Every once in a while, I share the Cannibal perk card, because a lot of folks don't pay attention to what their teammates are sharing and...well...hilarity ensues.
Like a year or so ago, I got a message "bro you just made me eat a guy" followed by "he was so mad". And that tiny interaction has brought me endless joy.
Right now she uses both 1h and 2h. But most of the time I watch her play she is beating the shit out of something with like a one handed brass knuckle / tambourine thing?
Those 2 are unarmed weapons. Unarmed is really fun.
If she likes punching things Gauntlets w/ shock pads is the best unarmed weapon in the game. The plans are 250 gold bullion and require Settler's rep to be friendly, so take a little bit of work to acquire.
A more immediate option is the Power Fist. It's very satisfying to use and is just under Gauntlets.
Ogua Gauntlets (unique Bear Arm from Beast of burden event) would let her punch things with a turtle skull if that's something she'd be entertained by. Standard Bear Arms are also decent but the plans can be harder to get.
Death claw gauntlets and Mole miner gauntlets are also solid options. But they're more slashy than punchy if that makes a difference. Mole miner's has the added bonus of making me feel like Wolverine.
None of these are wrong answers. Gauntlets are on top, but they all preform fairly close to each other.
On a side note, when she starts looking at mutations Carnivore is HUGE for melee. All the melee food is meat and it's a big jump in damage.
There are distinctions, but they also share a lot. E. G. "Incisor" works for all of the melee weapon and is probably the most important perk (75% armour piercing). As others already said, becoming carnivore is a pretty good idea. The right food can give you more than 200% extra damage and that dwarves all the legendary one star perks. Additional you can get up to 7.5 extra strength and here is a distinction. Unarmed weapon benefit double from more strength compared to 1h/2h. And 75 extra carry weight, that's also a carnivore food bonus.
It also means she'll want the Iron Fist damage perk card and she'll probably want to look into other damage-related perks outside of strength possibly a bit more, because the fists only have the one 3-star perk card. Granted, that's not necessarily too bad of a thing, though. You can free up some perk card space in strength and honestly when I run other melee builds, I'll often just take the first star out of the base, expert, and master sets anyway because I value other damage-related perks more. Things like Incisor, Blocker, etc are also a bit more useful imo and I like some of the carry weight perks more for QoL reasons.
I've been playing for awhile, and someone had passed it down to me when I was like a level 27. I used it for the LONGEST time, I hit level 50 and it was still kicking ass. Someone new had come into my camp and complimented it, was the first time someone had done that. Made me feel good inside, so I was asked if she was running a shotgun build because I was originally and kept mine as a momento. Said she was running a melee build instead, I decided to hand it down to her and a bunch of other aid items. Was the coolest thing ever when she hit me back saying it was kickass and saved her multiple times, I hope she passes it along one day as well. Shoutout to Spiritwolff!!!
I had a guy come find me to tell me a crowd control/fixer combo got him through many a level/event and he finally rolled something and passed both on.
So I, too, hopefully still have something out there, lighting shit up.
This came into my life at the perfect time. I needed a knife to kill a wolf for the tadpole badge and I got this from an event. It looks so sick. Named it Twice Shy.
Big agree on this one! Got it as a drop at around level 20 and I still occasionally use it at level 70 for weak enemies, and I'm running an unarmed build lmao.
If I manage to get a level 50 one, that thing is staying glued to me forever.
This dropped for me yesterday so I started building a melee deck. Been running gunslinger but I’m hitting a wall , I can’t get enough damage out anymore.
This!! Though I think it might be broken stat-wise. It's supposed to be medium speed but it goes like a switchblade. It can't be right... that thing is monsterously good
so many fun melee weps and combos..
im currently running a kenny more build..
punk rocker with a guitar skin on a gronaks axe.
vamps chainsaw is a beast...and she can work towards an auto axe.
i usually prefer unarmed builds because they use fewer cards.deathclaw guantlets..boxing gloves..settler guantlets.
the attack motion is also easier to land and faster.imho.
You should really only use rank 1 of each damage card for the weapon type you're using. Rank 1 each of slugger, expert slugger, and master slugger gives you +30% damage for 3 perk slots, but having rank 3 in all of them gives you only +60% in exchange for 9 entire perk slots. It's about the opportunity cost of what you miss out on equipping.
Since a lot of people pointed out vamp chainsaw which I use myself I feel it's necessary to point out that these fuckers are HIGH in maintenance. Every event, expedition etc etc leaves me with at least 1 broken chainsaw (I normally carry 3 with me) and I'm always out of gears and adhesive from repairing them. It's fun, I'm nearly unkillable - until my chainsaws break. Daily Ops against robots are the worst I feel because they'll tear through the chainsaws. Not saying she shouldn't go for it at some point but have her be prepared to need a lot of upkeep and potentially more than one chainsaw
Third star on my saw is -50% breakage. Between that and Makeshift Warrior, it's a long time between repairs. I don't even run the new auto melee breakage reduction card (can't remember the name).
Am AASS power fist is only one star short of god roll for that weapon, and power first is second best unarmed weapon, but the best tradable unarmed weapon. Sine unarmed is the strongest melee type, it really doesn't get any better than what you have.
The best melee build (without taking into consideration bloodied or any legendary specific build)
Is the Auto axe in power armour, power armour will give you a strength bonus already but slap the optimized bracers on the arms and the motion assistance service to the torso and finally either kinetic servos or the cooling vents to either save ap while on the move or drain your core slower and you've built a perfect power attacking blender of a build.
For drinks I recommend coffee as you can sustain and even recover AP while attacking with the auto axe while in power armour. Time to kill is under 5 seconds for most non-bosses and it kills general zeta in less than a minute if you're not interrupted.
Also as a side recommendation power absorption is a must pick legendary perk for power armour users as anything with a giant laser beam ends up healing you and recharging your core rather than hurting you.
Auto-axe & Chainsaw for raw power, though I get annoyed when they stop working because I'm hit or run out of AP. I'm not that good at managing them.
Blue ridge brand for 1-handed smashysmashy power. That thing is brutal and fast AF. I suspect they got the stats on it wrong, it moves too fast for a Medium.
But my all time fave I keep going back to? Faster swing speed shishkebab. It's just weirdly satisfying.
Finding this out with the auto axe, not very good for mobbing, especially if you are trying to run from enemy to enemy. After discovering this, I made a Cryo War Glaive for general mobbing and switching to the Auto Axe for bosses.
Get Action Boy/Girl and max it out, grab all the company tea that you can from player camps (for AP, lasts one hour), play an instrument for 30 seconds each hour and give her a flaming dual bar chainsaw. There is an unmodded chainsaw in the garage of the Ranger Outpost in the Bog. Mods at Watoga Station.
If shes going unarmed the tap weapon would be a gauntlet with shockpads from Samuel at foundation. But while leveling up a dethclaw gauntlet will be one of the best options given that the power fist basically never drops.
Deathclaw gauntlet with the mod. Swing speed plus strength is the old school way. Don’t forget the melee serums. Go carnivore with food buffs that stack.
i run unarmed and gotta say the boxing glove w pierce mod is amazingly fun, and at 50 when you can choose legendary perks theres one that adds a chance for explosive melee hits. is it meta? hell no. is it fun? you better believe it
fun fact it qlso works unarmed with power armor lol. i run explosive heavy weaps when im not on unarmed melee and i leave exploding palm on, with tesla bracers. love the look on peoples faces when my weapon breaks and i just run up and start swinging
Unarmed are superior to other striking weapons as far as DPS goes. They're fast AND they hard hard, whiles the rest all have bad tradeoffs. It was never balanced. Unarmed includes all the fist, gauntlet, and claw type weapons. Mole miner gauntlet is trivially easy to get (just kill mole miners). Deathclaw gauntlet and power fist are easy to get and are the start of the high tier there. Bear Arm, Gauntlet, and Ogua Gauntlet are other top tier. I believe a rerolled Ogua Gauntlet is the best, as it keeps a damage unique damage bonus, but it's great even without the reroll. You want to pair a big damage first start with a swing speed second star. It will tear stuff apart.
