Mechanics

New Vegas asks about your character sheet at four different speeds. Seven attributes are settled while you are creating your character, before you set foot in the Mojave, and then barely move; the ten traits on our traits page sit beside them, each gated by a requirement rather than a level. Skill points arrive with every level. A perk arrives with every second one. And a whole class of numbers, the ones crafting cares about, is never asked for at all until you stand at a bench and find out you are five points short. Our four pages on attributes and skills, traits and statistics, perks and crafting each cover one of those speeds, so this guide runs through them from the slowest to the fastest.

Set once: the seven attributes, with the ten traits beside them

The attributes are the only numbers in the game that everything else is derived from, which is why our attributes page tells you not to max any skill at the start and to spend the points where the downstream effects matter. Strength carries your melee and unarmed damage and how much you can lug. Perception covers Explosives, Lockpick and Energy Weapons plus your compass range. Endurance is hit points and Survival. Charisma is Barter, Speech and how steady your companions stay. Intelligence feeds Science, Repair and Medicine and, more importantly, decides the number of skill points each level hands you. Agility governs Guns, Sneak, walking speed and how fast action points come back. Luck nudges every skill and drives your critical hit rate.

Traits carry no level requirement anywhere on our traits page, and every one of them is a trade. Our traits page lists ten; here is what each one gives and takes.

Two of those ten feed straight into other pages. Built to Destroy is a running bill you pay to the people on our repairers and doctors guide, and Wild Wasteland decides whether the YCS/186 Gauss rifle, the Alien Blaster and Camp Searchlight's Holy Frag Grenades exist for you at all.

Every level: thirteen skills and the points Intelligence hands you

Our attributes page ties each of the thirteen skills to the attribute that sets its starting value: Barter and Speech to Charisma; Energy Weapons, Explosives and Lockpick to Perception; Guns and Sneak to Agility; Medicine, Repair and Science to Intelligence; Melee Weapons to Strength; Survival to Endurance; and Unarmed to Strength and Endurance together. Three of them are tagged at creation for a head start, and the Tag! perk at level 16 adds 15 points to one more.

What makes the skill numbers worth planning is how many locks they open elsewhere in this set of pages. On the perks table, 30 of the 86 standard perks ask for a skill number and nothing else, and 15 more want a skill and an attribute together. The steepest asks are the six perks that want a 90: Jury Rigging in Repair, Nuka Chemist in Science, Meltdown and Laser Commander in Energy Weapons, Unstoppable Force in Melee Weapons and Slayer in Unarmed. The crafting page reads the same numbers: some recipes open at Repair 20 and others not until 75, Science recycles energy ammunition at a workbench, Repair builds ammunition at a reloading bench, and Survival is what lets a campfire turn ingredients into food.

Level-ups are not the only supply. Skill books add to a skill for good and magazines lend it 10 points for a while, and the whole map of both is on our skill books, magazines and unique weapons guide. Two early perks change the exchange rate: Comprehension (level 4, Intelligence 4) doubles what a magazine gives and adds a point to every book, and Retention (level 2, Intelligence 5) makes the magazine effect last longer.

Every other level: 86 standard perks and five smaller lists

Every standard perk on our perks page sits on an even level, and the table is front-loaded: nine perks open at level 2, seven at 4, eleven each at 6 and 8, ten at 10 and twelve at 12, which puts 48 of the 86 within reach by level 10 and 60 by level 12. The list then thins to six at 14 and 16, four at 18 and 20, three at 22, and one apiece at 24, 26 and 28. If you are chasing something late, it is Slayer, Nerves of Steel or Rad Absorption, in that order.

Requirements split four ways. Seventeen perks want nothing beyond the level (Intense Training, Cannibal, Bloody Mess, Here and Now, Explorer and the like). Twenty-three want a single SPECIAL score, which is where a starting spread quietly decides your late options: Better Criticals at level 16 wants Perception and Luck at 6, Solar Powered at 20 wants Endurance 7, and Nerves of Steel at 26 wants Agility 7. Thirty want a skill alone and fifteen want both, and one, Ghastly Scavenger, wants another perk, Cannibal. Six perks carry more than one rank, with Intense Training's ten ranks the only perk that adds an attribute point outright (Night Person, Solar Powered and Nerd Rage! lend theirs by the clock, the daylight or your health), so the 86 rows add up to 102 pickable ranks.

Five shorter tables sit under the big one. Eight companion perks arrive free with the companion: Raul slows gear decay, Veronica doubles as a workbench, Boone marks hostiles when you aim. Ten companion benefit perks reward a companion's own quest, so Cass gets +50 hit points or 15% gun damage depending on whether Heartache by the Number ends peacefully or not, and Raul's Full Maintenance (75% slower decay) needs Old School Ghoul. Eighteen challenge perks are earned by doing something a set number of times, from 50, 100 and 150 kills of abominations, mutated animals, insects or super mutants to 100 waters drunk, 25 chems used and 50 cripplings, with two exceptions that are not counters at all: Power Armor Training for finishing two quests and Meat of Champions for cannibalising four named men. The page notes Machine Head's third rank is glitched and cannot be earned. Nine implants are bought from Doctor Usanagi, whose clinic is on our doctors and vendors page: each SPECIAL point costs 4,000 caps, Sub-Dermal Armor (+4 DT) 8,000 and the Monocyte Breeder (1 HP every 10 seconds) 12,000, so the full set is a 48,000-cap shopping list. Four unarmed moves are taught by people: Lucius, Ranger Andy, the Great Khans and Veronica once she has formal wear.

Any time, at a bench: crafting

Crafting is the one system that never interrupts a level-up. Our crafting page lays out three stations. The workbench builds weapons, armor, healing items and weapon repair kits and makes energy ammunition. The reloading bench turns low-grade ammunition into better rounds from lead, powder and primer, and warns that a spent hull or casing is not part of the deal. Campfires cook food and medicine from raw ingredients, and electric hot plates do the same job, mostly in the Sierra Madre and a few in Big MT. Three perks widen what those stations will accept: Hand Loader (level 6, Repair 70) recovers more shells and unlocks hand-load recipes, Vigilant Recycler (level 6, Science 70) recovers spent energy cells, and Nuka Chemist (level 22, Science 90) unlocks the Nuka-Cola recipe.

The derived numbers, and one to be careful with

Our traits and statistics page closes with the figures the sheet computes for you. Action Points set how many VATS attacks you can queue. Carry Weight climbs with Strength and can reach 300 with the Strong Back perk (level 8, Strength and Endurance 5, +50). Damage Resistance cuts incoming damage 1% a point and caps at 85%. Hit points follow level and Endurance, with Life Giver adding 30. Karma changes how people talk to you. The experience curve starts at 200 points for level 2, 550 for level 3 and 1,050 for level 4, with each step 150 larger than the last. The page also states a level-30 ceiling that does not sit on that curve, so treat the early figures as the reliable ones. Everything above is the part of the game you can plan from a chair; where it meets the map, the caps and the console is laid out on our Fallout New Vegas guide.