Early Bird and Owned Bed

Early Bird is a trait which you can select at the start of the game and at the reset when leaving Goodsprings.

From 6 a.m. to noon, Early Bird gives +2 to every SPECIAL's base value.
From noon until 6 p.m., SPECIALs revert to their base values (plus any additions from gear, etc.).
From 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., EB subtracts 1 from every SPECIAL's base value.

To keep SPECIALs at their max, once you reach noon or close to it, you can Wait or Sleep long enough to take you forward to 6 a.m. the next morning.

Once you get to Novac, you can get an “owned bed” and get an XP bonus for 12 hours after sleeping in it (even for a 1-hour nap) at any time of the day. For example, if you sleep until 2 p.m., you will get a 10% bonus added to any XP you earn until 2 a.m. But I prefer to sleep until 6 a.m. in order to be consistent with EB so that I know when it gets close to 6 p.m., it’s time to be getting back to bed.

Sleeping until 6 a.m. also fits well with Early Bird since EB's benefits start at 6 a.m. The only problem is that while the owned bed bonus lasts for 12 hours, the EB benefit only lasts 6 hours - until noon. To get these two to work together at maximum efficiency takes a good understanding of each.

You are almost constantly earning XP, not just from missions, but from frequent XP (skill) checks where you normally get the amount of XP equal to or greater than the level of the skill shown. For example, if the game shows that it takes 50 Repair to fix something, if you do have Repair equal to 50 or more and choose that option, you get 50 XP plus any XP bonuses you have coming. You get 10% more for sleeping in an owned bed, and you get 10% for each of 3 levels of the Swift Learner perk you choose for a max possible XP bonus of +40%. This is HUGE! There are times when it seems like you level up every day.

When you level up, you boost your Skill levels so that it makes it possible to pass even more XP checks which accounts for the faster-than-usual level ups. In addition, higher Barter lets you accumulate caps faster, higher Guns lets you kill enemies more easily, etc. So the whole game becomes easier.

In contrast, since Early Bird boosts your Skills between 6 a.m. and noon, if you are outside of those times, it's only a problem if you expect to be doing something that will require the higher Skills.

For example, you get a lot of missions in Freeside (New Vegas) which are basically just running around talking to people, and even that doesn't require high Speech, so I don't worry about Early Bird hours. However, before turning in missions, I take a nap in a locally owned bed to boost XP.

Early Bird vs Sleep Bonus:

Early Bird bonuses affect Skill levels. Sleep Bonuses add 10% to XP every time XP is earned. When noon is reached, your EB bonuses disappear, but you still have 6 more hours of XP bonuses if you slept until 6 a.m.

When noon arrives, you can keep going and still get the XP bonuses for 6 more hours. The only cost is that a major shopping spree will cost you more because your Barter will go down and your Guns and Explosives abilities will decrease which may or may not matter, depending on who you are fighting, so you should schedule such activities accordingly.

When noon arrives and you lose the Early Bird bonuses, you can Wait for 18 hours to get to 6 a.m. where EB bonuses will kick in again. But if you started a sleep bonus at 6 a.m., it still works until 6 p.m. If you are not where you can sleep in an owned bed, you can Wait until 6 a.m. of the following morning for the sake of EB, but the sleep bonus will have expired, and it's never good to lose out on XP, so which do you do?

Once you get up over, say, level 15 using the walkthrough on this site, you will have accumulated enough Skill points that losing 1 or 2 of them when noon comes is not a big deal compared to losing the XP bonus. So it is probably better to lose the EB points at noon and keep the XP bonus going since XP chances come along frequently, assuming you have enough Skill points (including Skill magazines) to meet XP challenges, such as Speech, Repair, etc.

From midnight to 6 a.m., EB subtracts 1 point from each of your skills' base points. From 6 a.m. to noon, EB adds 2 points, so that is a 3-point difference in each skill point, which is very significant. Also, if you sleep in an owned bed starting at 6 a.m., the Well Rested bonus of 10% each time XP is earned stops at 6 p.m. So I would rarely want to keep going past 6 p.m. and virtually never go past midnight without waiting until 6 a.m.

Here are a couple of examples of dealing with EB and SB:

Come Fly With Me is at Repconn, which is a short walk from Novac where you have an owned bed, but the game still takes an hour for you to get there. So you should sleep until 5 a.m. which gives a Sleep Bonus from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. By the time you get to Repconn, it will be 6 a.m. and EB will kick in.

