So I thought about making a melee character(not unarmed). I havn′t really done much melee fights, hardly even tried it. I have most been fighting with guns. So I tought it was a good idea to get some advice before I build the character. So my question is what should I focus on? What perks is best, what kind of skills would be most efficient for fighting and is there any unique weapons I should get?

Melee 100(duh) Having an agility of 7 is nice, or 6 +implant. Combine that with 70 unarmed for the Slayer perk.

Pick Survival or Medicine as an important stat, what good is a melee guy if he can't heal?

But are you going to be a Bar Brawler kinda guy, or a kill you in your sleep kinda guy?

Bar brawler I belive. I also tought about focusing on Sneak skill, as I could close up to the enemy before assaulting.

Using sneak just to close in on enemies is a good idea, less bullets going into your system. If you aren';t going Luck based and going for hits over crits, choose Heavy Handed trait. Barter could have some uses, seeing as ammo will most likely collect dust, so you can make some caps to keep your weapons in top quality condition.

Bullets are inevitable to a melee character, so allow me to make some suggestions: Take the Toughness trait as many times as it will allow you, the DT can come in handy! The implant for DT is nice too! For your clothing related needs, I would suggest going Light or Medium. Heavy is always nice, but the protection could be negated by the fact it takes longer to get to your target! To balance this out, I recommend Gannon Family Tesla Armor, which is power armor, but it is classified as Medium. Pretty good armor too.

Tossing explosives and then rushing the enemies with a whatever-whack-stick is a good strategy.

1: Acquire Knock Knock
2: 100 melee plus super slam
3: ?????
4: Profit!!

Alternatively Oh Baby! is also a really good choice.

Pfft. DT folks. I melee with zero DT and do just fine. What are you guys so fuzzy about?

But anyways:

I think using Light Armor with Travel Light will get you a long way to successfully meleeing in most situations. The increased speed in your run should be able to get you in quicker than you expect. Based on what you want, you'll probably want the Heavy Handed Trait so down'ing Luck to 1 should be the best course of action. I did it on my current Melee / Unarmed character, and she does just fine without crits.

Silent Running is almost imperative for sneaking with melee, if you're planning to go that route. I can go into so much more detail about melee sneaking but I don't think you're aiming for that. I was actually thinking of writing some form of tutorial as to sneaking with melee but I would rather not get into it.

At the end of the day, even though you're having melee as a main source of damage, I would still recommend taking up a ranged weapon skill so that it can be pulled out as a "just-in-case" event. Not may skill points have to be put in as well, like maybe a simple 10mm pistol, which requires 25 Guns Skill to be fully effective, will do the trick as just having an alternative option will not get you into too much trouble.

i like sneak to go with it, higher enderance means when you get shot you can take more punishment. I think strength is tied into your damage output. I don't actually use melee, but all my characters use unarmed as a backup. I would also put some points into guns, just in case you need to pop some heads at a distance. Maybe medicine or survival to make restoration items and poisons. Like i said i use unarmed so my favorite up close weapon is the ballistic fist, i think oh baby is one of the better melee weapons.

I would go for heavy armor, like power armor, with the remenents armor you can shrug off just about any damage, and i never have any problems with sneaking in it

I find Travel Light to rather lackluster. Rather take Medium/Heavy Armor any day. Even with Travel Light, all the nasty critters can still outrun you - Cazadors, DeathClaws, Ghoul Reapers, or Giant Rad Scorps. Now in all fairness the extra DT will help against some of those, but not all. However, a higher DT will allow you to squash anything but the big nasties. Who cares about some Fiend or Golden Gecko or Viper ganger when you have 25+ DT? Take a few scratches and crush them.

I would agree about using a Ranged Combat skill though. Pound someone from a distance with a gun and then crush their head with a Sledge Hammer when they are dumb enough to get close!

Also, since I am rolling my first really serious melee character here are a few "extra" tips! Keep two types of melee weapons - a high DPS one handed weapon(Lead Pipe or Combat Knife) and a two handed long reach melee weapon (Like Rebar Club or Sledge Hammer). The one hand weapon is best for gun using targets. Charge right in and wail on em. The two hand is best for the heavy hitting melee mobs(Giant Radscorps or night stalkers). You want to kite them as much as possible.

