Brief “about the author”:

I’m 29, a professional engineer (MTU), and been a gamer since my parents brought me home a NES back in 1991.

Around 2005 I started writing strategy guides on forums such as this. In total I’ve gotten millions of views on my guides, some of them becoming wildly popular.

Some of my more successful guides were on Borderlands 2 (Gunzerker), Diablo 3 (Monk), and League of Legends (Dominion, Alistar)

For Fallout 4, I’ve completed a play through of the game on Survivalist difficulty and actually found the game really easy, even on survivalist mode, because I used these tactics.

Intention:

This guide is intended to help players who are starting Fallout 4 or who are struggling to find success in the game.
I’m going to share some tips about builds, equipment, and strategies that I found success with.
My intention is to give you the least amount of spoilers possible. I am going to cover a small handful of things that could be considered spoilers by purists in the gearing section. I’ll be sure to mark that section so that readers can choose to skip it if they want.

Glossary:
1) Build Summary
2) SPECIAL
3) Perk Priorities
4) Underwhelming Perks
5) Gear Selection

6) A few game breaking pieces of gear (Vague spoilers)

7) Farming

8) VATS

9) A way to power level yourself or get easy caps (Vague spoilers)

1 Build Summary:

The single most important thing that any player can do in Fallout 4 is allocate their skill points correctly throughout the game.

Simply applying your talent points in the optimal spots will make the game go from seemingly impossible to trivial. By allocating your points in the most-wise way, you can give yourself drastically improved effectiveness in any situation. Improving your efficiency means that you will consume less resources, which means that you’ll have more resources to take on tougher fights to let you get even better stuff. The snowball effect is real.

The build that I used was a mid to long range “Rifleman Crafter Savant” build. At lower difficulties you can also use this exact build at close range by throwing on a shotgun, however, at higher levels and higher difficulties shotguns really fall off in effectiveness due to the fact that they don’t penetrate armor as well as rifles.

I feel like this is by far the strongest build because it is incredibly flexible, safe, and strong in nearly every situation. Plus it is very time and resource efficient as you tend to get the most out of your ammo, and you don’t waste a lot of time positioning.

*IMPORTANT NOTE ON POWER ARMOR*
Feel free to use and abuse the heck out of your power armor from the beginning of the game on.
I actually didn’t use mine much until level 24 or so because I was concerned about saving power cores for the late game. It was around that time when I realized that I had stockpiled 30 of them and could afford to use them. But I finished my survivalist play through with over 50 unused power cores even though I never left Sanctuary without power armor equipped after that point. As long as you fast travel/walk/sneak everywhere (not run) and don’t use your jet pack too much you will gain power cores faster than you can use them in the mid and late game. This is especially true if you choose to fight the Brotherhood of Steel whose power armored units drop them regularly.

2 SPECIAL:

In general, I think that they give you way more starting stat points than you really “Need”. Between the starting points, the bobble heads, and the SPECIAL magazine that is available within the first 20 minutes of play, you have more than enough points to flush out this build without investing your hard earned level up points into stats until you’re well into the game.

Strength- I don’t see much need for Strength beyond the 3 you need for armorer. I’d recommend having 3 for this and then never putting another point into Strength.

Perception- Perception is a lot less important to riflemen than it was in previous Fallout games. All it really does is improve your hit rate (subtlety) in VATS and personally I only used VATS against things that got really close to me and my hit rate was always 95% against them regardless of what my Perception was. I would highly recommend a perception of 4 for lock-picking though. If you aren’t interested in lock-picking, at least have 2 so that you can get Rifleman which is the single most important perk for this build.

Endurance- Endurance has one of the most valuable and under-rated perks in the game in Life Giver. The early ranks of this will greatly improve your early game survivability while the 3rd rank gives you a ridiculous amount of health regeneration. I finished the game with over 200 stim packs even after selling a 100+ of them over the course of the game largely because this single perk. Make sure you have 3 Endurance for this perk.

Charisma- I really found Charisma lackluster up until the late game diplomacy. I started my character with 4 thinking that I’d use Dogmeat… but ultimately found Paladin Dance much more effective up until level 40 when I switched to a lone wanderer strategy. You could easily start the game with 1 Charisma and not miss anything. You can carry a dress/suit, a pair of glasses, and a fancy hat and net yourself 4 points of charisma on demand. That should be plenty to get your dialog to go the way you want in the early game and a set like this will only weigh about 4 pounds.

