I just finished FO1 yesterday and immediately started playing FO2. It's great (they did keep a LOT of the old stuff, though...seems more like an expansion pack)! I can't believe I actually heard MUSIC in Arroyo. It gives the game so much more ambiance and mood. Anyway, let me get to my question. How viable is it to go through the game using solely unarmed combat? I just got out of the temple of trials, and something the guy I had to fight said made unarmed combat intrigue me. Can I do it? And, more importantly, will it be fun? Thanks!
FO2 Unarmed
- Thread starter NotHans
- Start date
Purly unarmed, hmm good luck! I've done both games using sledgehammers and such, but not unarmed..
You should choose melee. There are just few weapons like the power fist, brass knuckless and so on using the unarmed skill.
I'm now playing as Narg (the melee dude) and I use cattle prods, spears, knifes and other that kind of weapons. There are just more of them than the unarmed ones.
I'm now playing as Narg (the melee dude) and I use cattle prods, spears, knifes and other that kind of weapons. There are just more of them than the unarmed ones.
I have not really tried to beat the game unarmed in the sense NotHans is talking, without using the “unarmed” weapons like the powerfist or the brass knuckles. Looks like a difficult path, because the “advanced” unarmed moves seems to require too many action points for too little damage. But probably it’s doable at least against the regular enemies, if you choose to fight against the Enclave soldiers you can always use a megapowerfist.
I have played a game with an unarmed character using knuckles and powerfists and IMO it is not a difficult way of playing. Here’s a final analysis of my martial artist character. Prepare yourself for a loooong read. Those are her statistics just before facing the end boss:
......................................FALLOUT
........................VAULT-13 PERSONNEL RECORD
.........................05 February 2243..0727 hours
Name: Etta..............Age: 26................Gender: Female
Level: 35.................Exp: 605,402........Next Level: 630,000
::: Statistics :::
Strength: 10 ............Hit Points: 384/384........Sequence: 10
Perception: 07.........Armor Class: 045........... Healing Rate: 02
Endurance: 06.........Action Points: 12............Critical Chance: 007%
Charisma: 07 ..........Melee Damage: 05.........Carry Weight: 275 lbs.
Intelligence: 09........Damage Res.: 070%
Agility: 10.................Radiation Res.: 087%
Luck: 07.................. Poison Res.: 030%
::: Traits :::
Gifted
One Hander
::: Perks :::
Awareness
Bonus HtH Attacks
Bonus Move (2)
Better Criticals
Slayer
Action Boy (2)
Lifegiver (2)
Quick Pockets
Gecko Skinning
Dermal Impact Armor
Phoenix Armor Implants
Vault City Training
Expert Excrement Expeditor
::: Karma :::
Karma: 2127 (Savior of the Damned)
Champion
Prizefighter
Grave Digger
Made Man: Wright
::: Reputation :::
Klamath: Liked
Den: Accepted
Vault City: Idolized
Gecko: Idolized
Modoc: Accepted
Sierra Army Depot: Neutral
Broken Hills: Idolized
New Reno: Idolized
Redding: Neutral
New California Republic: Idolized
Vault 13: Idolized
San Francisco: Idolized
Raiders: Vilified
Vault 15: Idolized
Ghost Farm: Neutral
::: Skills :::............................................................... ::: Kills :::
Small Guns ..... 133%............................................Men ............ 382
Big Guns ....... 010% .............................................Women .......... 149
Energy Weapons . 020%...................................... Super Mutants .. 028
Unarmed ........ 152% ...........................................Ghouls ......... 008
Melee Weapons .. 132%....................................... Radscorpions ... 103
Throwing ....... 030%............................................. Rats ........... 142
First aid ...... 113% ............................................... Floaters ....... 022
Doctor ......... 088% .............................................. Centaurs ....... 018
Sneak .......... 100% .............................................. Robots ......... 061
Lockpick ....... 101% ..............................................Dogs ........... 038
Steal .......... 050% ................................................ DeathClaws ..... 041
Traps .......... 076%................................................ Plants ......... 030
Science ........ 121%.............................................. Geckos ......... 075
Repair ......... 113% ...............................................Aliens ......... 055
Speech ......... 112%..............................................Giant Ants ..... 077
Barter ......... 018%
Gambling ....... 025%
Outdoorsman .... 100%
::: Inventory :::
2x Antidote, 1x Vic's Water Flask 50x Beer
25x Nuka-Cola , 16x Roentgen Rum, 11x Condom (Green package),
22x Gamma Gulp Beer, 1x Tool, 10x Condom (Blue Package),
13x Rot Gut , 1x Motion Sensor, 18x Rad-X,
13x RadAway, 38x Buffout , 48x Psycho,
91x Jet, 22x Mentats, 95,571x Money,
24x Small Energy Cell, 55x Super Stimpak 344x Stimpak,
13x 2mm EC, 1x Expanded Lockpick Set, 1x Electronic Lockpick MKII,
1x Mirrored Shades, 2x M72 Gauss Rifle, 8x 4.7mm Caseless
1x Presidential Access Key, 1x PPK12 Gauss Pistol, 1x Mega Power Fist
1x Adv. Power Armor MKII
Total Weight: 248 lbs.
