My character had the zergling pet. I play starcraft 2 now, I'm in the diamond league which constitutes the top 5 percentile of players.

Role playing and playing a RPG is not the same thing. When i play a RPG i always try to optimize my characters current build, survival isn't optimizing. The role playing part for me, is more how you handle different situation, evil or good etc.

I see, a twink or mini-maxer. Ok, I understand now.

I get high ( 70 or something ) survival in my first ( vh/hc ) game , it was ok I think . You know , living off the land (desert sallads , gecko kabobs ...) instead of using those poisonous stimpacks . But I guess for more in your face playstyle , stims might be necessary .

Besides , real men always sneak with backpack full of stolen pressure pots. Never drink dirty water.

i have about 13 barter points and i've never wanted for caps. there is money abound out there, and the only thing to spend your caps on is weaponry - and i've got plenty of guns. survival opens up a new branch of gameplay, keep your eyes open for that important loot and then craft some handy items. much more fun than having mountains of caps and nothing to spend them on.

And they COULD have added a Trap skill.... but no... Combining 3 chems worth 20 caps apiece and seeing them come out as a single 20 cap "Super-Chem" brought up enough rage for me to restart my level 19 survivalist... My new melee specialist doesn't waste anytime with roasting weenies at those lonely campfires.

This "RPG Purist" argument for Survival holds no weight with me.


The New Vegas area is possibly the most populated, wealthiest, best preserved territory in all of the Fallouts. The skill might be called Survival, but it's cooking weenies over a campfire, tanning useless and worthless hides, and playing My First Meth Lab. In Fallout, survival is a matter of - wait for it - surviving. You survive however you can, be it as a prospector, taking out roving gangs and selling off their gear, or pretending you're better than other people because you can mix a 7lb Deathclaw egg in a tin can and make an omelet over a campfire.


The skill is underdeveloped, overbalanced, too sparsely provided for in ingredients, with recipes that demand too many of those ingredients, require a lot of skill points to create, and yield a lot of things that aren't so much worth the trouble of making due to low cap values or lack of further applications.


Making food is cool and all, don't get me wrong, but that's almost all that the skill is doing. The most useful foods are the most convenient to make, and they're things like steaks - gecko, dog, coyote, brahmin, big horner - simple recipes that aren't a hassle to keep some ingredients handy to make. Higher-end food doesn't tend to have an appreciably longer effect duration. Tanned hides are useless and sell for a poor return (and they desperately need further crafting applications, like in armor modification). Poisons are understandably melee weapon/spears only, but the recipe yields only a few doses, and the weakest of the poisons requires cazador glands and good luck getting a hold of those by level 10. Outside of that, sure, a few old Fallout 3 skills were retooled very slightly to require Survival skill points, but it didn't bring anything new or must-have to the table.

I'm not saying Survival isn't a good idea - it's a damned great idea - but it's still in its infancy and mechanically pales in comparison to other skills. If the name of the game is survival, then Survival as a skill isn't the best thing to bet your life on.

I tagged guns, repair, and survival on my first character. I spent about 15 hours on that character before I scrapped it and started a new one. Survival is completely useless, even on hard core. I haven't put a single point into survival on my current playthrough and I'm doing just fine.

FYI: There is one speech check on the Survival skill that's needs 60. The reward you get for passing it is pretty damn good.

I'd gladly sacrifice any shot at that ammo for all the skill points I sank into Survival.

Sure, making some chems is nice, but screw this skill. It is the lackest of lackluster.

Minor regeneration with high DT = no damage taken in majority of combats. Strength only comes in at 3 levels of Rad poisoning. For End, the difference in lower max hitpoints is made up in a handful of seconds, so I'm not sure how END can be important and regeneration irrelevant.

Cost matters for this thread. It's not, "how can I get more caps", but comparing Barter vs Survival.

Neither.

I survive with my gun

I barter with my gun.

I like survival but I agree the crafting was a bit of a let down, they needed more recipes for science, explosives(I know but what ever), and survival. Go all along the world to find some junk items to make some not so junk items. Its really all about luck when you find these items and craft them when the planets align on the very campsite your cooking from.

Survival does have one thing going for it- food health and readily available makes it a cut above the rare stimpack for the med skill. And of course giving hydration and eating bonuses to food.

Bartering- only thing you really get is speech checks and when your later in the game you have plenty of caps.

Well, if you get the perk Pack Rat with 70 Barter, that halves the weight of anything 2lbs or less. That's a lot of (make that Most) items in the game.

Combined with the notoriously useful Strong Back, you'll be prepared for anything, or, in hardcoe, able to carry enough ammo to take out the entire Legion.

That largely boils down to convenience and preparation. When I play my next game and go Legion (and Cannibal Sandman) I'm making a bee-line for it and stocking up on dynamite and Explosives skill points.

I'm doing the same thing! Sneak, melee, and unarmed, and not really focusing on crafty words. I'm more just out to stealing everything I can and killing anyone I want :laugh:

lock pick 100
speech 80
guns 80
science 52

repair i think i might need to boost but not as valuable as in fo3

I actually feel like Repair is where it should be, now. It's a much more forgiving mechanic in New Vegas, trading the preexisting version's skill requirements for supply requirements.

Now you can walk around with gear in good repair with less repair skill, but you'll be throwing more materials into that maintenance. I think it's a good trade-off.

Not to mention that half the speech challenges in the game are for barter.

I don't know if it's actually HALF, but a LOT of the challenges hang on Barter skill.


I know this Barter vs Survival is a false dichotomy of sorts, but they largely fill a similar niche, but one comes out way ahead and the other lags far behind.

I have low survival and still rarely use stims now. Sunset Sass and healing powder usually gets me through, at least since I got that speacial implant from the med clinic. I think I needed stims a little more prior to that if I'm being honest.

Two words. Jury Rig.

Of course it doesn't. it only makes sense to RPG purists.

I still find barter useless. The two associated perks are rather pointless. Anyone who thinks they are essential to hardcoe mode hasn't played hardcoe mode. I was never over encumbered once on my HC play through. Jury rigging gets me all the caps I need and speech is superior to barter when it comes to dialogue checks. I could only see barter beneficial to a pack rat, or someone role playing an OCD kleptomaniac.

Walking around irradiated to regenerate health you will be saving very few caps in the long run. Even with a low barter skill Stimpacks are extremely cheap and everywhere. High DT + endless Stimpacks = no damage taken in the majority of encounters. The regeneration isnt important to being "invincible" but moreso due to the high DT. In any kind of Power Armor the only things that are even a threat are high end enemies like Deathclaws and Cazadors with or without regeneration. Barter will save you much more than Rad Child in the long run.

What im getting at is you are trying to back Survival due to the Rad Child perk when it simply isnt that great and certainly not worth dumping 70 points into Survival purely to unlock it. END is important because, unlike healing over time (or regeneration), +hit points (or +END) isnt everywhere. If you want to regenerate then quaff some water, food, Stimpacks or all three. Its more than enough healing over time to tank any threat in the game. Because its possible to stack healing from different kinds of food and drink healing isnt really a problem. If I use a Dirty Water, Purified Water, Brahmin Steak, Gecko Steak and a Dog Steak ill be healing about 30 health per second without a Stimpack.

I like the concept of survival but it needs to be cleaned up and some serious balancing done.