Second, master blocking. You want to block and then unleash, Works really well once you have Super Slam. It really does make all the differnce against melee mobs.

Lastly, crank up surivial. At least to a 50 early on. Then aggressively hunt Geckos/Bloat Flyes/Big Horners.

Who said Travel Light was for running away? You're rushing in there with Travel Light. :thumbsup: I find it a decent tactic to holster my melee weapon, for the speed boost when you holster a weapon, and then VATS it to draw and lock onto the target. What's the # for this... right.

So with Travel Light and Holstering your weapon you get the following equation (I assume): 1.10(4.00 x 1.1), which is 4.84, or more than 20% faster than default. That's pretty damn fast believe me.

Don't Golden Geckos go through more than 25+ DT? I swear I've never seen the armor icon pop up before on them. They seriously do big damage, though obviously not the level of Deathclaws.

This is why I like Light Armor in general. It provides enough protection so that NPCs with low-tier / low-damage weapons can't get through yet still retaining the speed of being naked. Sure, beasting my way through mobs with Heavy Armor is neat and all, but if I ever run into an NPC that can break the DT, I most likely die before I can reach them. Opinions are opinions I suppose. I've been through hell in mods so I kinda know how effective I am with different things. Probably why I suggest stuff like I do.

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I don't have anymore tips outside of the ones I already suggested as the rest are purely based off the fact that I sneak melee with no DT... which no one ever does these days. :rolleyes:

Are we talking about melee only or melee&Unamred?

Melee. I think most tactics from Unarmed apply to Melee anyways so... *shrugs*.

Edit:

At least, I consider them to be similar in nature.

You are wrong then. Melee doesn't get special moves and require your character to specialist in either raw or crit; i.e. different in both tactics and build....

When some basics are the same, anything beyond is quite different

Well, of course I'm wrong. I'm wrong because stuff just works for me. I did say that they are similar in nature but nothing short of identical. The 'most' part throws that out the window though.

I'd agree and disagree with what you said though. It's really dependent on the build. A middle ground between crit and raw damage is feasible, though it takes a specific set of actions to get it working and, I'm not sure if it would be just as effective as leaning to one side or the other. I've experienced both sides of what you said, and they play very differently from one another. But again, that's because I play them differently to begin with. I could swap playstyle and they may as well do just as fine.

At the same time, I can do the same with Unarmed but it's a lot more limited in terms of both variety in build and weapons.

Ineed. When I make melee characters I always have explosives as a secondary. Cripple and stun your opponents with explosives, then move in, disarm, and kill them.


OP, get the fire axe.

Well, people have vastly different experience with a game, and NV is one of the most diverge I have seen on forums. "Doing fine" are very different from person to person. Still that isn't the point.

I would say Unarmed's only restriction are weapons; playstyle is more diverge thanks to special moves, and more freedom in builds because Unarmed weapons are balanced in raw as well as crit damage.

Unarmed and Melee's similarity are being a close range attack, and you approach your prey with similar maneuver; but once you are in range and start to attack, the similarity ends.

I'm pretty sure Travel Light just gives you 10% more speed, not 20

It 20% more than medium and heavy because they have 10% speed penalty.

Doing a very informal test of counting while running between 2 locations, Light Armor and Travel Light was only able to shave off a second or two vs medium armor/heavy.

Not worth it in my opinion.

i liked the thermic lance for melee but it degrades pretty quick.you should go with unarmed so you can use the different power fists displacer ballistic etc

Would you like to reveal these two locations? if it was a 10 seconds walk then sure you should only shave 1~2 seconds.

Personally I found it a huge improvement, even more so if you are sneaking.

Find a chainsaw or ripper, hold down the fire button, and aim for the face.

It was a very short distance. Between Bison Steve and Viki & Vance.

Even though, I am starting to rethink the value of DT in this game. With the 20% bleed through + a lot of critters do massive damage. More then any DT the player can get.

Any opinions on a Hybrid Melee/Guns build? I made a new toon based off of Eli (Book of Eli) and I can't decide how to go with perks. I use a pistol, Shotgun, and right now Liberator (which I'll trade for Gladius eventually). I disdain having to go all the way through 70 unarmed to get piercing strike for a melee guy...just seems [censored].

Also, is Super Slam worth it?