Intellect- Is really strong and is necessary to utilize one of the most fun and interesting parts of the game; “Crafting.” If you aren’t interested in scavenging items to break down and craft with… why even play Fallout? As such I would recommend that you start the game with at least 3 int for “Gun Nut”, if not 4 or 5. You’ll eventually want Science to completely break the game by maximizing your power armor and potentially make energy weapons, but that won’t be until the mid-game. Int also increases the amount of experience you gain, making it a worthy early investment.

Agility- Agility is by far the stat that improves any gun focused build’s combat performance the most. It influences your ability to sneak (and hence get sneak attacks) and the number of action points that you have. Action points influence how long you can sprint and how many shots you can take in VATS. These are important things to your survival and success. Dump any extra skill points into agility and profit. I’d recommend at least 7 for ninja into agility at the beginning of the game.

Luck- Luck is actually really helpful this time around. High luck means finding more stuff in general. The luck tree also has one of the most ridiculously strong utility talents in the game in “Idiot Savant”. Using the perk legitimately is insanely strong. Save scumming (quick save before turning in a quest and then loading until it procs leading to gaining entire levels instantly) with the perk will make you level at a rate that your friends will call you a cheater. Idiot savant decreases in proc rate the higher your int, but int also makes the base number that is being multiplied bigger. You really can’t go wrong with Idiot Savant… even with 10 Intellect it is worth the investment. As such investing 5 into luck at the start of the game is recommended.

My recommended S.P.E.C.I.A.L. start:

Strength - 3
Perception – 4
Endurance – 3
Charisma – 1
Intellect – 4
Agility – 8
Luck – 5
With special book going into INT

3 Perk Priorities (Highest priority listed first [Descending order of priority])

Rifleman: Each point of this increases your damage by 20% with weapons of this class. You could choose to go with commando or gunslinger instead, but in my opinion, rifles are the strongest weapon class due to their armor penetration and excellent range/accuracy. Any way you choose to go, choose one weapon class and max out the damage with that class by having the highest rank possible at all times.

Life Giver: This skill is a life saver. It greatly improves your survivability early game and keeps you at maximum health at the start of each engagement once you get rank 3.

Idiot Savant: I’d recommend picking this up as early as you can. Level 3 if not earlier. It will easily pay for itself by keeping you at least 1 level ahead of where you’d be if you hadn’t invested in it.

Gun Nut: I’d recommend adding a short scope to your rifles as soon as possible. Late game you can get the amazing recon short scope that tracks targets for you and has a larger field of view. More importantly, Gun nut will drastically improve the damage output of your weapons by improving the receivers and allows you to make weapons outside your specialization into weapons inside your specialization. This becomes very important once you start finding legendary weapons.

Locksmith: Locksmith is a huge benefit for any play-style. Almost every instance that you enter will have multiple doors and/or containers to lock-pick. You will get a huge bounty of ammo, chems, materials, gear, and a healthy flow of experience by having your locksmith skill rank 3. I do not recommend wasting a point on rank 4 though. With rank 3 I finished the game with over 150 bobby pins to spare. You just don’t need indestructible bobby pins…

Ninja: Sneak attack headshots are a great way to thin the enemy or take a big chunk out of a legendary before the fight really begins Increasing your sneak attack damage is therefore pretty valuable. Once you get a silencer put on your weapon (thanks to gun nut) then you can get multiple sneak attacks off before your enemy figures out where you are… potentially clearing out entire rooms without retaliation.

Bloody Mess: More damage with no down side, not much else to be said.

Armorer: Armorer isn’t anywhere near as game changing as Gun Nut, but it gives you a few nice perks and customizations.

Science: Science in combination with Armorer and Gun Nut give you all the end game goodies: Recon scopes and jet packs! You’ll need 6 int for science. So you’ll need the bobble head & special book to be able to take this (or invest a skill point). Locations for bobble head and book are available online.

Lone Wanderer: I would recommend putting points into lone wanderer in the mid 30s. You’ll want to save your level 38 point and 39 point for gun nut and armorer once you hit level 39 and then you want science at level 41. So I would recommend putting your level 35 point into charisma (+1 from bobble head will make 3) level 36 and 37 point into lone wanderer and then maxing out the perk at 40. 25% damage increase plus 30% damage reduction… you won’t miss your companion any more.

