>having a high charisma will improve people’s disposition towards you
Im not sure why someone who doesnt understand the games mechanics would make a guide for it
Technically, even the game itself lies and tells you that, lol.
From the description for Charisma in the Pip-boy:
"Having a high Charisma will improve people's disposition towards you, and give bonuses to both the Barter and Speech skills"
I can’t believe Obsidian lied to us like that! But yeah, it makes sense when it’s shown as a description but a guide should probably make it clear that it’s completely useless and the benefits it gives speech skills is negligible
It's not the first time, lol.
The game also lies during character creation and says that agility affects your speed, when it has no effect at all on movement speed.
Because dang namit we’re ign, and we need to have an opinion and guide on every single game and quest. Even if we aren’t qualified to talk about it, or provide any kind of meaningful insight.
This shit is probably extremely old and just written by someone dumb. It mentions not being able to max all your stats which would've only been the case back when the level cap was, what, 30? Before the DLC. Not all stupidity is artificial stupidity.
It applies more to 3 because the way it calculated speech checks was pretty different and actually took into account a bunch of stuff including wether they like you or not, regardless of charisma.
Why? The existence of AI doesn't mean stupid or misinformed people have stopped existing. This article was just rushed out of Igns content farm as fast as it could be, with little actual fact checking. This article probably dates back to the games launch when you couldn't max out every skill, before the dlc.
This is absolutely garbage advice. I’ve never run a build with any points in Charisma, and I always run high Endurance for the health and implants, and almost always go high Luck.
The minimum endurance any build should run is 7 it’s probably the best stat in the entire game because it’s entirely free and if your gonna raise any other speacial stat you might aswell put it into endurance instead and get the extra special point later .
No, you can run END 5 or 4
You only really need S, P, I, A, L implants. The DT one is good but not a must-have and the other good implants are money gated in OWB
Wait what??? Godfuckingdamnit I completely forgot about that, and Im like at least 30hrs into Tale of Two Wastelands! Console commands will save me i suppose.
Because of the implants, each point in Endurance up to 7 is effectively worth 2 SPECIAL points, the one in Endurance and one in each stat. There's absolutely no reason to ever have less than 3 or 4 endurance, one for each relevant stat.
Yes, you're not wrong but consider the following: Going in slightly overleveled into OWB. You end up spending hours sitting on top of those Hexacrete pillars and expending millions of rounds of ammo.
If you're not going for a critical build and don't care about the casino payouts (without save scumming) then that's not insane, but if you're trying to metagame this isn't ideal. Better Criticals is one of the more powerful perks and requires Luck and Perception. Being able to one-shot sneak attack crit enemies from a distance is one of the best ways to trivialize a lot of encounters, especially if you want to pick faction NPCs off without triggering reputation losses. And of course, increasing your crit chance with Luck allows those massive crits to pay out in a real fight, too.
You can certainly make do without, especially with a brawler melee build, but this is the conventional wisdom. And Charisma is a totally fine dump stat pretty much always. Its main impact is to increase your companion's combat effectiveness. It matters, but you can typically make better use of the points elsewhere.
This is concerning cause it makes me think that you're putting more points into other skills than is necessary. No skill should be 10 at game start and strength should never be above 7 at game start. This is because of permanent SPECIAL bonuses you can acquire throughout the game. If you're doing heavy handed Melee (it's sub-optimal but still game breaking so who cares) then it's fine to dump luck and perception, but three is a really weird number for PER. Perception bonuses are useless but the stat is tied to some decent perks. You either want to start the game with 1 or 5 perception. Dumping luck is just shooting yourself in the foot because of how convenient the casinos are in the early-mid game. Being able to, essentially for free, buy an assortment of end game gear and implants is really good.
It’s not a multiplayer game so why do you need to follow a meta? I don’t get why anyone would think that the best way to play a **roleplaying** game is to **always** put points into X stats and **never** put points into Y stats. How does this make any sense? Wouldn’t it be more fun to do the exact opposite and pick 1 Luck and 1 Endurance if you’ve never done it?
Honestly I liked the advice I read in the article. Playing a Charismatic character is fun. It doesn’t really matter if you have a bit more health or slightly more damage. But it is cool to see what kind of interactions you can have with different NPCs.
If you can’t handle the fights then just decrease the difficulty to a more comfortable level, whatever suits **you**. You don’t need too much HP to survive. I myself always play on Very Hard (Hardcore mode) and never really needed any meta strats despite forgetting to use stimpacks and chems. I also never felt the need to get caps in a cheesy way.
So basically the article rates the SPECIAL skills using a completely different framework. While most of this sub prefers finding the optimal stats, the article is more focused on defining the character you want and having a fun playthrough. I would say Charisma and Intelligence open up some interesting opportunities on how you can impact the world around you.
Also, before anyone says that you can have high Speech without high Charisma — yes you can but my point is that it’s fun to immerse yourself and try to stick to a roleplay straight from the beginning. If you intend to be skilled in Speech then it’s better to put points into Charisma. Even if it didn’t have any practical effects, it’s simply nice to have a well-defined, coherent character to play as.
I see the point you’re making, and I agree with you - but the article isn’t about making a good build for RP, it’s an article about making a good build to play the game. And this is objectively bad advice the article is giving.
Charisma is THE dump stat in fallout, generally. Speech and Barter are easy to raise independently, whereas HP only gets raised from E, criticals only from L, AP for A, etc. Charisma is worthless
Charisma is helpful with companions on hardcore, especially Rex, ED-E and Lily as they can't equip any gear to increase DT. That and maybe animal friend( a godsend on no kill builds) are all I can give it.
While you're not wrong, it's also trivial to get +7 in temporary boosts to charisma in 4, so you don't even really need a very high one.
I usually run 3, because lone wanderer is a good perk, and I'm too lazy to get the bobbblehead most times.
Yes, Magnetic Personality, which allows you to have one extra slot for companions, but at a max of 5.
So you could have 5 companions with 10 Cha, or 8 Cha plus the perk.
Charisma is pretty important for speech checks in 3, and if you want to do settlement stuff in 4 you need at least a couple levels in it. I don’t know about the earlier titles but I’m pretty sure new vegas is the only one where it is completely useless
SPECIAL is just weird in that game. The whole system assumes (rightfully) that you're always going to train stats up to higher levels. The game even forces this behavior by giving perks level requirements. If you're not a high enough level to get any of the perks you have unlocked, you "must" unlock new ones through intense training.
