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Fallout 3 Hints
Perk Tips
1 of 16: Since there's basically no limit to how high you can level up now, increasing your XP as much as possible is a major priority. Therefore, you should take the Swift Learner perks on your first three level-ups.
2 of 16: At level 5, take the Educated perk so you can start getting bonus skill points on level-ups. You're bound to get all of your skills up to 100 by level 30 or so no matter how you do things, but it's important to be able to pump lots of points into certain skills early on. For the same reason, take the Comprehension perk at level 6.
3 of 16: At level 7, get the Black Widow perk so you can start doing 10% more damage to all male NPCs. That will be very useful against raiders and such, plus all the Enclave forces you'll have to fight during the last few main quests and the Broken Steel quests.
4 of 16: For levels 8 and 9, take the Bloody Mess and Entomologist perks, since they're two more damage-increasing perks. The more of those you get early on, the easier getting combat XP will be. (Note that Entomologist requires a Science skill of 40, so be putting level-up points into it and/or finding its bobblehead and skill books prior to level 9.)
5 of 16: Get Finesse at level 10 to increase your critical chance, then get Strong Back at level 11 so you can carry more loot. (Yeah, your main priority is getting XP and surviving combats, but being able to haul more stuff to merchants to raise money is also important.)
6 of 16: While allocating your skill points for those level-ups, be sure that you get your Sneak skill up to 50 by the time you reach level 12. Go get some skill books and the Sneak bobblehead if you have to. Any character can benefit hugely from the Silent Running perk, and level 12 is the earliest you can get it.
7 of 16: Be sure to get your Explosives skill up to 60 before you reach level 13 so you can get the Pyromaniac perk to increase your damage with flamers, Firelance, and shishkebabs. Sneak around and get the Explosives bobblehead and some Explosives skill books if you have to, avoiding combat and quests to keep from leveling up too soon.
8 of 16: You may then have to do the same thing for Science and Medicine, since you'll want them both to be 60 or higher when you reach level 14. That'll allow you to take the Cyborg perk, which increases several things, including damage resistance and the Energy Weapons skill. At level 15, take the Toughness perk to further increase your damage resistance.
9 of 16: Take Better Criticals at level 16 to increase the damage that your critical hits do, and Robotics Expert at level 17 so you can do more damage to robots. For levels 18 and 19, take the Demolition Expert perk to increase the damage your explosives do.
10 of 16: At level 20, get the Ninja perk, which requires Sneak and Melee Weapons skills of 80 each. It increases critical chance and sneak attack critical damage with melee and unarmed weapons.
11 of 16: Get the final Demolition Expert perk at level 21, then get the Deep Sleep perk at level 22 so you can get the Well Rested XP bonus from any bed anywhere. That'll help you get more XP without requiring you to pay for a bed or return home all the time.
12 of 16: Get Paralyzing Palm at level 23 so you can have fun using V.A.T.S. and unarmed weapons to paralyze enemies and pound on them while they're down.
13 of 16: Next, take a look at your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes. Count up all the ones that aren't 10 yet, then subtract your result from 10 to see how many times you need to use the Intense Training perk before you reach level 29. If you've been following these guidelines closely, you won't have any attributes at 10, so you'll only have to do three Intense Trainings, allowing you to take two other perks before you reach level 29 (I suggest Life Giver and Adamantium Skeleton).
14 of 16: At level 29, take the Here and Now perk, since this is your last chance to do so. You'll immediately reach level 30, allowing you to take the Almost Perfect perk to get all of your less-than-9 attributes up to 9. I hope you've already gotten all of the attribute bobbleheads, since you'll need to get all of your still-9 attributes up to 10 using Intense Training, not bobbleheads. If there are any attribute bobbleheads you haven't picked up yet, don't get them until after you get their attributes up to 10 with Intense Training.
15 of 16: As for what to take for perks after level 30, you'll have to do those remaining Intense Trainings eventually, and may prefer to do them right away -- especially the one for Strength. Other good perks to get soon are Scrounger (for more ammo from containers), Fast Metabolism (for more healing from each stimpak used), Quantum Chemist (so you can convert Nuka-Colas into quantums for making nuka-grenades), and Solar Powered (so you can slowly heal while out in the sunlight).
16 of 16: You might also want to take the three Iron Fist perks soon, since they're the only damage-increasing perks left unless you count Nuclear Anomaly (and you shouldn't). If you like V.A.T.S. a lot, you might want to pick up all the good V.A.T.S.-related perks that have been passed by.
