Fallout New Vegas Perks Tier List 

Time Stamps for All Perks: Black Widow/Confirmed Bachelor - 0:55 Cherchez La Femme/Lady Killer - 0:59 Friend of the Night - 1:09 Heave, Ho - 1:20 Intense Training - 1:39 Hunter - 1:49 Rapid Reload - 2:33 Retention - 3:04 Swift Learner - 3:36 Light Touch - 4:47 Old World Gourmet - 5:18 Junk Rounds - 5:32 In Shining Armor - 6:00 Cannibal - 6:34 Comprehension - 7:12 Educated - 7:43 Entomologist - 8:07 Rad Child - 8:46 Run 'n Gun - 9:10 Travel Light - 9:35 Bloody Mess - 10:00 Demolition Expert - 10:17 Ferocious Loyalty - 10:38 Gunslinger - 10:59 Toughness - 11:12 Fortune Finder - 11:49 Lead Belly - 12:07 Hand Loader - 12:32 Shotgun Surgeon - 13:00 Vigilant Recycler - 13:30 The Professional - 13:49 Mad Bomber - 14:10 Commando - 14:33 Cowboy - 14:55 Living Anatomy - 15:17 Pack Rat - 15:40 Grunt - 16:06 Rad Resistance - 16:29 Quick Draw - 16:47 Scrounger - 17:17 Strong Back - 17:40 Stonewall - 17:58 Terrifying Presence - 18:16 Super Slam! - 18:39 Sneering Imperialist - 19:26 Tribal Wisdom - 19:50 Home on the Range - 20:11 Fight the Power! - 20:21 Here and Now - 20:47 Animal Friend - 20:57 Finesse - 21:23 Math Wrath - 21:41 Miss Fortune/Mysterious Stranger - 21:57 Mister Sandman - 22:15 Nerd Rage - 22:37 Night Person - 23:08 Plasma Spaz - 23:32 And Stay Back - 24:05 Fast Metabolism - 24:27 Ghastly Scavenger - 24:48 Hit the Deck - 24:54 Life Giver - 25:05 Long Haul - 25:13 Piercing Strike - 25:22 Silent Running - 25:43 Robotics Expert - 25:59 Pyromaniac - 26:20 Sniper - 26:44 Splash Damage - 26:58 Unstoppable Force - 27:18 Hobbler - 27:46 Heavyweight - 27:59 Alertness - 28:33 Adamantium Skeleton - 28:47 Center of Mass - 29:08 Chemist - 29:27 Jury Rigging - 29:48 Light Step - 30:26 Purifier - 30:47 Action Boy/Action Girl - 31:15 Better Criticals - 31:32 Meltdown - 31:46 Chem Resistant - 31:58 Tag! - 32:08 Weapon Handling - 32:38 Computer Whiz/Infiltrator - 32:51 Concentrated Fire - 33:25 Paralyzing Palm - 33:45 Walker Instinct - 34:00 Grim Reaper's Sprint - 34:19 Explorer - 34:31 Ninja - 34:46 Solar Powered - 35:01 Eye for Eye - 35:13 Atomic! - 35:39 Mile in Their Shoes - 36:05 Them's Good Eatin' - 36:25 Laser Commander - 36:44 Nuka Chemist - 37:02 Spray and Pray - 37:15 Irradiated Beauty - 37:37 Voracious Reader - 37:52 Slayer - 38:08 Nerves of Steel - 38:25 Tunnel Runner - 38:37 Lessons Learned - 38:57 Roughin' It - 39:21 Rad Absorption - 39:38 Implant GRX - 39:57 Burden to Bear - 40:18 Broad Daylight - 40:26 Certified Tech - 40:46 Ain't Like That Now - 41:04 Just Lucky I'm Alive - 41:29 Thought You Died - 42:01

Daily Reminder: in Fallout: New Vegas, bisexuals do 10% more damage to E V E R Y O N E. Best game.

