Severely Underrated Perks For Any Builds in Fallout 4 

What's your favorite perk?

I have never heard anyone pronounce "savant" like that.

Ironically pronouncing "idiot Savant" incorrectly over and over is level 100 trolling.

A trick of mine is to use .38 ammo as cash when trading because one round equals one cap and is only used by the pipe weapons which are weak

The mispronunciation of Idiot “Savant” is killing me

I’d say one of my favourites has to be the aqua boy/girl cause of the underwater breathing suuuper useful

Ghoulish Perk Tier 4 gets rid of radiation damage. OP at Far Harbor & The Glowing Sea because you are constantly being "healed" by the Fog/Radiation. Also eliminates the need for Rad-X, Radaway, X-111 Compound so you have more items to sell at vendors.

always like the bloody mess perk, straight up extra damage on everything and makes them explode, always funny

1. Perks/SPECIAL: -Lone Wanderer not only super powerful when alone or when with the Dog (give him collar to make him stronger), but also helps looting locations even if you prefer not to fast travel (missing encounters, time moves fast so things might respawn or despawn, or just highest difficulty): when you are full and ANY companion is full dismiss the companion back to your nearest settlement. Then with Lone wanderer kicking in grab even more loot and return too, you can even walk with him. - With no armorer perk you can have pocketed armor (+30 carry), for deep pocketed need armorer 2 (leather). Later of course all kind of crazy stuff available. - lockpicking and hacking not only give more loot but many intresting story things are also locked on terminals, behind doors, etc. - Endurance 1: for me i never had issue with endurance 1 (85 hp level1, only 105 with end5 not huge difference) even on higher difficulty, but it saves a lot of points to put on other things. You need to heal anyways. It's like a gun with 4 or 5 ammo you will reload eventually. Oh healing: it's x amount per second. Favor for quick use your purified water, grilled stuff, etc too so when need heal you can quickly use 2-3-4 kind, giving 2x-3x-4x faster heal (higher difficulty slower heal) - Local Leader helps connecting your settlements, making dropping off your loot on the nearest settlement easy and building them up easy. Also you can empty your pockets to your provisioners, then when at it's settlement (where he was assigned from and have his bed) summon them using bell (and resting 1h) - if you like ranged combat and VATS all luck perks are your friend, improving VATS (except base hit chance, that is from perception and weapon range) - weapon modding is the strongest weapon, test things with pipe weapon easily. Damage isn't everything, for example first mod is to make weapon lighter: -1 damage but you can shoot 2x-3x more in VATS with full AP, damaging more and also refilling your critical meter super fast. - scrapper perk is helpful to get more rare materials from scrapping. - pistol vs gun: i like more careful approach (sneak shots from far, etc.) so i like to take gun perk, they are still good at close range . Pistols shoot faster but their range is very limited. Also need way better sneak to use silenced pistol for sneak attacks. 2. Leveling up and anything that makes leveling up faster like Idiot Savant is a huge misconsception: yes you level up but also the enemy!!!! You need to understand weapons, armors, modding, many things on deeper level to use your all your new unlocked perks. This can be overwhelming, first the million options what you can do even at level 1 is a lot.... now multiply that... If you level up every time you play once or twice you have time to get used to perks, modding, slowly. Many less complex enemies. If you enter Lexington or Boston on high level you just see everyone uses missiles, grenades, throws nukes, have huge hp, everything is super hectic. One upside of higher level is you find more powerful things on enemies, but they will use it on you first...(ok some containers are better and power armors are more advanced). Still for first playthrough do NOT take Idiot Savant. You have been warned. (and Idiot Savant can easily proc on quest completion giving 2-3 levels instantly)

Aqua boy was one of the very first perks I got the first time I played the game. I just took one look at the map and thought, “There’s a hell of a lot of water here. Be a good idea to be able to swim without getting rads.”

Pro tip: while swimming, swim in first person it is faster. Even more so when you equip movement speed gear. There are 4 available for you to wear at the same time. Two hats, the captains hat in fat harbor, and Oswald’s top hat in nuka world. Black ops right shin guard, destroyers right leg destroyers left leg, recon marine right arm. All these have the sprinters legendary effect and can let you absolutely blitz down the river on survival.

