Nick can hack

Decent read. I never considered Life Giver until reading this, it sounds handy but even without it I still have over 200+ stimpaks by level 40, because I usually eat cooked food and save the stims for when my limbs get hurt too badly. Also, Luck >>>>> Perception for snipers, imo. Agility is a must for boosting your sneak crit of course, but the crit perks far outweigh the "Sniper" perk at agi 8. Science is not needed until end game, once you reach the appropriate level, you will start getting endless drops of sniper rifles with suppressors and recon scopes, so I saved a few points from not taking Gun Nut 4 and Science until later. I tricked out my .50 cal sniper rifle with gun nut 3.

I don't think you mentioned it but since you use suppressed weapons for the sneak attack, Mr Sandman is critical because at level 3 it gives you +50% damage to sneak weapons, further boosting that sneak crit. Legendarys actually go down in one hit at range, most wouldn't even have the chance to mutate.

Unimpressive loot notwithstanding, does hacking high-level terminals offer other gameplay advantages such as opening a locked door to gain a shortcut to a location, or seeing interesting logs, etc., or anything that is actually worth your high hacking skill?

Also, are there a lot of "double-dippable" terminal-lock combos? By that, I mean like in FO3, there were a lot of terminals that controlled locked doors; even though you could hacked the terminal to unlock the door, I usually unlocked the door first, then hacked the terminal; that way, I gained XP for both hacking and unlocking, hence double-dipping. I saw a lot of those in FO3, but curiously haven't seen that many in 4, and I'm at level 17 already.

I agree, but he is not very reliable: nick can fail in hacking, and that logs you out FOREVER of the computer. Still can be used and ditch hack too,if you are inclined to; the same as with Cait with lockpick ( but Cait does not fail, she even unlocks impossible doors like in vault 81 XD).

Mr Sandman is decent. Bonus is much smaller than ninja's and only applies to silenced weapons which aren't available until mid game when you can make suppressors for your guns (beyond the .38 which granted you can get pretty early).

Ninja + Sandman is probably going to be overkill damage and puts a lot of emphasis on not ever being detected.

It's going to be a perk that I will pick up in the level 50-60 range, but don't think I'd recommend it to a player in the early or early mid game.

You also can't put a silencer on many guns, such as lazer and plasma weapons.

Solid perk none-the-less, but less freedom than ninja.

how much does the explosive protection help with power armor? just fully modded my x01 and haven't gotten a chance to test it out.

It's interesting what you say about perception, Peli.

I thought it considerably raises accuracy in VATS. Although I play a sneaker sniper build I still use VATS for mid to long range shots. For this I've taken perception 7 at game start and at level 17 I've put 2 more points in it to make it perception 9, + the bobblehead it makes it 10, for the concentrated fire perk (that adds +10 accuracy in VATS for every consecutive shot on same body part). I took this strategy to maximize hit chances in VATS at medium to long range.

Yeah I know manually aiming with the scope at those ranges gets you more hit chances, but I still don't wanna let VATS go cause I like it, maybe too much

Do you think it's a faulty strategy and I shouldn't put so many points in perception ? What would you do to maximize hit % in VATS at med-long range ?

This guide seems like it's aimed at making the game less fun to play by overpowering your character. If your goal is to min/max the hell out of Fallout, then I think you're on the right track. But in your own words...why even play Fallout, then?

This sort of blatent misinformation doesnt belong in a thread for new players.

You can argue back and forth about what you like more, but wild exageration has no place.

There quantity of safes vs terminals is closer than you imply, may not be 1:1, but at least 2:1, and likely closer to 1:1, there really are a lot of terminals. from an exp standpoint, you are gaining about as much from either skill.

Terminals give acccess to a fair number of safes, again more than you imply, and a reasonable number of full rooms that are prevented without them. When a place is available by lockpicking or hacking, the hacking number will be easier, which due to minimum perk levels, means you can sometimes hack where you couldnt pick. You will probably get at least half the loot with hacking as with lockpicking, maybe more than that.

On the other hand, hacking gives far far far more story and background bits. You will miss a lot of character by skipping the skill.

While I agree that lockpicking is the more useful sklll, its not nearly by the margin you imply, and I couldnt imagine wandering the wastes without both skills.

I would also like to specifically call out the stealth skills, even if not stealthing, give immunity to ooops theres a landmine or tripwire moments. You wont regret points spent there either.

The reason why I specifically mentioned hacker as a skill that I thought that I would get and then didn't is exactly because my statement IS NOT an exaggeration.

Easily 60% of terminals are novice level and require not hacker skill. Another 30% either have key cards or are scripted to be opened by NPCs in story fashion. Hackers get the remaining 10%. And unlike safes and toolboxs which are everywhere, terminals are rare in the first place.

One tenth is probably generously

I did both hacker and locksmith. Reason is because I have a lot of fun doing those too. Lifegiver, I really don't need it because I play on very easy and easy. I love the perk(I forgot the name) that lets you share junk across all of your settlements.

I just want to mention that this game gives you multiple ways of approaching any problem, and other builds and/or ignoring many or any or all of these perks can work quite well. (But of course so can using these perks and this special distribution...)

Good read! I think you should specifically mention that you will unavoidably pick up a perception bobblehead the the very beginning of the game, increasing your perception +1 permanently. Thus you only need 3 in perception to get lockpicking. It's also worth mentioning that the SPECIAL book is to be found almost immediately.

On the "early income" tip, you should add a disclaimer that if you plan to build any significant settlements, you WILL need all of that wood and steel, and even more so. You could supplement with a "for those that want to build settlements" tip that water purifiers provides a significant income via salable cans of purified water, as an alternative but somewhat slower money-making approach.

Good comments Slapstick.

Yeah, if you want to go full minecraft at the beginning of the game then you may just want to do that instead of making 1000 fence posts or vendoring your resources. If you plan to do that, you should do it right away and get that huge dump of experience from building sooner rather than later.

If you plan to do it later then don't worry about steel and wood. They are extremely easy to come by and you will quickly aquire more settlements with tons of broken down cars, trees, and the like if you do some Minutemen quests.

You can simply steal resources from another settlement for your main one later.