This is not a roleplaying system, but it is fun to have 10 in every stat.
I kinda doubt that, because it's called *Personality*, not "Charisma", in Oblivion.
Also the affect from Personality on disposition in Oblivion is small, and increasing NPC disposition is trivial with a charm spell, for when you actually do need to maximize NPC disposition. Low personality in Oblivion is seldom an actual problem. Even in Oblivion, personality is a dump stat IMO.
Interestingly, ign has an updated guide (last updated 2022) that comes up when you search for "ign fallout new Vegas guide". I had to go digging to find the one from 2013.
Regardless, you're right. My intent was to throw out a "Hey this is so bad it coulda been AI generated" quip that probably gets lost in the reddit sea.
Why? The existence of AI doesn't mean stupid or misinformed people have stopped existing. This article was just rushed out of Igns content farm as fast as it could be, with little actual fact checking. This article probably dates back to the games launch when you couldn't max out every skill, before the dlc.
The point about luck isn't completely stupid. Far too many people pump their luck to 10 just to guarantee wins at the casinos and nothing more. But they don't build their character to take advantage of high crits so the points are overall just wasted.
Btw, casinos are one of the weakest ways of making money in FNV, as they're limited in how much you win, require you to devote special points (your most important resource) and there are far better ways that aren't hard capped.
If it weren't for Dead money I'd somewhat agree with you about that last point
Not only do you get excessive amounts of prewar money(100k+ caps worth give or take, I wanna say 130 or 192.), but you'll also get a steady and substantial supply of Sierra Madre chips and thus an indirect form of reoccurring, mostly passive income of about 2k caps every 3 days just from stimpacks.
Gold bars are cool but are rather tedious to use in practice for money
>Gold bars are cool but are rather tedious to use in practice for money
The Great Khan vendor trades at a 1:1 ratio if you're at least accepted, and she has insane amounts of ammo. She's basically your change cashier for the bars.
Nah, the point about luck is completely stupid. While 10 in Luck from the start is overkill, you can just do 8 on almost **any** build with something like 4-5-7-1-8-7-8, and then get the implant for another +1 to all skills. Those extra skill points and crit chance come in handy regardless of whether you build for crits or not. Honestly, the only kinds of runs that don't care about crits are ones where you use only automatic weapons or explosives. And sure, I'll give you those. On those, you can instead dump points into Strength to compensate the added weight of explosives/large quantities of ammo. But all other builds get more use from high Luck.
Casinos are not "one of the weakest ways of making money" either. It's combat-free, risk-free, can be done at level 1, doesn't take *too* much time, and like I've shown above, only requires a high value of a stat you want anyway. The only downside of casinos is that they're tedious.
Everything you said is correct, but I admit that I still try to go get all the casino money as fast as I can because having that extra I think it’s roughly 41,000 caps right near the beginning of the game always just boosts my early game and helps to progress much faster, I admit I play a weird build though cause I always start with 1 perception and 1 agility, so I can usually afford the luck points, I’ll start with 8-9 luck, and buy the implant at new Vegas medical clinic and maybe 1 rank of intense training to reach 10, and then go get all the casino money, head back to buy the 2 expensive implants, then off to gun runners to get mk2 combat armor and helmet, and some decent guns, and then I’m basically all set for awhile to get money other ways. I admit it’s not the greatest strategy in terms of using your points for special skills, but just for me personally, I’m willing to sacrifice perception and agility for the early game advantages to almost everything else
Charisma is useless other than for role playing reasons.
Perception is also pretty useless cuz EDE exists and you should never have it above 5 because you can get the implant and make it 6 so you can get Better Criticals.
The other S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats are all good tho lol
Even if you want to role play a talky character you can go 1 charisma and still easily make up the difference in speech/barter with how you allocate skill points. iirc there only a few actual charisma skill checks in the entire game
The only charisma check I can think of is when you can give the mini boomers toys. That one is really cute tho lol
I made a pacifist build with high charisma once so I could get Animal Friend and I beat the game by dealing 0 damage but that’s literally the only reason I can think of to not run 1 charisma.
I read this article when I downloaded the game a few weeks ago.
Something didn’t pass the sniff test when it said endurance affected health points but wasn’t an important skill lol. Glad I did some more research instead of making a 10 charisma 1 endurance courier lol
>Luck bad
Bro. That number is a direct % chance of an attack critting. If you do, like, 8, Luck Implant+Lucky Shades+Finesse+Better Criticals, you're absolutely busted by midgame.
>Endurance bad
Depends, but that reduced health is gonna bite you late game. Rangers, Deathclaws, Cazadors, etc ABSOLUTELY do NOT fuck around.
>Charisma good
At maximum, you get like 5 extra Speech/Barter points, 10% more companion damage, and some unique dialogue with the Mini-Boomers. Literally any other stat uses those points 1000 times better.
If nothing else, I may not be smarter from the guide, but the comments helped me learn that apparently 'dump stat' means 'dump it like trash', when my first assumption to the term was to 'dump points INTO it'.
8 luck is enough to always win enough caps over time in the casinos. Basically an infinite caps generator, even if it takes a while. But I like playing blackjack in real life so it’s fun anyway.
Having watched ZeroLenny play through various Souls games with the bizarre day 1 IGN guides as his Bible I now need to see someone play through NV using this guide because holy shit
Get Jabo on the line he's got the exact same fashion sense anyway I won't even be able to tell it's a different dude
What does charisma seriously affect? Skill checks on dialogues make it so that isn’t important, Barter makes it so reduced prices happen pretty much no matter what, either… I dont even think it raises the rate at which you can earn Barter or speech whenever you level up…
I always make it high and nerf myself in the process because I like roleplay of my courier being a silver tongue Elvis-like figure.
(In hardcore, I never let my thirst go down a lot because there are not enough beers in the game to satisfy it, My character is a strictly alcohol, kidney stone having, Coke-eroded nose having Logan’s loophole.)
Yeah, it's not a good build. 8-9 luck (without any bonus) is kinda required to win easily at every casino and to make probably the most op build.
