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A good place to begin understanding Fallout: New Vegas is to quite simply delve into the game's statistical background. Like many RPGs, just about everything that happens in Fallout: New Vegas is determined by numerical statistics, behind-the-scenes dice rolling, and how various numbers match up with one another in order to give advantages or disadvantages to just about every person, action and scenario in the entire game.

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Near the beginning of the game, you'll be introduced to the outlying, basic statistical system in New Vegas, which is called S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Obviously, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is an acronym, and it stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. While there are a more complicated and more expansive set of statistics that live within S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (which we will discuss shortly), S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is, for now, what we will concentrate exclusively on. The brief explanations below are ripped from the game itself, allowing you to understand better just what each statistic directly affects. We'll then discuss the skills in more depth, and talk about why or why not a skill may or may not be important for you.


"Strength is a measure of your raw physical power. It affects how much you can carry, the power of all melee attacks, and your effectiveness with many heavy weapons."

Even if you don't intend on fighting with melee weapons or your bare fists, there's still something to be said about raising your Strength to a pretty high level in the game. What this all depends on is whether or not you'll be exploring extensively, and whether or not you intend on carrying a lot of equipment at one time. Because if you're not playing with a melee/bare fists slant, your Strength will really only determine your "raw power" strictly in terms of how much equipment you can carry. As you'll find out sooner rather than later as you begin to experience Fallout: New Vegas, carrying a lot of equipment around with you isn't only beneficial, but actually outright integral to your long-term success. Thus, a high Strength statistic is worth your consideration, even if it comes at the detriment to another S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skill.


"A high Perception grants a bonus to the Explosives, Lockpick and Energy Weapons, and determines when red compass markings appear (which indicate threats)."

Perception is one of those statistics that you'll want to dump at least some points into without giving it too much credence... at least unless you intent to specialize exclusively in the three realms which Perception will specifically help you master. That's because Perception helps the all-important red threat markers appear on your HUD quickly, which will prove to be extremely useful when you're stalking about unfamiliar or dangerous environments. Without those red compass markers, enemies you're unaware of will be able to sneak up on you and strike at you without much warning time, which could prove to be disastrous, especially later in the game. But again, if you're wanting to use Energy Weapons and have a nice Lockpicking skill, for instance, Perception will also prove to be beneficial.


"Endurance is a measure of your overall physical fitness. A high Endurance gives bonuses to health, environmental resistances, and the Survival and Unarmed skills."

Out of all of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills, Endurance is probably one of the more unimportant ones, though it certainly caters to gamers who want to craft characters in a very specific mold. It's true that Endurance's base advantages rest almost entirely in bonuses to health and environmental resistances (so the former allows you to sustain more damage, while the latter will allow you to, for instance, become radiated more slowly), but if you want to play as an unarmed character, relying in totality on your fists to do damage, Endurance might be a good statistic for you to jack-up. Your Survival skill will inherently increase if you do this, too, though most gamers won't find much of an important use for it.


"Having a high Charisma will improve people's disposition towards you, and give bonuses to both the Barter and Speech skills."

If you want to see and do everything the game has to offer, you're going to want to concentrate on raising your Charisma skill at least to moderate levels. Charisma's usefulness is easy enough to identify, since high Charisma will give your character significant, permanent bonuses to your Barter and Speech skills. Now, to a novice, Barter and Speech sound like the most boring and unimportant skills imaginable, especially when you compare them to skills like Guns, Explosives, and Sneak. But having a high Speech skill, as you'll find out later, will allow you to use your words to convince people to speak with you, opening up many more options for you. And Barter will allow you to do the same, mostly with merchants, bringing down costs and opening up new conversation trees and higher bounties for work done. So in other words, Charisma is quite, quite important, especially if you intend on seeing the game in its entirety. Don't underestimate it!


"Intelligence affects the Science, Repair and Medicine skills. The higher your Intelligence, the more Skill Points you'll be able to distribute when you level up."

