homepage Forums Land & Armor Combat Tactical Simulations - General Re: Fallout 4 (now with extra New Vegas!...and a dash of 76)

I was wrong. The Atlantic City event will be later this year. I think it will be out by the end of September.


And yes, I'm already using the perk card that reduces the weight of rifles. I'll be using this one a lot.

Do you guys use any pieces with Aristocrat on them? Not getting the bonus, it shows zero even though I am holding 38k caps, since the update.

Speaking of caps, my vendor has been a smashing success. So much so that I have to constantly go buy stuff to keep from capping out. One of the featured items at my camp is Handmades, since I roll a lot looking for specific bonuses. I could scrip them, but I figure someone may want them so I throw them in the vendor for a week. If they don't sell I pull them and scrip them. I had sold a few, and then a couple nights ago some cat comes along and buys like all ten I had up at the mo. I sell most weapons between 200 and 600 caps. Enough to be worth it to me, but cheap enough that someone will get a good deal on a weapon they want.

Fuel sells quickly. Bobbleheads, magazines, .308 ammo. I've put up quite a few intriguingly modified armor pieces. A three-star piece of armor only gets 24 scrip at the machine, while three-star weapons bring in 40, so it's easier to justify selling armor. And again I'm thinking that players will find them especially useful, and get a good deal at the same time. Since I got secret service I had no use any more for my old set. My chest piece was Forest Scout with Aristocrats, so gave 80/60 with 25 cryo at high caps. It also had 25% less noise while sneaking and 25% harder detection chance. Put it up for 800 caps and it went in a snap.

The notification that pops when someone buys something from your vendor fades too fast. I can't read both what they bought and how much it sold for before it is gone from the screen. Is there a way to add time to this display? When you complete a quest it stays on the screen for 10 seconds.

My Fat Boy is Aristocrat. When I log in later today I'll check and see if I'm getting the damage bonus for having high caps. I think I'm near the 40k cap limit right now.

Cool, thanks. Mine is an armor piece. Before the update it showed Currently: +20. Now it says 0. Same amount of caps .

Not sure PanzerMeyer. These days it is hard to plan anything.

It would be fun, but as it stands now I`m too much amatour to be of any support.

Right now I`m in a coal mine just northeast of the bar.

I have saved Sol and found Polly the bot. Seems something is wrong with the Pollylaser as it is too weak to kill anything. May be I am missing something.

I have to find out how to find/craft my backpack as I need some more space.

Then I need perks. How do you know what you have , and how to get more?

Hit the TAB key to view your Pip Boy and then hit the "T" key to view the perks you currently have. Whenever you level up your character you get one point to either choose a new perk card or to level up a perk card. You have to remove and add perk cards via your Pip Boy.

Thank you PanzerMeyer.

And choose wisely! It's possible to make a scattered build with little focus and less power. If you have any questions about which ones to pick don't hesitate to ask.

Polly isn't supposed to be a weapon. She should be installed on a new body to finish the quest at which point she will be removed from inventory. I think she is level 1 so no surprise it doesn't do much damage.

For the backpack I had mentioned this before. There was a small backpack plan at the end of the quest which took you to Morgantown airport, I think in the same chest as the overseer log. Did you grab this? It's possible you learned it already and therefore it will not appear in pip boy inventory. Use an armor bench to see if you can craft it. There are also backpacks in the atomic store, but maybe those are just skins?

For carry capacity there are literally perks to reduce the weight of everything. Chems, rifles, armor, junk, food and drinks and well, everything. I use several, like Traveling Pharmacy and the new Arms Keeper perk. Pack rat increases your capacity, most others reduce the weight of the affected items.

What I recommend is to have a path, a focus on what you want your character to be, like the Commando/Rifleman thing I keep bringing up. Then you can choose the perks to support and improve the build, so it all synergizes with the type of character you want to play. Until level 75 I think it's best to identify this and pick the right perks. It takes that long to fully build out I think. After that you can have the luxury of multiple builds, but you'll probably want to scrap unused perks at that stage to rank up legendary perks.

