Melee Challenges
Up Close
Up Closer
Task: Kill 50 enemies with Melee weapons.
Reward: 75 XP
This is Hacking
Task: Kill 100 enemies with one-handed Melee weapons.
Reward: 50 XP
New Vegas Samurai
Task: Inflict 10,000 damage with Melee weapons.
Reward: 50 XP
I Can Do It One Handed
Task: Inflict 10,000 damage with one-handed Melee weapons.
Rewards: 50 XP and the Melee Hacker Perk
Perk: Melee Hacker – Gives +5% to Melee attack speed.
NOTE: This grants one rank of the Perk that does indeed stack with the one granted by Two Hands Are Better Than One for a total of +10% Melee attack speed.
Two Hands Are Better Than One
Task: Inflict 10,000 damage with two-handed Melee weapons.
Rewards: 50 XP and the Melee Hacker Perk
Perk: Melee Hacker – Gives +5% to Melee attack speed. This grants one rank of the Perk.
NOTE: This grants one rank of the Perk that does indeed stack with the one granted by I Can Do It One Handed for a total of +10% Melee attack speed.
As you can tell by looking at the challenges you’re going to need a good one handed weapon as well as a solid two handed weapon. Your best bet is to get Chance’s Knife and Knock Knock right from the get go but they’re not the best weapons for a melee character. That privilege would belong to the Chainsaw and Thermic Lance.
When creating a melee character you will want to look for one of two builds. You can either make a high Luck build that will rely on critical hits to shred enemies to pieces. This character works well but it makes some weapons kind of useless, namely those weapons that can’t land critical hits. With this build you would take perks to inflict greater chances of critical hits or use sneak attack criticals to take enemies down rapidly. Carrying Chance’s Knife and Knock Knock will enable you to dish out an extreme amount of damage. If you feel like taking the Pyromaniac perk then you can use the Shishkebab to deal a large amount of damage.
The other build that works well is to just ignore your Luck, put all your points into another SPECIAL stat and then take the Heavy Handed trait. With this your criticals do less damage but all your basic attacks do an increased amount of damage. This means that you can ignore criticals entirely and focus instead on using beefier weapons. You’ll want to grab up a Ripper and either a Chainsaw or Thermic Lance as these weapons deal heavy amounts of damage without relying upon your Luck to boost it.
With either of these builds simply adventuring you will get these challenges done easily enough. As there’s no challenge for hurting / killing enemies with critical hits this shouldn’t figure into your combat decisions at all with this character type. If you’re having problems with the tougher enemies you can use a Cattle Prod to keep knocking them down where you can then proceed to obliterate them.
Unarmed Challenges
A Fistful of Hollars
Task: Kill 42 enemies with unarmed weapons.
Reward: 50 XP
For a Few Hollars More
Task: Kill 75 enemies with Unarmed weapons.
Reward: 100 XP
%26hellip; And Boy Are My Arms Tired
Task: Inflict 1,000 damage with Unarmed Weapons
Reward: 75 XP
Old Tyme Brawler
Task: Inflict 10,000 damage with Unarmed Weapons.
Reward: 50 XP
Destroy Something Not So Beautiful
Task: Inflict 10,000 damage with Unarmed Weapons.
Reward: 100 XP and Beautiful Beatdown Perk
Perk: Beautiful Beatdown – Reduces the AP cost of Unarmed attacks.
Full of Stars
Task: Cripple 100 enemy heads with Unarmed attacks.
Reward: 50 XP
Go For the Eyes
Task: Inflict 6,000 damage to enemy heads with Unarmed attacks.
Reward: 75 XP
NOTE: Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes! Eyargh!
Gut Checker
Task: Cripple 100 enemy torsos with Unarmed attacks.
Reward: 50 XP
Lethal Weapons
Task: Land 100 critical hits with Unarmed attacks.
Reward: 50 XP
While you could get away with a low critical hit percentages when using melee weapons you’re going to need it with unarmed if you want to get the challenges completed. But on the flipside, you can learn a wide variety of unarmed maneuvers to help you obliterate your enemies. When paired up with one of the more powerful unarmed weapons these maneuvers can let you do surprising things to your enemies in rather short order.
Making your character is somewhat dicey as the best unarmed weapon in the game requires a Strength of 9 but that’s stupid. Don’t even bother putting your points into that, raising it up to a six at best, and dump the rest of your points into Luck (try to get it up to at least an 8). Leave the traits alone and the skills you Tag are mostly irrelevant so long as you’ve obviously tagged Unarmed. Many people suggest a Strenght of 9 so you can use the Ballistic Fist but this is, to be blunt, stupid. That’s a waste of your points especially when you can just use Pushy. More on that below.
Early on you won’t have many options for dealing with enemies beyond Boxing Tape or Spiked Knuckles. But that’s remedied surprisingly fast by going spelunking a bit. Making your way to Black Rock Cavern, located to the northwest of Helios One (close to the paths leading up to Black Mountain), you can find the Paladin Toaster. This does a decent amount of damage and does extra damage against robots meaning it is surprisingly useful for most situations.
With that in hand, or on… your… hand… god that’s a terrible joke, you can make your way to the Ruby Hill Mine, located northeast of Jacobstown. Down inside this hellish place full of Lakelurks you can get your hands on Pushy. Pushy is the second most powerful unarmed weapon in the game, second only to the uber Ballistic Fist, but yet more useful as it doesn’t require a stupidly high strength.
Using Pushy with some of the special unarmed attacks will enable you to knock enemies down before attacking or simply charge in for powerful attacks. Be sure to take the following perks for maximum effectiveness: Finesse, Piercing Strike, Slayer and Better Criticals. With these perks and the special attacks enemies will, to put it rather bluntly, not stand a damn chance against your fists of fury.