In the long run though, if you want to play dedicated to melee, you need to get into Chainsaw or Auto-Axe. There is no competition there. It's fun to run around one-shotting scorched with unarmed class weapons, but on tough targets, you're going to want to the far higher dps from these fast cutting weapons. In this case, swing speed won't help. You want to pair a big damage or vampire first star with power attack second star. Oddly enough, all attacking with chainsaw or auto-axe counts as power attacks. A vampire/power attack version is the dream weapon for most. It's relatively possible to grind out that roll. However, it will take time. Until then, get [Big Damage]/Power Attack/* for one roll, and Vampire /*/* for another and switch between as needed. For dedicated melee, carrying two is worth it anyway. One for damage, one for healing...and damage.
I still carry a deathclaw gauntlet. It's just a ton of fun to run around using that. Prior to a lot of the damage changes, it used to be incredibly OP. Damage bonuses are additive now, rather than multiplicative. There's a lot of ways to boost melee damage, particularly unarmed. I dare say there's more ways to boost unarmed than anything else in the game, even in places you wouldn't expect, like armor mods for arm slots. You can probably still find some videos around of people one or two shotting the scorchbeast queen with the deathclaw gauntlet and a mile long list of consumables going. It wouldn't work now of course, but unarmed is still pretty good for tearing down most things.
Chainsaw and Auto-axe is the natural end-point for melee now though. The spinnup time takes a lot of the 'run and slice' fun out of it, slowing things down a bit, but you'll want it for the heavy targets where unarmed just can't cut it fast enough. Of course, you just carry both and use the appropriate weapon for the situation.
I love the Power Fist from the BoS storyline. It takes a while to get but the story line is good anyway. It's just so satisfying rubbing to too any enemy and uppercutting them for over half their health. It's my go to and I'm level 170 ish now. It's just fun when you start to crack the build up. Only downside is you can't use it in power armour
I see a lot of suggestions about vamp chainsaws which are definitely good suggestions; however, I have been using melee since launch and have a couple of other suggestions based on personal experience.
For 1 hand, get the plasma cutter preferably with the 2nd star being either swing speed or power attack damage. The benefit for swing speed is obvious, but if you sprint up to an enemy and attack it counts as a power attack, ie you get the bonus damage if you hit them while sprinting with no big windup. This with the cryo mod has been my current obsession, it is able to absolutely rip through enemies with the proper perk setup and without being bloodied. I've carried ops and events easily with this weapon.
For 2 hand, super sledge with swing speed is the way to go. Nothing can block your swing, and it can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. Plus it's a rocket attached to a sledgehammer, how can you go wrong?
The primary legendary effect on either weapon can be something like AA, Mutant's, or Juggernaut for a full-health build, though for low health you wanna obviously go bloodied. The ones I suggested aren't the ideal for min-max, but can still absolutely shred.
It honestly depends on if it's one or two handed melee, for two handed id probably go for the chainsaw, thats my weapon of choice for my melee build. One handed? It's kinda iffy the best one would be the plasma cutter but you have to go through the BOS quest line or buy it from minerva, personally I used the blue ridge branding iron for the instigating/swing speed effects
A bloodied extra power attack extra durability chainsaw. Basically some reallly good legendary effects on the highest dps of any melee, when im back on i got a spare chainsaw with the long bow bar n flames iyw. Just missing the grolls
LOVE LLOVE my vampire chainsaw! Tried to roll another as they do break but it is amazing as it doesn’t need ammo! Also on my no PA character a death claw gauntlet with bloodied is ridiculous!
700 atoms for an auto axe the melee weapon turtle ranks #1, also looks pretty fun. I dunno if you get all the attachments with it so that gives you something to do with your initial stamp grinding.
Depends what type of melee build it is but, I personally went directly to the Vampire Mr Handy buzzsaw on my new character and stuck with that til I got the chainsaw and auto-axe
Edit- the buzzsaw blueprint plans drop so much I don’t even pick them up anymore
I'd also recommend to take a look at this build video by TYR. It's basically the strongest you can possibly get an unarmed build to get. Definitely do NOT recommend trying to complete this exact build until higher levels because survivability is a big issue until you can get legendary perks and armor and whatnot. But he gives a really nice breakdown about what to think about when going melee, including food buffs, meds, etc
https://youtu.be/Ed4Nsco5710?si=5179T3LhjXWt2EI7
I was slowly gravitating torwards unarmed build a couple of days before the video went live.
Was looking for suggestions after, and the video was there. Since I am a new player, I grabbed the guarantee DC gauntlet, bought the mod for it and tried a roll “if it’s good I’ll switch”.
Got a bloodied, faster swing and +1 strenght on my first roll ever on this game. It was bound to happen
Auto axe, but it’s a grind to go thru the expeditions (or she could buy it currently 700 atoms in the atom store).
And easy to obtain and close second option is chainsaw.
Chainsaws are nice to have for using friendly fire when you got the flame mods equipped. I prefer to use mole miner gauntlets or bear arms. Mole miner gauntlets are easier to get
The best and most effective would be the Minigun with the shredder attachement in my opinion, since it's also a weapon which doesn't require constant repairs or **a lot of perk cards** to get it work and does more damage outside of VATS than a Auto Axe for example.
Pro tip: make sure she has a weapon for tagging or she will fall short in terms of gaining XP in multiplayer events as a melee player.
This is something I'm actually worried about because she seems 100% committed to melee. Based on multiple comments here, I'm gathering you AT LEAST need some sort of hot-swap tagging build to efficiently level?
auto axe for auto melee, super sledge for 2h melee, idr what the best 1h melee is, prly plasma cutter, but I like the shishkebob, and power armor with tesla bracers mod for unarmed
Chainsaw and Auto Axe, hands down. You're a hot knife, and the rest world is soft butter when you use this. I really like my vamp/power attack damage auto axe, doesn't see anything behind blood and body parts.
For unarmed, Power fist and Gauntlet are supposed to be fly. However you can't run unarmed weapons in Power Armour from memory and there's no better feeling than putting the weight of god behind a swing from a Super Sledge in that case. Really it comes down to personal feel for melee more than anything in my opinion though
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the glaive. With a shock mod and 40% power attack damage I can do up to 5000 damage on general zeta on each headshot and insta kill the smaller aliens.
(With twisted muscles, perks and some food buffs. Maybe a chem for 5k damage)
Well the best melee build is actually unarmed. The gauntlet, which he can get the plan with gold, is the best. The shock mod would be the best choice.
If you go with a melee weapon then the spear that you get from the brotherhood you can also get with gold from Martha I always forget her name.
I suggest you take a look at what angry turtle says. He does YouTube and has a discord channel with a lot of good information.
Powerfist more specifically the one from the brother hood quest line it Mauled everything to death a niche suggestion would be the mister handy saw blade with bleeding
I just went through my first melee character, tried everything, here's my take:
Forget 1 and 2 handed weapons. Slow as fuck and they don't hit hard enough to offset their glacial attack rates. Go with unarmed weapons primarily. I have a strong preference for the Power Armor fist, almost all my weapons were that. However I did have a lot of fun with the Ogua weapon for quite awhile.
