So I'm completely new to Fallout. I've never played any Fallout game ever. I'm fairly adept at video games, so it puzzles me why I'm having such a hard time in Fallout. I feel like I don't fully understand the system(s) in place, so I'd like to ask for some help. I'm really enjoying the game despite my hardships, so I'm looking forward to learning and improving.

1. I die all the time.

It's funny - I was letting my friend check the game out via Steam Broadcasting while I played. I'm going around, exploring, looting, talking, and he asks me "How come you never use your VATS?" I was like "What the hell are vats?" He explained it to me very basically because he isn't familiar with it either, but up until that point I had no idea. The squares with numbers in them looked familiar from a brief tutorial I went through, but it was late at night, and the next day I didn't even remember the system existed. So I thought maybe this was the reason I was doing so poorly - turns out it only helped slightly. I assume that's because I don't really understand how it works. My problem with it is that I miss all the time when I use it - even when the target is fully exposed and has nowhere to hide. I assumed since VATS seemed to take control of my weapon, that it was aiming for me, but I almost seem to do better when I aim it myself. Also - even when I do hit, it's usually pretty weak. Again, it seems I do more damage when I aim on my own. What am I missing about this system? I assume that I am the problem, and that I need to learn to use it correctly.

I seem to take a lot of damage and hit like a wet noodle. I tried modding my guns and armor, but it seemed to make very little difference. I know how it sounds, but I can promise you it's not a matter of aiming skill or spraying. I've been playing shooters since the 90s. I'm damn good at them. In Fallout, I miss a LOT. For this reason, I feel like I'm missing something about how things work, especially with the VATS system. It feels like there's something more to it than other shooters, which I think is awesome, but I am just missing something about how it works.

2. My character bulid.

The game explained very little about how perks work, but for the most part, they seemed pretty self-explanatory when I read them. I want to go back and reset them, so I'll have to see if there's a way to do that. At first I wanted to make an intelligent character who relied less on brute force and more on outsmarting his opponents. It seems that this isn't really viable though, so I've been not-so-carefully putting points into whatever thing I'm having trouble with at the time. Running out of ammo, got Scrounger. Wanted to craft, got Scrapper. Dying all the time, so I got Toughness. So on and so forth in that manner. So I have a haphazard smattering of random talents. Here's what I created on my first day, having no real knowledge of the Fallout universe:

Strength 4

Perception 5

Endurance 5

Charisma 3

Intelligence 7

Agility 3

Luck 2

Seemed fairly well balanced to me.

Perks:

Aquaboy

Commando

Covert Operation

Gun Nut

Guns and Bullets

Gunslinger

Locksmith

Medic

Scrapper

Scrounge

Tesla Science

Toughness

Unstoppable

V.A.N.S.

Wasteland Survivor 1

I guess my questions could be summed up as:

- Are any of these perks noob traps?

- Should my character be more focused or more generalized?

- Is an intelligence character viable? (I want to outsmart, hack, lockpick, and craft as opposed to break, smash, punch, and overpower)

- Can I reset these perks?

3. Crafting

I'm pretty frustrated with crafting right now. I feel like the game did a bad job of explaining it, but as with everything, I'll assume I'm the problem unless I'm shown otherwise. I super enjoy looting stuff, and super enjoy crafting, so I was excited to get started on this aspect of the game. I heard it was pretty in-depth.

Here's a summary of what I'm currently doing:

- Looting just about everything for raw materials

- Fast traveling to Home Plate and back when I get too full

- Dumping everything into my workbench

Now, it seems like whenever I want to craft something at another station, I have to remove the materials from the workbench, and deposit it into the next station. Is this for real? It's such a pain. Also - is there no way to scrap items while out in the world? I'd like to carry around raw materials rather than stuff my weapon list with pipe gun #437. It seems that I either have to deposit the items into the station intact, or drop them in the "crafting zone" and manually scrap them one by one. Is there a workbench function to 'scrap all'?

I have no idea how power works. I saw a terminal in my house that claimed to generate 100 volts (I assume they're volts). I saw wires running from it, and managed to run some wire and a node of my own before I ran out of copper. I placed a ceiling fan above my 'bedroom', and it just magically worked without any wiring going to it. I assume the items draw power (I saw some red voltage on some items, which I assume indicates that it uses that much power), and that I can use up to 100 volts before I need to think about expanding that somehow. Lots of assuming here on my part.

