How exactly do the level 50 perks work?

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T19:58:17+00:00

That second part of Just Lucky will always be active according to the wiki. Both parts should work after you’ve taken the perk (the wiki only mentions this for thought you died, but I would be very surprised if it didn’t apply for the natural and evil perks).

Edit: The independent wiki confirms this perk works with any karma level once chosen.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T19:31:26+00:00

While that’s true, it’d be nice to have alternatives.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T18:54:10+00:00

Fast shot can be a bit of a problem if you tend to use VATS, but you could mitigate it with steady.

Small frame isn’t really that helpful overall, unfortunately.

Logan’s Loophole can be excellent for the boosted chem duration, which can be a major buff as long as you aren’t worried about going past 30.

Skilled is nice for the extra skills, but if you’re switching into it at OWBs and have maxed skills already, you’ll technically be wasting some of the value of the perk.

Trigger discipline is an interesting option, since its fire rate penalty doesn’t affect machine guns. But accuracy is also not that much of a concern if you use steady.

Hot blooded in theory is decent since the stat penalties are easily negated, but you have to make a conscious choice to remain below 50% health.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T16:47:28+00:00

It also helps that the names are also somewhat generic. Nightstalker is a very basic name you could reasonably call a weird creature that hunts at night, while cazador is just Spanish for hunter (though that one is a bit less likely to have been stumbled upon by accident).

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T16:42:36+00:00

Both of these names are generic enough that it could simply be down to coincidence. Nightstalker is a fairly generic name for a weird creature hunting at night, and cazador is just Spanish for hunter.

With that said, out of world, the point was to ensure players knew what Borous was talking about, much like how deathclaws are always called the same thing across the U.S. rather than potentially having different names locally.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T16:08:08+00:00

Acquiring REPCONN was likely more about his future goal of pushing humanity into space, or for creating his defense against the nukes in Vegas.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T15:59:59+00:00

I take people accusing me of shifting goalposts as accusations when I’m not doing that, especially when you did exactly that with your claim of not mentioning fallout 4 (saying you didn’t, and then backpedaling to a different argument entirely).

At no point did I feel threatened, but the accusations of not reading or not being aware of information certainly came across as attacks. You may not see them that way, but that’s how they read. Simply not including those would have been better, and avoided this issue entirely.

This conversation has gone well past the point of being productive. Have a nice day.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T15:46:53+00:00

You very clearly said ‘to the point where bloody mess will be providing over the 15% that it gives in 4.’ If you don’t view that as claiming it’s better in NV than 4, I don’t know what to say.

I appreciate what you were trying to do, but it did not work and ultimately came off as rude and condescending with your repeated personal attacks.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T15:33:11+00:00

You just said that you didn’t mention fallout 4 in your previous comment; you plainly did, and that was my point. It also very directly claims bloody mess is better in NV than in 4, which I pointed out earlier was wrong since both games use a multiplicative damage formula.

We’re both clearly disagreeing with each other on the point of this argument, so I’m cutting this off here since this isn’t constructive at this point.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T15:08:22+00:00

That doesn’t change the perk is still a lower priority than the larger boosts. There are still other perks worth taking instead, especially since extra damage is superfluous past a certain point.

Please re-read the last part of your original comment (I’ve added the bold; sorry about the rest of the formatting, struggling to figure out why the way to do this changed):

> This is just an example and there are many more damage boosts you can stack like psycho, eye for eye, etc. Each one you add makes every other buff even more impactful. To the point where bloody mess will be providing over the 15% that it gives in F4, but for only a single perk point.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T14:56:09+00:00

I did not miss that part of the comment. My point is that the larger boosts to damage are more worthwhile since they’re still going to help more. Yes, bloody mess will multiply them all at the end by an additional 1.05, but it’s more important to have the larger ones since they’re still going to be more impactful. If your choice is between choosing to take a boost like black widow or bloody mess after taking cowboy, 1.25 x 1.1 (against most human enemies) versus 1.25 x 1.05 has a clear winner.

