Fallout: New Vegas – Shotgun Build

I couldn’t find this guide anymore, full credit goes to original creator rychek. I used this for my first play-through and had an absolute blast.

This is my Light Armor – Riot Shotgun Build/Guide. This guide is a current with perks granted from all released DLC’s

Build and Stats Guide

Сrеdit gоеs to joeybagofdonuts !

Video of the shotgun build in action:

The Deathclaw Promontory -quite possibly the roughest place in new vegas.

Special Configuration:

Starting value on the left, final values on the right.

• S – 4 -implant- 5 (7 with the spineless perk from OWB and +1 from the lonesome road finale)
• P – 5 -implant- 6
• E – 9 -implant- 10
• C – 1 -implant- 2
• I – 5 -implant- 5
• A – 8 -implant- 9 (10 with intense training)
• L – 8 -implant- 9 (10 with the lucky shades)

Tag Skills:

• Guns
• Repair
• Speech

Traits:

• Fast Shot
• Built to Destroy

Perk Path:

• Level 02: Rapid Reload – 30 guns, 5 agility
• Level 04: Light Touch – 45 repair, 6 agility
• Level 06: Intense Training – Agility
• Level 08: Finesse – *no requirement*
• Level 10: Bloody Mess – *no requirement*
• Level 12: And Stay Back – 70 guns
• Level 14: Shotgun Surgeon – 45 guns
• Level 16: Better Criticals – 6 perception, 6 luck
• Level 18: Strong Back – 5 endurance, 5 strength
• Level 20: Fast Metabolism – *no requirement*
• Level 22: Pack Rat – 70 barter, 6 intelligence
• Level 24: Toughness rank 1 – 5 endurance
• Level 26: Toughness rank 2 – 5 endurance
• Level 28: Robotics expert – 50 Science
• Level 30: Jury Rigging – 90 repair
• Level 32: Travel Light – 45 survival
• Level 34: Silent Running – 50 Sneak, 6 agility
• Level 36: Tunnel Runner – 8 agility
• Level 38: Living Anatomy – 70 medicine
• Level 40: Adamantium Skeleton – *no requirement*
• Level 42: Life Giver – 6 endurance
• Level 44: Stonewall – 6 strength, 6 endurance
• Level 46: Burden to Bear – 6 strength, 6 endurance
• Level 48: Hit The Deck – 70 explosives
• Level 50: Thought You Died – at least 250 karma

End Game Gear:

• Head: 1st Recon Beret & Lucky Shades
• Body: Ulysses’ Duster
• Weapon: Riot Shotgun(my personal preference),or Dinner bell, or Hunting shotgun

• Final derived critical strike chance: 33%
• Derived from luck stat: +10% crit
• 1st Recon Beret: +5%
• Ulysses’ Duster: +5%
• Light Touch: +5%
• Finesse perk: +5% crit
• Built to Destroy: +3% crit

• Final derived Damage Threshold: +26.4
• Ulysses’ Duster: +13
• Implant: +4
• Toughness, both ranks: +6
• Spineless: +1
• Big Brained: +10%

Leveling Guide

Leveling Notes:

Your main goals from level 1 on should be as follows:

• Head straight to vegas

Make a stop at “mick and ralph’s” to buy the naughty nightwear for +1 luck (roughly 300 caps), then get to the atomic wrangler in freeside and start gambling it up with 9 luck until you’ve been banned. Once you have accumulated enough caps, buy the luck and intelligence implants ASAP. Hit the strip, once in i recommend you hit up saving the tops for last, as seeing benny will complete his quest and give you 1000 xp. Buy up all of the implants and then…

At this point, dead money is in my opinion, the best thing you can do. If you enter dead money at level 4, you will leave near level 15 with a hunting shotgun. The weapon repair kits and stimpaks given by the vending machine in the abandoned BOS bunker are incredibly helpful for tearing through the wastes. Also dead money is not a hard DLC, don’t bother using shotguns throughout the DLC except maybe towards the end when you find the hunting shotgun. Just get near point blank vats head shot kills on the ghost people with police pistol. Make sure to raise your speech to at least 50, or dealing with dog is going to be rough to say the least. (85 is the requirement if you want to save both god and dog)

It is a good idea upon completion of dead money to buy 30 med-x and 30 radaway – you can use these items as turn ins for followers of the apocalypse reputation, which will get you into a safehouse.

