Fallout: New Vegas Hints

Level 6 Perks

• * Bloody Mess: This perk will increase all damage you do by 5%, and will often cause enemies to splattify in very gory ways when killed. The universal damage increase is very nice, but since it's only 5%, there'll probably always be some other perk you'll want a bit more.
  
  * Demolition Expert (Explosives 50): You can take this perk up to three times to increase the damage you do with all explosives by 20% per perk level. This is really great for anyone who's making their character into an explosives specialist. (Note that it doesn't increase the damage done by missile launchers.)
  
  * Ferocious Loyalty (Charisma 6): When your health drops below 50% of max, this perk will cause any followers who are with you to have a greatly increased damage threshold. That can be a bit helpful if you have followers with you a lot and don't wear particularly good armor, but most players will probably prefer to stay healed up and well-armored.
  
  * Fortune Finder (Luck 5): This perk will let you find a few more caps than normal in most container items. That may sound good to cap-poor players, but you should just keep exploring and looting (and selling unwanted loot) to get more caps.
  
  * Gunslinger: This perk increases your accuracy percentages in V.A.T.S. if you're using a one-handed ranged weapon. This isn't very useful even for one-handed weapon users due to the fact that your V.A.T.S. percentages will be pretty high anyway if you're close to your target. If you're not, you're better off just taking your best aim in real-time.
  
  * Hand Loader (Repair 70): This perk is handy for those who use reloading benches a lot, since it lets you recover more cases and hulls, plus it gives you all of the hand load ammo recipes (except the one for the .44 magnum, which you have to find schematics for).
  
  * Lead Belly (Endurance 5 or Survival 40): This perk reduces the rads you take from consuming irradiated food and water by 50%. This is of very minimal use, since you don't take many rads from that sort of thing anyway, and you can always use a handy radaway item whenever your rads get uncomfortably high.
  
  * The Professional (Sneak 70): This perk increases sneak-attack critical damage by 20% if you're using a one-handed gun or energy weapon. This can be useful to sneaky characters since a successful sneak attack always scores a sneak-attack critical. (Remember that your stealth indicator must read "[HIDDEN].") However, some stealth specialists may prefer to use melee or unarmed weapons for close-up attacks and powerful two-handed rifles for long-range attacks, in which case this perk is useless.
  
  * Shotgun Surgeon (Guns 45): With this perk, using a shotgun on any enemy will effectively lower his damage threshold by 10 points. In other words, you'll do an extra 10 points of damage to him. The fact that you have to use a shotgun to get the damage bonus makes this perk one that only shotgun specialists will value.
  
  * Toughness (Endurance 5): This perk can be taken twice to add 3 to your damage threshold per perk level. What a rip-off! It would take two precious level-up perks to get a measly +6 DT, which would mean that a mere 6 points are subtracted from the damage you take from each hit. Foo!
  
  * Vigilant Recycler (Science 70): With this perk, you recover more drained energy weapon ammunition and have more efficient recycling recipes at workbenches. This would only be useful to energy weapon specialists who use workbenches a lot.
  
  
  This is where perk recommendations start to diverge widely based on what type of character you're trying to build. The only perks that would be useful to everyone are Bloody Mess and Toughness, and they're not all that great. If your character won't benefit much from Demolition Expert, The Professional, or Shotgun Surgeon, then either take Bloody Mess or something you want from the level 4 perk list.
  

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