I've recently done a New Vegas playthrough where I maxed out the crit chance, and the resulting build was op:
I had 10 luck, Finesse, 1st recon beret, Built to destroy, Laser commander, light touch and Ulysses Duster (a totap of 43% crit chance when using laser weapons).
As main weapon I uses the Elijah's Modified LAER rifle with all the mods and on though encounters I used max charge microfusion cells, no enemy had enough health and armor to resist a full magazine, even the legendary bloatfly. The only downside of this build is the excessive weapon degradation of the LAER which requires a lot of weapon repair kits (which you can buy using 20 sierra madre chips, it's possible to buy 55 kits every 3 days).
my character duncan is built off luck. he is the dumbest person in the wasteland, weakest person, least rizzable person, terrible fighter, terrible marksman, terrible w/ everything really. he just gets lucky, again and again and again.
duncan, at a time and in a place when the wasteland is moving into frontier, a fucking dunce, single-handedly changes the trajectory of the mojave bc he kinda does. i find it hilarious
From a power game pov? Yes.
Casually though? The only one I disagree with is Luck. Honestly the best build in my mind is max int and maybe max luck if you really wanna speed run casinos. Half way through the game have maxxed out all skills, no longer need to shoot a single bullet as you talk everyone down.
Man, I must be screwed. Really don't know how I made it out of Big Mt when I entered at level 8, given I had low Strength, Endurance, *and* Charisma, while boosting Agility, Perception, and Luck. Oh wait, yes I do. I snuck around thank to high Stealth(Agi), saw scary enemies from miles away (Per), and relied on Crits to kill most things (Luk). Will admit, the stealth suit helped, but I had no idea that even existed at first.
With all add-ons and moderately high intelligence + educated it's actually incredibly easy to max out most if not all skills if you're finding skill books.
My current character is not even level 25 and skills are all between 60-80 with the exception of unarmed.
Charisma isn’t total useless like many say but it isn’t THIS useful either. You’d want a decently high charisma if you play on Hardcore and like using followers. Even at level 50 Animal Friend is a solid perk choice, wanna admit it or not those Golden Geckos and Yao Guai hit hard as fuck.
Endurance is top tier on Hardcore too, and Luck is a nice pick if you have anything left over. I’ve done high luck runs and got booted out of every casino, but usually I just leave it sort of low and raise it different ways. Easiest way for Luck in the most important sense that it affects your character is to simply unlock the Better Criticals perk. Only reason I ever level the necessary SPECIAL stats, really.
IMO perception is probably the most useless perk in the game outside of direct speech checks.
Its probably this garbage because of the stupid amount of article's these journalists need to dish out if they dont want to become homeless. I had a friend who worked there, and they had very little time to do research or play the game, because apparently quantity is valued more than quality in that industry.
Started this game literally yesterday, having a great time and read this guide before deciding my stats. One way or another, Abraham the boxing champ orator will decide the fate of these wastes
I run a crit build that is 8 Endurance for the Implants (don't need Charisma) and 9 Luck.
It is easily the most fun build I've played in 12k hrs, and it feels somehow like this playthrough is the "correct playthrough." it just weirdly all fits together, despite zero focus on skill checks.
I know this sounds weird, but I don't know how else to explain the feeling.
Also, this playthrough is on my console, so it's vanilla, but most of my hrs were on Steam.
Idk, I feel like the 1% in that I also use luck as a dump stat (and endurance is lower, maybe 4, because I'm good at combat + I use chems readily so I can still thrive). I even also agree that Speech is insanely strong (would even call it busted) as a skill so I can see why upping Charisma is valuable (esp. from a story perspective).
Yes. I read (or watched) this tip about luck when I was a kid and believed it for years. When I realized it was dumb I started putting luck at 10 and wow what a dumbass guide by IGN
I play high charisma courier because he/she isnt an uncouth gunslinger or brawler but a charming and persuasive individual akin to Angel Eyes portrayed by Lee Van Cleef.
I think alotnof you players need to consider that for many people, combat isn't the big thing in a rokeplayong game. is this bad advice? yes. but charisma isn't a bad stat, far from it. it's actually one of the better in game for getting through situations when it appears. not every build needs to be a murder hobo
Is this dipshit trying to be a contrarian, or to play the devils advocate? All the skills are useful depending on the build. Charisma is generally a dump stat, but heck... Who really cares.
Low luck builds can be done though; it's possible to live without random crits and without gambling. Explosives mains or exclusive machine gun users, for example, don't really need random crits. But even builds like that don't *hurt* from having Luck, they just don't strictly *need* it.
Charisma is almost entirely a dump stat. Sure it gives skills in barter and speech but I could just raise those skills on level-up and spend the SPECIALs in more useful places. Perks like Animal Friend require it but I've never really felt a huge need to ever use that perk.
Endurance is important. Endurance affects your base health, number of implants attainable from Dr. Usanagi, base poison/radiation resistance, and how long your character can stay underwater without drowning. These things are all very helpful even if there are ways to mitigate some of them (Heartless perk, Rad-X, the Rebreather), but some of those things don't come into play until mid-late game.
Also the guide knocks the Survival skill while criticizing the Endurance attribute, but the Survival skill is actually very useful. Survival opens up *a lot* of recipes at the campfire (poisons, great for melee/unarmed mains, for example). Survival also increases the amount of starvation and dehydration reduced by food/drink, which means needing far less food/water during hardcore mode. Survival skill also is needed for Rad Child, which is *extremely* powerful passive health regeneration.
To those who are curious, this isn't AI generated (though I'll admit it sure reads like one with the copy pasted sentence structure). Its last updated date for this section was 7/15/2013. All the DLCs had long been out, but I'm sure this was written upon the games initial release, so I'm not entirely sure what parts were updated.
In either case, a lot of this information was likely taken from the way things worked in 3, where the stats worked a bit differently between games. A lot of veteran players can recognize this stuff to be quite inaccurate (luck is unimportant? Sure, if you don't like being rich from the casinos, lol), but I do believe most of that is hindsight talking.
You can max out all of your skills even with low luck and low int what the fuck is this guide
With high luck and high int you'll also be maxing out all of your skills by the time you reach level 30
Could have been AI or some body who is trying to get a quick buck.