Her stats in the beginning: Str 6, I know 5 would be more than enough, but I think a little more was nice to fit with the “theme”. PE 6, as a close combat character this isn’t so important as to a ranged one. Endurance 6, I think 4 is enough, specially with the 2 Lifegiver perks, but once again it fitted with the theme of a strong and hard unarmed fighter. Charisma 6: enough for a decent party from the beginning. Intelligence 8: I like smart characters and also the more Int, the more skill points. Agility 10: I always like to have the most AP’s possible and it is specially important for a unarmed character that have to chase the enemies all the time. Luck 5: because of the NCR Zetascan and the way the Slayer perk works, more on this later.
The traits I choose: Gifted for obvious reasons and One Hander. The last one is good for a pure unarmed character, as unarmed is always considered a One Hand attack. I would not suggest it if you also want to use melee or ranged weapons in a regular basis.
First I concentrated in developing the Unarmed, Lockpicking and Speech skills, also in minor scale the steal skill. Then I improved Sneaking, Doctor, Traps and Melee. In retrospect, I think developing melee before small weapons was a mistake, because considering I have the one hander trait, melee was not any better than unarmed to me. All this while, the science, repair, first aid, outdoorsman and small weapons skill were developed mostly with the use of books. Only in the end, when I had many spare skill points I greatly developed small weapons for a backup combat skill.
About my party. I started with charisma 6, so using mentats and the Mirrored Shades I could have a four people party. So I got Sulik, Vic, Cassidy and Marcus. After I got the charisma module I also picked Brainbot, but then the games was almost finished. Cassidy as always, proved to be the best NPC, although he has that annoying tendency of reseting his combat orders, he can use armor and the Gauss rifle. Even with the shotguns or a sniper rifle he was able of scoring many deadly criticals. Vic was nothing to write home, but he also can use armor and the Gauss rifle and his repair skill was a nice bonus, overall a decent NPC from beginning to end.
Sulik was a great help in the beginning, but his usefulness diminished towards the end, because the sub machine guns he use could not hurt the well armored enclavers very well and furthermore he would shoot my party very often. I could have given him a supersledge as I always do, but I didn’t want the knockback effect this time, because as an unarmed character I wanted my enemies to be close. Anyway even in the end, he at least didn’t get in the way very often. Marcus in the other hand...
He was amazing when I first got him, I gave him a turbo plasma rifle early on and he was deadly with it. In the Great Wanamingo mine he killed more than my character! The problem is that he does so much damage that the enemies tend to concentrate their attacks in him. In the early/middle game that wasn’t a so serious problem. But when the enemies weapons started to be more dangerous, well, he was a pain to be kept alive, specially considering that Marcus can’t use armor. To make things worse you can’t order him to stay close of you or to snipe the enemy, he is always in the heat of the battle. Against the Enclavers he’s helpless.
Brainbot I used for little, but overall he’s decent enough, as you can order him to keep close of you, so even without armor he was safe for most of the time.
What can I say about combat performance? She surely was deadly, specially after the Slayer perk. Slayer has a advantage over its ranged counterpart, Sniper, that it upgrades ALL your hits to criticals, when Sniper is dependent of your luck (critical chance is 10 x luck %). That’s why I started with luck 5 (upgraded to 7 with a zetascan in NCR).
She have done very well since the beginning of the game as she was able to have a decent unarmed skill quickly. To be true her start was way easier than gunslingers characters I made before, because she had not to concern about ammo or weapons. In Broken Hills I gained a powerfist defeating Francis the mutant at arm wrestling. But I could not use it very often then, because the ammo was scarce. From New Reno I got it upgraded to a megapowerfist and after taking the Salvatore family I got enough ammo to use it non stop. That’s a major advantage of this build: you got your end game weapon early on.
