So I've decided to pick up FNV again, which I haven't done since a few days after LR came out. I have all DLC including the weapons pack, etc. I don't remember much about the mechanics and tips behind energy weapons, so I was just going to ask for some quick tips/hints.

So yeah, any help regarding an energy weapon's build would be great. I'll be starting soon.

Luck is your most important Special for EWeps. I find that the most effective starting tags is Energy Weapons, Repair, Science. That allows you to deal with the relative fragility of your weapons and scarcity of your ammo. Try to get Vigilant Recycler as soon as possible. Also, the best sources for energy weapons are the dead Bright Followers corpses you find now and then, and Fiends. You'll frequently find Fiends with Laser RCWs, Laser Rifles, and Plasma Rifles. The Recharger Pistol is good. The Recharger Rifle is terrible.

If you have Gun Runner's Arsenal, try to buy the MF Hyperbreeder Alpha in Novac. It's expensive, but is an amazing weapon, and needs no ammo. Also, Optimized ammo is very good.

Don't be afraid to use VATS, as precise hits that turn into criticals is where the EWeps really shine.

Keep a good stock of your primary ammo (Overcharged or Optimized) with a moderate amount of Max Charge on hand for dealing with high DT enemies.

The Holorifle from Dead Money is immensely powerful.

Finally, in my personal opinion, the Gauss Rifle and Tesla Cannon use too much ammo, and fire too slowly to be worth it. A good Laser Rifle with Focus Optics and Scope is an excellent, highly reliable weapon that can serve nicely for both general-use and sniping. Plasma Defender is excellent for close-in work against weak to moderate enemies. Plasma Caster with HS Electrodes has a high Strength requirement (eight) but hits hard, and fires very quickly, making it a very good choice for defeating powerful enemies.

Oh, and Fast Shot doesn't serve you well for energy weapons, as you don't really want to waste ammo. Trigger Discipline and Built to Destroy (for the extra critchance, which is the key to EWeps) are both excellent. 20% reduction in RoF from Laser RCW/MF Hyperbreeder Alpha/Gatling Laser/Plasma Caster with HS Electrode/The Smitty Special is still absurdly fast.

I have a Fetish for Energy Weapons, using things like Guns or Melee Weapons that arn't The SuperSledge is very.. primitive.

Since in nearly every fallout game I play I use Energy Weapons here is some advice.

You cannot be a pure Energy Weapon build in hardcoe on Very Hard, its too cost intensive and ammo weight is a problem, instead pick either the Unique Plasma Rifle located in Repcon Headquarters or the Unique Laser rifle located in Vault 22, I reccomend you go to Repcon first though because of the easier location and has some Tesla books and lots of Microfusion cells located within.

Also, Melee weapons is a must, use something powerful like Super Sledge (Oh! Baby!) is the best sidearm weapon your going to have, great for in small caves or vaults where fools are funneled into your LoS, using Energy Pistols like Laser Pistol or even Plasma Defender is just too slow or not strong enough for when a Rifle is not fesible, also they use different ammo thus incresing weight.

The Holorifle is imo very overrated, good for softcoe or easy mode but too many reloads = death in hardcoe.

Oh and Advanced Power Armor or Tesla Armor is what you must use as your main armor, but regular Combat Armor or its variants will be good until you get ahold of the power armor required, don't bother with T-51B its too primitive.

The only Tesla Armour in the game can only be reached by completing a companion quest in a specific way and the Remnant's Power Armour can only be gained in either the same mission or fighting through over a dozen Deathclaws. Those armours would be, respectively, imposiible and very difficult to get early on.

OP: Vigilant Recycler is one of the most important EW perks in Regular mode and is the most important EW perk in hardcoe. The Pack Rat perk(which should go without saying in hardcoe) makes Optimized Mfc's weigh 0.03 lbs instead of 0.1 lbs. I'd also recommend a fully modded Plasma Defender as a starting weapon. It's deceptively useful, I've wiped out Legion Assassins with ease with this fine weapon.

thats why you use a combat armor until you get remnants, the other heavy armors just arn't viable

Some advice

Important SPECIAL stats

Luck (start off with 6 or 7)
Perception(start off with 5 or 6)

Luck determines your base critical hit chance, 1% per each point. Most of the Energy Weapon have a critical hit multiplier, making them more likely to score a critical hit. See the wiki for indvidual stats http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_weapons

There are several perks and parts of equipment in the game that will raise your base critical hit value further.

Perception you want to be at 6 by Level 16 latest, as this is the requirement for the perk Better Criticals, which raises your crit damage by 50%. You can buy an implant at the clinic, so going with 5 PER at the start is fine.