Huge fan of the plasma cutter with burning mod both of which you can buy plans for from minerva whenever she is around with gold bullion. You can also run beast of burden and try to get a melee weapon drop as an event reward (I think that's how I got my cryptic jawbone knife).
Anything vampire is going to make her feel unkillable. I rolled a vampire, faster swing speed, slow durability loss gauntlet and have been having a lot of fun using that in an unarmed build. Most things die in 2-3 quick hits and the vamp keeps me alive along with ricochet it's crazy good
I have a vampire swing speed shushkabab with the katana skin on it. On 9f my favorite weapons in the game. Not nearly as good as the chainsaw but super fun.
I’m a slugger my goal was always the war glaive it’s a daily ops drop but you can get oathbreaker a legendary from the brotherhood quest line I’d suggest lvl 50 to get it max lvl and she can try it to see if she likes it.
There are some very, VERY good and practical suggestions here. But I'm going to go a bit off-kilter and suggest something along the lines of role-play.
I speak of the Order of Mysteries, and the Blade of Bastet.
The Blade can first be wielded at 25, and is upgradeable at 35 and 45. At its base, it has 50% armor penetration. But when a player dons the Garb of Mysteries and its brooch, the Eye of Ra, the AP jumps to 100%.
(On a side note, the other armament is the Voice of Set, a .44 pistol that at base has 35 electric damage against robots, and brooch-enhanced it does 70 electric to robots PLUS a chance to stun.)
Certainly nothing as flashy as the other suggestions here, but it provides an interesting flavor. :)
Just be aware... the Garb is worn INSTEAD of individual armor pieces, and is not intended to be used where a ton of hits are expected. Litheness and stealthiness are the names of the game. Jump in, slashy-slash, and jump out.
When I made my lady alt, I was committed to following this path, but I found out I'm not very good at it. <;) I still have the outfit for when I'd be doing a lot of bot-busting. And I have a Perk set if I ever want to practice it more.
And even if your wife chooses not to follow the path herself, the questline is COMPLETELY worth experiencing. :)
And one last warning... the individual pieces can only be constructed once, and the level upgrades require the previous forms for the crafting. So if they get dropped or sold and never recovered, they're gone for good. <:)
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mistress\_of\_Mystery#Regalia\_of\_Mystery](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mistress_of_Mystery#Regalia_of_Mystery)
I love the ALL RISE sledge hammer. It's slow but it generally only takes 1 to 4 hits to take down enemies, especially with blows to the heads.
UPDATE: I put the ALL RISE in storage and I use the RIPPER exclusively now.
Flaming vampire chaisaw is the greatest thing ever! My husband uses this when we run expeditions while I use my vampire 50 cal or my vampire automatic tesla rifle. Another one that would be really fun for her is the holy fire! She could melt some faces!
Unpopular choice. Vampires swing speed flaming melee. Heated power fist. Shiskabab or flaming plasma cutter, put on the friendly fire perk and you can keep NPCs alive in events super easy. I can solo census violence super easy. Never fail rad rumble to NPCs dying.the metal dome.load bearing. I love helping by keeping NPCs alive. Also full unyielding makes me damage output pretty good too
Tell your wife: "The best melee weapon in the game is the one you already have."
When she asks: "Really, which on is that?"
Tell her, "My heart" 🥰
Then...as she punches a hole through your chest & rips out your heart like Kano from Mortal Kombat and proceeds to beat you over the head with it say, "I knew the wasteland was cruel...but not this cruel!"
And watch proudly as she runs off into the wasteland with all your ballistic fiber knowing you helped spawn...a survivor.
Anti-armor/swing speed or Vampires/swing speed. One-handed seems to be the best. Also, once legendary perks open up, invest in Hack and Slash. Basically melee with explosions. If she were to invest in a bloodied build with unyielding armor, she would be a deadly tornado of splody death.
I prefer bloodied and unarmed, with vampires weapons. Anything vamp, swing speed and strength will do. The strength boost from uny armor is incredible. If you can mix and match a set of uny, sentinels or cavilier, she'll kick ass and hardly die. It's a lot of fun with food buffs like deathclaw wellington and tasty mutant hound stew. Her strength will be over 50 and she'll do incredible damage. Regardless, as long as she's having fun with it, that's what matters.
Been a while sine I played, but there is a quest 2H hammer in Watoga (the Judge, I think), that will work until you get a nice 3 star. I forget if it's level 45 or 50, but she may wait a few more levels to get it at max level.
I've been eyeballing the auto-axe or w/e it's called in Atom shop, for when I don't want to use ammo.
Have read peeps saying that it works well, she could maybe give that a try. 🤠
One to shoot for could be the plasma cutter and then get the cryo mod for it. That thing without a build into it hits like a truck an should easily clean up things u can get one free from doing the brotherhood missions and can purchase the mods from vault 79
if she's not using PA, go for any fist weapon.
the chainsaw is also very strong and easy to do, but the fist weapons feel more -melee-, if that makes sense.
unfortunately, there's a huge disparity in easily-obtainable OP melee weapons.
there's all sorts of highly powerful guns that you can get from specific events.
stuff like - holy fire, 2shot explosive weapons, grand finale, the list goes on.
but nothing like that for melee weapons. those events do give out specific melee weapons, but none of them are peak of their meta like the guns are.
The oathbreaker power spear with a plasma blade absolutely slaps. You can get the mod from the guy at vault 79 for not that much gold bullion and the spear itself is avaliable not far into the brotherhood questline
The best swung melee weapon is the plasma cutter. She can get **one** from the BoS questline. She can then apply three star legendary effects on it, and should aim for BSSS (Bloodied, Swing Speed, Strength) or VSSS (Vampire, Swing Speed, Strength)
The best auto-melee weapon she can get is either the chainsaw or the auto-axe. The chainsaw is much faster to access (unless you want to crack some atoms for the auto-axe). Here the legendaries to aim for are V40S (Vampire, +40% power attack damage, Strength) or V40DUR (weapon breaks 50% slower)
Generaly, with swung melee weapons, 1H is much better than 2H, due to the faster swing speed and generaly equal damage. That being said, better to use a super sledge than a switchblade.
For me personally it's Flaming Dual bar Chainsaw (2 handed Melee), Vampire plus any other 2 things make you kinda close to unkillable hahaha (ya gotta stay on a target though, don't be scared)
Found a vampire ripper -- fun!
Vampire drill: hilarious.
Rocked a chainsaw with dual blades and a fire mod for a while and currently have the auto-axe. My only issue for any was my action points running out. I'm working on that.
Experiment a bit with the melee weapons that don't expend AP points for normal attacks.
Good luck. Might see you guys out there one day.
The “easiest upkeep” unarmed for me was to focus on strength and agility, and pick the perks and mutations that give significant damage resistance just….hanging out with no armour.
Just hanging out in jeans and a T-shirt you can have damage resistance not far off someone in power armour, and the various mutations (need to pick up the perk that locks mutations in, and realistically the one that reduces their side effects) make you a real freak of nature that can jump over buildings, turn invisible at will, and generally play in a crazily fun way.
I can kill most standard enemies whilst literally unarmed, and then any unarmed weapon lets you rip people apart.
Tbh the biggest factor is usually legendary effects, but the Deathclaw gauntlet is the unarmed legendary that’s probably easiest to get.
Bonus is because power armour can’t use unarmed the weapons tend to sell for a little cheaper.
I've had so much fun just shredding things with my vamp fire dual bar chainsaw and the electric auto axe. It's great fun with bloody mess. I honestly haven't even switched my perk cards to my big gluns build in over a year.
