Hello all.

I just bought Fallout: New Vegas, but I'm having some issues starting the gameplay. I am not a very experienced RPG player in general and the only game from the Fallout series I've played so far was Fallout: Tactics. Some of the questions may be on the "duh" side of things, so please be patient.

Anyway, my questions:

1) After you've used a weapon, how do you holster it so that you don't wander around in a fighting stance?

2) Some of the weapons' description at the Fallout wiki says that they can be concealed, either with Sneak above a certain value or regardless. How does one conceal a weapon, and how helpful is this ability in practical terms?

3) How important is Charisma? If I lower it in order to boost other stats, am I setting myself up for trouble later in the game?

Thanks in advance

1. hold the reload button (on xbox anyway, it could be different on the pc)

2. when you enter some casinos someone will ask you to hand over your weapons (they are returned when you leave). there is an option to keep holdout weapons (concealed weapons). certain weapons can be kept at any sneak level, and certain guns require 50 sneak to bring in.

3. it's not important unless you play in hardcoe mode

i believe you hold the reload button for that. just hold it down for a couple seconds and your weapon will be holstered.

it's a passive thing, you personally dont have to do anything besides have the weapon with you. when you enter a casino, they take your weapons and some weapons can be hidden, allowing you to still use it in the casino if you need to. it isn't too helpful, there hasn't so far been any time where I've needed a weapon in a casino, or if i do my fists usually work just fine until i can get a weapon from somebody else.
some weapons you can smuggle in are razors, switchblades, and the sort. also some handguns like the 9MM if your skills are high enough.

charisma is not very important, it's fine to lower it to boost other stats. mine is around 2 or 3, and i didn't run into trouble anywhere in the game at all with anything having to do with it.

Thanks, guys

Another thing: are utility skills such as barter, lockpick and repair worth investing into or even tagging?

Lockpick and Repair are very usefull, Barter is only useful for a skill check.

Look at the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_perks to see if you want a high Charisma.

1 and 2 are answered, but I found charisma to be fairly useful. Speech is one of the most helpful skills in the game, if you dont want to get into a fight every few minutes. alot of quests require it actually.

but charisma at 4 isnt that big of a problem. anything lower might not be good.

of course you can always use implants later on.

yes, repair is for sure. at 90 repair i believe you can get the jury rigging perk, which is incredibly useful. it lets you repair power armor with metal armor, and an anti material rifle with a hunting rifle or other similar rifle, which will save you tons of caps needed for repairs and make it easier to repair weapons yourself, since anti material rifles are hard to get it's easier to repair it with a hunting rifle then waiting to find another anti material rifle.

as for barter, there were several speech checks involving a needed barter skill i have come across, but i don't think i missed out on very much, since my barter is like 20. and lockpick is worth getting up to at least around 40-50, since there's many doors and things you might need to open using it, and there's a vault armory with some pretty good weapons in it and it requires a lockpick skill of 75 i believe to open. i don't know for sure though.

so barter no, unless you want to use it for speech checks that you'll find sometimes. lockpick, yes, get it to a decent level, and repair for sure, because if you max it out like i did you can save a ton of money by doing repairs yourself and easily have fully repaired equipment.

edit: oh and also with a 50 repair i think you can make weapon repair kits so you can repair your weapons when you don't have access to someone who can repair, and so you won't have to stop what your doing just to get something repaired.

Well charisma boosts your companions stats in combat, making them do more damage and gaining more resistance. This feature is called "companion nerve". Look at the Fallout wiki for more details. If you plan to use companions in combat a lot, especially on hardcoe, don't lower charisma much.

What hruza said. I tried a 1 char. chr once and the difference in the companions was noticeable. Useful in hardcoe where death means actual death for them, or if you like to mess around with them to see what they can do.
But if you're not that into companions, not a big deal to drop it to 2 or even 1, if you really want.

There are other stats tips I collected while playing:

Only thing high perception does is showing enemy contacts on your compass bit earlier. It does not increase your accuracy at long distance as it did in old Fallouts. If you rely on your own eyes, its useless.

Agility does not rise your speed. It just rise your weapon holstering speed and weapon reload. If you do not use VATS, its another stat which you don't need to spend points on.

Intelligence does not give nearly as big skillpoints boost as it used to. 1 point of intelligence gives you 0.5 additional skillpoints per level. That is just 15 skillpoints per whole game. If you rationalize bit on your skill distribution, you don't need it nearly as high as was usually case in previous Fallouts.