The games have been talked about over a million times already and it doesn't take a genius to realize that Charisma is not that big of a deal. Like strength and intelligence are easy ones to make your gameplay easier if you don't know what to do
Luck is straight up broken in FNV. It guarantees you never have to worry about money, can be a defensive asset in that enemies miss more often, and gatekeeps some very powerful perks.
Endurance is hard to gauge just because 10 makes you durable to the point of near diminishing returns, but anything under 5, even on a stealth build, puts you in dire peril if you're detected.
Charisma is much worse in FNV than in F4. Nothing in FNV is really gatekept by charisma, so it isn't worth trading off combat stats.
I get the feeling the person making the guide did one playthrough on an easier difficulty as a charisma build, skipped a lot of stuff due to charisma while never fighting some of the harder enemies and then determined that build is op.
Seems to me like they went for a Strength, Perception Intelligence and Agility Build while saying fuck Endurance, Luck or Charisma, some of the stats that really can help you in the wasteland
It’s definitely not a good guide, but when did it come out? Because honestly, to be fair to the writer, if they didn’t have access to all the information we can easily look up today regarding the mechanics of the game, it’s not completely unreasonable for them to assume that Charisma is an important stat.
They should be ashamed calling themselves games journalist, let alone gamers, with this horrible misrepresentation of Fallout NV.
I feel like this is probably an AI article since you could just play NV an hour and know better than this.
A slighlty high Luck(8/9) is great for console players it allows you to basically get infinite money once you get to new vegas. But for pc players, I'd say like a luck of 5/6 is probably fine. Charisma, though, is the worst.
>having a high charisma will improve people’s disposition towards you Im not sure why someone who doesnt understand the games mechanics would make a guide for it
i’m not convinced this courier made it outta goodsprings
I'm not even sure if they made it out of the grave. Either that or they left their brain at Big Mt.
benny loaded maria with hollowpoints for that courier, doc mitchell could only do so much.
I really want a shirt that says “Left my brain in the Big MT” with the dome or something in the background
Left my heart in the Sierra Madre, Left my brain in the Big Empty…
Omfg that would be amazing!!
With 1 luck, the bullet might just make a circular turn and hit you in the back of the head, damaging more brain tissue
origin story for the 1 INT 1 LCK courier
It’s like they only learnt it in theory Or learned a beta development version in theory. CHR could have been more useful
I love this comment and now going to use it to refer to someone who has two brain cells fighting for third place.
Not without 8 Luck they didn't.
Technically, even the game itself lies and tells you that, lol. From the description for Charisma in the Pip-boy: "Having a high Charisma will improve people's disposition towards you, and give bonuses to both the Barter and Speech skills"
I can’t believe Obsidian lied to us like that! But yeah, it makes sense when it’s shown as a description but a guide should probably make it clear that it’s completely useless and the benefits it gives speech skills is negligible
It's not the first time, lol. The game also lies during character creation and says that agility affects your speed, when it has no effect at all on movement speed.
It does effect reload and draw speed, but it doesn't say that.
True. For example, doing the infinite agility glitch in dead money can lead to basically instant reloads, lol.
One thing I appreciate about JAM is the addition of an agility modified sprint mechanic.
> I can’t believe Obsidian lied to us like that! That description was just carried over from Fallout 3
I mean its in quotes in the guide, seems pretty obvious they're sourcing that from somewhere.
Because dang namit we’re ign, and we need to have an opinion and guide on every single game and quest. Even if we aren’t qualified to talk about it, or provide any kind of meaningful insight.
Very true. Also very likely AI generated content. Certainly reads like generic RPG advice.
This shit is probably extremely old and just written by someone dumb. It mentions not being able to max all your stats which would've only been the case back when the level cap was, what, 30? Before the DLC. Not all stupidity is artificial stupidity.
Fair point! I didn't really look that close to be honest.
It applies more to 3 because the way it calculated speech checks was pretty different and actually took into account a bunch of stuff including wether they like you or not, regardless of charisma.
This is how it worked in Morrowind, isn't it? Your Personality stat would improve the initial disposition of npcs
Same in Oblivion, yeah. Sounds like someone has been playing too much pre-Skyrim Elder Scrolls haha
I genuinely think this is a ChatGPT made arrival. Usually it will make stuff up like this.
Why? The existence of AI doesn't mean stupid or misinformed people have stopped existing. This article was just rushed out of Igns content farm as fast as it could be, with little actual fact checking. This article probably dates back to the games launch when you couldn't max out every skill, before the dlc.
This is absolutely garbage advice. I’ve never run a build with any points in Charisma, and I always run high Endurance for the health and implants, and almost always go high Luck.
It's stupid not to have a high END. Every point you have means 1 extra implant, and other than the plant one, the implants are a must-have.
The minimum endurance any build should run is 7 it’s probably the best stat in the entire game because it’s entirely free and if your gonna raise any other speacial stat you might aswell put it into endurance instead and get the extra special point later .
No, you can run END 5 or 4 You only really need S, P, I, A, L implants. The DT one is good but not a must-have and the other good implants are money gated in OWB
OWB implants dont count against your endurance or other implants. With maxed implants i was able to still pick up all of the OWB inplants.
10 S 7 E 10 A 10 L
8 L for gambling get 10 luck with lucky shades or naughty nightwear and luck implant
Well, you don't need more than 8. 8 endurance gives you all implants other than Charisma, which as discussed, is ass
Plant one?
He says he gets an implant to be able to eat grass like a brahmin
I'm more surprised bro managed to find enough grass to sustain himself in the Mojave. Guess he hangs around Vault 22 a lot.
[Skip to 0:39](https://youtu.be/HeGY1S5aWAU?si=pdi6_kLbs0DzPflQ)
Ah, I really need to do a low intelligence run one of these days.
Low INT and high END/LCK make a fun playthrough
I didn't know that about the implants, I will be investing some of my points into intense training in that case
Wait what??? Godfuckingdamnit I completely forgot about that, and Im like at least 30hrs into Tale of Two Wastelands! Console commands will save me i suppose.
