It's always a crapshoot what character development options Bethesda give us whenever they decide they want to have another go at this "RPG" thing. Most of the perks in the game are genuinely useful, but here is a short list of what I find to be the most utterly stupid ones.
6. Quick Hands (level 2)
Wouldn't it be nice and logical if the AP cost of your actions in VATS mirrored the time it took to perform them in realtime? Well, you can forget about that, because in order to gain the full benefits of Quick Hands you also need to saddle yourself with this deadweight here. Oddly enough, reloading in VATS is almost instantaneous already. It's almost as if they included the perk specifically to benefit a new weapon introduced in this title, one that heavily relies on reload speed. Almost, because since there's no way to manually reload in VATS you cannot charge the Laser Musket beyond the first crank, so that weapon is just slightly more useless in VATS than this perk.
5. Lead Belly
The Sole Survivor solely survives on a healthy, balanced diet of Stimpaks, Rad-Away and Rad-X. At the time of writing I have over 100 Stimpaks, 20 Rad-Away and 23 Rad-X. When I do eat food it's radiation-free and homecooked, and I only do so in order to gain the auxiliary effects. There is simply no way you can run out of healing items in this game, and even so the radiation effects from binging on irradiated food only equate to standing near a radioactive barrel for a couple of seconds. If the first level of the perk made you completely immune, and the next two increased the healing and auxiliary effects of the food, it would have made the perk slightly less redundant. And if I had some ham I could make myself some ham and eggs, if I had eggs.
4. Idiot Savant (level 3)
Spending one perk early on for a fair increase in XP throughout the rest of the game isn't bad, especially if your Intelligence is low and you plan on doing a lot of settlement building. Spending another one at level 11 is probably pushing it, but then we get this glistening gem of stupidity at the third level. With this perk, every time you gain XP there is a slight chance of getting another slight chance of getting more combat XP for a short amount of time. If you play the game for long enough with Intelligence at rock bottom, you may encounter a situation where this effect actually triggers and you manage to kill enough enemies that this perk pays for itself, by which time you will be FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS OLD.
3. Awareness
This would have made sense in a game where A: there were more than five types of enemies, B: there were more than two types of damage, and C: damage resistance made a significant difference in damage taken. Fallout 4 is not such a game. The only time you're up against enemies with serious armor is if you put the difficulty slider to max, and even so, neither "Ballistic" nor "Energy" is effective against "Sponge". And even if you did find out that an opponent had a surprise weakness, you wouldn't be able to exploit it right away because you can't switch weapons in VATS. Here's a tip for you: Use your laser pistol against metal armored Raiders and machines, they'll die slightly faster. Actually, use it against everything. But don't waste a perk on making the game spell out inconsequential details that you can figure out yourself anyway, you fucking ding-dong.
2. Hacker (level 4)
The first three perks are just utilitarian access-granting ones, albeit less useful than Locksmith because for some mysterious reason there is almost always a secondary option to hacking a terminal, and one of your companions can do it for you anyway. But what's this? A fourth perk! What could it possibly do? It seems Bethesda asked themselves the same question and failed to find a proper answer, because what it does is simply mindblowingly moronic. Congratulations, moron. You finally don't have to play that horribly difficult children's game called Mastermind anymore. Now you can just hit all the funny words until the computer goes PING and you can get back to shooting things. Know what else you could have done all along? Exit the terminal after three tries and re-open it, for an unlimited amount of retries. Get Awareness if you want a better perk than this. Also, get a life.
1. V.A.N.S.
In the same category as Hacker level 4, but on a whole different, vastly more useless level of uselessness, is where you will find this festering turd of a perk. As if a map with quest markers that show you exactly where to go, and a HUD compass with those same quest markers on it, and a floating quest marker on the screen weren't enough, now you can waste a level on getting a perk that delivers even more hand-holding bullshit straight to your face. The most useless spell in Skyrim, copypasted and jammed into a setting where it makes no sense. If it isn't blitheringly obvious to you where your quest target is without this perk, then you are officially the dumbest waste of breath alive and should be strapped inside a rocket and launched directly into the sun.