What I found really helpful is to draw plan of my character development. I first decide which skills I want to rise to what level (depend what I want to use those skill at ...like crafting certain items). Then I made list of perks which looks interesting and then I pick 15 of them level by level.

When done I decide how to set my attributes according to skills and perks I want as well as some other things (like STR requirements of guns I want to use).

You can find all info for this on Fallout wiki. It will save you possible frustration if you discover at level 12 that you can not get certain good perk as it requires endurance 8 while you have just 4.

And last tip: I find traits to be mostly not worth taking. One which you should not skip however is Good natured. You most probably not going to develop all combat skills. There will be one or two at last which you will not use at all. Good natured will transfer few skill points from combat skills to noncombat. As you gone need at last few points in all noncombat skills this perk will in fact make you available few skills from those useless combat skills. Only drawback is that you will start your combat skills bit lower but that is not big issue and can be moreover balanced by tag.

1.) Hold down X if you are on Xbox.
2.) The way to conceal a weapon is if you go into a place where people will have do dispatch you such as casinos. When they talk to you you will have an option to keep your "holdout" weapons, which are your conceiled weapons (note: only certain weapons can be succesfully conceiled, including the Silenced .22 pistol and Switchblade, as your sneak skill increases to 50 at least you will be able to carry in SMG's. Maxed and you can carry in rifles. Any higher ranking weapon such as heavy weapons and explosives will not be able to be conceiled.), all other weapons will be kept in a safe behind the desk where you buy chips to play games like Blackjack and the only way to retrieve them is too steal them, which can lead to some problems if you don't do it right.
3.) If you plan on being a good character, definatley invest in Charisma and Speech. It doesn't neccesarily mean you'll be in trouble for lowering it, it will just mean you won't be able to get an easier slip-by by people that give you the option, and with a low Speech many things will be conceiled to you (such as quests and weapons).

Fallout is a very fun game despite how complicated it is, just play through the systems more and it should be easily understanded.

6 is an important number for most perks that have SPECIAL requirements. Some later ones do have higher, but not that many of them relatively speaking. So unless you're going for a super specialized build, or plan on taking tons of Intense Training+implants, being well-rounded w/the SPECIAL can be useful to open up as many perks as possible your first run through, so you can try out a lot of them.

strength - not real necessary to have this high, 5 is fine especially with strong back perk

perception - having a high perception is nice if you play a stealthy/sniper character. and it does a lot more than just showing red ticks.

endurance - i start this at 5 but raise it 7 later on.

charisma - i start it at 3 but raise it to 4 or 5, its a nice stat and comes in handy, i wouldn't lower this too much.

intelligence - i raise this to 9 helps with skill points

agility - this doesn't need to be maxed out but i do raise it to 8 or 9 by the time i'm leveled up.

luck - i start it at 5 but by the time i'm leveled up it wil be 6 or 7

What else does it do?

Nothing. Its only direct affect is on your pipboy display. I always start with a very high Perception because I find that alone incredibly useful.

Of course all SPECIAL attributes give an increase to certain skills, so Perception will give you a couple of extra points to Explosives and, I think, Lockpick. But you can just add those points when you level up so that's a bad reason to put extra points into any SPECIAL attribute.

When deciding where you want to put your SPECIAL points when creating a character, be sure and check the list of perks available at level up. Many have SPECIAL and skill requirements.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_perks

For example, Infiltrator is the only perk that requires a Perception of 7, but it's a pretty useless perk.

Anyway, go ahead and create you character build, post it here and we'll critique it for you.

I think Perception also helps with energy weapons as well.

What effect do you mean?


Only by providing additional 2 skillpoints per 1 point of perception on character creation screen. But those are not lost if you invest in to other stats instead as each boost some skills. Other than that it is useful only as some perk requirement (like better criticals) and putting contact on your compass. Nothing else.

well for one thats a pretty big deal, unless you want enemies right on top of you at the last minute, you're not gonna want a 1 or 2 perception unless you like being suprised by everything, i play a stealthy sniper character so i do not want to be suprised by enemies, but apart from the red ticks, it also shows location markers sooner, and there might be a perk or two you need some perception etc. also it gives bonuses to to a couple skills, lockpicking i think for one, and there are items to interact with where a higher perception is nice to have as well as some dialoge stuff, so its more than just enemy markers.

By pipboy display I meant the compass display. It just doesn't have any other effects than that (other than the previously mentioned possible perk requirements and few extra skill points).