Must Get Perks On Any Adventure

Armourer – Requires 3 Strength

With armour playing a huge role this time around in Fallout 4 allowing you to equip individual pieces to undergarments, getting and levelling up the Armourer perk is a big priority. The later levels of this perk will give you some of the best misc mods for your armour as well as the defence and resistance upgrades, allowing you to build for weight, sneaking or all-out defence. The only reason why you wouldn’t take this perk is if you are a maniac and enjoy deploying kamikaze tactics, or you simply rely on chems and certain companion perks in order to help you in the defence department.

Awareness – Requires 3 Perception

Only requiring one perk point to get the full effectiveness, Awareness comes in very handy for a multitude of different reasons. First, it allows you to see specific enemy resistances which can assist with not just your damage output but also your ammo consistency. No use using a radiation weapon on a ghoul for example when you can just pelt him with lead. On top of this you can also see the enemy’s level, identifying whether the upcoming confrontation will be a challenge or simply a bump in the road. Lastly it also has a passive trait when managing the settlers in your settlements. As you progress through the game and your settlements grow, some of your homestead dwellers can be replaced with institute synths that, at any point, could start destroying fundamental parts of your base. Awareness will help you identify these bad guys before they strike. An easy way to identify them is to check their energy resistance in any clothing or armour they may be in. If it’s surprisingly higher in comparison to a normal settler, quickly save your game and purge with your weapon of choice.

Locksmith/Hacking – Requires 4 Perception or Intelligence respectively

Of course when exploring the wastes you will come across many terminals and/or locks that can be a pain when you’re on your quest for booty. To combat this problem, you will need one of these two room opening/safe cracking perks. In our balanced build we preferred to go with lockpicking due to the abundance of bobby pins and the ease of the lockpicking mini game in comparison its hacking counter-part. Choose whichever suits you best, and pick up the other perk when you have the points available. Both are great regardless but we would also like to warn you about levelling these particular perks all the way, as they could be a waste. Max lockpicking will let you run around with one unbreakable bobby pin, which we feel makes the mini-game too easy and breaks the challenge. Respectively, the max level for hacking simply gets rid of being locked out of terminals which also gets rid of the challenge. At least take one or both of these perks to the second before last level, save the other two perk points for something else.

Toughness – Requires 1 Endurance

Think of this as another defensive option on top of the Armourer perk. Toughness will increase your innate damage threshold against everything in the wasteland, so even putting one point into this early on could be a great help on any run. This is especially the case if you don’t like wearing armour on undergarments and simply wish to dominate in full suits of armour or in more gentlemanly/lady like attire.

Aqua Boy/Aqua Girl – Requires 5 Endurance

Probably the best perk you can get your hands on very early on in your adventure. Now you may be thinking ‘Why do I need radiation resistance? I have Rad-Away and Rad-X’. That is true, but you mostly want to keep those items for when you’re encountering irradiated humans or creatures. Aqua Boy/Aqua Girl is best to get early on simply because of the amount of water there is around the wasteland. Want to cross the sea to get to a settlement the size of a whole island? Or want to dive into a body of water to find a hidden suit of power armour? Then get this to prevent that annoying rad damage. Do not level it up all the way however unless you prefer your stealthy approach to battles. The reason for this is because the maxed out perk makes you invisible when submerged under water. This only caters to you stealthy players out there, so only max this out if you are going to use it.

Cannibal – Requires 8 Endurace

Now you may be wondering why consuming the dead bodies of your opponents and losing any and all credibility with your companions is a good thing to get. Well we recommend getting this perk for two reasons. Firstly, keeping your at full health at all times is never a bad thing. With this you can do a challenge run where you must feed off the land and use no stims what so ever or only use them for limb recovery. Secondly is for the hardest companion to level up relationship with in the game, Strong. As we discussed in the companion part of our guide, he hates everything you do in the game from taking chems, to helping people and even using power armour. To earn this guy’s respect the easy way, just eat meat when he is around you. As a fellow meat lover himself, strong admires you taping into your inner mutant.

Local Leader – Requires 6 Charisma

Want to make sure that you can manage your settlements easier and make sure all of them are fully supplied with all of your junk? Then you need this perk. Local Leader at rank one will give you access to supply lines which allows you to share materials between your settlements. Keep the chain going and you will soon be able to go to any one of your many homes and drop off materials only to use them somewhere else. Note however that this does not work for items, weapons and armour, only for junk. Rank two is where the magic truly starts happening as you can set the off settlers you have standing around as shopkeepers. Not just can you interact with them to get deals and even a quick patch up but you can check back at your settlements work bench to see how many caps they have been bringing in. Earn income by simply building your bases, life just got much simpler.

Scrapper – Requires 5 Intelligence

Love ripping apart weapons and armour to make something new? Then this one can definitely come in handy. Especially if you are after specific rare crafting materials. Rank one of the perk simply gives you more for your reserves but rank two is why this perk is so great to have. Now when you’re out and about and after that specific material needed such as asbestos or adhesive, they will glow green amongst all the other junk around you. Definitely worth picking up if you are using the crafting system to its full effectiveness and want to get the maximum amount of materials back from scrapping weapons and armour.

Fortune Finder & Scrounger – Requires 1 or 2 Luck Respectively

We put these two together because quite frankly they do the same thing for different rewards. Fortune Finder helps you acquire more caps when rummaging through containers whilst Scrounger is the ammunition equivalent. Both of these perks will make your time searching for extra loot very rewarding, especially at the later ranks where you get a huge bonus. Also, as an added fun-filled bonus, max level Fortune Finder will occasionally explode your enemies and leave a pile of caps in their wake. If you see the little vault boy prompt after a kill, be sure to claim your reward from their decimated corpse.