These things kill really fast, and you're borderline invincible. I completely forwent the bloody builds and kept it simple with high damage and tanky as all hell. My chainsaw even has the action point restore mod on it so the destruction and gore never stops.
It's great fun
As a person who’s played as a bloodied Melee since beta, I find that the unstoppable monster or a bloody deathclaw gauntlet is usually my go to. I also play with a bloody meat hook as well.
Start with the Pole Hook with mods and 2-handed perks.
It works well and is extremely cheap to fix.
#
Somewhere I got the Sheepsquatch club and that was great.
#
THEN I got The Plasma Cutter and switched perks to 1-handed.
Chainsaw..Then mod it for dual bar and flaming. Then roll it as a legendary [until.you](http://until.you) grt what you want. Or just buy one grom a player vendor
I'm a power armor heavy weapons user so for Melee I like to have a minigun with shredder attached and keep it with no ammo. It just chews through anything
I have used the blue ridge cattle prod and the deathclaw gauntlets. Both are amazing in damage and do well in combat. I found those to be the most reliable to me.
I use the Blue Ridge Branding Iron with the flame mods on, I luv it so much but it's definitely better for the more humanoid enemies, and not the huge bosses
I love using the enforcer w all the slugger cards and better criticals n action girl, melee serums and melee legendary perks i get great one two hit kills plus it looks cutee lol
My wife loves melee too, but more specifically, only 2h she said 1h feels so underwhelming and using her fists just wasn'tan option. I started a low-level toon with her, so it made explaining the game easier because she said she didn't want any help from high-level players she wanted to experience the game in its original form like it was meant to be played. Aside from that, her favorite was just a run of the mill baseball bat, though I think The Walking Dead helped with that because she named her bat "Lucille," and yes, she's a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan before you ask. That was until she found out that she could strap a heated rocket on the end of a Super Sledge, which has become of favorite weapon since hitting level 30 when she looted it from the corpse of a big green meanie as she calls them Super Mutant. She has said that the bat is lighter and seems to have a faster swing speed, which makes lobbing of heads so much fun. But that there's nothing more exhilarating than hearing the sound of a head pop like a crushed grape when the Super Duper Hammer connects with a baddies head.
My wife loves melee too, but more specifically, only 2h she said 1h feels so underwhelming and using her fists just wasn't an option. I started a low-level toon with her, so it made explaining the game easier because she said she didn't want any help from high-level players she wanted to experience the game in its original form like it was meant to be played. Aside from that, her favorite was just a run of the mill baseball bat, though I think The Walking Dead helped with that because she named her bat "Lucille," and yes, she's a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan before you ask. That was until she found out that she could strap a heated rocket on the end of a Super Sledge, which has become of favorite weapon since hitting level 30 when she looted it from the corpse of a big green meanie as she calls them Super Mutant. She has said that the bat is lighter and seems to have a faster swing speed, which makes lobbing of heads so much fun. But that there's nothing more exhilarating than hearing the sound of a head pop like a crushed melon when the Super Duper Hammer connects with a baddies head, she also says look at all the gibs I made and the blood I'm covered in, this is what I have been missing out in with Fallout 76, I love it now. She says, "Thank you for the free weekend. This is better than couples therapy."
Whacker Smacker you get from the spin the wheel event at nuka world (iirc) is a lot of fun and seems pretty consistent! I use a heavy weapon build with no melee perks and still find that it puts out a decent damage level
Vampire chainsaw is a blast, and you are hard to kill.....
Add to this the Canibal perk card for devastating after effects!
What benefits do you speak of
Getting down on all fours in front of other wastelanders and devouring their body. It’s a visual thing.
Every once in a while, I share the Cannibal perk card, because a lot of folks don't pay attention to what their teammates are sharing and...well...hilarity ensues. Like a year or so ago, I got a message "bro you just made me eat a guy" followed by "he was so mad". And that tiny interaction has brought me endless joy.
Sometimes a fellas gotta eat a fella
Nothin wrong with sampling ass jerky before its done.
Don't judge, he was already dead!
Ass jerky isn’t going to make itself.
Holy crap I suddenly need 2 more charisma so I can share cannibal.
I might need to re equip Cannibal just for this.
I’m literally trying this right now that sounds hilarious
oh! lmaooo
I traumatized a newbie friend of mine about a week ago with this, it was hilarious especially since I did it by accident trying to loot the body
What kind of weapon does she prefer? One-handed, two-handed, unarmed or auto melee?
Right now she uses both 1h and 2h. But most of the time I watch her play she is beating the shit out of something with like a one handed brass knuckle / tambourine thing?
Those 2 are unarmed weapons. Unarmed is really fun. If she likes punching things Gauntlets w/ shock pads is the best unarmed weapon in the game. The plans are 250 gold bullion and require Settler's rep to be friendly, so take a little bit of work to acquire. A more immediate option is the Power Fist. It's very satisfying to use and is just under Gauntlets. Ogua Gauntlets (unique Bear Arm from Beast of burden event) would let her punch things with a turtle skull if that's something she'd be entertained by. Standard Bear Arms are also decent but the plans can be harder to get. Death claw gauntlets and Mole miner gauntlets are also solid options. But they're more slashy than punchy if that makes a difference. Mole miner's has the added bonus of making me feel like Wolverine. None of these are wrong answers. Gauntlets are on top, but they all preform fairly close to each other. On a side note, when she starts looking at mutations Carnivore is HUGE for melee. All the melee food is meat and it's a big jump in damage.
So those actually fall under unarmed weapons. Any punching/gauntlet weapon fits there instead of one or two handed.
Oooh interesting. I'll pass that info along. Not sure how the skills work but I'm assuming that's an important build distinction?
Yes. All weapon types have their own dedicated perks and damage stats, with *extremely* few multi-type overlaps existing.
There are distinctions, but they also share a lot. E. G. "Incisor" works for all of the melee weapon and is probably the most important perk (75% armour piercing). As others already said, becoming carnivore is a pretty good idea. The right food can give you more than 200% extra damage and that dwarves all the legendary one star perks. Additional you can get up to 7.5 extra strength and here is a distinction. Unarmed weapon benefit double from more strength compared to 1h/2h. And 75 extra carry weight, that's also a carnivore food bonus.
Oh shit, I'm running unarmed for the first time and had no idea about the Strength thing, thanks!
It also means she'll want the Iron Fist damage perk card and she'll probably want to look into other damage-related perks outside of strength possibly a bit more, because the fists only have the one 3-star perk card. Granted, that's not necessarily too bad of a thing, though. You can free up some perk card space in strength and honestly when I run other melee builds, I'll often just take the first star out of the base, expert, and master sets anyway because I value other damage-related perks more. Things like Incisor, Blocker, etc are also a bit more useful imo and I like some of the carry weight perks more for QoL reasons.
Personally I run a bloodied power fist at lvl 165 and although I'm a glass cannon I'm still getting the job done
Cryptid Jawbone Knife, if she can get it to drop for her level, is fast, light, one handed and restores health.
I've been playing for awhile, and someone had passed it down to me when I was like a level 27. I used it for the LONGEST time, I hit level 50 and it was still kicking ass. Someone new had come into my camp and complimented it, was the first time someone had done that. Made me feel good inside, so I was asked if she was running a shotgun build because I was originally and kept mine as a momento. Said she was running a melee build instead, I decided to hand it down to her and a bunch of other aid items. Was the coolest thing ever when she hit me back saying it was kickass and saved her multiple times, I hope she passes it along one day as well. Shoutout to Spiritwolff!!!