Just want to say you're a GOAT for including an image of what the perk actually does on screen. Not everyone just automatically knows them and it's really handy to have them on screen.

If anyone was wondering why the In Shining Armor perk doesn't work, the perk looks for the "Energy" weapon type, but the ID is "EnergyWeapons" so there are technically 0 weapons in the game that match the type of damage you'd get the resistance against

17:10 Quick draw is actually pretty nice because it can work as a faster reload. Unequipping and reequipping a weapon will reload it, so if you're using something with a long reload animation like the medicine stick, you can completely bypass it by assigning it to a hotkey (usually 1 for me) and double tapping it. It is cheaty jank? Yes. Will that stop me? No.

Jury rigging is definitely an S Tier for me. You can abuse that perk really easily and never have to worry about caps again

You mention Heavyweight being good for kleptos, but long haul is the best for that kind of play style. Being able to fast travel straight to Gun Runners with an obscene amount of loot is very useful imo.

Rad child is a busted perk on hardcore. It’s 2HP/sec per every 200 rads you have. 8HP a second is basically a constant stimpack (with low medicine), and even 6HP/sec is great as it is constant and noticeable. Stack it with healing items and you can face-tank a LOT of the tougher enemies; radiation sickness isn’t all that detrimental anyway, and with the ATOMIC perk later on, there’s some real synergy to be had.

29:32 Important to note: Chemist applies to Implant GRX, which is a ridiculously powerful perk combination.

One thing you forgot to mention with comprehension is the double skill points which is pretty gosh darn useful, especially with lockpick, science, and crit magazines

Just a note that Animal Friend DOES work on Nightstalkers, even the Legendary Nightstalker and the ones in Old World Blues. Absolutely great for picking them off at your leisure.

Miss Fortune being better than Mysterious Stranger is a baffling take. She does something completely random and potentially detrimental in some cases while Mysterious Stranger just kills the guy.

there's a negative to bloody mess, and its the fact you can take physics damage from the blood explosion, as well as from the flying limbs. seriously, i've genuinely almost died on several occasions because some eyeball hit me for 60 damage.

12:45 Handloaded 9mm ammo in the base 9mm smg will chew through a cazador faster than you can spit even in Very Hard difficulty, this games crafted gear is honestly 10/10

I believe "Heave, Ho" perk affects all non-hitscan projectiles. Meaning it will boost velocity of ANYTHING that is not hitscan, including plasma and missile/grenade launchers. You're basically getting WAY more of a benefit from it if you're planning to use explosives. I only know about it because I made a mod for myself that made all projectiles have weight and turned them non-hitscan. I used the same "effect" as "Heave, Ho" to boost velocity of projectiles when I use rifles.

Learned very quickly that when playing the Viva New Vegas mod stack, any carry weight related perk is immediately bumped up one if not two tiers.

Rad child is very underated. If you have like 3 stacks of rads its like the equivalent of having a constant stimpack for very minimal downsides. I usually dont take it because its too strong.

Pretty solid Tier list throughout. I would probably move Comprehension and Educated higher. Just having extra skill points is never a bad choice. This also allows you to choose more perks as they are unlocked earlier. And overall you can make a better well rounded character earlier in the game.

Comprehension is at least an A tier perk. I would personally put it in S tier. Not for the +1 in skill books, although that is nice, the really crazy part about this perk is the +20 to any skill with the right skill magazine. That is massive for passing skill checks, lockpicking, and hacking, which are abundant in FNV. I like using it for completing missions I have no right to that early in the run, it's such a good perk.

1 situation where quickdraw is more useful than normal would be when dialogue has a hostile conclusion; when you're talking to someone, your weapons tend to automatically holster. With this, as soon as the dialogue ends you can pop VATS and dome them.

