Fallout Fallout 1-2 builds

[jakkis]

If you *have* to rely on crits to kill something (which you do with Finesse, because its basically like giving every enemy in the game free Psycho), then you are absolutely silly to miss out on +60% crit from aiming for the eyes.

If you go for aimed shots, you don't need finesse at all

I played sniper build countless times and never ever though about adding finesse

Finesse CAN help with eye shots, like going from 75% cit chance to 85% is good, but then that's all your going to be doing and all non-eyeshot attacks are pure crap. Before getting a good rifle and 150% skill I'd much rather 0-range burst away with 9mm SMG all the enemies, finesse certainly doesn't help with that. Don't take finesse.

 

[jakkis]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

 

[NecroLord]

Finesse is just useless.
There's really no point in taking it.

 

[NecroLord]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

No, not closer, but farther away.

 

[Average Manatee]

"you can get like 600 free skill points out of it along with maxed unarmed skill"
If you want to keep your unarmed at 300%, there's no way that you'll be able to get 600 free skill points on top of it. That would be one hell of a free lunch

The free skill points from Tag! is more along the lines of leveling up some skill for free, (like Science, can be leveled up to 127% just by reading books), then tagging the skill and lowering it to the pre-Tag! level, pocketing the delta. So you get ~200 or whatever of skill points for the perk slot and the skill remains at 127%. But unarmed doesn't have a book. To get 300% after Tag!, you need to increase unarmed to about 175%-180%. But in your case you want to Tag! it beyond 300%. I couldn't be bothered to math it so I cheated myself 20 levels worth of xp. To get to 190% Unarmed, it took me ~400 skill points, then after Tag! and lowering Unarmed from above 300% to just 300% I pocketed about 100 skill points, so I'm still ~300 skill points behind. There's about 45 "inflation free" Unarmed training skill points (of course the price paid is ugly meta-gaming, similar to doing a Navarro run) so even with those I'm ~200 skill points behind.

Also to test it I had to downgrade sfall to an older version, 4.1.1 (2018). I kind of wonder whether the bug with Tag! doesn't exist solely because of sfall. Thief has a similar bug (taking the perk, then lowering skill to pocket the difference; and I assume other skill gaining perks have the bug too) - I was a bit surprised when I found out that you can't lower your skill after Thief in non-sfall vanilla. [EDIT: nah, I guess it must have been in vanilla too]

It's definitely possible that Sfall does some kind of change to this, but I'm fairly certain it worked as I described in vanilla.

600 skill points is a lot. I'm not sure on that number and I did it long ago when I was young, had lots of time to mess around, and metagamed everything to hell and back. I can say that when I did it I lowered unarmed till 99 skill points and then spent them many times over. It also involved saving all possible training options till the end, and constantly using chems to lower skills and then buy unarmed for less.

 

[roguefrog]

I haven't been following the thread but I have played Fallout an awful lot. Just my random and very general observations from all my different playthroughs. Might be preaching to the choir here though. If there's something you feel is incorrect, feel free to give me your perspective.

• You can beat the game with only one skill: Speech. No combat. Run from random encounters. Avoid quests that require combat (they are always not critical path)
• Small guns works for most of the game but fall apart late game.
• Big Guns are strong, but mid-to-late, and also fall apart late game.
• Energy weapons are non-existent early game and work wonderfully late game.
• Both Unarmed (with Powerfist) and Melee (with Supersludge) are really damn powerful and will get you through everything.
• Crit attacks are generally over tuned and you'll suddenly die from them on occasion. No chance to survive.
• Vast majority of combat is avoided by purple robe status. I have never actually tried to sneak it to be honest. (next playthrough!)
  

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

One thing I've noticed, especially replaying fallout 1 just now, is that armor is a lot weaker with AP ammo fixed (I know there's like 5 different mods fixing it, I'm going by whatever Fallout et tu did by default). In particular this means that even Power Armor isn't quite complete immunity to mid game weapons and Fast Shot bursts are 100% viable with relatively common weapons loaded with AP ammo throughout the whole game. Used to be that buying the combat armor in the Hub was enough to make clearing it out effortless, and with some psycho you were invulnerable. Much less so now, you can still easily lose half your health in a single round to an enemy shooting across the map even without being crit.

