Bloody Mess¶

With the Bloody Mess perk, characters and creatures you kill will often explode into a red, gut-ridden, eyeball-strewn paste. Fun! Oh, and you’ll do 5% extra damage with all weapons.

Okay, the aesthetics are cool, but that’s no reason to get a perk. 5% damage against everything is nice, though. Considering the fact that other damage increasing perks only affect certain weapon types, or certain enemies, a pure, honest, damage boost is special. There’s also the nostalgia factor, for us old school Fallout players.

Demolition Expert¶

With each rank of this perk, all of your explosive weapons do an additional 20% damage.

Guess what? This perk isn’t so useless anymore. Explosives now encompasses all the weapon types it originally should have, and 20% is a huge damage bonus, that goes a long way. Make your Explosives even more spectacular or - if a pun may be excused - get more bang for your buck with the Demolition Expert perk. That said, if you don’t consider Explosives a big part of your build, you shouldn’t consider this perk a priority.

Ferocious Loyalty¶

The power of your personality inspires die-hard loyalty from your followers. When you drop below 50% Health, your companions temporarily gain much greater resistance to damage.

Three problems with this, well, four, really. First, you have to rely on your companions to make the most of this perk. Second, if you drop below 50% of your health, the enemies are clearly attacking you, and not your companions. Third, it’s a duration effect, so you can’t even strategically keep your health below 50% so your allies reap the benefits. Fourth, it requires six points of Charisma, which is just a waste of five S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points.

Fortune Finder¶

With the Fortune Finder perk, you’ll find considerably more Nuka-Cola caps in containers than you normally would.

More caps. Yay. You’ll get plenty of caps killing things and selling their loot.

Gunslinger¶

While using a pistol (or similar one-handed weapon), your accuracy in V.A.T.S. is significantly increased.

If you plan to use one-handed ranged weapons-and V.A.T.S.-you should definitely pick up this perk, but since long range combat is a more viable option in New Vegas (as opposed to Fallout 3), rifles definitely have an edge over one-handed weapons.

Hand Loader¶

You know your way around a reloading bench and don’t let good brass and hulls go to waste. When you use guns you are more likely to recover cases and hulls. You also have all hand load recipes unlocked at the Reloading Bench.

This perk allows you to recover ammo cases in hulls, which in and of itself isn’t worth much. It does, however, unlock all the ammo recipes for guns, which includes the hand load ammo recipes. These, in turn, do wonderful things, typically giving a damage boost as well as altering the ammo in some other wonderful way. For instance, the 50mg rounds you can build with this perk deal x1.2 damage and increase spread. Now, if you buy plenty of ammo and break it down, and convert it to the better, hand load ammo recipes you’ll reap the benefits. It sounds like a lot of work, and you tend to take a loss on the ammo in the process (breaking down 100 rounds of ammo will not allow you to rebuild 100 rounds of ammo), but how can you really argue with a damage bonus on every shot? If you specialize with Guns, you can’t.

Note that to actually make some of the ammo this perk gives you access to, you may need a significantly higher Repair score. For example, .45-70 Gov’t, SWC Hand Load ammo requires a Repair score of 90, and .50MG, Match Hand Load ammo requires a whopping 100 Repair score. Getting up to 75, using magazines and wearing a Utility Jumpsuit comes highly recommended, in this case. Also note that most Guns don’t have Hand Load ammo recipes… and some of the few that do aren’t really worth making. You’re really looking at three types of ammo when it comes to the Hand Load recipes; .308 rounds, 50mg rounds, and 45-50 Gov’t rounds, all of which have excellent Hand Load recipes. Fortunately, they are the ammo used by pretty much all the good Guns in the game.

Lead Belly¶

With the Lead Belly perk, you take 50% less radiation every time you drink from an irradiated water source.

There’s plenty of clean water around. You can buy Purified Water cheaply. You can get your Rads cured from doctors and by using chems. Nobody needs this perk. Ever.

Mad Bomber¶

Your intimate knowledge of gadgets and explosives have combined to make you… the Mad Bomber! At Workbenches, you have special Explosives recipes unlocked for use.

Mad Bomber is for Explosives nuts what Hand Loader is for Gun nuts- albeit, if you think grenades make up the entirety of the Explosives. This perk will allow you to make a slew of different Grenade types you’d otherwise not be able to make, from the potent Nuka-Grenade to simple and cheap grenades that allow you to convert Microfusion Cells to grenades… it’s honestly the only way you can expect to use Explosives as a primary weapon (as clunky as that would be, at best). If you’re a fan of Explosives, and plan to pick perks like Demolition Expert, you should get this perk, too.

Shotgun Surgeon¶

Your precision with a scattergun is something to behold. When using shotguns, regardless of ammunition used, you ignore an additional 10 points of a target’s Damage Threshold.

If you use Shotguns, you need this perk, period. Shotguns function something like automatic weapons, firing numerous, low-damage shots at a time. This makes the Damage Threshold reduction absolutely crucial for Shotguns, and the fact that SMGs and Assault Rifles don’t have a perk like this really argues for the supremacy of the Shotgun. Combine this with Slugs, and you’ve got a good combination. It’s possible to kill a Deathclaw in three shots with this perk and a Riot Shotgun, which is a pretty nice feat. That said, there are plenty of weapons out there that are simply stronger than Shotguns. A Sniper Rifle will punch through an enemy’s Damage Threshold just fine. No perks required.

The Professional¶

Up close and personal, that’s how you like it. Your Sneak Attack Criticals with pistols, revolvers, and submachine guns, whether Guns or Energy Weapons, all inflict an additional 20% damage.

The high Sneak requirement on this is somewhat justified by the fact that you’d need a decent Sneak to get within range for these weapons. Honestly, though, this isn’t a great perk. It’s a 20% damage bonus that only applies to sneak attack criticals, and only to a variety of guns that aren’t really suited for sniping (or for dishing out huge amounts of damage, in any event)… and the guns that are most useful for this-the Ranger Sequoia or the .44 Magnum will already do loads of damage if you perform a sneak attack with them.

Toughness¶

With the Toughness perk, you gain +3 to overall Damage Threshold. This perk may be taken twice, with the second rank granting an additional +3.

Here’s how Damage Threshold works. If an enemies weapon can’t overcome your Damage Threshold, you only take a small fraction of that weapons’ damage. Many enemies use fairly typical weapons and thus do fairly low damage. A suit of Power Armor (typically granting you 20 some Damage Threshold) is about the best you can shoot for. With two of these perks, the Implant, and Remnant Power Armor and Helmet, you can aspire to the upper 30’s. Many enemies, however, will do much more damage than this. A Deathclaw, Cazador, Giant Radscorpion, or an enemy with a high-end gun will still do plenty of damage to you, regardless of your Damage Threshold. This perk will help you mitigate a bit of damage from every attack, but three points off a 50 damage attack is less impressive than Fallout 3’s base 10% damage resistance.

Vigilant Recycler¶

Waste not, want not. When you use Energy Weapons, you are more likely to recover drained ammunition. You also have more efficient recycling recipes available at the Workbench.

Just like the Hand Loader perk, but for Energy Weapons. Eh. There’s a quest you can do which will net you a good bit of free Energy Weapon ammunition that respawns over time. Also, there are fewer types of Energy Weapon ammunition, and less need to convert such ammo. Even if you love Energy Weapons, however, you might not want to pick up this perk, as you can create Maximum Charge ammo just fine without it.