Go acquire Veronica from the 188 trading post, she will give you easy access to the brotherhood of steel. Head to hidden valley, once there if you fast travel to there, the brother hood’s bunker will be north west of where the fast travel drops you off at. Head straight in, tell the elder you’ll do whatever he asks, and then go hit up torres their quarter master. If the riot shotgun is NOT in her inventory for sale, wait around until it is. (also note that she may become bugged and never refresh her inventory, if this happens the gun runners/vault 34 may be your only options for attaining one.)

Once you finally acquire a riot shotgun I’m sure you’ll be asking me “hey man how am i supposed to fuel this beast of a gun with ammos” The answer is pretty simple! The NCR! Once you have become “liked” or “accepted” by the NCR, travel to hoover dam. Speak with Quartermaster Bardon and pass a a speech check of 50. Quartermaster Bardon sells 400 to 600 – 12 guage shotgun shells. it takes 73 hours reset his inventory, I recommend waiting at a safe house.

Notes on beating Dead Money:

Dead money is fairly straight forward, but you may miss your opportunity to gain something… and you cannot go back to get it again.

Once you have gathered all 3 of your bomb collar wearing compatriots you will only be able to gain their 3 perks prior to starting the gala event. If you miss this chance, you will not have it again.

All of the skill books scattered throughout dead money can be picked up at your leisure after elijah has been killed except one. The energy weapon book you should grab before entering the vault.

Notes on beating Honest Hearts:

Honest Hearts is fairly straight forward and short. Just plow through the main mission and you’ll be fine. The most annoying thing you’ll deal with is white legs that are snipers. either break their line of sight so they have to come to you or just bypass them entirely they aren’t a very big concern. Everything else is fairly easy due to how melee heavy the expansion is.

Notes on beating Old World Blues:

Old world blues is rough, hands down it is the most difficult DLC to date. The upside is if you wait until you have the strong back/pack rat perk to do it you will be able to bring a considerable amount of ammo with you. I suggest Bringing no less than 2500 12 gauge rounds, with a heavy emphasis on slugs.

Notes on Old World Blues perk selection:

• The build does not rely on chems, so taking perks that benefit DT\healing bonuses are optimal
• Big Brained: Head cannot be crippled, +10% Chem addiction resistance, +10% DT
• Cardiac Arrest: 50% poison resistance, Healing items boosted by 50%, Robots have -25% crit chance
• Spineless: +1 strength, +1 damage threshhold, Torso cannot be crippled

Notes on acquiring the lucky shades:

Because the NCR is being kind enough to feed your ammunition needs, you really do not want to anger them until you have a sizable stockpile of 12 gauge rounds. Unfortunately gaining legion reputation is the ONLY way to get the lucky shades, and doing legion quests is one of the quickest ways to anger the NCR.

Pick pocketing NCR dog tags to turn them in at cottonwood cove is without a doubt your best option. Unfortunately you need FIFTY of them to get to liked.

Once you are up to liked and go speak to lucius and he will give you the key to the safehouse where they are located.

Notes on ammunition:

Buckshot is considerably weak versus heavily armored targets due to damage being calculated independently per pellet. While buckshot is still effective due to its crowd controlling nature it heavily relies on critical strikes for damaging heavily armored targets. However, poorly armored targets are shredded beyond compare by buckshot. There are 3 kinds of buckshot, listed below:

Standard 12 gauge buckshot rounds deals 1.2x damage.

Magnum rounds deal 1.3x damage. The downside to magnum rounds is that they degrade the condition of your gun more rapidly

Coinshot rounds deal 1.3x damage. Coinshot does not degrade weapon condition any extra.

Slugs/Pulse Slugs are more accurate than any other 12 gauge round and excellent for piercing armored targets. Unfortunately due to having taken the fast shot trait the shotgun build favors the use of buckshot styled rounds. One of the the best uses of slugs is point blank vats head shots on heavily armored targets, further more, knocking a target down with buckshot and then quickly switching to slugs for pin point vats pummeling works wonders. Due to the knock back chance of the “and stay back” perk being 10% chance PER PELLET, slugs knock back targets considerably less often than buckshot. Obviously pulse slugs are more effective against robots/power armor.

