrap though, so it's still usually worth picking up when possible.

Numbers-wise, synth armor is the best, both for ballistic resistance and for energy resistance.

But it's so ugly, so I stick with combat armor.

This is the same reasoning I have. Synth armor has an edge as far as the raw numbers are concerned, but the Combat Armor is by far the best looking armor in the game in my opinion, so I don't picture myself switching from it.

It looks like someone decided to fashion armor out of pieces from a broken toilet, Bethesda in my opinion really fumbled the ball in the institute weapons and armor.

This as well. So far, every single Institute gun I've found has simply not been worth using. I've found that to be the case with nearly all of the energy weapons in general. I almost exclusively carry ballistic weapons.

Synth armor looks like sci fi gimp wear to me, then again, I'm rolling around in highly customized raider caged armor and assorted pieces like some sort of Big Daddy from Bioshock and maxed out ballistic weave casual clothes.

Not winning any fashion shows, but you know, it gets the job done.

The Energy weapons become godly once you fully modify them, Plasma Weapons are ridiculously powerful now

Any armor you can apply the shadow mod to.

Bethesda has continued the tradition of sneak being completely overpowered.

Combat armor, because it looks the best.

It seems like Laser weapons are about on par with mid to high tier weapons like the 10mm Pistol or Combat Rifle, and I personally love how versatile they are. Plasma Weapons are a tier above that, and even stronger.

Institute weapons are mass-produced plastic. The gen 1 and 2 synths are idiotic shock troopers, it would be a waste to give them extremely advanced weapons. I just wish Coursers used Plasma weapons more often instead of improved Institute weapons.

If you like power armor, let me begin by saying how much i love overdriven leg mods with the jet pack. You run and jump around like you can fly. Makes the game so much more fun. Also adding on armor under the power armor that gives you 10% faster movment speed make that much better.

First, the biggest Charisma boost you can get from an outfit is +8. Reginald's Suit or Agatha's Dress, Black Rimmed Glasses or Fashionable Glasses, and a Charisma boosting hat is easier to get by far, but it's not the best. To get +8 Charisma, you need a full set of Sharp prefixed Legendary Armor Pieces. These give +1 CHA and +1 INT, so a full set of them will give +5. Add a Green Shirt and Combat Boots under-armor, and that's +6 just from the body slots. Add 2 more from the hat and glasses, and you're sitting at +8 Charisma total.

The catch, of course, is that by the time you get this set, you won't need it. For Speech Checks, you only need 11 Charisma. For Bartering, you need 16 for the best prices with just Charisma. However, the Barter Bobblehead, 8 copies of Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor, and both ranks of the Cap Collector perk push that down to 10. So by the end of the game, the only reason to push your Charisma past 11 is for more Settlers per settlement.

Second, armor progression is pretty simple: Raider -> Leather -> Metal -> Combat -> Synth. Just equip the best. For under-armor, it depends on what you want. Damage or Energy Res? Anything that can take Ballistic Weave. Radiation Res? Any Vault Suit. Charisma? Green Shirt and Combat Boots. I'd go on, but I'm at work, so I don't have the official guide in front of me. The examples I gave are what I know for sure.

All of this, of course, is based on stats. Looks are subjective. My character is currently running around with a full set of basic Shadowed Combat Armor over a BoS Officer Uniform, and topped off with a Military Cap and a set of Sunglasses (no pun intended). The overall look is of some sort of lightly armored spec ops bad ass, and I really like it. Unfortunately, higher tiers of Combat Armor don't fit the aesthetic, so my defenses aren't great. Thankfully, I'm on PC, so I've downloaded a mod that let's me apply Ballistic Weave to anything. I plan to add it to the BoS Officer Uniform only to shore up my meager defenses without being overpowered.

That's what some people seem to say. I've fully modded several of them in pursuit of these awesome energy weapons that people are always talking about. It's not a matter of lacking the appropriate perks or anything like that. I'm level 72, SPECIAL is maxed out, and I have most of the relevant perks like Rifleman, Sneak, and Sniper maxed out. I don't get it. Every single one I've tried has just been 'meh.' I have Righteous Authority fully modded, and from what I've gathered it's supposed to be one of the best energy rifles in the game. I wasn't impressed. My fully modded combat rifle smokes it. I won't even try to compare it to the Overseer's Guardian, because there's no comparison to make. My non-legendary, but fully modded combat rifle that I've been using for the majority of the game, until recently acquiring Overseer's Guardian, can get 1 shot kills that seem to usually take 4-5 shots with Righteous Authority.