Out of all seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills in the game, Intelligence might prove to be the most useful and important. A high Intelligence not only gives you permanent boosts to other skills that are actually quite important in their own right, including Science, Repair and Medicine, but it also gives you a boost to earned skill points. Jacking-up your Intelligence will therefore net you more skill points to spend on each and every other non-S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skill in the game upon leveling up. But let's put this into context to truly stress how important Intelligence is. Let's assume that you start out the game right away with a high Intelligence. The level cap is thirty, so leveling up with a high Intelligence will net you let's say three extra skill points per level. That's around ninety extra skill points you'd have at a high Intelligence level as opposed to a mediocre Intelligence level, which will only make your character much stronger much quicker. Food for thought (pardon the pun)!


"Agility affects your Guns and Sneak skills, and the number of Action Points available for V.A.T.S."

There are certainly arguments to be made both for and against Agility. On one hand, Agility does give you statistical bonuses of a permanent nature to both Guns and Sneak. The former is going to be a very important skill for most people (the latter not so much, especially with Stealth Boys at your disposal), so that might be reason enough to dump some points into Agility. But for us, a high Agility means much more, since action points available for V.A.T.S. (which stands for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) is determined by how high your Agility is. If you're a gamer who intends on really relying on V.A.T.S. (as opposed to simply running and gunning), Agility might be worth a second look.


"Raising your luck will raise all of your skills a little. Having a high Luck will also improve your critical chance with all weapons."

Luck is unequivocally the most unimportant of the seven S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, and is worth siphoning points out of to distribute anywhere else. Luck may initially sound appealing to you since it will raise all of your non-S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills a little bit, but that in itself flies against what Fallout: New Vegas seems to stress. Unless you hit the level cap with a high Intelligence level (thus garnering as many skill points as humanly possible from each level-up), and unless you find all of the game's Skill Books, you'll never max-out all of your skills anyway. Instead, you should be concentrating on what's important for your type of character, and what isn't. There's no type of character that needs to max-out every stat-type. As for Luck's caveat with critical damage, it's not nearly important enough to have a high Luck, either. Critical strikes will come on their own regardless, albeit at a much slower clip.

There is one minor positive that is not mentioned, but also is only heresay by players. It appears that Luck effects the outcome of gambling slightly, so if you plan on being a high roller, leave your Luck at a mininum of the base level.

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Apart from the seven base skills associated with S.P.E.C.I.A.L., there are thirteen ancillary skills that will more immediately and regularly affect how your character progresses, and how the game plays out for you. Each of these skills, discussed below, have some sort of minor connection with S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (usually in terms of any bonuses they may achieve from S.P.E.C.I.A.L.), but otherwise, they are completely independent. You can level up each skill to 100, which maxes that skill out entirely, but as you'll find out, skill points aren't plentiful. You'll receive some for leveling up, and can distribute them how you'd like. As mentioned earlier, you'll receive more skill points if your Intelligence is higher. But how should you distribute these points? Well, that's entirely up to you. Keep reading to find more information on each skill, and whether or not they're important to pay attention to for your particular character.


"The Barter skill affects the prices you get for buying and selling items. In general, the higher your Barter skill, the lower your prices on purchased items."

The Barter skill is generally a mid-level skill that most gamers will find somewhat important. The base usefulness of this skill is in terms of money spent and earned; that is to say, you'll be able to sell things for more money and buy things for less money with a considerable Barter skill. However, Bartering will also let your player open up new conversation trees, earn side quests that would otherwise be unattainable, and even raise the bounties and payments for various quests and tasks you take care of for others. Certainly worth considering.

Energy Weapons

"The Energy Weapons skill determines your effectiveness with any weapon that uses Small Energy Cells, Micro Fusion Cells, EC Packs, or Flamer Fuel as ammunition."

Some of the best weapons in the game are energy-type firearms, though there are plenty of weak and mid-level laser weapons in the game, too. It's probably a good idea to distribute at least some of your hard-earned points into Energy Weapons, though how much you do so should solely depend on whether you intend on using standard firearms (governed by the Guns skill), or laser and energy-based weapons (governed by this skill). You could always juggle both skills, too, though doing so will diminish the overall usefulness of both.