So yeah, by level 600 you can have multiple builds haha

When I started I found this build planner very helpful. It shows which perks there are and at which level they unlock, so you can come up with a roadmap and know which perk you'll pick next

FO76 Build Planner

I'll post my build later after work. You won't want to copy it, but it might give you an idea of how I went about it and give you some ideas.

Before I run through the build, it should be noted that the player has unlimited ability to respec for free from level 25 on. So any mistakes or regrets can be set right before too long. So don't sweat it. Still, it's efficient to pick the perks you'll use, and in the long run this will pay off. So it all circles back to choosing a path, knowing what type of character you want to main, and picking perks to build it out.

Here's the build I was using when I shut down last night. I say it this way because you can swap perks in and out freely, and I often do. You can also make loadouts to quickly swap between entire sets at any punch card machine (at level 25), and you've probably seen the machine in my camp between the tinkerer's and armor benches. It's so handy to have it right there. I have my field loadout and my camp loadout. All of my crafting perks are in the camp loadout of course and don't appear in the build shown below, except Gunsmith since it also reduces weapon degradation. Before you hit 25 you can manually swap cards in and out as you need them, but this quickly gets old. The punch card machine is a godsend.






Maybe call it the sneak commando grenadier build. I went full Agility and Perception as those are needed for my weapons, explosives and the stealth. I'd say many players go for crit builds, but I decided early on I would skip that. Crits are powerful, but require VATS. I use VATS, but not all that much, and certainly didn't want to tether my build to it. In Fallout 4 I was a VATS crit build, but in 76 I use free aim mostly, so I could get away with moderate Luck points. Luck perks are great for the most part, and this way I could make a moderate investment with the SPECIAL points while still benefitting from a number of good Luck abilities since I was not also invested in to crits. Endurance became a dump stat, and Charisma isn't far behind. I'd say you want at least 3 points in Charisma so you can share a perk when in a team, but that's optional. Strength is actually 4, but my second legendary perk is Strength so I currently have three additional points in it and soon to be five when I max it out. Legendary perks become available at level 50.

So essentially I suggest a player decides what he wants to be. Energy weapons, heavy guns, sniper, automatic rifles, pistols, melee etc. Do you want to be a crit build and use VATS often? Is stealth important? Or will you mainly rock heavy armor like PA? Points are limited, so it's not a good idea to try to split your build between different weapon types, or you won't be able to optimize any. Later, when you have enough cards to run multiple builds you can, but for a long time I don't think it's possible to be too flexible and still strong. Specializing is the way to go to hit hard and survive. Two weapons at most I'd say, like a sniper with a handgun, or my commando with explosives.

Once you know what type of weapon you want to use, you can then see which SPECIAL categories have the perks for it (use the planner linked above). In my case I needed Perception for all of my rifle damage cards, plus Intelligence for explosive damage with Demo Expert. Agility is needed for high stealth. So pick the path and then invest the SPECIAL points to support the perk cards needed to make the build effective.

Running through each SPECIAL

Strength -- Determines how much you can carry and how much melee damage you can do. But this is also where most of the weight saving cards are. It's also my most volatile set, with constant tinkering swapping cards in and out. Depending on what I plan to be doing I can attempt to optimize my build for what I will be carrying. If I'm scrounging for example Pack Rat is good. If I plan to bring back a lot of weapons I can tweak it with Strong Back for more overhead and that sort of thing. Traveling Pharmacy is great as chems add up fast. For players focusing on heavy weapons and PA this is the key category. I have two more points coming here soon and that will be great for giving me more options. Strength benefits any build.

Perception -- Determines your awareness and VATS accuracy. For me, as soon as I decided to go with ballistic rifles, Perception became the key category. All of my rifle cards are here. Eight points in to Commando, plus Tank Killer which increases armor pen. Plus two grenade perks, Fire in the Hole and Grenadier are here. Any VATS player or rifle/SMG player will need to invest in Perception. Concentrated Fire is essential in my view, as even if you use VATS irregularly like I do, you can target specific body parts which is a crucial ability to have. One point was enough for me, but if I were a VATS player I'd have more in it I think.