Distribute your other SPECIAL points at will.

Must have Trait Built to Destroy (+3% base critical chance)

Must have Perks

Vigilant Recycler (not only gives you better recycling, but up and foremost lets you craft more powerful ammo)
Finesse (+5% base critical chance)
Better Criticals (+50% critical damage)
Laser Commander (+10% damage with Laser weapons, +15% critical hit chance)
There's a number of other beneficial ones, but these are really essential for a serious EW user

Recommended equipment

1st Recon Beret (+5% base critical hit chance)
Joshua Grahams Armor (+3% base critical hit chance)
Elite Riot Gear (+5% base critical hit chance)

Weapon loadout
There's a huge number to choose from.
For the start, I'd recommend to go with the Plasma Pistol.
It is very cheap to buy, and does some serious damage from the get go.
Yes, the Plasma Defender is better, but way more expensive, and also has a skill requirement of 50, while the regular Plasma Pistol has 0. So, when starting from scratch, the Pistol is really the better solution.
It is using 2 SECs per shot, though, so have a Laser Pistol with you as a pea shooter.


As mentioned by silent93, a modded Laser Rifle is a very versatile and efficient weapon, especially early to mid game.

Also recommendable:

Q-35, unique Plasma Rifle, good base damage, high crit damage, ammo efficient, only uses 1 cell per shot
AER-14, unique Laser Rifle, good base damage, good ROF, better crit multplier than the non-unique version, uses 2 cells per shot however
Laser RCW, low base damage, high ROF, *very* low spread for a full auto weapon, superb against dangerous 0DT enemies like Cazadores or Nightstalkers
Tri-Beam Laser, high base damage, high crit chance, high ROF, can be upped to around 500 DPS, with the right perks, mods, ammo and buffs. Eats 3 cells per shot, though and needs a lot of repairs
Holorifle, high base damage, ammo efficient, uses 1 cell per shot. However, slow ROF and no critical hit multiplier. Good sniper tool, less good in open combat
Gauss Rifles/YCS-186, Sniper Weapons, insane base damage, critical hit multiplier, however using 4 or 5 cells per shot. That said, there's not much surviving a hit from these weapons out there.
LEAR, basically a light-weight Plasma Caster, very high base damage, high ROF, efficient ammo usage, crit multiplier. Fantastic weapon. Needs lots of repairs, but that's the only downside.

All the heavy weapons like Gatling Lasers, Plasma Casters and the like are very powerful, too. Just bear in mind them having high STR requirements and possibly high ammo consupmtion.

i wonder if the tesla cannon would be good for deathclaws?

Yeah, works well against them

One thing I forgot in my above posting regarding ammo:


Many people complain about ammo availabilty, and how not being able to get through the game with EW only.
That is utter BS. I really wonder how horrendeous and wasteful thier aiming must be to get to such a point.
Still, there's a way to have EW ammo in abundance for a dime.
Many merchants sell Bulk ammo, which is dirt cheap, in large quantities.
A box of bulk has 100 shots, and costs you between 100 and 150 caps, depending on your Barter skill.
It only does 85% damage, but also it has only 85% degradation rate, so it is friendly to your weapon.
It will do the job just fine.
For really hard enemies like Deathclaws, keep some Optimized or Max Charge cells in your inventory.
Also, learn how to make advantage out of your ammo conversion options at workbenches.
Ran out of Microfusion Cells, but sitting on hundreds of Small Energy Cells?
Well, convert them into MFCs, and you're fine.
If you run into serious ammo issues, you must have done something very wrong.
There's always ways, as i've just showed you.

It's funny how most of you stack crit chance like mad. I've never really cared about perfect builds, I just install bunch of mods to allow more customization. Not to make game easier, keep in mind, even harder is some ways.

First question for Project X should be: do you play on PC? If so I recommend installing some amazing mods, that make EW playthrough much better experience. Project Nevada, Weapon Mods Expanded (WMX) and Essential Visual Enhancements to start with. It's possible to run them all without incompatibilities.

Just wanted to add there's one EXTREMELY powerful exception.

The Sprtel-Wood 9700. If you get Laser Commander (perk requiring 90 skill points in laser weapons), then it adds 10% crit rate to your energy weapons. That 10% is a fixed amount and isn't effected by a weapon's crit multiplier. This is actually a benefit for the Sprtel-Wood because otherwise the crit multiplier would reduce that 10% down to nothing. You can also get Light Touch and wear light armor to add ANOTHER 5% (fixed amount) on top, meaning the Sprtel-Wood 9700, a rapid-fire laser, would have 15% crit rate: VERY high for a rapid-fire gun, if not the highest possible among all DPS weapons (the K9000 might be superior).

