I dont post here often, Ive searched around a bit but havent discovered much. In FO3 certain starting builds were beneficial due to clothing, bobbleheads and the like and I was wondering if NV was the same. Im going into the game with very little known to avoid spoilers, whats a good way to start a hardcoe playthrough to get the most out of it? Im thinking small guns and survival perks... help? Thanks

My only advice is to not do the same thing I did my 1st time through and thats get a vilified rep with the NCR. It will make your game much harder, you don't have to like the NCR but don't go completely against them until later on in the game.

Save often and save saves.

Moving this to spoilers.

That too, don't save indoors and if you do need to save indoors create a new save file

charisma barter and guns does me fine work a lil on seience and repair bc the are handy to have as well

Don't rely on autosaves too much.

Another tip being that just experiment with your build. Remember that you can always start from the beginning again with the knowledge you've gained.

High speech characters are win.

Edit: And no, imo there's nothing that's terribly important to do in order to have advantage re: certain things. Except perhaps the implants. eg, distribute your starting SPECIAL's with the notion of eventually getting implants in mind. But it's not a big deal/necessary.

Yeah, what these people said.

Id just ad that many of the non-combat skills in this game can be a lot more useful then they were in FO3.

Learn how to make ammo.

And while there are skill books and up to eight (depending on your Endurance) SPECIAL implants that you can pay for, there’s hardly any “enchanted” stat boosting armor or items to speak of like there were in FO3.

Also, pay attention to your faction reps; if ya shoot some Legion guy cuz you like his shinny hat, his npc buddies are gonna remember.

Don’t sweat it.

Thanks for the replies. Whats a recommended starting SPECIAL for a sneak/small guns type character to get the most out of my stats?

this game doesn't have bubble heads to boost your stats. instead it has implants which cost 4000 caps each. implants are based n your endurance. so an endurance of five means five implants. there are two other implants. s there are nine implants.

a good stealth build will eventually need perception of 6 and agility of 6 to take advantage of stealth perks.

strength 6
perception 5
endurance 6
charisma 5
intelligence 6
agility 5
luck 7

remember you can improve your stats later.

I might actually recommend boosting Perception, maybe Intelligence and Agility to start with, and lowering Charisma. If you are playing stealthily, you will want to be able to spot enemies from farther off, and you will probably not want to be traveling with other people who could give your position away. (Charisma is mainly for giving combat bonuses to companions.)

S - 5
P - 6
E - 8
C - 3
I - 5
A - 7
L - 6

Tags: Guns, Lockpick, Speech
Traits: Small Frame,

I'm playing this exact character build right now and it's a fairly well rounded sniper character that's planning on getting nearly all the implants. Tweaks can be made if you favor one stat over another or don't want/need all the implants. Drop Endurance to 7 or 6 and add into Intelligence for a bit more skill points. Agility can be dropped a few points as well for placement elsewhere as VATS isn't all important in NV compared to F3 so AP is less of a need.

Many will recommend using Charisma as a dump stat and putting its points elsewhere even if you use companions and that can work but I just don't like a stat being THAT low - ymmv on that one. Always leave Luck on an odd final number (factoring in the implant) to give you an extra skill point for all skills. Focus on raising your TAG skills for your first 4-5 levels to at least 50 each and you should have mostly smooth sailing for any challenges, be they locked areas, critters or friendly but reluctant to talk NPCs. Hope this helped, have fun with it.

All that stuff that's been said...

NV makes waaaaaay more use of your non-combat skills that FO3 did. There are many speech checks that get you stuff/reactions you might want.
IIRC, I think charisma affects speech, so it's not a dump stat anymore.

You don't amass caps like in FO3, so if you're going to rely on implants, a high Barter might be nice. I don't use implants, just put points into skills and occasionally into Intense Training to up a SPECIAL, so I left my Barter somewhere like 19 and never wished it was higher after level 6 or so.