Ok apparently I am moving through this game way too fast. Wasn't my intent, in fact I was going for the opposite, but it seems that nearly everything I need to open or whatever my skills are not high enough. I guess I need to find a place to grind for a while until I can get my Locksmithing, Science, Barter, and Speechcraft skills up to at least 50+ if not 75+.

So where is a good place to do this? Preferably somewhere that isn't going to cost me a whole lot of bullets. I'm willing to just start over if I'm too far in at this point anyway. Not knowing what I'm doing I've missed up quite a few things anyway. Besides since I didn't know the game at all I had no real role-play in place other than to try to be good. I think I can definitely play more focused now ... I just got to get my skills up.

You can't 'grind' like in skyrim, unless you're just talking about killing enemies to get XP? In which case go to deathclaw quarry (if not high enough level yet, go kill some fiends).

Also you don't need to start again. By the time you get to later levels you'll have so many skill points you won't know where to put any of them, so don't worry about it

p.s something I used to do is if there was a safe with a lock and terminal, i'd lockpick it and then hack the terminal to get double the xp. don't hack the terminal first cause then you can't lockpick it.

Clever. Thanks.

If I have all the DLC is it worth getting the perk that increases XP or will I max out before finishing everything anyway?

I have done everything I can to slow my characters down. With a Level Cap of 50, I will reach this cap long before game content is used up, or, I will have maxed out all my skills long before I get to the level cap. Note, you can't complete the game with one character, it takes 4 of them.

You get far more points for Quests than you do for actions, so there is nothing to really grind here but quests.

This perk is pretty worthless. Waste of a perk. don't bother about anything that gives increased Exp, as you will eventually max out simply through normal content.