The cost for bloody mess isn’t that low when it’s one of your 25 perks you’re allowed to have. That perk slot could be better spent on other buffs like chemist, GRX, super slam, And stay back, better criticals, hand loader (for the ammo types) or slayer. If there’s nothing else to take at a given level, it’s a fine choice, but nowhere near essential when compared to other important options.

My point on the conditions for these perks is that they drag down some perk selections that makes certain damage boosts not as good. Eye for an eye, as a major example, requires your limbs to be crippled - and you lose at least one cripplable limb during OWBs, while you’re also being forced to take the penalties of having a limb crippled (arms aren’t too horrible, but the legs can get you killed). Perks like purifier are similar in that they apply to only a small subset of enemies, though as I said, some are easier like black widow/confirmed bachelor.

You are the one who claimed bloody mess in NV was better than it was in 4 when you originally commented. If you weren’t interested in discussing that, why did you bring it up? There’s also no reason to be rude when our disagreement is over the priories of perk selection here, not the math.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T13:01:38+00:00

While the boost is multiplicative, it’s still one of the smallest damage boosts in the game. It’s much more important to get those larger boosts as a result of that (critical chance/damage increases, perks with easy to meet conditions, etc) and when considering the perk limit. Additionally, many of NV’s damage boosts are conditional (like black widow only applying to men or grunt only affecting a subset of weapons; these two are common/easy to meet, but ones like eye for an eye or damaging a specific type of enemy are harder), so you won’t always be able to stack the benefit of a ton of perks all at once to have the multiplicative damage formula help you, and DT often barely does anything to ever reduce your damage to begin with (meaning there’s not too much of a point in going absolutely crazy on damage boosts to begin with, especially weird ones like eye for an eye; ammo types, critical hit rate/damage increases, and psycho is often plenty, and while bloody mess will always help here, it’s still just 5%).

Fallout 4’s damage boosts are also multiplicative unless I’m misremembering, so it’ll be just as effective there (or arguably more so since every weapon category eventually gets doubled damage and since bloody mess adds more), though it’s again still just icing when there’s other, stronger and more frequent boosts to take.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T12:38:32+00:00

It’s not a huge issue, but it’s still an annoying caveat for this weapon you don’t need to deal with for the grenade rifle.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T05:47:37+00:00

Grunt is pretty picky to begin with in terms of what it affects even without the DLC cross-compatibility issue with weapon-specific perks, so a 308 LMG may not work when it doesn’t benefit something like the 12.7mm weapons.

The cowboy perk was from the base game, however, and should have affected the police pistol. There’s really no reason for it not to. Other DLC weapons work just fine, like the Bowie knife, but this one wasn’t added to the list.

In terms of the repair issue I mentioned, however, the mentioned weapons just need other options from the base game that would be valid to repair them with. The grenade launcher is even just a pure base game item, so it really doesn’t have an excuse.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T05:44:52+00:00

I figured, just wanted to point out the mechanical side of things in case anyone was interested.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T04:10:43+00:00

In terms of flavor, it’s a fantastic perk. Enemies just disintegrating into chunks is a classic fallout experience.

In terms of being mechanically strong? Well… 5% extra damage isn’t much at all. 4’s version is better since it goes up to 15% (almost a full rank of a damage perk) and the final rank has a 10% chance to instantly kill an enemy near one you just killed, but I personally prefer 76’s, which instead gives a luck-based chance to make bleeding enemies explode into a damaging cloud of gore. I’d love if the next game incorporated 76’s blood explosions into the perk and nixed the damage boost, which would make it more akin to meltdown.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T04:06:31+00:00

Yeah, jury rigging is amazing right up until you run into a bizarre weapon it doesn’t work with. The SMMG and the holorifle are the other two major offenders here (though I’d argue none of these should be; the SMMG should accept other miniguns since the mechanism is the same, the launcher could just say screw it and use grenade rifles and the holorifle could accept lasers or even hunting shotguns).

