Forums » Fallout

Perks and Leveling in Fallout 4

    • 1217 posts
    September 25, 2015 12:40 PM EDT

    So hopefully by now everyone's had a chance to see Bethesda's perk chart reveal, but if not here's a link and above is a brief video of mine talking about some of what was revealed. Naturally, because this deals with perks and leveling, this information means the most to the Vault's most popular past-time Character Building. We were only shown a handful of perks, so actually talking builds is still just a bit beyond us, but the details of the perks we do have, and some of the other features are well worth examining.

    For example, if you were in any doubt that you can choose any base perk you meet the SPECIAL requirements for, this should sort that out. Strangely, there is still some confusion about this aspect, but the original Bethesda video, with Todd's narration, makes it pretty clear. If you have 6 Charisma, you can choose the 6 Charimsa perk without ever taking the any of the first 5. This doesn't carry over to the ranks of those perks. For example, even though you can take the 10 Charisma perk "Intimidation" at level one, you can't add another rank to it until level 23, and ranks do have to be taken in order.

    It's also worth noting that the article makes it clear that not all the perks in the game are on this chart. The 275 advertised are tied to the chart and perk ranks, but additional perks can be added in the form of magazines. This leaves the possibility open of perks added by Bobbleheads, companions, and other sources.

    • So what's got you most excited about this new look at the perk system?
    • If you already had an idea of your SPECIAL for your first Fallout 4 character, did this change anything?
    • If you didn't have anything planned, has this got you thinking about it?
    • 641 posts
    September 25, 2015 4:39 PM EDT

    I wonder if that one perk is a carry weight perk,

    • 1217 posts
    September 25, 2015 5:01 PM EDT
    One of the Strength perks is definitely a carry weight perk. According to the article it'll 1.add carry weight 2.let you fast travel while over encumbered and 3.let you *run* while over encumbered.
    • 641 posts
    September 25, 2015 7:31 PM EDT

    Running while over encumbered? That's crazy talk! 

    • 1913 posts
    September 26, 2015 6:09 AM EDT
    Another is Lone Wanderer, when traveling alone you gain damage resistance, higher carrying capacity and I think damage bonus.
    • 1913 posts
    September 26, 2015 6:41 AM EDT
    Bethesda sure knows how to give the fans what they want without spoiling them by giving them everything.

    Something I love is that from the video we clearly see Charisma has been severely upgraded. No longer a passive stat to avoid combat, now this is much more aggressive and actually worth taking. In past games Charisma did nothing or did so little it was negligible, now it actually serves a purpose.

    The perks from the Charisma tree deal mostly with companions, if not permanent companions then turning enemies into pseudo companions. Perks like Animal Friend and Intimidation are similar in that you point your gun to them and gain a chance to pacify the target. With further ranks you can cause them to attack their friends or even take additional commands like the contextual commands screen dogmeat showed in the E3 demo. This completely changes the game cause prior to this if you wanted to disable traps, open doors that were locked, hack stuff, but didn't have the key or password or skill you were screwed. Now, if you find an enemy with it and command them, you can make them do I for you, making lockpocking and hacking the two skills every character maxes.

    The way they plan to balance this by making all the perks good and have amazing benefits no matter I it is at 1 or 10 in a stat thanks to the multiple ranks.

    I am mad at some people not liking this cause it got rid of skills, these people say it is running down the fallout character system... Umm... Hello?! Fallout's skills were unbelievably dumb and simplistic... Take fallout 3 for example: By leveling up small guns because I use pistols a lot I also level up shot guns, sniper rifles, and machine guns despite only using a pistol... In fallout new Vegas it was worse because at least fallout 3 had big guns and small guns... In FNV all non-energy weapons are guns... So by being a master of lever action repeaters I have also mastered miniguns... Despite never picking one up... In both games skills like lockpocking and science literally didn't matter for 95% of the time. Each skill will have at least 1 point into it and went to a max of 100... The problem is that they only give you rewards of leveling at 25/50/75/100... A character of 25 science was no difference from a character with 49 science as they could both only open the same locks... That's a 24 point difference, that's almost 2 complete level ups worth of nothing... And again, if my character maxes science because he got good at hacking it also means he became a nuclear physicist... Despite not knowing anything about science outside hacking or possibly drug creating he now knows all about all science... It was incredibly simplistic and dumb.