I think this definitely moves the game in favor of perks life Lifegiver and Bonus Move that either keep you alive with HP or by not being shot. I don't think you *really* need any offensive perks beyond bonus rate of fire. Even Sniper isn't all its cracked up to be. I remember grinding deathclaws to get sniper in Fallout 1 so that I could one shot supermutants, now I already one shot them anyway with no perks other than 2x bonus move, bonus rate of fire and Action Boy. Granted I'm using the Bozar which is normally a fallout 2 weapon but et tu is also boosting mutant health and the AP modifiers are doing a lot.

Yeah, Et Tu with the ammo fixes and new weapons changes the game quite a lot:
- Small Guns is just better as a whole
- Burst shotguns seem useless now, whereas they were king by Hub.
- 10mm SMG in vanilla becomes useless by Hub, now it's actually an all-around good gun with AP rounds. You can even kill Deathclaws, Super Mutants and Combat Armored enemies, just load it with AP bullets. If you get a better weapon, give it to Ian and/or Katja (whoever doesn't get the .223 pistol).
- Assault Rifle goes from a useless piece of firewood to the 10mm SMG's upgrade. Get the Extended Magazine upgrade and now you have over a hundred rounds to burst people with and a 8-round burst, enjoy spraying people with a hose of AP bullets from range.
- 14mm Pistol is actually good now
- Magnum Revolver is as great as it was in Fallout 2, especially if you have Fast Shot. Its also a great weapon to give to Tycho because its he can shoot it twice, load it with FMJ rounds and he will do great with it. Give it the Speed Loader, too.

I think it actually gets closer to the original devs' vision due to that. You can see that both the 10mm SMG and Assault Rifle keep showing up by the end game, even through they are clearly useless as fuck by then in the original game.

Hint: You can actually make NPCs change ammo by giving them two different copies of the same gun loaded with different types of ammo. Just ask them to change weapon, it will look like they didn't change, but they did, you can see that by looking at them with Awareness perk, you can see the ammo they loaded and how many shots they got. If you will fight leather/jacket dudes, have your dudes load up on JHP guns. Metal and above, load AP.

 

[luj1]

Yeah, Et Tu with the ammo fixes and new weapons changes the game quite a lot

Et tu is the FO2 engine port right? Do you like it?

 

[Ryan muller]

People praising big gun usage in FO1 always make me wonder

Ive always thought it sucked in Fo1

Minigun barely deal damage due to how DR works and even if you mamage to deal more damage dedicating the entire build to fast shot + Bonus ranged damage and stuff, you are better off with gatling laser.

Rocket launcher is heavy asf to carry around and barely have ammo in the game, the damage is quite high but dissapointing compared to what you would expect, theres not a bunch of hordes in FO1 either so you are using this in very specific cases

The only weapon worth using is the flamethrower

 

[NecroLord]

People praising big gun usage in FO1 always make me wonder

Ive always thought it sucked in Fo1

Minigun barely deal damage due to how DR works and even if you mamage to deal more damage dedicating the entire build to fast shot + Bonus ranged damage and stuff, you are better off with gatling laser.

Rocket launcher is heavy asf to carry around and barely have ammo in the game, the damage is quite high but dissapointing compared to what you would expect, theres not a bunch of hordes in FO1 either so you are using this in very specific cases

The only weapon worth using is the flamethrower

Turbo Plasma Rifle is king in Fallout 1.

 

[Jigby]

People praising big gun usage in FO1 always make me wonder

Personally I used rocket launcher + flamethrower. Rocket launcher in Military Base/Cathedral, you get these long corridors and there are plenty of rockets just laying around, it's fire and forget there. Rocket launcher also has the weapon long range perk, with PE10 from Mentats you can use it even with the starting skill of ~40%. And then flamethrower everywhere else, mostly because it has okayish ammo management for a big gun. It's not that they're that great - rather that there's no HP bloat unlike in FO2.

 

[jackofshadows]

The only weapon worth using is the flamethrower

Yes, it's awesome, especially if you tag sneak. And you're getting it quite early in the game, and you can buy fuel in Hub no problem so you can go through the whole game with flamethrower. Minigun is ok in FO1: your main opponents are muties and they don't have much DT. Minigun's only useless in FO2 due to generally higher enemy DT and then again also has its use. As for rocket launcher - as been said above it's very good in the end game dungeons which means it's generally very good. Damage w/o crits is meh but it has stopping/control effect.

Also nothing stops your combat char from tagging energo and having both by the end game.

Turbo Plasma Rifle is king in Fallout 1.