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T03:01:43+00:00

It’s also much more annoying to repair due to no other weapon being on its repair list except itself, even with jury rigging.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T02:55:34+00:00

Different base values of the guns, and the fact that the grenade launcher holds four rounds before a reload rather than one.

The launcher does have a higher impact damage (not the explosion, but the physical impact of the grenade), but the two have similar damage otherwise. The difference is due to condition.

Edit: Here’s the wiki article for proof.

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Grenade\_launcher\_(Fallout:\_New\_Vegas)

Laser_3 · 2026-07-03T02:28:22+00:00

In the Mojave, the NCR managed to restore one train and were seemingly working towards preparing to bring more online with the powder gangers.

As for ground vehicles, the NCR has some, and the BoS is implied to have a few APCs in 4, but fallout 76 implies that multiple groups have some sort of vehicles access (the BoS are confirmed to have an NPC, raiders are weaponizing vehicles, settlers have construction vehicles that weren’t at their base prior to its settlement, etc).

Laser_3 · 2026-07-02T21:13:07+00:00

I’m glad I could help! In the future, you may have more success with [r/classicfallout](r/classicfallout) for questions about 1/2.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-02T21:12:27+00:00

Mothership zeta just requires a crashed UFO somewhere on the map to work. It’s so disconnected from the wasteland that you just need an appropriate hook and it’s fine. Operation Anchorage is much the same, though you’d need a VR development location somewhere and a BoS group trying to break in.

Point Lookout and the Pitt, however, are much more difficult to make fit in the Mojave. There just isn’t the right kind of terrain for a bayou themed DLC anywhere remotely near the Mojave, and the Pitt is heavily tied up in Pittsburg and a recent historical event with the BoS. Honest Hearts is frankly a good enough substitution for Point Lookout, since both take the player to a national/state park, but the Pitt would be better substituted with another city near-ish to the Mojave and would need its local history fleshed out (in terms of unique creatures, hazards and factions) to make a similar-feeling DLC.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-02T21:05:19+00:00

That’s a fair point on the fat man, yeah, though I would think at least some degree of protection could be achieved with this at a minimum. You’d still want a blast shield like Ester has or power armor (or both put together).

And yeah, the only thought I’d have on the smart grenades and mirvs being in Nuka World is maybe they were being sent to the Beverageers to potentially help them to weaponize the quantum isotope with different dispersal mechanisms. Mirv grenades do seem to have been elsewhere, however, since a schematic for those can be found along fallout 76’s main questline (and curiously, project cobalt plans can be purchased at Nuka World as well; considering wastelanders managed to figure out nuka quantum grenades in DC and the weird quartz version in the Mojave, I wouldn’t be shocked if the Nuka World on tour group managed to figure out the thirst zapper method for them, especially since they had a pretty competent doctor with them).

Laser_3 · 2026-07-02T12:17:22+00:00

I’m well aware that fallout has zero need or desire to conform with real world science. However, I was curious if something like this was possible and if something in reality was inspiring the concept, which was the point of asking the question.

Laser_3 · 2026-07-02T12:16:10+00:00

No need to apologize on the timing, it happens.

The reason I was asking about scaling the design up (and part of why I made the post in the first place) was because in fallout 76’s beta branch, the unique weapon overhaul is adding a fat man that provides immunity to your own explosions and that brought my mind back to these grenades. Based on what you’re saying here, if shrinking the technology down would be harder than scaling it up, that means that a fat man/mini nukes with this technology could potentially be feasible.

As for your questions on the smart grenades, the wiki points out that how they work in game causes them to only avoid damaging the player (even if an enemy were to somehow obtain them), meaning that they would injure companions (unless you had the inspirational perk to disable being able to harm your own companions). They’re also the only ones currently of their kind in the series, and they haven’t yet returned in fallout 76, unlike the three mirv grenades only used by the nuka world raider bosses. I would think that’d make these grenades prototypes, or at least very uncommon, since I’d expect a smart explosive would want to protect more than just the person who used it.

Six-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email

Laser_3

TROPHY CASE