I know I swore that my very first character I made I would stick with. I played about 3 horus of the game, then I read all the xbox 360 problems with patches or what not, so I thought, since I only bascially started the game, I will restart hoping non of the issues will appear with people playing with a "patched" game.

So what are your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.s are? What traits and skills did you use? What else without spoiling the game did you do? Right now my son is playing New Vegas so I can't so maybe if I read some good tips, I can change it.

Strength: 9 I used 9 so I can just carry lots of stuff. I hate leaving anything behind. Same for Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Perception: 6 I might lower this, I only have it on 6 for some of the traits. I am not shure if I will use these traits or not, so I might lower them.
Endurance: 8 Would have it at 9, but don't have an extra perk for it. I am playing Hard Core mode, so thinking trying to get this as high as I can will let my traits and skill for Survival be good. Also lots of health.
Charisma: 1 Just like in Fallout 3 and most other games, do we really need it?
Intelligence: 9 At first I had it at 5 or 6, but I thought when I level up, I will just use the extra points into things I would never use like Barter or Speech and see what happens there.
Agility: I have it around 5 or 6. I can't remember at the moment. Again I would have this lower but I need it at 5 or 6 for a skill I wanted. Can't remember what it was.
Luck: 1 I I had it at 6, till I read that the Mysterous Stranger perk has been nerfed, and it looks like it might not be as fun as it was in Fallout 3, so brought it down to 1. *edit* I also put luck to 1 to make the game more harder instead of raising up the difficulty slider. I hate bullet sponges.

Again, I am not shure if this is what I am going to use, but is what I have for now. So what do you have for your characters and why?

S-4
P-5
E-4
C-8
I-6
A-6
L-7

Tags: Speech, Barter, Science

Traits:Small frame, trigger discipline

Wanted to start out with something completely different from my comfort zone of sneaky sniper. So, I'm a smooth talking merc. Tagged barter and science to get a boost early on and add a few points to guns every level. Guns skill isn't as high as the others but it's enough (along with Boone ) to get me through most fights. Mostly though, I'm very pleased with how well speech and barter have been working out for me.
I've got a little backstory for this guy, in that he along with a partner worked as mercs for years. They traveled the wastes as hired guns, and whatnot (y'know doing mercenary things) one doing the talking the other being the muscle, until a deal went sour and his partner was killed. So, down on his luck and with his best friend dead he decides to retire from 'the life' and just ride it out easy as a courier.

For my second playthrough I'll be playing as the other Merc - a big dumb brute, with the story being the suave guy was killed. Then I suppose eventually I go back to being a sneaky sniper

anyway, ramble over..

Luck at 1?! Luck is more important than that. I never have it below 4 unless I'm doing a pure speech/barter/intelligence character. Criticals are super important especially on harder difficulty levels. For this build I'd lower your perception (unless you really want the boosts to lockpicking, explosives or energy weap.) to 2 or 3 or less and put those points into your luck or agi.


Although it depends mainly on what type of play you want to do. With this build you seem best suited for melee combat, exploring, med use, and science use.

There are times when charisma can be good. If you want the boost to speech and barter, and when you want your followers to be better in combat. My charisma is at 6 and my followers destroy (especially Boone and Veronica). Also this is a rpg so having speech options is nice.

My current build is
S-7
P-1
E-7
C-6
I-6
A-7
L-6

My tagged skills are: Guns, repair, and survival.
Traits: Trigger Discipline, Heavy Handed

I wanted an all-around gun player that could survive in the wastes without carrying or buying lots of meds. I'm also putting points into unarmed so I can fight when I run out of ammo and whatnot. My Perception is low so I can't get sniper perks or better crits perk, but I still get crits fairly often and took the center of mass perk. I also have the gunslinger and commando perks, and am about to get shotgun surgeon perk. I can use every basic firearm with efficiency. I'm also getting every SPECIAL Implant so all of them will be at least +1 at some time (I'm wondering that if I get the END implant if it will allow me to get one more implant). I put charisma at 6 for some companion nerve and I wanted to be able to do some speech challenges so that's why my CHAR is at 6. My character is flawed in one way from my design. Somehow I took the intense training perk and put a point into PER. Such a waste and I don't know how I did that... I don't remember putting that point there.

Yes, if we don't like to role play a misanthrope.

