SPECIALs and Perks

Initial Set-up:

When the Vault-Tec agent comes around, you will get a chance to set your SPECIAL points. Before you leave the vault, you will get another chance (and last chance in the game) to change them. This gives you an opportunity to temporarily get SPECIAL points which will maximize your game before leaving the vault.

The only two things you will be doing on your way out of the vault are killing radroaches, which earns you a bit of XP, and picking up loot, which gains an even smaller amount of XP. While the XP doesn't amount to a lot, you may as well set Intelligence to 10 to maximize it, then you can change it back before leaving the vault. And you may as well set strength to 10 for melee-ing the radroaches.

Here is where I usually put my points when leaving the vault. Also shown are the main perks I get for each. All the SPECIALs except STR and CHR are set to the lowest level with which you can get the desired perks. STR and CHR are set higher to maximize their additional benefits.

There is no one right way to play F4. If you search the Internet you will find many different builds (distribution of SPECIAL points and perks). The best thing about F4 is that you can play it however you want to and still do okay in the game. This build is just for a normal game in which you use guns and power armor.

Also, if you want to follow the walkthrough here called Getting The Best Weapons Early, you should use the following specs:

6 Strength - Armorer (requires STR=3). High strength lets you carry more loot.
I use the SPECIAL magazine in Sanctuary to raise STR to 7.
4 Perception - Locksmith (PER=4) and Demolition Expert (PER=5)
You get a Perception bobblehead early on when you meet Garvey, taking PER to 5.
6 Charisma - Cap Collector, Lone Wanderer (CHR=3)
High charisma gets better prices, passes speech checks.
7 Intelligence - VANS, Gun Nut (INT=3), Hacker (INT=4), Science (INT=6), Chemist (INT=7)
2 Agility - Commando (AGI=2), Sneak (AGI=3)
2 Luck - Scrounger (LCK=2)

Agility needs to be 3 for Sneak, but I feel like the high Strength (for carrying more loot) and Charisma (for getting better prices at merchants and for passing speech checks) are more important. If desired, Agility can be increased later in place of taking a perk.

I leave Endurance at 1 because its perks are nowhere near as useful as others. For example, some people love AquaBoy because it lets you swim underwater without needing to come up for air and without getting radiation. I've played F4 many times without it and never once felt the need for it, and it takes 6 points to get it - 5 for Endurance and 1 for the perk.That means you would have to level up 6 times to get those points back to put in other areas where they are very much needed.

As for the effects of Endurance itself: Endurance is the measure of overall physical fitness. It affects your total health and the action point drain from sprinting. Well, I make a ton of health remedies at the Cooking Station and Chemistry Station and I take them if my health gets low. I virtually never take a Stimpak. With the Spray n Pray and Overseer's Guardian weapons, I virtually never use VATS. Even running never is a problem.

See the Perks page for which Perks to get at each Level Up. As you can see on that page, once you reach Level 26, you can't get higher ranks of your essential Perks until your level is quite a bit higher, so you can use those levels (26 - 31, for starters) to get less important Perks you would like to have - even Action Boy.

At higher levels, it takes longer to level up, so I would use those unassigned levels to max out intelligence which lets you level up faster. Next I would max out strength for greater carrying capacity, though I already have a ton of carrying capacity, so this is not critical.

A lot of people are adjusting their SPECIALs for the patch 1.5 Survival Mode, increasing Endurance in particular. I left the above points the same and had no problems.

Boosting Your SPECIALs:

While there are exploits/cheats which can be used to up your SPECIAL levels, this page is about using standard methods to increase them. (Many of the exploits were removed with patch 1.4.)

X-cell adds 2 points to every SPECIAL category. Locations of it are shown here.

Legendary armor can be found which adds point(s) to various SPECIAL categories, but it is not shown here because the really good stuff doesn't drop until later in the game, if ever.

WARNING: If you put on apparel which boosts SPECIAL stat(s) and then put on Power Armor, you lose the boosts. That means you could go to a vendor expecting to get great price discounts, for example, but still be paying list price.

The fix is simply to take off the power armor before bartering or doing XP-generating activities. For example, if you are getting ready to turn in a mission, take off the power armor and change into intelligence-boosting gear first.

Likewise, if you already know that a conversation with another character will contain a speech check, you can put on your charisma-boosting gear first. And even if a speech check comes up when you are unprepared, you can back away from the other character until the speech choices go away, change gear, then go forward and resume the conversation.

Maps and map coordinates for places mentioned here can be looked up on this page.

Strength:

Strength is important for Melee builds. In this guide we don't Melee, but it is still important because it also determines how much gear/loot you can carry. This is important if you are picking up supplies with which to build settlements, but it is equally important for getting loot to trade for ammo, weapons, etc. I also pick up a lot of supplies for use at the Cooking and Chemistry stations.