Some other random questions:
- Is there a way to call your current companion? I loaded up that synth with a lot of junk and he went off somewhere. Do I have to go track him down at the next quest location?

- Will I always be out of ammo? I seem to always be out, even though I naturally conserve. Is there a way to craft ammo? I'm hoping that if I can figure out how to kill someone with less than 10 shots, this problem will resolve itself.

- Are collections a thing? I've found pieces of junk that lend themselves to being part of a collection, but I'm not sure if anything happens when I get them all (letter blocks, skeleton parts, toy pony parts, etc).

- Can you place junk in your home? I didn't see a method of doing this aside from dropping it and hoping it lands where you want it. For instance, if I have five junk items - a spoon, fork, knife, plate and glass - can I make a place setting on a table, or would I just have to drop the items over and over until it lands where I want it?

- I'll add more when I play again. There's more, I just can't think of them at the moment, and I'm not at home with the game right now.

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

There's a 'Store All Junk' button on the menu when you open up the workshop in a settlement. Makes a sound like a ton of garbage hitting the floor.

For starters, Home Plate isn't a good place to store your junk. In all of the other settlements you have the option of creating a supply line. How this works is you assign a settler from a given settlement to run a supply line to another one, creating a big chain. Assign someone from Sanctuary to the supply line to Red Rocket, assign someone from Red Rocket to run a supply line to the Abernathy Farm and so on. Now when you go into build mode at your connected settlements, you'll have all of the construction materials and crops that are available in the work benches at your other connected settlements. Home Plate doesn't offer the option of connecting via the supply lines because you can't recruit settlers to Home Plate.

Note that you will only see the combined materials when in build mode. If you have a given item stored in the work bench at Sanctuary, you will only be able to withdraw that item from the work bench at Sanctuary.

VATS is kind of a personal choice. I tend not to use it too much because I've always been more of a FPS kind of person. It can be very handy though. When you open VATS you can move around the target and it displays numbers on each section. These numbers are your percentage chances of hitting the given target. Hit Q to a select a target (you can select more than one target, or select the same target multiple times in multiple areas), and then hit E to confirm (if you're on PC). Like I said, I rarely use VATS, but it can be handy at times. Things like Mirelurks are most easily killed by shooting in the face, but it can be hard to hit them there. VATS can help with this. If you have multiple targets when you walk into a room you can select all of them in VATS and take them out quickly. This can be especially useful in a hostage situation.

I started out with a well balanced character. I simply boosted every characteristic to 3 right away. Since then though I've built a very charisma/intelligence driven character, but now I'm starting to catch up on the strength and endurance aspects as well.

Regarding the ammo - It sounds like you're still relatively early in the game. Ammo is scarce at first, but it'll become far more plentiful soon enough. I'm level 36 and about 90 hours of game play in, and I probably have close to 20,000 rounds of various types of ammunition and I have never once actually bought any.

Junk storage is a pain unless you pick one primary base in which to store all your junk and do your crafting at. Home Plate is lousy, because the crafting stations just outside are not connected to your junk stash there. I set up at Sanctuary or the Red Rocket station, where those things are connected to each other. I stopped using Sanctuary, cuz the people there are just annoying yackety nutballs, and moved shop to the Red Rocket, which I leave unpopulated. Silence to concentrate is golden. There are numerous other sites that would work as well.

Some secrets to fighting and killing more effectively, from my own style that works for me:

1) Build up stealth, I get it to level 4 by the time I'm 23. Until you get that perk to level 4, you need to sneak around in 'walk' mode. If you sneak in 'run' mode, enemies will hear you coming a mile away. It's a pain to use stealth until you get that 4th point into it, but good training on being sneaky and using shadow/noise/clothing/line-of-sight skills to get closer for shots. I just play at night, cuz stealth works so much better then- sleep through the daytime. I sneak everywhere, seldom stand up unless in actual combat, and frequently not even then. I do explore sneaking in run mode, and flip to walk sneaking when the indicator show something is beginning to detect me. If you don't sneak when exploring you have no way of knowing something has spotted you and is attacking, until you get ambushed. Unless you spin around like a top and have really, really good eyes...

2) Have at least 6-8 points in agility- it helps stealth, gives more attack points to work with in VATS, and improves your use of guns overall. Find clothing and accessories that adds agility, wear it.