S- 6-7 Can't remember
P-5
E-5
C-6
I-5
A-8
L-5

I think this is my stats, but I'm not completely sure

Tags: Barter, Lockpick, Guns I think

Traits: Good Natured, Heavy Hands

***don't know how I got this dbl post here

I love roll playing. Problem for me is, when I upped the skills so I woudn't be a "misanthrope" I didn't see no difference in it for me at all. The only game that sort of made me feel like that would be Daggerfall. So now at least for me, I don't see no real difference between a charimsa of 1 to say a charisma for 9. So I have more fun putting those points else where.

@ Big Jesus, I also thought, which I forgot to mention was to put Luck at 1 to make the game harder for myself. So instead of upping the difficulty level, (I hate bullet sponges, don't find it fun at all) that instead of having higher luck, to make the game a bit easier, I thought if I go the other way, then it would make the game a bit harder. As for the charcters being weaker too, I thought about that as well, but then agian, in my game, I like to be called "The Lone Wanderer" so maybe it's fitting they do die.

Thanks for the comments, guys, please keep them coming. Also please post your characters.

S - 6
P - 4 +1 (Four Eyes)
E - 4 +1 (Intense Training)
C - 8
I - 7
A - 4
L - 7

Tag: Melee Weapons, Science (or was it Repair?), Speech
Traits: Four Eyes, Wild Wasteland

Probably not that practical but I had roleplaying in mind.

S - 4
P - 9
E - 5
C - 1
I - 3
A - 9
L - 9

Guns, Sneak, Lockpick

Wild Wasteland and that one with +20% accuracy, -20% rate of fire

Having played FO3, I know never to start with a 10 in any stat, because you'll find ways to improve. I didn't even know about implants. I just figured there'd be stuff like the Lucky 8 ball.

S 5
P 6
E 4
C 9
I 6
A 4
L 6

Speech, Barter, Medicine, Science, Repair, Guns

Good Natured, Trigger Discipline

(May or may not suspiciously resemble the Smooth Talker build in the guide...)

SPECIAL: 4 6 4 4 6 9 7

Traits: Built to Destroy, Kamikaze

Tag: Guns, Medicine, Science

PERKS:
2 Black Widow
4 Educated
6 Cherchez La Femme
8 Comprehension
10 Commando
12 Living Anatomy
14 Finesse
16 Math Wrath
18 Sniper
20 Silent Running
22 Action Girl
24 Action Girl (2)
26 Better Criticals
28 Grim Reaper's Sprint
30 Nerves of Steel

Since there are no bobbleheads, and you only get perks every two levels, not to mention that you can only get a limited number of implants, I went with the following for my initial build (on hardcoe + very hard):

Str 7
Per 4
End 5
Cha 1
Int 8
Agi 5
Luck 10

Traits: Built to Destroy, Wild Wasteland
Tagged Skills: Sneak, Melee, Guns

In FO3, I would usually end up with Luck, End, Int, Str and Agility pretty high after some intense training and bobbleheads, but I'm planning on not putting perk points into Intense Training very much in FNV. I will put a few intense training into Str, Agility, maybe endurance, depending on if there is a specific perk I want that has a requisite. I will try to get Cherchez La Femme and Black Widow to get more dialogue options because my Cha is so low.

Luck high for the criiticals, which really helps with all the New Vegas melee weapons that have bonus crit chance, bonus crit damage or bonus limb damage, such as machete, straight razor, cleaver. Already I've lopped off a few heads of convicts not wearing armor with one or two machete criticals. I've had a few one or two shot sneak critical headshot kills with 9mm or cowboy repeater as well.

Someone later pointed out that high luck will probably help gambling.. I should have considered that this is Fallout: "New Vegas" so luck should be important in other areas. The luck doesn't seem to provide extra caps or loot from dead bodies so far.

I think survival is pretty helpful on hardcoe mode. Those campfire recipes provide massive HP compared to stimpaks, and there are a lot of melee poisons you can craft. I'm going to put 70 skill points into it so I can get the Rad Child perk, which regens HP if you are irradiated.

In hindsight, although I use melee weapons a lot and it's helpful to have more carrying capacity due to strength, I probably should have put an extra point into perception (guns), endurance (implants) or agility (VATS) and gone with STR 6.

Pasted from my post in another thread

Speech can be pretty darn useful in NV, it can help you bypass pointless tasks and can help in other big ways...

Indeed i went with Charisma of 9 to begin with, tagging speech and barter and guns. First i created a lone sniper build but it felt too similar as to what i played FO3 so i went for a Smooth talking scavenger hopefully getting boone to be my muscle. Will see how this ends up....i tend to get bored with my builds and want to start over every 4 hours or so.

