Highlights
- Point-based perks like 'Daddy's Boy/Girl' and 'Gun Nut' are generally a bad idea, as they offer only a few extra points for skills without any additional abilities. The 'Educated' perk is a better solution to increase skill points.
- The 'Intense Training' perk becomes obsolete with the 'Almost Perfect' perk introduced in the Broken Steel DLC, which raises all stat points to 9. It's better to choose the superior option later on.
- Perks like 'Infiltrator' and 'Computer Whiz' provide solutions to avoidable problems, such as forcing locks open. There are alternate solutions to access what these perks offer, making them pointless.
It’s always exciting to level up and slap a handy perk on a character in Fallout 3. New abilities, increased proficiency in combat, more dialogue choices, and protection from harm are but a selection of the many perks offered in the game and its respective DLCs (all of which are packaged alongside the Game of the Year edition).
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Certain perks could turn the Lone Wanderer into a one-man (or one-woman) army, ready to take on radioactive zones, hideous Super Mutants, and anarchic Raiders by the boatload. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of perks that are not so hot and should be avoided completely for a variety of different reasons.
9 All Point Perks
Just Get The 'Education' Perk Instead
It may sound like a sweeping generalization, but choosing the point-based perks is generally a bad idea. To be more specific, these are the low-level perks that offer a few extra points for certain skills, yet no other abilities are packaged alongside them. These are ‘Daddy's Boy/Girl,’ ‘Gun Nut,’ ‘Little Leaguer,’ ‘Thief,’ ‘Scoundrel,’ ‘Size Matters,’ and ‘Iron Fist.’
Sure, it may nudge certain skills a bit higher in order to meet the requirements of more powerful perks along the way, yet there’s already a better perk that's a solution to this: ‘Educated.’ So long as the player has an Intelligence of 4 or higher, and chooses this as early on as possible, that’s an extra 3 points per level. Getting more points from the other aforementioned perks won’t have much of a profound effect on the gameplay since they offer no further abilities.
8 Intense Training
The Broken Steel DLC Offers A Better All-Around Perk
This perk would have been a decent enough choice for anyone without the DLCs. After all, an extra point to a special stat is nothing to scoff at here. Alas, it is rendered obsolete by a perk introduced in the Broken Steel DLC.
While ‘Almost Perfect’ is limited to those at Level 30, the highest one can get to, it raises all stat points to 9. So, in other words, all those other point boosts made via ‘Intense Training’ will be left for naught if this superior perk is acquired. And, let’s face it, why wouldn’t someone take the clearly superior choice available later on, anyway?
7 Infiltrator / Computer Whiz
These Perks Provide Solutions To Easily-Avoidable Problems
These are lumped together as they share a similar effect: they both offer another attempt at accessing something. To be specific, ‘Infiltrator’ gives its user one more chance to force a lock open when lock-picking, and ‘Computer Whiz’ offers a second chance to hack a terminal when locked out.
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Both are solutions to two completely avoidable outcomes. Tip: don’t force a lock as it could break it and render it unusable without a key, and close a terminal before interacting with it again to replenish all lost attempts. It might allow a person to reopen a chest or door, but sometimes there are alternate solutions to access them anyway. Whichever way one looks at it, both of these are a bit lame.
6 Lead Belly / Rad Resistance / Rad Absorption
Spend A Perk Point, Or Just Use A Rad-X
Radiation is almost impossible to avoid in Fallout 3. When push comes to shove, a player can drink dirty, irradiated water to regain a bit of health. At least there are lakes aplenty in the Capital Wasteland, not to mention sinks and toilets in the pre-war buildings and mostly abandoned subways.
With that in mind, why would anyone want the ‘Lead Belly’ perk? Less radiation from water sources is a rubbish ability as it’s easily combated with RadAway, Rad-X, and carrying bottles of Purified Water (of which there’s much more during the events of the Broken Steel DLC) instead. This also counterbalances the ‘Rad Resistance’ and 'Rad Absorption' perks, as the effects of irradiation are minor at best and, again, easily fixable with the previously mentioned methods.
5 Rad Tolerance
No Radiation Poisoning Is Nice, But It's Not That Nice
Broken Steel may have introduced a bunch of perks ranging from handy to blatantly unbalanced, yet ‘Rad Tolerance’ is utter tosh. It nullifies the effects of minor radiation poisoning completely. Again, as stated before, RadAway and Rad-X - as well as wearing a Radiation Suit - can help with slowing down or reducing rads.
All that minor radiation poisoning actually does is reduce one’s Endurance by a single point, thereby lowering the Lone Wanderer’s health slightly. That’s hardly something to fret about to the point of acquiring a perk. Again, with many solutions to help out against the invisible menace, they render yet another perk utterly useless.
4 Swift Learner
Reaching Max Level Is Fairly Easy Without A Minor XP Boost
It’s a beginner’s trap when it comes to choosing perks. A 10% boost to earning XP seems like a small but handy choice to pick at low levels. It even specifies to collect it early on to rake in the most benefits, so, again, grabbing it will come across as a bit of a no-brainer for newcomers who have never tried the game before.
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The issue here is that there’s really no point in a perk that collects more XP, especially when it comes to picking it up more than once. All it does is push a player towards the level 30 cap (providing the Broken Steel DLC is present) just a bit faster. Why bother? After all, once the Lone Wanderer hits the maximum level, it doesn’t do anything else anymore.
3 Deep Sleep
The Lone Wanderer Isn't Likely To Sleep Enough To Make This Perk Worthwhile
Another XP-based perk - this time, it’s an additional reward for sleeping in an owned bed. Eight hours of sleep in a proper bed, like in the Megaton house or the Tenpenny Tower suite, will offer 12 hours of an XP bonus - 10% more of it to earn, to be exact. No soggy mattresses in a dilapidated subway will count towards this, of course.
What sucks is the ‘Deep Sleep’ perk, which increases the player’s XP by 10% for no less than 8 hours regardless of where one sleeps. Again, like with the ‘Swift Learner’ perk, this becomes totally useless after reaching the level cap and is there just to fill space.
2 All Karma-Altering Perks
Karma Has Very Little Effect On The Game Overall
It seems quite general to lump three perks together as inessential, yet this is tied in with one of Fallout 3’s biggest problems. And, no, the linearity of choices isn’t one of them. It’s the fact that Karma does not have much of an effect on the overall gameplay, barring minor details here and there.
A rebel could nuke the town of Megaton, and then give a bunch of water bottles to a beggar to balance out their Karma. Or, a heroic protagonist may just go on a stealing spree to get them back to Neutral Karma. While ‘Devil’s Highway,’ ‘Escalator to Heaven,’ and ‘Karmic Rebalance’ are lazy shortcuts, they offer no other bonuses alongside this. In fact, they’re only useful for getting the level 30 Karma-based perks, so be sure to save, select one, then load back and do it with the rest. After that, pick a better perk.
1 Here And Now
A Free Level Is About As Beneficial As Junk Food
There is absolutely no benefit to picking the ‘Here And Now’ perk whatsoever. All it does is instantly level up the player, and nothing more. The description mentions “all the advantages it brings” - which is to say, none. Yes, it’s tempting to take a shortcut to become stronger and better, yet cheaters never prosper, as the saying goes. It’s not different in this context, either.
So, one slot is used up when another perk could've been used in its place, and nothing can be done about it. Well… aside from loading back and choosing something else. Avoid this one completely. There’s literally no point in taking it.