Man I just took multiple trips to collect all the enclave power armor…. Still worth it for the collection

aquaboy is so crucial once you get to the diamond city area. the major river in the middle becomes an enemy free highway to most areas around there.

For me Black Widow is a most have, and I always play as Nora. There are more male characters / enemies across the Commonwealth, the gain is well deserved.

3:19 That’s so true. It’s like a disease for me, I can’t help it. I’ve played many play throughs so I’m just having a glitch run - duping stuff, etc, so I don’t even need the loot. But I still can’t help picking everything up - and I mean EVERYTHING. Even dumping stuff in containers and getting my companion to get it and it adds 20 minutes to me getting out of a particular dungeon, I can’t help myself. I set out saying “don’t loot anything, just do the mission and leave”. Nope, I can’t. And I’m in survival so I can’t fast travel.

“And unless you’re the complete opposite of me, you’re going to loot everything anyways” Said as he doesn’t loot everything from the body

Hearing you pronounce it sav ant and not sav-aunt feels intentional since the perk is called idiot savant

The water one is always my first perk i take because water is everywhere from huge bodies of water to that little puddle thats all over and ofc it gives you radiation sao it really helps early game to not have to worry at all about water.

Favorite underused perks? Attack dog on Lone Wanderer builds. Dogmeat gets "so" much better with this perk line. It's absolutely worth it. He won't be as good as a normal companion, but if you're doing Lone Wanderer, you'll already have the charisma requirements and the whole point is to not use human or robot companions. On Survival, opening the fight by sicking Dog Meat on a strong bad can make the fight trivial, as he'll open them up to your shots, pulling them out of cover, stopping them from shooting you, etc. Penetrator is another one that's ungodly good that is almost never used because of the perception 9 requirement. It's ABSOLUTELY worth the investment. At around level 30 you'll get access to straight up wall hacks able to shoot people through cover with no penalty to your aim. It breaks the game's difficulty in human encounters as enemies will waste their time hiding behind cover that does nothing for them while your cover works for you.

damn how many times he mispronounces savant is killing me....

Fortune Finder not only gives more money, it also makes more containers that would otherwise be empty have *something*. This something is mot only caps, but can be resources, food, weapons, and yes, even ammo.

Playing these game series for years and still i'm learning new stuff with these videos

Quite unpopular, I guess, but I also like to unlock pretty soon the perk that let you HACK ROBOTS. Even when you meet a group of them, no matter how strong they are, you just have to sprint close enough to interact with them and you can turn them off one by one. Then, you have all the time to decide their fate... and usually is SELF DISTRUCTION.

I never take IS because I cannot stand the sound effect when it procs, I rather get less XP than hearing that over and over.

SavANT. You're putting the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong syllABLE

On survival getting life giver maxed out will save you alot of healing supplies. Nuclear physicist also works for gattling lasers giving you a larger magazine

I dont like the idiot savant perk it randomly jumpscares me at the most random times

Oh for anyone just starting out. If you go to abernathy farm(you can look up where it is) and when talking to lucy you choose only the top options in dialogue, you can get her to give you 5 caps per melon, there are melons on the farm, and she has infinite caps AS LONG AS YOU DONT DO THE ABERNATHY QUEST. So if you go to any settlement, sanctuary etc you can plant tons of melons and run on over and make easy caps. I have 4 settlements with 120 melons each (requires 10 settlers) and im averaging 2000 caps each run. And all you gotta do is wait 24 hours outside your settlement and you can do it infinitly. Water farming is inefficient, because you CAN NOT WAIT OR SLEEP, the game was coded to ONLY produce things like water, scrap etc in your settlements every 24 in game hours. The kicker is that you have to pass that time organically, I've tried, it only works when you dont wait or sleep. 1 real life minute is about 20 in game minutes, so 24 in game hours takes 72 minutes real time. The amount or materials and valuable resources you need to make enough water purifiers for this to be viable #1 is not something you can do early game, #2 is again, wildly inefficient.

