THE BEST BUILD
The title of this post is a little misleading. As any avid fallout player will tell you there’s no such thing as a “perfect” or “best” character build. One of the main draw cards of the fallout games is the agency they allow the player in making their own choices and playing the game in their own way. That being said, not all character builds are equal. Some stats tend to be more universally useful than others.
If you’re just starting out in Fallout 2
and you want some guidance creating your first character then you’ve come to
the right place. The following is my preferred character build for a
high-speech, gun-toting all rounder. This build is strong in combat, able to
talk its way into or out of most situations and has a good critical hit chance.
The stats that I put at 9 can be increased during the game to a full 10 through
the use of appropriate perks.
OPTIONAL TRAITS
- Gifted
- Finesse
GIFTED
The extra SPECIAL points given by this perk
more than make up for the lost skill points. Especially given our characters
high intelligence – meaning we end up with a high number of skill points to
distribute each level up regardless.
FINESSE
This trait significantly boosts your chance
to do critical hits which I find very useful and a fair trade off for the small
damage reduction overall.
SPECIAL
Strength: 5
Perception: 9
Endurance: 4
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 9
Agility: 9
Luck: 7
STRENGTH: 5
The strength stat can easily by raised in game by
collecting the power armour which will raise the stat to 8. Even the initial
setting of 5 will give you enough inventory space to be getting along with. The
melee damage isn’t an issue except for the very start of the game but even then
is passable. Hit points aren’t as important as you might think. With good
armour and high Action Points you can get through most areas with ease with only mediocre
hit points.
PERCEPTION: 9
You need perception of at least 8 to get
the best perk in the game, sniper. On top of that perception determines how far
away you start from enemies in random encounters and is crucial for accuracy in
ranged combat.
ENDURANCE: 4
Endurance isn't as crucial as you might think. With good armour and the superior combat
skills in this build, having lots of Hit Points isn’t such a big priority.
CHARISMA: 4
Charisma doesn’t seem to affect much in
game aside from the number of companions you can bring along with you on your
adventures. This build will set you up to be an effective solo character which
is how I usually play. If you do want some company, a Charisma stat
of 4 still gives you the ability to recruit two companions at once. The negative
effects of a low charisma stat on your characters NPC interactions can be
easily fixed with boosts to the speech and barter skills.
INTELLIGENCE: 9
Intelligence is crucial, mainly for its
determining factor on how many skill points you get to distribute on each level
up. Intelligence also has an impact on dialogue options and has a wide ranging
influence on skill levels.
AGILITY: 9
Agility is probably the most important
SPECIAL stat. This is because it determines the number of Action Points your
character has in combat. Action points determine how many times you can attack,
how far you can move and related actions such as checking your inventory.
LUCK: 7
Luck has a major effect on your chance to
score critical hits in combat. It also affects the outcome of many chance based
mechanisms in the game.
TAG SKILLS
- Small Guns
- Lockpick
- Speech
Your choice in tag skills isn’t as important
as your SPECIAL stats. Whereas your SPECIAL is pretty much finalized after you
make your initial choices a poor choice in tag skill can be overcome over time
by investing skills points in other areas.
That being said I think you’ll have a
much easier time if you make a good tag skill selection from the start, an
example of which, in my opinion, is Small Guns, Lockpick and Speech.
SMALL GUNS
The small guns skill determines your
character’s effectivenss with convential firearms: pistols, rifles, smgs etc.
These guns are the most common in the game and because of this a good choice
for your main combat skill. You could always invest in a second combat skill
like big guns or energy weapons later on if you wanted to. Small guns is a good
place to start though.
LOCKPICK
There’s a lot of locked doors and
containers in the game world. Raising this stat early on not only gives yous
access to the treasures that lie beyond these locks but is a nice little XP
booster, as each successful lockpick use gives you some bonus XP.
SPEECH
I’m not often a big fan of speech skills in
rpg’s. I tend to prefer focusing on my combat skills. But fallout 2 is a hard
game and not only will a high speech skill make it a little easier, it’ll also
allow you access to quests and dialogue options that would otherwise be inaccessible.
thanks for the help ive played fallout 1 and 2 yearsss ago lol and this is a good build i think for what i wanna do anyway which is be overall well rounded. thanks man :)
ReplyDeleteHey man thanks for the comment, I hope the build works out for you :)
Deletethanks for this build i havent played fallout 1 or 2 in years and im been looking for an overall well rounded build and this looks excellent for just that so thumbs up to you for taking the time to make this especially 15 years after this game came out :P
ReplyDeleteThanks man, I really appreciate the positive feedback :)
DeleteWooo many thanks! i'm beem looking for a nice stats build, and this one is fantastic
ReplyDeleteCheers!
DeleteThanks for this build... im finnishing fallout 1 and looking how to start in second fallout... first time i played fallout series i was 11 year old and my build was terribe :D - i still donk know how i finnish game with my monstrosity :D ... so thanks again!
ReplyDeleteNo problems, I've attempted play throughs with some pretty bad builds myself. I hope this helps :)
DeleteGoing to revisit fallout 2 to tide me over until Wasteland 2 is released. This was helpful, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome.
DeleteSeriously, I was puzzled by the character developing system, but I'm have some notion now, so thanks for your this guide, and the effort you had put in it. Also, thumbs up for your reply to Curt! :)
ReplyDeleteYeah the system can be a bit confusing sometimes. I can be pretty crappy at replying to people in a timely manner haha so thanks :)
ReplyDeleteNice one, I still like to play as Chitsa, just changing the tagged skill "first aids" for "steal", always got stuff by trading or stealing (even both at the same time), lots of ammo and lots of stimpacks, smg's comes pretty handy thanks to "one handed" and a good level of "small guns",
ReplyDeletehight charinsma and speech let's me complete many quest without violence or spending money.
No point to rise charisma if you don't want to get companions (who will shot you in the back from automatick shotgun). And with a lockpick you wouldn't have problem with bad prices. Just finished F2 with IN2CH1 run with no such problems.
ReplyDeleteIf some one tired of dialogs and lots of sidequests in F2 there is a solution:
ST8 Pe6 En5 CH1 In2 Ag9 Lu 9 Finnese Jinxed Unarmed Speech Lockpick
Jinxed will made everyone sloppy (drop the weapon, lost ammo, skip turn, broke their legs by semself, etc).
Luck 9 will mostly negate thats effects on you.
Unarmed can't drop the ammo or weapon and quite effective on first part of game. You can easly kill giant radscorps and outrun floater/aliens etc.
In2 will skip most of quest and dialogs ("ok boy please go to someone else, i have no time for morons"). IN2 also will force BOS-member to repear and fuel tanker for you so all you need - just push the Start button on tanker.
Mentat will give you In4 for Geck 4000exp (if you steal it you'll get 25Xp) or In6 in the Rig for turrets computer)
You'll need speach + mentat for Granite squad so they (+turrets) will kill last boss for you. :)