Fallout New Vegas Energy Weapons Build Guide by Villedge (mvilladolid | Google Mail)
Here's my guide to create the ultimate energy weapon killer, whether your weapon of choice is laser or plasma.
Please note, this build is designed for core mode, so if you want to play hardcore either make the necessary tweaks or just don't follow this build.
To begin with, let's take a look at the starting SPECIAL:
Str: 4
Per: 7
End: 7
Cha: 1
Int: 6
Agi: 6
Lck: 9
Traits: Four eyes, Built to Destroy
Four eyes effectively boosts your perception to 8 while wearing glasses, and
built to destroy increases your chance to score critical hits, which is
invaluable to this build.
Now, to explain these values:
For strength I chose 4 because, assuming you get a strength implant, your final
value will be 5. The most powerful energy weapon, the Gauss rifle, has a
handling strength of 5. Case closed. Although if you would prefer to use a
heavier energy weapon such as the Tesla Cannon, I suggest you move points from
luck and into strength.
Perception is at 7 because it is one of the determining factors of your energy
weapon skill. Also, with the four eyes trait your perception will be 6 without
glasses, and 8 with. Add any hat with +1 perception and an implant, and you've
got yourself a perfect 10.
Endurance is also at 7 for implant reasons. You can choose to get an implant
for each of your SPECIAL stats, or you can ignore charisma and/or endurance in
favor of the increased DT and health regen.
Charisma is 1 because it is the most useless stat in my opinion. Even with a
starting value of one, it isn't hard to increase your speech or barter to a
acceptable level. The only other thing affected by charisma is your
companion's nerve, which really isn't that important.
Intelligence is 6, but at level 2 I recommend you use intense training to raise
it to 7, and an implant later on brings the final value to 8, which is more
than enough to be able to max most if not all your skills.
Agility is 6 due to perks requiring this value, and an implant can raise it to 7.
Luck is at a whopping 9 because critical hits will be an important part of this
build, so the higher the better. As with the other stats, an implant will
bring this to the maximum value of 10.
As for armor, due to the four eyes trait you'll always want to have glasses
equipped. I personally prefer Authority glasses or sunglasses. Because you
will most likely always be wearing glasses, helmets are out of the question.
Since this energy weapon build focuses on critical hits, the 1st Recon Beret
you get from Boone is ideal as it not only grants +1 perception, but also gives
you a +5 to critical chance.
For your body, you can use whatever suits you. Having trouble surviving
firefights? Wear something with a high DT. Need an extra boost to complete a
speech challenge, wear a piece of clothing with +speech. Honestly, the body
armor you wear doesn't really matter, so wear whatever you feel like.
For your choice of weapon, I personally prefer either the Gauss Rifle (you can
find the unique YCS/186 Gauss Rifle in a mercenary camp), Laser RCW and Pulse
Gun. The Pulse Gun is used to take out any robots or people wearing power
armor, while the Gauss Rifle and Laser RCW will vaporize anything else.
In the beginning of the game if you want to get your hands on some energy
weapons, here's a couple I've found:
Doc Mitchell should give you a laser pistol upon exiting his house, assuming
your energy weapon skill is high enough. If you look on the shelves inside his
house near the room where you first wake up, you'll also find a laser pistol
and ammo you can take with no damage to your karma.
Chet, at the Goodsprings general store, sells a plasma pistol for around 200
bottle caps.
If you choose to side against the Powder Gangers, at the NCRCF the leader
there, Eddie uses a laser pistol and at least one of his guards has a laser
rifle in his possession.
Once you get to Freeside check out the Silver Rush, it's a stormtrooper's dream
come true. Feel free to buy/steal weapons to your hearts desire.
Southwest of Freeside and New Vegas are the Gun Runners, who usually have
powerful energy weapons in their stock.
Final Layout
So assuming you use your implants to raise all your SPECIAL stats, the final
layout should look like this:
Str: 5
Per: 7 (without glasses), 9 (with glasses), 10 (with glasses and a hat with +1
perception, preferably the 1st Recon beret)
End: 8
Cha: 2
Int: 8 (Intense training at level 2 will raise it one point)
Agi: 7
Lck: 10
Tag Skills:
Energy Weapons (duh!)
Science (Boosted in order to more easily obtain science skill related perks)
Repair (Important to get your repair skill to 90 by level 14 for Jury Rigging)
Skill point distribution:
This is just what I did so that my skills would be high enough to get the
desired rank.
Put all your skill points into science until you reach a skill of 70; this is
needed for the Vigilant Recycler perk at level 6. Depending on how you
distributed your special stats/tag skills, this should happen around level 4 or 5.
After that, start pouring points into energy weapons until you have a skill of
90, which will be around level 8 or 9.
Lastly, get your repair skill to 90 by level 14 for Jury Rigging.
After that, you're free to spend the rest of your points however you see fit,
these are just the important values you need for perks.
On to perks! Keep in mind that you don't need to follow any of this guide to
the letter. If you feel like you'd rather take a perk other than one I
mentioned, feel free. It's not like your character will fail horribly if you
don't do exactly as I say.
Level 2: Intense Training - Intelligence (I feel like this is the best choice
as it will grant you a few more skill points which will help meet the
requirements for later perks.
Level 4: Educated (See the reason above)
Level 6: Vigilant Recycler (This perk requires a science skill of 70, so every
time you level put all your points into science until you reach 70.)
Level 8: Commando/Gunslinger (I choose Commando because the Gauss rifle and
Laser RCW are both two handed weapons. If you would rather use one handed
weapons, feel free to take gunslinger.)
Level 10: Finesse (The increased chance at getting critical hits from this perk
is insane, it's a must-have)
Level 12: Math Wrath (Yes, Plasma Spaz is also available at this point, but
Math Wrath works for all weapons, making it the better choice. If you dislike
VATS and never use it, feel free to choose something else.)
Level 14: Jury Rigging (Repair skill of 90 needed, makes it insanely easy to
repair/maintain weapons and armor)
Level 16: Meltdown (Energy weapons skill of 90 needed, makes it much easier to
kill groups of enemies)
Level 18: Better Criticals (Seeing as critical hits are a big part of energy
weapon game play, why wouldn't you get this?)
Level 20: Grim Reaper's Sprint (As with Math Wrath, if you prefer straight up
FPS then feel free to leave this alone and pick up something else.)
Level 22: Laser Commander (The name says it all)
After level 22 your options become a lot more open-ended. Get whatever you
feel suits your play style, but some perks I personally choose would be the
following:
Plasma Spaz (this stacks with Math Wrath and allows to get more shots in VATS)
Sniper (Easier to hit the head)
Center of Mass (More damage when attacking the torso)
Action Boy/Girl (As if Math Wrath, Plasma Spaz and Grim Reaper's Sprint wasn't
enough, you can get this to just put the icing on the cake.)