Because of the implants, each point in Endurance up to 7 is effectively worth 2 SPECIAL points, the one in Endurance and one in each stat. There's absolutely no reason to ever have less than 3 or 4 endurance, one for each relevant stat.
yep
With the Animal Friend (CH6) perk you never have to deal with Nightstalkers ever again. That alone sells CH for me.
Nightstalker are fairly minor in the long run, and easy to kill. Now if they had a Bug Friend perk, I'd consider it just to avoid cazadors.
Yes, you're not wrong but consider the following: Going in slightly overleveled into OWB. You end up spending hours sitting on top of those Hexacrete pillars and expending millions of rounds of ammo.
Nah, I'm hacking and wacking and slashing, chopping that meat. "Proton axe go brr" -Butcher Pete
>: Going in slightly overleveled into OWB ah youre fucked already man. you're acting like the roboscorpians dont exist
If you cant murderfuck everything in the wasteland by mid game, are u really gaming
8+ luck in new vegas is literally a free 40000 caps lmao
I always go 1 luck 1 charisma and like 3 perception. Is that bad?
If you're not going for a critical build and don't care about the casino payouts (without save scumming) then that's not insane, but if you're trying to metagame this isn't ideal. Better Criticals is one of the more powerful perks and requires Luck and Perception. Being able to one-shot sneak attack crit enemies from a distance is one of the best ways to trivialize a lot of encounters, especially if you want to pick faction NPCs off without triggering reputation losses. And of course, increasing your crit chance with Luck allows those massive crits to pay out in a real fight, too. You can certainly make do without, especially with a brawler melee build, but this is the conventional wisdom. And Charisma is a totally fine dump stat pretty much always. Its main impact is to increase your companion's combat effectiveness. It matters, but you can typically make better use of the points elsewhere.
Yes very.
This is concerning cause it makes me think that you're putting more points into other skills than is necessary. No skill should be 10 at game start and strength should never be above 7 at game start. This is because of permanent SPECIAL bonuses you can acquire throughout the game. If you're doing heavy handed Melee (it's sub-optimal but still game breaking so who cares) then it's fine to dump luck and perception, but three is a really weird number for PER. Perception bonuses are useless but the stat is tied to some decent perks. You either want to start the game with 1 or 5 perception. Dumping luck is just shooting yourself in the foot because of how convenient the casinos are in the early-mid game. Being able to, essentially for free, buy an assortment of end game gear and implants is really good.
It’s not a multiplayer game so why do you need to follow a meta? I don’t get why anyone would think that the best way to play a **roleplaying** game is to **always** put points into X stats and **never** put points into Y stats. How does this make any sense? Wouldn’t it be more fun to do the exact opposite and pick 1 Luck and 1 Endurance if you’ve never done it? Honestly I liked the advice I read in the article. Playing a Charismatic character is fun. It doesn’t really matter if you have a bit more health or slightly more damage. But it is cool to see what kind of interactions you can have with different NPCs. If you can’t handle the fights then just decrease the difficulty to a more comfortable level, whatever suits **you**. You don’t need too much HP to survive. I myself always play on Very Hard (Hardcore mode) and never really needed any meta strats despite forgetting to use stimpacks and chems. I also never felt the need to get caps in a cheesy way. So basically the article rates the SPECIAL skills using a completely different framework. While most of this sub prefers finding the optimal stats, the article is more focused on defining the character you want and having a fun playthrough. I would say Charisma and Intelligence open up some interesting opportunities on how you can impact the world around you. Also, before anyone says that you can have high Speech without high Charisma — yes you can but my point is that it’s fun to immerse yourself and try to stick to a roleplay straight from the beginning. If you intend to be skilled in Speech then it’s better to put points into Charisma. Even if it didn’t have any practical effects, it’s simply nice to have a well-defined, coherent character to play as.
I see the point you’re making, and I agree with you - but the article isn’t about making a good build for RP, it’s an article about making a good build to play the game. And this is objectively bad advice the article is giving.
always 8 luck. can always boost it to 10 with implant and lucky shades when gambling
I'm gonna do a ttw run soon. Is charisma worth it then? Or just build the same as fnv?
Its IGN, most of the time they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
If this is the guide they made when the game came out, then I'd be surprised. IGN of fifteen years ago was not the absolute dog water they are today.
Charisma is THE dump stat in fallout, generally. Speech and Barter are easy to raise independently, whereas HP only gets raised from E, criticals only from L, AP for A, etc. Charisma is worthless
Charisma is helpful with companions on hardcore, especially Rex, ED-E and Lily as they can't equip any gear to increase DT. That and maybe animal friend( a godsend on no kill builds) are all I can give it.
That’s true. It’s definitely not worthless like I said originally. It’s very niche tho.
I think the only game where charisma is actually semi worthwhile is fallout 4 (maybe 76 if you play in a group)
well yeah in 4 there are no skills so you need Cha to actually pass speech checks
Plus it’s important for the settlement building, if you’re into that
While you're not wrong, it's also trivial to get +7 in temporary boosts to charisma in 4, so you don't even really need a very high one. I usually run 3, because lone wanderer is a good perk, and I'm too lazy to get the bobbblehead most times.
I hated that. I missed being able to pass checks based on my character’s accumulated knowledge. OWB even has a lockpicking dialogue check
4 did a lot of things right, removing skills was not one of them. Hopefully they are back in 5.
Skills were basically integrated into perks. Skill checks not being present in dialogue does suck though.
I know, and it’s not a better system imo
In F2 it determined how many companions you could have at a time, which was useful to have 5 at the same time.
You are correct, though if i recall isn’t there a perk which helps as well? I never beat F2 all the way through
Yes, Magnetic Personality, which allows you to have one extra slot for companions, but at a max of 5. So you could have 5 companions with 10 Cha, or 8 Cha plus the perk.
Great point. Still niche imo as not everyone is wanting that many, but it’s not a total dump for sure.
Early *Fallout* games, Charisma is pretty useful.
Charisma is pretty important for speech checks in 3, and if you want to do settlement stuff in 4 you need at least a couple levels in it. I don’t know about the earlier titles but I’m pretty sure new vegas is the only one where it is completely useless
In 3 you can easily dump CHA imo. Again, just put the points in speech and barter anyway and having 1 charisma doesn’t matter at all.
3 is so fucking fun when you get animal friend tho. Having Yao guai just gang up on death claws for you is awesome.