3) Sneak attack crits and manual VATS crits are key to taking down enemies. When you notice your VATS crit-bar is full and ready to use, and you need it, use it. This will help knock down your enemy's healthbar before they knock out yours. When you can get the Ninja and Better Criticals perks, do so- and max them out when you can. They are huge.

4) in VATS, don't try for headshots until your target is close enough to get your chance over 75%- before that, just do torso shots or a high-percent-chance limb shot. Use VATS as your primary attack method, until you get better equipped and practiced at fighting effectively in the game.

5) Grenades and molotov's rock. Even without any points in explosives perk, they will decimate enemies, and if you get good at tossing them, can take out whole groups of them at once. Don't use them up close, though! Heh, last night I was up on some high antennae perch thing, and spotted a cluster of 9 raiders standing in a clump about 100 yards away, BS'ing and picking their noses. I gave my best hail-Mary longball toss like a right-fielder throwing to home plate, and it landed right in the middle of them! 7 of 9 went down with mucho missing limbs, then I sniped the other two easily. That was with explosives perk only at lvl 1. Great fun Conversely, when you see the red grenade icon on your screen, it indicates an enemy has tossed a pineapple near you. They work on you just as well as they work on your enemies. Get the heck out of there when you see one coming.

6) Know when to hold 'em, and know when to run screaming like a little vault girl whilst peeing your blue suit. If things start to look dicey, use up some AP to sprint for the hills. Then sneak back and try again. Or not.

There's a bazillion other important things to know, but that'll get you started.

If you have more than one settlement, you can assign a settler to set up a supply line (this will tie workbenches together so can store all your junk at settlement A and use it at settlement B ). To do this you'll need 6 charisma in order to get the local leader perk. Once you have to perk go into workshop mode, aim at a settler and hold q (I don't know what it is on consoles) and a menu will come up showing the names of your settlements. Select one and now you can share junk between settlements.

As far as dying a lot, make sure you have stimpacks, you can select them in your pipboy under aid or stats (stats will show you what button to press to either take a stimpack or a radaway). Chems can turn the tide of any battle. Jet will slow down time for 10 seconds, psycho will boost your damage and resistance for 25 seconds (I think 25), rad x will reduce radiation damage, etc. While headshots do more damage, that's not always the best place to aim. If you do enough damage to a limb you can cripple it or shoot it off entirely. This is real handy if you want to shoot a gun out of someones hands (forcing them to charge you with a melee weapon), shoot the arms or legs off of a Ghoul (they will bite you), or shooting the mini nuke a supermutant suicider is holding (though it's best to kill the supermutant before he explodes because you can take his very rare mini nuke). Some bad guys have "weak spots" that can turn them hostile against everyone (including their friendlies) like bugs with antennas or the targeting sensor on the back of robots. There's a perk that makes this easier via the vats system (I can't think of it's name off hand).

The explosive perks can be pretty useful, allowing you to craft some of the rarer explosives (like the cyro grenades/mines), but will require nuclear material (if you kill an enemy with a plasma weapon you have a chance to turn them into goo which can provide nuclear material).

Different enemies have different weaknesses and immunities. Fire or explosive damage will tear though Ghouls, while radiation damage does nothing. Pulse/electric damage will do a lot of damage against robots, but they are pretty tough against anything else, and so on.

VATS is the *only* way to detect nearby enemies without engaging them, so it is an essential thing to use if you want to avoid dying frequently. On the PC, press and hold Q to enter VATS, which will highlight sleeping enemies, hard-to-see land mines, hard-to-see enemies, and any hostile within the line of sight or partial line of sight. The hostiles don't have to be in front of you for this to work. They can be to your left, right, or behind you, as long as they are within the VATS detection radius. In Fallout 3, hostiles show up on your compass automatically without having to go into VATS. But FO4 changed that.

Pop a scope on almost any non-automatic rifle, and you can pick off enemies at surprisingly long distances with manually aimed headshots.

When using VATS, the torso usually gives you the best to-hit numbers, but may not be what you want to aim for. Take a lower to-hit and aim for a leg on melee attackers, or an arm on ranged attackers; with a little luck, you can render them powerless and pick them off at your leisure.

Also, one problem with VATS - it doesn't do well with railings, minor cover, and other seemingly inconsequential obstructions. Even if VATS gives you a 95 to-hit, chances are your bullets will be deflected if there's a narrow pipe or strut in front of your target. Very annoying.

