Fallout Fallout 1-2 builds

[Jigby]

In F1 skilled gives you the +10% to all skills and no additional skill points
In F2 skilled gives you +0% to all skills and 5 additional skill points/level

Apparently it was buffed in et tu which is what I just installed and was playing with. That definitely makes it a lot weaker than I was thinking. Still, not sure it's bad.

Should be the same as in F1?
10Int+Skilled+no gifted has in
F1 25 skill points/level
F1 et tu 25 skill points/level
F2 30 skill points/level

Unless you actually do have 30 skill points with et tu, then my bad....

 

[Average Manatee]

Should be the same as in F1?
10Int+Skilled+no gifted has in
F1 25 skill points/level
F1 et tu 25 skill points/level
F2 30 skill points/level

Unless you actually do have 30 skill points with et tu, then my bad....

I swear it was 25 skill points per level when I also had gifted, but I just checked now and its 20. Must have been really tired and not paying attention last night, I probably misclicked gifted or something.

EDIT: Also apparently et tu (I think it's an sfall change?) lets you save perks forever so if you're now saving your level 3 perk to buy 2 level 6 perks then skilled is a bigger drawback. But that is kind of cheating.

 

[EldarEldrad]

Skilled is fantastic in FO1 but it's garbage trait in FO2.
Gifted is kinda overrated. It is still good trait, but it is not must-have and sometimes you should consider to not take it to make your early stages of games easier. Personally, I always avoid Gifted in FO1 and rarely take it in FO2.

 

[luj1]

Skilled is fantastic in FO1

but why

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wtf are you people even on about with skilled? It's absolutely garbage tier and would've still been even if skill points did not have value as low as they do in F1 compared to F2. Literally only niche for it is going for a low-int idiot challenge run, but that's nowhere near enough to call it "fantastic".

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

1) what other builds are there?

There's Guns/Speech dumping points into Energy Weapons late-game and there's the Gambling build. Literally no reason to do anything else.

Hammers are a reason to do something else.

 

[Ryan muller]

Skilled is good for evil characters, low int and non combat builds as you will have way less xp and this can make late stages more difficulty to endure and you will be in need of those extra skill points to surpass challenges without fighting too much (like the science check in the cathedral or the repair checks in mariposa)

The useful perks are almost all combat related so a non combat build wont need them and even for more combat heavy ones, you can do well with less perks (probably only 2 if you finish the game at level 9 + skilled)

I always use it when speedrunning the game as the early skill points do help a lot, but its garbage on fo2

 

[Jigby]

There are very few traits in F1 that are useful, most are either cosmetic (bloody mess), lulzy (jinxed,bloody mess) or just outright bad (bruiser). Looking at the wiki I'd consider only Fast Shot, Finesse, Kamikaze, Good Natured, Skilled and One Hander to be "useful" and really out of those 6 only Fast Shot is kind of a game changer. You have 2 traits to take, I guess one option is to ignore some of the six and take a cosmetic trait like Bloody Mess. Another would be to only take 1 trait and leave the other slot empty.

With Skilled you're going to have 5 turboplasma shots instead of 6 - what a disastrous mistake that would be! Only 5 shots! The build is ruined!

On the uptick you're going to have early sneak 100%, early barter 60%, combat armor costs 6000 instead of 50000, you do all the gambling nonsense etc... no game changer by any means - only fast shot is.

That said, bruiser is also a bit of a derpy trait, you can always go for the 3AP build with it.

 

[luj1]

There are very few traits in F1 that are useful

yeah

like imagine if FO had the character building of Underrail

or if Underrail had the nuanced writing/atmosphere of FO

 

[EldarEldrad]

Skilled is fantastic in FO1

but why

Skilled give you +10% to each skill but you take only 1 perk less during the whole playthrough. Also you shouldn't take your first perk at level 4, you can press Cancel each time you enter Character Sheet and wait until level 6 to get your first perk. One perk is absolutely non-critical but boost to skills can be very important if you want to get maximum things done on high difficulty.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Traits can easily be divided into three categories: good (pros overshadow the cons), bad (the other way round) and flavor (neither pros nor cons matter much). Skilled is bad, cause there's no way to justify prioritizing skills over perks. SPs are just not that valuable in Fallout, particularly not in F1, but even in F2 they are not some huge priority. It's just that the sequel makes more skills (kinda...) useful and introduced the cost inflation as you pump (but it really matters only for a chosen combat skill and a bit for science if you really want that companion, although why would you). In fact, even for weird builds like non-combat ones the SPs aren't magically made all that more important and the impact you get from having more of them early on is very negligible. Plus, any non-combat build should have 0 issues with pumping INT, pushing this trait even further into the garbage bin. Like I said, this leaves only idiot runs and that's it.