Endurance -- Determines how many hit points you have and environmental resistances. These are valuable for survival of course, but I still dumped it. Endurance has a lot of good quality of life perks, but with points so precious this is where I decided to skimp. Illnesses for example just don't have enough consequence for me to worry about it. In the shot above you can actually see I am suffering from Buzz Brain (if you only knew!) whatever that is, and anyway I wouldn't even know I had it if not for the messages and icons telling me I do. I'd like to rock more Endurance perks but spent elsewhere.

Charisma -- Determines your ability to lead and help others. Also gets better pricing at vendors I think. Again, points are precious, so I just dropped three here. That lets me share one rank-1 perk (usually Ordnance Express or Good with Salt). This slot is rotated between three manually swapped cards. Bodyguards when on a team, Lone Wanderer when not on a team and Hard Bargain when shopping. Some players are much more team-minded and there are a lot of good perks here if that describes you.

Intelligence -- Determines mental acuity and affects your ability to hack terminals (raising INT decreases the number of words in the hacking mini-game), the condition and durability of items that you craft, the return you get from scrapping items, and how much XP you get. Intelligence is super important for crafting, but out in the field I've just dropped eight points in order to max out Demo Expert and have level 3 Gunsmith since the Handmade rifles I carry need level 3 for the mods. However, in my camp loadout Intelligence is maxed at 15 and even then I have to always swap cards in and out depending on what I am building, crafting or repairing. You cannot have enough INT points while in camp. Power armor players and energy weapon players will have this maxed all the time. Perks like Stabilized are must-haves with heavy guns in power armor.

Agility -- Determines your action points and how stealthy you are. What RPG am I not high agility? Key category for me. High AP is great, even if I don't use VATS much. But the stealth is key. Stealth is very effective in any Bethesda game, and here too. Not only does it make everything more survivable, sneak attacks do double damage (or more with the right perks) and you have a situational awareness meter at the top. This is not at all necessary to be effective in this game, but it's how I want to play and it works great. Adrenaline is a nice perk for bigger fights. Lightfooted is nice. There aren't too many mines nor traps in 76, but this means I won't set them off if crouched. The real benefit is I can pull in my mines safely if they didn't get set off in the last battle.Pistol players will need to invest here too.

Luck -- Luck is a measure of your good fortune. I think it affects drop quality and certainly affects drop condition. It also affects criticals. The perks are pretty cool in this category, and if you want to go with a crit build you'll need to invest in luck. Scrounger, Cap Collector and and Good with Salt get me more ammo, caps and make food spoil more slowly. Honestly now that I'm typing this I need to swap out Cap Collector as that isn't really a concern at the mo. I rotate Ricochet with Junk Shield as the mood strikes. Usually Junk Shield when out on my own and Ricochet in events where I'm sure to get hit a lot. I took Bloody Mess for the 15% damage boost. It boosts all damage so works for my guns and my explosives so I thought it was worth it.

So yeah, I hope this is helpful in some way. The way I did my build was to sort of reverse engineer it. That is, I decided first which perks I would take, and then spent my SPECIALS to allow them to fit. With respec this isn't crucial nor is it final. But it is efficient, allowing you to always pick a perk you'll use and arriving at your final version sooner. Using that build planner I knew ahead of time which perk I would choose at each level-up and just went from there. I have no lockpicking or hacking cards as one of the Legendary perks called Master Infiltrator makes them all redundant. You can take this at level 50, among other choices.

Ok. Thank you .
So much info that it is almost overwhelming.

It is past 2 am. here so I need to read me up tomorrow,

I finished the save Polly and SOL mission and went back to the bar. There I got the mission to find a pristine body or something for Polly.
I`ll see if I can try that tomorrow too.