Finally, plan your battle! I'll scope out an area, plan my approach and retreat routes with line-of-sight obstructions in mind, and place mines at strategic points on my retreats. It might not be heroic, but it gets the job done...

Vats is not required to play the game. It can help find enemies and land mines but unless you invest in Vats perks it svcks for all but point blank range.

You are doing poorly as you have just started playing the game and it's tough till you level up a few times. Do some of the simple quests and stay in the north-west area of the map. The hostiles get tougher as you explore further from the start location.

Mob your weapons till you get some decent loot. Play how you feel happy playing. You can pick your playing style and don't forget to drop the difficulty setting if you are really having problems. You can move it up and down as much as you like. It does affect the loot you get so try to raise it when you get your fallout feet under you.

As for settlement building there are some great tutorials on how wires and power all works on YouTube. The game does nothing to explain how they work or the advanced programing required to set up traps and light boxes. Check out Ian Higton his tutorials kick ass;
https://youtu.be/U4j-EOsolnU

Some of those perks are from magazines. Press T to bring up the perk chart if you want to look at your own character build. I don't think there are any noob trap perks to speak of, so long as you understand what you are getting when you pick them.

Focus or more generalized? Up to you, and depending on difficulty. As you increse the difficulty, you need to be more focused in order to do well in combat.

Intelligence viable? absolutely, if you want to pick up both lockpick and hack like many people have, go for it. Just know that there are companions who can do it for you, for free, with a small chance of failure

Can you reset perks? No. But there is no level cap so theoretically you won't really "waste" a perk point, but if you pick somethign you end up regretting, then you wasted a level and some time.

think of this as one would play chess. you make moves 5 steps ahead of your enemy. be strategic in your battles. be patient, yet aggressive.

There are weapons for all sorts of situations.

Shotguns with bayonette - ghouls

10mm Pistol - raiders, radroaches (general killer)

Laser Rifle with recon scope - long range, good for any occasion

Missile Launcher - groups of enemies

Combat Rifle - medium range enemies, use with VATS is preferred.

The best advice I can give you is put more points into perks that go along with certain types of weapons, Rifleman, commando, etc. That was it increases the damage and accuracy of the weapon.

For Me, I use VATS a lot, usually aiming at the head (which I usually hit 80% of the time because of luck stat) and usually a leg (so that way ghouls can't run after you). Outside of combat, treat it like Call of Duty, aim for the head down sights or center mass.

The only problem I really do have with is enemies with missile launchers and Fat Mans.... If you take a direct hit with either, youre pretty much toast. The only thing that helps is the fat man makes a whirling sound as the nuke comes to you. You can try to shoot it out of the air but its hard. Suicide Super mutants you can VATS shoot the bomb usually.

Thanks guys, this is helpful. I'm playing on PC, by the way.

Maybe I'm too far from the start for my level. I'm level 11 and exploring/fighting around Diamond City. I recently just went through the Turnpike Tunnels and cleared that, dying a few times.

I didn't realize that different enemies had different resistances. It's quite possible I'm using the wrong weapons for the wrong things - although right now, it seems that I have to use whatever I can find ammo for.

I didn't realize VATS was showing the chance to hit. I thought it was an approximation of the damage I would do!

I have no idea what settlements are. Didn't even know they were a thing. Is that why the Gas Station has a happiness rating? I thought that was odd, but I don't think that was ever explained in-game. If it was, I might have been fighting some rats at the time. I'll have to look up a guide on settlements. I honestly don't think the game told me a thing about them. I remember it explaining crafting stations a bit, but that was it.

Is the map shown the entire game world? I'm used to MMO maps that are enormous. Seems a bit small if so - I mean I'm only 11 and have almost been from corner to corner. Doesn't seem like enough to contain a full campaign. For you ex-WoW players like me, I feel like I'm in the Elwynn Forest or Durotar or the game world, just starting to learn. I hope it's not the whole thing.

Anyway, are my weapons and armor up to snuff? According to the phone app (really cool thing), I'm currently using:

[Someone]'s Pistol (I renamed it)

Refills your Action Points on a Critical Hit.