 

[Hobo Elf]

There are very few traits in F1 that are useful

yeah

like imagine if FO had the character building of Underrail

or if Underrail had the nuanced writing/atmosphere of FO

Fallout doesn't need the build autism of Underrail. SPECIAL is simple to use and works perfectly. The issue with FO1 & 2 is that there's not enough content to really justify tagging most of the skills. Small Guns, Speech and Lockpick are *the* tags recommended (both for FO1 & 2) because they get the most mileage and are already useful from level 1. If other skills had more uses and more often then perhaps the character build variety in FO would be better. Skills like Science and Repair almost feel like they were made for meta gamers who were already familiar with the game and wanted to do something specific.

 

[Jigby]

Traits can easily be divided into three categories: good (pros overshadow the cons), bad (the other way round) and flavor (neither pros nor cons matter much). Skilled is bad, cause there's no way to justify prioritizing skills over perks. SPs are just not that valuable in Fallout, particularly not in F1, but even in F2 they are not some huge priority. It's just that the sequel makes more skills (kinda...) useful and introduced the cost inflation as you pump (but it really matters only for a chosen combat skill and a bit for science if you really want that companion, although why would you). In fact, even for weird builds like non-combat ones the SPs aren't magically made all that more important and the impact you get from having more of them early on is very negligible. Plus, any non-combat build should have 0 issues with pumping INT, pushing this trait even further into the garbage bin. Like I said, this leaves only idiot runs and that's it.

With Ya typical gun build there's no real cost to skilled in the early game to late mid game. It's only in the late game that skilled has some downsides (5 shots instead of 6). That skills are not that important in F1 - this is to some extent true, although quick development is always nice - but you leave out that the 6th shot is even less important. It's diminishing returns through and through, only useful if you're in some theoretical game of maximizing damage/turn. It's much better to have early sneak and barter, than the 6th shot. And the perk progression is almost identical (the typical gun build)
with sfall (ergo with unused perk accumulation)
w/o skilled:
lvl3 - skip
lvl6 - bonus move
lvl9 - better criticals + bonus rate of fire
lvl12 - action boy
lvl15 - action boy

with skilled:
lvl6 - bonus move
lvl9 - bonus rate of fire
lvl12 - better criticals
lvl16 - something inconsequential, the game is ending, let's say action boy, whatever....

It's only weaker because of the late better criticals (this is unfortunate) and then all the way at the end with the second action boy (so no 6th attack, completely diminishing returns). And this is with sfall, without sfall the difference is even smaller. You'd have to sacrifice a perk, let's say bonus move, to get the 6th attack.

In F2 skilled is obviously bad, not because skills are unimportant, but rather that Skilled there doesn't really help with the skill progression at all. If you want early skill points in F2 you can just take the Thief perk on lvl 3 and redistribute the 40 skill points whatever way you want. But there are a lot of skills to cover in the F2 early game. You want sneak 100% as quickly as possible, 100% speech by Den so you can do the checks there without failing (assuming no savescumming), 126% in a weapon skill by the end of Den to deal with Metzger, something like 45% lockpick to comfortably unlock becky's bar door to the basement etc... In the mid game, the skill requirements do mellow out, but there's a lot to cover at the start. Skilled doesn't help much though.

Edit: Also in F2 the perk selection is more packed. Because of the higher level that you're going to get, taking 2x Lifegiver on lvl12 makes a lot of sense. Bonus HtT attacks thanks to all the boxing side quests (San Fran, New Reno, NCR) is nice too. You wouldn't take 2x Lifegiver in F1, you end the game at something like level 15-16. And there aren't really any boxing sidequests. So skilled hurts the perks progression in F2 moreso than in F1.

 

[Jigby]

Also just be clear, everything I said about F1 is in regards to vanilla, not Et tu . I'm not claiming that skilled is some must have pick, merely that it's underappreciated and for the most mundane builds (like the small guns+speech+fastshot) even useful. For many other builds it's probably very average, potentially compromising. Like if you're going for the BB gun, 2x action boy is nice there. But BB gun is from a special encounter, f*** that...

 

[Ryan muller]

Skills like Science and Repair almost feel like they were made for meta gamers who were already familiar with the game and wanted to do something specific.