Silent running has an effect on sneaking - You have sneak-running and sneak-walking (Depending on run/walk toggle) It's highly recommended for sneak builds, and straight up mandatory if you are also going melee

Animal Friend actually does affect Nightstalkers, at least the ones in OWB, which makes the DLC a lot more easy to get through

Just Lucky I'm Alive is definitely S Tier for me, by far the best level 50 perk for crit builds. It stacks multiplicatively with Better Criticals and leads to some absolutely wild damage. Also, the thing about Dead Money perks not going away if you reset after Goodsprings is true for all dlc perks as far as I can tell. You can get two level 50 perks if you do the Chet xp glitch for a few hours before leaving, it just doesn't make for the most thrilling playthrough.

You know, the stone wall perk can be extremely useful in fight in particular; the final fight against lanius who just like to knock you down like a death claw

I don’t understand putting “Them’s Good Eatin” only in A tier. That perk in Dead Money on harder diff is a huge help. Should definitely be S tier.

In regards to Rad Child, it's 2 hp a second per 200 rads you have, not just 2hp/s after 200 rads. So you get up to 8hp/s if you're fine with losing some special. With that much healing you are basically invincible. I take it all the time because I like to use light armor and the regen offsets my low armor. Plus it works well with the Atomic! perk, which gives more AP regen based on your rad level up to 1.5x at 800 rads, not just when you are in an irradiated area unlike the rest of its effects. Nice thing about Bloody mess is that it can proc on ghost people making it easier to kill them, which makes Dead Money a little bit easier. Quickdraw has some use since when you switch to a weapon it is fully loaded, so you can switch away and back with hot keys to reload. For some weapons this can be faster than reloading, it's also useful if you switch weapons in battle a lot. Also having a weapon out slows you down a bit so some people might put theirs away just to get around a bit quicker. I agree overall that it's not that useful but it's not worthless. The problem I have with meltdown is that it can hurt you and you are more likely to face enemies that charge at you than you are to fight ones that cluster up. I just find it's somewhat of a liability and it means you have to switch weapons against melee enemies. It just feels like a counterproductive perk most of the time. Implant GRX is affected by the chemist perk and the day tripper challenge perk (but not fast times) for a total time of 8 seconds before slow down per dose. Also, the Logan's loophole trait but you can only get one rank of GRX with that so the total time comes out to be the same. Tunnel runner is more useful for melee as being able to close in on people quickly while sneaking is a huge help. The agility requirement is also a bit high but it's only one higher than slayer so again, it's best for melee.

extra note about Explorer, there is 1 unique dialogue option for taking it with the final speach confrontation with Ulysses. that is it. I think it also gives you every location on the map in each area, but that might just be a bad recollection.

As a melee lover, Superslam is legend to god S Tier, when the enemy gets knocked out, its done, even in groups if u knock 1 u can knock the other and perma knock em, specially by combining GRX Implant which i think its also affected by 2nd level, chemist and the upgrades from World Old Blues DLC, having a greater time than 5 seconds.

Do not underestimate taking out an enemy's legs. Especially if they're really fast, like a Deathclaw. If you can take out a Deathclaw's legs, that means they're going to be far slower, and you can avoid their attacks a lot easier. Then you can deal with them at your leisure. Same goes for Cazadores and their wings. A Cazadore crawling on the ground is a far lesser threat than one speeding at you with wings.

21:08 AF does include Night Stalkers though. Makes OWB a piece of cake.

Imagine how great this game would’ve been if they had more than 5 seconds to make it

Comprehension is easy S tier. It lets you max out more skills, and max them much quicker, but you didn't even mention one if its best uses: it doubles skill bonuses from magazines. This lets you keep skills you don't care about maxing lower to still hit break points, like only needing a 55 in science or lockpick to get through hard level locks/terminals, or bypassing really any skill check. Comprehension is maybe the most useful perk in the whole game since everything is based on skill levels and it lets you be the best at those.