In the end game, with the perks I choose, she was a beast. Almost 400 HP’s with 12 AP’s plus 4 move only AP’s. I really can not remember the last time she was killed. I only had to reload when a NPC was killed. I killed everyone both in Navarro and in the Oil Rig without any extreme difficult. And Horrigan wasn’t hard too. Targeted hits to his head made him to be knocked out most of the fight. Should be noted that I destroyed the security turrets as long I arrived at the oil rig, so I could have a “Honest” fight with him.
The Megapowerfist is a deadly weapon. It has a very good damage and a low AP cost. After the Bonus HtH Attacks Perk, it only requires 2 AP’s for a regular attack and 3 for a targeted one. With 10 agility and 2 Action Boy perks that translates in possible 6 attacks in a single round. And with Slayer, even the regular attacks were devasting. But here comes the main disadvantage of this build: the lack of a ranged attack means that you will end spending AP’s to chase your enemies. The bonus move perks were very good to help with this, but the annoyance persists.
The fact is, after you have your enemies close you are probably more deadly than a small weapons fighter. But in the other hand you have less tactical options. You cannot use hit and run tactics and the enemies often will have free shots at you until you close the distance to them. Furthermore the perk selection seemed to be more restrictive to me. For example, in most of my characters I only pick one level of Lifegiver, but she really needed both of them as she was a “Tank” kind of character. Also the two bonus move perk that weren’t required for ranged characters proved to be very usefull.
All and all, this character proved to be as viable as the gunslinger variants, with her own advantages and disadvantages, but a lot of fun to play none the less. Thanks to anyone that read this far and be welcomed to post questions or comments...
I have played a game with an unarmed character using knuckles and powerfists and IMO it is not a difficult way of playing. Here’s a final analysis of my martial artist character. Prepare yourself for a loooong read. Those are her statistics just before facing the end boss:
......................................FALLOUT
........................VAULT-13 PERSONNEL RECORD
.........................05 February 2243..0727 hours
Name: Etta..............Age: 26................Gender: Female
Level: 35.................Exp: 605,402........Next Level: 630,000
::: Statistics :::
Strength: 10 ............Hit Points: 384/384........Sequence: 10
Perception: 07.........Armor Class: 045........... Healing Rate: 02
Endurance: 06.........Action Points: 12............Critical Chance: 007%
Charisma: 07 ..........Melee Damage: 05.........Carry Weight: 275 lbs.
Intelligence: 09........Damage Res.: 070%
Agility: 10.................Radiation Res.: 087%
Luck: 07.................. Poison Res.: 030%
::: Traits :::
Gifted
One Hander
::: Perks :::
Awareness
Bonus HtH Attacks
Bonus Move (2)
Better Criticals
Slayer
Action Boy (2)
Lifegiver (2)
Quick Pockets
Gecko Skinning
Dermal Impact Armor
Phoenix Armor Implants
Vault City Training
Expert Excrement Expeditor
::: Karma :::
Karma: 2127 (Savior of the Damned)
Champion
Prizefighter
Grave Digger
Made Man: Wright
::: Reputation :::
Klamath: Liked
Den: Accepted
Vault City: Idolized
Gecko: Idolized
Modoc: Accepted
Sierra Army Depot: Neutral
Broken Hills: Idolized
New Reno: Idolized
Redding: Neutral
New California Republic: Idolized
Vault 13: Idolized
San Francisco: Idolized
Raiders: Vilified
Vault 15: Idolized
Ghost Farm: Neutral
::: Skills :::............................................................... ::: Kills :::
Small Guns ..... 133%............................................Men ............ 382
Big Guns ....... 010% .............................................Women .......... 149
Energy Weapons . 020%...................................... Super Mutants .. 028
Unarmed ........ 152% ...........................................Ghouls ......... 008
Melee Weapons .. 132%....................................... Radscorpions ... 103
Throwing ....... 030%............................................. Rats ........... 142
First aid ...... 113% ............................................... Floaters ....... 022
Doctor ......... 088% .............................................. Centaurs ....... 018
Sneak .......... 100% .............................................. Robots ......... 061
Lockpick ....... 101% ..............................................Dogs ........... 038
Steal .......... 050% ................................................ DeathClaws ..... 041
Traps .......... 076%................................................ Plants ......... 030
Science ........ 121%.............................................. Geckos ......... 075
Repair ......... 113% ...............................................Aliens ......... 055
Speech ......... 112%..............................................Giant Ants ..... 077
Barter ......... 018%
Gambling ....... 025%
Outdoorsman .... 100%
::: Inventory :::
2x Antidote, 1x Vic's Water Flask 50x Beer
25x Nuka-Cola , 16x Roentgen Rum, 11x Condom (Green package),
22x Gamma Gulp Beer, 1x Tool, 10x Condom (Blue Package),
13x Rot Gut , 1x Motion Sensor, 18x Rad-X,
13x RadAway, 38x Buffout , 48x Psycho,
91x Jet, 22x Mentats, 95,571x Money,
24x Small Energy Cell, 55x Super Stimpak 344x Stimpak,
13x 2mm EC, 1x Expanded Lockpick Set, 1x Electronic Lockpick MKII,
1x Mirrored Shades, 2x M72 Gauss Rifle, 8x 4.7mm Caseless
1x Presidential Access Key, 1x PPK12 Gauss Pistol, 1x Mega Power Fist
1x Adv. Power Armor MKII
Total Weight: 248 lbs.