    All in all, I can't wait to get the game to see the rest of the perks and ranks.
    • 641 posts
    September 26, 2015 7:19 AM EDT

    Hmm that's a strange one. Is it implying that lone wolfs become tougher beacuse they have nobody to rely on but themselves? 

    • 641 posts
    September 26, 2015 7:25 AM EDT

    The charisma mechanics sound amazingly useful for my planned Randall Flagg playthrough.

    • 649 posts
    September 26, 2015 7:33 AM EDT

    Randall Flag? So Walter is going to bring chaos to another level of the Dark Tower? 

    • 641 posts
    September 26, 2015 7:46 AM EDT

    Hell yeah! I was going to do Roland but I think the Man in Black will have more fun 

    • 649 posts
    September 26, 2015 7:53 AM EDT

    Man, now I want to play Roland in Fallout. That guy would really kick ass. 

    • 1913 posts
    September 26, 2015 8:29 AM EDT
    That's how the saying goes, it is under the charisma tree... I guess because lone wolves are interesting and charismatic?
    • 627 posts
    September 26, 2015 8:41 AM EDT

    I thought of doing that before, it would be awesome 

    • 649 posts
    September 26, 2015 8:51 AM EDT

    Deathclaws, men in power armor, radiation, robots. Roland wouldn´t even blink and shoot everyone to death. And yeah, he would probably shoot the radiation too ...Now I seriously want to play as Roland. 

  • September 26, 2015 8:11 PM EDT

    Looks like the CBers are going to have a ball with this, the ability to command and pacify humans and animals, and with perception actually being useful this time, great stuff bethesda

    • 627 posts
    September 26, 2015 8:18 PM EDT

    I'm now trying to work out what gun he actually uses or at least as close as is possible 

    • 1217 posts
    September 26, 2015 11:11 PM EDT

    Yep, seems there are a lot of fun new things to look forward to in every tree.

    • 77 posts
    September 27, 2015 3:15 AM EDT

    Yeah, it just looks like Skyrim 2 in terms of the perks; X/5s and passive damage buffs abound.

    The animal companion stuff looks cool, though. I hope you can maintain beasts as permanent pets just like the dog.

    • 1217 posts
    September 27, 2015 10:35 AM EDT
    It did look that way. We only saw one rank of those perks, though. Hopefully those predictions are wrong.
    • 207 posts
    September 27, 2015 12:23 PM EDT

    1. I'm not to excited because all the special stats im interested were left relativly untouched. But I'm happy, that what we saw weren't just plain percentage increases.

    2. When I maxed the perks I wanna have for my char I'm might gonna go for lone wanderer. I usually travel alone.

    • 1217 posts
    September 27, 2015 12:36 PM EDT
    Considering that New Vegas only had about 90 perks, and FO4 is touting 275, I don't think any SPECIAL has actually been left relatively untouched. It may look like that since we can only see the 70 base icons, but there's a lot going on behind them ;D
    • 207 posts
    September 27, 2015 3:20 PM EDT

    I mean they weren't featured during the video. The video was mainly about charisma, so i didn't get any chance to look at the perk descriptions for my favored special attributes. :)

    • 1217 posts
    September 27, 2015 3:27 PM EDT
    Which ones are you interested in seeing?
    • 207 posts
    September 27, 2015 4:13 PM EDT

    My usual Layout for my first char is Intelligence, Strength and Endurance.

    • 1217 posts
    September 27, 2015 4:27 PM EDT
    Intelligence and Endurance should prove to be extremely interesting.