Utterly useless perks

IMO waste of points are these:


STR based
Strong back 3 - allows AP use to run while overcumbered
Strong back 4 - allows fasttravel while overcumbered

Sure, both can save your time and you won't need to travel back to a location in order to transport the rest of the loot… But honestly? Playing the game for hundreds of hours and shortening the total time by 10 minutes is rediculous.
Those perks would be better invested in armor crafting where among all things you can grab deep pockets upgrade or something else.


PER based
Locksmith level 4 - pins won't break
Night person level 1 & 2 - INT and PER +2, +3 during night

There are so many pins to find/loot in this game, not breaking them "skill" is completely irrelevant.
Intelligence boosted during nights? So you get more XP? If there is anything one wants to avoid in this game it's too much of XP.


END based
Lead Belly level 1, 2 & 3 - resistance to rads on eating/drinking
Chem Resistant level 1 & 2 - not getting addicted to drugs easily
Aquaboy level 1 & 2 - no radiation damage nor suffocating under water
Cannibal level 1, 2 & 3 - health restore by eating corpses
Solar Power level 2 & 3 - regenerate radiation damage/health during day

I thought Lead Belly was a joke when I saw it before the game release. It was not. Anyway, there are so many stims and radaway to loot, you can craft those plus I see no logical reason why should anyone put points into this instead of Medic perks that up stims/radaway efficiency.
Chem Resistant does look nifty at first glance because Addictol is very rare (I've looted about only 20 of those in my more than 150 hours long game), but you can craft refreshing beverage on chemistry station which not only removes all addictions but also heals 500 HP and removes 1000 rads.
Aquaboy, with numerous rad-x you'll loot and forgot which exact cooked food allows underwater breathing also seems waste of points. There is a speculation that plans for the game were to have some huge underwater area and stuff to explore, if it was in the game Aquaboy perks would be musthaves. But since that's not in the game…
Cannibal, unless you're roleplaying such character, may look useful since if anything, there are endless corpses in wasteland. But as said before, stims plus Medic perks render these ones irrelevant.
And who on earth would want Solar Power when health regen is available with low endurance as Life Giver level 3 both day and night while radaways can be found pretty much elsewhere to loot.


INT based
Hacker level 4 - terminals won't lockup ever

Who needs nonlocking terminals? First all you'll do is to wait for a cooldown to pass if it happens (and it won't) plus you get a perk from a sidekick that allows you one more "guess" on terminals.


LCK based
Fortune Finder level 4 - enemies sometimes explode as caps
Idiot Savant level 1, 2 & 3 - XP boost

Caps exploding enemies so you clickfest to gather it all… For god's sakes.
And XP boost is something everyone wants to avoid in this game.



Your thoughts?

Couldn't agree more with this list --especially with the final lockpicking perk. It would be different if bobby pins were very, very rare or very expensive to buy. But that is just soo not the case in this game.

By the time you are at the level when you could take this perk, you would definitely realize this and scratch your head as to why this was final, ultimate version of this perk.

A person who is deep into role playing a character might pick some of these perks so that he can experience the game a certain way. Maybe he wants to play an expert lockpicker who travels light (one bobby-pin) and knows how to swim for a long time, etc.

Maybe you were a master hacker before the war and no system would ever "lock you out".

I guess sometimes you have to think about players not wanting to be most "efficient" and just wanting to create a specific, unique kind of experience.

Can't verify this yet, but thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by Morrandir
Can't verify this yet, but thanks for sharing!

Just an FYI.. you can see the higher ranks of a perk by pressing the 'Alt' key when viewing it on the perk chart.

Ah, thanks!

This sounds about right. I would also add the "find the nearest objective in VATS" to the list, as I really don't need that at all, though I guess some might find it useful.

I was in Corvega and just could not find the dude that you need to kill to mark that quest complete. For some reason, I had been in the area where he is located, but missed killing him. I used VANS to finally find him, so it helped me one time. I've not taken that perk since my first character but it has taught me to keep at least one spare perk point available for emergencies.

I use it also. For 1 point its useful if you are time limited. I don't use it often but I like it for when I missed something and don't feel like backtracking everything.

Originally Posted by Maylander
This sounds about right. I would also add the "find the nearest objective in VATS" to the list, as I really don't need that at all, though I guess some might find it useful.

Sorry I just can't be sure about that one.
I'm not using it and dunno how it actually works.

It is the clairvoyance spell from your favorite game of all time, Skyrim. It lights a path straight to your objective. Think Geralt's Witcher sense and you have the idea.

TW sense just highlights stuff in red. But FO4 has only two detective cases so… Not sure where would I need it.
I didn't remember clairvoyance in Skyrim… Probably I just want to forget everything about that game…

Aquaboy level 1 & 2 - no radiation damage nor suffocating under water

I agree mostly except for the above (plus who wouldn't want more caps?). So I was thinking about getting Aquaboy to be able to do thorough underwater exploration like I did for Vegas. Is it like Fallout 3, and there's nothing to be found underwater, mostly?

Yes I opened another thread about that.
Seems that the ocean is not as empty as we think. Some people found some odd stuff down there.
I'm gonna get those two and explore to it - if I find anything unique (means not power armor frames and whatnot obtainable easily on the ground), I'll delete Aquaboy from the list as it'll mean it's not useless.

Cool!

Originally Posted by Thrasher
I agree mostly except for the above (plus who wouldn't want more caps?). So I was thinking about getting Aquaboy to be able to do thorough underwater exploration like I did for Vegas. Is it like Fallout 3, and there's nothing to be found underwater, mostly?

Seems like a silly perk to me. I mean.. how do they explain that you can suddenly breath underwater?

I'd rather they had just included some (rare) gear that allowed you to dive for long periods.

Silly? Are you serious? Suspension of belief is king with this game.

Exploding bodies with a single gunshot
Mutated monsters in just 200 years
After 200 years there's still stuff to loot…

And the list goes on and on.

Perks are mutations. Anything goes.

Most of the things on that list are nitpicks compared to instantaneously mutating into something that can breath underwater. That's certainly not the only perk I could point to as being silly though.

Being silly is exactly what Fallout game is supposed to be. As such, the perk is not questionable.
What's questionable is it's price. Is it worth taking at all or not (assuming noone actually imagined roleplaying their character as halffish).

Because there are food/drugs means to emulate that perk, I put it up there. Exploring lakes, no problem without it. But then there is a huge eastern water part perhaps worth exploring.
Another thing - there is also a sidequest that points in the "middle" of that water mass

Right like the world even being livable in proximity to nuclear blasts. Radiation half life's in thousands of years being ignored. The whole premise is silly. If you buy into that, anything goes.

If you say so.

I wasn't trying to analyze it to that degree.