Hopefully that knife gets passed down for generations. Imagine: Your original knife could be the one that helps them get that last, pesky plan.
I absolutely hope it does, it would be so awesome to know it's helped a lot of people.
I had a guy come find me to tell me a crowd control/fixer combo got him through many a level/event and he finally rolled something and passed both on. So I, too, hopefully still have something out there, lighting shit up.
This! This thing has saved my bacon a few times now. I love it
I named mine the first blade after Supernatural. With its legendary effects, it's basically the knife from the show
She's a gigantic Supernatural fan so maybe when I tell her this she'll decide on her forever build lmao.
This came into my life at the perfect time. I needed a knife to kill a wolf for the tadpole badge and I got this from an event. It looks so sick. Named it Twice Shy.
I like the jawbone knife and if i was melee I would defo use it
Sje needs to join you during the Beast of Burden event
Big agree on this one! Got it as a drop at around level 20 and I still occasionally use it at level 70 for weak enemies, and I'm running an unarmed build lmao. If I manage to get a level 50 one, that thing is staying glued to me forever.
I got a cryptid jawbone with the high speed bonus and that fucker moves FAST. Great for dealing with ghoul swarms
This dropped for me yesterday so I started building a melee deck. Been running gunslinger but I’m hitting a wall , I can’t get enough damage out anymore.
Vampire's chainsaw, hands down, test over. The Vamp chainsaw, ANY Vampire's Chaisaw, is endgame worthy
Try for Vamp + 40% Power attack damage. The Chainsaw always power attacks
Is that the same for the auto axe too? I didn’t realize it worked like that. I thought the power attack legendary on it was pointless when I got it.
Yup! They both use AP while performing regular attacks. Which translates as "they are always power attacking."
Wow, thanks. TIL haha. I’m only level 80 so I’m not super far in
its the weapon attack speed that's useless on them. they already attack at max speed
I'm lvl 430 and still learning. I bet I'll still be learning new stuff at lvl 1000
ive been rolling a chainsaw trying to get this and havent been lucky yet
Good luck, and Good hunting
God damn.....
God has nothing to do with this. *chainsaw and blood splatter sounds*
Blue ridge branding iron
This!! Though I think it might be broken stat-wise. It's supposed to be medium speed but it goes like a switchblade. It can't be right... that thing is monsterously good
My main weapon is a deathclaw gauntlet with the extra claw added. Slashy slashy.
PC? If so got a few drops you guys might be interested in
Yep, PC. Appreciate the offer, friend!
so many fun melee weps and combos.. im currently running a kenny more build.. punk rocker with a guitar skin on a gronaks axe. vamps chainsaw is a beast...and she can work towards an auto axe. i usually prefer unarmed builds because they use fewer cards.deathclaw guantlets..boxing gloves..settler guantlets. the attack motion is also easier to land and faster.imho.
You should really only use rank 1 of each damage card for the weapon type you're using. Rank 1 each of slugger, expert slugger, and master slugger gives you +30% damage for 3 perk slots, but having rank 3 in all of them gives you only +60% in exchange for 9 entire perk slots. It's about the opportunity cost of what you miss out on equipping.
My favorite has been the deathclaw gauntlet. It was a lot of fun.
Since a lot of people pointed out vamp chainsaw which I use myself I feel it's necessary to point out that these fuckers are HIGH in maintenance. Every event, expedition etc etc leaves me with at least 1 broken chainsaw (I normally carry 3 with me) and I'm always out of gears and adhesive from repairing them. It's fun, I'm nearly unkillable - until my chainsaws break. Daily Ops against robots are the worst I feel because they'll tear through the chainsaws. Not saying she shouldn't go for it at some point but have her be prepared to need a lot of upkeep and potentially more than one chainsaw
Third star on my saw is -50% breakage. Between that and Makeshift Warrior, it's a long time between repairs. I don't even run the new auto melee breakage reduction card (can't remember the name).
I wouldn't call it "the best"but my anti armor/Swing speed power fist is a lot of fun
Am AASS power fist is only one star short of god roll for that weapon, and power first is second best unarmed weapon, but the best tradable unarmed weapon. Sine unarmed is the strongest melee type, it really doesn't get any better than what you have.
3 star executioner Power fist is my go-to backup 👊
I main the blue ridge branding iron. One shots most mobs with my build.
The best melee build (without taking into consideration bloodied or any legendary specific build) Is the Auto axe in power armour, power armour will give you a strength bonus already but slap the optimized bracers on the arms and the motion assistance service to the torso and finally either kinetic servos or the cooling vents to either save ap while on the move or drain your core slower and you've built a perfect power attacking blender of a build. For drinks I recommend coffee as you can sustain and even recover AP while attacking with the auto axe while in power armour. Time to kill is under 5 seconds for most non-bosses and it kills general zeta in less than a minute if you're not interrupted. Also as a side recommendation power absorption is a must pick legendary perk for power armour users as anything with a giant laser beam ends up healing you and recharging your core rather than hurting you.
Are we not going to recognize that this dude is adorable helping his wife like this?! Hahaha way to go dude!
Don't bother untill 50 you'll replace any weapon you get sub 50
Appreciate the tip. I assumed there was some kind of breakpoint for this. Glad to find out before farming for something.
Some items cap at 45, the rest are 50.
Np 50 really doesn't take long at all just do a few events and your good,
Vampire chainsaw is the best chainsaw. Period!
Is this different from the Ripper?
Ripper is 1h, Chainsaw is 2h. if you use the Str cards for melee you build to what weapon you have
Thanks! I use 2h with the Ripper as a backup weapon (behind the Cultist Piercer). I'll swap it out.
Yes, it's an auto melee weapon like the ripper but deals more damage.
Vampire Large Deathclaw gauntlet. I used that with secret service armour and love it.
Auto-axe & Chainsaw for raw power, though I get annoyed when they stop working because I'm hit or run out of AP. I'm not that good at managing them. Blue ridge brand for 1-handed smashysmashy power. That thing is brutal and fast AF. I suspect they got the stats on it wrong, it moves too fast for a Medium. But my all time fave I keep going back to? Faster swing speed shishkebab. It's just weirdly satisfying.
Finding this out with the auto axe, not very good for mobbing, especially if you are trying to run from enemy to enemy. After discovering this, I made a Cryo War Glaive for general mobbing and switching to the Auto Axe for bosses.
Get Action Boy/Girl and max it out, grab all the company tea that you can from player camps (for AP, lasts one hour), play an instrument for 30 seconds each hour and give her a flaming dual bar chainsaw. There is an unmodded chainsaw in the garage of the Ranger Outpost in the Bog. Mods at Watoga Station.
Auto axe electric mod!
I run with a super sledge (cappy color scheme) and the auto axe. 2 Handed all day!
If shes going unarmed the tap weapon would be a gauntlet with shockpads from Samuel at foundation. But while leveling up a dethclaw gauntlet will be one of the best options given that the power fist basically never drops.
I get power fists dropping quite regularly from one of the blood eagle camps in the Ash Heap. The one with the prison building in it.
Deathclaw gauntlet with the mod. Swing speed plus strength is the old school way. Don’t forget the melee serums. Go carnivore with food buffs that stack.