6. Quick Hands (level 2)
Wouldn't it be nice and logical if the AP cost of your actions in VATS mirrored the time it took to perform them in realtime? Well, you can forget about that, because in order to gain the full benefits of Quick Hands you also need to saddle yourself with this deadweight here. Oddly enough, reloading in VATS is almost instantaneous already. It's almost as if they included the perk specifically to benefit a new weapon introduced in this title, one that heavily relies on reload speed. Almost, because since there's no way to manually reload in VATS you cannot charge the Laser Musket beyond the first crank, so that weapon is just slightly more useless in VATS than this perk.
5. Lead Belly
The Sole Survivor solely survives on a healthy, balanced diet of Stimpaks, Rad-Away and Rad-X. At the time of writing I have over 100 Stimpaks, 20 Rad-Away and 23 Rad-X. When I do eat food it's radiation-free and homecooked, and I only do so in order to gain the auxiliary effects. There is simply no way you can run out of healing items in this game, and even so the radiation effects from binging on irradiated food only equate to standing near a radioactive barrel for a couple of seconds. If the first level of the perk made you completely immune, and the next two increased the healing and auxiliary effects of the food, it would have made the perk slightly less redundant. And if I had some ham I could make myself some ham and eggs, if I had eggs.
4. Idiot Savant (level 3)
Spending one perk early on for a fair increase in XP throughout the rest of the game isn't bad, especially if your Intelligence is low and you plan on doing a lot of settlement building. Spending another one at level 11 is probably pushing it, but then we get this glistening gem of stupidity at the third level. With this perk, every time you gain XP there is a slight chance of getting another slight chance of getting more combat XP for a short amount of time. If you play the game for long enough with Intelligence at rock bottom, you may encounter a situation where this effect actually triggers and you manage to kill enough enemies that this perk pays for itself, by which time you will be FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS OLD.
3. Awareness
This would have made sense in a game where A: there were more than five types of enemies, B: there were more than two types of damage, and C: damage resistance made a significant difference in damage taken. Fallout 4 is not such a game. The only time you're up against enemies with serious armor is if you put the difficulty slider to max, and even so, neither "Ballistic" nor "Energy" is effective against "Sponge". And even if you did find out that an opponent had a surprise weakness, you wouldn't be able to exploit it right away because you can't switch weapons in VATS. Here's a tip for you: Use your laser pistol against metal armored Raiders and machines, they'll die slightly faster. Actually, use it against everything. But don't waste a perk on making the game spell out inconsequential details that you can figure out yourself anyway, you fucking ding-dong.
2. Hacker (level 4)
The first three perks are just utilitarian access-granting ones, albeit less useful than Locksmith because for some mysterious reason there is almost always a secondary option to hacking a terminal, and one of your companions can do it for you anyway. But what's this? A fourth perk! What could it possibly do? It seems Bethesda asked themselves the same question and failed to find a proper answer, because what it does is simply mindblowingly moronic. Congratulations, moron. You finally don't have to play that horribly difficult children's game called Mastermind anymore. Now you can just hit all the funny words until the computer goes PING and you can get back to shooting things. Know what else you could have done all along? Exit the terminal after three tries and re-open it, for an unlimited amount of retries. Get Awareness if you want a better perk than this. Also, get a life.
1. V.A.N.S.
In the same category as Hacker level 4, but on a whole different, vastly more useless level of uselessness, is where you will find this festering turd of a perk. As if a map with quest markers that show you exactly where to go, and a HUD compass with those same quest markers on it, and a floating quest marker on the screen weren't enough, now you can waste a level on getting a perk that delivers even more hand-holding bullshit straight to your face. The most useless spell in Skyrim, copypasted and jammed into a setting where it makes no sense. If it isn't blitheringly obvious to you where your quest target is without this perk, then you are officially the dumbest waste of breath alive and should be strapped inside a rocket and launched directly into the sun.
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