Alien blaster then.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

Almost, but PER also determines sequence.

With low PER you will be close to the enemies and you will have your turn only after them

 

[Beans00]

Minigun barely deal damage due to how DR works and even if you mamage to deal more damage dedicating the entire build to fast shot + Bonus ranged damage and stuff, you are better off with gatling laser.

Minigun 1 shots every mutant in fo1 except master and lieutenant. Literally instant 90-400 damage depending on range. Minigun 1-3 shots deathclaws. I have beaten f01 with minigun as my main weapon many times.
F02 vindicator minigun does the job perfectly fine. Bozar is also the best or 2nd best weapon in the game depending on perks.


TLDR; You haven't played fallout please stop being a poser lol.

 

[Ol' Willy]

You can beat the game with only one skill: Speech. No combat. Run from random encounters. Avoid quests that require combat (they are always not critical path)

I have pacifist run of Fallout 2 in playground section

 

[blessedCoffee]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

Almost, but PER also determines sequence.

With low PER you will be close to the enemies and you will have your turn only after them

I guess they could make use of this:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Earlier_Sequence_(Fallout)

It's a sub-optimal / nonvital / unrewarding perk to pick? Well, it's something that I avoid in Fallout and Fallout 2, and I'd normally advise players to take other perks, especially in the first game, considering how low the level cap is.

But it sounds like a niche build, nothing wrong with experimenting every now and then, and taking inessential perks / traits / et cetera just to see how it goes.

 

[NecroLord]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

Almost, but PER also determines sequence.

With low PER you will be close to the enemies and you will have your turn only after them

I guess they could make use of this:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Earlier_Sequence_(Fallout)

It's a sub-optimal / nonvital / unrewarding perk to pick? Well, it's something that I avoid in Fallout and Fallout 2, and I'd normally advise players to take other perks, especially in the first game, considering how low the level cap is.

But it sounds like a niche build, nothing wrong with experimenting every now and then, and taking inessential perks / traits / et cetera just to see how it goes.

Or they could take the "Gain Perception" perk, but they can only take it once.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

Almost, but PER also determines sequence.

With low PER you will be close to the enemies and you will have your turn only after them

I guess they could make use of this:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Earlier_Sequence_(Fallout)

It's a sub-optimal / nonvital / unrewarding perk to pick? Well, it's something that I avoid in Fallout and Fallout 2, and I'd normally advise players to take other perks, especially in the first game, considering how low the level cap is.

But it sounds like a niche build, nothing wrong with experimenting every now and then, and taking inessential perks / traits / et cetera just to see how it goes.

Firstly, it requires at least 6 PER. If you dump PER harder, let's say 4 or 5 you won't be able to take this

Then, you can just choose gain +1 PER to get the same +2 to sequence.

Good choice is also Kamikaze trait which gives you +5 sequence.

Thus, if you have spare perks, you can get 6x2 + 5 + 2 + 2 = 21 sequence. This will give you the first turn in nearly every combat and constant doubles. 19 if you take just one perk, still good

But personally, I never complicated it this much. For melee builds I usually settle for 7 or 8 PER and Kamikaze for a total of 19 - 21 PER without wasting any perk slots

Having low SEQ really sucks because enemies will have two turns on you in early phase of combat

 

[NecroLord]

Forgot about Kamikaze.
Actually worth it with a melee build (since you don't need AC, as you'll more than likely get hit anyway).

 

[blessedCoffee]

I did the Bonus HtH Evade thing a couple of times, but it always felt like too much work for not that big of a payoff. The skill progression is also ugly, you have to hoard skill points for unarmed (have to keep Unarmed under 100% so you can get the free training in San Francisco). So you can't increase your other skills that much (have to hoard), but you can't increase Unarmed either... and then you spend 2 perk slots (tag!, bonus hth evade) that on a normal build you wouldn't have.

Worst impediment to Full Unarmed build is the majority of enemies carrying powerful ranged weapons.
You absolutely need Bonus Move perk, not to mention Full Action Points so you can close the distance between you and your enemies.

Low perception helps in random encounters to get you placed closer to the enemies. I think. Good for HTH chars.

Almost, but PER also determines sequence.

With low PER you will be close to the enemies and you will have your turn only after them

I guess they could make use of this:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Earlier_Sequence_(Fallout)

It's a sub-optimal / nonvital / unrewarding perk to pick? Well, it's something that I avoid in Fallout and Fallout 2, and I'd normally advise players to take other perks, especially in the first game, considering how low the level cap is.