By the time you kill all the feral ghouls on the main floors and talk to Bright, it will be close to noon and you still have to clear the Nightkins (super mutants) out of the basement. If you don't Wait until 6 a.m., you will not have your full fighting Skills (Guns, Agility, etc.) But if you do wait until 6 a.m., you won't get the XP bonus for killing the Nightkins.

Fortunately, the hallway where the stairs lead down to the basement leads pretty quickly to the side entrance of the building. Just follow the hall until you get to a room, bear left to get to a door, turn left and go down the hall to some stairs down Take them down, turn right, follow the hall to the door on the left which exits to open air. Fast travel to Novac. Sleep until 5 a.m. Fast travel back, go up the stairs to the building entrance but circle left around the building to the door you exited from, and follow your tracks back to the stairs down to the basement.

(Tip: Anytime you know you are going to have to backtrack along a complicated path, pull a Hansel and Gretal. That is, have some unusual junk with you, such as pots and pans, and when you get to a place where you have to turn, drop a pot there so that when you come back, you'll see it and know to turn.)

After getting rid of the Nightkins, continue the mission until you get to where you have to leave to get thrusters for the rockets. Exit to open air, fast travel to Gibson's, get the thrusters.

Now this is where instinct used to tell me to go to Novac and sleep until 5 a.m. before finishing the mission. But the only relatively high skill that may be required is Speech of 50. If you can get that without Early Bird, then EB doesn't help, so you can skip sleeping.

However, when this mission is over, you get a huge amount of XP, so since you slept until 5 a.m., you have to be sure of getting through the end of the mission before 5 p.m.

Vault 3: This is a free quest given to you by Hsu at Camp McCarran. If you own a bed at the Wrangler in Freeside, or if you got the suite at Lucky 38, you can sleep there first; otherwise, the travel time to/from Novac makes sleeping in Novac not worthwhile.

When you get to the entry to V3, fast travel back to your bed and sleep, but this time you can fast travel right to V3. Enter and fight your way to the end, racking up XP until 5 p.m. Wait until 6 a.m. You have now lost the Well Rested bonus, but if you wish, you can exit the vault, fast travel to sleep and come back to continue.

The only place where you lose EB and the Well Rested bonus for a long time is Vault 34. It takes too long to get in and out of the Vault, so you can't easily go somewhere, sleep, and resume in V34, and you can't Wait while in V34 because of the constant radiation. This makes V34 harder, but it is still not all that difficult to survive (as long as you don't run out of RadAway).

Actually, because V34's radiation - regardless of the EB & SB problems - makes it such a PITA and because the armory is such junk, I've just been skipping it.

How Early Bird + Four Eyes Affects Skill Points:

Here are SPECIALs recommended for use with EB+FE when starting in Goodsprings (see SPECIALs): 

STR=3

PER=4

END=2

CHR=8

INT=10

AGI=6

LCK=7

Tot=40

Early Bird adds 2 points to each SPECIAL (to a maximum of 10) and Four Eyes initially subtracts 1 point from PER but then adds 2 to PER when you wear glasses for a net gain of 1. In the line below, PER started with a base of 4 then -1 +2 = 5. Also, nothing is added to INT because 10 is the max. 

STR= 3 + 2 = 5

PER= 4 -1+2=5

END= 2 + 2 = 4

CHR= 8 + 2 = 10

INT= 10 + 0 = 10

AGI= 6 + 2 = 8

LCK= 7 + 2 = 9

Tot = 40 -1+12=51

Travel Times:

I frequently sleep in Novac to get the Well-Rested XP bonus. I also use Early Bird so I try to do most of my work between 6 a.m. and noon. Since I usually have to travel elsewhere to do missions, I need to wake up in time to get where I’m going by 6 a.m., which means knowing how long it takes to get places. For example, to get from Novac to Majove takes 3 hours, so I want to sleep until 3 a.m. before fast traveling. EB doesn't start until 6 a.m. and lasts for 6 hours (until noon) while Well Rested starts as soon as I get out of bed (3 a.m.) and lasts for 12 hours (until 3 p.m.)

Here are a few times from Novac to other places:

Place:	Hours
Repconn	1
188 Traders	1
McCarran	2
Freeside	3
Majove	3

Remember that if you sleep to 3 a.m., it will be 6 a.m. when you get to Freeside, which is when your 6 a.m. to noon Early Bird works, but since the Well-Rested bonus starts when you get out of bed (3 a.m. in this case), that bonus will expire at 3 p.m.

It takes a little while to earn an owned bed at the Wrangler in Freeside, but you can get an owned bed from House immediately. Also, you can rent a bed at Wrangler for just $10.