Scrounger, Nuclear Physcist, Aquaboy/girl, Adamantium Skeleton, Strong Back, Idiot Savant, plus crafting perks makes for most of my focus, early on

Putting points into black widow is a lot less powerful than bloody mess or adding to your charisma stat. Each pt of charisma gives +15% success to dialogue and 11 charisma makes it impossible to fail a speech check

I never bother with Strong back because of a bug in the game. If you command your companion to pick up an item or search a container they will add loot to their inventory even if it is already considered full. This can give you an unlimited inventory. The only companion this doesn’t work on is Dogmeat because he is considered a pet companion, a scrapped game mechanic. I discovered this bug also works in Skyrim.

I start as a 10 intelligence and my first 3 perks are used to get idiot savant. It seems that once I am able to pass 12 intelligence using sharp or similar legendary armor it kinda tricks the game engine into more instances of idiot savant. At level 3 when you get 3x XP for kills for a limited amount of time, one good fight could easily get me a level up.

Wasteland Whisperer and Intimidation, if you can wait until level 23 for them to start being useful. They both have a reasonably high success rate, and they work on anything in their category. Turn enemies against each other! If you can get to rank 3, then you can turn one enemy of each category into a temporary follower. Have a Deathclaw pet watching your back! Just dont take them near any settlers orctoens, as npcs will aggro.

I remember youtubers shitting on Aqua boy in the earlier years of the game. Nice to see the community actually love that perk nowadays.

I've never considered taking the river even though Aquaboy was one of the first perks I got. Gonna give that a try next playthrough.

Plus there’s lots of beds located around the waterways, for playing survival. I always pick that perk every time

My playthroughs, I like putting 10 in endurance and intelligence, 3 (4 if getting the SPECIAL book) in perception and 2 in luck. Then make my way to the endurance bobblehead at level 1. I like getting the Scrounger, Fortune Finder, Locksmith, and Hacker early

Pro tip: The four pieces of movement speed gear stack, and work while overencumbered. They also reduce elapsed time from fast traveling in survival, meaning less meter build up. They stack with swim and sneak speed as well.

Aquaboy/girl is amazing, you can easily visit any Main Factions HQ easily in survival mode. Just clear out Hangman ally first to make it a easy rest stop.

You dont sprint with strong back 3 or get a “speed boost” You use your action points to move at a normal pace instead of walking like you normally do under over-encumbered

The strong back perk isn't super useful if you're good with the Brotherhood as you can summon a vertibird for those times when you're overencumbered for a nominal fee.

3:59 I got the magazine in Nuka world to get a bunch of strength at low caps so I purposely keep my caps very low and use ammo for money so yes this perk is VERY useful.

the ammo perk is useful even for buying things to the merchants in game , the cc content bfg add to the game the argent plasma cells , and are very valuable

Believe it or not usually the first perk I usually get is to breathe underwater perk reason why it also allows you to not receive radiation whenever you're going across lakes and let me tell you that's very helpful

If you Go for Perseption then Take Penetrator. The second Stage of This perk literaly gives you wallhacks with vats. Also Combo that with critical banker and grim reapers spitit (and Mysterious Stranger). You will be OP

Only issue with swimming is power armor lol if you use it you can’t swim but definitely love that perk for looting and crossing rivers 😁

Hi! Which pipboy mod did you use? Thanks!

I love the unrelated background footage of you slaughtering things with your rediculous shotgun.

What I love about the mysterious stranger in 4 is that Valentine recognizes him and yells after him if you’re with Valentine

I got the Scrounger perk once and I got a LOT of power cores. If I was going to do a Power Armor build I would get Scrounger first.

Aquagirl is a great "quality of life" perk :D

I recently started a new game and noticed that under the strong back perk, the ability to fast travel while over encumbered is no longer an option. Did Bethesda remove it for some reason?

I hate to be that guy but uh... it's "suh-vont" ... not "savint" 😅

Good picks here. I would push back on Mysterious Stranger perk. I just dont think the stranger appears enough to warrant the investment. It needs some alternative way to increase the chance of stranger appearing like greater change at low health or scales with luck stat, etc.

I always get scrounger. I use all the bullets for caps. It honestly feel OP.