S 8
P 4
E 7
C 3
I 4
A 7
L 7

Melee, unarmed, survivor

Small frame,Wild wasteland

I guess I'm thinking of a Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Steven Seagal type character who can use weapons or her fists. I know I'm gonna end up wishing repair and lockpick were higher (both 15), but ya gotta start somewhere!

Also, while not a fan of gimping, I got bored in FO3 of building "perfect" characters, all of whom ended up about the same, anyway.

I have a question for the people who made a low strength, 5 or less. How come you did this? I am assuming for Roll Playing purposes. So my next qeustion is, how do you not go crazy in not being able to pick up every single thing? How do you decide what you drop and what you carry then?

Another question, why do people have such high Luck? 9 or even 10? :shocking: I would never had thought of this before.

S 5
P 6
E 6
C 1
I 9
A 5
L 9

Traits
Built to destroy
trigger discipline

I am boosting most stats by 1 to meet perk requirements, so most have a +1 I havent added.
I will make a new char and take 2 inteligence points and put them into strength as I need buffout to carry the sniper rifle due to low strength. Aside from that error, I like this build, its a sniper character.

@Davor, strong back requires 5, that gives more carry room, other than that just travel light, this build is on hardcoe and I rarely get overencumbered. But I did lower the difficulty because stimpacks are crap on HC.

I put a lot of points into Survival in order to get Rad Child (playing hardcoe + very hard) and now I''m considering how to boost my SPECIAL with implants and Intense Training to counteract the effects of critical RAD poisoning (-3 END, -2 AGI, -2 STR) so that I can stay consistently at critical poisoning level and get the +8 HP regen every 10 seconds.

If I get Solar Powered and the Monocyte Breeder I think it would be increased to +10 HP and the strength boost from Solar Powered would counteract the critical RAD penalty during the day.

The problem is one bad hit from a Glowing One could potentially kill me if I'm already at critical RAD poisoning.

My first playthrough of hardcoe normal start to finish was:

max agi, max perception, max intelligence, charisma as high as it could go. Everything else left at 1. Got the small frame trait to help me max out at 10 agi. Then, I got guns, sneak, repair and speech to 100 asap, ignoring other skills. I wore a wasteland wanderer outfit for the entire game and used the best pistols and rifles I could find, ending up with the anti materiel rifle. I couldn't meet the STR requirement for it, but it really didn't seem to matter. I still dominated with it.

Playstyle is just to talk my way out of everything I can, and then sneak around and ambush everything else.

Next playthrough I will probably skimp out a bit on Intelligence and charisma and put luck as high as I can get it, but otherwise play basically the same character.

S 7
P 6
E 5
C 5
I 6
A 6
L 5

Tagged - Guns, Repair, Sneak

Traits - Four Eyes, Trigger Discipline

Reasonably normal Small Guns thief / sneak / sniper character for me. Gotta have some extra Str to carry junk, gotta have some extra Int for skill points, and Agi / Per are for the Guns.

Don't really like buying down stats, especially to really low levels.

Perks I can remember:
Cherchez la Femme (which hopefully, I'll find a dialogue trigger for someday),
Comprehension,
Educated,
Entomologist (I'd had some bad experiences with some radscorps),
Scrounger (yay, ammo),
Strong Back (gotta carry more junk)
...don't remember the other one (Just hit 15, so that should be all of them).

Distributing skill points is annoying - there are so few of them, and soooooo many things you need (Repair for workbench recipes, Survival for cooking, Science for terminals and recipes, speech & barter for dialogue tests, Lockpick for loot & xp, Sneak and Guns for fighting.... :ahhh: )

I think I will do this my 2nd playthrough of the game. Right now, I just want to be able to shoot with guns, sneak and live. Next game, I will be the chatty type.

Sneak is overrated, IMO, for guns builds. I didn't put a single point into sneak this time around because it didn't really fit my character type of a gambler/arms dealer, and I'm really not missing it.

When I decide a situation is too dangerous to try to march in and sweet talk my way through it, all of my scoped rifles can headshot from so far out that I'm never within detection range for my base sneak skill anyway.

And when a situation absolutely requires stealth, Stealth Boys are everywhere.

Doesn't a higher sneak skill mean higher sneak attack damage? I absolutely rely on those to kill really scary enemies.

S - 6
P - 6
E - 5
C - 5
I - 6
A - 6
L - 6