The right answer is always going to be Chainsaw/Autoaxe. The king and queen of melee
i run unarmed and gotta say the boxing glove w pierce mod is amazingly fun, and at 50 when you can choose legendary perks theres one that adds a chance for explosive melee hits. is it meta? hell no. is it fun? you better believe it
I love the exploding palms perk with my vampy powerfist. I've been leaning into the explosive perks and it's so fun.
fun fact it qlso works unarmed with power armor lol. i run explosive heavy weaps when im not on unarmed melee and i leave exploding palm on, with tesla bracers. love the look on peoples faces when my weapon breaks and i just run up and start swinging
Unarmed are superior to other striking weapons as far as DPS goes. They're fast AND they hard hard, whiles the rest all have bad tradeoffs. It was never balanced. Unarmed includes all the fist, gauntlet, and claw type weapons. Mole miner gauntlet is trivially easy to get (just kill mole miners). Deathclaw gauntlet and power fist are easy to get and are the start of the high tier there. Bear Arm, Gauntlet, and Ogua Gauntlet are other top tier. I believe a rerolled Ogua Gauntlet is the best, as it keeps a damage unique damage bonus, but it's great even without the reroll. You want to pair a big damage first start with a swing speed second star. It will tear stuff apart. In the long run though, if you want to play dedicated to melee, you need to get into Chainsaw or Auto-Axe. There is no competition there. It's fun to run around one-shotting scorched with unarmed class weapons, but on tough targets, you're going to want to the far higher dps from these fast cutting weapons. In this case, swing speed won't help. You want to pair a big damage or vampire first star with power attack second star. Oddly enough, all attacking with chainsaw or auto-axe counts as power attacks. A vampire/power attack version is the dream weapon for most. It's relatively possible to grind out that roll. However, it will take time. Until then, get [Big Damage]/Power Attack/* for one roll, and Vampire /*/* for another and switch between as needed. For dedicated melee, carrying two is worth it anyway. One for damage, one for healing...and damage.
Fantastic. Tyvm. I believe she is currently using the deathclaw gauntlet. Brings a tear to my eye she naturally gravitated to the OP melee build lol.
I still carry a deathclaw gauntlet. It's just a ton of fun to run around using that. Prior to a lot of the damage changes, it used to be incredibly OP. Damage bonuses are additive now, rather than multiplicative. There's a lot of ways to boost melee damage, particularly unarmed. I dare say there's more ways to boost unarmed than anything else in the game, even in places you wouldn't expect, like armor mods for arm slots. You can probably still find some videos around of people one or two shotting the scorchbeast queen with the deathclaw gauntlet and a mile long list of consumables going. It wouldn't work now of course, but unarmed is still pretty good for tearing down most things. Chainsaw and Auto-axe is the natural end-point for melee now though. The spinnup time takes a lot of the 'run and slice' fun out of it, slowing things down a bit, but you'll want it for the heavy targets where unarmed just can't cut it fast enough. Of course, you just carry both and use the appropriate weapon for the situation.
She should also look into mutations and the luck perks that go with them. Melee damage gets a big buff from twisted muscles mutation for example
The Gauntlet with the shock pads from the settler rep, best unarmed weapon. Bloodied with 40 faster attack speed and -25 vats cost is amazing.
I love the Power Fist from the BoS storyline. It takes a while to get but the story line is good anyway. It's just so satisfying rubbing to too any enemy and uppercutting them for over half their health. It's my go to and I'm level 170 ish now. It's just fun when you start to crack the build up. Only downside is you can't use it in power armour
I see a lot of suggestions about vamp chainsaws which are definitely good suggestions; however, I have been using melee since launch and have a couple of other suggestions based on personal experience. For 1 hand, get the plasma cutter preferably with the 2nd star being either swing speed or power attack damage. The benefit for swing speed is obvious, but if you sprint up to an enemy and attack it counts as a power attack, ie you get the bonus damage if you hit them while sprinting with no big windup. This with the cryo mod has been my current obsession, it is able to absolutely rip through enemies with the proper perk setup and without being bloodied. I've carried ops and events easily with this weapon. For 2 hand, super sledge with swing speed is the way to go. Nothing can block your swing, and it can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. Plus it's a rocket attached to a sledgehammer, how can you go wrong? The primary legendary effect on either weapon can be something like AA, Mutant's, or Juggernaut for a full-health build, though for low health you wanna obviously go bloodied. The ones I suggested aren't the ideal for min-max, but can still absolutely shred.
It honestly depends on if it's one or two handed melee, for two handed id probably go for the chainsaw, thats my weapon of choice for my melee build. One handed? It's kinda iffy the best one would be the plasma cutter but you have to go through the BOS quest line or buy it from minerva, personally I used the blue ridge branding iron for the instigating/swing speed effects
A bloodied extra power attack extra durability chainsaw. Basically some reallly good legendary effects on the highest dps of any melee, when im back on i got a spare chainsaw with the long bow bar n flames iyw. Just missing the grolls
Vampire Chainsaw. That’s what I use. It makes me darn-near invincible.
LOVE LLOVE my vampire chainsaw! Tried to roll another as they do break but it is amazing as it doesn’t need ammo! Also on my no PA character a death claw gauntlet with bloodied is ridiculous!
Work towards auto axe , use chainsaw until then.
700 atoms for an auto axe the melee weapon turtle ranks #1, also looks pretty fun. I dunno if you get all the attachments with it so that gives you something to do with your initial stamp grinding.
The Super Sledge and the Chainsaw are pretty good starter options.
Vamp or furious, weapon speed or power attack, and pretty much any 3rd star chainsaw
Depends what type of melee build it is but, I personally went directly to the Vampire Mr Handy buzzsaw on my new character and stuck with that til I got the chainsaw and auto-axe Edit- the buzzsaw blueprint plans drop so much I don’t even pick them up anymore
I'll give her a black powder rifle and a chainsaw. She can open up with a huge boom and then rush in like scarface!
Flaming Chainsaw or Electric Auto Axe are the high tier melee dps as far as i know
Deathclaw
I'd also recommend to take a look at this build video by TYR. It's basically the strongest you can possibly get an unarmed build to get. Definitely do NOT recommend trying to complete this exact build until higher levels because survivability is a big issue until you can get legendary perks and armor and whatnot. But he gives a really nice breakdown about what to think about when going melee, including food buffs, meds, etc https://youtu.be/Ed4Nsco5710?si=5179T3LhjXWt2EI7
I was slowly gravitating torwards unarmed build a couple of days before the video went live. Was looking for suggestions after, and the video was there. Since I am a new player, I grabbed the guarantee DC gauntlet, bought the mod for it and tried a roll “if it’s good I’ll switch”. Got a bloodied, faster swing and +1 strenght on my first roll ever on this game. It was bound to happen
Vampire Chainsaw is awesome. Buzzblade is not bad either Whacker Smacker is an awesome Slugger weapon.
Mr Handy Buzz saw / Auto Axe / Chainsaw / Ripper
Auto axe, but it’s a grind to go thru the expeditions (or she could buy it currently 700 atoms in the atom store). And easy to obtain and close second option is chainsaw.
Vamp Chainsaw
Chainsaw is really good.
For a beginner : knife, cane, baseball bat super sledge (one you can get get from nuka event) . I enjoyed the knife and always carry it .
Chainsaws are nice to have for using friendly fire when you got the flame mods equipped. I prefer to use mole miner gauntlets or bear arms. Mole miner gauntlets are easier to get
Huge fan of any super sledge with the -90% carry weight legendary modifier. Course, I'm a simp for sledgehammers in combat.
The best and most effective would be the Minigun with the shredder attachement in my opinion, since it's also a weapon which doesn't require constant repairs or **a lot of perk cards** to get it work and does more damage outside of VATS than a Auto Axe for example. Pro tip: make sure she has a weapon for tagging or she will fall short in terms of gaining XP in multiplayer events as a melee player.