Toughness: Toughness is a very appreciable survivability bonus as long as you aren’t using power armor. At the point where you start running around in power armor exclusively, Toughness starts meaning almost nothing. When you have 10 damage resistance at the start of the game, 10 more damage resistance is pretty amazing. When you have 2000 damage resistance because you are in a fully upgraded X-01 power armor, 10 damage resistance doesn’t mean much. As such, I’d highly recommend the first 2 or 3 points of toughness but would not suggest wasting the points on the skill beyond that.

Once you get these skills there are a lot of options to choose from but this will guide you to level 46 or so. At which point there is no wrong answer. Personally, I went with diplomacy perks such as “Black Widow” (Lady Killer except better because 80% of interact-able characters are men) to mold my storyline the way I wanted… but there is no wrong answer.

4 Very underwhelming perks: These are some perks that I heavily considered going into Fallout 4 that I either never got due to them being not useful or that I was very disappointed in.

Hacker: Hacking is very mediocre, especially in contrast to lock picking. I’ve seen maybe 3 or 4 terminals that offer loot unobtainable to non-hackers in contrast to the hundreds of locked containers that I’ve lock-picked along the way. There are a couple of top notch power suits hidden behind hacker doors… but you can only pilot one… and there is a full set of X-01 that any level 30+ character can snatch without the hacking skill.

Mysterious Stranger: I picked up the skill because someone hyped it and was very disappointed. The stranger never seems to show up… when he does show up he either kills my target before I get to hit it which denies me experience or he kills something with a sliver of health that I could have easily killed with my next shot anyway. It’s a gimmicky perk… I would not recommend it.

Medic: Life Giver pretty much meant that I never used stim packs… so improving stim pack effectiveness was pretty meh. And as long as you don’t swim a lot or hang out in high radiation areas a lot you should have plenty of Rad away.

Awareness: Awareness really doesn’t tell you anything that you shouldn’t already know. If it is horribly mutated and living in nuclear waste… radiation damage isn’t going to hurt it. If you shoot something in the head… it dies faster than if you shoot it in the foot. If it looks like it is covered in armor… it probably has high armor. DUH! Don’t waste the point on this perk, just use common sense.

There are a lot of bad perks. If it sounds bad… it probably is. If you want it anyway… cool whatever.

5 Gear Selection:

For weapons… it should be pretty straight forward.

If you go with the Rifleman perk, use weapons that Rifleman’s bonus applies to.

You’ll be running around with your .38 pipe rifle for a long while.

Eventually you’ll get a .45, a .308, a 5.56 mm and a .50 receiver for your hunting/sniper rifle.

You may even want to trick out a laser rifle and get some mileage out of those fusion cells you’ll collect.

If you are lucky enough to find a legendary version of any of these then of course upgrading that one will be better than a vanilla.
If you are really loved by the game you may find a 2-shot version of one these. It’s “GG” from there on.

Just remember to keep your receivers as powerful as possible and use your favorite sights/scopes. I highly recommend using a combination of short scopes and red dots until the short recon scope is available.

For armor, damage resistance is really all that matters up until the mid-late game. And by then you’ll have your power suit.

It’s a good idea to keep one hazmat suit handy for occasions where you have to go into high radiation areas until you get your X-01 tricked out to have over 1000 radiation resistance. Rad-x and rad away on hand is also a good idea.

It’s also a good idea to keep a charisma suit on hand for conversations. You should be able to get +4 charisma by using a chest armor, glasses, and hat.

6 Key Gear pieces (vague SPOILERS)
In this section I just want to point out a couple pieces of gear that will carry you through the game. There are really only 2 pieces of gear that I heavily recommend: the Overseer’s Guardian and the X-01 Power Armor. With these 2 pieces of gear, I was able to clear anything and everything the game could throw without much fuss.

The Overseer’s Guardian can be purchased at any level meaning that you can be using it very early on to crush the game. It fires .45 ammo, which becomes very easy to find on fallen enemies starting level 35 or so. Up to that point, you have to be a little stingy with your use, though you will find it in crates and on occasional enemies as soon as combat rifles start showing up around level 20.

The Overseer’s Guardian has the 2-shot perk on it inherently, which makes it deal double damage. This perk is stupidly overpowered and should never have gone live. At the very least the perk should consume 2 ammo per shot for the sake of balance, but it does not.