Flechette A high penetration version of buckshot, great for any situation.

Dragon’s Breath , I would recommend against using these rounds, constant fire makes it pretty hard to see what you’re doing on your screen.

Skill Book Locations

Barter:

• Primm gift shop
• Vault 22 pest control
• Allied technologies
• Cap counterfeiting shack
• Salida del sol south house, near house entrance (DM)
• Marked Men Guard Outpost (LR)

Energy Weapons:

• Repconn gift shop and vault area
• Brotherhood of steel hidden valley bunker
• Old nuclear test site
• Room before the vault (DM)
• Hopeville Missile Base Headquarters (LR)

Explosives:

• Sloan barracks
• Nellis, pearl’s barracks
• Mojave outpost, underneath counter
• Ranger station foxtrot
• Residential district (DM)
• Collapsed Overpass Tunnel (LR)

Guns:

• Nevada Highway Patrol
• Raul’s Shack
• Vault 34 armory
• Gomorrah big sal’s office
• Cashier area of the casino (DM)
• Hopeville Armory (LR)

Lock Pick:

• Silver Peak Mine
• Bitter springs rec area
• The prospector’s den
• Wolf horn ranch
• Casino offices, ontop of a tool cabinet (DM)
• Hopeville Missile Base (LR)

Melee Weapons:

• Cottonwood cove
• Hidden supply cave
• Jacobstown
• Cannibal Johnson’s cave
• Police station (DM)
• Hopeville Women’s Barracks (LR)

Medicine:

• Follower’s safehouse
• Mesquite mtns crater
• Helios one
• Ranger Andy’s
• Villa clinic (DM)
• Buried building after cave of Abaddon (LR)

Repair:

• Sloan Barracks
• Nellis, Loyal’s House
• Southern wind farm
• Abandoned BoS bunker (DM)
• Switching Station (DM)
• Hopeville Missile Silo Bunker (LR)

Science:

• Nipton townhall
• Brewer’s beer bootlegging
• Camp Forlorn Hope
• Repconn HQ Gift shop
• Helios 1 quest reward for full region power
• Executive suites (DM)
• Y-0 Research Center (OWB)
• Ashton Silo Control Center (LR)

Sneak:

• Goodsprings house east of schoolhouse
• Vault 3
• Sharecropper farm Barracks
• Camp searchlight
• Switching station (DM)
• X-13 Research Facility (OWB)
• X-13 Research Facility sneak suit quest (OWB)
• Sunstone Tower (LR)

Speech:

• NCRCF
• Cerulean robotics
• Lucky Jim Mine
• Brooks tumbleweed ranch
• The tampico (DM)
• Third Street Municipal Building (LR)

Survival:

• Lone wolf radio
• Matthews husbandry farm
• Scavenger platform
• Mesquite mountains camp site
• Waste Disposal Station (LR)

Unarmed:

• Nipton rest stop
• The tops pres suite
• Vault 11 Residential area
• Fisherman’s pride shack
• Villa fountain (DM)
• Wastewater treatment plant (LR)

Random Skill Books:

• Angel Cave (HH)
• Cueva Guarache (HH)
• Fallen Rock Cave (HH)
• Stone Bones Cave (HH)

Snow Globe Locations:

• Goodsprings: Goodsprings cemetery on a grave
• The Strip: vault 21, lower level, behind an average locked door
• Mormon Fort: take a right as you enter, then go into the tower
• Test Site: Lucky 38 casino, cocktail lounge, behind a cash register
• Mt. Charleston: Jacobstown lodge, The reception desk.
• Hoover Dam: Hoover Dam Reception Desk
• Nellis AFB: Boomer Museum
• Sierra Madre: Upper levels of salida del sol north (DM)
• Zion: General store, behind the desk (HH)
• Big MT: X-17 Meteorological Station (OWB)
• The Divide: Junction 7 Rest Stop (LR)