I think an oft overlooked quality of Quickdraw is that it doesn't just make you draw weapons faster, it also lets you switch weapons faster, making it essential for any builds that use multiple weapons. Going from sniping with an Anti-Mat to blowing enemies away with a Riot Shotgun 50% faster is at least worthy of C-tier

Rad Child is good for a Super run. That is, you build a character around strange powers. I think this is a type of run we should see more.

The professional perk is funny, because even in the movie, Leon says something about how a professional works all the way down the weapon chain, until they are up just close and personal with the knife.

I like travel light in general, but it is really fun in melee, unarmed and shotgun guilds. Closes the distance faster so you take less shots before you take down your target. Apso alertness is surprisingly good with vats. Crouching increases your chances chances but being able tosave 2 perceptoion points is nice.

Eye for an Eye is really useful, did a glass cannon build once. It requires 10 Luck, Finesse, Light Touch, Travel Light, Eye for an Eye, Rad Child, Chem Resistant, Chemist, Old World Gourmet, Laser Commander, Better Crits. You basically have to rely EXCLUSIVELY on healing from Radiation and Food and sometimes you need to use Steady to hit your target at a long distance and will be moving slower. But the rewards are having a Laser Rifle with a 50% crit chance and deals Nearly double the damage it normally would. This also works beautifully with miniguns and turns them it to literal death machines.

The real "Lesson Learned" is to not take that perk lmao

I think comprehension is probably the best perk in the game if you’re not going all the way to level 50, and it’s still pretty good even if you are. Hunting for skill books is fun and getting soooo many more skill points from them is great. The bonus from magazines is straight up busted, and basically means as long as you have a magazine you can pass almost any skill check you need to. Yeah it’s not as impactful if you’re going to level 50 anyways, but there’s only really gonna be 4-5 skills max that you’re gonna want at a hundred unless you’re really trying to make a perfect character. But maxing the skills you want maxed significantly faster still is very useful.

Lessons learned is a % bonus on XP gained after taking the perk if you are at level 26 you get a 26% bonus on all xp gained going forward so for every 4 xp you gain an additional 1XP.

Honestly I would have put Comprehension into A tier. Having that extra skill point on books helps increase skills faster and the double on magazines helps pass skill checks. Unless you know when and where every skill check happens it is really helpful for at the moment need.

Rad child was always the best for me. I stacked DR, got indestructible limbs, got something crazy like 8 hp regen/second from rad child. Was immortal even on hardest settings without ever using consumables.

Light Touch also has the added benefit of every single dlc medium armor was never added to the exclusion list for the perk so it works with stuff like the old world blues stealth suit Edit: travel light uses the exact same exclusion list

Rad Child is borderline OP imo. I always take it and max out my rads.

Nuka Chemist is good since it allows you to make the Nuka Cola grenades. Their base damage is over 500, and with explosive perks you can easily cheese that to over 800 damage from a single Nuka Grenade.

Travel Light, Silent Running and Tunnel Runner seem to Synchronize well with each other, taking stealth mobility to another level. As i always take Light Touch taking the other 3 is a no brainer.

I like the heavyweight perk. The AM Rifle weighs 6.5 after the perk and the mod.

You misunderstood the Lessons Learned perk. It works like Swift Learner, except your gained XP is increased by a percentage equal to your level. So at level 26 all XP gained is increased by 26%, at level 27 your XP gained will be 27% higher and so on. Still not a good perk, but it's much better than what's said in the video.

Cannibal is definitely a meme perk for either going for meat of champions in a playthrough, or you just want full immersion. Or you're playing FNV: Dust and you need every tiny crumb of HP you can get your decaying broken arms on.

You missed the actual power of comprehension: the double bonus from skill magazines. You can effectively keep skills much lower than 100 and get the boosts when you need it. It is also needed for maximizing your critical chance. One build I made kept charisma at 4 (most do 1) and I took party time mentats (+ 5 charisma -> +10 speech and barter) and meeting people (+20 with comprehension) for 100 speech consistently. Similar with OWB you can wear mobius scrubs for an increase in science and then take a programmer’s digest for a massive boost.