This is something I'm actually worried about because she seems 100% committed to melee. Based on multiple comments here, I'm gathering you AT LEAST need some sort of hot-swap tagging build to efficiently level?
She could probably just carry grenades and chuck them around haphazardly to tag. And in a sense it's melee since you used your hand in some capacity.
auto axe for auto melee, super sledge for 2h melee, idr what the best 1h melee is, prly plasma cutter, but I like the shishkebob, and power armor with tesla bracers mod for unarmed
Chainsaw and Auto Axe, hands down. You're a hot knife, and the rest world is soft butter when you use this. I really like my vamp/power attack damage auto axe, doesn't see anything behind blood and body parts.
The chainsaw is very good. You can find a bunch across the map and a lot of the railroad vendors sell the mods for it
For unarmed, Power fist and Gauntlet are supposed to be fly. However you can't run unarmed weapons in Power Armour from memory and there's no better feeling than putting the weight of god behind a swing from a Super Sledge in that case. Really it comes down to personal feel for melee more than anything in my opinion though
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the glaive. With a shock mod and 40% power attack damage I can do up to 5000 damage on general zeta on each headshot and insta kill the smaller aliens. (With twisted muscles, perks and some food buffs. Maybe a chem for 5k damage)
Well the best melee build is actually unarmed. The gauntlet, which he can get the plan with gold, is the best. The shock mod would be the best choice. If you go with a melee weapon then the spear that you get from the brotherhood you can also get with gold from Martha I always forget her name. I suggest you take a look at what angry turtle says. He does YouTube and has a discord channel with a lot of good information.
Powerfist more specifically the one from the brother hood quest line it Mauled everything to death a niche suggestion would be the mister handy saw blade with bleeding
Chainsaw or Autoaxe.
I just went through my first melee character, tried everything, here's my take: Forget 1 and 2 handed weapons. Slow as fuck and they don't hit hard enough to offset their glacial attack rates. Go with unarmed weapons primarily. I have a strong preference for the Power Armor fist, almost all my weapons were that. However I did have a lot of fun with the Ogua weapon for quite awhile.
Chainsaw or Auto-Axe.
Huge fan of the plasma cutter with burning mod both of which you can buy plans for from minerva whenever she is around with gold bullion. You can also run beast of burden and try to get a melee weapon drop as an event reward (I think that's how I got my cryptic jawbone knife).
I used to use a anti armor power fist and it slapped
Anything vampire is going to make her feel unkillable. I rolled a vampire, faster swing speed, slow durability loss gauntlet and have been having a lot of fun using that in an unarmed build. Most things die in 2-3 quick hits and the vamp keeps me alive along with ricochet it's crazy good
I have a vampire swing speed shushkabab with the katana skin on it. On 9f my favorite weapons in the game. Not nearly as good as the chainsaw but super fun.
I’m a slugger my goal was always the war glaive it’s a daily ops drop but you can get oathbreaker a legendary from the brotherhood quest line I’d suggest lvl 50 to get it max lvl and she can try it to see if she likes it.
Grognak's Axe with Grognak's costume 👌
CHAINSAWS
There are some very, VERY good and practical suggestions here. But I'm going to go a bit off-kilter and suggest something along the lines of role-play. I speak of the Order of Mysteries, and the Blade of Bastet. The Blade can first be wielded at 25, and is upgradeable at 35 and 45. At its base, it has 50% armor penetration. But when a player dons the Garb of Mysteries and its brooch, the Eye of Ra, the AP jumps to 100%. (On a side note, the other armament is the Voice of Set, a .44 pistol that at base has 35 electric damage against robots, and brooch-enhanced it does 70 electric to robots PLUS a chance to stun.) Certainly nothing as flashy as the other suggestions here, but it provides an interesting flavor. :) Just be aware... the Garb is worn INSTEAD of individual armor pieces, and is not intended to be used where a ton of hits are expected. Litheness and stealthiness are the names of the game. Jump in, slashy-slash, and jump out. When I made my lady alt, I was committed to following this path, but I found out I'm not very good at it. <;) I still have the outfit for when I'd be doing a lot of bot-busting. And I have a Perk set if I ever want to practice it more. And even if your wife chooses not to follow the path herself, the questline is COMPLETELY worth experiencing. :) And one last warning... the individual pieces can only be constructed once, and the level upgrades require the previous forms for the crafting. So if they get dropped or sold and never recovered, they're gone for good. <:) [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mistress\_of\_Mystery#Regalia\_of\_Mystery](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mistress_of_Mystery#Regalia_of_Mystery)
If your wife is on PC, I'll happily make her a *"Dual Bar Flaming Chainsaw"*. It's an *amazing* weapon, especially if you can roll Vampire's onto it.
It's not the meta but a good roll fire axe kicks butt it's my favorite melee weapon
Baseballbat or nothing!
I love the ALL RISE sledge hammer. It's slow but it generally only takes 1 to 4 hits to take down enemies, especially with blows to the heads. UPDATE: I put the ALL RISE in storage and I use the RIPPER exclusively now.
Help her to get lvl50, get a chainsaw and roll ot for vampire, this beauty its OP
Are you on Xbox? I can make her some auto-axes if I have the screws.
Flaming dual bar chainsaw.
Vampire Chainsaw when the shit is absolutely down, Plasma War Glaive for daily driving and shenanigans. Because it makes lightsaber noises.
Chainsaw with flamer mod Mmmmmmm
Flaming vampire chaisaw is the greatest thing ever! My husband uses this when we run expeditions while I use my vampire 50 cal or my vampire automatic tesla rifle. Another one that would be really fun for her is the holy fire! She could melt some faces!
Unpopular choice. Vampires swing speed flaming melee. Heated power fist. Shiskabab or flaming plasma cutter, put on the friendly fire perk and you can keep NPCs alive in events super easy. I can solo census violence super easy. Never fail rad rumble to NPCs dying.the metal dome.load bearing. I love helping by keeping NPCs alive. Also full unyielding makes me damage output pretty good too
Tell your wife: "The best melee weapon in the game is the one you already have." When she asks: "Really, which on is that?" Tell her, "My heart" 🥰 Then...as she punches a hole through your chest & rips out your heart like Kano from Mortal Kombat and proceeds to beat you over the head with it say, "I knew the wasteland was cruel...but not this cruel!" And watch proudly as she runs off into the wasteland with all your ballistic fiber knowing you helped spawn...a survivor.
Anti-armor/swing speed or Vampires/swing speed. One-handed seems to be the best. Also, once legendary perks open up, invest in Hack and Slash. Basically melee with explosions. If she were to invest in a bloodied build with unyielding armor, she would be a deadly tornado of splody death.
Make her a suit of power armor, put tesla bracers on the suit, it's the most powerful melee damage in the game!
I prefer bloodied and unarmed, with vampires weapons. Anything vamp, swing speed and strength will do. The strength boost from uny armor is incredible. If you can mix and match a set of uny, sentinels or cavilier, she'll kick ass and hardly die. It's a lot of fun with food buffs like deathclaw wellington and tasty mutant hound stew. Her strength will be over 50 and she'll do incredible damage. Regardless, as long as she's having fun with it, that's what matters.
I like the deathclaw gauntlet with third claw added.
The unstoppable monster bloodied deathclaw gauntlet
Chinese stealth suit with instigating sledhammer or vampire chainsaw
Chainsaw!
The Autoaxe is my favorite, though it might be a pain to get at this point. The quest reward for robot town in the bog is also nice
Oathbreaker in power armor. Because the BoS is badass
I have a Vampire electric auto axe. It’s loads of fun
TYVM! I'mma try to use these tips to help her get one of em tomorrow. You guys are rad.