Her stats in the beginning: Str 6, I know 5 would be more than enough, but I think a little more was nice to fit with the “theme”. PE 6, as a close combat character this isn’t so important as to a ranged one. Endurance 6, I think 4 is enough, specially with the 2 Lifegiver perks, but once again it fitted with the theme of a strong and hard unarmed fighter. Charisma 6: enough for a decent party from the beginning. Intelligence 8: I like smart characters and also the more Int, the more skill points. Agility 10: I always like to have the most AP’s possible and it is specially important for a unarmed character that have to chase the enemies all the time. Luck 5: because of the NCR Zetascan and the way the Slayer perk works, more on this later.
The traits I choose: Gifted for obvious reasons and One Hander. The last one is good for a pure unarmed character, as unarmed is always considered a One Hand attack. I would not suggest it if you also want to use melee or ranged weapons in a regular basis.
First I concentrated in developing the Unarmed, Lockpicking and Speech skills, also in minor scale the steal skill. Then I improved Sneaking, Doctor, Traps and Melee. In retrospect, I think developing melee before small weapons was a mistake, because considering I have the one hander trait, melee was not any better than unarmed to me. All this while, the science, repair, first aid, outdoorsman and small weapons skill were developed mostly with the use of books. Only in the end, when I had many spare skill points I greatly developed small weapons for a backup combat skill.
About my party. I started with charisma 6, so using mentats and the Mirrored Shades I could have a four people party. So I got Sulik, Vic, Cassidy and Marcus. After I got the charisma module I also picked Brainbot, but then the games was almost finished. Cassidy as always, proved to be the best NPC, although he has that annoying tendency of reseting his combat orders, he can use armor and the Gauss rifle. Even with the shotguns or a sniper rifle he was able of scoring many deadly criticals. Vic was nothing to write home, but he also can use armor and the Gauss rifle and his repair skill was a nice bonus, overall a decent NPC from beginning to end.
Sulik was a great help in the beginning, but his usefulness diminished towards the end, because the sub machine guns he use could not hurt the well armored enclavers very well and furthermore he would shoot my party very often. I could have given him a supersledge as I always do, but I didn’t want the knockback effect this time, because as an unarmed character I wanted my enemies to be close. Anyway even in the end, he at least didn’t get in the way very often. Marcus in the other hand...
He was amazing when I first got him, I gave him a turbo plasma rifle early on and he was deadly with it. In the Great Wanamingo mine he killed more than my character! The problem is that he does so much damage that the enemies tend to concentrate their attacks in him. In the early/middle game that wasn’t a so serious problem. But when the enemies weapons started to be more dangerous, well, he was a pain to be kept alive, specially considering that Marcus can’t use armor. To make things worse you can’t order him to stay close of you or to snipe the enemy, he is always in the heat of the battle. Against the Enclavers he’s helpless.
Brainbot I used for little, but overall he’s decent enough, as you can order him to keep close of you, so even without armor he was safe for most of the time.
What can I say about combat performance? She surely was deadly, specially after the Slayer perk. Slayer has a advantage over its ranged counterpart, Sniper, that it upgrades ALL your hits to criticals, when Sniper is dependent of your luck (critical chance is 10 x luck %). That’s why I started with luck 5 (upgraded to 7 with a zetascan in NCR).
She have done very well since the beginning of the game as she was able to have a decent unarmed skill quickly. To be true her start was way easier than gunslingers characters I made before, because she had not to concern about ammo or weapons. In Broken Hills I gained a powerfist defeating Francis the mutant at arm wrestling. But I could not use it very often then, because the ammo was scarce. From New Reno I got it upgraded to a megapowerfist and after taking the Salvatore family I got enough ammo to use it non stop. That’s a major advantage of this build: you got your end game weapon early on.
