Fallout 4 Best Build: Lucky Gunslinger

This build provides the highest survivability whilst doing obscene amounts of damage from afar, all within the safety of VATS slow mo. A close second is a build that gave between 25-28 in all stats using the Far Harbor DLC’s ‘Unyielding’ gear set but, even though it’s a monster, maintaining a 25% health requirement using radiation while walking through the more radiation-prone areas of the map proved too much of a chore to allow it to be suggested in good faith.

PLAYSTYLE BASICS:

This build revolves around stacking the Luck stat through ‘Lucky’ set gear, in combination with maximizing VATS through agility and perception. Using a Lucky pistol on top of this allows a large number of shots in VATS, which synergizes with the ‘Concentrated Fire’ and ‘Gun Fu’ perks, provides a huge capacity for damage from the safety of VATS at a distance. Using this build, one can go the entire game on ‘Survival’ difficulty without ever needing to shoot outside of VATS. Obviously with the unlimited level cap in Fallout 4, you can essentially get everything, so this build is aimed at the pre-DLC endgame (specifically, level 55). Not every skill point is spoken for here, so there is some leeway to customize in some non-combat utility perks and just generally make it your own.

INITIAL STAT ALLOCATION

• Strength: 1
• Perception: 7
• Endurance: 2
• Charisma: 1
• Intelligence: 1
• Agility: 7
• Luck: 9

EVENTUAL STAT ALLOCATION

The endgame stat allocation assumes the gathering of all +1 bobbleheads.

• Strength: 2
• Perception: 10 (11 with any of: ‘Sunglasses,’ ‘Patrolman’s Sunglasses’ or ‘Welding Goggles’)
• Endurance: 3
• Charisma: 3
• Intelligence: 2
• Agility: 10 (12 with ‘Military Fatigues’)
• Luck: 10 (20 with Lucky set gear)

MANDATORY PERKS

Perception

• Penetrator 2/2: Makes it harder for enemies to hide from your VATS shots.
• Concentrated Fire 3/3: The 20% damage stacks per shot synergize incredibly well with the large number of shots you can fire with a pistol.

Endurance

• Lifegiver 3/3: Having the extra health, while not completely necessary, gives a bit of breathing room if faster enemies (i.e. feral ghouls) close the gap during VATS.

Charisma

• Lone Wanderer 4/4: The added 25% damage and 25% Action Point boost blows away the damage you would be getting from a companion. Sidenote: you can keep Dogmeat out to distract enemies and still get this effect.

Agility

•  Gunslinger 5/5: This build relies on pistols and this perk doubles pistol damage and disarms opponents. Enough said.
• Action Boy 3/3: On the rare chance that you run out of Action Points while shooting something, this will help you get them back rapidly.
• Gun Fu 3/3: Because of your stash of Action Points, you will be able to take down multiple enemies rapidly.

Luck

• Idiot Savant 3/3: This goes some way to make up for starting with 1 Intelligence.
• Better Criticals 3/3: 2.5 times damage for critical hits essential means 2.5 times your damage when this build is operational.
• Critical Banker 4/4: Saving more criticals allows you to stash them when shooting easier enemies to save them for the occasional legendary.
• Grim Reaper’s Sprint 3/3: As you will be killing every enemy in VATS, this almost ensures a near-constantly full Action Point meter.
• Four Leaf Clover 4/4: If 20 Luck wasn’t enough to keep giving you criticals, this tips it over the edge. More shots will be critical than not critical when this ties in with the gear.

OPTIONAL PERKS

• Gun Nut 4/4 (Intelligence 3): This is not necessary because all the mods you need for the gun detailed below can be sourced from found guns. However, if you want to make it easier on yourself, throw some points at it.
• Armorer 3/4 (Strength 3): While not necessary, allows you to make your armor ‘ultra-lightweight,’ which increases the Action Points you have to spend by 10 a piece. However, these too can be taken off found armor.
• Awareness 1/1 (Perception): Allows you to see if an enemy has a particular weakness in VATS. It highlights their level, but this is largely redundant as you can tell from the damage you are shown on their health bar whether or not you are under-leveled for a particular enemy.
• Ricochet 3/3: As you will not be getting shot much – finishing gun fights before they start most of the time – this doesn’t proc enough to make it necessary. However, it is wildly satisfying when it does.
• Ninja 3/3: If you begin gun fights while crouched, this will ensure at least the first bullet packs a bigger punch.
• Intelligence generally: as there is an unlimited level cap, if you have points to spare it’s never a bad choice to throw them into Intelligence. Even though Intelligence stops ‘Idiot Savant’ procing as much, there is still a net benefit experience-wise.

COMPANION PERKS

As you can attain all the companion perks at once, the obvious selection here is “all of them.” However, the most important is MacCready’s perk which gives an increase of 20% headshot chance in VATS. This is huge, especially for distant enemies.

ARMOR

Synth/Combat/Metal/etc. is largely a matter of preference, and so are the other modifications. The only important modification choice is ‘Ultra-lightweight’ (see: Optional Perks).

• Commando Helmet (+10% Action Points)
• Lucky Chest (+2 Luck)
• Lucky Right Arm (+2 Luck)
• Lucky Left Arm (+2 Luck)
• Lucky Right Leg (+2 Luck)
• Lucky Left Leg (+2 Luck)
• Military Fatigues (+2 Agility)
• Sunglasses (+1 Perception)

WEAPON

Lucky .44 Pistol

With the mods detailed below and with the perks above, this will give you 241 base damage. There are other pistols that you can create with higher damage – e.g. one plasma pistol you can mod to fall just shy of 400 – but ballistic ammunition is far cheaper and is able to shoot through cover much more successfully. This is especially important when fighting certain enemies (when shooting at sentry bots, for example, it allows you to target their fusion cores immediately and kill them in one hit).

• Legendary effect: +100% critical damage and +15% critical meter refill rate.
• Receiver: Advanced Receiver
• Barrel: Bull Barrel
• Grip: Comfort Grip
• Sight: Reflex Sight (consumes less Action Points in VATS than the Recon Scope)