Here are things which let you carry more:

Pocketed armor. See the Armor work bench (if you are not using Power Armor).
Power armor calibrated shocks (for legs) let you carry 50 pounds more per leg.
Military paint applied to all 6 pieces of a set of power armor adds 1 to Strength and 12 pounds to carry weight limit.
Companions, including Dogmeat, can carry 100 pounds for you. The trade-off is that they spend 80% of their time getting in your way and otherwise annoying you.
Lone Wanderer perk increases the amount you can carry (+50, then +100) and reduces the damage you get when not accompanied by a companion (other than Dogmeat, giving you the benefits of a companion and this perk).
Strong Back perk increases carry weight (+25, then +50). As you can see, the Lone Wanderer perk gives you twice the benefit (more than twice since you also get reduced damage). This puts Strong Back perks way down the list of perks to get.
Grilled Radstag lets you carry 25 more pounds for 60 minutes - more than long enough to get back home, though in the game, 25 pounds isn't much.
Alcohol lets you carry 10 more pounds - hardly enough to matter.
Other drugs may increase your strength, which also increase your carry weight, but they also decrease your intelligence, causing you to earn less XP than you otherwise would. An exception is X-Cell which increases all your SPECIALs by 2.

Also, before spending Perks on something like Strong Back, keep in mind that when you are traveling around and find that you are nearing your carry limit, if you are at or near a site which appears on the map, you can fast travel back home, dump your excess stuff, and fast travel back. And while you are there, you can repair or upgrade your gear, restock ammo, etc.

In addition to determining how much you can carry, Strength determines how well you can handle heavy weapons.

Charisma:

Charisma is widely referred to as unneeded and left at 1, but Charisma is hugely beneficial for buying high-priced weapons and other gear. The higher your charisma, the better are the prices from merchants. In addition, the Cap Collector perk gets you even better prices.

High charisma (along with Charisma increasing gear and drugs) also let you pass the highest levels of speech checks which can get you more money, more XP, etc.

You can improve prices further by wearing and eating specific items which affect Charisma in general or Bartering in particular. Commonly found items with Charisma benefits include

suits, dresses (+2 CHR),
some hats (+1),
some eyeglasses (+1),
most alcoholic drinks (+1).

Just those five bonuses will bring prices down by 33%, such as from 900 caps to about 600. And the benefit is even greater when you are selling, since a 600 cap item increases to 900, which is a 50% increase. I always carry these items with me because you never know when you might meet a trader or when a speech check will come up requiring higher charisma to be successful.

Grape Mentats gets you 10% better prices when bartering, which is odd because they supposedly increase Charisma by 5 (for 8 minutes), but as just seen, +5 Charisma from other sources brings Charisma down by 33%, not 10%.

Day Tripper temporarily increases Charisma by 3. It is also a drug, but it cannot be crafted and is fairly scarce. Here are some places it can be found.

Another rare drug which cannot be crafted is X-Cell. It increases all SPECIAL traits by 2 for a limited period of time. Because both X-Cell and Day Tripper are so rare, you cannot routinely use them the way you can Grape Mentats.

However, the only time I have used either X-Cell or Day Tripper is early in the game before being able to make a big supply of Grape Mentats, such as when getting the Overseer's Guardian and Spray n' Pray.. A Grape Mentat lowers prices as much as taking X-Cell and Day Tripper combined.

There is a limit to how much the price of things can be reduced, even if Charisma goes up. In the example below, once the price of the Spray n' Pray hits 1200, additional increases in charisma have no effect. If you wear +4 charisma gear and take a grape mentat, you have reached the maximum discount, so drinking beer or taking other drugs will not help.

To avoid wasting scarce drugs, save before taking them and compare prices before and after taking a drug to make sure prices actually go down.

Here is an example starting with Charisma=6 and the first rank of Cap Collector. Note that drinking beer and taking X-cell is +3 charisma, the same as just taking a Day Tripper, and thus they have the same effect on prices. However, Grape Mentats increases Charisma by 5 but only improves prices by 10%, as seen for Charisma totalling 12, Grape Mentat combinations are shown separately.

While X-cell and Day Tripper "stack" (both can be taken and their effects will add together), two or more items of the same type, such as beer and Gwenet Stout, do not stack, nor would taking two grape mentats.

Fun Fact: Each 1 point increase in Charisma (excluding increases caused by Grape Mentats) lowers the price in this example by 135. So putting on gear for +4 Charisma lowers the price 540 caps, or 4x135. So the more points you put into Charisma, the higher the discount each point earns.