"The Explosives skill determines the ease of disarming any hostile mines and the effectiveness of any explosive weapon (all mines, all grenades, Missile Launcher, Fat Man, etc.)"

If you're not interested in using explosives-based weapons, then you can all but ignore the Explosives skill and dump your points somewhere else. However, it's important to keep in mind that the Explosives skill is an overarching and far-reaching set of weapons that you will almost certainly have at your disposal from very early in the game. Mines and grenades are considered explosives, of course, but so are weapons that shoot explosives, such as missile launchers. Because of this, and because of the fact that a moderate Explosives skill will allow you to disarm enemy mines and other explosives, you may deem it necessary to put at least some points into Explosives, even if only for that very reason.


"Guns determines your effectiveness with any weapon that uses conventional ammunition (.22 LR, .357 Magnum, 5mm, 10mm, 5.56mm, .308, .45-70 Gov't etc.)"

Dumping skill points into Guns is basically a no-brainer. Unless you're going to depend entirely on unarmed or melee combat, or have a decidedly one-sided slant towards energy weapons, Guns is going to be one of those skills that you'll want to max-out as soon as possible. That's because the Guns skill basically dictates how well you'll be able to wield all bullet-using firearms in the entire game, which will be the bread-and-butter of most people's experience with the title. Unless you're playing as an unusual type of character, don't hesitate to dump lots of points into Guns. It'll inevitably make you all the more of a powerhouse.


"The Lockpick skill is used to open locked doors and containers."

Veterans of Fallout 3 will know damn well that not dumping points into the Lockpick skill from the get-go will prove to be a huge mistake. Your lockpicking skills are obviously determined by Lockpick, and this doesn't sound very glamorous, but indeed the exact opposite is actually true. There are locked doors and locked safes all over the Mojave Wasteland, and without a good lockpicking skill, you simply won't be able to take advantage of any of these locked doors and safes. This will lock you out from exploring new areas (excuse the pun), finding new items, undertaking and completing new side quests, and more. Believe us when we say, by the time you reach level thirty and have found all of the supplementary skill books, you better hope your Lockpick has reached 100. If not, there will still be locked doors and safes around the Wasteland that are locked-up. And you won't be able to do anything about it!


"The Medicine skill determines how many Hit Points you'll replenish upon using a Stimpak, and the effectiveness of Rad-X and RadAway."

In many ways, the Medicine skill is in the eye of the beholder. Raising your Medicine skill to the upper reaches towards the number 100 will allow all curative items in your inventory to become more potent. So when you use a Stimpak to recover lost health, you'll recover even more lost health than you otherwise would have. The same thing with Rad-X and RadAway, which will work longer and become more potent. It's probably not a bad idea to dump some points into Medicine, but there are certainly other skills that should be more weighted and filled-in more rapidly.

Melee Weapons

"The Melee Weapons skill determines your effectiveness with any melee weapon, from the simple lead pipe all the way up to the high-tech Super Sledge."

This should go without saying, but the Melee Weapons skill will be completely and utterly useless to you unless you intend on using melee weapons with regularity. Melee weapons include things that are held in the hand and are used directly to strike other enemies (like a sword, knife, nightstick or axe, amongst many, many other weapons, both regular and makeshift). Now, you may still want to dump twenty or thirty points into Melee Weapons just to be safe. After all, having a melee weapon with you if you run out of ammunition is probably a good idea. But there's absolutely, positively no reason to dump more points than that into it if you don't intend on using melee weapons more regularly.


"The Repair skill allows you to maintain any weapons and apparel. In addition, Repair allows you to create items and Guns ammunition at reloading benches."