I give strong back A Tier since you can bring more stuff Into honest hearts

Rad child is actually really good it increases how much you heal every 200 rads. Must have for meele build

Shotgun Surgeon + And Stay Back is the basis for a whole shotgun run. The combo is crazy powerful.

I started following you because of DRG, but I've really appreciated the NV content! I think you have solid opinions on all of the videos i've seen so far (except Bloody Mess is S tier :P )

Explosive builds are amazing especially if you take the throwing perk. Throw sticks of dynamite with vats from a mile away at enemies is so satisfying

Underrated atomic imo, there's always an area of radioactivity near-by

Ron you are the only person I know who regularly plays 3 of my all time favorite games (DBD, DRG, F:NV). Thank you and keep it up!

Quick draw should make it so if you shoot your weapon ~1 second after unholstering, you get a high crit chance

29:05 Fun fact, there are several other methods to heal limb condition. Hydra is a new vegas exclusive that restores limb condition although you can't specifically target specific limb so I think it randomly selects which broken limb to heal, so if it's just one it's fine but if it's leg and head, it may Randomly heal leg even though you wanted head 😅. Also there's campfire recipes that add I think 2 more limb restoration recipes and they're alright, but man, if you gonna craft stuff yoy better get that barter 70 perk that reduces the weight, almost all campfire recipes have weight and while small, it quickly adds up.

Nuka Chemist is still really good for explosives builds since you will have a much easier time crafting nuka grenades

It's amazing that neutral karma is the hardest one to ride to max level and it gives you the worst perk of the 3

riot gear helmets (some of the best in the game, especially since you can put boone's cap on with them) also give low-light vision

Shotguns are just so good, between shotgun surgeon and “And Stay Back” any mid/late game shotgun can murder most enemies given the right ammo

Good tier list. I agree with most takes but wish the tiers focused more on what the best perks to take per level. Like light touch/black widow being okay perks overall, but likely the best perks to take at level 2. With Comprehension 4, Toughness 6, etc.

Currently grinding up a character to have the max level in goodsprings, which will allow me to take many more perks. While we will disagree on a few perks, thanks to your list I will be trying some new ones like hand loader and professional.

As someone that pretty much refuses to use stimpacks and only heals by food/survival, Them’s Good Eatin’ is probably an S tier for me. I tend to not use stimpacks because they’re that common to the point you could just spam them and never die almost. With food I need to duck out, etc.

The key is perk stacking depending on the build like friend of the night & night person& mister sandman to roleplay a midnight murderer or cowboy& gunslinger to make revolvers do double damage

I'd say skill that gives 10% of movement speed while using light armour is A or S tier, because FN is a huge open world with lots of walking, and just map your heavy armour for key 1 in fast menu, and you basically have instant buff you can switch whenever you you're not in combat (you fightin, press 1 to equip armour, you're not fightin, switch your armour to pants and run as fast as possible)

Animal friend does affect nightstalker, at first i thought it was just the OWB ones but even the base game are affected (even the legendary one yes).

Actually cannibal does have a use, if you eat 25 people you get access to dine and dash which gives you the ability to gather human remains and at max survival heals you for 30 health -135 starvation and weights 1 pound.

My build often contains rad child. I'm the type of person that runs into battle forgetting to heal and that includes unintentionally having radiation poisoning so it just helps me with my play style. That's all perks are, you have to find what works best for you and your play style. This list does give a good idea of where to start if you haven't really played the game much

The Long-haul perk has two great uses that make it great imo. 1. Fast travel with all the gold bars you stole at the end of dead money. 2. Fast travel to move your items from one base to another. I guess they are sort of the same thing.

Travel Light, Implant Y3*, and Tunnel Runner stack. You can almost double your speed by crouch running, which is useful for sneak builds with Silent Running * I may not have the correct implant here

silent running is an S tier if you ever want to use sneak and succeed its effect is tremendous, like doubling your sneak or more

Great video! Pretty useful and made me do my first hardcore run after 500 hours on the game lol.

