I'm playing on PC and it gives me the option to raise my perks. (lvl 4 is where I'm at now) but there is no option to save it after I've used ctrl/alt to adjust them. I've tried enter, shift click and everything else I can think of. What's the hotkey that I am missing to save them? My options are tab to back out, cntrl for up, and alt for down. Where's the save? If I move the mouse it all resets again. I'm sure I'm going to kick myself in the head for asking, but just can't seem to get this figured out. What am I missing here? Thanks.

I don't understand what you're trying to do. What do you mean by save?

I open up the Pip boy and go to the perk page to assign points to the various perks. I can adjust them, but there is no option to save them. So when I exist (tab out) no perks show as being active on my pip boy.

Oh! I think you mean to confirm the selection i.e. spend the point, right? Hit "E" followed by enter to spend it.

If you do happen to mean save it for later, simply don't spend the point and tab out.

Perhaps I don't have any perk points yet at level 4. I appreciate the input and will continue to try, but pressing E and enter did not work. Guess I'll wander the wastes as a noob until I figure this out. Can't find anyone else with this issue.

Click on the perk you want to learn and then either hit "E" or click on "Accept" in the bottom left.

You get a perk point every level, starting at 2. Are you sure you meet the prerequisites for the perk you're trying to get? You have pick the first rank of a given perk before the later ones, and many have hard level requirements.

I am quite certain that I meet the requirements for the perk. Trying to get Rifleman. It requires Perception at level 2. I have level 8 Perception. It will let me adjust it 2 levels (because I am only 4) but it will not save the changes and I see no option on my screen to save it. I've tried "E," "Enter," Shift click, and every other thing I can think of. Nothing works. Frustrated, but at least I know Fallout well enough to make it work until I get this sorted. There is nothing on forums or in the manual on how to actually save the points so maybe my game file is corrupt. That's the only thing I can think of, but that'd be weird because everything else works perfectly.

What do you mean by "adjust it two levels"?

I am 99% certain that your problem is that, whatever it means.

Here's what I do. Enter game, open pip boy, go to perk tab. It opens up. Everything but the top level is "grayed out" but I can assign points. I can use alt, ctrl to adjust how many points. I've tried 1 and 2 points in various perks but I still do not get any option to save. Moving the mouse completely resets the options that I've made, and there are no options that I see other than [tab] to go back, alt and ctrl for up and down on point allocation.

Yeah stop pressing alt and ctrl. You have to take the first rank of a perk first.

Are you trying to change the number of stars on the perk? Don't worry about that. Just click on the perk itself and then hit the enter or e key. That should do it.

Going to wait until level 10 and then see what happens. I could be missing something but none of these things are working. It doesn't make any sense. May have to spend another 12 hours dl'ing it again, but I doubt that will fix it. I thank you all for your input and help.

Ok I think I've figured it out. Access your pip boy with the tab key. Then hit "T". That will give you the perk chart. Move your mouse to the perk you want and click. Then hit enter to save it. You can move the chart by moving your mouse to the top or bottom of the page. The alt and ctrl just show you what the next and last rank does for the perk. You can also use the perk points to increase your "SPECIAL" ranks at the very top of the page.

Yes Sir. I totally see that, and that it is based on how many perk points you have. However, when I left click on the skill and hit enter, nothing is done. If I right click and hit enter, nothing is done. If I hover over the skill and press "e" nothing happens. Nothing shows up in my pipboy no matter what I do, and as I said there are no options but alt/ctrl and tab in the menu. I honestly think that I'm missing a hotkey here somewhere and I can't find it anywhere in my menu's or any tutorials or Bethesda documents. I'll reset to default and see what happens.

You're misunderstanding.

Ctrl and Alt don't spend perk points. All they do is let you preview what bonus you get at each star level of the perk.

When you open your Pipboy, if you have points to spend, you see the words "Level Up (num-perk-points-to-spend)" at the bottom.

When the perk chart opens, once again the bottom of the screen says:

Choose (num-perk-point-to-spend) if you have points to spend.

At level 4, all you can choose is the first star of all the un-greyed out perks that you see.

While hovering over the perk you want, use the Aticvate key (E or Enter on the PC) to select that perk.

CTRL and ALT don't spend points. They're used to look at higher ranks in the perks, so you can see what higher ranks of each perk do without having to get your stats and levels up. In order to spend a Perk point on a perk, you need to highlight the perk you want, then hit E, Enter, or Left Click. Nothing appears to happen, but if you look at the bottom of the screen, the controls line has changed the Enter option to "Confirm". The dialogue box telling what the perk does doesn't actually change. Hit the appropriate option to confirm, and that spends the perk point and gets the perk to show up in the Perks section of the Pip-Boy when you back out of the Perk Chart.

Finally got this to work. Restarted the game several times and finally got it to work. Perks do not come with levels it seems. Only after level 5 did I get a perk choice. I appreciate all of the input and patience when I am clearer lacking in both departments. *tips hat*

You get a perk Every level. (from level 2 on). At level 5, you should have 4 perk points to spend.

I think you may accidentaly be assigning your perk points to S.P.E.C.I.A.L.; which will not show up on the 'perk' section of your pip boy.

You can use a single perk point for a perk, or to level up your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Not both.

This is probably what happened because I am quite certain I did not put 8 points into SPECIAL at the start. However, it eludes me how they got applied. I will throw this into the wind as operator error. Might even restart. Thank you all for the answers and helping my dumb butt.

CTRL and ALT changes the rank you're viewing, represented by how many stars there are. To gain a rank in the perk, you have to access the next available rank and meet the requirements. Left click or use [E], then confirm your selection with [E] or [Enter].

Glad you got it working. And restarting is common with this game for me. I tried out four different characters before I settled on how I want to play. A smart thing to do is save just before you leave the vault and make sure not to overwrite that save. You can change name, appearance and special points there and you won't have to replay the intro.