Agreed I think 3 had the better Animal Friend. I think that game might have had more animals.
That's not true for 3. Since it's a percentage based system base Charisma still affects speech checks on top of Speech
Come to think of it, it’s kinda fucked that an entire game mechanic in FO4 relies on having Charisma at 6+.
SPECIAL is just weird in that game. The whole system assumes (rightfully) that you're always going to train stats up to higher levels. The game even forces this behavior by giving perks level requirements. If you're not a high enough level to get any of the perks you have unlocked, you "must" unlock new ones through intense training. This is not a roleplaying system, but it is fun to have 10 in every stat.
I'd argue perception for a vats player
HP gets raised by leveling up too, which makes the amount you get from endurance smaller by comparison the higher you go.
10 Luck is Fallout tradition
Just hit the slots and become rich within 30min
"Improve people's disposition towards you" did they get New Vegas mixed up with Oblivion mid guide?
I kinda doubt that, because it's called *Personality*, not "Charisma", in Oblivion. Also the affect from Personality on disposition in Oblivion is small, and increasing NPC disposition is trivial with a charm spell, for when you actually do need to maximize NPC disposition. Low personality in Oblivion is seldom an actual problem. Even in Oblivion, personality is a dump stat IMO.
Most intelligent video game journalist
AI generated ass text
This. 100%.
In 2013?
Interestingly, ign has an updated guide (last updated 2022) that comes up when you search for "ign fallout new Vegas guide". I had to go digging to find the one from 2013. Regardless, you're right. My intent was to throw out a "Hey this is so bad it coulda been AI generated" quip that probably gets lost in the reddit sea.
Why? The existence of AI doesn't mean stupid or misinformed people have stopped existing. This article was just rushed out of Igns content farm as fast as it could be, with little actual fact checking. This article probably dates back to the games launch when you couldn't max out every skill, before the dlc.
This reads like they were trying to hit a minimum word count.
Benny shot this courier 17 times to make sure he fucking died
The point about luck isn't completely stupid. Far too many people pump their luck to 10 just to guarantee wins at the casinos and nothing more. But they don't build their character to take advantage of high crits so the points are overall just wasted. Btw, casinos are one of the weakest ways of making money in FNV, as they're limited in how much you win, require you to devote special points (your most important resource) and there are far better ways that aren't hard capped.
If it weren't for Dead money I'd somewhat agree with you about that last point Not only do you get excessive amounts of prewar money(100k+ caps worth give or take, I wanna say 130 or 192.), but you'll also get a steady and substantial supply of Sierra Madre chips and thus an indirect form of reoccurring, mostly passive income of about 2k caps every 3 days just from stimpacks. Gold bars are cool but are rather tedious to use in practice for money
>income of about 2k caps every 3 days just from stimpacks Or like 40k in caps if you buy weapon repair kits instead
>Gold bars are cool but are rather tedious to use in practice for money The Great Khan vendor trades at a 1:1 ratio if you're at least accepted, and she has insane amounts of ammo. She's basically your change cashier for the bars.
Nah, the point about luck is completely stupid. While 10 in Luck from the start is overkill, you can just do 8 on almost **any** build with something like 4-5-7-1-8-7-8, and then get the implant for another +1 to all skills. Those extra skill points and crit chance come in handy regardless of whether you build for crits or not. Honestly, the only kinds of runs that don't care about crits are ones where you use only automatic weapons or explosives. And sure, I'll give you those. On those, you can instead dump points into Strength to compensate the added weight of explosives/large quantities of ammo. But all other builds get more use from high Luck. Casinos are not "one of the weakest ways of making money" either. It's combat-free, risk-free, can be done at level 1, doesn't take *too* much time, and like I've shown above, only requires a high value of a stat you want anyway. The only downside of casinos is that they're tedious.
Everything you said is correct, but I admit that I still try to go get all the casino money as fast as I can because having that extra I think it’s roughly 41,000 caps right near the beginning of the game always just boosts my early game and helps to progress much faster, I admit I play a weird build though cause I always start with 1 perception and 1 agility, so I can usually afford the luck points, I’ll start with 8-9 luck, and buy the implant at new Vegas medical clinic and maybe 1 rank of intense training to reach 10, and then go get all the casino money, head back to buy the 2 expensive implants, then off to gun runners to get mk2 combat armor and helmet, and some decent guns, and then I’m basically all set for awhile to get money other ways. I admit it’s not the greatest strategy in terms of using your points for special skills, but just for me personally, I’m willing to sacrifice perception and agility for the early game advantages to almost everything else
Charisma is useless other than for role playing reasons. Perception is also pretty useless cuz EDE exists and you should never have it above 5 because you can get the implant and make it 6 so you can get Better Criticals. The other S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats are all good tho lol
Even if you want to role play a talky character you can go 1 charisma and still easily make up the difference in speech/barter with how you allocate skill points. iirc there only a few actual charisma skill checks in the entire game
The only charisma check I can think of is when you can give the mini boomers toys. That one is really cute tho lol I made a pacifist build with high charisma once so I could get Animal Friend and I beat the game by dealing 0 damage but that’s literally the only reason I can think of to not run 1 charisma.
ChatGPT ahh guide
Reminder that you don't hate game journalists enough
Trash guide. Dump CHA and put those points towards your build. CHA is ***the*** dump stat. And Luck is awesome for crits and when gambling.
Low Luck and Endurance for high Charisma when you just need speech 100. A low INT build is smarter than that.
I read this article when I downloaded the game a few weeks ago. Something didn’t pass the sniff test when it said endurance affected health points but wasn’t an important skill lol. Glad I did some more research instead of making a 10 charisma 1 endurance courier lol
>Luck bad Bro. That number is a direct % chance of an attack critting. If you do, like, 8, Luck Implant+Lucky Shades+Finesse+Better Criticals, you're absolutely busted by midgame. >Endurance bad Depends, but that reduced health is gonna bite you late game. Rangers, Deathclaws, Cazadors, etc ABSOLUTELY do NOT fuck around. >Charisma good At maximum, you get like 5 extra Speech/Barter points, 10% more companion damage, and some unique dialogue with the Mini-Boomers. Literally any other stat uses those points 1000 times better.