Super helpful. Appreciate the effort.

Jury rigging doesn't belong in S tier. It belongs in God tier. It is an absolute must perk no matter what build you're running.

Rad Child being in D-tier is just not sitting right with me, 8 HP per second is like having a Super Stimpak active for your entire playthrough. There are too few irradiated areas in New Vegas, so you can walk around with 800 rads always and be immortal.

Lightly irradiate food also procs the atomic perk which can be pretty good if you view it like a chem that gives 2 str and DT with 25% boost to attack speed, its not the best thing ever but I think its useful.

Old World Gourmet is a must-take for me, every game. Just think of all the places you can find quantities of booze, those locations are now rooms full of stimpacks. Benny's suite, for example, contains a motherload of wine that I yoink from whenever I'm getting low on supplies.

Voracious Reader is much better than it sounds because it makes True Police Stories (the crit magazine) easily obtainable, which also synergizes extremely well with Comprehension. It's a godsend for crit builds, though I admit that I play TTW instead of vanilla NV, so that impacts my judgement as well. I still wouldn't take Retention, though, as you could just craft more magazines.

Heave ho affects the distance of ANY arch firing weapon, like fat man and grenade launchers too

Heave, Ho is a perk I plan to take around level 30 when I'm looking to really flesh out the finer points of my base build. For reference I did Unarmed, Explosives, Energy Weapons but I'm mostly focused on energy weapons and Explosives. The idea is that my character is a mad tinkerer and likes things like homemade bombs, recharger weapons and displacer fists. This'll be nice to have for chucking grenades over enemy defenses but I don't see myself wanting to even take it until at least Honest Hearts, and more likely it'll be right around when I start Dead Money.

The interesting thing about quick draw is that apparently in New Vegas when you unequip then re-equip your gun the gun is fully reloaded. So I run a Cowboy High Critical and AP build. I get all my shots in, minus one bullet, using VATS and then when the VATS animation is over I immediately unequip and re-equip the gun and its fully loaded. I found doing this with quick draw better and faster than faster reload when comes to using .357 magnum, level action guns, and hunting shotgun.

comprehension perk also multiplies bonuses from skill magazines by 2. So instead of +10 you get +20 .S tier for me

Actually cannibal saved me on multiple occasions and the dine and dash is pretty good,at least c or low b teir

You speak so fast I love that with tier lists thank you

Great Tier list, thanks for all the effort. Only addendum i can think off is that Quickdraw becomes insanely powerful if you abuse the glitch that reloads weapons when equiping them, so if your build uses 1 or 2 weapons with slow reload animations, switching between them with quickdraw is stupidly overpowered as they get reloaded each swap. For example: In a shotgun build with a Riot Shotgun and Dinner Bell/Hunting shotgun+ this breaks the game.

Hobbler is good for dealing with things that do high damage and close the distance fast, like Tunnelers and Deathclaws. Meltdown is good but dangerous. My recommendation is people install the mod that makes it so Meltdown only activates while you're in Sneak mode, to keep it more within your control so you don't damage yourself or allies.

Judging by your tier list, it seems like you've never done a ghoul-inspired unarmed build on hardcore before! I strongly suggest you give it a try, it's a lot of fun and quite powerful when done correctly. I think you'd find an appreciation for the rad-related perks you relegated to D tier once you start stacking the together

I found cannibal to be very useful because you can stash body parts to eat later and literally every human you kill you can get health from this way.