I could understand Science since its very underwhelming and just not good to tag

But repair? You can fix necropolis's waterpump

Get a suit of power armor

Disable the force Fields in Mariposa,etc...

Its just way too useful to be considered only meta gaming

 

[Hobo Elf]

Skills like Science and Repair almost feel like they were made for meta gamers who were already familiar with the game and wanted to do something specific.

I could understand Science since its very underwhelming and just not good to tag

But repair? You can fix necropolis's waterpump

Get a suit of power armor

Disable the force Fields in Mariposa,etc...

Its just way too useful to be considered only meta gaming

You're proving my point for me. All of this is useful for the meta gamer. A normal player isn't going to fire up Fallout for the first time ever and level Repair because they know they can get power armor. If they pick Repair they'll muck around for the first 5 or so hours before realizing that it isn't very useful because there's nothing much they can do with it and then they'll regret their choice. None of this is true, it isn'ta useless skill, but it doesn't have as many cases overall where the player can use it and see some immediate returns for their investments. Same thing with Big Guns and Energy Weapons and whatever. Fallout 1 & 2 have a problem where you have clearly early level skills and higher level skills which means that for new players some skill picks will be traps because there aren't enough instances where they are shown to be useful in the early parts of the game. Small Guns, Speech and Lockpick are going to be useful throughout the entire game, making them the essential god choices for your character.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

It's a good thing there are all those science and repair books so you don't have to take those skills.

 

[Ryan muller]

Skills like Science and Repair almost feel like they were made for meta gamers who were already familiar with the game and wanted to do something specific.

I could understand Science since its very underwhelming and just not good to tag

But repair? You can fix necropolis's waterpump

Get a suit of power armor

Disable the force Fields in Mariposa,etc...

Its just way too useful to be considered only meta gaming

You're proving my point for me. All of this is useful for the meta gamer. A normal player isn't going to fire up Fallout for the first time ever and level Repair because they know they can get power armor. If they pick Repair they'll muck around for the first 5 or so hours before realizing that it isn't very useful because there's nothing much they can do with it and then they'll regret their choice. None of this is true, it isn'ta useless skill, but it doesn't have as many cases overall where the player can use it and see some immediate returns for their investments. Same thing with Big Guns and Energy Weapons and whatever. Fallout 1 & 2 have a problem where you have clearly early level skills and higher level skills which means that for new players some skill picks will be traps because there aren't enough instances where they are shown to be useful in the early parts of the game. Small Guns, Speech and Lockpick are going to be useful throughout the entire game, making them the essential god choices for your character.

What you mean is sistemic usage vs scripted usage

Some skills are going to get their uses all the way throught the game but not necessarily be that required to solve quests and get desired outcomes out of every situation.

If you think about it for example

How many quests in fallout 1 does require lockpicking? How many instances of you getting locked outnof a situation because you couldnt open something due to low SP?

Very few, while you could do most of the lockpicking in the game by only having a master lockpick kit + eletronic lockpicks and save scumming the living hell out of it

Same with Steal

My point defending repair comes from how often this skill is integrated in the quest design of fallout, having actually quite a lot of uses specially compared to science.

Lets remember that i havent even mentioned every situation in which it gets used in such a small game like fallout and it usually makes for the best solutions for quests, give you a hell of a lot more XP than the other methods and still gives the olayer way easier acess to PA.

I just cant see how it wouldnt worth it by being supposedly situational

Specially when some of the most frequent used skills can become redundant because of save scumming a lot and/or are just not so good (first aid, big guns,etc..)

I dont think you need to meta game hard to realize it since new players will miss out on solutions revolving repair at their first playtrought and the game telegraph it pretty well, making obvious that they only could do certain things with a high repair skill.

Alongside with Lockpicking its by far the most useful Skilldex skill in fo1

And tbh i never got the skill book thing.

As far as im concerned they only increase 1 skill point each and the guides never recommend barter (even tho barter is good) nor gambling

While i do get quite a lot of money by the end of the game, its not nearly enough to justify burning it to raise every skill to a higher level when i just get 1 skill point for each book

Am i missing on something?

 

[laclongquan]

Repair can fix the well in Arroyo straight off the cave.
Later on can fix the still in the next town.
And the elevator in Toxic Cave.

It's not useful in gaining as much benefit as other skill, but it does have enough use that a Repair-tag player doesnt feel total useless. An underwhelmed choice, yeah. Useless, no.