In the end game, with the perks I choose, she was a beast. Almost 400 HP’s with 12 AP’s plus 4 move only AP’s. I really can not remember the last time she was killed. I only had to reload when a NPC was killed. I killed everyone both in Navarro and in the Oil Rig without any extreme difficult. And Horrigan wasn’t hard too. Targeted hits to his head made him to be knocked out most of the fight. Should be noted that I destroyed the security turrets as long I arrived at the oil rig, so I could have a “Honest” fight with him.
The Megapowerfist is a deadly weapon. It has a very good damage and a low AP cost. After the Bonus HtH Attacks Perk, it only requires 2 AP’s for a regular attack and 3 for a targeted one. With 10 agility and 2 Action Boy perks that translates in possible 6 attacks in a single round. And with Slayer, even the regular attacks were devasting. But here comes the main disadvantage of this build: the lack of a ranged attack means that you will end spending AP’s to chase your enemies. The bonus move perks were very good to help with this, but the annoyance persists.
The fact is, after you have your enemies close you are probably more deadly than a small weapons fighter. But in the other hand you have less tactical options. You cannot use hit and run tactics and the enemies often will have free shots at you until you close the distance to them. Furthermore the perk selection seemed to be more restrictive to me. For example, in most of my characters I only pick one level of Lifegiver, but she really needed both of them as she was a “Tank” kind of character. Also the two bonus move perk that weren’t required for ranged characters proved to be very usefull.
All and all, this character proved to be as viable as the gunslinger variants, with her own advantages and disadvantages, but a lot of fun to play none the less. Thanks to anyone that read this far and be welcomed to post questions or comments...
Actually the unarmed skill in FO2 is pretty badass, if you get it up to 225% and you get all the unarmed bonus traits and perks, you can do 250+ damage with a punch, took out a bunch of unclave guys doing it once, so its possible
good luck getting there, the game is a bitch if your not up in the 170s with unarmed.
good luck getting there, the game is a bitch if your not up in the 170s with unarmed.
Muddy said:
Man, that's one hell of a loooong read! I got warstories too, but there not so detailed. I once finished the game with an unarmed/melee-party. I took Sulik, Dogmeat, Marcus and Goris. Gave Sulik a Ripper and Marcus a Mega Power Fist. I didn't attack Navarro and The Enclave, though. And I used the more diplomatic and sneaky ways of finishing the game (I did use the turrets, I always do). But the fights were fun (Sulik was great with the Ripper - that I remember). Oh yeah, and Dogmeat died unfortunately. He was shot somewhere in the wastelands and died a horrible death (no kidding).
If I ever find the time again, I'm going to try to finish the game with Robodog, K-9, Dogmeat and Laddie (Jonny can rot).
Hm. Ever thought about playing Fallout 2 with Miria, Myron and the Pariah dog as your party, using nothing but Plant Spikes, Gold Nuggets and your Mutated Toe?
AaronHardy
First time out of the vault
isn't the mutated toe ment to do sumthing to harrigan
SimpleMinded
Vault Fossil
I'm playing through fallout 2 unarmed right now and the only difficulties I've seen, is when bad guys run away. Since my character has no abilities with guns, it takes a long time to catch bad guys. I haven't reached the hardest areas yet but I think getting two action boy perks, slayer, and bonus HTH attacks would make your character unstoppable. Four aimed punches, all crit hits? Sounds bad ass...
Bonus move is a good perk obviously. I played through with only unarmed and was pretty kickass by the end. It does generally take longer to complete combat, but if you are using no weapons at all (no brass knuckles or powerfist, just your hands) then I found that when your unarmed skill got past 125% (or making aimed shots at head, etc) then you could knock out enemies pretty well guaranteed.
There's something incredibly fun about punching someone in the head or groin and sending them flying across the screen unconcious...
There's something incredibly fun about punching someone in the head or groin and sending them flying across the screen unconcious...
AaronHardy said:
alec said:
Does he eat it or stick it up his Grampy-Bone slot? 
alec said:
Hardly
BTW Anyone ever managed to talk to the tribal? He doesn't say anything as far as I can remember, and you can't begin normal dialogue. I've heard that he was supposed to be involved in a "peaceful" way to eliminate the Mercenary Raidrers, however, this was never put in the game, was it?
You have now earned the 'Gravedigger' karmatic title.
"They're dead, they don't care"Jebus said:
I was searching for the phrase "Broken Hills Mine", believe me or not. And there I find Alec to be such a prankster
Frank Horrigan@BIS
Still Mildly Glowing
If you want a challenge try to beat the game with plant spikes/flares/rocks or the red ryder BB gun (although that weapon is slightly better then the others).
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
I've never played unarmed or melee for that matter because what do you do when your up against a group of muties or deathclaws?