Any gun can drop from a legendary mob with the 2 shot perk, but the Overseer’s Guardian always has it and is always available from one particular spot.
That spot is the shop in vault 81. Vault 81’s location is readily available online.

The second piece is the X-01 power suit. This bad boy will make you shrug off anything in the game short of a nuke going off under your feet.
It can be found in a building called 35 Court as long as you are at least level 30.
I would recommend getting the Overseer’s Guardian first along with having power armor already to get this power armor as it is pretty well defended.

7 Farming

Farming is pretty amazing this time around, mainly because of vegitable starch which can be scrapped for 5 adhesive.

The recipe for vegitable starch is 3 mutt fruit, 3 tato, 3 corn, and 1 purified water.

I'd highly recommend planting mutt fruit, tatos, and corn as early in the game as possible so that you can get yourself to 15 of each type of plant.

Even if you don't need the adhesive now, routinely harvest the plants and toss them into a workshop for later use.

8) Use VATS

VATS is one of the things that makes Fallout unique.

It is very helpful for gathering information about the number of enemies you are facing, the type of enemies you are facing, and their locations.

But, especially early game, using VATS for damage dealing can be frustrating because very often you will feel like you are just wasting ammo by using VATS because of your low chance to hit anything that is mid to long range away.

Even without perks and stats that boost your hit rate though, VATS is still a huge asset to a player, even if not for damage dealing.

VATS has a huge range and will automatically find targets even if your crosshairs are no where near them.

This is very helpful for finding enemies that are lying in ambush or in dense cover.

Also, certain weapons are inherently stronger in VATS than others.

Bolt action sniper rifles and pistols get a considerable increase to their DPS output in VATS because the time it takes to chamber the next round in VATS is practically negated.

If you are struggling with an enemy in the early/mid game because they are rushing you, consider using VATS with a .308 or .50 bolt action when they get close. You might be surprised to watch your self utterly destroy the critter in slow motion.

In huge contrast, using a .38 semi-automatic rifle in VATS not going be very valuable in terms of damage per action point.

Play around with VATS, even if you don't like using it in typical combats.

9) A good tip to level FAST in the early game and suppliment your income. (Vauge spoiler again)

If you've been playing Fallout for any time, you know that the begining of the game is when you are the most vulnerable and that you are most likely to run into enemies that way outclass you at this point in the game.

Here is a tip to help you get through the first few levels so that you can get through those first levels quickly and fairly painlessly.

You will need to get your first settlement/work bench to do this trick.

Once you get to that work bench go around that settlement and scrap every tree, fence, and other wood source you can find.

Considering that some trees give you 30 wood a piece, you should now have hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of wood.

Useful right?

Now go into you workshop menu and find fences. For a cost of just 2 wood, you can make a "wire fence" post. Placing a wire fence post grants you 2 experience (6 if idiot savant procs).

Go nuts. You should easily have enough wood for 4+ levels at the point in the game.

Need cash?

Each single resource is worth 1 cap. The next time you see a traveling trader pawn some wood or steel or whatever and get some "jingle for your pocket".

do all of your guides come without any formatting?

Thank you! I think I'll keep hacking for completeness though. Lifegiver I may skip instead. Also how about sneaking perks?

Finally, no settlement perks?

You should definitely hide those spoilers, they are a bit more than vague.

"Shoot it in the head, it dies faster"
Pls, just
Pls
Tell me you havent been shooting deathclaws and assultrons in the head thinking it does more damage

My tip is don't eye the brahmin.

I've been shooting deathclaws in the legs in the vain hope it slows them down. Where should I be aiming on assaultrons?

The body on assultrons oddly does x2 damage compared to their head. I guess its because thats where their power supply and the like are..

Deathclaws - shoot in the belly. You can easily dodge their power attacks given proper timing

Lol... two enemies in the whole game that are both really rare... and neither is new to the Fallout experience.

And besides, now that you've listed the two exceptions that skill really is useless.

I personally didn't find settlement perks helpful, but that's not to say that everyone is going to have the same interests as me.

I'll say it this way, the guide is intended to help you through the story line and to get you to an "end game" level.

Settlements are useful for scrapping, crafting tables, and food plots for adhesive but are pretty useless beyond that for actual story line advancement.

Actually.. Theres a vault near the glowing sea filled with assultrons and in the glowing sea deathclaws are a pretty normal occurance for me..