Science, now. Science doesnt have much use early game. It's a middle game investment, for sure.
----
Yeah, okay, F1 is different.

 

[Ryan muller]

Repair can fix the well in Arroyo straight off the cave.
Later on can fix the still in the next town.

It's not useful in gaining as much benefit as other skill, but it does have enough use that a Repair-tag player doesnt feel total useless. An underwhelmed choice, yeah. Useless, no.

Science, now. Science doesnt have much use early game. It's a middle game investment, for sure.

This is about fo1, repair is actually less useful on 2 compared to 1

 

[Average Manatee]

A significant problem with first aid/science/repair/outdoorsman is that you can just get books for them. Money isn't exactly hard to find in fallout as soon as you are fighting humans. Small guns too but most builds tend to raise that on its own before you get to the book spamming stage.

On the topic of Steal, does it even work in Fallout? All I know is that when I have -10% steal I seem to have about a 1/3rd to 1/2 success rate and when I have 100% steal I also seem to have a 1/3rd to 1/2 success rate.

 

[Ryan muller]

A significant problem with first aid/science/repair/outdoorsman is that you can just get books for them. Money isn't exactly hard to find in fallout as soon as you are fighting humans. Small guns too but most builds tend to raise that on its own before you get to the book spamming stage.

Then again, 1 SP by book, how can you get enough money without investing to barter to the point where you can burn so much without even caring?

On the topic of Steal, does it even work in Fallout? All I know is that when I have -10% steal I seem to have about a 1/3rd to 1/2 success rate and when I have 100% steal I also seem to have a 1/3rd to 1/2 success rate.

It does, weight also counts so bigger items have significantly less chances to be stolen, using alcohol and having the pickpocket perk helps too, but steal certainly works, hence why its even optimal for speedruns in fo2 (1 and 2 use the same formula for steal as far as im concerned, different from barter)

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

there's no real cost to skilled

No real cost lol. The cost is that you are getting perks later and there are longer intervals between them (which adds up when leveling slows down). All this while perks are the interesting/cool/exciting/c&c part of the char building while having some more SP is extremely boring and meaningless in comparison. And it doesn't really matter if you're doing an optimized power build or just screwing around picking sub-optimal choices and trying new stuff. You get some more SPs and do what with them? Completely break F1's economy a tad earlier compared to breaking it almost instantly otherwise if you want to (and it's not like it's ever needed or exciting apart from 1st time novelty)? Wow. Not to mention that it's a severely moot discussion: the way SPECIAL is balanced pretty much any build has no problems with pumping INT, having more SPs that they'd ever need and making Skilled increasingly worthless with each added point.

 

[Jigby]

On the topic of Steal, does it even work in Fallout? All I know is that when I have -10% steal I seem to have about a 1/3rd to 1/2 success rate and when I have 100% steal I also seem to have a 1/3rd to 1/2 success rate.

Steal skill doesn't do anything, the logic is poorly coded, check the pseudocode -> https://github.com/falltergeist/falltergeist/wiki/Stealing

There are 2 components to stealing, you passing the steal check and the opponent not noticing your steal attempt in his own steal skill check. If you fail your own skillcheck, the game goes on to the opponent's codeblock, if you pass your skillcheck... the game goes on to the opponent's codeblock. There's no difference. The only time it doesn't go into the opponent's codeblock is if you critically fail on your check, in which case you're just automatically noticed. Or on critical success.

You can improve your chance of stealing by lowering the target's agility. Every -1AG is -3% steal skill. Lower with buffout. (actually had to check, it's -3% in F2, -1% in F1).

Edit: Let me rephrase. Increasing steal skill doesn't do anything, your chances remain the same, dependant on the target's steal skill, facing, size of the object etc... but not on your steal skill.

 

[Jigby]

No real cost lol. The cost is that you are getting perks later and there are longer intervals between them (which adds up when leveling slows down).

I already showed how you get the cool perks at the exact same moment and the exact same interval, with the exception of Better Crticals. But Sneak > Better Criticals when it comes to combat effectiveness, the early sneak offsets the delay.

All this while perks are the interesting/cool/exciting/c&c part of the char building

And you do get all the cool perks, bells and whistles at the exact same time.

You get some more SPs and do what with them? Completely break F1's economy

You get Sneak 100% probably before the Raider camp. You get combat armor right at the start of Hub. You don't get the sixth attack, my god...

Why do you deem the 6th attack so important? Is this some theoretical maximization game? Or it's the as you say "coolness"? 6 is cool, 5 is boring