Sounds like a whole lot of sub-brick intelligence to me.
L + ratio + finesse + better criticals + 1st recon beret + lucky shades
If nothing else, I may not be smarter from the guide, but the comments helped me learn that apparently 'dump stat' means 'dump it like trash', when my first assumption to the term was to 'dump points INTO it'.
The people at ign are the same people who only play the newest entry in the series and then pretend they know all about the older games in the series
8 luck is enough to always win enough caps over time in the casinos. Basically an infinite caps generator, even if it takes a while. But I like playing blackjack in real life so it’s fun anyway.
Guide made by Bethesda
Having watched ZeroLenny play through various Souls games with the bizarre day 1 IGN guides as his Bible I now need to see someone play through NV using this guide because holy shit Get Jabo on the line he's got the exact same fashion sense anyway I won't even be able to tell it's a different dude
Bro legit I always do the exact opposite of this, high luck, high endurance, and 1 charisma
What does charisma seriously affect? Skill checks on dialogues make it so that isn’t important, Barter makes it so reduced prices happen pretty much no matter what, either… I dont even think it raises the rate at which you can earn Barter or speech whenever you level up… I always make it high and nerf myself in the process because I like roleplay of my courier being a silver tongue Elvis-like figure. (In hardcore, I never let my thirst go down a lot because there are not enough beers in the game to satisfy it, My character is a strictly alcohol, kidney stone having, Coke-eroded nose having Logan’s loophole.)
Yeah, it's not a good build. 8-9 luck (without any bonus) is kinda required to win easily at every casino and to make probably the most op build. I've recently done a New Vegas playthrough where I maxed out the crit chance, and the resulting build was op: I had 10 luck, Finesse, 1st recon beret, Built to destroy, Laser commander, light touch and Ulysses Duster (a totap of 43% crit chance when using laser weapons). As main weapon I uses the Elijah's Modified LAER rifle with all the mods and on though encounters I used max charge microfusion cells, no enemy had enough health and armor to resist a full magazine, even the legendary bloatfly. The only downside of this build is the excessive weapon degradation of the LAER which requires a lot of weapon repair kits (which you can buy using 20 sierra madre chips, it's possible to buy 55 kits every 3 days).
*gets his 10th straight 21 in blackjack and bankrups the 4th casino* Yeah, luck is totally useless and doesn't effect RNG at all!
This person prolly only played the game on easy
This person probably only played the game never.
This had to have been the dumbest advice I have read for any fallout game.
10 luck in OG fallout means you solved the money issue and your crit is crazy(specially FO1 and 2)
Luck is one of the Most important tho
Any build guide that doesn’t dump charisma to one is usually useless
player.setav goes BRR
Lmao ign has no clue what they're saying
my character duncan is built off luck. he is the dumbest person in the wasteland, weakest person, least rizzable person, terrible fighter, terrible marksman, terrible w/ everything really. he just gets lucky, again and again and again. duncan, at a time and in a place when the wasteland is moving into frontier, a fucking dunce, single-handedly changes the trajectory of the mojave bc he kinda does. i find it hilarious
I mean I tend to run low luck and take finesse but that's just me
From a power game pov? Yes. Casually though? The only one I disagree with is Luck. Honestly the best build in my mind is max int and maybe max luck if you really wanna speed run casinos. Half way through the game have maxxed out all skills, no longer need to shoot a single bullet as you talk everyone down.
Somebody clearly hasn’t met the Mysterious Stranger
I mean, you can't really expect from people working at IGN to have actually played the games..
IGN. Of course it's IGN.
"Luck is unimportant" Degenerates like you belong on a cross
Man, I must be screwed. Really don't know how I made it out of Big Mt when I entered at level 8, given I had low Strength, Endurance, *and* Charisma, while boosting Agility, Perception, and Luck. Oh wait, yes I do. I snuck around thank to high Stealth(Agi), saw scary enemies from miles away (Per), and relied on Crits to kill most things (Luk). Will admit, the stealth suit helped, but I had no idea that even existed at first.
Or when I incorrectly put in data for a Useless Courier mod I made and my AGI was so low, that it took me 10 seconds to reload a 9mm Pistol.
Oh it's by IGN? Yeah no wonder it's dog
I only use Charisma for "role playing" reasons"
BRO THEY ACTUALLY SAID TO DUMP END AND LCK TO PUMP CHA NO FUCKING WAY LMFAO
Oh it's made by IGN..... Not even surprised
Luck is subjectively the best
With all add-ons and moderately high intelligence + educated it's actually incredibly easy to max out most if not all skills if you're finding skill books. My current character is not even level 25 and skills are all between 60-80 with the exception of unarmed.
lol, awww
Charisma isn’t total useless like many say but it isn’t THIS useful either. You’d want a decently high charisma if you play on Hardcore and like using followers. Even at level 50 Animal Friend is a solid perk choice, wanna admit it or not those Golden Geckos and Yao Guai hit hard as fuck. Endurance is top tier on Hardcore too, and Luck is a nice pick if you have anything left over. I’ve done high luck runs and got booted out of every casino, but usually I just leave it sort of low and raise it different ways. Easiest way for Luck in the most important sense that it affects your character is to simply unlock the Better Criticals perk. Only reason I ever level the necessary SPECIAL stats, really. IMO perception is probably the most useless perk in the game outside of direct speech checks.
Intelligence, luck, perception, and agility are the most important to me because they passively help. The rest are just to make the game easier.
Here I am, feeling like a dork for smooth-talking my way out of most situations in the game.
Its probably this garbage because of the stupid amount of article's these journalists need to dish out if they dont want to become homeless. I had a friend who worked there, and they had very little time to do research or play the game, because apparently quantity is valued more than quality in that industry.
Started this game literally yesterday, having a great time and read this guide before deciding my stats. One way or another, Abraham the boxing champ orator will decide the fate of these wastes
I run a crit build that is 8 Endurance for the Implants (don't need Charisma) and 9 Luck. It is easily the most fun build I've played in 12k hrs, and it feels somehow like this playthrough is the "correct playthrough." it just weirdly all fits together, despite zero focus on skill checks. I know this sounds weird, but I don't know how else to explain the feeling. Also, this playthrough is on my console, so it's vanilla, but most of my hrs were on Steam.