Damage 72

Fire Rate 6

Range 119

Accuracy 82

Glow-Sighted Powerful Double-Barrel Shotgun

Damage 67

Fire Rate 36

Range 71

Accuracy 37

Scoped Incendiary Institute Rifle

20% chance to cripple the target's leg.

Damage 33

Fire Rate 6

Range 47

Accuracy 29

There's a few other weapons all in a similar vein. Which leads me to a related question: Is there PLEASE a better way to compare weapons of similar ammo type? I feel like I have to carry around guns for every ammo type, since it's so scarce. I currently have one of each pistol for 10mm, .44, Cell, etc. I feel like I can't get rid of any of them, because what if I run out of .44? I have to be able to use 10mm. Right now, I have to scroll through my entire weapon list, find the guns that use the same ammo type, then click back and forth on them to see which is best so I can drop or scrap the other ones. Keeping one of each ammo type for pistol, rifle, smg, and shotgun gets heavy, but I feel it's necessary because I never know what type of ammo I'll find.

I really appreciate your help guys. I really hate to go to outside sources for a guide or anything (I like to learn by playing the game), but I guess I'll have to look up some stuff. The only reason I am reaching out here for advice is because I thought maybe I was missing out on some core mechanics - and it seems like I have been. I have some learning to do.

Excellent info. I'm looking forward to being able to do this - but seriously I have very little ammo for any of these so I need to use whatever gun fits the ammo I have. I haven't even seen a rocket launcher yet!

Knowing that VATS is showing the chance to hit will help out a lot. One time I used VATS right after tossing a grenade, and I shot the grenade right as it went by an enemy. Felt like a total badass. But right now, my big problem is carrying enough guns of each ammo type to always have one available to use. My favorite guns are out of ammo, so I'm using some unmodded ones I picked up. Sounds like I'll have to get better at this ammo/gun/weight juggling act. I'm scouring every room I enter, and not shooting unless I'm fighting, and aiming carefully (when I can).

LTVATS

Learn to VATS.

I find strength to be relatively useless compared to perception, since I use guns most of the time. On harder difficulty, you don't have a lot of health, you can't really meelee anyone at all, so guns become very essential, even more so when you encounter suicide bombers. I mostly die in one hit on survival unless I shoot the football first.

My weapon of choice is actually machine guns. They are fast and eat into the enemies' damage a lot faster than other weapons with reload time.

If possible, join the Brotherhood of Steel, Power Armors improve your survival greatly, and learn to wear certain armors with corresponding resistance. Children of atoms are pretty annoying without a hazmet suit on. Basically, just take things slow and learn the enemies' weakness.

Lower the difficulty if you need to...

Learn to run away if you need to...there is no sin in doing the smart thing and coming back later.

I can't say I've really had a huge problem with ammo yet, so I don't know how much help I can be. After a certain point in the game, I always seem to have more 10mm and fusion cells than I'll ever use, with a healthy dose of shotgun rounds. That said, I tend to run low on .308 (or whatever ammo hunting/combat rifles use). My "fix" for that is to trade drugs for bullets with every trader I come across, as I never think to pop Jet or Buffout or whatever. I usually get enough .308 that way to keep me sniping.

Any location with one of those red workbenches is a settlement (or a potential one - some require a quest for access). So, yep, Red Rocket can be settled. How you attract settlers is kind of sort of explained by a quest Garvey eventually gives you. I think you have to do two "go see what some random settlement wants" quests for him first, though.

Very basic rundown on settlements - you'll need at least 1 bed, 1 food, and 1 water for each settler. You'll also need some Defense as well. A "green" Defense is enough to make your people happy, but is usuallly not sufficient to deter raiders. I'm given to understand that a Def greater than the sum of food, water, and power will prevent attacks (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

The world seemed small to me as well, but that may be because I used to live and work in the Boston area... However, I haven't yet felt constrained gameplay-wise - but that may be because I've played extensively in three superhero-themed MMOs where the maps were also small relative to WoW.

Get Paladin Danse as a follower. All your combat problems are solved.

Barter with useless light weapons for ammo at vendors..

They explain nothing and its very different from most shooters. Sneak attacks, vats and chems are where its at. Or power armor and a sledge hammer. As an RPG oddly it gets easier as you get later in the game assuming you build your character in some logical way.

Are you wearing armour? When looting, make sure you check out the difference from what you have to what you have highlighted. You will see +, ++, +++ or -, --, --- to see if it's better or worse. Same goes for weapons.