I feel people underestimate Idiot Savant level 3. The wording is a bit confusing but basically what it does is every time Idiot Savant triggers, you then get a 3X EP bonus for a period of time. Some people takes this to mean level 3 is a reduction from 5X back to 3X. I'm not sure that's true. I'm still getting some big EP bonus from it triggering. Personally I think the first trigger is still 5X, but you just get an additional 3X on all kills for a period of time afterwards. But even if the first trigger was cut back to 3X (which I'm not sure it is, but lets run with it) in my current game I have all my base stats maxed, Idiot Savant maxed, and am working on getting level 4 Ghoulish (at 2 atm). I'm still leveling up fairly quickly all things considered for being in the high 40's/low 50's range (I forget exactly what I'm on). Even if the first trigger was cut back to 3X, I feel like having the 3X for a period of time is still earning more overall than a 1 time 5X bonus. So while most look at 5X and assume level 2 is automatically the best. Honestly, I think level 3 is being slept on.

I love idiot savant because of the sound. But my favorite perk is strong back, and mysterious stranger.

3:13 so that is what feel called out is.

It's "Suh-Vaughn-T"

Sah-vent is not how it's pronounced. It's Sah-vahnt Other than that, great video, very informative. You clearly researched everything about the game effects and you earned my subscription :)

I can never train myself to empty a whole clip before reloading.

missed opportunity to mention robotics expert, level 1 alone can trivialize a lot of encounters, especially during the automatron questline

Aqua boy is my first perk point every time

Raising the difficulty only affects legendary enemy spawn rate in Fallout 4; it doesn't affect XP gain. The exception is if you bump it all the way up to Survival difficulty, which doubles your XP gain, but adds in some nasty mechanics that make things much harder, such as the need to eat, sleep, and drink, plus adding weight to items that were negligible before such as ammunition.

Something I do that you might consider doing for your next playthrough. I add a single mod to my plays. Weightless junk. In my view junk is in the same category as ammo and misc items. If ammo is weightless, why not junk? It makes the game much more enjoyable in my opinion. To be able to lean into your hoarder self. You can loot everything in a location and carry all the stuff you need from settlement to settlement. My favorite perk is Lone wanderer. In all my plays I travel the commonwealth alone. Not even Dogmeat. I hate Bethesda companions and how they behave. Impossible to control. I prefer to just be alone and Lone wanderer makes it much more viable. I do sometimes use robot companions tho, robots would be the exception. Since they are customizable.

Well, not a perk, but an "infinite money" hack using settlements. At about 8 medium-to-large settlements, build as much water production as possible and link them all with supply lines. Every two days, at any one of those 8, the water produced will be added to the Workshop inventory. Going to any one of the 8 gives you access to the others via the supply lines. Water trades as easily as caps to any merchant. Hundreds of purified water every two days for free to spend like caps.

Isn't the highest level of Strong Back the one that lets you sprint while overencumbered, and only use 1/2 the AP of the previous level? That was my favorite part of that perk. My favorite perk is Sneak. I love being about to sneak around and not be detected. Makes for Sneak Critical Attacks doing LOTS of damage. I also like Pickpocket because I am a Psychotic Prankster.

Being a Power Armor user myself, I really appreciate Nuclear Physicist, Armorer, Science!, Scrounger, Scrapper, and Pain Train. The only downside to Nuclear Physicist, long-term, if you can really call it a downside, is that, coupled with Scrounger, you end up with insane stockpiles of Fusion Cores. Right now, I'm a little over 97 hours into a new play through, and no lie, I have 163 Fusion Cores, counting the one that's currently at ~50% in my frame, and statistics say that I've only fully consumed 5 Fusion Cores. Over 97 hours. Of course, the Repair Bobblehead also helps with that, granting an additional 10% duration to Fusion Core lifespan.

I have always put my strength at 6 to start, specifically for the Strong Back perk. It's only recently with the fanbase boom from the show that all the Fallout CC's are coming out to show me new stuff. 8 straight years I didn't know about the Your Special glitch, the int build/idiot savant, or even that there was a chest at the bottom of the lake in sanctuary?? What?!

Best thing underwater is the power armor near the wrecked vertibird in the water

Just started playing this and loving it. Only thing I hate is companions ( Dogmeat ) getting in the way all the time, so I go alone.

Finally, someone putting respect on aqua boy/girl. It’s so good

Idiot savant is usually one of the first perks I grab. Even with high intelligence it still helps a lot

The fact that you don't grab molotovs bugs the shit out of me for some reason.