I tried Old Faithful, which Arturo in Diamond City sells. That's supposed to be a great energy weapon. 2x damage when the enemy is at full health is nice, but the damage has to be effective in the first place in order for 2x damage to really be significant.

I have a fully modded laser sniper rifle, which isn't bad, but the Tinker Tom Special (a legendary recon .50 sniper rifle) is far more effective. I just picked up a legendary plasma sniper rifle earlier today that I haven't tried yet. I'm going to mod it out soon and give it a try. The gauss rifle is of course a beast in this game. But I wouldn't really consider that an 'energy weapon.' It simply uses an electromagnetic field to propel a projectile, as opposed to using a propellant like gun powder. I also just found a legendary irradiated laser gatling earlier tonight. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to try it out soon.

I won't say that all of the energy weapons svck, as I haven't tried them all yet, but I'm yet to find any that are particularly good. I recently picked up the Alien Blaster Gun and Lorenzo's Artifact Gun, which are both supposed to be really good too. I'm going to give those a try soon.

Would you recommend any energy weapons in particular? I want to like them, but every single one I've tried has gotten stored back in the workbench and replaced with my faithful fully modded trio of the Tinker Tom Special, the Overseer's Guardian, and my VATS Enhanced Advanced Combat Shotgun.

Interesting. That's good to know. I never thought to use armor for charisma boosting, although I do have a few charisma boosting pieces of it. But I don't want to use that armor, and I'm definitely not carrying it with me just for charisma. Carrying around my current charisma outfit in addition to my combat outfit doesn't take up a significant amount of weight. I just recently stopped

It's all rather irrelevant in my case now though. I have SPECIAL maxed out now as of yesterday, so my base charisma is already 10. I unfortunately picked up the charisma bobblehead before realizing that maxing SPECIAL out prior to picking up the SPECIAL bobbleheads would give an 11 for that stat. Add Reginald's Suit, the Trilby Hat, and the Fashionable Glasses to that and I've got 15 charisma. I'm probably going to stop carrying around Reginald's Outfit and the Trilby Hat since, as you mentioned, you only need 11 for speech checks, and to save on weight. I'll just hang onto the Fashionable Glasses or a pair of Black-Rimmed Glasses and swap them in for my Patrolman's Glasses during speech checks. When I make the rounds to all of the merchants to sell my purified water and mass-produced Jet, it'll be easy enough to just throw on Reginald's Suit and the Trilby Hat. I'll have to keep that armor in mind later on though when I'm focusing on maxing out my settlements.

Play with plasma weapons. Going by your post you have yet to even touch one in game.

I did try a plasma pistol some time back and wasn't particularly impressed, but to be fair I don't have the gunslinger perk (or whatever the pistol perk is) maxed out since I almost never carry pistols with me. As I said though, I just recently picked up that plasma sniper rifle. I'll definitely be giving it a try. Thanks for the tip.

I have one but it just spews goo or something. Doesn't do barely any damage. I took a set of combat gear and I modded it with the poly stuff - went out and was taking way more damage that I ever did in my T60 power suit. I was moving faster and all, but not sure yet. I haven't really tried modding combat weaopns yet. Im only level 25 and didnt know the right way to use points when I started. That .50 calibar sniper rifle seems good for range, the say n spray is best close up. Those are my two goto weapons, but ill give the others a try too.

Im working from home today, might wander up to my gaming loft here shortly ;P

Synth Armor's actually the best It goes Raider

A 6 crank Laser Musket fully tricked out as a sniper is kinda OP. Slow, but hits like nothing else.

One of my characters was lucky enough (high luck) to find legendary heavy leather chest piece and left leg along with other pieces of leather over the top of Minutemen outfit that was looted off a dead minuteman in Concord. Then I took Preston's hat and finished the ensemble off with highway patrol shades, he looked like an outback mercenary

Ballistic Weave is the best, wear whatever you want on top.