Alertness¶

You’ve learned to keep your senses alert to any danger. When crouched and not moving you gain a +2 to your Perception attribute to help you find enemies before they find you.

To get this perk, you need to have a Perception score of between six and nine, and it allows you to sense enemies as if you had two more points of Perception when you’re crouched and not moving. If you don’t know why this perk is awful, your garbage detector must be broken. Why not get a point of Intensive Training, instead, so you’ll have a point of Perception all the time, that gives bonuses to skills, too? Or, just drag ED-E around with you.

Fast Metabolism¶

With the Fast Metabolism perk, you gain a 20% Health bonus when using Stimpaks.

Stimpaks are cheap enough to buy, you don’t need this perk.

Ghastly Scavenger¶

With Ghastly Scavenger, when you’re in Sneak mode, you gain the option to eat a Super Mutant or Feral Ghoul corpse to regain Health. Every time you feed, you lose Karma, and if the act is witnessed, it is considered a crime against nature.

Much like the Cannibal perk, this perk is only remotely useful if you’re playing in Hardcore mode. Even then, this perk requires you to have Cannibal-a perk with arguable value as it is-and only works on Super Mutants and Feral Ghouls. Humans are more plentiful, and unless you’re just starving away on Black Mountain, Camp Searchlight, or Vault 34, there’s not really any widespread use for this perk.

Heavyweight¶

Have you been working out? Weapons heavier than 10 lbs. now weigh half as much for you. (Modified weapons that drop below 10 lbs. will not gain this benefit.)

Most of the best weapons in the game don’t weight 10 lbs. or more, and even then, just for the sake of argument, how many of these weapons would you even have on you at once? One, two? Unless it were loot you grabbed from Super Mutants. In that case, doesn’t having Strong Back to give you 50 lbs. extra carrying capacity - all the time, for everything - help more in the long run?

Hit the Deck¶

Your extensive familiarity with Explosives allows you to ignore a portion of their damage. Your Damage Threshold is increased by 50% against any and all Explosives–even your own.

This perk can actually have its uses, albeit dependent upon your love of Explosives and your base Damage Threshold. If you use nothing but Explosives, and wear enough armor to give you around about 30 Damage Threshold, then the frequency of friendly fire and the Damage Threshold bonus may well be worth the perk. If not, you can ignore this perk.

Hobbler¶

With the Hobbler perk, your chance to hit an opponent’s legs in V.A.T.S. is significantly increased.

Like Sniper, but for dinks. Going for headshots results in kills. Killing is better than slowing a foe down, the only benefit of which would be to kill later. Get Sniper and shoot for the head, instead.

Life Giver¶

With the Life Giver perk, you gain an additional 30 Hit Points.

Considering that you gain 20 hit points for a point of Endurance, this perk is pretty much on the same level as an Intensive Training perk spent on Endurance-minus the bonuses to resistances and the skills, and the ability to grab another Implant. The fact that Implants call for us to have such a high starting Endurance makes 30 extra hit points dispensable, and although it’s nice, it’s not quite nice enough to fit into most builds.

Long Haul¶

You have learned how to pack mountains of gear for the Long Haul. Being over-encumbered no longer prevents you from using Fast Travel.

Sure, you might think this is nifty. After all, how wonderful would it be to just grab up all the loot you can carry and fast travel back to town? What about the implications for Hardcore mode? Hogwash. Crawling around scavenging the last few items in a room or on some corpses and then having to inch your way outside to fast travel is not a time saver. Just drop the excess and come back. Or store it on a companion. This is an illusory time saver, and unless you stored an ungodly amount of loot in a container, picked it all up, and then waddled outside to fast travel, you wouldn’t be doing anything. This isn’t a good perk, it’s just procrastination disguised as convenience.

Piercing Strike¶

Piercing Strike makes all of your Unarmed and Melee Weapons (including thrown) negate 15 points of Damage Threshold on the target.

Ignoring 15 points of Damage Threshold is huge, even ridiculous, especially considering that many Unarmed and Melee Weapons already do good damage. Combine this with the Purifier perk and you will be able to deal with Deathclaws and Super Mutants as well as any weapon-bearing character in the game. Frankly, however, against those enemies you’d probably be better off keeping your distance. If you go melee, however, you’re going to want this perk, even if it just makes killing weak-to-mid strength enemies that much easier.

Pyromaniac¶

With the Pyromaniac perk, you do +50% damage with fire-based weapons, like the Flamer and Shishkebab.

This is a huge damage boost that effects a small variety of weapons. Still, the Heavy Incinerator can be fun. If you use Energy Weapons, and really have the desire to use a fire-based weapon… well, you might as well get this perk. If you don’t fall into this narrow niche, ignore it. This perk is especially useful for boosting the Shiskebab melee weapon. With this perk it becomes a viable weapon for late game use… well, as much as any melee weapon becomes, anyways. It might not be as powerful as the Super Sledge, but it is much faster. Or you could just go Unarmed and use a Displacer Glove or something. Either way.

Robotics Expert¶

With the Robotics perk, you do an additional 25% damage to any robot. But, even better, sneaking up on a hostile robot undetected and activating it will put that robot into a permanent shutdown state.

This is still as good of a perk in Fallout: New Vegas as it was in Fallout 3, but with a few notes on the gameplay. First, it’s much harder to sneak to within melee range of enemies in New Vegas. Second, there aren’t nearly as many robots in the Mohave as there were in D.C., which makes this a less useful perk. Oh, also there’s the Pulse Gun, which pretty much wastes robots on its own.

Silent Running¶

With the Silent Running perk, running no longer factors into a successful sneak attempt.

Alright, let’s be honest here. In order to Sneak effectively, you need a fairly high Sneak score. However, in Fallout: New Vegas, you don’t need to get within most enemies’ perception range to snipe them, making Sneak less obligatory. However, if you want to sneak near an enemy, much less sneak up to them, you’re going to need to be quick about it, as enemies wander around more regularly. To this end, you’ll want Silent Running. If all you want Sneak for is to get within the generous sniping range, or to grab an item off a shelf, you probably don’t need this perk. If you want to get closer to enemies, or to sneak past them at any decent speed, you need this perk.

Sniper¶

With the Sniper perk, your chance to hit an opponent’s head in V.A.T.s. is significantly increased.

If it has a head, you probably want to shoot it there for the bonus damage. If you only stick to melee attacks, or never use V.A.T.S., you can ignore this perk. If you play realistically however, this is a pretty good perk. Mind you it doesn’t just cover ‘sniping’. Popping a Super Mutant in the face with a few rounds of Shotgun Shells at mid range is also a good use of the Sniper perk.

Splash Damage¶

When you’re deep in enemy territory, you just start chucking grenades and hope for the best. All Explosives have a 25% larger area of effect.

A larger explosive radius sounds neat enough on paper, but keep in mind that it can be a bit of a double-edge sword. First, it seems just as likely to hurt you as not, and second, just how many enemies are going to find clustered together? Three, or four at the most? You’ll probably be better off with Demolition Expert instead.

Unstoppable Force¶

Your martial might is truly legendary. You do a large amount of additional damage through enemy blocks with all Melee Weapons and Unarmed attacks.

Just how many enemies actually block in this game? Human enemies that use melee weapons, which are, as a rule of thumb, usually easy to kill. Super Mutants, Cazadores, and Deathclaws won’t be blocking your attacks, so what use is this perk? And 90 Melee Weapons? Even a dedicated melee fighter can ignore this perk.