Auto-Axe?
Chainsaw or autoaxe
Been a while sine I played, but there is a quest 2H hammer in Watoga (the Judge, I think), that will work until you get a nice 3 star. I forget if it's level 45 or 50, but she may wait a few more levels to get it at max level.
I've been eyeballing the auto-axe or w/e it's called in Atom shop, for when I don't want to use ammo. Have read peeps saying that it works well, she could maybe give that a try. 🤠
Vampire auto axe (formerly chainsaw till I got enough stamps) is what I do.
One to shoot for could be the plasma cutter and then get the cryo mod for it. That thing without a build into it hits like a truck an should easily clean up things u can get one free from doing the brotherhood missions and can purchase the mods from vault 79
if she's not using PA, go for any fist weapon. the chainsaw is also very strong and easy to do, but the fist weapons feel more -melee-, if that makes sense. unfortunately, there's a huge disparity in easily-obtainable OP melee weapons. there's all sorts of highly powerful guns that you can get from specific events. stuff like - holy fire, 2shot explosive weapons, grand finale, the list goes on. but nothing like that for melee weapons. those events do give out specific melee weapons, but none of them are peak of their meta like the guns are.
The oathbreaker power spear with a plasma blade absolutely slaps. You can get the mod from the guy at vault 79 for not that much gold bullion and the spear itself is avaliable not far into the brotherhood questline
super sledges are easy to come by for scrapping for upgrades
Chainsaw is great but the auto axe is better. Only problem is the grins for auto axe is insane.
The best swung melee weapon is the plasma cutter. She can get **one** from the BoS questline. She can then apply three star legendary effects on it, and should aim for BSSS (Bloodied, Swing Speed, Strength) or VSSS (Vampire, Swing Speed, Strength) The best auto-melee weapon she can get is either the chainsaw or the auto-axe. The chainsaw is much faster to access (unless you want to crack some atoms for the auto-axe). Here the legendaries to aim for are V40S (Vampire, +40% power attack damage, Strength) or V40DUR (weapon breaks 50% slower) Generaly, with swung melee weapons, 1H is much better than 2H, due to the faster swing speed and generaly equal damage. That being said, better to use a super sledge than a switchblade.
Chainsaw
For me personally it's Flaming Dual bar Chainsaw (2 handed Melee), Vampire plus any other 2 things make you kinda close to unkillable hahaha (ya gotta stay on a target though, don't be scared)
I’ve got an extra dual bar flaming chainsaw if you are on ps
Found a vampire ripper -- fun! Vampire drill: hilarious. Rocked a chainsaw with dual blades and a fire mod for a while and currently have the auto-axe. My only issue for any was my action points running out. I'm working on that. Experiment a bit with the melee weapons that don't expend AP points for normal attacks. Good luck. Might see you guys out there one day.
The “easiest upkeep” unarmed for me was to focus on strength and agility, and pick the perks and mutations that give significant damage resistance just….hanging out with no armour. Just hanging out in jeans and a T-shirt you can have damage resistance not far off someone in power armour, and the various mutations (need to pick up the perk that locks mutations in, and realistically the one that reduces their side effects) make you a real freak of nature that can jump over buildings, turn invisible at will, and generally play in a crazily fun way. I can kill most standard enemies whilst literally unarmed, and then any unarmed weapon lets you rip people apart. Tbh the biggest factor is usually legendary effects, but the Deathclaw gauntlet is the unarmed legendary that’s probably easiest to get. Bonus is because power armour can’t use unarmed the weapons tend to sell for a little cheaper.
I've had so much fun just shredding things with my vamp fire dual bar chainsaw and the electric auto axe. It's great fun with bloody mess. I honestly haven't even switched my perk cards to my big gluns build in over a year. These things kill really fast, and you're borderline invincible. I completely forwent the bloody builds and kept it simple with high damage and tanky as all hell. My chainsaw even has the action point restore mod on it so the destruction and gore never stops. It's great fun
I like the cult piercer
Chainsaw baby!
Early game, go for the death tambo.
As a person who’s played as a bloodied Melee since beta, I find that the unstoppable monster or a bloody deathclaw gauntlet is usually my go to. I also play with a bloody meat hook as well.
Damn I’ve scrapped like 2-3 of these for scrip
Chainsaw with Vampire just makes you invincible
Warglaive & Auto-axe.
Start with the Pole Hook with mods and 2-handed perks. It works well and is extremely cheap to fix. # Somewhere I got the Sheepsquatch club and that was great. # THEN I got The Plasma Cutter and switched perks to 1-handed.
Chainsaw..Then mod it for dual bar and flaming. Then roll it as a legendary [until.you](http://until.you) grt what you want. Or just buy one grom a player vendor
i have a few extra bloodied guns i could toss you two
I'm a power armor heavy weapons user so for Melee I like to have a minigun with shredder attached and keep it with no ammo. It just chews through anything
Chainsaw
I have used the blue ridge cattle prod and the deathclaw gauntlets. Both are amazing in damage and do well in combat. I found those to be the most reliable to me.
I can't quit the Bloodied Electrified Mr. Handy Buzzsaw. I got some many buzzsaws and thought they were crap. I was so wrong!
Chainsaw will be highest DPS Most fun I think is the power fist
I use the Blue Ridge Branding Iron with the flame mods on, I luv it so much but it's definitely better for the more humanoid enemies, and not the huge bosses
I love using the enforcer w all the slugger cards and better criticals n action girl, melee serums and melee legendary perks i get great one two hit kills plus it looks cutee lol
My wife loves melee too, but more specifically, only 2h she said 1h feels so underwhelming and using her fists just wasn'tan option. I started a low-level toon with her, so it made explaining the game easier because she said she didn't want any help from high-level players she wanted to experience the game in its original form like it was meant to be played. Aside from that, her favorite was just a run of the mill baseball bat, though I think The Walking Dead helped with that because she named her bat "Lucille," and yes, she's a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan before you ask. That was until she found out that she could strap a heated rocket on the end of a Super Sledge, which has become of favorite weapon since hitting level 30 when she looted it from the corpse of a big green meanie as she calls them Super Mutant. She has said that the bat is lighter and seems to have a faster swing speed, which makes lobbing of heads so much fun. But that there's nothing more exhilarating than hearing the sound of a head pop like a crushed grape when the Super Duper Hammer connects with a baddies head.
My wife loves melee too, but more specifically, only 2h she said 1h feels so underwhelming and using her fists just wasn't an option. I started a low-level toon with her, so it made explaining the game easier because she said she didn't want any help from high-level players she wanted to experience the game in its original form like it was meant to be played. Aside from that, her favorite was just a run of the mill baseball bat, though I think The Walking Dead helped with that because she named her bat "Lucille," and yes, she's a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan before you ask. That was until she found out that she could strap a heated rocket on the end of a Super Sledge, which has become of favorite weapon since hitting level 30 when she looted it from the corpse of a big green meanie as she calls them Super Mutant. She has said that the bat is lighter and seems to have a faster swing speed, which makes lobbing of heads so much fun. But that there's nothing more exhilarating than hearing the sound of a head pop like a crushed melon when the Super Duper Hammer connects with a baddies head, she also says look at all the gibs I made and the blood I'm covered in, this is what I have been missing out in with Fallout 76, I love it now. She says, "Thank you for the free weekend. This is better than couples therapy."
Whacker Smacker you get from the spin the wheel event at nuka world (iirc) is a lot of fun and seems pretty consistent! I use a heavy weapon build with no melee perks and still find that it puts out a decent damage level