Then I went to Overseers camp and found a small backpack as an option to craft.
I am missing some leather so I ll figur out how to get that. Kill a cow or something?

I found a easy way out in the coal mine where Polly was.
Figured it would be difficult to stay there and kill all the scorchers.

About weapon efficiency; Is that a variable that is perkable?
With the Vampire ( I like it. Thanks DBond) I need 3-5 shots to get a kill as for now. that is the3 556 ammo.

I am only at level 17 now.
Still a lot to learn.

Haha yeah, it's cool. That's a lot to read, and probably won't make much sense yet, but thanks for reading it (if you did). But as you start leveling and picking perks I think it will start to become clear. If you haven't been leveling up then you have a lot of points to spend, and you'll get a lot stronger in a hurry, if you pick the right ones for your style. And probably a couple of perk packs too. But maybe I misunderstand and you have been choosing perks and employing them in your build. Main weapon choice I think is the primary decision to make, then everything can radiate out from there.



Yes, of course. But different perks boost different weapons. When you are using the semi-auto rifle, Rifleman is what you want to run. When using the automatic, Commando is what you want to run. First rank of each boosts damage by 10%, second rank (combine two Rifleman/Commando cards) adds 5% and the third rank does too. So that is 20% boost to base damage if you spend three points here. If you look at the build planner you will see at level 10 you can pick Expert Rifleman for the same bonuses again (potentially now at +40% damage) and at level 35 you unlock Master Rifleman to potentially boost your semi-auto base damage by 60%. Commando's versions of these come at levels 20 and 40.

So you could drop up to nine points just boosting your main weapon's damage and you can see how it would be inefficient to try to do that with multiple weapons, at least in the early game. Not enough points to go around.

Other perks like Sniper, Tank Killer and Long Shot can further enhance and specialize your build, for rifles anyway. It's all a matter of weighing the opportunity cost. By picking this, you cannot pick that. Like in my build above I only put two points in to Expert Commando so that I could have the point available for either Concentrated Fire or Fire in the Hole. The number you see on each card is the rank, each one increasing the perk's effects. But it also takes up that many of the available special points. For most perks, the first rank is the most beneficial, with diminishing returns as you make them stronger, aside from the weight saving perks which are linear. So try a bunch, then choose and focus by ranking up your favorite ones. These would be my suggestions.

You're welcome! I'm just glad to see that you decided to give Fallout 76 a try!

To be fair I will complement you guys.

I see it as a proof of quality when you spend so much time in a game, and write/share them with us as well.

It turns out Aristocrats is broken for armor, not for weapons evidently. On armor there is currently no DR bonus like there should be regardless of how many caps are in your pocket.

Ah, thanks for finding that out! I'm pretty sure a hotfix will come out soon to address that bug.

Yeah, no worries, hopefully they get it fixed soon. In the meantime I switched over to Overeater's on that piece. Crafting this SS is so cheap. Love it.

I haven't seen Wigean in a while to give him the PA, but then I realized it's probably all level 45 or 50 anyway, which I hadn't considered. You're still welcome to it (and I found a T-45 helmet too) but it would be a while before you could wear it. You might have better power armor by then. And I said T-45 was the worst set, but that's actually Excavator, at least from a protection point of view. It does have the carry weight and ore mining bonus, which sets it apart. More like a utility PA, which was its intention in design in the lore anyway.

When I need to wear PA in some events I'm opting for the Hellcat which I am slowly improving. Mods cost bullion so it's slow going.

@DBond.

Just looked on your perks screenshot.

It shows allt he perks in one picture.
I have to use sideways arrows to watch mine. (2560x1440)
Are you using a 4K monitor?
If so any recommendations. (question)

Let's try and meet up some day this week so we can do an event or two. I believe Norway is 6 hours ahead of the US East Coast time zone right?

That`s correct PanzerMeyer.

My biorhytm is a little out of pace today as I watched the FedEx play-offs in Atlanta last night.
Our guy did well.