And although Grape Mentats add 5 to Charisma, which should be 675 caps (135 x 5), the game supposedly gives you 10% better prices, which in this example should be 234 caps (10% of the first line cost). Yet the chart shows that it gives you a discount to 1499, or 841 off, which is a discount of 36%. (This is as of patch 1.5.) But each point added to Charisma after taking a Grape Mentat only gives 122 caps instead of the 135 caps each point gets if you do NOT take a Grape Mentat. Strange...

Total CHR	Gear (+4)	Grape (+10%)	Beer (+1)	X-cell (+2)	DayTrip (+3)	Cost
6						2340
7			x			2205
8				x		2070
9					x	1935
9			x	x		1935
10	x					1800
11	x		x			1665
12	x			x		1530
13	x				x	1395
13	x		x	x		1395
14	x		x		x	1200
15	x			x	x	1200
15	x	x				1200

11		x				1499
12		x	x			1377
13		x		x		1256
14		x	x	x	x	1200
21	x	x	x	x	x	1200

A Barter Bobblehead plus a Junktown Jerky Vendor magazine can be found side-by-side at the Longneck Lukowski's Cannery, each improving prices even more.

Here are the locations of other Junktown Jerky Vendor magazines for getting better and better prices:

Big John's Salvage: inside a caravan which is on top of some containers, on top a small table with a lantern.
Four Leaf Fishpacking Plant: in the basement locker room on the western side of the plant, on a bench.
Gwinnett Brewery: go up to the metal catwalk hut along the upper level. Climb the pipes and catwalks to reach the magazine near the northwest wall.
Mystic Pines: on a side table near the TV set along the western wall north of the main entrance inside.
Super Duper Mart: in an area right of the snack bar, to the right of a Milton General Hospital poster, on a magazine stand along the west wall.
Walden Pond: inside the pipe tunnel of the interior cave, on the barrel with the lantern on top.
Wreck of the FMS Northern Star: on the upper level of the ship, on a round table about mid-deck, next to a lantern..

Some legendary armor adds points to Charisma.

Intelligence:

Intelligence increases the XP you get for doing things, allowing you to level up faster. It also lets you get the V.A.N.S., Gun Nut, Hacker, Science, Chemistry, and Scrapper perks. To benefit from the XP bonus of Intelligence, put on gear and take drugs which affect Intelligence before crafting, building, or killing enemies or before turning in completed missions.

Sleep: An hour (or more) sleep gives you a 10% XP bonus which lasts about 6 hours.
Berry Mentat: Gives an XP bonus and highlights enemies (including turrets and mines).
Lab coat (+1 or +2 INT). The earliest place I can think of to get these is the secret vault in Vault 81.
Mechanic jumpsuit (+1),
Press cap (+1), Destroyer's Helmet (+1), Tinker headgear (+1), Ushanka hat (+1),
Liam's glasses (+2), road goggles (+1). Liam's glasses come very late in the game and we need this early. You get them when looting bodies/robots in the first battle of the Automatron DLC, but that's not early enough.
My preferred method is to visit Charles View Amphitheater with the SnP, shoot up the place, and check the bodies for Road Goggles. If the F4 gods are not with you, it may take many attempts to get them, but the last two times I played, they were there on the first try once and the second try the other time.
Be sure to save well away from the amphitheater (but still with it in sight) or reloading the save may not change anything. Do a couple of saves - one even further away - and if you see that everyone has the same gear each time, reload the save which was farther away.
There are 10 people at the amphitheater and any one of them could have the goggles. If you go in guns blazing, they may scatter and you might never find them all. I put on a Stealth Boy, sneak up the left stage stairs, go backstage, kill a couple of people who are usually back there, and this draws the others in that direction. All the bodies should be close to the stage.

Upgrade your power armor helmet with Internal Database and it raises intelligence by 2. This is important since any INT-increasing gear you wear is negated by wearing power armor over it.

You can craft Berry Mentats at a Chemistry workstation. They provide +5 INT. They only last 8 minutes, but that is a good bit of time in a combat situation and with the Chemist perk, they last from 12 minutes (rank 1) to 24 minutes (rank 4). Put them on your Favorites wheel and you can pop one when you are getting ready to kill a bunch of enemies or craft a bunch of stuff.

A side benefit to the Berry Mentats is that they highlight people, critters, turrets, etc., in red, even when they are on the other side of walls and floors. This gives you advance warning so that you can pop a Psycho Jet before entering a gun battle.

The Targeting HUD modification for power armor helmets also highlights people, etc., in red, but only when they are in line of sight. Also, it is known to make people hostile and thus can cause some missions to fail. A much better modification for helmets is the Internal Database.

Squirrel Stew provides a 2% XP bonus for 120 (real-life) minutes in addition to regenerating 105 HP. Unfortunately, squirrel bits needed to make squirrel stew are somewhat hard to come by, though some vendors sell them from time to time.