I just started playing NV a week ago and this guide you make really help me for my second playthrough. The first one is a mess and I don't think I ever want to play it again lol.

rad child should be at least in A tier YES is that good. plus you can combine it with atomic and get +50% ap regen this is definitely worth to try in your game

I been playing new vegas since day 1 so I know where are all the important speech challenges are. I raise my speech stat to 80 then read a meeting people magazine to push to 100. Saves me skill points to place into anything I want

I wanted you to know this video taught me a lot about perks I haven’t used much of and I feel the need to make a new character and try them out cause shit that’s the way to play anything in new Vegas start a new save

Not a bad perk tier list! However when you incriese difficulty and play lets say at very hard hardcore and if you add to that Jsawyer mod and other challenging mods, some perks are much better then the rest, expecially if you decide to play without deaths. No matter what build you decide to play there are some perks which fit everywhere and have great value, universal for every build. Here is a small list of what I like to use, not in that particular order: 1. Rad Child: great for hardcore - up to 8 hp/sec, stacks with other sorces of healing like food and stimpacks. Very few downsides but 70 survival can be a bit hard to get really early on. 2. Pack Rat: must have for hardcore, 70 barter is not easy to get very early on but with some easy to find barter skill books and comprehension skill + a few levels in barter skill is possible. 3. Comprehension: it will give you not only a addition skill point in but also double the effectivnes of magazines. Usually 10 without the perk, 20 with it. True police stories magazine doubles the chance from 5% chance for criticals to 10% with comprehension. In a critical build with voratious reader perk later in the game in OWB dlc you will be able to craft unilimited amount of magazines and use true police stories in each dangerous battle for more crit chance. But even if you don't use a critical build I think that comprehension is better then education early or mid game where you still build your char. 4. Adamantium Skeleton: the best way to test its effectivnes is against explosives but in reagular fights is also fantastic. 5. Chemist: double the effectivnes of medicine, GRX implant, food in harcore 6. Entomologist: great against powerful enemies like casadores and rad scorpions, better taken early on but also not bad if you take it at midgame or even late game. 7. Hit the Deck 25 DR against explosives: this can be hard to get as 70 in explosives skills is usually not you primal goal unless playing an explosives buils but at some point mid, late game it's possible. 25 DR against explosives doesn't seem so much until you realise that explosives do damage to all parts of the body so this is much more and 25 DR. 8. Stone Wall: great against nockdown effects for a deathless playthrough. 9. GRX implant 2 ranks: god mode when paired with chemist and daytripper. Turbo recipe is a substitute for GRX implant and it's better early on or even late game so this perk is really great but can be skipped as usually you will be able to craft a lot of those and even if you use them in some dangerous sitiations you will have plenty of them. I would consider strong back at some point also, greatly benefits from pack rat and was thinking to add it but I feel that it is not an absolutely must have but still quite convinient. Silent running for sneak builds is a must have. Better critical and finesse for critical builds is also a must have but those perks depends on the build and are not universal. Of course perks like toughness, bloody mess, black widow and some others can be nice to have but for me they don't have that great impact as the perks above and either I don't take them or take them late game. Usually there are other much more important perks to take which are tied to the build that I am using - critical or not critical, guns, melee, explosives or some hybrid.

if u eat caesar kimball and house u get +1 to each special stat for some time every time u feast so taking that into account cannibal can be useful

Quick note for Animal Friend. It includes the following, unexpected animals: * Nightstalkers (which makes BigMT a LOT easier) * Green Geckos (which makes Honest Hearts a lot easier) * Golden Geckos * Legion and White Leg Mongrels I just got it because I didnt like killing coyotes, but it's insanely useful.

I do really enjoy grabbing the scrounger perk. It's just a nice quality of life perk. I think it's effective even if you don't need the ammo because it gives you more ammo that you can sell. In which case it's a mile better than fortune finder because not only are you getting more ammo, any ammo for weapons you're not using or extra ammo can be sold for a lot of extra caps. I found 37 missiles in a supply bag inside the fire station at camp little light today because I have the perk.

On one note, well rested only works if the bed you sleep in is one you own or have rented. Which means you won't have one until novac at the earliest. Trying to get well rested is a time sink unless you're in the Old World Blues dlc at the sink, since you'll be revisiting the sink multiple times anyway