Keep changing armour for more protection. That could help.

Also as someone said, lower the difficulty to the easiest setting and learn from there. Once you find it too easy, increase the difficulty on notch at a time.

Level 11 is pretty low for being around Diamond City.

You've asked a lot about VATS, well I do know a lot about VATS but the truth is I'm sick of VATS and don't ever use it. Fo4 can be entirely played in a satisfying manner without the use of VATs. I play the close to mid range combat game with my character.

So, my build is focused on using a Riffle along with Bash (Which is your Melee with a range weapon like in Halo, this is a very handy attack for my play style).

Stats

STR 8 (raised over time)

Per 2

END 4

CHA 9 ( I raised this up over time)

INT 10

AGI 2

Luck 2

Perks for Combat

Basher 2 levels, this makes bash viable

Riffleman 4 levels

Whelp that's pretty much it spent my points into Specials and unlocking some Settlement Perks.

Now you've mentioned that your having a hard time surviving in battles and doing enough damage well I'm going to attempt to explain how you can fair better in a first person shooter without Vats.

First off you need to keep up with allotting points into your Primary Method of Attack which you picked Commando, you want to get that to level 2 ASAP because you need the 'Hip Fire' bonus so more of your hits land on target. You could also get 'Steady Aim' later on to help with that but you need Strength 7 to get that perk.

How I do it.

Hotkeyed Drugs and Grenades.

Nades aka grenades such as fragmentation and Molotov are self explanatory but know that you can assign these to your hotkeys to quickly switch out which nades you use but the best for most flesh targets tends to be Molotov.

Drugs and why they are good to have Hotkeyed!

Psycho,

25% more damage and 25 points of Damage Resistance, for 8 minutes!

->That's quite a lot of damage especially early in the game.

->25 points of Damage Resistance is a whole heck of a lot considering that its like wearing another layer of Armor on the character in the early game when you opt to not use Power Armor.

Buffout,

+2 STR, +2END, and +50 MAX Hitpoints, for 8 minutes!

->This Drug gives you a hefty amount of Hitpoints to your Max Pool of Hitpoints for a very long time.

->Endurance effects Hitpoints so its like this at level 10 that +2 Endurance gives 10 more HP. Level 20, 20 more HP, LVL 40 40 more HP.

->Early Game Buffout gives quite a substantial amount of Max Hp to your total pool of Hitpoints like half again more HP.

You can mix those two drugs together into PsychoBuff which you can do to consolidate your Hotkeys.

Jet,

SlowTime, for 8 seconds, aka your Bullet Time button.

->for those moments you know your going to die.

->With JET you rename yourself Keanu Reeves and move between bullets.

Anyway, Drugs, Hotkeys, and make sure your putting a decent amount of points into your weapon skills don't skimp on them. Also level 11 is kinda low for the Diamond City area so your probably rushing the game a bit much.

Get,

Chemist your character is smart you want your drugs to last longer as these are not easy to come by and if your using them a lot well you want them to last. With ranks in Chemist I just pop stuff before entering a building let alone combat, its like I know that I will be fighting so why wait.

With 1 level of Chemist you can make Pyscho last 12 minutes which is more than enough time to clear a building if you don't stop to loot on the way.

Level 2 Chemist is 16 minutes

Level 3 Chemist is 24 minutes

Jet

Chemist level 1 12 seconds

Level 2 16 seconds

Level 3 24 seconds...more time than you need...

And yes my character is a binge user of combat drugs >< but its the world man its broken.

you started off with a lvl 10 SPECIAL?

The best thing for a new player to do is to equal out your SPECIAL, it would make you a well rounded character. Then I would start dumping points into certain perks.

Fortune Finder - helps get you caps, especially at helps at the beginning of the game.

Scrounger - helps get you more ammo when you loot things.

Hacker - helps hack terminals, often for better loot.

Lockpicking - helps for better loot from safes

Then I would dump points into combative perks

Rifleman, Steady Aim, Gun Slinger, Commando - these help increase your damage to pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, etc.

Crafting perks can help you make better weapons, but that's usually done over time. I immediately dumped points into Gun Nut, Science!, Armorer..... and blacksmith if youre into melee weapons.

If you are having trouble with being overencumbered, dump points into Strong Back, and Lone Wanderer (as long as you keep dogmeat as a companion).