The perk itself is actually usefull, theres different variations of the exact same armours but with bolstered stats and random mods and enemys themselves have diffrrentiated stats it seems. And if youre using pacify perks you kinda NEED to know what level your enemys are cause if theyre higher - you cant pacify them

Question is; will your lazer musket or your insanely modded 10mm pistol be better for the job? Maybe a gamma gun will work better?

I mean, if you dont care about bullet usage and would rather blast your way through things regardless - its useless.
But if you want to be more informed and have the extra perk? Its great


Theres alot of things enemys take differently with damage, i mean (genric enemy wise) supermutants take more of a stagger from arm cripples, ghouls are useless with a leg gone.. Im sure theres l o t s more and itll be expanded upon in DLC

But yeah - while it seems useless, its better than VANS - and there is some practicality to it

It is a useful guide for begineers, not suited to my playstyle, but have interesting tips.

For settlement builders:

I will go for 6 Ch soon as possible and get Local leader, so your settlements will be your providers of free crafting loot. With local leader 2 you will have vendors in every settlement and some caps income. Also you do not have to go searching for building materials from settlement to settlement if you link them.Also, perks like medic are prerequisites for advanced settlement buildings, as with cap collector.

Also, if you are not playing in survival ( most enemies will see you anyway), it is better to pick the sneak and mr sandman perks with the ninja perk XD.

I do not use Lone wanderer ever, nor plan to do it( I prefer the companions′ chat and support. With max-approval Peston, for example, you have more damage at lower level than 40, more cargo hold than 100 pounds and also you do not get shooted so often; With Curie you will be healed when you are about to die, etc) but in other topic some stated that you can use dogmeat without lose the advantages of this perk. Doggie also holds enemies in place so you can shoot them easily.

If you ask me I will go for both Hacker and Locksmith, but if you have to choose, Locksmith offers you ammo and loot, but that is it. Hacker is more useful: they give you loot but also gives you faster resolve of some quests and background info in most places, and allows you to hack turrets, use protectrons... Also some locks can be opened with computers, but not viceversa. And if you use Cait as companion she can pick the locks for you if you give her bobby pins so you do not have to waste perks on locksmith ( forgot to say this=) ).

Do you always complain about me giving you something for free that other people would willingly pay for?

I just am not interested in spending hours on making things pretty... if you don't want to read it because I didn't use 25 types of font... it doesn't hurt my feelings.

I have never seen a protectron terminal that was higher than novice. And while it is true that hacking will often let you skip sections of the game, you then miss out on that section of the game...

I mean... what's the point? If you want the "clear" on the map, you have to kill the leader. And 9 times out of 10 the leader is the one with the key card anyway.

With a very small amount of extra effort you can almost always get any terminal door open. No matter what you do, you aren't getting that safe open without locksmith (with the rare exception of the ones hooked to terminals as well).

If you like hacker, fine... but the income of experience and resources from hacker is maybe one tenth of what you get out of locksmithing.

great info! thanks for taking the time to share!

But if you use Cait as thief you do not even have to put any single point in locksmith, and you can use her temporally even if you have that lone wanderer whatever. You can only hack with your MC, so, hack>locksmith any time. Better both of them, of course.

Everything you say is true... but in the same breath:

1) There just aren't that many enemy models in the game

2) Variance within that model type is so subtle that it almost never makes any difference

3) 95% of the time Bethesda gives you pretty clear visual clues to tell you what things are strong against and weak against without the perk

If a Mirelurk pops out of the ground near nuclear waste and is glowing green... radiation damage probably isn't going to work on him.

While you could spend a lot of time in VATS studying each individual opponent, it's a lot faster and easier and takes less perk points to just use good judgement and keep an eye on the enemy's health bar.

If you are chunking him, keep doing what you just did. If his bar doesn't move then try to apply logic as to why and make the logical adjustment.

I played through an entire survivalist campaign and never once was puzzled by an enemy. 99% of the time I put a crosshair on his head and pulled the trigger and his head popped off after one or two shots.

Like I said, you don't really need a perk to help you figure that one out.

For the final 1%, after the brief moment of surprise of their head not coming clean off, I'd anolyze the creature a little further and figure out why then make the appropriate adjustment.

That's why I don't recommend the perk.

And in terms of energy vs ballistic vs radiation... you don't even find yourself in a position where you have to make that decision until late mid game. At which point, most of the game's challenge has been removed anyway.