Having a good Repair skill, as well as plenty of like items in which to make repairs, will be useful when you're out and about exploring, and will also go a long way to saving you potentially tens upon tens of thousands of Bottle Caps in having to pay others to make repairs for you. The Repair skill will allow you to more adequately take like items in your inventory and combine them to make one of those same items, but in better condition. So if you have to 10mm Pistols, both in various states of (ill-)repair, you can combine them with Repair to make one 10mm Pistol that's in better shape than both weapons initially were. How good of shape that 10mm Pistol is in, of course, will depend not only on the condition of both weapons before combining them, but also on your Repair skill in general.


"The Science skill represents your combined scientific knowledge, and is primarily used to hack restricted computer terminals. It can also be used to recycle Energy Weapon ammunition at workbenches."

While the Science skill has multiple uses, including the ability to recycle old Energy Weapon ammo into new, more useful rounds, the Science skill still has only one really important function, identical to its function in Fallout 3. That function governs your ability to hack computers. Even though the world is now a nuclear wasteland, and even though it has been for some two-hundred years (in-game, that is), there are still working Apple II-like computers all over the place. Many of these computers are locked up, and only with a high Science skill will you be able to hack these computers and find their contents. Hacking computers can disable robotic enemies and turrets, net you all sorts of important information, and even unlock a whole slew of side quests. Don't sleep on the Science skill, even if you think it sounds nerdy. It's one of the game's most important overall skills to master.


"The higher your Sneak skill, the easier it is to remain undetected, steal an item, or pick someone's pocket. Successfully attacking while undetected grants an automatic critical hit."

The Sneak skill is one of the only skills in the game where the usefulness of it is in the eye of the beholder. Sneaking is super useful, especially in Hardcore Mode, since remaining undetected by enemies will allow you to get the all-important jump on foes during combat (which will give you a critical hit 100% of the time). Sneaking also allows you to stealthily pick pockets and otherwise remain undetected when doing things like stealing. But the somewhat-expensive and rare items called Stealth Boys basically do the same thing for you. So unless you intend on using Sneak-based movements and attacks pretty exclusively throughout the game, it may not be a good idea for you to dump too many points into Sneak when those points may be better used elsewhere. But that all depends on how you intend on playing through the game from beginning to end.


"The Speech skill governs how much you can influence someone through dialogue, and gain access to information they might otherwise not want to share."

Believe us when we say, Speech might be the single most important non-combat skill in the entire game. Your Speech skill should unequivocally reach 100 as soon as humanly possible, since with a perfect, 100-rated Speech skill, not a single character in the Mojave Wasteland can resist your charms and powers of persuasion when otherwise given the option to. "Speech Checks" are common in Fallout: New Vegas, and without a high Speech skill, you won't be able to get what you want out of many characters. Simply for the sake of progression and nothing else, concentrate on raising Speech along with Lockpick, Guns and Science, and you'll be a powerhouse before very long.


"The Survival skill increases the Hit Points you receive from food and drink. It also helps you create consumable items at campfires."

The Survival skill is one of the few skills in Fallout: New Vegas that wasn't in the previous title, Fallout 3. And unfortunately, while the Survival skill might sound interesting, its usefulness is quite dubious at best. Food and drink become more potent with a high Survival skill, but that's not really important. After all, eating and drinking food and drink that's cumbersome to carry around in a limited inventory isn't as good as simply using healing items (most of which lack any weight whatsoever). Then again, a good Survival skill will also allow you to create more and more special items at campfires, another interesting new feature to the Fallout series that may or may not be useful for you.


"The Unarmed skill is used for fighting without a weapon, or with weapons designed for hand-to-hand combat, like Brass Knuckles, Power Fists, and Displacer Gloves."

And finally, we've come to the Unarmed skill. The Unarmed skill is, in a way, a little bit redundant. After all, a high Unarmed skill will undoubtedly complement the like-minded Melee Weapons skill. So if you're dumping points into one, you might as well dump points into the other as well. But the realm of the Unarmed skill will allow bare-handed combat to become stronger, as well as for weapons specifically designed to be worn on your hands, as opposed to weapons designed to be held by them. You should pretty easily know if this is a skill worth a point investment. As usual, it's all a matter of the weapons you intend on using, and in which category they fit.

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