Idiot Savant – Requires 5 Luck

Even with high intelligence, this perk triggers so often that it is simply worth it to get the additional experience and the later ranked bonus on enemy kills. Early on this can help you simply get all the levels you need in any of the other perks you want to acquire. Later on when you’re not worrying too much about perks and experience gains, you can simply enjoy the little prompt of an idiotic vault boy gracing your screens when performing the most death-defying or the simplest of tasks.

Play Style Perks

Ironfist/Big Leagues/Heavy Gunner/Rifleman/Gunslinger/Commando

All of these perks are easy to get a hold of early on and simply increase the damage of any weapon you can imagine. The reason why these perks are here is simply because of your specific preference on a certain run or in general. Luckily none of them are specific to any weapon type like pipe or laser and are categorised by rifles, pistols, melee, unarmed and big guns. Pick your armaments of destruction, get the appropriate perk to build up damage and lay waste to your opposition.

Blacksmith – Requires 4 Strength

As Armorer can also cover for your Power Armour upgrades, Blacksmith is the only thing that can assist with upgrading the arm parts of your suits. More so if you’re worried about giving them misc mods to add more of a dynamic touch to them. The reason why we keep this one targeted towards play style whilst its brother is essential is simply because the upgrades only apply to melee, unarmed and misc mods for power armour arms. On top of that the arm mods mostly consist of added damage, resistances or variants of damage on specific foes. Not the be all and end all but worth getting if your more of a close range build.

Concentrated Fire/Blitz/Gun Fu/Grim Reaper’s Sprint/Four Leaf Clover

These perks are all tied to the use and effectiveness of VATS in the game and if you have played Fallout 3 and New Vegas you would know that this system is now built more as an optional tool rather than a mandatory mechanic. With this said, players that tend to use VATS a lot will want to take full advantage of these specific mods as soon as possible as they help with accuracy, damage, penetration, AP consumption & regeneration and critical hits. We would recommend also getting these perks after you have a few points in your chosen weapon damage perks to take full advantage of your chosen weaponry.

Science!/Gun Nut

These are very dependent on your choice of laser or regular weapons. Science is also slightly more appealing due to it also benefiting your power armour upgrades whilst Gun Nut, along with Science, is more catered towards higher level defensive turrets for settlements. Pick and choose which one is best for you or put points into both as you get into the later levels.

Optional Perks

Strong Back – Requires 6 Strength

A handy perk to have if you cannot fathom dropping all the great loot you come across in the commonwealth. Early on the bonus to your carry weight is okay, but the later ranks allowing you to run and fast travel whilst over-encumbered is why you truly want this at your disposal. We only leave this as an optional perk as some players do not like maxing this all the way or taking it what so ever as it may deviate from the idea of you carrying what’s in your pockets rather than carrying an invisible rucksack that never fills.

Pain Train – Requires 10 Strength

A fan of using power armour? Then we suggest taking this perk only if you are jumping into your trusty suit for every scenario. Pain Train gives you a running tackle that you can use to initiate fights and potentially take out opponents right off the bat. If your opponents aren’t dead they will at least be crippled, staggered or even knocked to the ground.

Demolition Expert – Requires 5 Perception

We have placed this perk down here instead of with the other damage increasing mods simply because standard fragmentation grenades and Molotov cocktails are quite common in the commonwealth when facing enemies. On top of that, grenade damage at base is pretty good without points put into this perk. We recommend picking this one up if you are an avid fan of causing explosions of all different kinds and also wish to challenge yourself with an unarmed & explosives only run of the game. Plus, being able to make your own projectiles can come in handy in the right situation.

Refractor/Life Giver/ Adamantium Skeleton

These perks all reward you with either health, energy resistance or limb damage resistance and are optional simply due to them adding on top of your damage threshold. Since we put Toughness on the essentials list, these are more optional as you can progress through the game with just this perk and skill books to boost your resistances. With that said however, these become much more important if you are playing on the harder difficulties and wish to stand up to the more ferocious creatures.

Lone Wanderer – Requires 3 Charisma

If you just don’t like teaming up with humanoids or robots and tend to spend your time exploring with either a dog or no one, then this is the ideal perk for your playthrough. Not only does it increase your damage threshold but it also boosts your damage output when you’re on your lonesome wandering through the commonwealth. As we said over in our companions guide, Dogmeat is the only companion you can have with you if you wish to use the full effect of this perk and still have someone by your side. This perk adds to the challenge and to some will add to the feel of being a true lone wanderer like Mad Max.

Sneak/Mister Sandman/Ninja

As sneaking has always been a viable tactic in the Fallout games, the option returns with these three perks giving you great benefits for your deeds in the shadows. Sneaking has been made easier to understand too in Fallout 4 thanks to the detection radar at the top of the screen squeezing in when enemies are noticing you and expanding out when you’re unnoticed. Now that the sneaking mechanics this time around are more fun to use and easier to manage, picking up these perks may just be a viable option for you.

There are many more perks that we did not list in the guide that are just as good to mess around with on your adventures. If it isn’t in our guide it does not mean the perk is bad, it simply means that we did not particularly recommend it as one of the more important perks in the game. With your adventures be sure to try out any and all of these perks to see what you think and how your character changes.

Have your own go to perks? Let us know what you would choose in the comments and keep an eye out for more instalments of the survival guide in the future.