By the time that you get a steady flow of fusion cells to use a laser rifle, you only have a few hours of campaign left and your ballistic weapons should be 1 shotting every non-legendary anyway...

Thanks for the guide and time put into it. Not sure why people feel the need to be rude to others for trying to help.

I don't think this is true about Cait and lone wanderer.

I think this works with Dog Meat, but not Cait.

Have any proof?

Sorry, I said "temporally": Take her to pick the locks and then pick dogmeat. That way you can still have the benefits of Lone wanderer if you like it that way and you can ditch locksmith totally without missing anything. Of course, for commodity it is better both perks, and for me have a companion other than the dog and not that perk, but if you have to choose...

PD. Forgot to say that you miss much more content without the "hack" perk. You cannot read the background story on the terminals. That is content too no? o.O.

I tend not to read back story because the gaping holes in them ruin the immersion.

I like to pretend that the bombs went off only a years ago, because that is the only way that there would be this many supplies and unexplored secrets.

After 200 years zero manufacturing and everyone scauaging to get by, you wouldn't find as much as a shovel in good condition... let alone nuclear reactors and computer terminals.

Suppose theres the argument the perk is only good for one playthrough then you have an idea on base stats but example;

Standard chest combat armour (no mods) does round about 12 DR yet a sturdy chest combat armour (still no mods) has a DR of 20+ odd. Theres no way to tell em apart.. Granted the latter starts spawning in the higher your level.

I think its utter lies to say on survival its EASY.. May not be hard as you expected but its still a decent challenge.
Those who outright say its easy and they can one hit most enemies are either lying, camping in stupid spots or exploiting the AI weaknesses, not the enemys actual weakness. Which.. Yknow, isnt how the game is intended to be played.
Its still alot harder than fallout 3 and it gives you incentive to play in harder difficulties with the more occuring legendarys.

Lategame is always easy to a degree though because, lets face it - its just grinding for loot to sell off - lategame youll have 5 MK V x-01 suits, hundreds of meds and "unique" items that youll probably never use.

Why?
Because its fallout.

Bloody Mess is a waste early on when you're doing 20 or so damage...that 5% will only grant 1 more damage point so save it until you unlock 2 or more tiers at once. I recommend getting scrounger and scrapper asap then loot and scrap everything...by level 10 I was swimming in materials and ammo. I also conserve my stronger ammo for skull/legendary enemies and later levels. I'm currently lvl 25 and have 1000+ .308 rounds and hundreds of other better ammo as I'm mostly using .38 (which is abundant) and 10mm.

I agree that medic is a waste in the long run but it helped me out when supplies were scarce and I don't burn as much radaway when fighting Children of Atom.

I don't know... I 1 shot most enemies that aren't uniquely named or "mini-boss quality" and even 1 shot some of them with sneak attacks.

And I'm just using the Overseer's Guardian most of the time.

And even if I couldn't 1 shot them, it's not like they can do anything to me.

Maybe I'm just in a certain level threshhold where my spec puts me too far ahead. And perhaps the enemies will catch up a little once I level some more.

But as of right now Power Armor and "2 shot weapons" really makes the game a joke...

I mean... at level 40 on survival difficulty I walked into the Brotherhood of Steel's ship and declared war on them by assassinating their leader and everyone else on the airship.

I must have killed 20 guys with power armor by the time I cleared out everyone from the air ship and from the Boston Airport below.

And I did all that without using a single stim pack and only using a .45 ballistic weapon.

Imagine if I actually had a 2 shot Plasma Sniper Rifle or something...

I'm sure that if I tried that without power armor that Brotherhood Knights and Paladins would do more than tickle... but if I'm using my truly best gear then the survival mode is pants on head stupidly easy IMO.

2000 damage resistance, nearly 2000 energy resistance, and 1000 radiation resistance just makes everything in the game laughable.

Bloody mess isn't an all-star, but it is definitely solid.

I listed 10 perks in decending order of importance and bloody mess is listed as 6th, so you probably won't be taking points into it until at least the teen levels.

On average, bloody mess is still going to provide more and more consistent bonus damage over any perk other than the ones listed above it (Rifleman/Commando/Gunslinger, Gun Nut, Ninja).

Yes with 1 rank on a weapon with 20 damage, you deal 21. With three ranks of it, you are dealing 23.

Now apply a x3 sneak attack multiplier...

You're dealing 9 more damage than you would have if you didn't have this perk on a 20 damage weapon... that's a pretty big deal.