Cannibal¶

With the Cannibal perk, when you’re in Sneak mode, you gain the option to eat a corpse to regain Health. But every time you feed, you lose Karma, and if the act is witnessed, it is considered a crime against nature.

If you want to be truly despicable, you can go ahead and get this perk. In Hardcore mode it just might come in handy, as you’ll apparently heal points of [FOD] for every corpse you eat… which isn’t much, but if you kill a batch of Viper Gang Members, you can get a good bit of… you know what, this perk sucks, food is plentiful and cheap, you’ll never need to eat corpses.

Comprehension¶

With the Comprehension perk, you gain double the bonus from reading magazines and one additional skill point whenever a skill book is read.

Few perks have been hit by the expansions as hard as Comprehension, and for an obvious reason. If you can get all your skills up to 100, you don’t need magazines, and with twenty extra levels, its very easy to get your skills up high enough without needing the extra point from each skill book. Still, there are even more skill books in the game now, and if you find them all (or most of them) you’ll end up getting more skill points than Educated gives… and the magazines help in the early-to-mid phases of the build. Honestly, if you’re absolutely committed to getting all the skill books in the game, you don’t need this perk… but level four perks aren’t great, and the convenience of not having to stress over every last skill point is not to be underestimated.

Educated¶

With the Educated perk, you gain two more skill points every time you advance in level. This perk is best taken early on, to maximize its effectiveness.

This was already a great perk before the DLCs-it’s just that much more useful now that it gives us an extra 40 skill points over the extra twenty levels… but with all the new skill books and levels, it’s just not necessary to max out all skills. It’s more convenient than Comprehension-you don’t need to hunt down books, you just need to level up-but Comprehension can end up giving more skill points if you’re vigilant about hunting down skill books. Also, Comprehension allows you to get scores to 80, then use magazines every time a [Very Hard] lock or computer rears its ugly head. With Educated you’d have to boost such skills to 90… which really isn’t that much more work. Honestly, if you’re absolutely committed to getting all the skill books in the game, you don’t need this perk… but again, most level four perks aren’t winners, and it’s nice to have a surplus of skill points.

Entomologist¶

With the Entomologist perk, you do an extra 50% damage every time you attack a mutated insect, like the Radroach, Giant Mantis, or Radscorpion.

Giant Radscorpions suck in this game, but not enough that you really need this perk. Later on you’ll have weapons that can handle their Damage Threshold, and they’re just never become the same level of threat that Deathclaws become, although the extra damage against Cazadores is somewhat welcome. It’s not a great perk, but if you’re just getting wasted by bugs later in the game… and you have good weapons and armor, maybe it’s worth a look.

Rad Child¶

You truly are a rad child. As you go through the increasingly devastating stages of radiation sickness, you will regenerate more and more health.

Yeah, there’s an Implant for that now, and frankly, it’s better to avoid becoming heavily irradiated.

Run n Gun¶

The Run ’n Gun perk reduces accuracy penalties with one-handed Guns and Energy Weapons while walking or running.

Let’s think about this critically, shall we? Most one-handed guns aren’t very strong, at least not against armor, and certainly not compared to rifle-grip guns. And there’s another way you can negate this penalty… by stopping and aiming. Yeah, that defeats the purpose of the whole thing, but if you are running around shooting wildly at an enemy with a one-handed gun, then there’s something you did wrong at some point in the encounter.

Travel Light¶

While wearing light armor or no armor, you run 10% faster.

Speed is nice, but 10% isn’t a big enough boost to warrant spending a perk on it.