Fallout 4: Best perks to get early in the game

It’s no surprise that Amazon’s Fallout has brought the entire franchise back into the spotlight. Exiting a vault for the first time is an eye-opening experience, whether you’re spinning up a new Fallout 4 character or entering the Commonwealth wasteland for the first time.

To get the best chance of surviving, you’ll need to know the best perks to get early in the game. These perks are handpicked to be useful for nearly every build, regardless of weapon type. Even if you’re charging down Super Mutants three times your size with a pool cue (though I’d advise against it), this selection of the best early-game Fallout 4 perks will carry their weight throughout the entire playthrough.

Idiot Savant

You’ve probably seen Fallout 4 players mention Idiot Savant for level grinding, and for good reason. The chance to multiply the experience from all sources by five makes for a much smoother leveling experience. Even without save scumming, Idiot Savant can carry you to level 30 quickly.

The downsides of Idiot Savant are easily manageable. You won’t have access to mod crafting perks such as Science or Gun Nut, but mods can still be acquired from vendors and weapons you find. You can always just increase your intelligence and take the perks you’d like while still benefitting from the occasional Idiot Savant proc, albeit at a less frequent rate. 

• Requires 5 Luck
• With 1 intelligence, rank 1 and 2 of Idiot Savant have an 11% chance of granting 3x and 5x experience respectively
• With every additional point of intelligence, the chance lowers by 1%
• By having 2 intelligence and eventually getting rank 2 of Idiot Savant, you have a 10% chance of getting 5x experience from every source while still being able to take one of the other most helpful perks in Fallout 4: Medic

Medic

No matter how much of a sweet-talking pacifist you may be, you’re going to take health or radiation damage in Fallout 4. This makes the Medic perk one of the highest impact perks for any build from early to end game.

Healing items can be expensive and difficult to stockpile early on, so increasing their efficiency makes an immense difference both in your survival and in your cap supply.

• Requires 2 Intelligence
• At rank 1, Stimpacks and RadAways will remove 40% of health and radiation respectively
• This bonus increases by 20% with every rank, up to 100%
• At rank 4, the healing rate increases

Lifegiver

One thing to note about Stimpacks is that they heal based on a percentage of your max health instead of a flat rate. That means that the higher your health pool, the more health each Stimpack effectively heals. Lifegiver doesn’t sound too exciting on paper, but it’s one of the most essential perks to have if you want an efficient and less anxious playthrough. 

• Requires 3 Endurance
• Each rank in Lifegiver provides an extra 20 flat maximum health. 
• At rank 3 however, it additionally grants the player a passive health regeneration ability. While the regeneration is slow and isn’t going to replace a Stimpack within the heat of battle, it can save you using a Stimpack to top off your health after taking a stray bullet or two. 

Toughness

Lifegiver and Medic work hand in hand, but add Toughness and you’ll be strong enough to taunt even Super Mutants. Toughness increases your damage resistance (DR) on all body parts, allowing you to get up to an additional 50 DR.

For example, a standard set of full combat armor grants 59 DR to all body parts. At Toughness rank 5, you’ll have nearly as much DR while naked. Pair Toughness with any set of armor to become truly tanky.

• Requires 1 Endurance
• Rank 1 grants 10 additional DR 
• Every additional rank adds 10 more, up to a maximum of 50 additional DR

Action Boy/Girl

In previous Fallout titles, action points were exclusively used in VATS, offering little reason to take action point perks if you weren’t using it. Fallout 4 expanded action points with the ability to sprint and assigned action point costs to…well, actions.

The last thing you want to do is run out of action points when you’re desperately trying to jump onto a rock to evade a Deathclaw. Action Boy/Girl won’t make you capable of outrunning a Deathclaw, but it’ll make you think that you can. 

At rank 3, you won’t have to stop for a breather as often and can typically regenerate the action point cost for jumping between each maneuver. These bonuses become even more valuable if you find yourself using VATS often or take VATS-related perks such as Blitz, Gun Fu, and Mysterious Stranger. 

• Requires 5 Agility
• At rank 1, action points regenerate 25% faster 
• Each rank adds an additional 25% up to 75% at rank 3

Strong Back

In any Bethesda game, you’re bound to find yourself overencumbered at some point. Rather than make the heartbreaking choice between dropping one of the dozen hunting rifles you’ve looted or the 28 typewriters you found, you can take the Strong Back perk. 

Some could argue that Strong Back isn’t a necessary perk since players could simply manage their inventory better. But, as my low-intelligence character would say, “Big number in bag make bigger money at vendor.”

• Requires 6 Strength
• At rank 1, Strong Back grants you an extra 25 carry weight 
• Rank 2 provides an additional 25 carry weight 
• Rank 3 grants you the ability to use action points to run while overencumbered
• Rank 4 by allows players to fast travel despite being overencumbered
• Rank 5 can only be acquired if players have the Far Harbor DLC, but it reduces the action point cost of running while encumbered by 50%

Scrounger

Finding ammo is essential in Fallout 4, but you’re probably not using a gun for every single ammo type. This means you can sell off surplus ammo in order to purchase supplies. Scrounger increases the chance of finding ammunition within containers, which is extremely noticeable in the early game when there are fewer ammo types in the loot table. 

There isn’t any way to craft ammo themselves without the Contraptions DLC, but even then, you’ll need to source the materials for the ammo recipes. This makes Scrounger valuable in the early game if you’re struggling to afford sufficient ammo along with Stimpacks, RadAways, and equipment upgrades.

• Requires 2 Luck
• Rank 1 provides a 40% increased chance to find ammunition in containers 
• Rank 2 and 3 provide an additional 30% chance each, up to 100%
• Rank 4 grants a base 5% chance to reload a “free” magazine or fusion core which scales higher based on the player’s luck attribute.

Black Widow/Lady Killer

Whether you’re playing through the main quest, the DLCs such as Far Harbor or Nuka-World, or you’re roaming the Commonwealth looking for trouble, one thing is certain: You’re gonna find yourself up against many more males than females in Fallout 4. For this reason, the Black Widow perk for female characters is more valuable than the Lady Killer version for males. 

Both perks only apply to humans, as Super Mutants and Synths are considered genderless. Female characters will find the flat damage bonus to be active much more often than their male counterparts, but both genders have enough enemies to make persuasion checks against that Lady Killer is still worth it.

• Requires 2 Charisma
• With either of the perks, you’ll deal an additional 5%/10%/15% more damage against the opposite gender at ranks 1/2/3. Additionally, the opposite gender becomes increasingly easier to persuade and intimidate with each rank.