But it sounds like a niche build, nothing wrong with experimenting every now and then, and taking inessential perks / traits / et cetera just to see how it goes.

Firstly, it requires at least 6 PER. If you dump PER harder, let's say 4 or 5 you won't be able to take this

Take a pill / inhale one of the drugs, once, receive the stat(s) boost(s)

take another pill / inhale again, receive additional boost(s)

now, if you were to repeat this, it would have no effect, but there's an exploit

save your game, go back to the main menu, and reload

Take another two doses / inhale two more times, and save again

Go back to the main menu, reload the game and keep doing this for how long you want to.

If you're not playing a heavily modded Fallout 2, it should still work. I recall this being fixed in one of the fanmade updates to the game.

In the first Fallout there's even a trait which temporarily boosts your perception, depending on the time of the day.

This one-> https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Night_Person_(trait)

The perk selection window doesn't checks if you naturally have a certain amount of perception, or if you boosted the stat with drugs. So the perk will be unlocked, anyways.

 

[Ol' Willy]

save your game, go back to the main menu, and reload

I don't like build related exploits

I don't mind exploits related to cash (like the stealing money from San Fran store, cloning bug in Arcanum or plainly using trader reload in Underrail) because I hate the grind and don't have neither the time neither the desire to grind cash

But exploiting the builds, what's even the point? It's the challenge itself of making the build work within the given limitations

 

[Ryan muller]

Minigun barely deal damage due to how DR works and even if you mamage to deal more damage dedicating the entire build to fast shot + Bonus ranged damage and stuff, you are better off with gatling laser.

Minigun 1 shots every mutant in fo1 except master and lieutenant. Literally instant 90-400 damage depending on range. Minigun 1-3 shots deathclaws. I have beaten f01 with minigun as my main weapon many times.
F02 vindicator minigun does the job perfectly fine. Bozar is also the best or 2nd best weapon in the game depending on perks.


TLDR; You haven't played fallout please stop being a poser lol.

Are you counting Bonus ranged damage + Fast shot or just saying minigun does that purely w/o anything else?

If its the former, let me record a video later on

If its the later, gatling laser, again, do it better. Which is what i said previously.

 

[Ryan muller]

Forgot about Kamikaze.
Actually worth it with a melee build (since you don't need AC, as you'll more than likely get hit anyway).

Kamikaze is always worth it, some few AC wont save your ass

 

[Ryan muller]

The only weapon worth using is the flamethrower

Yes, it's awesome, especially if you tag sneak. And you're getting it quite early in the game, and you can buy fuel in Hub no problem so you can go through the whole game with flamethrower. Minigun is ok in FO1: your main opponents are muties and they don't have much DT. Minigun's only useless in FO2 due to generally higher enemy DT and then again also has its use. As for rocket launcher - as been said above it's very good in the end game dungeons which means it's generally very good. Damage w/o crits is meh but it has stopping/control effect.

Also nothing stops your combat char from tagging energo and having both by the end game.

Turbo Plasma Rifle is king in Fallout 1.

Alien blaster then.

Last playtrought i used RL and went to try and kill the gun runners

I lured all of them for the outside portion of their base and shot

Two out of the entire group died, cant exactly say i was surprised by the damage richard suffered either, in fact, my melee build with super sledge + fast shot (1 AP per hit) killed the master in two cycles (Hard) but my rocket launcher didnt

 

[blessedCoffee]

save your game, go back to the main menu, and reload

I don't like build related exploits

I don't mind exploits related to cash (like the stealing money from San Fran store, cloning bug in Arcanum or plainly using trader reload in Underrail) because I hate the grind and don't have neither the time neither the desire to grind cash

But exploiting the builds, what's even the point? It's the challenge itself of making the build work within the given limitations

Even without the exploit, the player could increase the perception three times in Fallout 1 (I even linked you to the page that gives extensive info about the trait that temporarily raises the PC perception stat under specific circumstances, I guess you could use some good old Mentats my friend), a bit less in the second game, right after leveling up so they can select the aforementioned perk.

About the exploit, I get it, it doesn't tickle your fancy.

Others may disagree, and in case there's someone's wondering which version the exploit works on (keep it in mind I can't, and won't test the exploit in every version available), I'm leaving these screenshots here:

I tested on the edition offered at the Gog store.