I was looking at this during a recent play through and umm... Guess what?

I restarted again because of it.

At one of my level ups I went down the entire list of perks and realized that I didn't have my SPECIAL's set up right to unlock the perks I wanted later in the game.

So I applied my usual logic(!?!!) to it, and made a list of what attributes had to have how many points

It turns out that in order to unlock EVERY ONE of the perks that come later the total number of SPECIAL points is THREE less than we get at the start of the game:

S - 4

P - 6

E - 7

C - 6

I - 7

A - 7

L - 6

Total= 43

Given amount at game start= 40

Which means at some point at least 3 more attribute points have to come from somewhere.

Because of the comments I have seen from a number of people about the relative uselessness of the LUCK attribute, I have set my "L" to 3, and everything else at the above.

I forget exactly which perk it is that needs luck to be 6, but I hope I didn't make a gross error that will lead to another re-start...

UPDATE: I looked some things up because I wanted to be sure about this.

Intense Training can be used up to ten times, it needs only three times to get the extra SPECIAL points to pad the list out.

At FIVE LUCK Scrounger (extra ammo) and Fortune Finder (extra caps) unlock.

At SIX LUCK Mysterious Stranger and Better Criticals unlock.

~assuming your other levels and skills are qualified~

I think I want to use the next three level ups on "I.T." so that it's all set for the rest of the game. He will be at level four, and wired for the duration.

Actually you did, Luck is not useless. It determines your chances of a critical hit and each of your skills goes up by one point for every two points you have in Luck. So by having your Luck at 3, as opposed to say 6, you're depriving yourself of quite a few skill points at the start of the game.


You seem to be forgetting about the Bobbleheads in the game. There's one for every SPECIAL. So you're actually starting out with 7 more points than you actually need for all the perks.


That seems like a waste of perks to me. I never take more than one Intense Training at second level, since I don't find there's much that's useful then.

In my strategy I get my guy up to L30, and then use the "Nearly Perfect" perk, only then do I go bobblehead hunting.

It matters little anyway, since I posted that a few hours earlier (and in spite of a lot of unnecessary hunting around for a lawnmower blade, of all things) I now have all the SPECIAL that I need so that if ANY of the perks come open I can get them. Five hours - it could have gone a lot faster.

* That all came about because I got a schematic for the Shishkebab from a trader right in front of Megaton just after I arrived at the start of the game.

I am currently after schematic #2 for that, which should make it impressive after I go through the Anchorage Alaska DLC and have the CSA.

This time I won't leave Alaska without all ten intelligence cases being found.

BLUNTLY I didn't want any of the perks to be handicapped by low special points later, I wanted to get all of the truly useful perks quickly and not even consider some of the more pointless ones.

I think differently than a lot of people. I look to the maximums at a very early stage in the game and practice staying the course regardless of temptation.

Thirty minus four is 26 perks. if you pick 26 perks and none of them are the kind that just boost a skill, there is very little wastage.

I will be refining this method as I check it out.