Now to beef up the base damage? Well Maximum charge is always nice to reduce enemy DT, but more importantly take ED-E with you. A fully upgraded ED-E (you need to complete Lonesome Road and find all his upgrades) will award 5 extra points of base damage to laser weapons. This is MASSIVE for the Sprtel-Wood 9700, since it's a rapid-fire weapon. With this setup, the Sprtel-Wood deals 21 BASE damage, as in that's the damage it deals BEFORE you include the Laser Commander damage boost, the damage boost from Maximum Charge cells, Psycho or anything else. If I remember correct, with this setup you can get the Sprtel-Wood to hit 38 damage per hit (an additional 16 damage with every crit and a 15% crit rate), which, considering it's firing rate, is ABSOLUTELY SICK. Like this, you could easily rely on it as your one and only gun. It's also more cost effective since one Microfusion cell can be converted over to make multiple Electron Charge Packs.

Well I see lots of good advice here which is useful to me as well because I am also relying on energy weapons this playthrough for the first time but they are a support weapon class in addition to my main unarmed/mele weapons. At the moment I am on level 20 and both mele n unarmed are looking nice at around 80 each and my EW is at 30 but even at that low score I am doing insane damage with a fully modded laser rifle tho.

I am gonna take silent running at level 22 and slayer at 24 so I think I will have three spare perks to splurge on energy weapons after that I was thinking of picking laser commander as one of them definitely but the question I had is wheather I should take perks like jury rigging/plasma spaz or can I give them a miss and improve my vats with grim reapor and action boy?? I plan on finding the y2k gauss rifle + a gattling laser will I have enough ammo for em? Is ammo a big issue with them?

I honestly think that the only useful heavy armour is the Armour of the 87th Tribe you can get in Lonesome Road. All of the others, especially the Power Armours, are just way too heavy to be practical.

The Tesla Power Armour is medium armour and does have the highest DT of any medium armour, but overall I still prefer the more practical Combat Armours and Elite Riot Gear. The EW bonus is nice, but by the time you get it you'll most likely already have maxed it.

True that Iove using the vault 34 light armor myself which has a humble dt of 16.. go for power armor only when I need the extra strenghth or if I am going to encounter some tough enemies. I personally really liked the perks they added which make light armor even more appealing. Haven't played lonesome road yet but I really liked the light security armor I found in dead money which has a dt of 18..

Gatling Laser eats ammo like there's no tommorow. It's good, especially against soft targets with lots of hp, but it's a very hungry gun.

i cant reccomend gatling lasers, even the unique one, great for small targets but they should be more powerful against things like deathclaws, logic suggests bigger the gun the more punch but dosnt work with fallout it seems

Action Boy? Take a Jet. Take a Rocket in addition, and you have 3x Action Boy. Don't waste a perk on something you can emulate simply with chems.
Plasma spaz gives you a discount on AP, also doable with chems.
Jury Rigging is always nice, Vigilant Recycler lets you collect more drained cells which you can recycle. With the GRA pack, it allows to craft superb ammo, making it a no total brainer then. But I suppose you're on Vanilla.
Yes, Gatling and Gauss are costly, when planning to use them a lot. Still it is very possible to keep them fed. I've already outlined how.
The Gatling can be brought to very good use, even against Deathclaws.
Just make sure you meet the STR requirement for the weapon and use Over Charge or Max Charge ammo when going against heavily armored enemies.

Use the crafting bench at every opportunity.
Raul is a great companion to have, especially with full maintinance.
Get your luck and crit chance up.

Seriously with the associated perks and critical multiplier a fully modded laser rifle is all you'll ever need. Played a d.i.d. run as only using laser weapons, had a fully modded one before I left Novac and never looked back! Even after dead money I brought the holorifle with me to OWB and used it a couple times but pretty much stuck with the fully modded rifle. Became one of my all-time favorite fallout weapon.

you must be playing an un-modded game on easy if a modded laser kills things easy..

Not necessarily, Max charge cells do make it pretty deadly.

A gun is only as deadly as the person wielding it...

This! Even without most enemies will fall or be severely health depleted from a sneak critical. The tougher enemies is when I pull out the max charge.

True, but if you have a decent stock of these then why bother using them on a normal Laser?

Better off using them with Smittys, AE or any type of Plasma Rifle

or even Elijahs LAER if plenty of Sierra Madre chips to stock weapon repair kits

Its largely because it can have a scope and its easier to hit things then with a Plasma weapon.