1 INT + First 2 levels of Idiot Savant are a great foundation for an XP farm that especially new players might not be aware they can take advantage of. Inside the Saugus Ironworks building is an issue of _Picket Fences_ magazine, which when obtained, lets you build statues on your settlements. So what’s the big deal? Well, just get some copper, then at your settlement, duplicate until you have somewhere in the 10s or 100s or thousands of copper - there are guides on a pretty easy duplication method on RU-vid - store it in your settlement storage, and then you will want to scrap everything you can at your settlement, THEN start building specifically the *baseball player* statue until you have the settlement where you can’t build anymore, scrap them and start building more when they’re cleared out. Normally you get about 30 XP, but when Idiot Savant procs, you will get significantly more from those individual statues. I’ve been able to get to about level 200 that way, give or take.

Such a cool vid- 4:31 GYYYAAAAAATTTTT

Getting any explosive legendary gun(Preferably fully auto) and using Demolition Expert is the most overpowered way to kill enemies. Personally, my favorite: Spray n' Pray explosive drum-gun from the traveling merchant Cricket. Combine Demolition Expert with Commando and literally everything gets wiped away with ease. Then I also purchase the Partystarter missile launcher from Good Neighbor which does 50% more damage to ALL humans.It's expensive though. If you get the Targeting computer mod on it, you can lock onto raiders and then fire a missile in a random direction and it will still just zone in on the target and obliterate enemies.

Has anyone tried the radiation perk that heals you or the zombie one where eating corpses gives you health back

I came to see how many ppl where nails down the chalkboard with SAW VAH HAUNT 😂😂😂

Picking scrounger made the game a cakewalk especially since it feels like having unlimited ammo.

Does scrounging stack with the eye bot searching

Pro tip, mod Idiot savant to reverse the scaling. Then you get even more broken situations

Yeah waterboy is cool i dont know why other yt guys say its sht

For me i like the lead belly perk. Most of my inventory is food and drugs.

The single most underrated perk that I almost never see mentioned in the context of this discussion is Moving Target. How many fights are you waltzing into an area with enemies around the corner and immediately dashing back aro when they start shooting? Its a lot, especially if you're newer to the game and don't know where the static enemy locations are. That extra damage resist has saved my ass on so many occasions to give me a chance to heal up before Jetting back into the fray. And if you're on Survival Mode with no fast travel, its third rank is a GODSEND. 50% less AP drain from sprinting on top of some Action Boy/Girl or Jet Fuel will allow you to pretty much go from Sanctuary to Jamaica Plains in like three AP bars. You really just get to run forever when you get it.

The mysterious stranger is the ghoul from the show? Is that possible? If so, he fathered the guy from FNV, right?

finaly someon talked about the stranger, im kinda new to fallout and nr 4 is my first one but the stranger saved me 27 time now (T2) so i got to keep so much ammo and so manny heals becouse he got my back. but once i saw somthing funny,i was in the watter cleaning thing where you nead to activate 4 levers,first up one mirelurk glitched in to the wall then preston. on my third try i did it and didint die but before that the stranger came and a mirelurk atacked him i mean how did that thing ATACK him how? (he didint die but realy is that thing hacking?).

How are you able to shoot that shotgun like that and not use ammo?

Strongback and Scrapper. You will never need to buy a lot of junk.

Played thousands of hours and never needed to use Scounger as a end up having more ammunition than I can ever use . It’s only early game where ammo is rare

Yo the savant thing was that jarring af. The video itself was good. Its totally normal to know how to read a word VS say the word. At least it was just one word

thanks to strong back rank 3- i can loot everything- literally everything dropped by npc's and junk- carry over 3000 lbs of that stuff, and fast travel anywhere my little heart desires edit: with rank 4 is the fast travel option

What is that double barreled auto shotgun????

I had to tripled check to make sure this wasn’t an April Fools Day post. Bro seriously recommends Aquaboy and pronounces “Savant” like that.

Mysterious stranger is in my opinion the most OP perk at least in most fallout games.

Personally, I think a more fitting name for the Idiot Savant would be Dumb Luck

Got the explosive minigun 'n pistol So Imma just go boom boom

Strong Back works different on Survival. These are things it took years to figure out.

Savint? I am dying.

Aquaboy/girl is great in survival mode