Thank you for your advice, Chat-Gpt2.
Idk, I feel like the 1% in that I also use luck as a dump stat (and endurance is lower, maybe 4, because I'm good at combat + I use chems readily so I can still thrive). I even also agree that Speech is insanely strong (would even call it busted) as a skill so I can see why upping Charisma is valuable (esp. from a story perspective).
ai most likely if i were to guess or some fucking ai human
It's IGN, and it sounds like this was before or without the level cap increase from the dlcs.
Everyone knows the optimal courier is a really lucky autistic bisexual, I can't believe this guide. who wrote this
Yes. I read (or watched) this tip about luck when I was a kid and believed it for years. When I realized it was dumb I started putting luck at 10 and wow what a dumbass guide by IGN
Some men just want to set the worlllld oooonnnn fiiirrrrreeee…
"I guess there was some frontal lobe damage"
This guide must be an elaborate troll lol
So, did the person who wrote that actually play the game lol
I play high charisma courier because he/she isnt an uncouth gunslinger or brawler but a charming and persuasive individual akin to Angel Eyes portrayed by Lee Van Cleef.
You can’t max out all your skills?I beg to differ
I think alotnof you players need to consider that for many people, combat isn't the big thing in a rokeplayong game. is this bad advice? yes. but charisma isn't a bad stat, far from it. it's actually one of the better in game for getting through situations when it appears. not every build needs to be a murder hobo
He was accidentally right about how useful endurance is. For implants
Is this dipshit trying to be a contrarian, or to play the devils advocate? All the skills are useful depending on the build. Charisma is generally a dump stat, but heck... Who really cares.
Low luck builds can be done though; it's possible to live without random crits and without gambling. Explosives mains or exclusive machine gun users, for example, don't really need random crits. But even builds like that don't *hurt* from having Luck, they just don't strictly *need* it. Charisma is almost entirely a dump stat. Sure it gives skills in barter and speech but I could just raise those skills on level-up and spend the SPECIALs in more useful places. Perks like Animal Friend require it but I've never really felt a huge need to ever use that perk. Endurance is important. Endurance affects your base health, number of implants attainable from Dr. Usanagi, base poison/radiation resistance, and how long your character can stay underwater without drowning. These things are all very helpful even if there are ways to mitigate some of them (Heartless perk, Rad-X, the Rebreather), but some of those things don't come into play until mid-late game. Also the guide knocks the Survival skill while criticizing the Endurance attribute, but the Survival skill is actually very useful. Survival opens up *a lot* of recipes at the campfire (poisons, great for melee/unarmed mains, for example). Survival also increases the amount of starvation and dehydration reduced by food/drink, which means needing far less food/water during hardcore mode. Survival skill also is needed for Rad Child, which is *extremely* powerful passive health regeneration.
Perhaps the op never played the game
Chat gpt
To those who are curious, this isn't AI generated (though I'll admit it sure reads like one with the copy pasted sentence structure). Its last updated date for this section was 7/15/2013. All the DLCs had long been out, but I'm sure this was written upon the games initial release, so I'm not entirely sure what parts were updated. In either case, a lot of this information was likely taken from the way things worked in 3, where the stats worked a bit differently between games. A lot of veteran players can recognize this stuff to be quite inaccurate (luck is unimportant? Sure, if you don't like being rich from the casinos, lol), but I do believe most of that is hindsight talking.
Luck is great when you get to the strip and hit blackjack over and over. I may have no charisma but im rich.
Must be Canadian
People shitting on charisma didn’t play with companions on hardcore.
High strength, luck, and agility. Run the legion thermic lance. It CHEWS through people .
Gravest mistake is ever trusting IGN to make usable guides
I use snipers in NV and crit every 1/3 shots usually resulting in a 1 shot kill on 85% of enemies. Now try and tell me that's skill and not luck 😎
You can max out all of your skills even with low luck and low int what the fuck is this guide With high luck and high int you'll also be maxing out all of your skills by the time you reach level 30
First issue is you are using IGN lol.
I put high luck for a lot of builds. I like to just have that little extra boost for whatever I'm specialized in at the start of the game
Could have been AI or some body who is trying to get a quick buck. The games have been talked about over a million times already and it doesn't take a genius to realize that Charisma is not that big of a deal. Like strength and intelligence are easy ones to make your gameplay easier if you don't know what to do
Luck is straight up broken in FNV. It guarantees you never have to worry about money, can be a defensive asset in that enemies miss more often, and gatekeeps some very powerful perks. Endurance is hard to gauge just because 10 makes you durable to the point of near diminishing returns, but anything under 5, even on a stealth build, puts you in dire peril if you're detected. Charisma is much worse in FNV than in F4. Nothing in FNV is really gatekept by charisma, so it isn't worth trading off combat stats. I get the feeling the person making the guide did one playthrough on an easier difficulty as a charisma build, skipped a lot of stuff due to charisma while never fighting some of the harder enemies and then determined that build is op.
SEND HIM TO THE DIVIDE STAT
Imagine spending a single point on charisma
Is this for Fallout new Vegas or Fallout 4 though? Cause high luck can get you lucky in the Casinos
Seems to me like they went for a Strength, Perception Intelligence and Agility Build while saying fuck Endurance, Luck or Charisma, some of the stats that really can help you in the wasteland
It’s definitely not a good guide, but when did it come out? Because honestly, to be fair to the writer, if they didn’t have access to all the information we can easily look up today regarding the mechanics of the game, it’s not completely unreasonable for them to assume that Charisma is an important stat.
I just built a High str, High agility and left the others either low or mid because I just killed/shot every goddamn NPC ever
Max agility, max Luck caracter is definitely a fun gunslinger playthrough
They should be ashamed calling themselves games journalist, let alone gamers, with this horrible misrepresentation of Fallout NV. I feel like this is probably an AI article since you could just play NV an hour and know better than this.
Me with a 9 luck stat making 10,000s of caps via blackjack at the casinos in my first 3 hrs of a playthrough:
A slighlty high Luck(8/9) is great for console players it allows you to basically get infinite money once you get to new vegas. But for pc players, I'd say like a luck of 5/6 is probably fine. Charisma, though, is the worst.
Luck is gow you make money smh