These are some basic tips for developing your character. I shall assume you have created a character similar to the sample one detailed in the previous page. Specifically, you should have tagged unarmed combat and speech. When you play without saving and reloading, you have to play very cautiously.

Beginning game: When you fight, you should minimize an enemy's opportunities for hitting you in combat. In general, it is best if you fight conservatively and don't wade into a pack of enemies. For example, when you go to Klamath, you can immediately talk to Torr to guard his brahmin, then when guarding, it is advantageous to punch a Dunton once, then walk away 5 spaces. Since the Duntons have only 7 action points, they will only be able to walk up to you without punching. With this method, you should have no trouble killing them while taking no damage. A minor variation on this theme comes when fighting the repair bot in the Klamath canyon: here, you can use a targeted hit against the bot and still walk away without it being able to touch you, since it cannot move more than three spaces in one turn. By the time you attack, your unarmed skill should be high enough for you to punch in the sensors with decent reliability, and before long, you should get a critical with the comment, "breaking the sensor lenses." Whenever a robot's sensor lenses are broken, it will try to retreat, and will pose no threat to you any more. Then you can finish it off at your leisure.

Weapons and upgrades: Many weapons can be upgraded to have more ammo, better range, or more damage capability. Valerie (in Vault City) and Eldridge (in New Reno) will upgrade most upgradable small guns and cattle prods for money. Skeeter (in Gecko) will upgrade the same choice of weapons in exchange for money or a 3-step plasma transformer. You can secure as many transformers (and hence upgrades and chunks of 350 experience points) as you want by selling the part requisition form before your acquisition conversation ends, and buying it back before the game engine checks for it. Your limiting reagents are upgradable guns and patience. Algernon (in Eldridge's basement in New Reno) will upgrade anything which can be upgraded, and he will do it for free. The only problem is that you must sneak into the back of Eldridge's store during the day, and you must only exit during the day, or else Eldridge will attack you. There is apparently a way to talk him into letting you into the back, but I don't bother. When I pick up weapons in the wasteland, I make a point to upgrade three weapons in particular: assault rifle, plasma rifle, and power fist. Note that the weapon's magazine is filled upon upgrade, so you can get free ammo by handing over empty weapons. The assault rifle is the extreme case of this, as the expanded magazine contains 100 rounds of 5mm JHP ammo. If you're planning on using a non-Vindicator minigun, you should collect assault rifles for upgrade. The plasma rifle and power fist do not give you so much ammo, but they upgrade to much improved weapons, and the turbo plasma rifle has a much higher barter value, unlike most upgraded weapons.

Drugs: When you don't save and reload, it's good to be clean of addictive drugs. You can almost always survive a fight without performance-enhancing drugs if you know how to plan your movement and targeting. Never use jet unless you have completed the antidote quest, as it is very addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms are bad for combat. Buffout is useful for the arm-wrestling contest against Francis: if you start with strength 6, two buffouts will ensure victory. Psycho is good if you plan to take a lot of physical hits or need extra agility, but I tend not to use it. It is good to stock up on non-combat medicine, such as poison antidote, radx, radaway, and healing chems. Once you recruit Myron, he can make poison antidote from scorpion tails and stimpaks from broc flower, xander root, and a hypodermic. If you can get him to advance levels twice, he can also make super stimpaks out of fruit, nuka-cola, and stimpaks. Thus, it pays to pick up stimpak ingredients and fruit wherever you can find them. Don't bother to buy nuka-cola except at the Broken Hills bar, where there is an infinite supply which is quite cheap.

Good Perks:

Lifegiver

This is the best perk. With two ranks, you gain an additional 8 hit points per level. That means 15 if your endurance is 10. The main purpose of this is a cushion against random critical hits.

Tag!

This is definitely the second-best perk. If you pump up a skill to well over 100%, pick tag!, then subtract some points, you won't have to worry about skills again. More concretely, suppose you boost energy weapons skill from say, 2% to 151%, then tag energy weapons, taking the skill to 300%. You can then get 374 skill points to freely distribute by taking your skill down to 180%, which is still fairly decent.

Sniper/Slayer

These are automatic critical perks if your luck is good, and they almost eliminate the need for targeted attacks.

Better Criticals

This gives you a good chance of dealing instant death.

Bonus Rate of Fire

An example: If you have 8 action points, you can only fire a pulse rifle once per turn, but with this perk, you can fire twice. You can also do two targeted shots with a pulse pistol. The benefit of this perk is greatest when in conjunction with the Fast Shot trait and Sniper perk.

Bonus HtH Attacks

This reduces a punch to 2 AP's; good with Slayer perk.

Mutate!

This is where you can choose Fast Shot. It is best taken really late.

Action Boy

Two ranks of this perk + Fast Shot + Bonus Rate of Fire + Sniper + good big gun + various drugs = Frank can be killed in one combat turn with four bursts (Good big guns are: Vindicator Minigun or twin Bozars)

Bonus Move

This helps for hit-and-run and general maneuvering.

Bonus Ranged Damage

This is only useful with burst-fire weapons.

Awareness

Helps with combat planning.

Gain Luck

Generally better than Gain Stat X for X not luck, but this is only for Sniper perfectionists.

Comprehension

Advantageous, but not particularly useful, given the opportunity cost.

Perks which give skill points

These points can be subtracted and reallocated to the skills you like, but it is not a very efficient process unless you have no other good choice (e.g. Thief vs. Awareness or Comprehension). Be aware that the value of some of these perks has been decreased between the time the manual was published and the time the game was built.

A sample sequence of perks is:

3. Awareness
6. Bonus Move
9. Better Criticals
12. Lifegiver
15. Lifegiver
18. Bonus Rate of Fire
21. Tag! - Energy Weapons
24. Sniper
27. Action Boy
30. Mutate! - Small Frame to Fast Shot

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